Twilight's Child

  "What is that, Jimmy?" I asked, sitting back and smiling. Jimmy loved surprises and especially loved surprising me.

  "It's from Daddy," he said, and he pulled out the photographs, handing them to me one at a time without speaking. There was a letter, too. The photographs were pictures of Daddy's wife Edwina and their son Gavin. Some pictures were just of Gavin. They had named him after Daddy Longchamp's grandpa. "Daddy says as soon as they get a chance they're going to travel up to see us," Jimmy declared, and he handed the letter to me along with the pictures.

  "Oh, that would be wonderful. Gavin looks just like Daddy Longchamp," I said. Gavin did have Daddy Longchamp's coal-black hair and dark eyes. "And Edwina's very pretty," I added. She was a slim brunette with light brown eyes. From the way she was depicted in the photograph, I thought she was almost as tall as Daddy.

  "Yes," Jimmy said, but we looked at each other and silently agreed she wasn't as pretty as Momma had been.

  "Daddy seems very happy now," I said, gazing at the letter. "And very proud of his new son."

  "Yes. And I suppose I should be happy about having a new brother," Jimmy declared, a sad look washing over his face and dimming the light in his eyes. "Of course, Fern's got a new brother, too," he said, "although she doesn't know it and may never know it. Did you speak to Mr. Updike about what I suggested, about hiring a private detective?" he asked.

  His dark eyes held a quiet, waiting look, as if his entire life depended upon my answer. I didn't want to tell him Mr. Updike was not enthralled with the suggestion and had tried to talk us out of it.

  "Yes. He said he would look into it for us and get back to me later this week."

  "Good," Jimmy said. "Well, I'd better get back out there. I'll leave all this with you," he said, handing me the envelope and the letter.

  I sat there gazing at the photograph of Daddy Longchamp with his new family. He looked so much older to me, and a lot thinner. It was almost as if he were the ghost of the man I had once known as my father. His smile seemed forced to me; he looked like a man desperately trying to hold back gloom and doom, slamming the door on the past and clinging to the doorknob while the memories battered and pried, trying to get back at him. I was sure it would be very difficult for him to come here to see me. He carried a ton of guilt on his shoulders, and confronting me might only weigh him down. It was better he remain where he was, in a new world, in a new life, the past of beyond the horizon.

  I didn't realize I was crying until a tear dropped on the photograph. And then suddenly my sorrow began to upset my stomach. I felt a wave of nausea come over me. The blood drained from my face, and my heart began to pitter-patter so quickly, I had to gasp for breath. I got up quickly and rushed to the bathroom, where I emptied my stomach of everything I had eaten for breakfast and lunch. It brought me to my hands and knees. Finally I was able to retreat to one of the sofas and lie down. The nausea eased up enough for me to sit up and catch my breath.

  I didn't feel as though I had a fever, but the vomiting had left me weak and tired. I tried to go back to my work but found the nausea returning. I had to rush back to the bathroom. Later that afternoon I decided I had better go see the doctor. I didn't want to worry Jimmy, so I didn't tell him. I just had Julius bring the hotel car around.

  But keeping secrets at Cutler's Cove was a nearly impossible thing to do. I had to tell Mrs. Bradly at the reception counter that I was leaving the hotel. She saw I wasn't feeling well, and she told Mrs. Boston, who told Robert Garwood. The chain of gossip ran out to Jimmy rather quickly, so that when I emerged from the examination room I found him waiting in the lobby, pacing nervously about. He hadn't even stopped to wash the grease of his forehead and cheeks.

  "How did you find out where I was?" I began.

  "What's wrong, doctor?" he demanded, looking quickly from me to Dr. Lester, the physician I had been using to care for Christie. He was a very gentle man who had a way of putting his patients at ease with his comforting smile and methodical manner.

  "Nothing's wrong, Mr. Longchamp," he said, and then he smiled. "Unless you didn't want your wife to be pregnant."

  "Pregnant!" Jimmy's look of concern transformed into a look of shock rnd happiness. He smiled with a dazed expression in his eyes and started to stutter. "But

  "Congratulations," Doctor Lester said, laughing. "Is she all right? I mean—-"

  "Everything's fine, Mr. Longchamp," he assured Jimmy quickly.

