Chapter 14

December 1962

The warm steam of the tea touched at his thinner upper lip, and his tongue moved to the corners of his mouth, tucking in any other sip his aged lips would let dribble out. It used to embarrass him, but embarrassment was beginning to be just another dim memory; he wasn't sure if this was a benefit or a detriment.

He lifted his eyes from his tea and up again to the room, the blue walls a sharp contrast to the tawny-orange of his tea, but not uninviting. The glow of the fire and lamps warmed the space nicely, like they'd done a thousand other nights in his memory.

And just as in memories, his eyes wandered up to her bed and to her place where she sat: turning the cover of a book, her dark hair falling in front of her face, her chin lifting and her eyes searching for him.

But then the light caught at her features, and it wasn't her at all. His arms felt weaker at the recognition, and he heard the involuntary tremble of the saucer in his other hand. It rattled daintily, but persistently.

"Donk? Would you like me to take it?"

He was sure his response was delayed, but he did indeed give the cup and saucer to Coco who he heard place it neatly on the little table beside the chair. His chair. The chair he had sat in most evenings when he'd entered this space.

His eyes gradually moved upward again and he tried to adjust to the movement around him. Edith was there, just to his right. He could hear her shuffling through more photographs that Coco occasionally thrust into his lap. The others — George and his wife Grace, Mary and Henry, Tom, Caroline and Marigold — they had floated in and out of the room since he sat down earlier this afternoon, even Shirley, checking on him, making sure he was alright. And he had been, though it took him a moment longer to look back up at the bed, at her sitting there. It was harder to look up and find Sybbie on the bed, books piled beside her, and not Cora.

Cruelly, his less conscious mind wondered where she was. Where was she? Wasn't she …

Robert closed his eyes and forced himself to place his thoughts in the present just as his great-granddaughter had placed his teacup: solidly, but gently, down and still. He knew she was gone. He knew it. He knew it as one knows that the sky is blue, winter is cold, a flame will burn one's finger.

Cora was dead.

He opened his tired eyes again, and he brought them to where Sybbie sat, in Cora's spot, on their bed.

He knew she was gone, he knew, but she felt … it felt as if she should walk through her door and smile at him.

"Donk?"

Robert heard Sybbie's voice distantly and blinked. Ah. He'd been staring at her, hadn't he?

"Are you still all right? Remember, we don't have to use anything that you want to keep. It's entirely your choice."

"Of course I'm alright," his voice was gruff. He chuckled at it. "Though I must admit having any say is a new sensation. Nothing's been entirely my choice since 1921."

He heard as his girls laughed — his Edith, his Sybbie, his Coco — and he felt it again. He felt her again.

His Cora.

Sybbie let her eyes linger on her grandfather for another moment, at the way he looked at the bedroom door which was slightly ajar and then at the way he looked back at the teacup that Coco had taken from him. Sybbie watched his white brow dip and then as his rounder chin tremble for a moment as he moved his mouth, away from the laughter they'd just shared and toward a thought, as if he was about to speak. In the glow of the lamp from behind him — a lamp that reminded Sybbie of the pink tasseled lampshade that she'd tickled in her grandmother's room years ago, watching as her grandmother dabbed her little stick of scent to her long neck — Donk looked smaller and yes, he looked old. The feathery glow of his soft wisps of white hair touched her heart, and she consciously took him in this way, committing it to memory. She wasn't sure how much longer she'd be able to do such a thing.

Her cousin's daughter once again took another picture from Aunt Edith behind her and then handed it to Donk, asking again for him to name the faces there.

Donk didn't hesitate. "Of course this man here is Isidore Levinson. Cora's father."

"Oh!" Coco knelt beside him, craning her neck to better see the picture he trumpeted to and fro. "Gosh, he was tall! Look at the door frame beside him." Here she giggled, "He looks like Gran in a way. Or rather, Gran looks like him."

