THE PRINCIPLES OF DEVOTION
1918
MY SISTER SARA CALLED ME TO HER ROOM on the morning of her death. She was in quarantine in the cottage behind our house, stricken with the Spanish flu, unable to eat or drink, her fever so high she had begun to speak with people who weren’t there. In a lucid moment she gathered her strength and wrote a note she then shoved beneath her door. I stood in the yard and read it. It was September and everything was yellow. The bees’ nests were high in the trees, which meant a hard winter would follow. Sara wanted me to grant her a last wish. I had never been able to deny her anything. I was ten years old and she was twenty-five, as much a mother to me and my younger sister, Hannah, as our own mother had been. It was an honor to be asked such a favor. If I was afraid of anything, it was only that I would fail her in some way.
Our parents had died the year before, our father first, our mother soon after. They were bound together, people said. They had never spent a night apart and always called each other Mr. and Mrs., as though still delighted and somewhat surprised to find themselves husband and wife. Sara was our father’s favorite. He called her his charm and said she brought him luck. Even after she’d married Billy Kelly, who later went to war in France and was now in quarantine himself in the navy yard north of Boston, unable to see his wife as she lay ill, Sara had always come to our father for comfort and advice until his death last winter. Now, perhaps because there was no one else, she’d sent for me.
Mrs. Kelly, Billy’s mother, was helping us keep house, but she wouldn’t venture inside the cottage for fear of my sister’s disease, even though Sara had fallen ill after visiting her son. Each evening, Mrs. Kelly carried a tray across the yard. She fixed a bowl of broth, a plate with some dry rolls, and a pitcher of water. She slid the food through an open window. Even though she had no contact with her daughter-in-law, she wore a mask over her face and hurried back across the yard as if our darling Sara was a venomous snake. I refused to look like a coward to my sister. Sara had told me that a woman who could rescue herself was a woman who would never be in need. But there was no rescue for her now. Her skin was pale, and we could hear her coughing far into the night from across the yard. Our younger sister, Hannah, went to sleep with her hands over her ears so she could blot out our dear Sara’s suffering. But I listened. I heard. I sat by my window and wondered what came next, in the world beyond our own.
I SLIPPED ON my good blue dress for the visit, even though my black one had been cleaned and pressed and was waiting in the bureau. I didn’t wear gloves the way some people did when ministering to the ill. Sara had always been so brave. Perhaps that was why our father favored her. I didn’t blame him. She’d been a strong swimmer as a girl and had gained some fame when she crossed from Boston Harbor to Swampscott. A small rowboat had tried to keep pace with her in case she faltered, but they had lost her in the fog. Sara told me that seals had followed her, as if she was one of their own. She was photographed for the newspapers with a garland atop her head, a huge grin across her face, soaking wet in her swimming suit. She was the sort of woman who was more beautiful in difficult times, resolute, ready for action. She had always hiked and fished with our father, and she loved horses. She had a natural affinity with them and said people who used a whip when they rode should be whipped themselves. She was also a painter of some note, and her watercolors were prized not just in Berkshire County, where we lived, but also in Manhattan, where she’d studied. She laughed and insisted that even though she had a New York soul, her heart was in the Berkshires. I had one of her paintings above my bed. It was of Hightop Mountain, which I could see out my window. I preferred my sister’s version to the original. When I looked at that painting, I imagined I was Sara, and that for once I could see through her eyes.
Many men had been in love with my sister over the years. Boys in school sent her love notes. Painters asked her to model, but she laughed and told them they should model for her instead. Once a fellow from New York showed up on our doorstep. Our father chased him off by pointing a rifle at him, which was laughable considering my father’s kind nature and the fact that the gun hadn’t worked for years. My sister’s caller stood his ground, and my father invited him in for dinner. He was a wealthy man, bewitched by my sister’s talent and her beauty, but in the end Sara chose Billy Kelly, whom she’d known since they were in school. He was steady, she told me, like a rock. I was only a child but I wanted to say a man is not a rock. I myself would have preferred a man who was like a river, changing and quick, always a surprise.
