Wicked Forest

  " 'That woman'? 'That woman.' as you call her, is my mother, if you don't mind. She has a name, and she has more intelligence and compassion in her pinky finger than the two of you have in your whole bodies," I countered.

  They spun around like tops and marched away. When I turned back to the salesgirl, she was staring with a mouth so agape I could diagnose tonsillitis.

  "Anything else you need?" I snapped, and she leaped to finish my sale.

  My heart was still pounding when I exited the department store. How cruel people could be. I thought. How difficult life must have been for my mother all these years, and how easy it was now to understand why she had chosen to remain like a hermit. I walked along, past the quaint shops and galleries, then stopped when something caught the corner of my eye.

  Through the window of a small cafe. I saw Thatcher at a table sitting across from an attractive dark-haired woman, elegantly dressed, wearing designer sunglasses. At first I imagined her to be one of his clients, but he had his hand over hers and was looking so intently at her, they appeared more like two lovers. For a moment the sight took my breath away and drained the blood from my face. Then he turned slowly as he leaned back in his seat and started to bring his cocktail to his lips. His eyes shifted toward the window, through which I was sure he saw me. He froze for a moment, then turned back to the woman as if he had not seen me at all.

  Now I had two men treating me as if I were invisible, I thought, and pounded the sidewalk hard as I marched to my car, threw the packages into it, and drove home.

  .

  As I had hoped, my mother's smile was like a sun-burst when I gave her the present. However, almost as if she realized she had violated some bargain she had made with a guardian angel, she quickly hid her joy and declared I was doing enough for them, too much as it was.

  "You don't have to buy me presents. too. Willow." "I know. I don't do it because I have to. Mother."

  She stared at the pashmina shawl covetously, torn between her admiration for it and her guilt in accepting it.

  "You don't have to be afraid to be happy. Mother," I said. It was like tossing a dart and hitting the bull's-eye. She looked up at me quickly, her face revealing the accuracy of my analysis. I could almost feel the patter of her quickened heart. Sometimes, it was painful to be right, especially if it was a heartfelt secret someone would rather keep under lock and key.

  "Every time I permit myself to enjoy

  something. Willow, I can't help but feel like a little girl blowing up a festive balloon with such excitement and enthusiasm, she causes it to burst."

  "You don't have to feel that way anymore. We can blow up all the balloons we want. In fact, we'll bury this place in balloons," I declared with a furious air.

  She brought back her smile, then put on the shawl and gazed at herself in the mirror. Suddenly, her face returned to that dark, pained look.

  "What's wrong? Don't you like it?" I asked.

  "Oh, yes, Willow. Yes, of course. It's beautiful. It's just... it seems like a waste, like putting a new window in a jalopy, a run-down junk heap of a car. Look at my dull hair, these streaks of gay, these split ends, and my complexion. I'm so pale, so sicklylooking. And this ridiculous old rag I wear."

  She thrust her hands at me.

  "I have fingernails like a garage mechanic. See! I hate mirrors. That's why there are so few of them in this house. All they do is remind me of what I've become," she declared, and started to whip off the shawl. "Why tease and torment myself?"

  "Then don't," I said sharply, and seized her hand, stopping her from completely removing the beautiful shawl. It dangled off her right shoulder, "Let this be the beginning of a renewal.

  Mother. Let this be magical." I urged, stroking the shawl.

  Then, instead of a bulb bright with a new idea, a string of Christmas lights went on inside my head.

  "I know what we'll do," I said firmly. "We'll both go to the beauty parlor this week. We'll have it all: facials, body wraps, mud packs, paraffin baths for Our hands and feet, pedicures, manicures, everything, and we'll do something exciting with your hair. too."

  She started to shake her head and back away as if the idea were so forbidden and terrifying, it could bring a hurricane of new disasters to her doorstep.

  "Why not? It will be fun to spoil ourselves and be Palm Beach royals."

