Wicked Forest (43 page)

Professor Fuentes knew about it all as quickly as everyone else, but made no attempt to talk except to ask me if I was all right. I wasn't in the mood to talk about it anyway, but soon after that. I realized I was guilty of the very things we hoped to overcome in prospective clients— avoidance, the ostrich syndrome— only here, it wasn't possible to bury your head in the sand for long. Waves of gossip, intruding eyes, and busybodies washed it away and left you naked with the truth.

Finally. I admitted to the professor that I wasn't all right. He nodded and asked me to join him for coffee, which quickly turned into one of our famous tete-a-tetes.

"How are your mother and Linden taking all this?"

"My mother puts on a good act. but I know she's hurting for me. Linden... is behaving strangely again."

"How so?"

I explained how he doted on me even more, and how my breakup with Thatcher had reinforced his idea that it was the two of us against the world.

"He's been insisting I stop going to the doctor Thatcher had recommended. I was never crazy about him anyway, so I might go to someone else. Of course. I'm worried about reinforcing his paranoia."

"Don't worry about that. Worry about what makes you comfortable at this time," Professor Fuentes advised.

I agreed with him, then described Linden's latest painting. He nodded. thoughtful.

"He literally sees himself in you. Your suffering is his suffering."

"I haven't done enough to help him. For a while there, because of Whitney and her nasty rumors and such. I neglected Linden, actually avoided him when I should have been helping him get stronger and get out in the world."

"Don't try to take too much of this on your own shoulders. Willow," Professor Fuentes warned, "Get him to return to a professional therapist and get back on some essential medication."

"I will," I said, knowing that was a much bigger task than I could envision. There were more storm clouds on the horizon with Linden's and my names on them.

For one thing, the Eatons, especially Whitney, weren't going to permit Thatcher to be the bad one in this scenario. It wasn't long before new rumors began to blossom like black weeds with sharp thorns. Once again. the Club d'Amour was my source of

information. The girls knew when I was going to be home after class, and all burst onto the property together a few days after Professor Fuentes and I had spoken. They were waiting for me when I arrived, Mother had greeted them and sat with them. but Linden, as was usually the case when anyone came to Joya del Mar, had fled to one of his private places on the beach.

The moment I set eyes on them, I knew there was more trouble. Mother. her eyes dark with worry, excused herself and went upstairs. She looked so much more frail and older to me since my breakup. It almost made me wish I had swallowed my pride and accepted Thatcher's ludicrous rationalization for infidelity.

I sat quickly. I could see the urgency and anger in their faces. "What now?" I asked as soon as Mother excused herself. "They dropped the second shoe,"

Manon began.

"Second bomb is more like it," Marjorie quipped.

"They, meaning my in-laws?"

"Yes."

"And the second shoe is what?"

"Thatcher's defense, at least the defense he is floating out there." Manon said. nodding at the front door.

"Oh, and what is this defense?"

"The story they are spreading is that he caught you in an incestuous relationship with Linden, and he is even unsure that the baby you're carrying is his,"

she said.

"That last part has Whitney's fingerprints on it."

Sharon added. "You knew she was circling it for some time, just waiting like a rumor vampire to sink her sharp teeth in it and bleed it all over Palm Beach."

I tried to swallow, to take a breath, but I felt as if there were fingers closing on my throat.

"How could Thatcher permit this?"

"You ever hear 'All's fair in love and war'?"

Marjorie asked. "Here, love and war are one and the same."

"They have their image to protect in the community," Liana said. "Thatcher has to be the victim, I've heard they are already being invited to dinner parties so they can tell the sordid tale. and Bunny Eaton is the one eager to do it and do it well."

"I'm disappointed in Asher," I said.

"Why? He was never much of a man, as far as I could see,"

Manon said. "He's like most of them— he goes whichever way the wind is blowing."

"And Bunny is always doing the blowing."

Liana said.

They laughed. but I couldn't find a shred of humor in the moment.

"What will I do?" I looked toward the doorway, the image of Mother hobbling away fresh in my mind.

