Tentyrian Legacy (2 page)

It was a rare instance when Ari was even
allowed to leave the grounds of the Parker residence. School was
out of the question, so she had a string of private instructors
instead. Aside from her black Labrador retriever, Beau, Ari had no
friends. The teachers, her doctors, and even her parents came and
went. At the tender age of seven, Laura’s birthday was a welcome
escape, despite her mother’s insistence that it would likely be a
“mediocre” affair. Since Ari’s parents believed she was taking her
medication and her episodes were in-check, she was allowed to
go...just barely.

Ari remembered she wore her patent leather
party shoes with frilly socks to the party. Roger, the driver who
always smelled of Altoids and cheap cologne, dropped her off. Ari
entered the front door of the charming Georgian brick home and was
immediately overwhelmed by the high-pitched buzzing that filled her
ears. Ari fought back against the sounds in her head that
threatened to crush her. She was determined to be there, and Ari
knew she could do it if she stayed focused.

Ari navigated her way through the sea of
girls to hand Laura her present. She didn’t know what it was but
hoped the Iron Curtain had the good sense to get the Barbie she’d
pleaded for. Laura graciously accepted the gift and took Ari’s
hand. She led her to the kitchen where Laura’s mom, Mrs. Delia, was
putting the finishing touches on the cake—a pink-frosted concoction
with white roses and plastic ballet dancers.

“Ari, hello there, darling!” Mrs. Delia
greeted her. “I haven’t seen you since your parents’ Christmas
cocktail party, and that was a year ago. My how you’ve grown, and
aren’t you as beautiful as ever! Where is your tiara? Laura, be a
love and get Ari her tiara. We only allow princesses in this
house.” Ari stood there speechless. The warmth and genuine pleasure
around her took her off guard. This was the opposite of her
home.

Laura handed Ari a sparkling sequin crown,
the same as those that graced all the little girls’ heads at the
party. It was one of the most beautiful things she had ever seen.
Ari placed it carefully on her hair, mindful not to muss the tight
French braid the Iron Curtain crafted that morning with her
shriveled hands.

“Laura, has your father finished setting up
the games?” asked Mrs. Delia. “Why don’t you show the girls where
we’ve set up Pin the Bow on the Ballerina?”

“Come on, Ari,” said Laura cheerfully as she
held out her hand. But before Ari could grab it, Mrs. Delia said,
“Ari, you stay here with me for a second. Laura, why don’t you get
the girls started?” Ari’s heart sank. They probably wanted her to
stay in the kitchen in case she scared the other children. But at
least she had a tiara, thought Ari practically. She could play
princess with Beau later.

Ari waited for Mrs. Delia to instruct her
where to sit, but instead Mrs. Delia flashed a mischievous smile
before she lifted Ari up to a kitchen-counter stool. “Now, I know
you have your own lunch and snacks to eat; your housekeeper called
me twice to remind me. But I think we both know that you’d prefer
something else.” With a twinkle in her eye, Mrs. Delia filled a
flowered birthday party plate with three hot dogs and almost half a
bag of puffy Cheetos. “I won’t tell if you won’t,” she said.

The birthday party was magical. Ari played
with the other children and won a purse full of plastic jewelry.
She managed to keep the voices primarily at bay by focusing on the
activities. There were no episodes. When she returned home that
evening, she wanted to vomit all the food and birthday cake she had
gorged herself on. But she held it together. She could be a normal
kid, she told herself.

Ari remembered that day had taken its toll as
the sounds in her head were at a fevered pitch. The Iron Curtain
started Ari’s bath and stripped off her gingham party dress. Ari
couldn’t speak as she climbed into the Japanese soaking tub that
was almost as deep as she was tall. As soon as her head slipped
beneath the surface, the buzz and voices quieted. If only every day
was like this, she had thought, or if at least she had been born a
mermaid princess. That way she could stay under the water forever
and never have to hear the voices that haunted her. Irena pulled
Ari from the bath that night and put her to bed. She passed out and
afterward slept for two days straight.