Donk slowly turned the palm-sized photo over to see if any inscription was on the back. "Mary certainly inherited his self-assurance. Well, from him and from my mother."

Sybbie smiled to herself and then caught Aunt Edith's eye and saw her smiling, too. But Donk continued. "No, Mary looks like the Porters."

"Who are the Porters?"

Donk's eyes moved from the photo to Coco again. "Martha's family. Martha's mother, in particular."

"Martha is my great-great grandmother, right? So her mother would be … oh my great-great-great grandmother?"

Sybbie, too, was doing a quick family tree as she heard Donk's little sigh of exasperation. "That's quite enough of that."

"Oh, and I think we have a photo of her from your wedding Donk. It was a gigantic group shot all sitting at tables." Coco stood and practically hopped to the secondary photograph box, a box they'd decided should be put into photo albums, and began flicking through them.

Donk, though, kept speaking evenly. "Cora and I always say it's Sybil who looks the most Levinson."

Sybbie paused at his comment, the tenses settling strangely between them let her eyes go to her aunt. Aunt Edith, too, had looked her way.

Meanwhile, Donk shakily pointed at the little photo. "That's Harold. Cora's brother. You can see there. Something about the shape of the face."

"Was Granny Cora older or younger than Harold?"

"Older," he answered quickly, "but not by much."

Her aunt glanced away and continued to finger through more photos. Every now and again, Sybbie watched as she extracted one and added it to the little pile she'd begun beside the box on the surface of the chest of drawers, pictures Sybbie assumed her aunt wanted to bring home for herself.

"What's this!" she said suddenly, and then plucked another from the box and handed it to Coco who was finishing writing Harold's name to the back of the last photo. "Papa, here's another group shot. I recognize Mama and Grandmama, but when? Their dresses are quite elaborate."

Donk retrieved the photo from his great-granddaughter as Edith spoke and Sybbie watched him narrow his gaze. The photo trembled slightly in the lamplight over his head.

And then he laughed amusedly. "I'm not sure, but you're right. Even Martha looks quite nice."

Sybbie watched as her aunt Edith walked over and bent down over Donk's shoulder, her mostly now-whiter blonde waves of hair tickling at her cheekbones. Her cheeks had gone narrower since last Christmas, and Sybbie saw for the first time a resemblance between her aunt and her grandfather: the same cheekbones, the same chin, the same lift of smiles and laughter.

"I believe that's Lady Falton in the chair besides Cora," Donk was mumbling and narrowing his gaze through the lenses of his spectacles. "Annette Falton."

"Who is she?" Aunt Edith leaned ever closer to the photo. "Have I ever met her?"

Sybbie watched as Donk's expression changed into something softer, as if the recognition of the face had reversed the years kept in the lines around his eyes. "No. You were an infant. She had twin boys, but died when they were quite young." He lifted his chin. "I don't remember how. Cora and I went to the funeral shortly after you were born."

"Oh how sad," Coco commented, and Aunt Edith spoke over her.

"But how did you know her, Papa?"

"She was Cora's friend. Another American."

Sybbie looked up from the cover of the book she held and blinked. A friend? Granny was terribly nice, but she had few — perhaps not any — friends who weren't somehow also linked to Donk. None of her own. She sighed and felt her body deflate softly, listening closer.

"Oh," Aunt Edith's voice was quieter. "Mama never spoke of her."

Donk motioned for his teacup, and Edith fetched it quickly, offering it to him. "No. She wouldn't have. Your mother and grandmother stayed with the Faltons during her first Season. I met your mother at a dinner there."

Sybbie furrowed her brows, not remembering this story. She noticed Coco now rested on her heels.

"But I thought you met at a ball!" Edith shook her head. "Lord and Lady Whittens?"

Donk sniffed once. "Whitmere. And yes, but not properly."

Aunt Edith walked around to see him better. "Not properly?" Sybbie watched as she found the chair beside Granny's dressing table. "That sounds rather exciting. And certainly a different story than Mama's."

