Willow

  I felt as if my day had been jumpstarted, too. I guess it is possible to be swept off your feet. I thought, and dropped my head back to the pillow. What was happening? I didn't come here for this.

  The intercom rang before I could get into an argument with myself again. It was Jennings asking what I wanted for breakfast. I ordered and then rose and went out onto the balcony. It was a glorious morning. I could understand why people might feel they were blessed living here. I gazed at the dock again and revived my memories from the night before. Perhaps today, I thought, perhaps today after I finally speak with my mother for a while,I'll understand what is happening to me.

  I went in and took a quick shower. I was out and in my robe again before the maid brought up my breakfast. Maybe it was the sea air, or maybe it was burning up so much energy tossing and turning in my sleep. but I was ravenously hungry and ate nearly everything on the tray. Then I put on a pair of shorts and a halter top, slipped into my sandals, and headed downstairs to uphold my half of the bargain I had made with Linden.

  He was there on the beach, already prepared for work. He glanced at me and looked away. "I didn't think you would show up," he said in that sullen tone.

  "Why not? I said I would."

  He looked at me again, this time with a somewhat infuriatingly sarcastic smile on his face. "People here promise to do lots of things they never intend to do.'

  "I'm not from here. remember? Besides, we made a bargain. Does that mean you won't keep your half? You're from here.'

  He stared at me a moment. I thought he was going to say something very nasty, but suddenly his face brightened, and he laughed. "Okay," he said. He nodded at a large paper bag, "The clothes are in there."

  I gazed into the bag, then took it over the little hill to where the day before he had suggested I go to change. Everything fit as if it had always been mine. and I loved the lavender scent. When I returned, he looked at me with appreciation, maybe even more. His eyes moved over me, slowly taking in my face, my throat, my breasts and waist, and then up again slowly until he and I were standing there staring at each other. For a moment_. I wondered if he saw something of himself in me, enough to suggest who I might really be. Was that the reason for his close scrutiny?

  His expression changed a little, the wall he kept between us crumbling enough for me to see another side of him, a softer side,

  "You look just the way I expected you would." he finally said.

  "And what was that. exactly?" I asked.

  "Like someone fresh. innocent."

  "Well, that's me," I said with a grin.

  "To my artistic eye, at least." he remarked with a smirk.

  "Where do I go?" I asked, not hiding my annoyance. He seemed to have a talent for hitting nerves, like some clumsy dentist.

  "Oh. Just sit over here," he said, marking a small rise in the beach. "and gaze out at the ocean."

  I sat, and he studied me a moment.

  "May I?" he asked, coming over and putting his hands on my shoulders.

  "Yes, of course."

  He turned me slightly, and then he put his hands under my hair and spread the strands as he wished. He stepped back, contemplated me, and moved to my legs and smoothed out the skirt,

  "Are you comfortable enough?" he asked.

  "For now. I don't think I can sit here like this and not move for two hours." I warned.

  "I'm not expecting you to remain like that for two straight hours. You can take frequent breaks." he said, and hurried back to his easel as if he were afraid I might jump up and run off and he would lose the moment. He worked with frenzied, quick motions, feasting on my image, digesting it and reproducing what he saw inside himself.

  "I'm sorry if I frightened you last night," he said, about ten minutes after he had begun.

  I started to turn toward him.

  "Oh, please, hold the pose for as long as you can."

  "Right. I'm sorry you have trouble sleeping. Whenever that happens to me. I hate it I wake up cranky and angry at myself for worrying too much or eating the wrong things, whatever."

  "Yes," he said. but I suppose people would say I wake up cranky and angry regardless of how I sleep."

  "No. Really?" I teased. "I wonder why they would have such a thought."

  "Very funny." He relaxed his shoulders. "I am what I am," he said with a shrug.

  "Is it like that for you every night?"

  "Just about." he said. He paused. "I'd rather you didn't talk about our little encounter. People will only tell you it's a symptom of inherited madness, especially the Eatons."

  "If that were true about insomnia, there would be quite a few people suffering from mental illness out there."

