Willow

  "If our children have problems, we hire therapists, tutors, specialists, and hardly skip a beat in our daily lives. If our marriages come apart, we hire good lawyers and work out dissolutions and then go off to the Cote d'Azur to recuperate from the tension. Sometimes, we don't even let death disrupt us. The husband of a rather wealthy, well-known woman died last year just at the beginning of what we call the season here. She was so annoyed that she would miss certain events mourning his passing that she put his body on ice and postponed the funeral.

  "Most of this is nothing more than amusing to me, but to my son, it's practically criminal. Yet I will tell you," he added. His face suddenly turning very serious. "I don't think he's anywhere nearly as happy as Bunny and I are. He broods too much. He has some demons to get out of his system." He looked toward the beach house.

  "Sometimes," he continued, almost in a whisper now, "I think he's more like Linden Montgomery than he knows."

  He looked at me-- expectantly, I thought.

  "I don't know either of them well enough yet to agree or disagree.," I said.

  He nodded and smiled, "Very good answer."

  "It's the truth. Asher."

  "I'm sure it is." he said. "Well. I guess I've been a little like Thatcher here. I didn't mean to be so serious. It's your fault," he said, pointing a finger of accusation at me. "You're too serious. Isabel. You're too focused. Where's your hedonism when you need it the most?" He laughed at my expression. "Take advantage of us."

  "I already have." I said "Your hospitality..."

  "No, no, that's not even a drop in the bucket. Feel free to do anything you want. Bunny would love to take you on a shopping spree for clothes. for example. Just mention it to her."

  I couldn't help the way my mouth gaped. How could anyone be so rich or unconcerned about being exploited? Why was that amusing?

  "Something tells me you are trying to corrupt me, Asher Eaton," I said, and he burst into a fit of laughter.

  "I think that's it." he said. nodding. "You're right. People like you make us too aware of our wastefulness and extravagance. We have to corrupt you in order to feel better about ourselves."

  "And maybe that's why you're a little annoyed at Thatcher," I suggested.

  "Very good," he said. "You could be a social worker for the rich or a psychologist. I suppose." He gazed at the beach house again. "Maybe that's also why Grace and Linden bother Bunny so much. Grace makes her afraid." he said.

  "Of what?" I asked, holding my breath.

  "Of losing it all and becoming like that... a shadow on the beach, a prisoner of memories. Do you know what is the worst fear and danger to us Palm Beach royals, Isabel?"

  "What?"

  "Loneliness," he said. He looked at the beach house again. "Loneliness."

  I guess I was right about that, I thought. I guess I have inherited some of Daddy's instinct and perception. Now the question was what would I do with it?

  Asher apologized again for being too serious and then insisted I go look at his game room, where he had a beautiful pool table, a genuine working slot machine, and a set of electric speed cars. He told me he and some of his male friends bet ridiculously high sums of money on the toy car races and swore someone lost fifty thousand dollars one night.

  When I looked at the time, I excused myself. thanked him for the lunch, and went up to my room to change and freshen up for what I had come all this way to do: meet and get to know my real mother.

  Just as Linden had promised, she and he were sitting on their patio, having coffee and talking quietly. I paused for a moment and watched them before they saw me approaching. My mother was still dressed only in that housecoat I had seen her in when I first set eves on her. Her hair was tied back, and she wore no makeup. There was, however, a soft, almost meditative peace in her face, just a tiny suggestion of a smile in her lips. She nodded at something Linden had said, and then they were both quiet, both still, gazing out at the sea and looking as if they had fallen back into one of Linden's pictures.

  "Hello again." I said, stepping toward them on the walkway. My mother looked surprised, of course. but I thought, or perhaps hoped, she looked pleased. too.

  "Hello," Linden said.

  At that. I saw the surprise grow brighter in my mother's face. She glanced at him, obviously waiting for him to drive me away. When that didn't happen, she turned back to me.