  She stepped farther back, continuing to shake her head while her eyes betrayed a wish to agree,

  "I couldn't... I just wouldn't know how to..."

  "I'll be there with you. I need to do something with my hair. and I haven't spoiled myself for some time now. Look at me." I stepped before the mirror and tugged on the strands of my hair. "It isn't just a whim. I have to do something if I'm to become competitive with the women here. right? You've got to help me." I said, making it seem as if she were going to do it all for me.

  The idea was beginning to become a possibility. Her eyes softened with memories and excitement.

  "I can't remember when I last did anything like that. It was obviously before I went to the clinic, but after your father and I..." She paused as though she had said too much. "I mean, that was part of our therapy, to permit the volunteer beauticians to come to the clinic and help us feel better about ourselves, but afterward, when I came home. I just didn't have any reason to continue."

  "Now you do," I said. "Soon, we'll all be moving back into the hacienda again. There will be people visiting, dinners and teas. All the good things will come flooding back to you, Mother."

  "Will they? Do I dare hope for such a thing?" she asked, almost rhetorically.

  "Why not?" I countered angrily. "Why should people like the Eatons be the only ones who dance with happiness here? What makes them more deserving than you?"

  They didn't live in so much darkness," she said sadly. "Darkness they inherited from their own family, darkness of their own making."

  "How do you know that? Everyone, especially everyone here, if you ask me, has his or her own closet full of dreads. Mother." I said, recalling the things Thatcher had told me. "They might be richly dressed and well attended, but they have to stand before mirrors, too, and wipe off their makeup, and take off their jewelry and their wigs. Naked, they are full of their own wrinkles of sin, and they drink themselves to sleep or take their little pills or pay people to create a world of fantasy for them so they can ignore and forget. That's why they are so frightened of you,"

  "Frightened? Of me?" She started to laugh.

  "Of course they are." I said sternly, and her smile ceased. "You're right in their faces with the truth, and that forces them to look at themselves. In their heart of hearts, they all know they are just as vulnerable as you were and they could just as easily shatter like so much of their precious Tiffany."

  "I never thought of it that way. Willow."

  "Well, now you will, and you'll get strong again and be as beautiful as you want to be, as you art," I insisted.

  She studied me for a moment, then nodded.

  --There is a lot of your father in you. He used to tell me what I would do and what I would overcome with just as much confidence and even with just as much anger running beneath his words. He hated my illness more than I did, and made me think of it as something outside of me. something I could attack and defeat."

  "Then don't stop now," I said. "Okay." She smiled. "Okay, Willow De Beers, daughter of the doctor, I won't stop."

  We both laughed.

  "Do you have any preference in beauty salons?" I asked. "I wouldn't even know where to begin."

  "All right. I'll do my own research and make our appointments," I promised.

  I left her turning back to the mirror, putting the shawl neatly an again and doing what every woman has done since the beginning of time: envisioning herself more beautiful. I felt like a Wiccan, a good witch who had truly brought her some magic woven in silk.

  However, my powers weren't to be as great when it came to Linden.

  I found him sitting by the win
dow in the room he had used as his studio. I almost passed him by because he was as still as a storefront mannequin. He was staring out at the beach and the sea. He had left the door open. I gazed around the studio.

  Unfinished works were covered with cloth, and those that had been finished were piled against each other on the floor and against the wall. His paints and brushes were locked away. On an easel in the far right corner was a canvas covered with a sheet, standing like an obedient servant, waiting for orders that weren't coming.

  I knocked on the door. It was time to confront him. I thought, to force him to see me, to hear me, but to do it as gently as I could.

  "Hi, Linden," I said. "Do you mind if I come in?" He didn't turn from the window,

  "So this is where you do some of your work. It's a nice room, but you'll have a bigger and better place for all this soon. Linden, a real studio again."

  I saw his shoulders lift, deepening the crease in the back of his neck for a moment. I ventured farther into the room until I was nearly beside him.

