The Break Is Made

And that’s the way Nurse Sarah finished her story, only she shrugged her shoulders again, and looked back, first one way, then another. As for her calling me “chatterbox”—she always calls me that when she’s been doing all the talking.

As near as I can remember, I have told Nurse Sarah’s story exactly as she told it to me, in her own words. But of course I know I didn’t get it right all the time, and I know I’ve left out quite a lot. But, anyway, it’s told a whole lot more than I could have told why they got married in the first place, and it brings my story right up to the point where I was born; and I’ve already told about naming me, and what a time they had over that.

Of course what’s happened since, up to now, I don’t know all about, for I was only a child for the first few years. Now I’m almost a young lady, “standing with reluctant feet where the brook and river meet.” (I read that last night. I think it’s perfectly beautiful. So kind of sad and sweet. It makes me want to cry every time I think of it.) But even if I don’t know all of what’s happened since I was born, I know a good deal, for I’ve seen quite a lot, and I’ve made Nurse tell me a lot more.

I know that ever since I can remember I’ve had to keep as still as a mouse the minute Father comes into the house; and I know that I never could imagine the kind of a mother that Nurse tells about, if it wasn’t that sometimes when Father has gone off on a trip, Mother and I have romped all over the house, and had the most beautiful time. I know that Father says that Mother is always trying to make me a “Marie,” and nothing else; and that Mother says she knows Father’ll never be happy until he’s made me into a stupid little “Mary,” with never an atom of life of my own. And, do you know? it does seem sometimes, as if Mary and Marie were fighting inside of me, and I wonder which is going to beat. Funny, isn’t it?

Father is president of the college now, and I don’t know how many stars and comets and things he’s discovered since the night the star and I were born together. But I know he’s very famous, and that he’s written up in the papers and magazines, and is in the big fat red “Who’s Who” in the library, and has lots of noted men come to see him.

Nurse says that Grandma Anderson died very soon after I was born, but that it didn’t make any particular difference in the housekeeping; for things went right on just as they had done, with her giving the orders as before; that she’d given them all alone anyway, mostly, the last year Grandma Anderson lived, and she knew just how Father liked things. She said Mother tried once or twice to take the reins herself, and once Nurse let her, just to see what would happen. But things got in an awful muddle right away, so that even Father noticed it and said things. After that Mother never tried again, I guess. Anyhow, she’s never tried it since I can remember. She’s always stayed most of the time up in her rooms in the east wing, except during meals, or when she went out with me, or went to the things she and Father had to go to together. For they did go to lots of things, Nurse says.

It seems that for a long time they didn’t want folks to know there was going to be a divorce. So before folks they tried to be just as usual. But Nurse Sarah said she knew there was going to be one long ago. The first I ever heard of it was Nurse telling Nora, the girl we had in the kitchen then; and the minute I got a chance I asked Nurse what it was—a divorce.

My, I can remember now how scared she looked, and how she clapped her hand over my mouth. She wouldn’t tell me—not a word. And that’s the first time I ever saw her give that quick little look over each shoulder. She’s done it lots of times since.

As I said, she wouldn’t tell me, so I had to ask some one else. I wasn’t going to let it go by and not find out—not when Nurse Sarah looked so scared, and when it was something my father and mother were going to have some day.

I didn’t like to ask Mother. Some way, I had a feeling, from the way Nurse Sarah looked, that it was something Mother wasn’t going to like. And I thought if maybe she didn’t know yet she was going to have it, that certainly I didn’t want to be the one to tell her. So I didn’t ask Mother what a divorce was.

I didn’t even think of asking Father, of course. I never ask Father questions. Nurse says I did ask him once why he didn’t love me like other papas loved their little girls. But I was very little then, and I don’t remember it at all. But Nurse said Father didn’t like it very well, and maybe I did remember that part, without really knowing it. Anyhow, I never think of asking Father questions.

I asked the doctor first. I thought maybe ‘t was some kind of a disease, and if he knew it was coming, he could give them some sort of a medicine to keep it away—like being vaccinated so’s not to have smallpox, you know. And I told him so.