Eye of the Storm

"Not while I was in the house," she said. "I did leave to do some shopping for us."

  "Oh." I thought a moment. "Where is my phone? My aunt was supposed to see to that."

  "I don't know. I've got lots else to worry about here," she added.

  Furious about it now. I tried to reach Aunt Victoria, She had a phone service like some doctor when her office was closed.

  The indifferent operator said she would pass along the message. I told her it was very important.

  Hours later. while I was having dinner, the phone rang and Mrs. Bogart told me it was Aunt Victoria. I wheeled myself over to it and she handed me the receiver.

  "I need that phone installed," I began before I even said hello. "You promised to take care of it and I..."

  "We have some other, far more demanding concerns at the moment. Rain. I'll see about the phone when I get back."

  "Get back? -Where are you?"

  "I'm in Washington. with Grant. Your mother, my sister:' she added, her voice dripping with disgust, "made a pathetic attempt to take her own life."

  "What?"

  "She swallowed a dozen or so sleeping pills. Grant is beside himself. We've had to contain the news, of course, keep the disgrace out of the press."

  "Is she all right?" I asked.

  "All right?" She laughed. "Hardly. She's not dying now, if that's what you mean. The maid found her in time, which was probably what she expected would happen, and they rushed here to the hospital and pumped her stomach. The doctors and I believe she will have to be committed to the psychiatric clinic for a while, maybe quite a while.

  "They're nominating Grant for Congress next week. too. He certainly doesn't need this just when his dreams are coming true."

  She paused, letting out a deep sigh like someone enduring a great burden.

  "As soon as I can. I'll return and we'll do what has to be done for you. For now, I'm afraid you'll be on your own."

  "Where do you think I've been?" I snapped back at her. She didn't reply and I calmed myself. "What about Alison?" I asked.

  "What about her?"

  "How is she taking all this?"

  "Fortunately, she's not here. She's in Italy, traveling with a group of students. Grant isn't telling her anything about it. Why spoil her trip?"

  "Yes." I said. "Why do that?"

  What had Alison ever done to be blessed with a world of happiness and pleasure, a world where sadness was stopped in its tracks and when it rained, it rained lollipops and jelly beans?

  And what had I done to live in a world where smiles and laughter were mined like diamonds and cherished more than rare jewels?

  "If you can." I said. "tell my mother I'm sorry to hear about her trouble and I wish she would get better."

  Aunt Victoria grunted.

  Even someone as insensitive as my aunt knew how I had wanted my mother to have sent similar good wishes to me after my accident.

  But she never had.

  Now I wondered if she ever would.

  10

  Giving Up

  .

  Austin returned on Monday to continue my

  therapy. My doctors had told him to keep my exercise light and easy and gradually build back up to the program we had been following. Consequently, we spent a lot more time just talking and being outside. He told me about himself and his family, revealing that he never really liked the way his father treated his mother.

  "She works with him at the plant. Actually, I should say she works for him. He acts like she's just another employee. There's no change in tone of voice, no warmth, no real sharing. She doesn't even know how much money they have.

  "For as long as I can remember, she asks him for things the way my sister Heather Sue and I do. I mean, she needs his permission to spend any of their money, even on her own things. My father has a business manager who reviews their household expenditures as well as their business expenses and gives him a monthly report. God help my mother if the categories have gone up in any dramatic way. Then we have the Spanish Inquisition at my house!"

  "Doesn't she complain?" I asked. "She likes it that way."

  I knitted my eyebrows together.

  "I swear. She's one of these old-fashioned women who believes the man should be totally in charge of these things. She likes being dependent. I think."

  We were outside, under the sprawling old oak tree to the right of the house. A pair of squirrels watched us suspiciously. They seemed to freeze in midair when they stood up or turned, their eves always on us.

  The sky was strewn with thin long clouds that the wind spread like cream cheese over the deep blue. For us it was a welcome breeze coming out of the northwest, driving the humidity away.

