Wicked Forest

  "I'd get it all over with as soon and as painlessly as you can," Manon said. "The longer it drags out--"

  ."--the more the stories will flourish and be embellished," Sharon completed.

  "Once it's over, it will become yesterday's news so quickly, your head will spin." Liana assured me. "That's the way things are here."

  "Of course. finding another suitable man in this town will be practically impossible." Marjorie said. "I speak from experience when it comes to that."

  "So she'll find him somewhere else." Mallon said. "Maybe there is no such thing." Liana mused aloud.

  They all gazed at her for a moment.

  "No such thing?" I asked.

  "As a suitable man."

  "There's no doubt about that," Marjorie said.

  "My father was a suitable man," I said, hating their cynicism. "I'm sure you all know someone you would hold up as an example."

  Not my father," Sharon said bluntly. "Nor mine." Liana added.

  "Nevertheless, we shouldn't generalize. I have the freshest wound, and Fin telling you, I am not giving up my dreams just because one man brought me a nightmare." I said with heat in my face. "I won't let a man do that to me, and none of you should permit it either. You have a right to be happy. We all do." I insisted.

  For a moment, they all looked like little girls again, their eyes full of fantasy and hope. even Marjorie's. Then, as if the magical bubble burst, they blinked, stirred, shook their heads, and laughed with derision.

  "What do you expect from someone who wants to be a psychiatrist?" Marion asked them. "She has to be a little crazy herself to understand her patients."

  They laughed again.

  No matter what happens to me, I vowed silently. I'll never become what they have become.

  Was I crazy?

  I narrowed my eyes at their cynical smiles, my spine turning to steel.

  "Laugh if you want, but my father used to say that dreams, that fantasies are as important as vitamins," I said "If flowers didn't believe that cloudy days would end, they would wilt and die. Bitterness feeds on itself. It consumes you and, in the end, you become the very thing you hate,

  "This, too, shall pass," I said, smiling at them. "All of it will end. The clouds will move away. We will have sunshine penetrating the black leaves of our wicked forest and we will be happy. Above all, no matter what, we will be happy. That should be the motto of your Club d'Amour," I admonished.

  They all looked like little girls again, but little girls who had been lectured and set straight.

  "Maybe you're right," Manton said. "I can' deny I hope you are."

  Sharon nodded.

  Marjorie looked away like someone who wanted to hide her tears. and Liana smiled.

  Despite the terrible and ugly news they had brought me. I actually felt better and stronger myself-- until I saw Jennings standing in the doorway. The look on his face told me immediately something was wrong.

  Something was very wrong, "Jennings?"

  "It's Miss Montgomery," he said. "One of the maids just called down to me."

  "What?" I asked, shooting to my feet so quickly, I felt my heart bob like a yo-yo. I pressed my palms against each other between my breasts.

  "She's collapsed by the side of the bed."

  18

  An Empty House

  .

  Mother's eyes seemed to be sewn shut. I felt for

  a pulse and found a very low, weak beat. Even before I started up the stairs to see what was wrong with her, I had told Jennings to call for an ambulance. Since there was no hospital in Palm Beach, she was taken to Good Samaritan in West Palm Beach.

  The uproar brought Linden out of his room. He stood like a stone statue and watched as the attendants lifted Mother onto a stretcher and placed her in the ambulance. Then he came along with me in my car, moving like a robot, his silence made me babble continuously. The girls of the Club d'Amour all went home, each promising to call. From the looks on their faces and the hollowness in their voices, I knew they didn't really want to call. Thatcher once told me that sickness and death were so abhorrent to the residents of Palm Beach that no hospital or cemetery was permitted within its precious boundaries.

  Linden was as quiet at the hospital as he had been at home and in the car. He sat with an almost expression-less mask over his face, the only hint of emotion evidenced in the slight trembling in his lips from time to time. His eyes were steely gray, his neck stiff, his hands clasped in his lap as he waited with me in the lounge. When I asked him if he wanted something to drink, he just shook his head. He looked like he was sleeping with his eyes open.

