Into the Woods

  When I returned home for the holidays I seriously debated continuing with caller. Maybe I needed a year off. I didn't bring it up with Mommy, but I did with Winston. and I could see he was very troubled by the suggestion. He was silent for a long moment and then nodded slowly.

  'Perhaps I have really been the one with my head in the sand when it comes to you. Grace," he said. "Maybe I have been ignoring your difficulties or trying too hard to distract you. Wrapping Jaya del Mar around you and withdrawing from the world isn't going to solve anything," he said. "Give it all a second and a third thought. Please," he pleaded.

  As it turned out. I didn't have to give it any more thought. Fate, that creature Mommy had been so confident about defeating, had only been waiting in the shadows, waiting and watching for it's

  opportunity. When it arose, it slipped out quietly and tiptoed up the stairs of our elegant home. It did so sometime during the night, glancing once perhaps my way and smiling and then continuing down the hallway, past all the magnificent and beautiful art, until it reached Mommy and Winston's door.

  There it paused and glanced over its shoulder, gesturing toward another shadow that is always ready and waiting to be beckoned like an obedient servant. They entered together and left together.

  Mommy's screams rode on the wave of morning sunlight that lifted the night off of Jaya del Mar and replaced it with a different sort of darkness, a blanket of gloom woven with the mournful cries. shrouds. and dust of centuries. My eyes snapped open, and my heart stopped and started. I was trembling so hard I could barely move one foot ahead of the other. When I stepped into the hallway the servants were rushing up the stairs, coming from every direction.

  Mommy saw me standing there, my hands clutched between my breasts.

  "I keep shaking him and shaking him, but he won't wake up!" she cried, "He won't wake up!"

  Somewhere outside another sea gull turned and went screaming out to sea on its wings of panic.

  In my mind I heard the roar of helicopters.

  16

  None So Blind

  .

  I didn't want to wallow in self-pity after

  Winston's death. It seemed to me a selfish way to be. but I was more convinced than ever that everyone I cared for or who cared for me suffered some cruel fate. Surely this proved it was some sort of curse I brought along into every relationship. I was a Typhoid Mary. I carried the disease. but I didn't get it.

  There was still my mother, of course, but that didn't mean she was exempt. In time I couldn't help believing that something terrible would happen to her, too, and all because of me. I didn't tell anyone about these thoughts. They came to me again and again, especially during Winston's funeral. In church. when I looked around at the people in attendance. I was sure I saw the accusations in their granite faces. They were staring at me too hard and too angrily: and nodding at me. I imagined a wave of long, sharp forefingers pointed in my direction.

  Maybe they believed I had taken up too much of his time, had given him too much to worry about. or had exhausted him. Why else would a man who had been so fit and such a great athlete have a fatal heart attack when men fifteen, twenty years older were still active and alive and not half as healthylooking?

  The mourners looked at Mommy in a different way, too. Almost no one but Dallas and Warren gazed at her with any sympathy. Most had wry smiles writhing over their lips.

  Everyone knew that as Winston's wife Mommy had inherited a considerable fortune. She was just another jeweled fruit ripe for plucking. I overheard comments to that effect at Joya del Mar after the funeral when most of these people came to pay their respects. Some unmarried men and widowers even stood around adding up the value of everything as if they were deciding whether she was worth the trouble. They were nothing more than a different form of buzzard disguised as eagles with gilded wings, especially the lawyers and financial managers who descended with their plastic smiles and air kisses, clicking their lips around her face and around each other so much it sounded like an invasion of crickets.

  I was glad when it all ended. Like some very young girl I harbored the hope that it had all been a dream, that I would walk out onto the rear loggia the next morning and find Winston sitting there, comfortably reading his Wall Street Journal. He would look up at me and smile warmly, and we'd have coffee and talk about the condition of the sea and the winds while the sailboat bobbed invitingly at the dock.