  "Who says there aren't?" he shot back, "If you get thirsty, I have some cold lemonade in my bag there," he said, nodding toward a white cooler.

  "Okay, thank you."

  We were both quiet for a while. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched him work. He seemed possessed by it, intense. determined. The effort made the veins in his neck stand out and the veins in his temples as well. He bit down on his lower lip so hard at times I thought he would surely draw blood.

  "This is a very beautiful place to work." I said.

  "I don't always work here. Sometimes I take my sailboat and go to a bay nearby where I can enjoy even more solitude. I'm often interrupted by the noise from the house or even some of the Eatons' guests wandering over to see what the mad artist is up to."

  "You like being alone?" I asked.

  He shot me a look as if I had asked the dumbest question.

  "Often. I like being alone," I continued. "but I do enjoy being around people. too. Too much introversion isn't good, but not ever wanting or being able to be alone isn't good, either. It is like being afraid of the voices inside you that will become vocal if there is nothing else to distract or diffuse them."

  "You sound like a psychology major. Is that what you are?"

  "Yes." I said. smiling.

  He stopped working. "That's not why you really came here, is it? I mean, if someone set you on us deliberately--"

  "Oh, no," I protested. "I'm doing an entirely different project... it's for my sociology class."

  That wall began to build again as his eyes turned cold and skeptical.

  "Besides," I said, it wouldn't be an honest analysis if I snuck up on someone. It would be the worst sort of betrayal. You have to win trust in order to understand people and their problems and especially if you want to help them."

  "How do you know so much about it?" he asked. "You sound like you're more than just a student."

  "My father was a psychiatrist," I said.

  "Oh." He looked relieved. Was he worried I had been a patient? "Poor you." he added, and returned to his work.

  "Why poor me?"

  "It's enough to have people analyzing you when you leave home, but to have it day in and day out like my mother had to bear, that has to be difficult."

  It wasn't easy being a teenager." I admitted.

  He nodded. "I'll bet it wasn't. It was hell for me.," he said.

  "Why?"

  Again, he gave me a look suggesting I had asked another dumb question. He didn't reply. He worked. I watched a sailboat turning to head back to wherever it had come from. The beehive sound of a motorboat made me think of Thatcher for a moment, and then I saw an airplane dragging a banner advertising a special at some restaurant.

  "Take a break." he said after another ten or fifteen minutes, and opened his insulated bag to get the cold lemonade. He poured me a glass.

  "Thank you."

  He poured himself one and sat near me. "Have you and Thatcher become an item already?"

  "What?"

  He turned, and for a moment he seemed like a violin strung too tightly, ready to twang at the least careless touch.

  "Why is it women have to play it so coy? You know what I mean."

  "I don't think it's just women who play it coy." I snapped back at him. I held my breath. Would he
go into a tantrum at my stem tone and end it all?

  He surprised me with a smile. "You're right, Men can be just as affectedly modest, or phony. I should say-- especially Thatcher."

  "You don't like him?"

  "I don't care about him enough to like or dislike him. I just know who he is, how he was raised, and what he does for a living."

  "Didn't he help you and your mother?"

  "Yes, but it wasn't for any altruistic reason. He at his fees and his notoriety being the attorney for the madwoman and her mad artist son, I'm sure."

  "He doesn't seem like that sort of a person. He's quite critical of those who are like that around here, in fact. Sometimes he sounds so critical I wonder why he continues to live here."

  "Have you asked him?"

  'Yes.'

  "And what did he say, something like 'Where else would I live?'

  "Something like that. What about you? Why do you stay here if you hate it so?"

  I thought he would give me that look again, but he didn't. "I stay for my mother," he replied.

  "Why does she stay?"

  "She stays because she thinks..."

  "What?" I asked almost breathlessly when he held the rest of his reply inside him.

  I do not know what it was that made him decide to tell me. Maybe he felt something that bound us spiritually. Maybe he was suffering so with all his unspoken secrets gnawing away within his heart that he just had to open the doors. Daddy called it mental bleeding and said people in pain had to relieve themselves. He just had to make sure he was there when they did and get them to trust him enough.