  Nearly two and a half hours after we had arrived with the ambulance, the doctor finally came out to see us. He was tall and thin with curly black hair, and so baby-faced it was difficult to have any faith in anything he said, but he did speak with authority and medical expertise.

  "I'm Dr. Hersh." he began. "We've examined your mother and concluded beyond a doubt that she has suffered a stroke or, as we say, brain attack. A CT scan has revealed an intracerebral hemorrhage.. I'm afraid it's rather massive. We've determined that she has suffered a recent myocardial infarction, which created the blood clot."

  "A heart attack? But wouldn't we know if that had happened to her?" I asked.

  He shook his head so casually, it was almost as if we were discussing some very insignificant thing.

  The patient suffers symptoms, doesn't report them to anyone, and lives with the damage until a blood clot is created in the heart that breaks off and travels to the brain, cutting off the supply of blood and eventually causing the hemorrhage. It's not as uncommon as you might think." he said.

  He looked from me to Linden as he spoke, but something in Linden's face frightened him enough to keep him from looking at him at all.

  "What can we expect?" I asked, my heart pounding so hard, I wasn't sure I had spoken loud enough for him to hear me. "The prognosis is not optimistic. I'm afraid," he said.

  "She's in a coma, of course. She's not feeling any pain."

  "Can we see her I asked.

  "Yes. We've placed her in our ICU. It's protocol to provide a clear air passageway, of course, so we have a nasogastric tube employed. She's on a heart monitor. I'm just telling you all this so you're not surprised or frightened by what you see." he added with a soft turn of his lips. He glanced at Linden, then shifted his eyes back to me and nodded. "I'm sorry," he said. "My suspicion is, there were some warnings that were ignored. Many people don't even know when they are having a stroke. I read a report yesterday from the University of Cincinnati that indicated 52 percent of their acute stroke patients were unaware they were experiencing a stroke. We've got to do better at making people stroke-smart."

  What does all this have to do with us now? I thought. Maybe he was only trying to make conversation, or maybe, in his own way, trying to explain how someone you loved dearly was about to be taken from you and how he, our doctor, a representative of this great medical machine, this expensive infrastructure of doctors, nurses, devices and medicines, was helpless and could offer only a smooth transition to the grave.

  I nodded. took Linden's arm, and headed for the ICU. When we got there, the nurse seemed to glide over the floor like a funeral director, gesturing rather than talking, and directing us to Mother's bedside, She looked so small, the bed and the machinery around her engulfing her. I held tightly to Linden's arm. He was still very stiff. mechanical, his jaw taut, his eyes like marbles,

  "She doesn't look like she's suffering" was all I could manage.

  Linden released a breath, faltered for a second, then regained his poise and straightened his back. I reached for Mother's hand and held it. She already felt as cold as a corpse, her complexion fading as if she were being drawn slowly down into herself. into her own bones, closing like a clamshell.

  So she was not going to see her grandchild after all. I thought. She was not going to enjoy the autumn of her life and be part of my accomplishments. All of the pr
omise I had brought, all of the renewed hope was to be lost. I knew that she had wanted to help me and support me at this time of great difficulty. Perhaps. on top of all the pain and suffering she had endured, mine was too much. Perhaps. if I had left her alone, if I had not sought her out and become part of her life, she wouldn't be lying here now. I couldn't help wondering about it.

  The tears streamed down my cheeks. I took deep breaths and wiped them away. Then I felt Linden nudging me.

  "We've got to get home." he said.

  "Get home?"

  "You know how Grace is," he replied. smiling. "She won't eat dinner without us."

  It felt like an ice cube was sliding down my spine.

  He looked up. and I realized he wasn't looking at Mother. He was looking past her. Something in him was keeping him from seeing her like this. He had shut all the doors to reality and retreated to the world he knew at Jaya del Mar. Maybe he was better off. I thought. What good would it do him now if I forced him to acknowledge her, dying in this bed?