  "Now, don't you feel foolish running down here like this, James Gary Longchamp?" I playfully chastised with my hands on my hips. Jimmy started to stutter again, so I took his hand. "Come on, Jimmy," I said. "We have lots of work to do."

  "Work! You're not working as hard as you've been working. No, sir. Things are gonna change around that hotel. And don't you start arguing about it, Dawn," he warned, placing his forefinger on my lips. "I'm about to be a daddy, and I've got a say in these matters."

  "Well, it's not going to happen tomorrow, Jimmy," I said, laughing. "And being pregnant isn't like being sick. I'm not going to lie around like Mother and be waited on hand and foot. So don't you start," I said firmly.

  "We'll see about all that," he replied.

  "Uh-oh," Doctor Lester said, "I'm stepping out of this." He retreated to his office, and Jimmy and I returned to the hotel, where we knew the news would spread and everyone would want to share in our happiness. I still couldn't believe it. I was pregnant with Jimmy's baby. At last it seemed all our dreams were coming true.

  Mother found out two days later and called. Bronson had told her. Sometimes Bronson knew things about events at the hotel before I did. He had his spies, his informers who kept him aware of how we were doing. I suspected Mr. Dorfman might be his source. I didn't blame Bronson; I imagined he wanted to be up on the news at the Cutler's Cove Hotel because it was such a big investment for his bank. Maybe some of the members of his board were pressuring him to keep tabs on how the new, very young owner of the Cutler's Cove Hotel was bearing up under her responsibilities.

  "I'm not surprised you hid this news from me," Mother began. She didn't even say hello or ask me how I was. She went right into her tirade. "Why you would want to make me a grandmother again, I'll never know. You just got married recently, and you're so young. You have so much to live for, so much to do, and here you go having another baby."

  "Mother, getting pregnant and having children is not sentencing yourself to death," I replied quickly.

  "That's what you say now, but just wait," she moaned, as if it were she who was having the baby. "It takes months, years to get your figure back; most women never do," she warned.

  "I'm not worried about that, Mother. I had no trouble getting my figure back after Christie was born, did I?"

  "You say that now because you are young and naive, but oh, how you will change your mind. Believe me. What are you going to do," she snapped, "have a half dozen babies?"

  "Mother, you had three children, didn't you?" I pointed out.

  "Don't remind me," she said, and then she gave out a deep sigh. "I suppose everyone in the community will be talking about it soon," she added, once again speaking as if my becoming pregnant was a scandal.

  "I think they will have more interesting subjects to amuse them, Mother. If they don't, their lives must be terribly boring."

  "You don't realize who we are in this community," she lectured. "Everything we do, everything that relates to us is news here. Why—why, we are their royalty, their celebrities. Like it or not," she said, "we live in a fishbowl."

  "You didn't always think that way, Mother," I said. "You certainly didn't worry about being under glass," I reminded her. It came out a great deal sharper than I had intended, but Mother was making me angry. I didn't ask to be put on display and have my every little action and decision put under a microscope.

  "I was young and foolish and very unhappy then," she retorted. "I thought you understood that," she added, with tears in her voice. "Oh, do what you want. You never listen to anything I
say anyway," she complained. "I'm always wrong in your eyes, no matter what I say or try to do."

  "I listen, Mother. I just don't agree," I said.

  "Why must our conversations always degenerate into arguments?" she asked, her voice dreamy, wistful, as if she were asking someone else in the room with her. "Anyway," she said, jumping to another topic, "Bronson and I have decided to go on a cruise in the fall . . . Italy, the Greek Islands. Bronson suggested I ask you if you and Jimmy wanted to go along, but I suppose now, with your new motherhood on the horizon . . ."

  "Thank Bronson for thinking of us, Mother," I said. "I'm tired now. I have to go lie down."

  "That's just what I mean," she snapped. "You're in the middle of your high season, and you go and get yourself pregnant. You don't even have the strength and energy to talk to me on the telephone. Honestly, I don't think any of my children has a brain."

  "It must be so hard for you, Mother, to have all this wisdom now and not have anyone listen," I said, but she didn't understand my sarcasm.