  Now I felt I could never sail again. The very thought of doing it and then returning to a house without Winston to share in my excitement and enjoyment sickened me. The deep emptiness in my stomach was much like the emptiness I had felt after Daddy's death, and just as I avoided looking at anything even remotely connected to or reminiscent of the Navy. I wanted to ignore and be blind to all those things Winston and I had shared and loved so much together. Without him they were simply reminders of the pain. I hated even living here in a palace that had become a prison of memories and sadness.

  I realized I wasn't thinking enough about Mommy. After all, she had lost deeply twice. too. I always knew she didn't love Winston with the same sort of passion she had loved my daddy, but she had become quite fond of him and certainly very dependent on him over these last five years. She was well aware of the fact that the new world, the new life she had so wanted for us was now seriously compromised. I could see she trembled with insecurity even though she tried to put on a brave face for me the very next day at breakfast.

  "Well. Grace." she began after we both had gazed sadly at Winston's empty chair. "we're back to just each other again. It seems cruel fate has not retreated as far into the background as I had hoped.

  "However." she said, nodding at her own thoughts. we are not going to hunker down like frightened rabbits. We're going to continue to enjoy and to appreciate each and every opportunity. For starters. I don't like this idea of you not returning to school."

  "I'm not sure what I want to do with myself," I replied.

  "But isn't college the best place to explore all that?"

  "No." I said firmly. "There's too much distraction. I will take some time off and..."

  And do what. Grace? Hide in your room? Walk on the beach? Go sailing by yourself for hours and hours, not go to any parties with young people your age? What? What will you do with this time off?"

  "I'm not sure. Mommy. Let me be," I said. I said it with such authority I surprised even myself.

  "Well, I'm telling you this, Grace. I'm not going to become some pathetic widow draped in black and in retreat. I want to be just as vibrant and alive as I was. Otherwise fate has had its way with me," she said with defiance. 'If you don't do the same, you're victimizing yourself. I promise you this as well," she continued. "I won't spend the rest of my life lecturing you and trying to get you to do the right things for yourself. You're old enough to make the right decisions for yourself now."

  I said nothing. We ate quietly, me nibbling at my food like a small mouse and she deliberately attacking hers with a vigorous vengeance. The grandfather clock banged, the servants scurried about doing their chores as usual. and Joya del Mar, like a ship set on a course that couldn't be changed. continued.

  However, it wasn't long before Mommy discovered her plans and expectations were built with an optimism that had no substance. It was all as airy as dreams. Even the artificial friends she had developed over the past few years drifted away. Invitations became less and less frequent. It wasn't long before it became crystal clear that the only reason she had been included in anything the so-called core families and A-level society conducted was Winston. He and his family had been old Palm Beach with something akin to royalty rights. Mommy was just another usurper, an accessory. What good were earrings without ears, necklaces without a neck, bracelets without a wrist? Winston had been the body, and he was gone. She was as unimportant as last month's gossip on the pages of the Palm Beach Shiny.

  And so those first six months or so after Winston's death were very difficult. Almost

>   immediately a nightmare began to shadow our days. More often than not Mommy would walk about with a worried frown drawing her eyebrows together. She resembled someone with a constant headache. I often heard her mumbling angrily to herself about this one or that. Even the Carriage sisters stopped coining around and taking her phone calls. Hardly anyone she called returned a call, and every time she learned about an event from which she had been excluded she went into a new rage. It got so I tried to avoid her. Fortunately the house and the property were so large it wasn't all that difficult to spend most of the day without confronting each other.

  I did as I had planned, dropped out of college for what I thought would be about six months. I kept up my reading but rarely went anywhere except to the bookstore or to shop for necessities and, on rare occasions, to see a movie by myself. I knew I was becoming an old maid, even though I wasn't even in my mid-twenties, Whenever I stepped out to do anything I felt myself close up like a clam and begin to tremble inside. I thought I could even be diagnosed with agoraphobia and placed in therapy.

