Wicked Forest

  "Willow, don't rush off like this." Manon pleaded. "Take your time. Let someone go with you."

  I got into the car and threw the folder on the passenger seat. After I started the engine. I looked out at them, all of them standing together, gaping at me with so much pity it made me feel even sicker. My tires squealed on the parking lot pavement as I backed out, and then I shot onto the highway, nearly cutting off another vehicle. The driver leaned on his horn and accelerated, passing me by with a face of brutal anger.

  Taking a deep breath. I slowed the car and tried to swallow a lump that threatened to choke the air out of me. Finally. I was calm enough to breathe comfortably. I drove on, but when I reached the entrance to Jaya del Mar. I did not turn in. I kept driving until I found a place to pull off the road.

  After I stopped. I sat there staring out at the water. I could hear him so clearly now. What was it he had said?

  "I knew there was a good reason why I married you. You're going to make me a respectable man yet. Willow."

  Respectable?

  I started to laugh through my tears. Then I stopped, sucked in my breath, and reached for the dreaded folder. With a shaking hand. I opened it and began to read the documentation. The first few pages delineated the dates, times, and places Thatcher had met secretly with Mai Stone, just as Manon had described. After that were copies of some motel slips, the most recent one being the night he was supposedly meeting those all-important clients in Tallahassee. Then there were the pictures, some of the two of them sitting in a restaurant, one of them walking and holding hands, her head on his shoulder, and one, the most devastating, of them kissing near a fountain in front of some hotel.

  Without much warning, my stomach revolted. I had just enough time to open the door and vomit outside the car. I thought I might lose the baby right there and then, the ache was that ueat in my stomach and chest. When it was over. I sat back with my eyes closed. All I could see were images of Thatcher looking at me lovingly, saying loving things, telling me how much I meant to him. Each vision was like another sting of the whip.

  "Daddy!" I cried, but I didn't hear or see him this time. This time I was all alone.

  I was more alone than I had ever felt or been before. This time I would have to find the answers all by myself.

  17

  Guilty

  .

  Mother had fallen asleep in a chaise on the rear

  loggia and looked so at peace, her thoughts and dreams full of contentment. I didn't dare wake her. Linden was somewhere in the house, probably in his studio. I thought. He was one person I didn't want to see me like this. One glance at myself in the hall mirror showed me quickly that anyone could tell I had been devastated by something.

  I had no idea how Linden would react to this news. I knew he'd really never liked Thatcher. Keeping the peace between them had always been a juggling act for me, and what kept Linden in check most effectively was my showing him that it would displease me terribly if he didn't continue to get along. This was not the time for me to deal with anyone else's crisis. I had enough of my own.

  Anger was still at the forefront of my marching emotions. I went directly to our suite and spread the sheets of information and the photographs in the folder over our bed, laying out the evidence in an orderly and chronological fashion like a homicide detective arranging her presentation for the district attorney. He or she would have no doubt as to whether there was enough to present to a grand jury and get an indictment, I thought. Thatcher, of all people, should appreciate that.

  I stood back and contemplated it all for a few moments, revulsion churning my stomach, creating the nausea I had so far escaped during my pregnancy. I needed air, fresh air, and quickly, I thought. This room, full of his things, was closing in on me. I put on a light windbreaker and went out a side entrance so as not to pass Mother and disturb her. I walked down the beach almost to the south end of our property, where I sat with my legs drawn up and stared out at the mesmerizing waves. The sea breeze played with strands of my hair. Terns circled in front of me, studied me, then decided I wasn't all that interesting and flew off. In the distance a single sailboat rode the waves. I could almost see the bloated cheeks of the impish wind blowing and toying with the mast. Of course, that made me think of Thatcher and our many wonderful boat rides, our picnics, and making love out there on the ocean.