  "Exactly. That's it exactly," she agreed. By the time I cradled the receiver I was laughing.

  I suppose I had really anticipated what Mother's reaction to my being pregnant again would be, but I had no way of knowing how Philip would react. When I told him, he stood staring at me for a moment, his eyes far off. Then he blinked and smiled, and his eyes gleamed. He rushed forward to hug and kiss me and offer his congratulations, but everything he said sounded odd. It was as if I were having his baby and not Jimmy's.

  "We're going to have to adjust some of the work around here and make sure you're not stressed. We can't have our little mother made tired. No more standing for hours in the dining room doorway at dinner to greet the guests, and no more parading around to see how their food is. Let me handle all that. And just buzz me in the office if someone calls you to go all over the hotel to check something," he pleaded. "Our new baby's got to have the best care and protection."

  "Thank you, Philip," I said. I shook my head in astonishment after he kissed me on the cheek again and rushed out to check on a room assignment problem I was about to solve. Was there something about this hotel that forced people to dwell in illusions? First Randolph, and certainly Mother, and now Philip? I hoped it would never happen to me.

  With Jimmy hovering around me all day to be sure I wasn't doing too much, and now with Philip popping in and out to check on my condition, I began to feel like the specimen under glass Mother suggested I was. Both Philip and Jimmy had the staff spying on me and reporting to them if I went traipsing up and down stairs or into the basement to see about something. Every time I went outside and walked over the grounds I saw bellhops and chambermaids gawking out of windows or around corners. Moments later either Jimmy or Philip would be at my side to see what it was I had intended to do. If I so much as lifted something that weighed more than a pound, someone would drop whatever he or she was doing and fly over to assist. Carrying Christie up or down the stairs was enough to set off an air-raid siren. Sissy did her best to intercept and finally confessed that both Philip and Jimmy had ordered her to prevent me from doing anything that could in the least way be thought of as work.

  At first it was amusing, but after weeks and weeks of it I began to get annoyed, and I let both Jimmy and Philip know in no uncertain terms one evening when they both showed up to escort me to dinner. First Jimmy arrived at my office, and then Philip popped in behind him.

  "I just came by to see if there's anything I can do," Philip said.

  "What can you do, Philip?" I cried, rising up and out of my seat behind the desk like a fountain of anger, gushing. "Can you carry me to the dining room? Can you eat my food for me? And you," I said, spinning on Jimmy, "why did you forbid Sissy from letting me carry Christie anywhere and tell her not to let me lift her out of her playpen or her crib?"

  "I just thought"—he held his hands out—"Dr. Lester said—"

  "He said, 'Don't do anything you wouldn't ordinarily do.' That's what he said. He didn't say turn me into an invalid!" I screamed.

  Unlike my last pregnancy, this one was making me somewhat irritable and blue. I had stopped having nausea, but my temperament had undergone a change. Was it just the pregnancy? I wondered. Or did it have something to do with the work, the hotel, making decisions, becoming the administrator Grandmother Cutler once was?

  "Okay," Jimmy said, holding up his hands like a man surrendering. "Okay, I'm sorry."

  "We're just trying to look after you," Philip insisted.

  "Well, don't," I snapped.

  Both wore the same shocked expression.

  "I'll just . . . see about tonight's dinner," Philip stuttered, and he left quickly. I sat down again and dropped my head in my hands.

  "Dawn," Jimmy said, coming around to put his hand on my shoulder. I started to cry. That was happening to me more and more often, but I kept it hidden from everyone, especially Jimmy. For no reason at all I would suddenly find myself bursting into tears. I had no reason to; the hotel was doing well, Christie was growing more and more beautiful every day, Jimmy and I loved each other very much and wanted our new child very much; but all it would take was a dark cloud slipping over the sun or a point on my pencil breaking, and I would sit there and bawl like a baby.

  Often I would awaken during that dim and lonely hour that comes before dawn, and I would lay in the semidarkness and stare around me, feeling strangely out of myself. Was I going mad?

  My shoulders shook when Jimmy's hand touched me.