But that was almost eight years ago. Ari was
no more a mermaid princess than she was that idyllic
seven-year-old. Older and wiser, she knew she’d never be normal;
she had come to terms with that. Howard, her physics teacher, had
just left. The rest of the afternoon was hers. Yet it always was
hard to relax after her lessons with him. Howard gave her the
creeps. A lecherous feeling came over her during today’s lecture of
quantum control and the cooling and trapping of atoms. She ignored
the buzzing and unintelligible whispers in her ears, like she
always did, but today it was more difficult than usual.

Needing to wash away the feelings she felt
helpless to control, Ari decided it was time for a swim. She
meticulously reorganized her textbooks and papers before she turned
the library lights off and dashed up to her bedroom—her place of
escape. Walking into her room felt like walking into a cloud. The
shades of cream and gray were a mature color palette, but the
soothing effect was what Ari loved. Since she spent the majority of
her life in her room, alone, Ari was given free rein to decorate as
she wanted.

From the scalloped pillowcases with
embroidered taupe edges to the Scandinavian armoire that elegantly
hid her plasma TV screen, Ari chose every element of her room with
the details in mind. It was her domain, so she was expected to keep
it scrupulously ordered. If not, Irena was instructed to tell Ari’s
parents immediately, resulting in one or more of her limited
privileges taken away.

Most teenage girls’ bedroom walls had posters
of their favorite movie stars or bands. At least that’s what they
looked like on TV to Ari. Her walls were painted in Farrow &
Ball’s “No. 203 Tallow” and were hung with a few carefully chosen
landscapes she had purchased at auction from Sotheby’s online. Her
walk-in closet didn’t have an article of clothing out of place.
Wooden hangers, almost exactly one inch apart, were hung with an
array of J.Crew and Ralph Lauren clothing also purchased online.
Ari knew her parents had their flaws, but their gift to her of
financial freedom, in the form of a Platinum American Express card
and Mac laptop computer when she was thirteen, wasn’t one of them.
However, with the few freedoms she did have, she knew not to abuse
them. After all, they were easily taken away.

Ari put on her turquoise bikini, the one she
hoped she would wear on vacation with her parents last spring. But
they didn’t take her to Bermuda. They never did. She was told the
potential for her having an episode was too risky between the
airport lines and travel logistics. So she stopped asking to go.
But she always held out hope she’d be included . . .

Ari stared at herself critically in the
full-length mirror of her closet. Too tall, too lanky, she
reflected. She had yet to develop the curves of her equally tall
mother, who was renowned for her beauty. In time, she hoped she
would look like her mom, but she vowed to never be like her.
Frustrated with what she felt was a lacking appearance of boring
brown shoulder-length hair and too sharp of facial features, Ari
turned away from the mirror and gave a whistle.

Beau came bounding down the hall and skidded
to a stop at Ari’s bare feet. He planted slobbery kisses all over
her legs. The adorable Labrador was truly a girl’s best friend.
After grabbing a monogrammed towel, Ari led Beau to the indoor pool
adjacent to the conservatory.

Although spring was around the corner,
winter’s chill had not lifted, making it impossible to swim
outside.

The Parker mansion was vast. The Iron Curtain
was in the east wing of the house instructing the maids, once
again, on how to polish the floor to her standards. In the west
wing, Ari and Beau proceeded to the pool unnoticed. Ari loved her
home, from the grand colonial façade to the rooms that seemed to
ramble one after another. Her parents had spent close to four years
renovating it before she was born. They turned the 1872 mansion
into the epitome of New England elegance. However, while their home
was picture perfect on the outside, the lives within were far from
it.

Today, Ari’s mother was likely at a ladies
lunch, maybe even one to raise money for the causes that were “so
dear to her heart because of Arianna.” Ari had heard that one too
many times to count. The irony certainly wasn’t lost on her. Gloria
Parker would rather attend charity events for schizophrenia and
raise money for research than spend five minutes alone with her own
daughter. Ari’s father on the other hand was probably at work. It
was Saturday.

Ari wondered what Laura Delia was doing
today. Occasionally, she saw her jogging on the road wearing her
“New Canaan High School Track” sweatshirt. She had seen pictures of
Laura and the NCHS track team in the paper. They were Fairfield
County champions and were going to the state championship meet in a
couple of months. Laura probably had a great social life and a
boyfriend, Ari thought wistfully. She opened the French doors to
the pool and strode over to the chaise lounge to spread out her
towel. Ari picked up Beau’s rubber ball from the wicker basket of
toys and tossed it in the pool. With a splash, Beau hit the water
in fast pursuit.