  Who was this man who had dazzled me with his eyes and smile when I first arrived in Palm Beach, who pursued me with such interest and confessed so much love? Who was this man who had taken me on a roller coaster above and beyond the ordinary world, whose laughter was music and whose kiss was a seal of promise time after time after time? Was it really all smoke and mirrors, elaborate deceptions, lies strung along like fake pearls, so well copied that it would take an expert to deny their value, their truth?

  Daddy once wrote an article on what he called "the Don Juan syndrome." I should have taken notes and kept them tied around my neck. I thought, In it, he evaluated a patient of his who, he said, pursued one woman after another, wooing and winning her, not because he was addicted to sex so much as he was searching for a way not to feel unloved and unlovable.

  I could understand why Thatcher would have grown up feeling unloved in his home. His parents. especially Bunny, were so self-centered they put his needs and wants well down on the totem pole of importance, below their precious social activities. His sister had grown up in the same household to become a hard, cold person, and like some cancer that spreads into other places, she was turning her children into mirror images of herself.

  Thatcher had gone in the opposite direction, collecting small love affairs, conquering innocent women, soaking up their devotion and love, then moving on. I was probably just another exercise for him, just another conquest. He had married me because he thought he should be married. Now, after what I had learned. I truly believed that any other woman who had walked onto the stage of his romances at that moment might have been wooed and won exactly as I had been.

  As I sat there thinking. I realized I could analyze him, I could even explain him, perhaps. but I could never forgive him. My heart was like HumptyDumpty. All the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put it together again.

  "Hi," I heard him say, and turned to see him standing there on the beach. I gazed up at him without speaking. He blew some air through his lips, ran his fingers through his hair, looked out at the ocean, and nodded. "I thought I might find you out here."

  "I needed fresh air," I said. "The air in our bedroom suite was rank and sour with deceit and decay."

  He nodded.

  "I tell you what surprised me the most," he said. "That you obviously hired a private detective." "I didn't. Someone else did on my behalf." "Someone else? Who? You don't mean Linden or Grace? Who do you mean?" he questioned, as if I were a witness he had to discredit in a trial. A frightening thought occurred to him. "It wasn't my sister, was it?"

  I was silent, letting him turn over the fire of his own torment.

  "This has obviously been going on for some time, this spying, Willow."

  "That really isn't the point here, is it. Thatcher? How all that came to be on our bed right now is not what matters. What it says, what it reveals, that's what matters."

  He looked at me, and then softened his posture.

  "You're right," he said.

  He paced for a few moments on the sand. I knew him well enough by now to see him gathering his thoughts, organizing his opening remarks to the jury.

  "I'm not here to deny it," he said, turning back to me.

  "I'm guilty of all of it, but what I want to do if you will listen is offer a defense.

  I lowered my eyes and smiled at how well I could anticipate his actions. The man I once had looked up to as nearly perfect, so bright and intelligent, suddenly looked so small and cheap to me. I was immune to all of the techniques, the clever reasoning that made you doubt your own instincts and conclusions. Only he had yet to realize that. He thought he cou
ld just switch gears, ratchet up his communication skills, and turn his big guns on me.

  "Go on. Thatcher." I challenged him. "Offer your defense."

  "You probably know better than I do that Freud claims there are always four people involved in any love affair," he began.

  How clever of him to go right to the subject I loved.

  As in his example." he continued, "that would be the first woman I fell in love with, the first man you fell in love with, and us. We see the firsts in us. We can't stop it, help it, prevent it That's the power of the subconscious.

  "I never got over Mai, never recuperated from that love affair I told you I had. I even told myself many times that I had. but I found it very difficult to deny whenever I was confronted with it, with her. I thought maybe if I gave in to it. I would overcome it, get over her by seeing her as just another woman. When you are away from someone, you tend to fantasize and idealize her. Confronting your dreams, bringing them into reality can end all that. I think that's happened finally,

  "I told her this last time that I was very much into our marriage, that you were pregnant, and that it had to end. I couldn't be there for her just because she had gotten herself into a bad marriage. I had a good marriage. We parted with that understanding.