  "Okay, Linden," I said. "We'll go home."

  I leaned over and kissed Mother on the cheek and whispered. "I love you."

  Then I turned and led Linden away like a blind man. I left all of our information with the medical office before we drove home. As soon as we arrived. Jennings asked after Mother. and I told him the sad news. He looked absolutely devastated and mumbled some consoling remark before retreating. There was no doubt in my mind that the only reason he had opted to remain with us rather than go off with the Eatans was his admiration and love for Mother. It made it all seem that much sadder.

  On behalf of the Club d'Arnour, Marion did call me that evening. I imagined them drawing straws to see who would be forced to make the call. I told her Mother's diagnosis and prognosis. She muttered her regrets quickly and, with little enthusiasm, asked me to call her if I needed anything. It wasn't difficult to understand. She, as well as her friends and so many other people I had met here, spent most of their time finding new and exciting ways to please themselves. They lived in a world in which they could assign their responsibilities to someone else, even their daily worries. Problems meant only that money would be spent, and money was in such abundance, it meant nothing. Despair. poverty, age, and death itself were persona non grata. They were to be ignored. Rich people here don't die, I thought. They simply stop being invited to parties, balls, and dinners . That was the extent of facing reality.

  Linden was obviously having his own difficulty with the events transpiring. He came by my suite to call me to dinner. I joined him at the table. and unlike his behavior before, he was talkative and animated again.

  "Mother isn't feeling well enough to join us." he said. "But she would be upset if we didn't have our dinner because of that."

  "Linden," I said softly, "Mother is very, very ill."

  "Oh. I know. I've been after her to take better care of herself, you know. Why, if it wasn't for me, she wouldn't eat a decent meal half the time. I'm the one who gets her outside to get fresh air and take walks. She would be content sitting in her room. We've got to get her to help herself more. Willow. I've told you that many times, haven't I?

  "She'll listen if you chime in as well. She usually listens to you better than she listens to me these days."

  "Linden..."

  "Yes?" He started to eat.

  I watched him for a moment, and then I shook my head, eating what I could while he talked on and on about the things he was going to do with the house to make Mother happier and more comfortable at Jaya del Mar.

  This isn't good; I thought. I must make him realize it at is really happening,. I must make him face the troth.

  "You know she's in the hospital, Linden. You know that we had to take her there in an ambulance. You must not pretend that didn't happen. Please,," I said. "I need you to be strong now."

  He blinked rapidly and nodded, then smiled.

  "I know, but don't you worry about her," he said. "She'll be home soon. Grace hates the very idea of hospitals and clinics and doctors. She's had a bellyful of them. She won't stand for another day there, so get ready to pick her up and bring her back." He thought a moment.

  "I should start something new, do something special for her, don't you think? I'll do something cheerful, something that will bring a big smile to her face again. I know just what I'll do, too," he concluded. He threw his napkin to the table. "I'll start on it immediately. It will be one of the fastest works I've completed.

  "You'll be happy with it, too." he declared. standing. "Now, don't you go and tell her and spoil my surprise. Willow. Promise?"

  "I promise. Linden," I said.

  "Good. Good. I'm sorry I have to leave you. but I have to get to work," he said, and left the dining room.

  I sat looking after him.

  And for a moment, as fleeting as it was. I wished I had some way to run from it all. too.

  .

  Mother died three days later. The call came in the morning just before I was going to leave for a class. I had hoped to go to it and then to the hospital. I hadn't taken Linden back to the hospital since they had brought Mother there in the ambulance. He was still having a very hard time accepting how seriously ill she was, and even that she was in the hospital. Although he had faced that fact with me at dinner the night she was admitted, he continued to make remarks about her resting in her room. I tried to reinforce reality by describing her condition and my hospital visits afterward. He would listen, grow silent, and then beam with new excitement about his current art project.