"If my mother hears of this..."

"I'd get it all over with as soon and as painlessly as you can," Manon said. "The longer it drags out—"

."—the more the stories will flourish and be embellished," Sharon completed.

"Once it's over, it will become yesterday's news so quickly, your head will spin." Liana assured me.

"That's the way things are here."

"Of course. finding another suitable man in this town will be practically impossible." Marjorie said. "I speak from experience when it comes to that."

"So she'll find him somewhere else." Mallon said. "Maybe there is no such thing." Liana mused aloud.

They all gazed at her for a moment.

"No such thing?" I asked.

"As a suitable man."

"There's no doubt about that," Marjorie said.

"My father was a suitable man," I said, hating their cynicism. "I'm sure you all know someone you would hold up as an example."

Not my father," Sharon said bluntly.

"Nor mine." Liana added.

"Nevertheless, we shouldn't generalize. I have the freshest wound, and Fin telling you, I am not giving up my dreams just because one man brought me a nightmare." I said with heat in my face. "I won't let a man do that to me, and none of you should permit it either. You have a right to be happy. We all do." I insisted.

For a moment, they all looked like little girls again, their eyes full of fantasy and hope. even Marjorie's. Then, as if the magical bubble burst, they blinked, stirred, shook their heads, and laughed with derision.

"What do you expect from someone who wants to be a psychiatrist?" Marion asked them. "She has to be a little crazy herself to understand her patients."

They laughed again.

No matter what happens to me, I vowed

silently. I’ll never become what they have become.

Was I crazy?

I narrowed my eyes at their cynical smiles, my spine turning to steel.

"Laugh if you want, but my father used to say that dreams, that fantasies are as important as vitamins," I said "If flowers didn't believe that cloudy days would end, they would wilt and die. Bitterness feeds on itself. It consumes you and, in the end, you become the very thing you hate,

"This, too, shall pass," I said, smiling at them.

"All of it will end. The clouds will move away. We will have sunshine penetrating the black leaves of our wicked forest and we will be happy. Above all, no matter what, we will be happy. That should be the motto of your Club d'Amour," I admonished.

They all looked like little girls again, but little girls who had been lectured and set straight.

"Maybe you're right," Manton said. "I can’

deny I hope you are."

Sharon nodded.

Marjorie looked away like someone who

wanted to hide her tears. and Liana smiled.

Despite the terrible and ugly news they had brought me. I actually felt better and stronger myself— until I saw Jennings standing in the doorway. The look on his face told me immediately something was wrong.

Something was very wrong, "Jennings?"

"It's Miss Montgomery," he said. "One of the maids just called down to me."

"What?" I asked, shooting to my feet so quickly, I felt my heart bob like a yo-yo. I pressed my palms against each other between my breasts.

"She's collapsed by the side of the bed."

18

An Empty House

.

Mother's eyes seemed to be sewn shut. I felt for a pulse and found a very low, weak beat. Even before I started up the stairs to see what was wrong with her, I had told Jennings to call for an ambulance. Since there was no hospital in Palm Beach, she was taken to Good Samaritan in West Palm Beach.

The uproar brought Linden out of his room. He stood like a stone statue and watched as the attendants lifted Mother onto a stretcher and placed her in the ambulance. Then he came along with me in my car, moving like a robot, his silence made me babble continuously. The girls of the Club d'Amour all went home, each promising to call. From the looks on their faces and the hollowness in their voices, I knew they didn't really want to call. Thatcher once told me that sickness and death were so abhorrent to the residents of Palm Beach that no hospital or cemetery was permitted within its precious boundaries.

Linden was as quiet at the hospital as he had been at home and in the car. He sat with an almost expression-less mask over his face, the only hint of emotion evidenced in the slight trembling in his lips from time to time. His eyes were steely gray, his neck stiff, his hands clasped in his lap as he waited with me in the lounge. When I asked him if he wanted something to drink, he just shook his head. He looked like he was sleeping with his eyes open.

