Mirelle made a movement, instinctively wanting to hold her against the tremors. Sylvia stepped back, one hand raised in warning.
"Sympathy would kill me, Mirelle."
"Hadn't you better get in touch with your doctor then? I can't…"
Sylvia gave her head a little shake. "I called him when this hit me this morning but he can't see me until 3:00. I knew that if I stayed in that house another minute, I'd…" Sylvia turned her back on Mirelle. "The problem is, she means well. She's operating according to her high standards… which died with the Treaty at Versailles, for God's sake. She's an Edwardian relic but she's so goddam strong… You don't know how lucky you are, Mirelle," Sylvia went on, her voice losing the shrillness of desperation, "to have had a rebel for a mother."
Mirelle blinked. "A rebel?"
"G.F. once said that he thought my mother would have made a superb courtesan. In fact, his exact words were 'what an empire builder she'd've made'. "
"1 never thought of my mother as a rebel."
Sylvia's smile was less forced, almost as if she were enjoying Mirelle's disorientation. "Didn't you? She was a concert and opera singer when that profession was just barely respectable. Then she had a flaming affair with the leading portrait painter of the decade, and a memento of the occasion…"
"Mother…"
"Ah ha." Sylvia was enjoying herself and Mirelle was torn between relief at seeing her in control of her emotions and a dislike of being teased. Then abruptly Sylvia's face resumed its mask of tragedy. "At least she had enough courage to follow her honest emotions."
"And paid for that the rest of her life."
"It's the sins of omission one regrets."
"Such as?"
Sylvia's face got even bleaker. "Matricide, for one."
There wasn't a speck of facetiousness in that remark: Sylvia was completely earnest. Mirelle knew that. But the laughter that bubbled out of her mouth was irrepressible.
"But, Sylvia, you know your mother wouldn't approve of that at all!"
The words were out before Mirelle could stop them, though she clapped horrified hands over her mouth in the next moment, desperately trying to figure out how she could redeem her gaffe, but just then Sylvia's sense of the ridiculous revived. She gave a short burst of harsh laughter.
"Not only disapprove but find some way to come back and haunt me. And that would be entirely insupportable."
The phone rang and Mirelle swore vehemently.
"Answer it, Mirelle. It might be Roman." Sylvia turned away to stare out the window.
Silently Mirelle cursed as she reached for the phone. Not that she had exhibited any unsuspected gift in easing her friend's mental distress but surely a sympathetic listener provided some sort of a safety valve.
"Is… Sylvia there by any chance?" G.F. asked casually.
"Yes, she is."
"Good. Would you tell her that Bert called and wants her to call him as soon as possible please? How's Roman?"
She responded politely to the last question and made no more effort to continue a conversation than G.F. did. She devoutly hoped that this Bert was the psychiatrist. How tactful G.F. was!
"G.F. says that Bert wants you to call immediately."
The relief in Sylvia's face confirmed Mirelle's wish. Sylvia almost grabbed the phone from her, her fingers shaking as she dialed with joint-twisting frenzy.
"Bert? You're free? Oh, thank God. I'll be right over."
She practically flung the phone back into its cradle, grabbing up coat and purse with clutching, fumbling hands. In the act of setting her foot on the first step, she whirled, her eyes alive in her still drained face.
"Mirelle, you did help. You said the right things. Thanks."
Then she was up the stairs and out of the house. The air pressure between the storm door and the inside one kept it from closing so Mirelle went to shut it properly. She saw Sylvia's car skidding in the snow on the hill and she worried that Sylvia's urgency might have disastrous results. But, as the car reached the crest of the hill, it slowed. Commonsense had come back to the driver.
Mirelle closed the door firmly, leaning back against it until she heard the latch click.
"My horoscope is wrong today, all wrong," she said, and then went to answer the phone again.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
THE SENSE OF UNREALITY lasted through the next day. Steve had come home and started to drink. He had been preoccupied all during dinner, but he had gone out to the hospital and spent an hour and a half with Roman. Mirelle had watched him quietly during dinner and had been waiting for him when he got back from the hospital. He hadn't paused in the living room to speak to her but had gone upstairs immediately. She heard him moving around in their room, the squeak of the louvered closet doors opening, the opening and closing of dresser drawers. To her sudden dismay, she realized that he was packing.
With great unconcern she went upstairs and dallied, checking the children's rooms before she entered theirs. He was packing the two-suiter, quietly and efficiently. He looked up as she came in.
"I doubt I'll be back before Sunday. And, if the situation in Cleveland hasn't changed, I may stop off there on Monday," he said.
The knot that had begun in the bottom of her stomach suddenly unwound. She had entirely forgotten about his convention. The only thing she had thought of when she'd heard him packing was that he was leaving her.
"I explained to Roman. He's a terrific kid, Mirelle. I forget that he's going on fifteen and growing so fast. I hate to leave him in the hospital, but he told me Dr. Martin says he can come home Wednesday."
"Yes, didn't I mention that at dinner?"
"I had my mind on the Cleveland thing," Steve said, but Mirelle knew where his mind had been and accepted the tactful lie. "I'll have to catch an early plane from Philly. I'll take the wagon and leave it at the airport. Easier all around."
Mirelle agreed, hearing all the while the words he wasn't saying. She undressed in that remoteness that had colored the entire day. She did, however, have the foresight to take two sleeping pills while she was in the bathroom. She heard Steve rattling in the medicine chest, too, for the same remedy. She hoped he'd hear the alarm in the morning.
She had managed to wake up sufficiently from her drugged sleep to get Nick and Tonia fed and off to school, but the phone rang three times with complaints about nondelivery of papers and that made Tuesday as wrong as Monday had been.
The only bright spot in the day was the overwhelming success of Roman's sickpig, which she took to cheer his morning. Every nurse on duty, the orderly, and Dr. Martin had to admire the silly thing. In a state of high glee, Roman showed her all the cards that had come. Dr. Martin confirmed his Wednesday discharge.
"As a matter of fact, send him back to school Thursday, Mirelle," Will Martin said. "He's more likely to be kept quiet there than at home. And think of the status he'll acquire."
Mirelle laughed.
"Say," Martin went on, "your Mr. Howell sent me a pair of tickets to that concert of his on Friday. I've half a mind to rip out the telephone plug and go to it. My wife sees me at breakfast if she's lucky. By dinner I've usually improved enough to be sociable, but inevitably some damn fool has an emergency so we never get a chance to enjoy an evening'sleisure time." He snorted over his choice of phrase. "Are you going?"
"Steve's out of town." Mirelle knew she was temporizing.