  "Is it always so lovely here?" I asked, edging closer to them.

  "No," Linden said sharply. "We have hurricanes and humidity and sand flies. But they're just not permitted on Worth Avenue."

  "I suppose there isn't a part of the country that doesn't have something negative about it." I replied, my eyes mostly on my mother, who kept her eyes on me and kept that gentle smile on her lips.

  Suddenly, however, some dark thought crossed her mind, and that smile evaporated. She looked as if she were going to get up and go inside.

  "I don't want to intrude on your privacy," I said very quickly. -"But I have so short a time to spend here and so few interesting people to speak with about my topic, I've gotten all I think I can get from the Eatons." I added.

  Linden looked very pleased with that remark. "I'm not surprised. That well is rather shallow," he said. He looked at his mother and then at me. "All right," he added. "We'll give you a few minutes of our very busy time. What do you want to know?"

  My mother looked more frightened now than surprised. My heart began to pound. I certainly didn't want her to see me as any sort of threat.

  I smiled and looked at the chair beside her. May I?" I asked.

  "Go on, go on." Linden said impatiently.

  I sat. "Is this where you grew up. Mrs. Montgomery? Where you spent your childhood?"

  "Of course it is," Linden replied for her.

  I acted as if I hadn't heard him and kept my eyes on my mother, my silence indicating I would wait for her to speak even if it meant sitting here until nightfall,

  "Part of it," she said softly. "but not in this house."

  "She knows that, Mother," Linden said, practically jumping at her.

  "I imagine you must have felt like a princess," I said. "living behind castle walls in such luxury."

  "More like a prisoner than a princess," Linden responded. She turned and looked at him hard for a moment and then turned back to me. "No," she said. "I did feel like a princess once. You're right. I used to pretend it was a castle with a moat and guards on the walls, a place where I was so safe nothing could touch me, not even germs."

  Linden blew air between his lips, shook his head, and turned to the sea. "Some castle, some protection," he muttered.

  "I wasn't born here." she continued, "I was nearly sixteen when my mother and I came to live here."

  "Where did you live before?" I asked as gently as I could, I felt as if I were moving through a mine field, tiptoeing and hoping I wouldn't trigger some explosion. Linden seemed. as usual, to be on the verge of spontaneous combustion, and my mother looked as if she could burst into tears at any moment as well: just one wrong word, one wrong look, would ignite them both.

  "We lived in what people here would call a rather modest home in West Palm Beach." she said. "My mother was a very attractive young woman who had come here from Norfolk, Virginia. My father was a naval officer who was killed in a helicopter accident when I was only fifteen."

  "How sad." I said.

  "He was a very handsome man with a promising career ahead of him. My mother used to call him the admiral because she truly believed he would become one someday. I remember that. It got so she even referred to him that way when she spoke to me. 'The admiral's coming home this weekend.' she would say. I was young enough to believe he had the stripes and the rank, and he would laugh and tell my mother she had better stop calling him that. or I would be telling all my friends at school my father was an admiral in the U.S. Navy. We were very happy then," she said, her smile deepening with her memories.

  "How did you come to live here?" I asked. If she only kn
ew I was learning about my own family, I thought.

  "My mother was a very independent, strongminded woman. She wasn't going to waste away as some navy widow, not for a second. One day, she picked us up and moved us to West Palm Beach. She had a background in the service industry."

  "A waitress." Linden interjected with a smirk.

  "Yes, she was a waitress when she and my father first met, but she was capable of being a manager. as well. She got a job as a waitress in a friend's restaurant, one of the better West Palm Beach restaurants, and there she met Winston Montgomery, who was Linden's grandfather."

  "He was never my grandfather," Linden insisted on correcting.

  "In name," she said. "but really more because he was very kind to me. Right from the beginning, he treated me as if I were truly his very own. I never felt unwanted or like some second-class citizen, not with Daddy Winston. as I used to call him."

  "Daddy Winston," Linden muttered.