  Austin was on the grass, sprawled on his back beside my wheelchair, chewing on a blade and looking up with his hands behind his head. Suddenly, that looked so inviting to me.

  "I want to lie on the round. too," I said.

  "Do it," he challenged. "You don't need anyone's permission orhelp."

  I lifted myself out of the chair, mostly with my arm strength, leaned on my right leg that he had been strengthening with our exercises and then tried to lower myself gracefully, but I toppled to my left and fell over him instead. He screamed with pretended pain and threw his arms around me, holding me there for a few seconds. I turned and our faces were inches apart. Our eyes locked. He smiled.

  "Nice try." he said and lifted his head just enough for his lips to reach the tip of my nose. He kissed it and started to lower his head again.

  "Nice try," I retorted.

  His smile widened and then his eves drew something deep and strong from inside him as he raised his head once more and this time brought his lips to my lips. It was a very soft, gentle kiss, but a kiss electric with expectation. It stirred feelings in me that I thought were gone, trampled and forever crippled by my injuries. My breath quickened as my heart began to pound.

  "Oh boy," he said after he pulled back. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to do that."

  "You mean that's not part of my therapy?"

  He laughed and shook his head.

  "I thought I was the one with the sense of humor here." "Maybe I'm not joking." I said.

  His smile tightened and then he moved me gracefully off him and I lay back on the grass. He sat up and took the pillow I had on the wheelchair off and put it under my head. "Comfortable?"

  "Yes," I said.

  He sat, looking down at me for a long moment, playing a blade of grass over his lips as he thought. The breeze lifted some strands of his hair and made them dance about his forehead.

  "I'm not supposed to let emotionally involved with any of my clients," he said. "it's not fair and it isn't very professional. I can't let something like that happen again. Seriously," he insisted, "If I did. I'd have to ask my uncle to have me replaced.

  "Not that you're not a very pretty girl. Rain. You art. If I wasn't your therapist. I could fall in love with you."

  "Right," I fired back up at him. "You would see me wheeling myself down some street and say, there's a girl I'd like to know,"

  I turned away, fuming, frustrated, an arrow of anger looking for a target and finding nothing but air.

  "You're making a mistake thinking you're not still very attractive."

  I turned back to him.

  "What kind of a lover would I be?"

  "A good lover. You're still capable of having children, you know. It's a little more involved, but it can happen. I have a client in fact, a woman in her twenties, who recently gave birth. I've been helping her regain her strength. She has a lovely little girl."

  "Really?"

  "Absolutely," he said. "Didn't your doctors discuss all this with you?"

  "No," I said.

  "They should have."

  He looked up sharply at the sound of an automobile coming up the drive.

  "Someone's here." he said.

  "Help me up," I asked him and he did so.

  "It's Aunt Victoria," I said when she stepped out of
her car. She started for the house and then caught sight of us. "You'd better get me back." I said. "She's bringing news about my mother."

  "Right."

  He helped me into the wheelchair and then started to wheel me back to the house. Victoria waited at the ramp. As we approached, she stepped toward us.

  "What sort of therapy can you conduct out there?" she demanded of Austin before I could introduce them.

  "It's important she gets a good dose of fresh air every day," he said.

  "Mrs. Bogart could wheel her about for fresh air. It seems a high price to pay a therapist for menial work."

  "We do exercises out here, too. Aunt Victoria. And I wheel myself about most of the time. Anyway, why don't we leave my therapy up to the physical therapist. okay? More important, how's my mother?"

  "I don't intend to conduct a conversation about that out here with a stranger present," she said. "Wheel her back to her room." she ordered Austin and went to the front door.

  "Sorry," he whispered in my ear. 'Imagine what would have happened if she had come a few moments earlier."

  The thought of that set my heart racing and brought heat to my face.

  In my room. Austin picked up his bag and told me he would be back the same time tomorrow.

