Wicked Forest (44 page)

Then I turned and led Linden away like a blind man. I left all of our information with the medical office before we drove home. As soon as we arrived.

Jennings asked after Mother. and I told him the sad news. He looked absolutely devastated and mumbled some consoling remark before retreating. There was no doubt in my mind that the only reason he had opted to remain with us rather than go off with the Eatans was his admiration and love for Mother. It made it all seem that much sadder.

On behalf of the Club d'Arnour, Marion did call me that evening. I imagined them drawing straws to see who would be forced to make the call. I told her Mother's diagnosis and prognosis. She muttered her regrets quickly and, with little enthusiasm, asked me to call her if I needed anything. It wasn't difficult to understand. She, as well as her friends and so many other people I had met here, spent most of their time finding new and exciting ways to please themselves.

They lived in a world in which they could assign their responsibilities to someone else, even their daily worries. Problems meant only that money would be spent, and money was in such abundance, it meant nothing. Despair. poverty, age, and death itself were persona non grata. They were to be ignored. Rich people here don't die, I thought. They simply stop being invited to parties, balls, and dinners . That was the extent of facing reality.

Linden was obviously having his own difficulty with the events transpiring. He came by my suite to call me to dinner. I joined him at the table. and unlike his behavior before, he was talkative and animated again.

"Mother isn't feeling well enough to join us." he said. "But she would be upset if we didn't have our dinner because of that."

"Linden," I said softly, "Mother is very, very ill."

"Oh. I know. I've been after her to take better care of herself, you know. Why, if it wasn't for me, she wouldn't eat a decent meal half the time. I'm the one who gets her outside to get fresh air and take walks. She would be content sitting in her room.

We've got to get her to help herself more. Willow. I've told you that many times, haven't I?

"She'll listen if you chime in as well. She usually listens to you better than she listens to me these days."

"Linden..."

"Yes?" He started to eat.

I watched him for a moment, and then I shook my head, eating what I could while he talked on and on about the things he was going to do with the house to make Mother happier and more comfortable at Jaya del Mar.

This isn't good
; I thought
. I must make him
realize it at is really happening,. I must make him face
the troth.

"You know she's in the hospital, Linden. You know that we had to take her there in an ambulance.

You must not pretend that didn't happen. Please„" I said. "I need you to be strong now."

He blinked rapidly and nodded, then smiled.

"I know, but don't you worry about her," he said. "She'll be home soon. Grace hates the very idea of hospitals and clinics and doctors. She's had a bellyful of them. She won't stand for another day there, so get ready to pick her up and bring her back."

He thought a moment.

"I should start something new, do something special for her, don't you think? I'll do something cheerful, something that will bring a big smile to her face again. I know just what I'll do, too," he concluded. He threw his napkin to the table. "I'll start on it immediately. It will be one of the fastest works I've completed.

"You'll be happy with it, too." he declared.

standing. "Now, don't you go and tell her and spoil my surprise. Willow. Promise?"

"I promise. Linden," I said.

"Good. Good. I'm sorry I have to leave you. but I have to get to work," he said, and left the dining room.

I sat looking after him.

And for a moment, as fleeting as it was. I wished I had some way to run from it all. too.

.

Mother died three days later. The call came in the morning just before I was going to leave for a class. I had hoped to go to it and then to the hospital. I hadn't taken Linden back to the hospital since they had brought Mother there in the ambulance. He was still having a very hard time accepting how seriously ill she was, and even that she was in the hospital.

Although he had faced that fact with me at dinner the night she was admitted, he continued to make remarks about her resting in her room. I tried to reinforce reality by describing her condition and my hospital visits afterward. He would listen, grow silent, and then beam with new excitement about his current art project.

Overwhelmed by hearing from my attorney

about my separation from Thatcher, trying to concentrate on my studies, and thinking about Mother.

I decided to let Linden live in his fantasy, but when the hospital called with the bad news. I had to bring down the curtain on illusions in our house.

The news made me numb. Surprisingly, I didn't burst into hysterical tears. as I kept expecting I would.

I had sobbed softly on and off during the days after Mother's collapse, but I think there was a part of me that was very similar to Linden, a part of me that held on to fantasy, that dreamed of her snapping her eyes open and smiling up at me and asking. "What happened? Why am I here, and when can I go home?"

The dream brought a smile to my face and put energy into my steps, at least for a little while.

Perhaps I had mourned her in advance. I

thought after I received the call, or perhaps I was anticipating so much difficulty with Linden that I knew I couldn't afford to be devastated. When you have to be strong, when there is absolutely no alternative to that, you somehow fish deeper in the well of your very being and find strength you never knew you had.

Every dark thought I had experienced since Mother's stroke was thumping at me as I put down my books and started for the stairway. I was carrying news that was so heavy, it made me walk like someone with far too much weight on her shoulders.

Before I had come here and burst in on their world, trailing the past in behind me like someone with muddy shoes. Mother and Linden were living an admittedly introverted, secluded life, but a somewhat contented one. She was living with her happiest memories, dreaming of my father's promised arrival, and Linden was secure in his dark art. Was I the one who had made him unhappy with himself, opened up doors he had forgotten existed, made him look at the blinding light that exposed and reminded him of his failings? Had I brought back the painful memories for Mother and given her night after night of tortured sleep?

After my father had died. I had felt so alone and frightened. My boyfriend. Allan Simpson, was too self-centered to provide any real comfort for me, and my aunt and my other relatives were not close enough to give me a sense of real family. I '.vas truly desperate myself when I set out to find my mother and have a family again. Maybe I was the selfish one.

Maybe I should have left well enough alone.

