Hidden Leaves

  She didn't look at me, but I could see just a slight tint of crimson rise to the surface of her cheeks.

  "I read about all the people you thought you somehow injured just by being close to them. Every one of them had his own history, Grace. Every one of them made decisions without you present and all had done significant things before they even knew you. Many of the things they already had done influenced what eventually happened to them. Please consider that whenever you think to blame yourself."

  She almost nodded.

  "Dr. Anderson said similar things to me," she told me. "Well, he wasn't wrong, Grace."

  "Somehow." she said, turning to me. "it didn't sound as convincing as when you say it."

  I smiled. "I told you it's more effective to do unorthodox things with your patients."

  Her smiled widened.

  "If you're up to it." I said. "I'd like to show you the view from that rise there." I nodded toward the hill about a thousand yards or so ahead of us. "It's quite beautiful."

  "Sneaking up on me again. Dr. De Beers?" she asked and I laughed, Then she looked out toward the hill, and after a long moment of decision, as if this one would change her life somehow, she said. "Okay."

  Sometimes, Willow, your mother's voice sounded like the voice of a little girl. She retreated to that innocent vulnerable state, and when she did, my heart went out even more to her. It took all my professional bearing to keep from putting my arm around her and pressing her to me. I so wanted to kiss that cheek, to touch her hair, to trace the perfect lines of her perfect lips. but I shut all that up in the deepest place in my mind and rose from the bench we were on to walk again. She kept her anus crossed under her breasts, her head slightly lowered, her eyes mare thoughtful now.

  I am writing this just after your tenth birthday. Willow. so I don't know how often you might have visited me at my clinic before you actually read this. but I do know that when you are old enough. I will take you far the same walk I took your mother that day. I might have the courage to reveal everything to you then, and if I do, there would be little reason to have my attorney iiive this to you.

  As you know, we have some beautiful grounds at our home, but because of the hills here at the clinic. I have this wonderful view to share with my patients. From the crest I brought your mother to, we could see the river snaking along, its surface now gleaming with an opalescence in the strengthening late morning sunlight.

  "My mother used to tell me rivers are the circulatory system for the earth, carrying the earth's blood: water. She was a very intelligent, well-read woman and she had a big influence on me and my success in science," I said. "It was like having a home study program."

  I remember thinking I never talked about my personal life like this with any of my patients, but ever; time I did, it brought a new smile to Grace's lips. Was I doing it just to win her trust, something a doctor needs to help his patient, or was I doing it because it felt good to speak about myself whenever I was with her, because it was something special?

  "I read where you wanted to become a teacher. Do you still want to do that?" I asked her.

  She looked at me, and I could see the idea of her ever becoming or doing anything with her life anymore seemed incredible.

  "I don't know," she said timidly, as someone afraid to have any hope would.

  I was angry, angry at all the events, the people, the forces that had turned this remarkable, beautiful, promising young woman into an unconfident, weak shadow of what she had every right to be.

  "Now, you listen to me," I said, seizing her just below the elbow and stopping her on the path. "You're going to have a future. Grace Montgomery. You're not going to be here or in the care of doctors forever." I said with steely eyes of determination.

  "'What makes you so certain of that?" she asked, obviously impressed with my firmness.

  "Experience, years of study, and..."

  "And what?"

  "Faith," I said. "Faith in you. Grace."

  "But you hardly know me. You're read the file Dr. Anderson sent to you, but that's not me."

  "I know it's not."

  "Then how do you have any faith in me?"

  "Maybe it's the faith I have in myself," I said, trying not to sound too arrogant.

  "You're not what I expected." she said again after a long moment, and this time we both laughed.

  Oh. Willow, the sound of her laughter... it was truly music, a free and melodic song. It had been sa long since I shared such a happy, carefree moment with anyone. I felt a little liberated myself. Suddenly it was brighter than I had thought. Those clouds were fleeing. The sun was making every color more vibrant, the very air we breathed was sweeter.

