Dawn (25 page)

12

On the way to my room I paused when I reached the stairway that led up to my parents' suite. I was still feeling cold because of my father's betrayal, but I thought my mother should at least know what my grandmother- was doing to me. After only a short hesitation, I scampered up the steps and met Mrs. Boston, who had just brought my mother her supper.

"Doesn't she feel well?" I asked, and Mrs. Boston looked at me as if to say, "When does she?"

After she left I knocked softly and entered my mother's bedroom.

"Dawn. How nice," she said, looking up from her tray of food. It had been placed on a bed table, and she was propped up against her pillows as usual; and as usual, she had her face all made up as though she were going to throw off her covers and jump into a pair of shoes to attend a party or a dance. She wore a soft-looking silk nightgown with a silver lace collar. Her fingers and wrists were laden with rings and bracelets. Gold drop earrings dangled from her lobes.

"Did you come to play me some dinner music on the piano?" she asked, smiling softly. She did have an angelic face with eyes that betrayed just how fragile she was. I was tempted to do only what she asked—play the piano and leave without telling her about the horrible events.

"I was going to come down and join everyone for dinner, but when I began to get dressed, I was suddenly stricken with an ugly headache. It’s diminished some now, but I don't want to do anything that would bring it back," she explained.

"Come, sit by me a moment and talk to me while eat," she said and nodded toward a chair.

I brought the chair closer to the bed. She continued to smile and began to eat, cutting everything up into tiny pieces and then pecking at the food like a small bird. She rolled her eyes as if the effort it took to chew exhausted her. Then she sighed deeply.

"Don't you sometimes wish you could skip eating, just go to sleep and wake up nourished? Meals can be such ordeals, especially in a hotel. People are so involved with their food. It's absolutely the most important thing for most of them. Have you noticed?"

"I will be skipping my meals," I began, taking a cue from her complaint. "But not because I want to skip them."

"What?" She started to widen her smile, but saw the intensity in my eyes and stopped. "Is something wrong? Oh, please, don't tell me something's wrong," she pleaded, dropping her fork and pressing her palms to her bosom.

"I have to tell you," I insisted. "You're my mother, and there just isn't anyone else."

"Are you sick? Do you have some obnoxious stomach cramps? Your time of month?" she said, nodding hopefully, and continued pecking at her food with her fork, scrutinizing each piece before stabbing it quickly to bring it to her mouth. "Nothing bores me more and disgusts me so much. During my period, I don't budge from this bed. Men don't know how lucky they are not to have to go through it. If Randolph gets impatient with me then, I just remind him of that, and he shuts right up."

"It's not my period. I wish it were only that," I replied. She stopped chewing and stared.

"Did you tell your father? Has he sent for the doctor?"

"I'm not sick, Mother. Not in that sense, anyway. I just came from a meeting with Grandmother Cutler."

"Oh," she said, as if one sentence explained everything.

"She wants me to wear a nameplate on my uniform with the name Eugenia on the plate," I said. I skipped the part about Philip, not only because I didn't want to confuse her, but I couldn't stand talking about it myself.

"Oh, dear." She looked down at her food and then dropped the fork again and pushed the tray away. "I can't eat when there is so much controversy. The doctor says it would damage my digestion, and I would have bad stomachaches."

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to ruin your dinner."

"Well, you did," she said with surprising sharpness. "Please, don't talk about these things anymore."

"But . . . Grandmother Cutler has told me to remain in my room until I wear the nameplate, and she has forbidden me to eat. The kitchen staff certainly won't serve me if she tells them not to."

"Forbidden you to eat?" She shook her head and looked away.

"Can't you speak to her for me?" I pleaded.

"You should have gone to your father," she said, still not looking at me.

"I can't. He won't do anything to help me anyway," I moaned. "I gave him a letter to mail to . . . to the man who had pretended to be my daddy, and he promised he would, but instead, he gave the letter to Grandmother Cutler."

She nodded, slowly, and turned back to me, now a different sort of smile on her face. It was more like a smirk of disgust.

"It doesn't surprise me," she said. "He makes promises easily and then forgets he made them. But why did you want to mail a letter to Ormand Longchamp after you learned what he had done?"

"Because . . . because I want him to tell me why he did it. I still don't understand, and I never had a real chance to speak with him before the police scooted me off and brought me back here. But Grandmother Cutler won't let me have any contact with him," I said and held up the envelope.