Nearly two and a half hours after we had

arrived with the ambulance, the doctor finally came out to see us. He was tall and thin with curly black hair, and so baby-faced it was difficult to have any faith in anything he said, but he did speak with authority and medical expertise.

"I'm Dr. Hersh." he began. "We've examined your mother and concluded beyond a doubt that she has suffered a stroke or, as we say, brain attack. A CT

scan has revealed an intracerebral hemorrhage.. I'm afraid it's rather massive. We've determined that she has suffered a recent myocardial infarction, which created the blood clot."

"A heart attack? But wouldn't we know if that had happened to her?" I asked.

He shook his head so casually, it was almost as if we were discussing some very insignificant thing.

The patient suffers symptoms, doesn't report them to anyone, and lives with the damage until a blood clot is created in the heart that breaks off and travels to the brain, cutting off the supply of blood and eventually causing the hemorrhage. It's not as uncommon as you might think." he said.

He looked from me to Linden as he spoke, but something in Linden's face frightened him enough to keep him from looking at him at all.

"What can we expect?" I asked, my heart pounding so hard, I wasn't sure I had spoken loud enough for him to hear me. "The prognosis is not optimistic. I'm afraid," he said.

"She's in a coma, of course. She's not feeling any pain."

"Can we see her I asked.

"Yes. We've placed her in our ICU. It's protocol to provide a clear air passageway, of course, so we have a nasogastric tube employed. She's on a heart monitor. I'm just telling you all this so you're not surprised or frightened by what you see." he added with a soft turn of his lips. He glanced at Linden, then shifted his eyes back to me and nodded. "I'm sorry,"

he said. "My suspicion is, there were some warnings that were ignored. Many people don't even know when they are having a stroke. I read a report yesterday from the University of Cincinnati that indicated 52 percent of their acute stroke patients were unaware they were experiencing a stroke. We've got to do better at making people stroke-smart."

What does all this have to do with us now? I thought. Maybe he was only trying to make conversation, or maybe, in his own way, trying to explain how someone you loved dearly was about to be taken from you and how he, our doctor, a representative of this great medical machine, this expensive infrastructure of doctors, nurses, devices and medicines, was helpless and could offer only a smooth transition to the grave.

I nodded. took Linden's arm, and headed for the ICU. When we got there, the nurse seemed to glide over the floor like a funeral director, gesturing rather than talking, and directing us to Mother's bedside, She looked so small, the bed and the machinery around her engulfing her. I held tightly to Linden's arm. He was still very stiff. mechanical, his jaw taut, his eyes like marbles,

"She doesn't look like she's suffering" was all I could manage.

Linden released a breath, faltered for a second, then regained his poise and straightened his back. I reached for Mother's hand and held it. She already felt as cold as a corpse, her complexion fading as if she were being drawn slowly down into herself. into her own bones, closing like a clamshell.

So she was not going to see her grandchild after all. I thought. She was not going to enjoy the autumn of her life and be part of my accomplishments. All of the promise I had brought, all of the renewed hope was to be lost. I knew that she had wanted to help me and support me at this time of great difficulty.

Perhaps. on top of all the pain and suffering she had endured, mine was too much. Perhaps. if I had left her alone, if I had not sought her out and become part of her life, she wouldn't be lying here now. I couldn't help wondering about it.

The tears streamed down my cheeks. I took deep breaths and wiped them away. Then I felt Linden nudging me.

"We've got to get home." he said.

"Get home?"

"You know how Grace is," he replied. smiling.

"She won't eat dinner without us."

It felt like an ice cube was sliding down my spine.

He looked up. and I realized he wasn't looking at Mother. He was looking past her. Something in him was keeping him from seeing her like this. He had shut all the doors to reality and retreated to the world he knew at Jaya del Mar. Maybe he was better off. I thought. What good would it do him now if I forced him to acknowledge her, dying in this bed?

"Okay, Linden," I said. "We'll go home."

I leaned over and kissed Mother on the cheek and whispered. "I love you."