I OPENED THE door of the cottage, eager to do anything my sister asked. There was a scrim of dust in the air, yellow, like the grass in the fields. The parlor was silent, except for the clock on the mantel. I went to the bedroom and knocked. The door opened under my touch. There was Sara, in bed, her dog lying by her side. Our father had bought her that dog, a pug she named Topsy, when she was little more than my age. He was nearly fifteen by now, ancient for his breed. Topsy was her protector and her friend, her only company since she’d taken ill. Now he stood and barked at me, as if he hadn’t known me my whole life.
“Topsy.” I was startled by how vicious he was. “It’s just me.”
Sara reached to pet him, and he quieted under her touch. Still he glared at me.
My parents had let my sister name me. Thankfully she hadn’t called me something to rhyme with Topsy. I might have been Flopsy if Sara had been a less poetic child. For three weeks I was nameless, a baby in my cradle. At last my sister decided upon Azurine. She said she couldn’t find a name beautiful enough for me so she invented one. It was the name of a watercolor paint, a wash of blue-green, mutable, gemlike. Perhaps you belong to anyone who names you. If that was so, then it was surely true of both Topsy and of me. Which of us was more distraught to see my sister in such distress, I couldn’t say.
I sat in a chair near the bed and said my sister’s name. How extraordinary a word it was, elemental, pure.
“Don’t come too close,” Sara warned. She held a handkerchief over her mouth. “I’ve been talking with Mother and Daddy. I speak with them all the time.” I shivered to think how close she was to the dead, able to hear their words. “I’m the favorite,” she announced, as if she were a little girl and I her proud aunt.
“You’re my favorite too,” I told her.
She was wasting away, but still beautiful. Because of her fever her hair was wet. She looked the way she had when she was photographed in Boston, standing on the shore.
“I have a wish.” Sara’s expression was serious and focused. All at once I realized she knew it was the end. I understood I needn’t keep that secret from her. For that I was grateful.
I moved my chair closer in order to hear. I had better remember every instant, for it would never come again. There was the tray with last night’s supper perched on the sill, untouched. The pitcher of water was filled to the brim. The window was raised and sparrows clustered on the ledge, chattering, pecking at the roll on the plate. I didn’t feel that I was ten years old, even though that was the number of my years on earth. Not anymore. I knew more than a girl should know. I saw my sister’s sorrow. Maybe I should have been more like Hannah and covered my ears.
“I need you to take care of the one I love. Promise you’ll never leave him.”
Sara’s voice was thick. Speaking was difficult for her. It may have been that she had never before asked anyone for anything and that was difficult as well. In her lifetime she had given far more than she had received. I was speechless when I heard her request. I thought she meant Billy, and for an instant I wondered if she had forgotten I was only a child. I shuddered. Did she expect me to spend my life caring for her husband, perhaps even marrying him the way some surviving sisters did? All the same I gave Sara my promise. My face was wet with tears, but I controlled my voice and managed to sound like a reasonable person, one who had just pledged her life away.
“I’ll write to Billy today,” I said. “I’ll watch over him.”
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“Billy!” My sister almost smiled. “No. Not Billy. I want you to take Topsy. He’ll be yours now.”
I was relieved in some ways, saddened in others. It was as though my sister had left the human world behind. And Topsy, who was to be mine, was growling.
“He doesn’t like me,” I said childishly.
“But I do,” Sara countered. “If I didn’t trust you more than anyone else, I wouldn’t put him in your care.”
I took her hand even though you weren’t supposed to touch those infected with the flu. The birds at the window had finished with their crumbs. They flew away all at once. The light changed and lengthened. I could hear the wind in the trees. I felt lucky to be there with Sara, to be the one she trusted.
The dog knew before I did. He made a sound that was nearly human, a sob it seemed to me. My sister dropped my hand. I heard something escape from her mouth, her soul perhaps, rushing upward. For one bright moment I thought she might return, but she was gone. I sat there for a while, then went to close the window. When I returned to the bedside, I reached to shut my sister’s eyes. Topsy leapt to bite me. There were two drops of blood on my wrist.