  "I hope I didn't make any new trouble for you."

  "Don't worry about it." I told him, but he left with a deep look of concern on his face.

  I impatiently waited for Aunt Victoria for nearly fifteen minutes after Austin left. Finally, I heard her distinctive heels coming down the hallway.

  "I'm gone for a few days and all hell breaks loose at the office," she moaned as she came into my room. "I swear it's getting more and more difficult to find competent people. Just getting someone who can answer the phone properly is a major task these days. I spend more and more time applying Band Aids on unnecessary complications."

  She caught her breath and gazed around.

  "Where is your therapist?" she asked, pronouncing the word therapist as if it was a profanity.

  "He's gone. I think you frightened him off," I said. She raised her eyebrows.

  "Maybe he should be frightened off. It's common knowledge these days that you are an heiress. Rain. Did you ever think of that? Here you are living in this mansion with this magnificent property, too. You've got to be careful. Fortune hunters will be coming out of the woodwork to take advantage of you in your weak condition."

  "Austin is no fortune hunter."

  "How do you know? You can't possibly know him well enough to make such a conclusion," she concluded herself before I could reply. "You've known him for a rather short period. I'm sorry I have to speak to you like this, but your mother's not here to give you firm guidance.

  "Just another thing Megan has left for me to do," she mumbled and surprised me by flopping rather ungracefully into the one and only chair. She let her head fall back, closed her eyes, squeezed her temples with her forefinger and thumb and sighed. "I'm so tired," she said. Then she sat straighter and looked at me.

  "Your mother's been committed to a psychiatric institution until the doctors feel she is emotionally and mentally well-balanced enough to be back in society and not attempt to take her life every other day. Grant is very distraught. We finally told Alison, but there was no point in having her return. She can't do anything."

  "She could visit her, help her care about herself and her future," I suggested.

  Aunt Victoria tilted her head down and looked up at me with a smirk.

  "Alison Randolph? Help someone else?"

  "Well, why did they spoil her so?"

  "Why? The apple doesn't fall far from the tree. Look at her mother."

  "You really hate her, don't you? You hate your own sister." I accused.

  "I don't hate her. I should. but I don't." She contemplated me for a moment. "It's easy for you now to pass judginent on me. You come swooping into this house and family, take a nibble here, a taste there and think you've digested our entire history, who we are and what we've all endured.

  "Yes, I'm firm and strong and I'm different from Megan, but that's not entirely a fault of my own. She never knew my father as I did. as I had to know him. He made all sorts of demands on me that he never made on her. He expected more from me.

  "Don't think I didn't ask myself why a thousand times," she continued before I could even think to ask.

  Actually, I was afraid to speak, afraid to utter a sound that would break the spell of this selfrevelation. Her eyes became distant. dark.

  "I could see the way he looked at Megan, how his eves just flooded with warmth and love and pride. I never once saw him look at me that way, even when I made great profits for his company. I received a simple pat on the back or a nod while he practically swooned over her every smile and laugh.

  "How can a father treat two of his children so differently?" she wondered aloud.

  I was tempted to tell her, to give her Jake's secret. Maybe it would be better for her. Maybe she would weigh the disgace of having him as her father against the terrible pain of not winning her stepfather's love and admiration the way she wanted. That understanding might make her a kinder, gentler woman, a woman who could come to terms with herself and live with herself and not be so bitter toward everyone else.

  "Oh, I know how pretty Megan is. How could I not know it. right from the start? When your younger sister is so attractive and so popular, it's not easy. Everyone looks at you and wonders why you aren't the same. She was even invited to parties my peers made and failed to invite me to!

  "And was Megan ever grateful? Hardly. She took everything for granted, even my father's love, especially my father's love."

  Her eves clicked shut and then open. She looked at me hard.

  "So don't judge me and accuse me of hating her. I hate what she's become, yes.I'm not ashamed to admit that. I'm proud of that.