Donk chuckled at that, "Your mama and I sometimes lived different versions of the same events."

"That may be so, but I'm not sure there can be a different version of how you met her." Edith's voice was flat, but when Sybbie looked at her aunt, she could see the gentle way she peered at Donk. "And Mama was always quite proud of her story, as if it were a fairytale. I feel more inclined to believe her version."

"Ah, but you would take your mama's side."

"Not always!" Aunt Edith leaned back, smiling, and went on, "But I have quite fond memories of when she'd tell us her stories when we were girls. They were always so lovely —"

"—especially in her American accent," Donk added off-handedly as he peered into for his teacup.

Edith ignored that. "Her story was that you met, and spoke and laughed, as if you were the only two people in the room. And from that night on she looked for you at every ball, until at last, it was you who searched for her."

"Well, she was right about that. We had been the only two people in the room; that's no metaphor." Donk was quieter and he slowly took a sip of his tea. Coco, Sybbie, and Aunt Edith watched as Robert lowered his cup but looked into some distant memory that no one else saw. And while it may have hurt Sybbie days ago to see him like this, alone in his thoughts, the people from his past only now existing there in his mind's eye, tonight it felt smoother, as if it had been a rough gem that had been tumbled around. Still hard, some places of it ugly and perhaps sharp, but precious. "We met briefly, only for a moment, in an open sitting room. There was hardly any conversation: I mentioned something about America; she teased me for it. And then we both stood at the door, pointed out our mothers to one another. And that was it."

Sybbie felt her smile deepen, and she looked back down at the book she held, letting Donk sit in his quiet memory for a moment more before she swallowed and whispered to the room, "That's very sweet, Donk."

"Oh, no. It wasn't sweet, both of us hiding in the dark," he leaned and managed to replace his teacup on the little table.

Edith, Coco and Sybbie all sat straighter.

"Oh, I think so!" Coco was protesting from the floor.

"No. It was shameful. I was more concerned with the size of her necklace that night." Donk took a deep breath and looked at his great-granddaughter. He lifted the photo that he'd let rest in his lap. "It was at Lord and Lady Falton's where I learned her name, when I sat beside her at dinner. I always felt I met her then." He smiled. "And that was sweet."

Coco knelt on her knees beside him and touched his arm, gently. "I think both nights sound sweet. And romantic … alone together in the dark … Granny Cora teasing you."

He nodded at her, handing her the picture. "You would say that, being sixteen, but our being alone too often led to a bit of trouble."

"Oh, Papa. No confessions, please. I'm not sure we need to hear about any of your young and infatuated escapades." Aunt Edith stood to walk back over to the dresser with a smile, but Donk was not really smiling.

"No. There was nothing improper. At least not until later."

"Donk!" Coco covered her mouth, laughing, and Sybbie couldn't help but laugh, too, the thought of Granny being anything but terribly well-behaved and innocent, tickling her.

"Oh," Donk reached out again for his tea. "But it was a different world then."

"There you all are!" The room seemed to shake at Aunt Mary's entrance. "Papa, it's nearing ten! You mustn't look worn out for the photographers tomorrow." At this her eyes scanned the mess of a room. "I won't comment on the state of this place for I'm sure you can all see just as well as I can."

"Don't worry, Mary. It'll be ready," Edith held a small stack of photographs out to her, and Mary walked in to take them. "And I can detain them. Come up with a reason to come again later, if I must. I'm well-versed in magazines. It is my business, after all."

"Owning a magazine doesn't make you the ordained bishop of all journalists. Now what am I looking at?"

Aunt Edith had met Donk's gaze and rolled her eyes before answering. "It's a group snap of us at Duneagle. I thought you'd like it."

Sybbie studied the way Aunt Mary's eyes studied the photo, put it back on top of the stack and fanned it around. "Yes."

Edith glanced up at her. "Don't you want it? There's Matthew —"

"— Yes. I do. Though where I'll put it, I . . ." The room watched as Mary looked at Donk next, and blinked. "Come to bed, Papa. It's late."

