Willow

  "Please take care of yourself." I told her.

  "You do the same." she said.

  We hugged and held onto each other as if we were never going to see each other again. Neither she nor I wanted to be the first to let go, but she finally let go and kissed my cheek. She smiled and went back inside quickly.

  With tears streaming down my face. I carried my suitcase up toward my car. Halfway there. I heard Bunny call to me. She came down from the rear loagia, a glass of "shampoo" in her hand.

  "Leaving us?" she asked, her voice back to sounding childishly joyful.

  "Yes, for a while. I have things to take care of back in South Carolina."

  "It's probably much better for you back there, anyway," she said. 'Everyone knows the story by now. I had to tell them why my party was ruined. didn't I?" she followed, defending herself. "Anyway, what's done is done. Leaving is smart. You'll only be tainted by your family's history here, and a young woman like you doesn't need all those disadvantages and burdens."

  'Thanks for the silly advice." I told her.

  She pulled up as if I had snapped a whip beside her.

  "If you think that's silly advice, you're not half as intelligent as I thought you were. Let me give you some advice that's definitely not silly." she continued rapidly. "Don't think that Thatcher will be here waiting for you, feeling sorry for you or otherwise. I would never permit him to throw his life away, his wonderful reputation and his career, by marrying a Montgomery woman."

  "I am not a Montgomery woman." I said, closing on her, my spine a steel rod. "My name is Willow De Beers, and my father was one of the nation's most prominent psychiatrists. What happened to my mother was tragic, but that doesn't make her in any way inferior to you or anyone in your family. Bunny,

  "And as for Thatcher, if he doesn't have a mind of his own when it comes to his own life and who he wants to be with and love. I wouldn't want him calling me. anyway. I certainly wouldn't chase after him."

  "That's ridiculous, Why any woman would give her--"

  "I'm not any woman. Bunny, at least any woman around here," I said firmly as I pulled up my shoulders. "Have a good night, or should I say good party?"

  I turned sharply and walked on, my heart pounding. I hoped I could live up to all I had told her.

  Don't you believe you can? I heard my father ask.

  Yes, I said.

  Then you can. Challenge every doubt about yourself as soon as it rears its ugly head.

  I got into the car and drove away without looking back, even when I reached the gate and waited for it to open. I wanted only to look forward now.

  The flight was delayed at takeoff but afterward was quick and uneventful. Mr. Bassinger was there at the arrival gate to greet me. He took my bags, and we went directly to his car. I could tell immediately that he had something to reveal,

  "You didn't just come here to pick me up. Mr. Bassinger. What's wrong?"

  "I didn't want you to be surprised." he began. "but your aunt Agnes is at the house. She knew about Miles, of course, and she had her attorney call me. There's no legal grounds for her to have a say in anything, but that doesn't mean she can't cause a commotion. She's been digging around, trying to find out why you went to Palm Beach and what you are doing there." he continued. "I'm not asking you to give me details. but I don't want her challengingevery action we take with your estate."

  "I'd like to tell you what I was doing. Mr. Bassinger. I think my father intended for me to do that after I opened the envelope and read his papers."

  "If you feel it has nothing to do with any of this. I don't have to know." he said.

  "It's fine, You were his trusted friend, and that makes you mine. too."

  "I appreciate that, Willow," he replied, and I told him everything,

  "1 knew your father didn't have a happy marriage." Mr. Bassinger said after listening, "I'm not passing judgment on anyone. None of that changes anything here. Willow. Don't let your aunt convince you otherwise," he advised.

  Before we arrived home, he gave me all the details about Miles's funeral and told me he would be by in the morning to pick me up and take me to the funeral parlor. It seemed so odd to arrive at the house and not find Miles waiting for me at the door to greet me and carry in my bags. There were lights on throughout, but there was still a sense of desertion, emptiness, as if the heart of it were gone and it was only a shell now. Mr. Bassinger helped me carry my bags to the door.

  "I'll be fine now," I told him. "Don't worry. Thank you for everything."

  He smiled and said good night.

  I opened the door with my key and entered, "Aunt Agnes?" I called.

  A moment later, she appeared at the top of the stairway. "Well," she said, "it's about time you came home."

  She was wearing a hair net and a robe. Her face was covered in some rejuvenation cream, which made her look ghoulish under the overhead chandeliers.

  "I had people here all day today cleaning." she continued as she descended. "You have no idea what a mess things were, what that deranged man had done."