Ball retrieved, Beau pulled himself out of
the water and shook off the droplets clinging to his glossy coat
onto Ari. “Well thank you for that!” she exclaimed. Laughing, Ari
grabbed the ball and tossed it back into the pool. Just then, she
realized that the buzzing in her head had grown louder and the
whispers had started again. When she turned to reach for her towel
on the lounge, she saw Howard. He was standing in the door watching
her.

“Howard, what are you doing here?” asked Ari,
surprised. She wrapped the towel around her self-consciously.
Modesty had been in-grained in her, and she certainly didn’t like
Howard’s eyes roving over her body.

“I forgot to leave a study guide I wanted you
to complete before Tuesday. When I came back to give it to you, you
weren’t in the library.

I heard some splashing so I came to the
pool,” he said.

“Great. Thanks. I’ll work on it later
tonight.” Ari took the guide from him quickly and stepped back
closer to Beau, who was waiting patiently for the next toss.

“Are you out here all alone?” Howard asked.
He decided to remove himself from the doorway and walked over to
the lounge chair.

“I’ve got Beau, and Irena is around here
somewhere,” said Ari nonchalantly. The back of her neck tingled,
and the throbbing in her head became a fierce pulse. Making himself
comfortable in the chair, Howard relaxed into it and kicked off his
Converse sneakers. With his vintage T-shirt under his tweed blazer,
he had a hipster geek look about him that didn’t quite fit, like he
was trying to be eighteen when he really was thirty.

Howard had received his doctorate in physics
from Dartmouth and was one of the university’s youngest PhD
graduates. But rather than becoming a university professor, Howard
had decided to become a teacher and tutor to the wealthy. It
certainly paid better. Several New Canaan and Greenwich families
used him to further propel their young’s trajectory toward success.
Not that Ari needed to be propelled. She excelled in academics and
her extracurriculars, despite her illness.

When Ari was three, she was labeled
“asocial.” She shunned company and would rarely speak, often
screaming when strangers, or even her own parents, approached her.
It was clear to the doctors that Ari didn’t want to form
connections with those around her. But that wasn’t entirely true.
Ari wanted to; it just hurt. Ari’s quiet and nearly silent
demeanor, consequently, turned her into an acute listener and
learner. When Ari would have been in second grade, she was at a
sixth grade reading level. When she should have been a beginner in
Spanish, she was fluent.

From fencing to swimming, Ari was also
skilled physically. This was highly unusual in someone with her
condition, as many schizophrenics had cognitive impairments. But
Ari had no physical handicaps. Her handicap, however, was perceived
to be in her brain. It had been explained to her when she was
little that parts of her brain just weren’t like other people’s.
And it was because of those parts she had terrible headaches and
often heard things that weren’t there. Being isolated in the house
helped, as it muted the pain and generally kept the voices quiet.
But as soon as she was in the company of others, a wave of noise
would hit her and she’d feel like she was drowning.

Ari reached a turning point in her illness
when she was around six and realized that her parents and doctors
couldn’t help her. It was an epiphany she had after Irena had
insisted on taking her food shopping. The new maids had just been
fired, and there was no one to watch Ari at home. So Irena took Ari
with her. The grocery store trip resulted in a horrific episode and
another fruitless attempt by her doctors to try a new medication
combination. Not surprisingly, it didn’t work. From then on, Ari
decided that she would have to start pretending she was better.
She’d stop saying she heard voices, and she’d try harder to be
around people. Her parents thought the change in Ari was due to the
new medication. But it was really Ari’s resolve. Because of it, Ari
was rewarded with Beau.

Despite Ari’s success academically and the
perceived improvement in her condition, her parents lived in
constant fear she would relapse. Ari couldn’t completely hide the
pain of her headaches and her obvious preference to be alone. She
still became exhausted after a day of coming into contact with more
than four or five people. Ari had no siblings, friends, or peers.
And as her parents’ only child, they continued to view her as the
daughter that never quite lived up to their expectations.