NO ONE WANTED to prepare the body, so in the end my sister wore the same white nightgown to her funeral she’d worn since falling ill. I brushed her hair, and Topsy watched me. I had smacked his nose after his bite, so he was a little more cautious around me, though he growled again. “Don’t you dare,” I told him. “You’re mine now.” He looked at me with his buggy eyes as though I were mad. We were in the same room, mourning my sister. That was all we had in common. It was she who bound us together.
Two laborers from the cemetery brought the coffin into our yard. The men were from Italy and could barely speak English. They came into the cottage, surprised to find only a ten-year-old girl and a little dog tending to the body. They took off their hats as a mark of respect, then carried my sister to the coffin, which rode atop a small wagon they pulled by hand. We followed the wagon, Topsy and I. I saw my sister Hannah through the window of the big house. Mrs. Kelly had insisted it was dangerous to attend the funeral, even though it would be held in the open air. Hannah put up her hand to wave to me, but I went on. The pastor, Johnson Jacob, came and said a prayer. He was a good man, and he waited with me while the laborers dug the grave. He told me that we could not begin to understand the mysteries of our faith, and I wondered why he assumed I had any faith at all. When he left, Topsy and I stayed on, until the earth was replaced. How was it that Sara could be gone? Of all that she might have asked for, how could her wish have been so small?
When it grew dark, I started for the path that led to the cemetery gates. They were beautiful gates, black wrought iron, crafted in France, ordered by a family who had lost their little girl, as if setting out those gates could keep her spirit from wandering. I called for the dog as I started for home, but Topsy stayed where he was. I clapped my hands. He didn’t even turn his head. The last of the season’s crickets were singing in the grass. Their sound was low and slow. Everything ended. Everything stopped. All at once I realized how alone I was in the graveyard. I felt again that I was only ten years old and that the world was far too much for me. I called and called, but Topsy wouldn’t come. The dark was widening and the wind took up. I ran on to the gate. When I looked back, the dog was lying in the grass, like an ugly old cricket.
MRS. KELLY MADE me bathe out in the yard with strong lye soap. I had to burn the clothes I’d worn. I watched as the black dress turned into smoke. When I went up to bed, Hannah slipped in next to me and wept. I comforted her and said Sara was in a better place, but we weren’t close after that. I kept to myself, especially after Billy came home. He’d found a new wife while he was in quarantine, a nurse from Boston named Annie. He was a young man and no one expected him to live the rest of his life alone, without a wife and children. They were married in the spring, and Hannah served as a flower girl. I picked the mallows to wind into a garland for her head, but when the day of the wedding came, I said I was ill and stayed away from the church. I went to the cemetery instead. I visited there each afternoon with a bowl of food and a jug of fresh water for Topsy. He had never come away from my sister’s grave. All winter he had stayed there, even though it had turned out to be an especially cold season, just as the bees nesting high in the trees had predicted. When snow fell he made a den. I brought him a blanket. There were several nights when I imagined he would freeze to death, but he always was there to greet me the next day. His coat grew thick and rough. His eyes were droopy. He never wagged his tail when he saw me, but he knew me and rose to greet me when I approached.
Now that it was spring, he sprawled out on the grass. It was blackfly season. I set a mesh over a tree branch to form a gauzy tent. I sat there protected from fly bites, but Topsy never came inside, no matter how I might urge him to join me in the tent.
“You’re a madman,” I said to the dog on the day Billy Kelly married his second wife. “Come sit with me.”
Topsy and I were hunkered down in the cemetery, the netting between us. I had brought along a lunch for us to share, but neither of us was hungry and I tossed the crumbs to the birds. Topsy twitched whenever flies circled above his head. He had little marks on his nose and paws from the irritations they caused. Our house was currently decorated with pink ribbons for the wedding supper. Pink was Annie’s favorite color. Clove pink, china pink, snow pink. I thought of how when Sara wrapped presents she used string instead of ribbons because she hated waste. “Oh, it’s just as good,” she would insist when our mother would say her work seemed too homemade. “It’s better.” My sister hated pink; she preferred the deepest darkest shades of red. Thinking of the roses she had once planted, I sat there in the tent of netting and cried. Maybe Topsy felt some pity for me because later he trotted beside me when I walked to the gate.