  "She thinks... thinks someone wonderful is coming for her." Linden revealed in a whisper. "Someone who will take her away from all this, erase years and years of pain. She dreams."

  I could barely breathe. The breeze lifted my hair and caressed my face. The salt spray felt good on my skin, and the ocean's combing of the beach resembled a lullaby that was there to keep us both calm, meditative, safe,

  "That's her new madness," he continued.

  "Why do you say that?" I asked. "Why call it madness? Everyone dreams of good things for him-or herself."

  He was silent, and then he turned to inc. "I lied to you last night. She was out there on the dock. You didn't imagine it, and I go out after her to make sure she doesn't..."

  "Doesn't what?"

  "Do anything more than stand out there waving that lantern." "Why does she do that?"

  "Something in her past, some promise someone made to her, maybe... I'm not sure. She won't say."

  "I don't understand," I said, shaking my head.

  He turned back to me. "She thinks he's coming. She's a little lighthouse guiding him back to her heart. Crazy, right?" He was back to being belligerent. 'Good copy for an article or for a study or just for coffeetime gossip?"

  "No." I said. "It's not crazy at all."

  His eyes widened with surprise. "Why do you say that?"

  "It's just a hope, a dream. You don't have to worry that she's going out there to hurt herself." I said. "She's going out there to keep herself alive. That's what hopes and dreams do for us. They help us go on."

  He stared mare intently at me, and then, as if realizing he was permitting me to enter places inside him that no one was supposed to enter, he looked away quickly.

  "That's nice." he said. but I don't have any hopes and dreams."

  "Sure you do." I said. "Otherwise, you wouldn't be an artist."

  He gazed at me again, some glint in his eves brightening like a lamp that had been kept shut up in the attic and was finally taken out and turned on. The fury and the darkness seemed to slide off his face as if he had been wearing a mask of ice that had begun to melt. Beneath it was a young man who could love and dream and work and live. I had a glimpse of him, but only a glimpse.

  "Then I had better get back to work." he said, smiling, and jumped to his feet. "You okay with it?"

  "I'm fine." I said. "Good. Thank you."

  He returned to his easel, and once again we were two halves of the same precious artistic moment, capturing some truth, doing what he had told Thatcher he did. casting a line for inspiration and finding it, only this 'time, with me or even... because of me.

  .

  We broke at noon. He didn't want me to see his work in progress but promised I could after the next session. I changed out of the clothes. and he headed back to the beach house, telling me to come by at twothirty to meet his mother as we had planned.

  Asher and Bunny were up and haying coffee when I entered the house. They were both surprised to see me.

  "We thought you had gone off to do some interview," Asher said.

  "Where have you been. dear?" Bunny asked.

  I told them what I had been doing and my bargain with Linden. Asher seemed amused. but Bunny looked concerned.

  "I don't know if she should be spending so much time with them. Asher, and especially with Linden, alone on the beach like that."

  "Oh, he's harmless," Asher said.

  "I was hoping you would go with me to the meeting of the committee planning the Cancer Ball," Bunny complained. "You would see and meet many wealthy Palm Beach residents. It will be so much more enjoyable, and you can learn so much more than you possibly could from Grace Montgomery and Linden."

  "I appreciate that." I said. "but I've already made these arrangements."

  "Oh, they won't even remember or care." Bunny insisted, waving her hand in the direction of the beach house as if there were some smoke in the air she could clear away.

  "However. I would remember. and I do care." I said.

  "Let her carry out her own business in the manner she sees fit, Bunny,," Asher gently

  reprimanded.

  "I'm just trying to help her." she protested. "She's a stranger here. She doesn't know these people. She doesn't know whom to see and whom not to bother with, does she?"

  "I appreciate that. Bunny. Thank you," I said. "Then you're coming along?"

  "No, I can't," I said.

  "I have to get ready to go." she said with a pout. How could a grown woman be so spoiled and childish, and how could she have a son like Thatcher? I wondered. "I'll be leaving in an hour should you change your mind," she told me, and marched out of the room.

