Wicked Forest (6 page)

"Maybe. Probably so." He nodded, thoughtful for a moment, then snapped back to attention. "Well, here are the documents for you to peruse and sign," he said. He rose, just want to check on one thing and then I'll return to answer any questions you might have."

"Thank you," I said, and began reading.

When he came back. I had a few questions

about some of the investments; then I thanked Mr.

Ross and left. Before returning to Joya del Mar. I decided to do a little shopping and pick up some toiletries at Saks. I was also searching for what Amou used to call a piece of
luz do sol
, a piece of sunshine, some pretty thing that could bring joy and brightness into a gray day. My mother probably hadn't gone shopping for years and still relied on the clothing, jewelry, and accessories her mother had left her. Of course, she would claim she had no use for any of it She went nowhere, but even Daddy, who had little use for so-called romantic ideas, used to say a woman is more like a garden than a man.

"She needs a new flower or pruning and tender loving care far more than a man. A new piece of jewelry, a bouquet of roses, a box of candy can make a woman's face blossom, and the glow from that can light up the day, not only for her, but for everyone around her." he told me.

My mother was so fond of shawls. I decided to get her a pashmina. After I had picked out the things I wanted, the salesgirl asked me for my address.

"So we can send you notifications of sales and new items." she explained.

I saw no reason not to give her my address, and did so. Two women shopping together were standing nearby they both obviously turned an ear in my direction and, as soon as I gave Joya del Mar as the address, smiled at me and approached.

"I couldn't help but overhear your address," the taller woman said. She wore a leather outfit with a fur-lined collar and had diamonds dripping from her earlobes. "Are you staying with the Eatons? We're good friends of Bunny's," she added quickly.

"No, I'm staying with my mother and my brother. Grace and Linden Montgomery," I replied, smiling.

They both pulled back as if I were breathing the plague. "Oh," the taller woman said. "You're the long-lost daughter."

The shorter woman, clad in a gray skirt suit, stared at me with furious eyes. She had coal-black, curly hair and was stouter, almost without a waist,

"I happen to work for Mangle. Orseck. and Lapolt as a paralegal," she said through barely opened, thick lips. "and I can tell you it's not only foolish but pathetic and cruel for you to be encouraging that woman not to sell her property to the Eatons."

" 'That woman'? 'That woman.' as you call her, is my mother, if you don't mind. She has a name, and she has more intelligence and compassion in her pinky finger than the two of you have in your whole bodies," I countered.

They spun around like tops and marched away.

When I turned back to the salesgirl, she was staring with a mouth so agape I could diagnose tonsillitis.

"Anything else you need?" I snapped, and she leaped to finish my sale.

My heart was still pounding when I exited the department store. How cruel people could be. I thought. How difficult life must have been for my mother all these years, and how easy it was now to understand why she had chosen to remain like a hermit. I walked along, past the quaint shops and galleries, then stopped when something caught the corner of my eye.

Through the window of a small café. I saw Thatcher at a table sitting across from an attractive dark-haired woman, elegantly dressed, wearing designer sunglasses. At first I imagined her to be one of his clients, but he had his hand over hers and was looking so intently at her, they appeared more like two lovers. For a moment the sight took my breath away and drained the blood from my face. Then he turned slowly as he leaned back in his seat and started to bring his cocktail to his lips. His eyes shifted toward the window, through which I was sure he saw me. He froze for a moment, then turned back to the woman as if he had not seen me at all.

Now I had two men treating me as if I were invisible, I thought, and pounded the sidewalk hard as I marched to my car, threw the packages into it, and drove home.

.

As I had hoped, my mother's smile was like a sun-burst when I gave her the present. However, almost as if she realized she had violated some bargain she had made with a guardian angel, she quickly hid her joy and declared I was doing enough for them, too much as it was.

"You don't have to buy me presents. too.

Willow." "I know. I don't do it because I have to.

Mother."

She stared at the pashmina shawl covetously, torn between her admiration for it and her guilt in accepting it.