  I wondered to myself. Is this what is meant by falling- in love? As a psychiatrist. I often had trouble with such romantic concepts. Nothing in the world seemed magical to me before I met your mother. Willow. Everything had an explanation either at the bottom of good scientific analysis or in its very physical qualities.

  We were living in a world in which more and more accurate prognosticators were designed and created to predict what people would do, how they would vote, what they would buy, and even, in some people's way of thinking, whom they would love.

  I was part of that world, one of those prognosticators. If anyone should be skeptical of magic, it was I. Willow, but I loved the possibility that there was magic in the world, that there were things that we were incapable of anticipating.

  I couldn't remember enjoying a session with any patient as much as I was enjoying this walk with your mother. I wished it would go on and on and even considered walking with her down to the river's edge. I was invigorated. I felt gigantic. I could cure her in one session. Ralston would be waving his finger at me. I thought. but I didn't have a chance to do any of that on our second day.

  "Dr. De Beers!" we heard someone shouting. I turned and saw Nurse Gordon hurrying toward us. "Come quickly!" she cried. gesturing.

  "Let's hurry back. Grace," I said.

  "-What's happening? What's wrong?" I asked as we drew closer to Nadine Gordon.

  "Sandy," she said. "She's jabbed a fork into her stomach! She's in the infirmary." She looked at Grace and then turned back to me. "She was supposed to be with you this hour."

  "Dr. Price was going to see her," I said. "Didn't you get the new orders?"

  "No. I was involved in another situation with the Masterson boy. He was having one of his tantrums in the recreation room and your young doctor Wheeler was overwhelmed," she shot back at me and started for the clinic.

  I hurried after her and told Grace to try to relax, go to the arts and crafts room. perhaps. She nodded and went off while I hurried to the infirmary, where I found Ralston conferring with Thomas Wheeler, the young doctor,

  "What happened?"

  "Hallucinating again, She believed one of the dark figures got into her and she was digging it our

  "How terrible," I said.

  "An inch or so to the right and she might have bled to death." Ralston told me. "I thought Nadine Gordon was bringing her to my office, and I got distracted during a phone call and didn't notice the time."

  "I did leave written instructions for Nurse Gordon to take her to see you," I said. "She's usually right on that, but she said she had some difficulties in the recreation room with Billy Masterson?"

  "Yes, he was acting out." Dr. Wheeler said.

  "But I was handling it just fine." he added defensively. "She could have attended to her own duties, especially if she had some orders from you to follow."

  Ralston leaned toward me to whisper, "You should have given her the orders orally. Claude."'

  "Yes." I said, now feeling terrible. This is not something I would have done before, I told myself. I'm too distracted.

  "All right. Dr. Wheeler," Ralston told him. "Let's get back to our schedule. Things are under control."

  He nodded and left us.

  "Where were you anyway, Claude?" Ralston asked me.

  "I took
Grace Montgomery for a walk. She was a great deal more at ease out there. I was making good progress with her."

  "Ummm. Okay, let's check on Sandy and get back to our other patients," he added.

  I didn't see your mother again until the end of the day. She had spent a good part of her afternoon in the arts and crafts room. We had a former art teacher working for us. Joan Richards. She was very good with the patients and often joked that she saw little difference between her working with mentally disabled people and teenagers. Grace took to her quickly and had already begun work on creating a doll.

  It wasn't hard to analyze that. Willow. Your mother was recreating Linden, her own baby. Nothing underlined her need to be with her child as much. In subsequent sessions with her I would come to understand that Grace resented her mother's assuming her role. She was even bitter about it at times. I encouraged her to express that. From a psychiatric point of view, it's good to get the patient to let it all out, so to speak, to get her to bring her darkest, most troubling thoughts up from the depths of her turmoil and express it. Once she does, it's the beginning of her ability to deal with it and overcome the problems. (This sounds like it comes from a manual on psychiatry, I know, but I have a suspicion that by the time you read this, you will appreciate the occasional comments.)