  Asher shook his head and smiled after her. "Bunny is very used to getting people to do whatever she thinks they should. She's actually like a fragile piece of expensive china that we have to set down gently all the time. It takes so little to shatter her happiness, especially these days." he added.

  "Why these days?"

  "She's feeling... older. We are no longer permitted to acknowledge her birthday, no presents, no special dinners, and especially no parties. Women here lie about their ages more than women in Hollywood. She still refuses to permit Whitney's children to refer to her as Grandmother or even Nana. They have to call her Bunny, just like everyone else," he said with a smile. "Actually. I think they enjoy calling her that. I think to this day, our granddaughter Laurel thinks Bunny is a cartoon character come to life."

  "How old is Laurel?"

  "Twelve. Our grandson Quentin is fourteen. He's a very serious young man. Bunny has a harder time with him, but they're both beautiful, talented kids. You'll meet them on the weekend at the party." he said.

  Jennings appeared. "Lunch. Mr. Eaton," he announced dryly.

  "Oh, wonderful." Asher said. "Will you join me for a bite. Isabel?" He stood up and held out his arm. Even at midday, he was wearing a light blue sports jacket, a dark blue cravat, a white shirt, and white pants with a pair of boat shoes.

  "Yes, thank you." I said. smiling. I could see from whom Thatcher had inherited his charm.

  "So what do you think of all this?" he asked, sweeping his arm over the patio, across the grounds and the private beach, the pool, the buildings and gardens,

  "It's very impressive," I said "It is truly more like a hotel than a home. You have everything here, anything anyone could possibly want."

&nb
sp; "Yes," he said. laughing, "I believe it was Ogden Nash who wrote about the rich. I don't mind their having a lot of money, and I don't care how they employ it. But I do think that they damn well ought to admit. they enjoy it."

  We both laughed. To a certain extent. I liked him for his lack of modesty concerning his wealth. So many people I knew through Daddy and especially through my adoptive mother were secretive about their money. They made excuses for spending and tried to justify every extravagance as if they were worried some envious person would try to take it all away from them or they would be cursed for having so much. That was certainly not the case here. Even in the short time I had been here. I saw that people wore their wealth like badges, outbuilding, outdriving, outdressing each other, and, as Thelma Carriage had said yesterday, even out-partying each other.

  "Did you always live like this. Asher?" "Yes. I suppose so," he said.

  As usual, a literal banquet had been prepared for just the two of us: platters of prawns, salads, roast beef. turkey, and poached salmon plus a dessert table. The two maids stood behind the tables looking as if they would soon compete for the opportunity to spoon some creamed onions onto Asher's plate or mine. We just nodded or pointed to something, and they filled our plates and brought them to us after we sat.

  "How can you eat like this every day?" I wondered without hiding my astonishment,

  "Oh. I don't think we eat like this every day. We have the opportunity to. but we don't." he said nonchalantly. His eyes twinkled a bit. "I suppose my son has been voicing his criticism of our lifestyle. Does he have a laundry list of complaints?"

  "Not really." I said. trying to be diplomatic about it. At least. he hasn't made it a major topic of discussion."

  "Oh? I'm sure he will. He takes after my grandfather." Asher confided. "Serious. full of ambition, and very competitive. He hates coming in second and goes into a depression if he loses a case or doesn't settle it to his liking.

  "I'll warn you right now," he added. "he doesn't take well to rejection, and if he's set his eyes on you, he'll come at you from now until the end of time."

  "You make him sound dangerous," I said. smiling.

  He shrugged. "There are all sorts of dangers out there." he replied, gazing at the sea. "Physical ones can sometimes be the least painful or frightening. I'll give you some thoughts to help your study of this world here. The wealthy can buy out of most of the problems that plague ordinary folk. I have never worried about an automobile breaking down, an appliance going bad, an electric or plumbing problem, much less a bill. and Bunny certainly hasn't, either. Everything becomes relative in a sense. however. She might have a fit if the restaurant she goes to with her friends doesn't have the vine she wants or the champagne or the appetizer. She could even get sick over the disappointment.