"Why did you give it to Randolph?" Mother asked, her eyes suddenly small and suspicious.

"I didn't know where to send it, and he promised he would find out and do it for me."

"He shouldn't have made such a promise." She was thoughtful for a moment, her eyes taking on a glazed, far-off look.

"What should I do?" I cried, hoping she would assume her role as my mother and be in charge of what happened to me. but instead, she looked down in defeat.

"Wear the nameplate and take it off when you're not working," she replied quickly.

"But why should she be able to tell me what to do? You're my mother, aren't you?" I cried.

She looked up, her eyes sadder, darker. "Yes," she said softly. "I am, but I am not as strong as I used to be."

"Why not?" I demanded, frustrated by her weakness. "When did you become sick? After I was kidnapped?" I wanted to know more.

She nodded and fell back against her pillows. "Yes," she said, looking up at the ceiling. "My life changed after that." She sighed deeply.

"I'm sorry," I said. "But I don't understand. That's why I wrote to the man I grew up thinking was my daddy. Where was I kidnapped from? The hospital? Had you brought me home?"

"You were here. It happened late at night when we were all asleep. One of the suites that we keep shut up across the hall was your nursery. We had set it up so nicely." She smiled at the memory. "It was so pretty with new wallpaper and new carpet and all the new furniture. Every day during my pregnancy, Randolph bought another infant's toy or something to hang on the walls.

"He had hired a nurse, of course. Her name was Mrs. Dalton. She had two children of her own, but they were fully grown and off making their own lives, so she was able to live here."

Mother shook her head.

"She lived here only three days. Randolph wanted to keep her on duty after you were stolen. He was always hopeful you would be found and returned, but Grandmother Cutler discharged her, blaming her for being so negligent. Randolph was heartbroken over it all and thought it was wrong to blame her, but there was nothing he could do."

She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and then opened them and shook her head.

"He stood right there in that doorway," she said, "and cried like a baby himself. He loved you so." She turned to me. "You never saw a grown man act so silly over a baby when you were born. If he could have spent twenty-four hours a day with you, he would have.

"You know, you were born with nearly a full head of hair, all golden. And you were so small, almost too small to take right home. For a long time afterward, Randolph used to say he wished you had been too small. Then maybe we'd still have you.

"Of course, he wouldn't give up searching and hoping. False alarms sent him traveling all over the country. Finally Grandmother Cutler decided to put an end to the hope."

"She made the memorial stone," I said.

"I didn't think you knew about that," Mother said, her eyes wide with surprise.

"I saw it. Why did you and Father let Grandmother Cutler do such a thing? I wasn't dead."

"Grandmother Cutler's always been a strong-willed woman. Randolph's father used to say she was as tenacious as tree roots and as hard as bark.

"Anyway, she insisted we do something to face facts and go on with our lives."

"But wasn't it terrible for you? Why would you do such a thing?" I repeated. I couldn't imagine a mother agreeing to bury her own child symbolically without knowing for sure that the child was dead.

"It was a quick, simple ceremony. No one but the family, and it worked," she said. "After that, Randolph stopped hoping, and we went on to have Clara Sue."

"You let her force you to give up," I said. "To forget me," I added, not without some note of accusation.

"You're too young to understand these things, honey," she replied in her own defense. I glared at her. There were some things that didn't require you to be old to understand and appreciate. One of them was a mother's love for her child, I thought. Momma wouldn't have let someone force her to go to the funeral of her missing child.

It was all so strange.

"If I was so small, wasn't it dangerous for them to kidnap me?" I asked.

"Oh, sure. That's why Grandmother Cutler insisted you were probably dead," she replied quickly.

"If you had a sleep-in nurse, how did they get me anyway?" I still couldn't believe I was talking about something terrible Daddy and Momma had done.

"I don't remember all the details," Mother said and rubbed her forehead. "My headache's coming back. Probably because you forced me to recall so many horrible memories."

"I'm sorry, Mother," I said. "But I have to know." She nodded and sighed.

"But let's not talk about it anymore," she suggested and smiled. "You're here now; you've been returned. The horror is behind us."

"The monument is still there," I said, remembering what Sissy had told me.

"Oh, dear, how morbid you can be."

"Why did they steal me, Mother?"

"No one has told you that?" She looked at me slyly, her head tilted. "Grandmother Cutler didn't tell you?"

"No," I said. My heart paused. "I was afraid to ask her anything like that."

