standards,” Edward informed her. “It's a disgrace.”
“It's hardly a disgrace. It's actually extremely difficult to get into Penn Veterinary School,” Harriet said, her voice rising. “It's one of the best schools in the country.”
“Regardless,” Edward said dismissively. “It's a lesser endeavor.”
Katharine, sensing trouble, came in from the kitchen. She looked at their faces. “What is it?” she asked.
“Daddy thinks I'm a disgrace to the family,” Harriet said.
“What is it?” Katharine asked again. “What's the matter?”
“I'm going to veterinary school,” said Harriet. “I'm going to be removed from the family tree.”
“Edward,” Katharine said, distraught.
Edward shrugged his shoulders, as though he had nothing to do with this. “Anyone who can get into a good medical school should go,” he said. “You have a responsibility to the world. You should use the talents you were given.”
“Who are you to decide that?” Harriet asked.
Julia drew in her breath.
“Don't be rude,” Katharine begged.
“Who I am is head of neurosurgery at Jefferson Hospital,” Edward said coldly, “though I don't think I have to tell you that.”
“No, I mean who appointed you to decide the hierarchy of human endeavor?” Harriet leaned back in the big armchair as if flattened there by the wind.
“I don't need to justify myself to you,” Edward said. “Looking after animals is a lesser endeavor, just as animals are lesser creatures than human beings. I don't have to tell you that.”
“You sound like someone from the Middle Ages,” Harriet told him. “And what I'm doing is not a disgrace.”
“Harriet—” said Katharine, anguished.
“Did your grades drop?” asked Edward. “Is that what happened?”
“My grades did not drop, Daddy,” Harriet said. “I have a 3.9 average. The last two years, a 4.0. I happen to want to treat animals. I think they're really interesting, and I think the science is interesting. I like animals, and I like being around them. I respect them, which is more than you can say about your patients.”
Edward drew breath, but Harriet went on.
“Why can't I decide what it is I want to do?” she asked. “And why are you such a snob?”
“Please,” Katharine said, desperate. She was shaking her head back and forth. “Please stop this. Just stop it, both of you.”
Edward shook his head, his face bleak. “I'm happy to stop. I have nothing more to say about this. Harriet, of course, may do as she wishes. It's her life.”
He walked across the room to the small armchair by the window, where he sat down in silence. He did not look at them.
“Harriet,” Katharine said, but Harriet shook her own head stubbornly and said nothing.
During dinner no one spoke. The air was frozen, they could hardly breathe. The only sound was knife, fork, plate. Julia heard everyone swallow. Katharine closed her eyes while she drank from her water glass, her face a mask of grief. Julia would not be drawn in. She would not come to Harriet's public defense, when she had been so carefully excluded from Harriet's private plans. Julia hardened herself against her mother and her sister.
That night, when Julia heard Harriet come upstairs, Julia didn't open her door. Why had Harriet not told her? She heard Harriet go into her own room. Julia lay on her bed, listening, as Harriet moved quietly about. It seemed as though Harriet had deliberately jumped overboard, off the family ship, and now was being carried far out to sea. She was too far away to be saved, and it had been her own choice to jump.
As she heard the small noises of her sister, Julia's heart felt tight, compressed. She was furious at her sister for being so stupid—she agreed with Edward, Julia told herself. It was stupid to go to veterinary school, it was lowering your sights. Harriet was flying in the face of everything, and why should Julia take her side?
She felt virtuous and sensible about what she was doing, keeping herself quiet, keeping this distance between herself and the miscreant. But really she was hurt: Julia felt utterly betrayed by Harriet. She did not let herself admit this, nor did she admit that there was something terrible about what she had done.
Edward paid for Harriet's tuition at veterinary school, but he disparaged it. He did this lightly, as though he were only teasing, and in a way he actually was only teasing, but in a way he was not, and Harriet grew increasingly acerbic in response. Disapproving, resentful, Julia watched her defiant younger sister and kept her distance from both her and Katharine. She had taken sides, it would be dishonorable to renege.
Edward had triumphed that night, standing by the cold fireplace, and Katharine had been reduced to misery and silence. In a way this was familiar: Katharine was always in pain, and this was not to be discussed or even acknowledged, since there was nothing to be done about it. They put it from them, they had always done this.
It seemed that Edward's rationality was the way of the world, the way life had to be lived. Allying herself with her mother, her mother's pain, her mother's feelings, had been a part of Julia's childhood, but now she was pushing herself into adulthood. She disclaimed her younger, weaker self. She was trying to become adult, not to allow herself to be held by these terrible, painful chains of emotion. She began to withhold herself from her family, to keep a cool distance from all of them.
Harriet began to use the same acerbic tone to her sister that she used to her father. Harriet seemed scornful of every aspect of Julia's life—marriage, children, New York, teaching, the art world. Harriet did not get married, though she had a series of long-term boyfriends. Julia did not understand Harriet, who was so brisk and dismissive, so ironic and cool, so disengaged.
Now the sisters seldom saw each other, and when they talked, animosity seeped into their conversation like moisture into felt. Julia had dreaded calling Harriet, and it had been just as bad as she'd feared. It was strange, now, to remember the time when they were children, when they'd trusted each other, when they'd hidden together under the covers from their parents, thick as thieves.
After dinner they all went out to the back porch. Julia put the chairs in a row, and they sat watching the sky for shooting stars.
At first they could see nothing. The night around them was opaque, a dense and uninflected black. It held them muffled and sightless. Slowly their stares softened into gazes, and the nocturnal world emerged. The watchers became aware of the dark openness above the meadow, with the quiet shushing of the invisible water beyond, and gradually they could see the revelation of the starlit sky overhead, black, transparent, scattered with glitter, endlessly deep.
It wasn't possible, thought Julia, to imagine the sky as endless, whatever science said. You couldn't conceive of infinity. The mind balked and slid sideways—toward beauty, for example.