  "He gave my mother whatever she wanted. He couldn't do enough to make her happy. He built onto the main house for her, but he was somewhat older than she was, and my mother was never fully accepted by Palm Beach society. We were in the social directory because of my stepfather. but..."

  -The Sears catalogue," Linden inserted,

  "The Who's Who," she continued. "My stepfather was rich and powerful enough to keep anyone from blatantly snubbing my mother, but she was snubbed nonetheless."

  "She was lucky," Linden said.

  "Winston died when I was twenty-one, and my mother took up with someone for a few years."

  "She knows about all that," Linden said. "Don't you?"

  "Not really," I said. "But I'm not here to dredge up any unpleasant memories for you. Mrs.

  Montgomery."

  "That's nice," Linden said dryly.

  She simply held her eyes on me. I felt very selfconscious and looked away quickly. "If you had to list five or six things that you lost when your family lost its wealth and position in Palm Beach, what would be number one in your mind?" I asked her.

  Linden looked just as interested in her answer.

  She smiled at me and then sat back a moment. "Having no sense of yourself," she replied.

  "You mean now, you don't know who you really are?"

  "Oh, no." she said. "When we were in all that, when we were part of all that. I never knew who I was, and I don't think my mother did, either. We were defined by what we owned. But those things come and go or fade or go out of style so quickly. No, no," she insisted, "It's only now, only afterward, that I have a sense of myself." She smiled. "It's like being in spotlights or in the headlines. It's glamorous, exciting even, but you never get to look at anything, really look at it, especially yourself.

  "My mother used to look in her mirror and wonder what happened to the woman who used to look back. I remember her saying that. I remember it very well because it happened to me. too.

  "When the lights went out, we stood in the much dimmer light, but we could see things we had never seen before." she said. "I think we saw the people we had been and lost."

  She laughed. "Don't misunderstand me. I'm not against being rich. I've been both rich and poor, and rich is better. I'm just against being so absorbed in the glamour that you forget you're just another member of the human race. Maybe it's easier for that to happen here."

  "No cemeteries or hospitals." I murmured, more to myself than to her and Linden, but they heard.

  "Yes," my mother said, smiling. "Maybe you understand. I'm sorry. I'm a little tired suddenly." She rose. "It's nice to have met you I hope you'll come by again," she said.

  "I'd like that."

  "Me, too," she said. She glanced at Linden.

  He had been sitting there as much in awe of his mother as I was, I thought. He blinked his eves and nodded.

  "Yes, yes." he said. "Go rest, Mother." "Have a good day." she told me.

  We watched her go into the house, and then I stood up. I truly felt as if I had crossed a barrier of time. I had cleared away some fog and had a long look at my own past, hidden and buried for so long.

  "Well," Linden said.

  "Thank you." I started off the patio, but he caught up with me immediately.

  "I don't know why she did that." he said. "What?"

  "Told you all those things. She hasn't spoken of those things for years. And that answer she gave you... surely, it was something she has been thinking about a long time, but she never said it to inc."

  "I'm very grateful."

  "No," he said. "I'm not Irving to get you to appreciate it. I'm telling you I appreciate it." He smiled. "There's something about you. Isabel. Something special. I think that was what made me want to paint you"

  I started to shake my head.

  "No," he said, taking my hand and looking at me so intently my heart began to skip beats. "I want this to be the greatest painting I have ever done. It will be. Will you go sailing with me tomorrow to nu; private bay?"

  "But you've already begun on the beach here," I said, not wishing to upset him.

  "That doesn't matter. The painting isn't there. It's here." He pointed to his temple. 'I do my best work at the bay. It's only about half an hour at the most I'm a good sailor, better than Thatcher, believe me," he said.

  "That's not my concern."

  "What is, then?" he practically demanded.

  I thought a moment. "Nothing. Okay. I'd like to see your bay."