"Ah, if you'll excuse me, ladies. My jailer has come to collect me."

The room chuckled slightly as Donk trembled upward, his thin arms hoisting himself up; Sybbie went to move, putting her leg over the side of the bed to help, but Coco was there instead.

"Here, Donk," she was whispering as Mary sighed with a an even more giant roll of her eyes than Edith's. A family trait, Sybbie thought to herself.

"Yes, alright. Make me out to be some terrible Dickinsian villain. Denying your every basic need — like sleep."

But Donk looked over at Coco instead. "If she'd been a man, they'd call her a tyrant."

"No," Mary caught Edith's gaze. "They'd applaud me."

Sybbie even laughed at that.

"Come on, Donk," Coco's lilting voice sounded young and sweet. "I'll walk you to bed. Help you find your pajamas."

Donk was mumbling something more as he moved through, past Mary, who lingered in the door, letting her eyes move around every surface and corner of her mother's room. Sybbie also looked up to inspect it.

It wasn't so bad: an open trunk; boxes of photographs; a few books on the bed. But Aunt Mary's face was pale.

"Can you really finish it?" She paused only for a breath before sighing, "Oh, I don't know why you didn't leave well enough alone. Everything is all upside down. And how can you be sure it isn't wrong to include him? I don't know. I just don't know!"

"Because Papa needs to be a part of it, as Sybbie said. And she's right, you know." Mary turned away from Edith, but Sybbie watched their argument from the bed, both of her aunts looking somewhat taller. "He does deserve to be the final word on her things, on what's put away or left in this room, on what we're allowed to take for ourselves —"

"Edith—"

"— it does help, to have something physical to cling to, Mary, which you should know. He was the most important person to Mama, aside from us. She'd want him to decide — you know she'd want him to. Her will stated as much —"

"But you weren't here."

Sybbie lowered the book she held at Aunt Mary's second, longer, exasperated sigh, her narrow shoulders dropping, her face oddly softening.

"You weren't here when she died, Edith. The day she died. The morning. You didn't see how even though there were months of knowing, of preparing, he just … he's unable to …" she trailed off, but both Sybbie and, she knew Aunt Edith, too, remembered how it had been. How could she not? For although Aunt Edith had not been there when Granny died, she'd been there that evening. She'd seen Donk then, how he wouldn't eat, how he'd sat up all night staring out into the fire laid for him, though it was early summer. How he'd dissolve suddenly into convulsive sobs for the following week, unable to be in her room, to see her clothes, hardly even to speak her name. How he'd burst into angry tirades at the mention of going through her things.

"He won't remember she's gone, Edith. Please."

Oh.

Mary had not meant that long, dark grief they'd all been here for. No. She meant the moment. And horribly and terribly unbidden, Sybbie, sitting in this very spot, the spot Granny had died, recalled back the moment it had happened.

Donk had watched her sink away, holding her hand, the people all around her weeping as quietly as possible. He'd watched her go, watched the last breath leave her fragile lungs, but he stayed there holding her hand for far longer than anyone else felt he should, staring at her, until at last, someone had to say so, had to say what was plainly obvious to everyone else in her room. And it was Mary who was the one to whisper, "Oh, Papa. She's gone."

And then … then he went to pieces.

"She can't be."

His voice, breaking and strangely not his own, still haunted Sybbie. Even now. Even then, in the moment, she'd known it would forever be with her — when she rushed from the room and onto the gallery with George and Caroline, crying. His voice had followed them, repeating over and over and over, in deep painful sobs, "She can't be."

She can't be.

Suddenly, tears stinging her eyes, Sybbie scrambled from the bed, holding the book still, but looking between her aunts. She knew she'd startled her aunts, but she didn't care.

She shook her head. She looked around the room, but the ghost of his grief didn't deter her somehow. Somehow it made this even more the right thing to do. As if … as if it was an unfinished task his soul must complete.