  "Hey, what's wrong, honey?" Jimmy asked. He squatted down beside me and lifted my arm away so he could look into my face.

  "I don't know," I cried through my tears. "I can't help it. I just . . . can't help it," I added, and I began to sob again. Jimmy raised me to my feet along with him and embraced me, stroking my hair softly and kissing my forehead and cheeks, kissing away the tears as fast as they emerged.

  "It's all right," he whispered. "It's all right. You're just tired. Maybe not physically tired, but mentally tired, emotionally tired. A lot has happened in a short time, Dawn. You have to realize that," he coached.

  I took a deep breath and swallowed back my sobs. Then I ground the tears out of my eyes and looked into Jimmy's soft, dark eyes, now filled with worry and concern.

  "I'm scared, Jimmy," I confessed.

  "Scared? What are you scared of? Being pregnant again?" he asked.

  "No, not that. I'm happy about that. Really I am. I'm just frightened sometimes, frightened of changing, of becoming someone I'm not, someone I don't want to be. I'm not changing, though, Jimmy, am I? I'm still the same person. I'm still Dawn Longchamp, the Dawn Longchamp you fell in love with, right?" I asked frantically.

  "Of course you are," he said, smiling. "I'll tell you when you've become someone horrible, don't worry."

  I didn't tell Jimmy, but it felt as if the office were closing in on me, as if Grandmother Cutler could still reach me here, even though I had altered and replaced almost everything, down to the color of the pens. One day, for no reason whatsoever, I had suddenly had three chambermaids come in and wash and polish and vacuum every corner. It was as if I was afraid there was still some trace, something of her that could affect me. I never told Jimmy, but I had nightmares about it. If he had heard about my mad cleaning of the office, he didn't bring it up.

  "Oh, Jimmy, I don't want to become someone horrible," I cried, throwing my arms around his neck. He held me tightly.

  "You won't," he whispered. "I won't let you. I promise." "Do you, Jimmy? Do you promise?"

  "Absolutely," he said. "Now wash your face. Sissy's brought Christie down to sit with us tonight. She's already greeting guests like a small princess."

  I laughed.

  "I bet she is. She thinks she's a princess," I said. I put my fingers on Jimmy's cheek and stared into his eyes. "Thank you, Jimmy. Thank you for loving me so much."

  "Hey," he said, shaking his head. "I couldn't stop even if I wanted to."

  We kissed, and
then I washed my face, and we went to play our roles as the hosts of Cutler's Cove.

  The rest of the summer flew by, maybe because we were so busy and I was so occupied with Christie and with my pregnancy. One day it was the middle of July, and then it seemed like only the day after and we were looking at plans for our Labor Day weekend. As had happened every weekend this summer, we had a full house booked. Twice during the high season I had let the bandleader talk me into singing for the guests on Saturday night. He made me promise to do the same thing on Labor Day weekend, claiming that some frequent guests had actually requested it. I did have guests stop to compliment me on my singing and ask when I was going to do it again. This happened especially at dinner, when I made the rounds to greet people at their tables.

  I often missed my music and tried to keep up with my piano playing. I was so happy when Trisha returned for a weekend when she was able to get away from her summer performing arts program. Just listening to her describe her acting classes and her vocal classes made me long to return to those days. As she did every time we spoke or saw each other, she brought me a tidbit of news concerning Michael Sutton.

  "His show closed in London earlier than was expected," she told me when she had come to the hotel. "There have been some rumors about him."

  "Rumors?" I knew how quickly show business gossip spread and that it was often exaggerated, but Trisha didn't seem to consider this a product of the rumor mill.

  "About his drinking," she said. "They say he's actually had to go for treatment in Switzerland."

  "How sad," I said.

  "I hope he gets whatever he deserves," Trisha responded, but despite all he had done to me, I couldn't harden my heart against him. After all, every time I looked at Christie I saw his face. Her features were getting more and more distinct, and she was getting to look more and more like him. It was as if he were reemerging through our daughter, so it became impossible to hate him. I couldn't help but wonder what it would be like for her when she was old enough to understand and i had to explain who her real father was. I would do it as soon as I could, because I knew her aunt Clara Sue wouldn't hesitate to tell her the first chance she got.