"You don't have to be afraid to be happy.

Mother," I said. It was like tossing a dart and hitting the bull's-eye. She looked up at me quickly, her face revealing the accuracy of my analysis. I could almost feel the patter of her quickened heart. Sometimes, it was painful to be right, especially if it was a heartfelt secret someone would rather keep under lock and key.

"Every time I permit myself to enjoy something. Willow, I can't help but feel like a little girl blowing up a festive balloon with such excitement and enthusiasm, she causes it to burst."

"You don't have to feel that way anymore. We can blow up all the balloons we want. In fact, we'll bury this place in balloons," I declared with a furious air.

She brought back her smile, then put on the shawl and gazed at herself in the mirror. Suddenly, her face returned to that dark, pained look.

"What's wrong? Don't you like it?" I asked.

"Oh, yes, Willow. Yes, of course. It's beautiful.

It's just... it seems like a waste, like putting a new window in a jalopy, a run-down junk heap of a car.

Look at my dull hair, these streaks of gay, these split ends, and my complexion. I'm so pale, so sickly-looking. And this ridiculous old rag I wear."

She thrust her hands at me.

"I have fingernails like a garage mechanic. See!

I hate mirrors. That's why there are so few of them in this house. All they do is remind me of what I've become," she declared, and started to whip off the shawl. "Why tease and torment myself?"

"Then don't," I said sharply, and seized her hand, stopping her from completely removing the beautiful shawl. It dangled off her right shoulder, "Let this be the beginning of a renewal.

Mother. Let this be magical." I urged, stroking the shawl.

Then, instead of a bulb bright with a new idea, a string of Christmas lights went on inside my head.

"I know what we'll do," I said firmly. "We'll both go to the beauty parlor this week. We'll have it all: facials, body wraps, mud packs, paraffin baths for Our hands and feet, pedicures, manicures, everything, and we'll do something exciting with your hair. too."

She started to shake her head and back away as if the idea were so forbidden and terrifying, it could bring a hurricane of new disasters to her doorstep.

"Why not? It will be fun to spoil ourselves and be Palm Beach royals."

She stepped farther back, continuing to shake her head while her eyes betrayed a wish to agree,

"I couldn't... I just wouldn't know how to..."

"I'll be there with you. I need to do something with my hair. and I haven't spoiled myself for some time now. Look at me." I stepped before the mirror and tugged on the strands of my hair. "It isn't just a whim. I have to do something if I'm to become competitive with the women here. right? You've got to help me." I said, making it seem as if she were going to do it all for me.

The idea was beginning to become a possibility.

Her eyes softened with memories and excitement.

"I can't remember when I last did anything like that. It was obviously before I went to the clinic, but after your father and I..." She paused as though she had said too much. "I mean, that was part of our therapy, to permit the volunteer beauticians to come to the clinic and help us feel better about ourselves, but afterward, when I came home. I just didn't have any reason to continue."

"Now you do," I said. "Soon, we'll all be moving back into the hacienda again. There will be people visiting, dinners and teas. All the good things will come flooding back to you, Mother."

"Will they? Do I dare hope for such a thing?"

she asked, almost rhetorically.

"Why not?" I countered angrily. "Why should people like the Eatons be the only ones who dance with happiness here? What makes them more deserving than you?"

They didn't live in so much darkness," she said sadly. "Darkness they inherited from their own family, darkness of their own making."

"How do you know that? Everyone, especially everyone here, if you ask me, has his or her own closet full of dreads. Mother." I said, recalling the things Thatcher had told me. "They might be richly dressed and well attended, but they have to stand before mirrors, too, and wipe off their makeup, and take off their jewelry and their wigs. Naked, they are full of their own wrinkles of sin, and they drink themselves to sleep or take their little pills or pay people to create a world of fantasy for them so they can ignore and forget. That's why they are so frightened of you,"

"Frightened? Of me?" She started to laugh.