  "It's really a very nice day, not too hot or humid, with a beautiful breeze. You should go out, go fishing for that inspiration you talked about." I reminded him.

  It was an analogy he had made when I had first arrived and he was eager to tell me about himself. He said he was like a fisherman cashing his creative line and waiting for some vision, some inspiration to take hold and be pulled into his mind.

  He turned slowly toward me, so slowly it actually started my heart pounding.

  "I can't go out there while they're whispering," he said, and turned back to the window,

  "What? What did you say, Linden?" I stepped up so he would have to look at me. "Who's

  whispering? Who are you talking about?"

  I actually gazed out the window myself, searching the beach for signs of someone. There was no one.

  'There's no one out there. Linden," I said. No one is whispering." I thought he must be speaking about the Eatons. "And anyway, they have no right to whisper about you or anyone else."

  "Yes," he said. "Yes, they do."

  I pulled a stool closer and sat. At least I had him talking to me. I thought, even if it didn't make much sense yet. He held his gaze fixed on something he was certain he saw on that deserted beach,

  "What are they whispering then. Linden? What do they say that bothers you?"

  "They are angry," he replied. "They are angry with me."

  "Why?" I asked. He was silent. "Why. Linden? Why would they be angry at you? What right do any of them have to be any with you?"

  He turned again, slowly, his eyes dark and tired, looking at me but giving me the feeling he was not seeing me. It was almost like someone talking to a ghost or a shadow.

  "Because I put them in my paintings," he said. "They never wanted to be seen. They never wanted anyone to know they were there.

  I realized immediately that he didn't mean the Eatons or anyone alive, for that matter. It was chilling.

  "That's silly, Linden. They would be happy you put them in your pictures. Your paintings are wonderful and very interesting. You have them in galleries, don't you?"

  His eyes widened and he reached out and seized my hand, squeezing hard enough to make me wince,

  "The galleries, I forgot that. We've got to get them back. You must help me do that!"

  Why?

  "We've got to get them back." he repeated with more insistence. "They will never stop until all the paintings are back."

  I could see from the way the veins in his temples bulged and the muscles in his neck strained that he was very disturbed about it. He held on to inc.

  "Okay. Linden. Okay. If that's what you want, that's what we will do,"

  "Promise," he demanded. "Promise."

  "I promise. We'll do it together tomorrow, okay?"

  "Yes," he said, relaxing his hold on me and lowering his shoulders, "Yes, tomorrow. We'll do it tomorrow. Tomorrow," he repeated, gazing out the window as though telling that to the spirits he saw.

  How bizarre, how twisted and bizarre for him to think he had violated some trust by painting the images of what he envisioned when he was on the beach, Poor Linden. I thought. How would he ever be reimbursed for all that shadowed his eyes and darkened his heart? His injury and the aftermath had left him still falling through one tunnel of nightmares after another.

  Maybe by tomorrow he would forget this whole horrible idea. Perhaps after a night's sleep and the start of a new day, it would be gone, whisked away like so many cobwebs. I watched him for a while. He barely blinked, but his lips moved ever so slightly, just like someone listening to voices and repeating what they told him,

  "Would you like something to eat or drink, Linden?" I asked. He didn't respond, not even to shake his head.

  "If you want anything, please tell me. Come out as soon as you are able and I'll be happy to take a walk with you, if you like, okay?"

  There was no visible sign that he heard me anymore.

  I rose slowly, put the stool back, and watched him for a moment more before starting toward the door. I paused at the sight of the pictures piled against each other on the floor, all with their backs toward me. Something caught my eye, a seam in the top one. I looked back at him, and then I knelt and lifted the first picture from the pile.

  The sight made me gasp.

  It had been slashed in an X. So had the next, and the next, and the next. In fact, they were all slashed!

  I stood up quickly and took the sheet off the one on the easel. It had been slashed even more viciously. I knelt and leafed through another pile of pictures stacked against the wall. They were in the same horrible condition.