By then most people in Blackwell knew that Sara’s dog had taken up residence in the cemetery and that he refused to leave. The school had a class trip to visit him, and the pastor came out on Sundays after his sermon and brought biscuits. The grass where Topsy lay was worn away. There was nothing but bare earth. He always went into the woods to do his business, then ran back to his spot. He accepted treats, but only if they were placed directly before him. He ducked his head if anyone tried to pet him. He wasn’t interested in their affections. In early fall, when Sara had been gone a year, Annie Kelly had a baby she named Beth Ann. Hannah often minded the baby—she took great pleasure in her—but I wasn’t one for children. When the baby reached up to me, I avoided her touch. I said I was clumsy, unable to help out with one so small. I began to take my school-books out to the cemetery so I could read in peace. I was there when an art class from Lenox arrived one afternoon. They set up their easels and made studies of Topsy. The teacher had been an admirer of Sara’s work and he gave me one of his drawings on that day. I showed it to Topsy and he gazed at it disdainfully. I laughed and agreed it wasn’t a very good likeness. Not so long ago my sister babied him and let him sleep in her bed and Topsy had been as fat as a frog. Now he was skin and bones, even though I brought him his supper each day. There was a white film over his eyes.
I didn’t think Topsy would last through another winter, but he did. He always stood to greet me, and when I left, he politely walked me to the gate. Other than those two rituals, he didn’t seem to notice my existence. I talked to him sometimes, but he never even tilted his head. He ignored me. I still had the bite mark on my wrist from the day my sister died. The bite had faded, but when I ran my hand over my skin, I could feel it. That following spring I turned twelve. I learned how to make rhubarb pie with a fine crust and how to read Latin. I cut my hair short, and it was a scandal. Everyone was talking about it, but by summer most of the girls in town had followed my lead. Now when I went to the cemetery, Topsy was there by the gate, waiting for me at four o’clock. He could tell time it seemed, and when I was late, he always looked put out. As we walked to my sister’s grave I told him wha
t was going on in town, bits of gossip and news. Not that he cared. I told him I couldn’t sleep at night, and that I had started swimming in the Eel River, even though I knew I would never be as strong a swimmer as Sara.
One afternoon when there was so much pollen the air itself seemed yellow, Billy Kelly came down the path. I was reading Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, which thrilled me, not only the story but the fact that a woman had been daring enough to write it. We had a new library in town and I was there nearly every week, stopping on my way to visit Sara. The librarian had hesitated when I checked out Frankenstein. I said, “Don’t worry. I’m not afraid of words.” Sometimes I read aloud. Now I looked up from my book and there was Billy. He was staring at Topsy. Topsy stared back at him.
“You’d think he’d have died out in the cold,” Billy remarked.
As far as I knew Billy had never come out here before. Perhaps his mother had filled his head with some nonsense about disease reaching out from beyond the grave. Perhaps he simply didn’t have the heart for such visits.
“He’s stubborn,” I said. When Topsy gave me a baleful look, I added, “All pugs are. It’s the nature of the breed.”
“Do you think it’s in your best interest to spend so much time out here?” Billy asked me. It was then I realized that people in town were talking about me, thinking I was odd.
“I wasn’t thinking about my best interest,” I said quietly.
Billy went away, but I stayed until dark. I didn’t want to have dinner with the family or speak to anyone, although that night Hannah slipped into my bed the way she used to when she was younger. We were a bit closer, but we were very different. I didn’t tell her to leave, but I turned to the wall. I spent more time at the library. I had decided I wanted to further my schooling, perhaps attend Smith College, and Hannah now came to the library with me. There was another baby in the house, and the Kellys seemed to have taken over. It was noisy and hectic even for Hannah. For me, it was like being in a madhouse where I was being driven out of my mind by all the diapers and dinners and laundry and people who meant something to each other but nothing to me.