  "My mother tells me she did it and is doing it for my own good.' Grace revealed through clenched teeth one day when we began to talk in earnest about this problem.

  "Don't you believe her?" I asked.

  "No."

  "Why not?"

  "She knows I never cared about what those people thought of me." Then she looked up at me and said. "She and my father were going to have another child, you know."

  It wasn't something she had told Dr. Anderson, so I considered it something of a breakthrough,

  "Why didn't they?"

  "He was killed before they could, but she came to me one day and told me that now that he was stationed for a long period of time in one place, and now that he had been given a higher rank with a better salary, they felt more relaxed and confident and decided to try. She had tried before but had not become pregnant, and she blamed it on her stress and nervousness. At least, her doctors told her that. I remember her telling me how she and my father had gone to doctors to be sure that she could become pregnant."

  "So you think that because of that..."

  "Linden was the child she never could have, the child she wanted." she asserted. "I was almost the surrogate mother, not her."

  "How do you mean?"

  "You know, like those women who carry another woman's fertilized egg in their wombs."

  I thought this analysis of her mother and herself was quite perceptive of her, and my appreciation of her rose even higher, as well as my expectations for a complete recovery.

  "How do you think you should deal with this. Grace?" I asked her.

  She thought a long moment.

  "I've got to get stronger," she concluded. "I've got to go home and take my baby back."

  "That's right," I said "That's exactly what you have to do. Grace."

  She looked up at me and we just stared at each other for the longest moment. It took all my

  professionalism, all my psychiatric skill to keep me seated in that chair, Willow. The man inside me was practically screaming for me to get up and go to her and put my hands on her arms and stand her up so I could kiss her and hold her and tell her the secrets of my own heart, but I managed to shut him down. I pretended to make notes, think, and then told her we had done enough. We had made some wonderful progress.

  "You are getting stronger. Grace," I added. "We can adjust your medications accordingly."

  She liked that.

  "Thanks to you." she said. "And your sneaky ways."

  I'm sure I had my best Christmas smile on my lips, the most joyful, giving smile I could manage. How delightful she could be. Willow. I never had a patient with so much personality My reactions to her weren't programmed, weren't designed just to make her more comfortable. They were sincere reactions, and she knew it just as much as I did.

  This secret you were holding inside you, Claude De Beers, I told myself, it can't be hidden forever.

  And it would not be.

  5

  A Pure and Wonderful Love

  .

  Like anyone with guilt in his heart. I couldn't

  help wondering just how much Alberta sensed when she looked at me and spoke to me during those early months when I was treating your mother. Willow. Ironically, I became grateful for all Alberta's distractions. Perhaps it was solely because of them that she was unable to take one look at me and see how lovesick I had became. I could not imagine how she missed it. Whenever I stopped for a moment in my home and gazed at myself in the mirror. I saw a different Claude De Beers, one who barely resembled the man everyone knew as Dr. De Beers, the renowned psychiatrist, lecturer, author, the mature, confident man of logic and reason. unflappable.

  How could even Alberta be so oblivious to my long pauses during our conversations, my

  daydreaming, my drifting through our home, walking like a ghost an air, being forgetful, even to the point of having to be reminded about dinner. One morning I was in such haste to get to the clinic. I even forgot my tie and Miles had to remind me, Fortunately, I had one in the car at all times.

  And at our dinners whenever we did eat together and Alberta went on and on about her activities or things she wanted us to buy or change in the house, how could she not notice my blank stare, my failure to comment, to question, to respond to anything, to give her my usual nod or simple yes and no? Why didn't she see how I nibbled at my food?

  Was all this in my imagination? Was I merely lost in some fantasy? Would it all come to an abrupt end? Shouldn't I want it to come to an abrupt end? I asked myself.