  "Great," he said. smiling. "No one, no one, has gotten my mother to talk like that," he repeated, and started back toward the patio. "I'll see you in the morning."

  Spirited, he rushed into the house and left me standing there.

  Why was it I felt as if I were standing in quicksand?

  13

  The Party

  .

  It was six-fifteen, and I was getting ready to go

  out to dinner with Thatcher. He had called and left word with Jennings that he would pick me up at seven-thirty.

  Mr. Bassinger had called as well. Fearing something had happened to the house or Miles. I phoned him back as soon as Jennings gave me the message.

  "Is there anything wrong, Mr. Bassinger?" I asked as soon as he said hello.

  "Your aunt Agnes has been calling me and saying things that were very disturbing."

  "Like what?"

  "She is convinced you're at the mercy of some fortune hunter down there. Willow, someone who is taking advantage of your vulnerability. She actually threatened to hire a private detective to locate you and follow you around. I can't say she won't do it." he warned.

  "If she does. I'll never speak with her again."

  I was almost ashamed to ask him about Miles's fantastic tale. but I did. "You did check on my father's office, when you were in the house, didn't you, Mr. Bassinger?"

  "Oh, yes. Nothing was turned on and running, and Miles said nothing to me about any computers. It was probably all a dream that he has already forgotten. I did speak with him in detail and outlined how your father provided for his needs. He'll be fine once the house is sold."

  "I'm glad." I said. relieved.

  "You are all right, are you not. Willow? I would hate for your aunt to have even an inkling of truth."

  "Don't worry . She couldn't be more wrong about me and what I'm doing."

  "It has to do with the papers I gave you, doesn't it?" he asked. "Yes."

  "I don't know what was in them, of course, but I feel confident telling you that there is nothing your father would want less than being the cause of any further unhappiness for you. Willow."

  "I know. Thank you." I said.

  It was, of course, my biggest and deepest worry: would I cause my mother more unhappiness, and would I do the same to myself?

  The knock at my door startled rue.

  "Come in." I called. and Thatcher appeared. He looked concerned, upset, his eyebrows turned in on each other like those of a man with a very bad headache,

  "I thought we weren't going until seven-thirty,
" I told him. I was in my robe. and I had yet to fix my hair.

  "No, we're not late or anything. I just... Bunny got hold of me while I was driving back from Miami,"

  "Oh"

  "She told me what you were doing with Linden Montgomery."

  "I see."

  "You're posing for him?"

  "Yes. It's nothing. really. Not nude," I added quickly, thinking that was his concern.

  "I'm glad of that, but regardless, I don't think you should get too involved with that guy, Willow. He's far too unstable. I mean, you've seen his work and how he behaves."

  "I understand. Don't worry," I said.

  "But I will worry. I feel partly responsible, introducing you to him and all." he insisted.

  "I think I will know when to back away from him, Thatcher. It's all right." I said a little more firmly.

  He shook his head. "Okay," he said. "but don't say I didn't warn you when he becomes even more bizarre."

  "Right," I said.

  He nodded but stood there staring at me.

  "I'll be fine. Thatcher, Really, I will," I said, smiling to reassure him.

  "Okay. I'll go shower and change for dinner." He started to turn and stopped. "Actually, from the way she spoke. I think my mother was really more upset that you chose to be with Linden over being with her at her charity ball meeting. She insists you missed a great opportunity. I told her not to worry. I'd make up for it tonight."

  "What do you mean? Why tonight?"

  "Before the day ended. I received an invite to the party on Hope Farris's yacht. Hope is the seventyyear-old heiress to the Farris fur empire. She's been married five times, and I had the honor of doing the prenuptial agreement for the last one. The marriage lasted fourteen months. She's celebrating another successful divorce tonight," he said. She was recently quoted in the newspaper as saying, 'For someone like me to be married and to escape with only the loss of a used Rolls-Royce is a fortunate accomplishment.' The reason I remember," he said with a wide, silly grin of pride, "is that it is all the result of my work."