  'I owe you an apology, of course. I should wake up every morning with an 'I'm sorry' on my lips and beg your forgiveness until the day I die."

  He was quiet. so I turned to him.

  "All those times, dates, places listed on those pages? The pictures documenting them? It took you all those adulterous encounters, even on our honeymoon, before you reached this amazing conclusion that you had a wonderful marriage?" I asked, my voice rising.

  "She was persistent. and I was weak. I admit that. but I'm stronger now You've made me stronger. Willow."

  "Moi?" I said with grand exaggeration. "Little old me? The college girl, the girl with barely enough romantic experience to fill ten minutes of a soap opera? I was the one who was able to give you-- a man of the world who speaks three languages, sophisticated, elegant, traveled-- give you the strength you needed? To teach you the truths about a significant relationship?"

  "Yes," he said firmly.

  I shook my head, looked out at the sea, and laughed to myself. "It is the truth." he insisted.

  I spun on him.

  "The truth? Please, Thatcher. You, your sister, your mother, your whole family are so used to lying, to pretending, to dramatizing and fabricating, that none of you can even recognize the true and the real anymore, even if it was hoisted on a flag or set in neon lights on Worth Avenue. This entire place. the Palm Beach social world, your precious Season that you treat like some religious period with invitations considered as valuable as blessings, all of that nonsense has given birth to all this, made you all who you are."

  "Being a bit condescending and superior, aren't you?" he quipped out of the side of his mouth.

  "I don't think so. I'm not a saint. but I won't lie to myself."

  "I thought you wanted to be a psychiatrist. I thought these things were valid to you, that you would be understanding," he wailed, his arms out.

  "You thought very wrong."

  He dropped his arms and let his shoulders sag with defeat. "Then everything I just told you doesn't matter?"

  "No, it matters. It has helped me reach a verdict."

  I turned and stared at him coldly, so coldly he actually took a step back.

  "What verdict?" he asked.

  "Guilty," I said sharply. "Guilty of being false, of betrayal, simply guilty of adultery with no mitigating- circumstances. Is that a clear enough verdict? You want me to pronounce sentence?"

  He shook his head.

  "Don't bother." he said, turned, and walked away. He looked more like he was fleeing. I watched until he disappeared, and then I closed my eyes and lay back on the warm sand so my eyes could swallow their tears.

  By the time I went into the house nearly an hour later, he was already gone. He took most of his clothes, but left things behind, especially the folder and its contents, still spread on our bed, the remnants of a crumbled marriage. I gathered up the evidence and shoved it back into the folder, then sat on the bed and finally let the trapped tears streak down my face. I had my hands on my stomach as I wept.

  Inside me. our baby was forming. A short time ago. I had thought of our baby as the product of love, thought that, no matter what the timing and the planning, she could never be thought of as a mistake. Our child would be too beautiful, too much a part of us to be thought of that way. But what was this child to be a part of now? A broken marriage? A series of deceits? A home built on a foundation of lies?

  What would I think every time I looked at her? Would I see Thatcher and his betrayal? Would I be unable to separate all that from our child? How much of him would be in our baby? Would it be the stronger influence?

  I hated myself for my first thoughts, for I was telling myself that I should seek an abortion. I should not permit the fraud to continue. This was not a child born of love, but a child born out of lust. I was just as guilty in that respect. I had no right to her.

  I gazed at myself in the mirror.

  Look at the world, the situation you would be bringing this child into, and ask yourself Willow De Beers-- for that's who you have returned to being Willow De Beers-- ask yourself do you want to do that?

  The rage inside me was hat and wild enough to consume my fetus anyway. I thought, All that bile, that hot blood bailed by betrayal and disappointment, would restructure and remold the infant so that she inherited the bitterness if she did survive. I saw now what Mallon meant by offering the information before I had made too great an investment in this corrupt marriage. All of them had sat there and gazed at me, asking with their eyes: Do you want to give birth to this man's child?