  "I'm proud," she whispered and stared at the floor for a moment.

  I was hardly breathing.

  I saw her eyes blink again and then she looked up at me sharply.

  "Let's get back to you. I still think it would be wiser for you to have a different therapist, an older, more experienced person, perhaps a woman. For a therapist to be effective, he or she has to remain more aloof. more impersonal. Just like a doctor.'

  "I appreciate your concern, but things are fine the way they are," I said.

  She stared at me, her lips pursed so hard. it drained the blood from her chin.

  "Okay. I see you have to make your own mistakes. You've got your mother in you, all right.. In more ways than one, you remind me of Megan.

  "Let's move on." She opened her briefcase and pulled out some papers. "I have some things I need to have you sign. Since my mother in her infinite wisdom gave you so large a piece of our investments, you would have to be involved with each and every transaction on a daily basis. To expedite it all. I need you to sign a power of attorney over to me. You won't be worth any less." she quickly added. "In fact, you'll probably be worth more because I'll be able to act on opportunities before they disappear. This will make it possible for me to carry on and continue to build our net worth."

  She handed me the papers. I looked at them. After reading the first few sentences. I thought they might as well have been written in Chinese. Should I just sign them or should I tell her I had to have my attorney study them first?

  "My attorney might get angry at me for signing anything without his approval," I suggested as quietly as I could.

  "Oh, for God's sakes,' she cried snatching the document out of my hand. "It's a boilerplate document, a standard power of attorney giving me the right to sign papers for us both. I'll have your attorney," she said out of the corner of her mouth, "review it and then you can sign it and feel safe from the claws of the big bad aunt."

  "You wouldn't sign anything without your attorney, would you?" I charged.

  She stared at me.

  "No," she admitted. "But I also wouldn't look a gift horse in the mo
uth. If I had an aunt like me, responsible, dedicated, concerned, watching over my property. I wouldn't be so uncooperative either."

  "I don't mean to seem ungrateful. This is all just too much for me," I admitted.

  She nodded.

  "Yes, you are your mother's daughter. Megan was never ashamed to confess her weaknesses."

  "I'm not confessing weaknesses," I cried. She could be so infuriating, making me feel like a twisted rubber band.

  "Whatever." she said standing and flicking her hand in my direction as if I were a mere fly. "I have a lot to do. I was hoping you would help make it easier for me. but I'll just plod on and get through it all. as I have always done. I'll be back as soon as I can," she added as she walked toward the door. She paused there with her back to me for a long moment as if she was deciding whether or not she should tell me something. Finally, she turned.

  "There is one more thing:" she said. "I nearly forgot or. rather. I didn't want to create any more problems at the moment"

  "What is it?" I asked in a tired voice. "It concerns your stepbrother Roy."

  "What? What about him?"

  "Oh well. I suppose you've got a right to know everything that concerns you, whether you're in a wheelchair or not."

  She opened her briefcase again and sifted through some papers, making me wait anxiously.

  "My mother's name was on the envelope so they just forwarded it to me without noticing your name written after ATTENTION. My secretary tore it open and put it on my desk as she does with every piece of correspondence. Where did I put... oh, here it is."

  She held it up.

  "It's from his army attorney on his behalf, informing you that he has been courtmartialed for violating a probation period."

  "What? What probation period?"

  "I'm sure I don't know the details," she said.

  She handed me the paper. I read it quickly, my right hand at the base of my throat, my breath trapped right at the spot. Roy had tried to run away from the army and had been caught and placed under arrest.

  "Oh no." I moaned. "He probably did this after he found out about me. I shouldn't have written to him and told him about the accident."

  "No. Maybe not. Maybe if you had asked my advice, I would have made some other suggestions. Just like Megan." she repeated shaking her head. "acting impulsively. Always take a step back before deciding on something, no matter what." she lectured. She shook her head and then closed her briefcase sharply. "I have to go."