Now guilt, more than grief, put the darkness in my face and the emptiness in my eyes. Maybe love is too complicated. I thought. Maybe we paint our days and lives with colors that will always fade. We manufacture one illusion after another to keep ourselves from admitting the only truth that has been with us since we began, a truth I had tried to deny and defeat by coming here: We are alone. In the end, no one wants to hold our hands and go with us. They mourn us for as long as they can, but they do not go with us into the shadows.

I knocked on Linden's studio door. He didn't reply, so I opened it and looked for him. He was standing by the window that faced the sea.

"Linden," I began. the hospital just called us."

He didn't turn.

"Linden."

He shook his head, and then turned to me.

"She's out there again." he said, frowning.

"She'll never stop waiting for him. I don't know how many times she has walked to the end of that dock and stood, sometimes for hours, staring out at the sea, expecting him.‖

He raised his arms and held his hands out toward me.

"How can we stop her? How can we get her to see how foolishly she's behaving? All it does is make her sadder, and that will make her sicker."

"She's not out there. Linden. We took her to the hospital. She had a stroke. The hospital just phoned to say she has passed away. There wasn't anything more that they could do for her.

Mother is gone. Linden."

I hated the sound of my own voice. I resembled the walking dead.

He shook his head.

"No. I just saw her," he insisted, refuting my words. "She's out there. Look for yourself." he said, timing back to the window. He stood there. I didn't move. After a long moment, he turned back to me, and this time he had tears streaming down his cheeks.

"She was there," he contended. "I saw her. I did,"

"I know you did. Linden. I know," I said, and moved to embrace him. I held on to him tightly. His arms hung limply for a moment, and then he clung to me, his tears falling on my cheeks. too.

I pulled myself back slowly.

"I've got to go to make arrangements. Linden.

Do you want to come with me?"

"No," he said. "I can't. I have to stay here and finish my work for her."

"Okay,' I said. With my handkerchief. I dabbed the tears on his face, and then I wiped them from my own. "I'll be back as soon as I finish.'

He nodded and quickly turned back to the

window.

I left him standing there looking down at the dock. How I wished that the world he saw was the real one, and the world I moved in was illusion.

.

Mr. Ross, our accountant, one of the first people I had met when I came here, turned out to be of great assistance to me. As soon as he heard about Mother's death, he called and told me he would take care of all the monetary matters. The Eatons didn't call, but Thatcher did. It was a short conversation. His secretary called and told me to hold on, and then Thatcher came on the line, sounding like he was in his car on his cellular phone and being patched in.

"I'm sorry about Grace," he said, "I was fond of her.'

"Thank you."

"When is the funeral?"

"The day after tomorrow at eleven."

"Oh. I'm due in court." he said. "Are you all right?"

"Yes." I said quickly. What I really meant was, if I wasn't, you would be the last to know.

"Okay. I'm sorry," he repeated, and said goodbye.

I called Aunt Agnes to tell her because I knew she would be insulted if I didn't, even though I also knew she wouldn't attend the funeral, nor would any of my relatives, Then I phoned Amou, and she and I had a good cry together over thousands of miles. Her words of comfort were the medicine I needed at the moment.

Manon and the others phoned and told me they would be at the funeral. I thanked them for that. The Butterworth twins and some of my other friends at school paid a visit, those who could promising to attend the funeral.

Linden spent most of the time in his room or in his studio. If I didn't make sure food was sent up to him, he wouldn't have eaten. He certainly didn't want to greet any visitors. The first two nights, I heard him wandering the hallways. I knew he paid frequent visits to Mother's suite. Perhaps it was his way of finally convincing himself she was really gone.

I went to her room myself and sifted through some of her things. It was a way for me to feel closer to her, to hold on to her awhile longer. While doing so, I discovered some photographs she had buried in a small box in a bottom dresser drawer. They were early pictures of her and my grandmother, Jackie Lee.

There were pictures of her stepfather, Winston Montgomery. too. He was a very handsome man, and she looked comfortable, even loving with him in the pictures she had.

I could see more resemblances between my

mother and myself when we were both in our early teens. Her face was brighter, full of life and joy. This was some time before she was seduced by Kirby Scott, of course. She still held on to that look of innocence and wonder we all see in young girls and remember once in ourselves. It's the beginning of the longing and the regret that comes with growing up and leaving your childhood behind.

On the second night after Mother's death.

Professor Fuentes came to see me. He had been down in Miami attending the christening of a cousin's new baby, and said he had just learned the news,

"We have one of those families that comes to events in packs," he joked.

"I envy you that." I told him.

We were in the den off the rear loggia where I had first met the Eatons, and where Thatcher had appeared, surprisingly, after seeing me first at the Breakers. I'd had no idea at the time he was related to these people who were renting the property from my mother. There had been such electricity and excitement between us then. Now, when I sat here and thought about it. I wondered how we could ever protect ourselves against the little betrayals we commit against ourselves, Had I really loved Thatcher, or was I just excited by him, the woman in me stirred so deeply I thought whatever it was would last forever?

Somehow we believe that true love is

everlasting in this life by definition. That was why we said. "To love and to cherish until death do us part."

Professor Fuentes gazed at everything and shook his head. He had been here only for the wedding.

"This is an impressive house," he said. Then he smiled. "For a future therapist, that is."

"I know, I've been wondering now if I shouldn't put it up for sale."

"Don't make any decisions for a while." he advised. "Unless, of course, you have to for financial reasons."

"No, that won't be the reason why I sell, if I sell." "What about your half brother?"

"I don't know. He's not doing well facing up to the reality of my mother's death. Tomorrow should bring it home to him, and then we will see," I said.

"Where is he now?"

He stays in his room and in his studio. Mother's death has returned him to a more introverted state."

"You'll have to consider professional help as soon as possible.,"