  "What had he done?"

  "What had he done? There was food left everywhere, even on trays up in your father's bedroom, as if he had brought it to someone. We're lucky we don't have rats here. Your father's office was a shambles, books and papers strewn about, and the kitchen... the kitchen had dishes piled sky high, bits and pieces of food all over the floor, things rotting on the stove. I practically had to have the house fumigated. The pest control left only a few hours ago. When I arrived here. I found windows open and doors open. Any sort of creature could have come inside, including snakes!

  "What do you suppose would have happened if a prospective buyer had been brought here this morning?" she cried, throwing up her arms. "How could you have left him alone here? What were you doing down in Palm Beach? Why is it such a big secret? Why did you leave college?" She fired her questions in shot-gun fashion in the hopes of getting me to answer anything.

  "Well? Why are you standing there looking at me as if I am the crazy person?" she demanded when I continued to stare at her in silence.

  I realized now that the Eatons knew who I really was and why I had gone to Palm Beach, it wouldn't be long before it was public information. Who knew how fast it would spread? It might even be a front-page story in their precious social newspaper by now. There was no point in my keeping any of it to myself anymore, and I actually felt that it would bring me some relief to open the doors of the vaults of secrets. With almost sadistic pleasure. I smiled at my aunt.

  "You and I have to talk. Aunt Agnes. We might as well do it right away and get it all over with. I'm actually happy you decided to put your nose in my business this time."

  "I guess you are." she said, still quite swollen with pride in all she had managed since she had arrived. "Maybe now you'll pay more heed to my advice."

  "Maybe. I have a lot of advice to get." I said cryptically. "Why don't we go into the sitting room right now and talk?"

  She looked at me suspiciously.

  "You're not going to tell me you went ahead and married someone in Palm Beach, are you?"

  "No. Absolutely not. Nor am I engaged."

  "Good," she said. "very well, let's talk. I hope to have things well in control here in a day or so and then return home. We have Margaret Selby's wedding hovering over us, and goodness knows how much I have had to carry on my shoulders. Young people today are far too flighty to do things correctly. When I was her age. I was already married and managing a home and a husband. There wasn't time to be flighty." she continued as she sat in what had been Daddy's chair. She looked so small in it, like a child tying to be an adult. It brought a wide grin to my face.

  "What are you laughing about?"

  "Nothing," I said. I took off my jacket and sat on the couch,

  "Well?" she asked when I let a long pause fall between us. "I would like to get to bed soon. I'm exhausted from all that I had to do and exhausted just thinking about what is left to do."


  "As you know." I began. "and know well and never failed to remind me of, either through innuendos or direct remarks. I am an adopted child. My mother was a patient at Daddy's clinic."

  "Of course, I know all that. Do you think your father would have kept such information from me? I was his only sibling, his trusted sister. He told me more than he told your mother. What of it?"

  "Adoptive mother." I corrected.

  "Whatever. What's the point of plowing up the same dirt again and again?"

  No point, except it's not the same dirt, as you say, Aunt Agnes. It's new dirt."

  "What are you talking about. Willow De Beers?"

  I smiled. "You don't know how much you sounded like my adoptive mother just then, reminding me of my given name as if it were branded an my forehead so I couldn't see it unless I looked in the mirror."

  "Well, she had some good qualities. Despite her poor family losing its inheritance, she had breeding. I would have made more of an effort to prevent the marriage otherwise. And what of it? Reminding you that you were given a cherished, well-respected old family name is not a fault. You were very fortunate my brother had so much charity in his heart."

  "Oh, you think it was simply his charity, then?"

  "Of course it was simply that," she said, straightening out her robe. She looked as if she were sitting on needles the way she shifted in the chair nervously. "I have to get upstairs and wipe off this cream. It's set long enough. Please, move to the point," she demanded.

  "Well. I'm happy to tell you that it was far more than simple charity for my father to bring me here to live. As it turns out. I wasn't given the name De Beers as a benevolent gift. I wasn't given anything. I was a De Beers at birth," I concluded.

  She simply stared at me. Her eyelids fluttered a bit, and then she pursed her lips and tightened her cheeks until they dipped like saucers. It was as if the air within were being drawn down her body,

  "What is that remark supposed to mean?" she said in a hoarse whisper.

  "It means that my father, your brother, was really my father and not just in name," I said.

  She seemed to shrink before inflating again. Even under the cream. I could see the crimson tint coming into her cheeks,

  Are you sitting there and saying that my brother impregnated one of his own patients?"