  "Oh. Linden, why? Why did you do this? All your work," I moaned,

  He turned and looked at me on my knees, the ruined pictures in my hands.

  "Why did you do this, Linden?"

  To stop the whispering in here," he said in a tone of voice that as good as called me stupid.

  Then he turned back to the window, To stop the whispering," he chanted.

  I stood up slowly, weighed down by the sight of the destruction. Then I went out to tell my mother, my own shoulders heavy with the burden of such news, and this, after I had just put some light back into her eyes.

  .

  She rushed into Linden's studio to see what I had painfully described, then burst into a torrent of tears. Linden looked her way, rose. and shuffled out while I held her.

  "Linden," she called after him. He went to his bedroom and closed the door. "What are we going to do?" she wailed. "Thatcher was right. He should be in a clinic. Who knows what he will slash up next?"

  "No, no. Thatcher's not right. Mother. I'm here now We'll help him. We don't have to send him away," I insisted.

  "But... he might need more than simply tender loving care, Willow. He might need medication and more vigorous therapy." she said.

  "Perhaps so," I admitted. but let's give him some more time. Once we're back in the main house and he sees the dramatic changes, he might have a better reaction, don't you think? It could revive him.

  "I don't know," she said, sniffing back her tears and grinding her eyes dry. "Nothing- seems certain in my world except that when I think things have gotten as bad as they can, they always seem to get worse."

  I was about to reassure her when the phone rang. She sucked in her breath and answered it, then called for me. I thought it might be Nit. Bassinger or Mr. Ross, but it was Thatcher.

  "How are you doing?" he asked. "Fine."

  "I need only hear one word from your mouth to know you're angry," he said. "I'm sorry I didn't acknowledge you earlier today,"

  "Uh-huh."

  "The. woman I was with is a client. She's starting a very nasty divorce. I was in the midst of calming her down when you suddenly appeared in the window. It was such a surprise that for a moment. I actually thought you were a vision, some working of my imagination. In the middle of such domestic misery, you looked angelic to me."

  You could
have at least nodded," I said.

  "Get this straight. Willow. I can't just nod at you and then turn away as if you were just another person, another face, another name in my life. I'd rather not see you at all than suffer like that."

  "Thatcher Eaton, you should be writing for Hearts Entwined or some other soap opera rather than writing those boring legal briefs," I quipped, which brought a laugh.

  "You're right. You bring out the romantic in me. What can I say? It takes a good woman to make a man good."

  "I'll remind you of that."

  "Forever, I hope. Can I see you tonight?'" "I don't know. Can you?"

  "You know what I mean. Willow. Will you meet me someplace, say about seven? I know where we can have an intimate dinner, and then later..." "Yes, later?'

  "I have the keys to a friend's beach house. He's in Europe at the moment. Actually, for a whole month or so. It can be our secret rendezvous. I'll have a key made for you. We'll set up our private world there and it will be like we've stepped out of this insanity, stepped onto a cloud or something," he confirmed, weaving the dream with the thread of his golden words,

  "Sounds like we're a pair of spies or fugitives." "Just a pair of lovers," he replied. "Well?"

  "All right. A part of me says no, but..." "Your heart says yes?"

  "No, it says maybe," I said, refusing to be a complete prisoner of the dream.

  He laughed.

  "I'll fix that with candlelight, music, your favorite pasta, and wine. The restaurant is called Diana's. It's a very inconspicuous, unpretentious little family restaurant just north of Palm Beach Gardens. You can't miss it. It will be on your right with a simple neon sign above the door. The beach house is only fifteen minutes away. I'll meet you at seven."

  "Okay," I said, unable to put up the slightest resistance now, "How are things there?"

  "Not good, Thatcher. Linden is not well at all. I'm worried for him and for my mother."

  "He belongs under a doctor's care, Willow. Waiting is merely postponing the inevitable."

  "That's something we all do," I muttered.

  "Yes, perhaps, but it's far more costly and even dangerous for someone like Linden. I can help, if you want."