"I was there," she blurted to Aunt Mary. "Aunt Edith doesn't remember, but you know I do." She looked at her aunt with new compassion now, and also a new understanding of what Uncle Henry had meant.

Aunt Mary did feel things very deeply; and just as he had said, she was afraid of how deeply she felt it. But that was the role she'd filled, wasn't it? It had been Granny's role, too: a calm in the storm.

It was Mary. Mary had been the one to stay behind in that room. She'd not escaped to the gallery. She'd been the one to comfort her father who still held her mother's hand. She'd been the one to tell him to let go of her so that Grasby's could take her away.

"I remember," Sybbie repeated to her. "I know. And we'll be careful with him."

Aunt Mary's face hadn't hardened again. It had remained soft and strangely vulnerable and Sybbie found herself nodding to her, encouragingly. "I promise, Aunt Mary."

"Very well," she nodded back, even though Sybbie could sense she didn't mean it. Again she flicked the photograph she held and glanced down at it before sniffing and lifting her chin. "I don't agree. I don't. But Edith's right about one thing, at least. That book should stay."

Sybbie furrowed her brow and looked down at the book she held, the book Aunt Mary had gestured to.

"It is special. In fact, there's a dog-eared page there. Where there's sort of note Papa sent Mama two days before they were married."

"Oh, Mary," Edith whispered to herself and had slowly sank into the chair Donk had occupied. Sybbie saw in her periphery that a far-away expression spread over her features.

Mary continued, ignoring her. "They'd had an argument, or a fight. I don't remember what Mama had said. Something had happened, they'd … well, it was something quite serious, and Papa wanted to be sure she knew he meant it, that he'd try to make her happy. So he sent her that, annotated, the night before their wedding."

Mary shook her head a little, lifted the picture she held an inch. "Matthew did that too, in a way. Except he came to apologize in person, which I much prefer over a note."

Sybbie felt herself warming at that, and when Aunt Mary met her eye, her aunt retreated from her own memories again and pointed, once more, to the stack of books left on the bed.

"Apparently they exchanged little annotations like that throughout their marriage, which, rather irritatingly seems exactly like something they'd do. For they were very happy, I think. Well, I know. They were."**

"— but how?" Edith's voice from the chair was small. "How do you know all this? Mama never told us it had been an argument. She'd only said it was a note he sent while they'd been engaged. How did you —"

Sybbie watched as Mary lifted her chin, rather haughtily, indignantly. "Papa wasn't the only one to keep Mama company in those last days, Edith. And I did listen. For you weren't the only one fond of her, you know."

"I know," Edith answered softly.

And Aunt Mary's response was just a quick nod. And then she left then. Silently. And Aunt Edith and Sybbie stayed quiet until, suddenly Sybbie heard a shaking breath and looked over at her aunt.

"Aunt Edith?"

But she was shaking her head. "I don't know why I'm crying. It's been years, though Mary always finds ways to make scars fresh again."

Sybbie frowned. "I don't think she means to be hurtful, this time. I think she … I think she's having a hard time with it all. With Donk who so obviously is …" she couldn't finish the words, but she realized she didn't have to. For Aunt Edith sat in Donk's golden-threaded chair and shuddered.

"It still hurts, not having been here for Mama," she wiped her eye. "And I suppose I'll miss his going, too." She sniffed. "My dearest Papa."

Sybbie's vision blurred, and she tucked her lips into her mouth, pressing them hard to keep her own feelings at bay. And then, beneath her fingers, within her hands, she realized she still held the green book with golden Ivy creeping up the cover. And because curiosity felt better than sorrow, her fingers searched out the dog-eared page Aunt Mary mention.

And it was there. She sniffed and swallowed. She drew her fingertip down the right margin of the page and saw the tiniest little faded, pencil-written Cora. Donk's handwriting. The same handwriting that'd been written on the little yellow ticket that meant he loved Granny.