  Every once in a while Mommy succeeded in getting a handful of guests to come to chimer at Joya del Mar. I realized before she did that they were really coming not to be friendly again, but just to see how she was doing. how the property was doing, so they could have some new gossip to spread. There was nothing like being at the forefront of a new story or rumor in Palm Beach. It gave the reporter some momentary popularity, and that was the coin with which they bought one another's company and friendship: popularity,

  Mommy's only real friend. Dallas, came by as often as she could or as often as Mommy invited her. They had drifted apart somewhat over the years because Mommy and Winston were in an entirely different social world. Whenever Dallas and Warren came to any affairs at Joya del Mar they seemed to spend most of their time talking to me and just watching Mommy move from guest to guest. both of them looking at her as if they were looking at some stranger.

  Phoebe had started college but soon had met someone and was engaged almost before the first semester ended. Winston, Mommy, and I had attended the wedding and learned she was pregnant. Less than two years later, she was separated and working at the restaurant, something she had always disdained. She had an au pair taking care of her child, which in my mind was better for the child. Not wanting ever to be friendly with Phoebe. I lost track of everyone else I had known at the school. It truly seemed as if even; tie Mommy and I had to our past had either been cut or was about to tear. I had contact with no one. I was like some small planet lost in space, passing closely by some face, some acquaintance, for only a moment and then continuing on into the dark beyond.

  Whenever anyone who came to our infrequent dinners at Joya del Mar asked about me. Mommy would chime in before I could respond and claim I was on a sabbatical. doing independent study. and I was soon to be going to school in Switzerland or France or Italy, depending on the people at the dinner. She got the idea to use that response when she saw me perusing same old school brochures Winston had brought me during those times when he was trying to get me to be more outgoing.

  I didn't deny anything she said because that was the easiest way to get the spotlight off me. Of course. Mommy tried to get me actually to do any one of those things. She used every argument she could, including claiming she needed me to be more educated to handle the complexities of our financial life,

  "I don't know what I'm doing or saying yes to when the broker calls or our manager calls or the lawyer calls. Winston took care of everything when he was alive. Now we've lost some money, too," she revealed in an attempt to get me to become more concerned. "Some bad things happened in the market. and some real estate partnerships have gone sour. I've been advised to end the jet plane lease."

  "We don't use it anyway. Mommy."

  "That's not the point!" she cried.

  I returned to what I was reading, and she stormed away.

  Finally one night she didn't come down to dinner. Instead she stood in the dining-room doorway and announced she was going out.

  "Where?" I asked. She was wearing a lot more makeup than usual and a very tight-fitting dress with a low neckline. It looked like something she might have ordered out of a Frederick's of Hollywood catalogue and was quite unlike the expensive, elegant, stylish designer outfits she had been buying and wearing all these years.

  "Out." she said. "With you drooping about all day and night and with the servants standing and waiting for constant instructions and the financial people driving me crazy, I've decided I need to get out,"

  Before I could ask another question she was gone. I had no idea what time she returned at night because I was long asleep. Soon she was going out two and then three and four nights a week. The phone began ringing again. She had developed some new

  friends. Of course. I was curious about it, but every time I started to ask a question she jumped down my throat and made a speech about how young and attractive she still was and how she was wasting her opportunities. According to her it was a lesson I should learn.

  And then, one morning when I was down at breakfast, not expecting her to join me, as was usually the case these days. I heard her descending the stairs. but I heard a man's voice as well. It made my heart beat faster and faster as their footsteps grew louder and closer. She came through the doorway and smiled at me.

  A man with thick golden brown hair and beautiful cerulean eyes accompanied her. He was wearing one of Winston's morning robes, and although he wasn't quite 'Winston's height, filled it out well. The first thing that struck me about him was that he was years younger than Mommy. There was also something vaguely familiar about his very handsome face, and for a few moments I actually wandered if he was an actor.

  "Kirby," she said, "this is my daughter. Grace. Grace, this is Kirby Scott."