"Of course they are." I said sternly, and her smile ceased. "You're right in their faces with the truth, and that forces them to look at themselves. In their heart of hearts, they all know they are just as vulnerable as you were and they could just as easily shatter like so much of their precious Tiffany."

"I never thought of it that way. Willow."

"Well, now you will, and you'll get strong again and be as beautiful as you want to be, as you art," I insisted.

She studied me for a moment, then nodded.

—There is a lot of your father in you. He used to tell me what I would do and what I would overcome with just as much confidence and even with just as much anger running beneath his words. He hated my illness more than I did, and made me think of it as something outside of me. something I could attack and defeat."

"Then don't stop now," I said. "Okay." She smiled. "Okay, Willow De Beers, daughter of the doctor, I won't stop."

We both laughed.

"Do you have any preference in beauty salons?"

I asked. "I wouldn't even know where to begin."

"All right. I'll do my own research and make our appointments," I promised.

I left her turning back to the mirror, putting the shawl neatly an again and doing what every woman has done since the beginning of time: envisioning herself more beautiful. I felt like a Wiccan, a good witch who had truly brought her some magic woven in silk.

However, my powers weren't to be as great when it came to Linden.

I found him sitting by the window in the room he had used as his studio. I almost passed him by because he was as still as a storefront mannequin. He was staring out at the beach and the sea. He had left the door open. I gazed around the studio.

Unfinished works were covered with cloth, and those that had been finished were piled against each other on the floor and against the wall. His paints and brushes were locked away. On an easel in the far right corner was a canvas covered with a sheet, standing like an obedient servant, waiting for orders that weren't coming.

I knocked on the door. It was time to confront him. I thought, to force him to see me, to hear me, but to do it as gently as I could.

"Hi, Linden," I said. "Do you mind if I come in?" He didn't turn from the window,

"So this is where you do some of your work. It's a nice room, but you'll have a bigger and better place for all this soon. Linden, a real studio again."

I saw his shoulders lift, deepening the crease in the back of his neck for a moment. I ventured farther into the room until I was nearly beside him.

"It's really a very nice day, not too hot or humid, with a beautiful breeze. You should go out, go fishing for that inspiration you talked about." I reminded him.

It was an analogy he had made when I had first arrived and he was eager to tell me about himself. He said he was like a fisherman cashing his creative line and waiting for some vision, some inspiration to take hold and be pulled into his mind.

He turned slowly toward me, so slowly it

actually started my heart pounding.

"I can't go out there while they're whispering,"

he said, and turned back to the window,

"What? What did you say, Linden?" I stepped up so he would have to look at me. "Who's whispering? Who are you talking about?"

I actually gazed out the window myself,

searching the beach for signs of someone. There was no one.

'There's no one out there. Linden," I said. No one is whispering." I thought he must be speaking about the Eatons. "And anyway, they have no right to whisper about you or anyone else."

"Yes," he said. "Yes, they do."

I pulled a stool closer and sat. At least I had him talking to me. I thought, even if it didn't make much sense yet. He held his gaze fixed on something he was certain he saw on that deserted beach,

"What are they whispering then. Linden? What do they say that bothers you?"

"They are angry," he replied. "They are angry with me."

"Why?" I asked. He was silent. "Why. Linden?

Why would they be angry at you? What right do any of them have to be any with you?"

He turned again, slowly, his eyes dark and tired, looking at me but giving me the feeling he was not seeing me. It was almost like someone talking to a ghost or a shadow.

"Because I put them in my paintings," he said.

"They never wanted to be seen. They never wanted anyone to know they were there.‖

I realized immediately that he didn't mean the Eatons or anyone alive, for that matter. It was chilling.

"That's silly, Linden. They would be happy you put them in your pictures. Your paintings are wonderful and very interesting. You have them in galleries, don't you?"

His eyes widened and he reached out and seized my hand, squeezing hard enough to make me wince,

"The galleries, I forgot that. We've got to get them back. You must help me do that!"