Mother nodded understandingly.

"Sally Longchamp had just given birth to a stillborn baby. They simply substituted you for the dead baby.

"That's another reason why Grandmother Cutler wants your name changed so much, I guess."

"What is?" I asked, my voice so weak it was barely audible.

"Not many people remember anymore. Randolph never knew. I just happened to know because . . . I just happened to know. And of course your grandmother knew. There wasn't much she didn't know if it happened anywhere near or on the hotel grounds," she added acridly.

"What?" I repeated.

"The dead Longchamp baby was a girl, too. And they were going to name it Dawn."

I could see there wasn't much point to my continuing to plead for my mother to intercede between me and my grandmother. Mother's attitude was to do what Grandmother Cutler wanted because in the long run that was the easiest route to take. She told me that somehow Grandmother Cutler always managed to get her way anyway. It was futile to fight.

Of course, I didn't agree. The things she had told me about Momma and Daddy and my kidnapping left me stunned. No matter how terrible it must have been for Momma to give birth to a stillborn, it was still horrible of them to steal me from my real parents. What they had done was selfish and cruel, and when my mother described my father crying in the doorway, my heart ached for him.

I returned to my little room and plopped down on the bed to stare up at the ceiling. It had begun to rain, another summer storm rushing in from the ocean. The staccato beats on the building and windows were military drums to take me into dreams, into night-mares, to exactly where I didn't want to go. I envisioned Momma and Daddy sneaking up the stairs at night when everyone was asleep. Although I had not met her, I imagined Nurse Dalton dead asleep in the nursery suite, perhaps her back to the door. I pictured Daddy tiptoeing into the suite and scooping me up in his arms. Perhaps I had just started to cry when he handed me to Momma, who pressed me dearly to her bosom and kissed my cheeks, giving me the sense of comfort and security again.

Then, with me wrapped firmly in my blanket, they stole down the stairs and through the corridor outside my room to the rear door. Once out in the night they easily made their way to their awaiting vehicle, with infant Jimmy asleep in the backseat, unaware that he was soon to have a new sister.

In moments they were all in the car and off into the night.

I pressed my eyelids tightly shut when I then imagined Nurse Dalton finding the crib empty. I saw my parents come rushing out of their room, my grandmother charging out of hers. Philip was awakened by the shouting and sat up terrified. Surely, he had to be comforted, too.

The hotel was in an uproar. My grandmother was shouting orders at everyone. Lights were snapped on, the police were called, staff members were ordered out and about the grounds. Moments after the little beach town of Cutler's Cove came to life, all the inhabitants discovered what had happened. Sirens were sounded. Police cars were everywhere. But it was too late. Momma and Daddy were some distance away by then, and I, just a few days old, didn't know the difference.

My heart felt as if it would split in two. The ache traveled up and down my spine. Maybe I should give up, I thought. My name was a lie; it belonged to another little girl, one who had never had the chance to open her eyes and see the dawn, one who had been taken from one darkness to another. My body shook with my sobs.

"You don't have to lie there crying," Clara Sue said. "Just do what Grandmother tells you to do."

I spun around. She had come sneaking into my room, not knocking, but opening the door as softly as a spy. She stood there with a terribly satisfied grin of self-satisfaction on her face and leaned against the doorjamb. Obviously intending to tease and torment me, she nibbled on a chocolate-covered pastry.

"I want you to knock before you come into my room," I snapped and ground the tears out of my eyes quickly. I wiped my cheeks with the back of my hands as I sat up.

"I did knock," she lied, "but you were crying so loud, you couldn't hear me. You don't have to go hungry," she lectured and took another bite of her pastry, closing her eyes to telegraph how delicious it was.

"That stuff will make you even fatter," I said in a sudden burst of nastiness. Her eyes popped open. "I'm not fat," she insisted. I only shrugged. "Pretend what you want, if it makes you happy," I said casually. My tone infuriated her more.

"I'm not pretending. I have a full figure, a mature woman's figure. Everyone says so."

"They're just being polite. How many people have the nerve to tell someone she's fat, especially the owner's daughter?"

She blinked, finding it hard to refute the logic.

"Look at all the clothing you've outgrown, and some of it you hadn't even worn yet," I said, nodding toward my closet. She stared at me, her eyes growing smaller with anger and frustration, making her cheeks look even fuller. Then she smiled.

"You just want me to give you the rest of this so you won't be hungry."