  "Hi," he said. She has your best features. Jackie." he told Mommy, and she smiled.

  "I'm absolutely ravenous." she announced, and called for the maid,

  Kirby Scott sat across from me, "Your mother tells me you're quite the sailor." he said.

  "I haven't done it for a while," I replied, still a bit taken aback by his presence and the fact that they had obviously spent the night together right down the corridor from me.

  "That's a shame. I've done quite a bit of sailing myself, although I was never on a sailing team or anything. I bet that was fun."

  I looked at Mommy. How much had she told this stranger about me? I wondered. She had an expression of self-satisfaction on her face as if bringing this young, handsome man to breakfast was a major accomplishment.

  "Maybe we could take the boat out today," he continued, "Jackie Lee wants to go, don't you. Jackie?"

  Mommy smiled at him. "Yes," she said. "Yes. I do."

  "But you hate sailing," I reminded her.

  "I don't hate it," she said. "I just like to feel safe, like to feel like I'm with someone who really knows what he's doing." She turned an ingratiating smile on Kirby Scott,

  Something turned and twisted under my breasts. "Winston was an excellent sailor. He obviously knew what he was doing. too. He taught me enough to qualify me immediately for the college team," I shot back at her.

  She held her smile although it looked as if her whole face might shatter like thin china any second.

  "So then, why not go out with us today?" Kirby interjected.

  I turned to him with as hard and cold a look as I could manage, but he didn't flinch. His eyes met my eves, and he widened his smile.

  "I don't want to," I said slowly, pronouncing each vowel and consonant hard and sharply.

  He slugged. "If you change your mind, we'll be glad to have you join us. Say about noon. We were

  thinking of taking a lunch." -I looked at Mommy. Who was this man? We were thinking of taking a lunch? "I thought you said eating on the sailboat was uncomfortable. The ocean -rocked too much. You weren't even fond of eating on the yacht anymore," I reminded her.

  "We'll find calm waters," Kirby said. It
was as if he had become her mouth, answering everything for her, speaking for her.

  "I hope you do." I said. "Otherwise she might throw up."

  "Grace!" Mommy cried. "We're having breakfast."

  "I'm not. I'm finished.'" I said. I rose.

  "See you later," Kirby said, still holding that handsome smile.

  "Whatever," I said, and left them. Almost before I reached the stairs I could hear them laughing. I went up to my room and debated getting dressed and taking a ride to the bookstore in the mall. After I showered and fixed my hair I paused at the window and looked out. I saw Kirby and Mommy moving toward the dock. He had a towel around his shoulders and wore only an abbreviated bathing suit and sandals. She was in one of her expensive sailing outfits she had rarely worn. Even from this distance I could see how trim he was. Mommy leaned on his arm, and when he said something, she laughed, and they hurried like two teenagers down to the dock and the sailboat.

  I got dressed as quickly as I could, suddenly eager to be anywhere else.

  .

  After that. Kirby Scott became Mommy's constant escort. If he didn't stay overnight he was there by noon the following day, and they were off to do things together. Whenever I asked her about him, and especially asked about his age, she told me not to be so concerned. He was just a distraction.

  "But what does he do?" I pursued. "He seems available to do anything you want anytime you want, and he doesn't look old enough to be retired."

  "He's between things." was all she would say and leave it as cryptic as that.

  I couldn't deny he was one of the best-looking men I had seen, and when he put on his tuxedo to take her to some extravagant Palm Beach charity event he looked strikingly handsome. Whether Mommy had been invited to something or not, she now made it her business to find out what was happening, where it was being held, and then, if it was a charity event, bought tickets for both of them, no matter what the cost. It was apparent to me that what she wanted was to be seen with him. Maybe it was her way of getting back at the stuffy social crowd. I thought, but I could actually feel Mommy slipping away, sinking into him. I had nightmares in which he was made of quicksand and she could not pull herself out. and I could not pull her out, either.