  I was caught in a great conflict, you see. On the one hand, I was doing all in my power to help Grace regain enough self-confidence to throw off the demons that had brought her here, and on the other, I was secretly hoping she would never leave, that we would go on forever, walking, talking, catching each other's longing in each other's eyes, and eventually....

  Eventually what?

  What do you expect will happen, Claude De Beers? I asked myself each day I headed for the clinic. Can't you see how impossible all this is? You can only ruin someone else's life along with your own. The voice of my conscience grew louder and stronger almost every new day. One night I arrived at what I thought was a prescription for ending all this. I decided to throw myself at Alberta, to try to resurrect our early passion for each other, to cure myself of this nonsense by reminding myself in no uncertain terms that I was a married man.

  It was a good night to try it. Alberta had not gone to any of her usual meetings, lunches, or dinners. She had spent the day meeting with some decorators because she wanted to redo our sitting room and our entryway. The house was old, but historic. a classic structure in our community. She knew I would not permit her to change the exterior very much, so she focused her attention on modernizing the interior. I used to think our furniture should be on wheels. She had it moved around and changed that often. Every time she visited one of her wealthy friends, she returned depressed about our home. For Alberta, the grass would always be greener somewhere else.

  I confess I was somewhat to blame for her behavior. As long as she was doing these things, she wasn't nagging me, criticizing me for the time I spent at my clinic. Occasionally she would burst into my office with a brochure of furnishings or with samples of rugs and demand I give her an opinion.

  "Well, which is right for the room?" she would ask again, impatient with the time I was taking.

  Almost invariably, what I chose, she hated. I began to think that my not choosing what she liked was her way of confirming her choice was correct. In her mind I had no taste, no sense of style because I was the classic absentminded professor. It was all simply another nail in the coffin that marked the death of our marriage, and I hav
e to admit that after I had met Grace Montgomery, I not only didn't notice all the nails. I didn't care.

  It frightened me. Would I. the psychiatrist's psychiatrist, go mad myself?

  Bring it to an end; I ordered my rebellious heart. Bring this all to an abrupt and final end. And there is no better way to do that than to reinforce the oath of marriage you have already taken; I told myself.

  I fortified myself with a tumbler of scotch on the rocks and concentrated my thoughts on memories of Alberta when we had first met, courted, and made love. I blamed my infatuation with Grace and my awn neglectful ways on my failure to regenerate my own marriage. I had become too comfortable with myself and my work, and now I was almost a married man living like a bachelor. Why should I blame Alberta for her interest in other things? What had I done to deserve her romantic interest in me? I was rarely escorting her to social events anymore. We had so little in common, and that was at least half my fault, I told myself. I had to do something to change that.

  In short. I was fleeing from Grace, retreating to my own marriage.

  Would it work?

  I knocked on Alberta's bedroom door. "Yes?" she called,

  "It's Claude." I said May I came in?"

  She opened the door and looked out at me. She was in her nightgown and had her hair in a hair net. I could see she had just begun to remove her makeup. She looked a little annoyed until she saw the tumbler of scotch in my hand. I hadn't realized I was still carrying it.

  "What is it. Claude?" she asked with a curious little smile nesting on her lips,

  "I was wondering if I could stop in to see you." I said.

  Our long love draughts and lack of intimacy made me sound more formal than I wanted to be.

  "Why?" she asked.

  There was a time when she wouldn't have had to ask that. I thought, although it was never easy for me to be amorous. Perhaps that was why I was so eager and happy to marry Alberta. Here was a very attractive young woman with a certain elegance who was willing to accept me as I was, at least in the beginning. I was quite conscious of my male friends and associates thinking I had done the equivalent of winning the lottery. Why would such a stunning beauty want to be with me above anyone else? Not that I think of myself as an unattractive man. Hardly that, Willow. I am just realistic about my romantic qualities and admit I am and was not the most exciting beau she could find or even the most exciting she was courting. I am quite familiar with the Don Juan syndrome. but I am by no means a Don Juan.