  I sobbed louder, my body shaking as I racked back and forth, holding myself.

  There was a knock on my door, so gentle at first that I didn't hear or realize someone was there. The knock grew more intense and made me jump. My gasp put a cork in the bottle of my tears. I sucked in my breath and managed a "Yes?'"

  The door opened and Mother stood there, her face full of concern.

  "I saw Thatcher leave," she said. "He was carrying suitcases and he looked furious. I called to him and I know he heard me, but he didn't turn back. What happened?" I shook my head and then burst into a flood of tears that I thought might drown us both.

  She rushed to me to throw her arms around me, and for a few moments I became a very little girl again, clinging to my Amou, soaking up her compassion and sympathy and clinging to her words of hope. There was always sunshine in her eyes for me, always enough to help me believe things would get better,

  When I was calm enough. I told Mother everything, and then I showed her the folder. She sifted through the documents, stared sadly at the photographs, and sighed so deeply. I felt sorrier for her than I did for myself. She looked like she had aged in minutes.

  "How disappointing." she said. "Such hard news. I was always impressed with Thatcher, impressed with how he had managed to overcome his own family to develop into such a respectable, mature young man."

  She looked at me.

  "I feel like I was part of the deception." she continued. "I feel responsible."

  "How could you be?"

  "I was so happy about your relationship with him and your marriage to him. I lent my support, my confidence to you and ignored all his philandering."

  "I am a big girl, Mother. I didn't do anything I did not want to do. I knew about his past, the way he lived and played. What I was blind to. I was blind to because I closed my eyes myself. No one closed them for me. There were so many hints and little footprints along the way. I think I realized some of this, but lied to myself because it was so much easier to do that. No one is more responsible than I am. I won't let you place an ounce of blame on yourself."

  "I am afraid I don't need your permission to do that." she said. She closed the fo
lder. "What have you decided to do now?"

  "I can't remain married to such a man." I said. She nodded,

  "And I'm thinking about the baby," I added. Her eyes flew up at me, widening.

  "What are you saying? You can't mean.., you wouldn't seek an abortion?"

  "I keep thinking about the life I'm bringing this child into. Mother. Mistakes compounded become so much bigger and harder to live. with."

  "Oh. no. Willow. no. The child can never be thought a mistake. Besides, whether you want to admit it to yourself now or not, this baby is a part of you. Believe me." she said. "I know."

  She reached for my hand and looked into my face.

  "Don't you think I went through the same sort of concern, had the same doubts and temptations? But in the end. Willow. I could not deny that the child being formed inside my body was so much a part of who and what I was that I could not place blame on him and I could not deny his existence. This isn't exactly the product of a rape. Mine was closer to that. but I was a young, vulnerable girl who just didn't realize what it all would and could mean."

  "Right now. I don't feel any more sophisticated or mature than you were then. Mother.

  "This is different. Willow. It's betrayal, it's being taken advantage of. but it's different," she insisted. "Believe me, you will hate yourself more if you stop yourself from giving birth. You wanted this child after you learned of its coming. didn't you? You had worked out all the problems, knew you could afford to have it and still fulfill your responsibilities and needs. What Thatcher has done shouldn't change that, can't change that."

  I shook my head. bit down on my lower lip, and closed my eyes.

  "No. I guess what he has done does not change that. You're right, of course. It's just that... just that it's going to be so hard now. Mother, for so many reasons."

  "It's been hard before." she said. smiling. "Somehow, we manage to get through it."

  I looked at her and felt so guilty for waving my self-pity in her face, of all faces. If anyone had the right to self-pity, it was she. Abused, sent away suffering emotional and mental pain, having to give up the man she loved and return to a world in which she was considered a leper. And she was the one giving me encouragement and strength.