Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer by Steven Millhauser

gone out alone in the afternoon and returned just in time for supper; she had accompanied Caroline upstairs to play two-hand euchre and would come down later. Martin sat down in his armchair, struck by the double absence, by the novel sensation of being alone with Margaret Vernon. She herself seemed a little constrained, and after a few light passages of conversation turned the talk to the subject of her daughters. She was concerned about them—two young women in a strange city. She was less concerned about Emmeline, who had always been a rock, than about Caroline, who—to speak frankly—might easily have been the center of an admiring circle of marriageable young gentlemen had she not so dreadfully discouragedall social efforts on her behalf. It sometimes seemed that Caroline wanted nothing better than to sit through life—simply sit there, without lifting a finger on her own behalf, though with her beauty it would take little more than an ever so slightly lifted finger: like that. Martin watched as the index finger of Margaret Vernon’s left hand rose very slightly from the dark red chairarm and returned to its place. Of course there was no reasoning with her. There was no talking to her. She did what she wanted to do and that was that. There had been a young man or two, one from a good Boston family, but Caroline—well, Caroline had simply acted as if he wasn’t there. She had barely looked at him. And yet she wasn’t cold by nature, she was a warm-hearted trusting girl once you got to know her. Of course she was difficult to get to know. She could be trying at times. He knew that, of course. But he also knew, he was getting to know, how warm and trusting she really was. Caroline was a treasure, really. But oh my. Mrs. Vernon hoped she wasn’t presuming on their friendship by going on and on. It was just that a mother’s patience had its limits. It was good to know she could rely on Martin. And she gave him a searching look.
    Martin assured her that she could rely on him. Her look of relief was so visible, so immense and unexpected, that he suddenly wondered whether she had been asking obliquely about his intentions toward her daughter. Immediately he wondered whether he had answered.
    The theme of Caroline returned a week later, when Caroline rose from her chair in the parlor and, pleading tiredness,retired to her room. Martin, alone with Margaret Vernon and Emmeline, asked whether Caroline had been sleeping poorly again; he hoped she wasn’t coming down with a cold. “Caroline has never been sick a day in her life,” Margaret Vernon declared, drawing back her shoulders and lifting her chin, as if to defy a challenge—except of course for little indispositions, headaches and such, all of which could be traced to her trouble falling asleep. Emmeline looked at her mother wryly and asked how a daily indisposition differed from an illness. At this Mrs. Vernon said that Caroline was healthy as a horse and had never had anything the matter with her that a ten-minute nap couldn’t cure—and she might add that it was unbecoming of Emmeline to paint so black a picture of her sister, whose only fault was a certain nervousness of disposition that prevented her from sleeping like an ox. Emmeline, who had drawn back at her mother’s reply, seemed about to answer but said nothing. When Margaret Vernon rose to leave a half hour later, Emmeline said she would follow in a few minutes.
    As soon as she was alone she said to Martin that she hoped she hadn’t painted a black picture of anyone; sometimes her mother, with the best of intentions, spoke more heatedly than perhaps she ought. In fact Caroline’s health was a mystery to both of them, for though it was true she was almost never sick in the ordinary sense—colds and fevers and what have you—it was also true that she was almost never free of some disturbing symptom or other, such as the headaches that often drove her to her bed. Oh, they had taken her to doctors,