  Overwhelmed by hearing from my attorney about my separation from Thatcher, trying to concentrate on my studies, and thinking about Mother. I decided to let Linden live in his fantasy, but when the hospital called with the bad news. I had to bring down the curtain on illusions in our house.

  The news made me numb. Surprisingly, I didn't burst into hysterical tears. as I kept expecting I would. I had sobbed softly on and off during the days after Mother's collapse, but I think there was a part of me that was very similar to Linden, a part of me that held on to fantasy, that dreamed of her snapping her eyes open and smiling up at me and asking. "What happened? Why am I here, and when can I go home?" The dream brought a smile to my face and put energy into my steps, at least for a little while.

  Perhaps I had mourned her in advance. I thought after I received the call, or perhaps I was anticipating so much difficulty with Linden that I knew I couldn't afford to be devastated. When you have to be strong, when there is absolutely no alternative to that, you somehow fish deeper in the well of your very being and find strength you never knew you had.

  Every dark thought I had experienced since Mother's stroke was thumping at me as I put down my books and started for the stairway. I was carrying news that was so heavy, it made me walk like someone with far too much weight on her shoulders. Before I had come here and burst in on their world, trailing the past in behind me like someone with muddy shoes. Mother and Linden were living an admittedly introverted, secluded life, but a somewhat contented one. She was living with her happiest memories, dreaming of my father's promised arrival, and Linden was secure in his dark art. Was I the one who had made him unhappy with himself, opened up doors he had forgotten existed, made him look at the blinding light that exposed and reminded him of his failings? Had I brought back the painful memories for Mother and given her night after night of tortured sleep?

  After my father had died. I had felt so alone and frightened. My boyfriend. Allan Simpson, was too self-centered to provide any real comfort for me, and my aunt and my other relatives were not close enough to give me a sense of real family. I '.vas truly desperate myself when I set out to find my mother and have a family again. Maybe I was the selfish one. Maybe I should have left well enough alone.

  Now guilt, more than grief, put the darkness in my face and the emptiness in my eyes. Maybe love is too complicated. I thought. Maybe we paint our days and lives with colors that will always fade. We manufacture one illusion aft
er another to keep ourselves from admitting the only truth that has been with us since we began, a truth I had tried to deny and defeat by coming here: We are alone. In the end, no one wants to hold our hands and go with us. They mourn us for as long as they can, but they do not go with us into the shadows.

  I knocked on Linden's studio door. He didn't reply, so I opened it and looked for him. He was standing by the window that faced the sea.

  "Linden," I began. the hospital just called us." He didn't turn.

  "Linden."

  He shook his head, and then turned to me.

  "She's out there again." he said, frowning. "She'll never stop waiting for him. I don't know how many times she has walked to the end of that dock and stood, sometimes for hours, staring out at the sea, expecting him.

  He raised his arms and held his hands out toward me.

  "How can we stop her? How can we get her to see how foolishly she's behaving? All it does is make her sadder, and that will make her sicker."

  "She's not out there. Linden. We took her to the hospital. She had a stroke. The hospital just phoned to say she has passed away. There wasn't anything more that they could do for her.

  Mother is gone. Linden."

  I hated the sound of my own voice. I resembled the walking dead.

  He shook his head.

  "No. I just saw her," he insisted, refuting my words. "She's out there. Look for yourself." he said, timing back to the window. He stood there. I didn't move. After a long moment, he turned back to me, and this time he had tears streaming down his cheeks. "She was there," he contended. "I saw her. I did,"

  "I know you did. Linden. I know," I said, and moved to embrace him. I held on to him tightly. His arms hung limply for a moment, and then he clung to me, his tears falling on my cheeks. too.

  I pulled myself back slowly.

  "I've got to go to make arrangements. Linden. Do you want to come with me?"

  "No," he said. "I can't. I have to stay here and finish my work for her."

  "Okay,' I said. With my handkerchief. I dabbed the tears on his face, and then I wiped them from my own. "I'll be back as soon as I finish.'