She looked at the curves of her Granny's little name and then beside it, the thin, thin pencil marks beneath short lines of text:

I'm yours for ever — for ever and ever. Here I stand; I'm as firm as a rock. If you'll only trust me, how little you'll be disappointed. Be mine as I am yours.*

Sybbie, too, wiped at her burning eyes. Sniffed again. Breathed in and out and then looked over at her aunt who was also trying to collect herself. "No you won't miss his going. You're here now, aren't you? And now is important. Perhaps even more important because … I think we all see it, don't we? He's leaving us," she managed. "Or perhaps, he left when she did. And none of us wanted to notice." She closed the book and put it in Granny's side drawer. "After all, they never really existed without the other, did they?"

It was cold. Bitterly. His toes, even nestled in two layers of socks, felt as if they were blocks of ice, nearly numb. His fingers felt the same. Hard to move. So cold they no longer even tingled.

Nothing.

It was well past midnight now. He was aware of that. He was also aware that it was the latest he'd stayed awake in ages. Perhaps years, though his old age had taught him that time was just a trick that mankind had created to catch one another out. Time didn't really exist anymore. It ebbed and flowed, quick and slow, like a waltz, dancing around the days, and weeks, and seasons with no constant, even tic-tic-tic. The clock he'd looked at moments ago, it only tried to make sense of something that was outside of any mortal's control, and for good reason.

Time was too powerful; she moved along, at whatever pace she chose, no matter how one wished.

His head felt heavy, dense, physically heavy and dense, that is, and his heart and chest had a heaviness too. So he'd switched on his lamp and let the electric buzz keep him company, or at least keep him grounded in present here, in this room, and not among the lovely things of their life together that he longed to be amongst.

The things Time had taken. The things Tomorrow had stolen and Yesterday had been forced to give up.

The photos, the trinkets, the notes, her little stacks of books — they had all awakened in him a simultaneous depth of love and joy and yet heartbreak and grief. Feelings he now understood to be dependent on one another; without one, the other didn't exist.

He let his blurry recent memory think back to her room, to Coco and Edith and Sybbie. He pictured in his hazy mind the photographs he'd spoken of. The images moved through his mind as they had done earlier; but then, at one photo, a photo of Cora smiling down at the infant Mary, both bathed in light, a glow about them that had magically been captured there forever, Robert's chill had softly warmed into … well, that depth of love and heartbreak again.

And gratitude to God, or whoever else has orchestrated such events.

Gratitude that he'd had this, had them, his little girls, had her — his darling — once upon a time.

No.

The photos began to move in his mind. It wasn't a photograph anymore. A memory? No.

It was not worth lying to himself, not privately.

No.

The real reason he'd turned on his lamp was not because of the memories keeping him awake. It wasn't.

He rattled out a short breath, and Robert told his tired arms to lift himself. His neck felt too tight, every bone scraped against the other as he inched himself up to rest against his headboard. The joints popped, cracked together, as he finally sat more inclined. It all hurt, or at least he thought it should, though pain was distant now.

Oh. He was aware of what was happening to him. It had become aware to him this evening, after Mary had slipped in her graying head to wish him a good night. To check on him as if he were a child in the nursery. She loves me, he reminded himself. Anger was not appropriate now.

Instead: a soft alarm.

For it had happened. After she'd left him alone … except he hadn't been alone.

She'd been there, only it wasn't her voice this time. He'd seen her there. By the door. Right where Mary had been.

He'd blinked his heavy, tired, aching eyes and she'd blurred and then gone.

But Robert was sure she'd been there with him, he'd seen her. It had been her. Dressed in French blue and pretty. She'd been there, unmistakably, though his mind kept reminding him over and over and over that she was dead.

Cora was dead.

But she'd been here tonight, and her jasmine perfume remained.

A/N: *quote from Henry James's The Portrait of a Lady, also thank you to modernamericangirl for this original line when I wrote 'An English Summer'

** headcanon from conversations with randomabiling, modernamericangirl, and thedowntonhistorian