Chapter 54: Anne

I was putting laundry away when Mary came into our room.

"Got a minute?"

"Always, for you. What's the matter? You've been looking down the last day or so."

"I've been thinking about that trip to Fairplay. It was so wonderful, everything I would have dreamed of a year ago, if I hadn't known it was impossible."

"From what you said about it, it must have been. How come you're feeling low? Backlash?"

We sat down on the bed. The sunshine coming through the open window ended not far away, cut off by the overhang of the roof. The warm breeze cooled us: in weather like this we rarely wore clothes at all.

Mary sat cross-legged against the headboard. I stretched out.

"Anne, I took Will away from you for two weeks. I didn't realize it would be so hard for you."

"It wasn't hard, Mary. Don't forget, I had Saul and two others. I'm glad he went with you. He needed it and loved it. You took good care of him."

"When we got back, I thought you'd gone over the hill. You didn't let him out of bed for days."

"Well, that's not true. We did get together a lot there, for a while, but I'm sure we were downstairs the next night when you fixed dinner."

"Okay, okay. You know what I mean. I feel like I took more than I should have. Don't butter me up."

Anne backed off, a little. "Well, it's true I really missed Will. I've gotten so used to him, having him around, feeling his presence. I missed him a lot, and when he came home I sort of went overboard. I don't really understand why, Mary. I'm really sorry I went overboard, and I hope you'll forgive me. I love him and I love Saul, too. I guess I didn't realize how important he is to me. Is that what's really bothering you? Is it that old thing about my loving Will and Saul?"

Mary sat and thought for a moment. "Yes and no. I've never felt a problem with your loving them, Anne. And, I'm glad to see you realize how important that is to you. You're a great one for blowing off things like that — saying 'it isn't that important', when it really is. I guess it's just that suddenly I feel a little strange. You've got Will and Saul, Sigrid has Tom, Heather has Alex..."

"And you haven't got anyone? You've got us all, Mary."

"Yes, and I know it and I feel the love you give me. But..."

"But you're missing something."

"I guess."

"I'll bet I know what happened, Mary. Can't you see?" I looked at her face. "No, I guess not. Looks like we're each showing each other something." I sat up, so I could look her in the eye. "Mary, something really big has happened to you. You got yourself a Mom and Dad, and it's fallen in on you."

"What do you mean, fallen in?"

"You saw them here, when they came to pick you up. Two more open, loving people I have never seen. And you responded to them in just the same way, I'm glad to say."

"Go on."

"Mary, until now, you have never had a real family to love and that accepted you. Aunt Bessie was always a substitute, no matter how much you loved each other. You always knew you didn't have a Mom and Dad."

"I suppose that's true. But I got along all right." She grinned ruefully. "That sounds defensive, even to me."

"It's thanks to Aunt Bessie and to your own courage and goodness that you did. But now that's over, things have changed. Now you have the love you wanted and never had. You feel different."

"Boy, that's sure true. But why do I feel so weird? I'm happy for them, I'm happy for me, but somehow I don't feel right."

"You're feeling the thing any person with a loving family feels, Mary, but it's new to you and you don't know what it is, what to do about it."

"Damn it Anne, what are you talking about?"

"Love. I'm talking about love. All your life you've given your happiness, your affection, your goodness, your body — to your friends. Same way I have with you, my pals in the study group at home and with Tom and Alex. You've given everything you had... But one thing you didn't have, and that's the ability to love someone; to give your love."

"I hate the way that sounds, Anne, but it feels right. What does it mean?"

"I think you needed to have a mom and dad to love you so that you could turn on the love that's inside you. As long as your mom was sick, and your dad went along with it, protecting her, you couldn't love anyone completely. The way I love Saul and Will."

"And you're saying, now I can."

"Yes."

Mary got up and went to the open window. She put her hands on the sill and stood, leaning into the sunshine, her golden hair gleaming.

When she turned back toward me, she said, "You know the best thing? The best thing is I have you and all the rest to love me." She grinned her big grin. "If I didn't have you, I'd probably run out and marry the first man I saw."