  It was a great deal more than just that. Aunt Agnes. They were truly in love, and, in fact, she remained at the clinic longer than she had to. When she gave birth, he brought me home. My adoptive mother never knew the truth."

  "What truth? Some scandal story a mentally ill person spread and that you have taken up as gospel?" She leaped to her feet. "If you should so much as whisper such a ridiculous tale in anyone's ear. why, I'll--"

  "Aunt Agnes," I said calmly. "this wasn't a story told by a patient. This is a story Daddy told me."

  "That's a lie, a bald-faced lie you are spreading yourself to... to... give yourself more standing in the community or maybe to justify your inheriting all this!" she screamed, "My brother never said such a thing to you, and you know it."

  "No, he didn't say it." I replied.

  She relaxed her shoulders and sat again. "Exactly."

  "He wrote it," I said.

  "What?"

  "He put it in the form of a letter and a diary that he had left with Mr. Bassinger to give to me in the event of his death. which Mr. Bassinger did. I tracked down my real mother and discovered she lives in Palm Beach, and that was why I went there." I added. "She told me more about Daddy and her. and I told her as much as I could about my life. We've grown very close in a very short time."

  She stared at me, as if she had been turned to stone. "Your father wrote a diary... Mr. Bassinger knows all about this?"

  "He does now He never looked in the sealed envelope, but since people in Palm Beach all know and might even be spreading it over the civilized world like hot butter over bread by now, I thought it was prudent to tell him, and now, of course. I think you should know as well. Isn't it wonderful? I'm really related to you by blood, and to your family, your whole family, cousins, everyone!" I cried with deliberately exaggerated happiness.

  Her mouth seemed to come unhinged in the comers. Her lip drooped.

  "I don't..." She pressed her hand to her heart. "I think I'm getting sick." she said.

  "Oh, would you like a glass of water, something stronger, perhaps?" I asked with such overthe-top concern I thought she would see through it for sure, but she was too involved in her own worry and shock.

  "What? Oh, yes, a glass of water. Yes." she said, and sat back so hard it looked as if she had lost complete control of her body.

  I went to the kitchen and poured some water into a glass. When I returned, she was still sitting and staring blankly at the wall.

  "Here you go." I said.

  She looked at me and then at the water.

  "Thank you," she said, taking it and drinking. "How could Claude have done such a thing?"

  "I think it was wonderful. actually. He was truly in love, and so was she."

  "In love.., how do you fall in love with a mentally ill woman?"

  "Well, you have what I would call an uneducated view of mental illness. Aunt Agnes. Most people suffer some neurosis or another. My mother had good reason to become depressed to the point where she needed professional help. What of it? Mental illness is illness. We don't look down on people who need heart bypasses or their gall bladders removed, do we? You're sick, you get professional attention, that's all."

  "It's far from the same thing." "Only to the uneducated."

  "Stop saving that. I had a fine education. I attended charm school. too. Oh dear, oh dear," she said, shaking her head. "all this just at the wrong time. A big story in Palm Beach, you say?"

  "Could be."

  "Well, who is this woman? Is she in a hospital there?"

  "There are no hospitals in Palm Beach, Aunt Agnes, nor are there cemeteries. The rich and the famous don't want to be reminded that there is such a thing as illness and death. They keep it hidden backstage."

  "Well, nearby, then." she snapped at me. My calmness and my good mood were driving her mad.

  "No. She lives on her family's multimilliondollar estate with her son."

  "She has a son, too? Don't tell me..."

  "No, Daddy was not his father."

  "Thank goodness for little things," she muttered, "How many children did this woman have and how many men?"

  "Just two." I said. "And the first was not by mutual consent."

  "Not what?"

  "She was raped by her stepfather." I said bluntly.

  "My God! Does the scandal ever stop? We won't be able to show our faces anywhere."

  "We'll be just fine," I said. "So. I think I'll settle in, take a hot shower, and maybe make myself something to eat. Are you going with me to Miles's funeral tomorrow?"

  "Miles's funeral? Of course not I'll finish up here and... go home." she said, still confused and spinning.

  "That might be best, Aunt Agnes."

  "Yes." she said. nodding. "Yes."

  I walked out and paused in the doorway to look back at her. She hadn't moved. She continued to stare at the wall, clutching the glass of water so hard and tightly in her hand that the veins were embossed right down to her wrist.

  I picked up my bags and went upstairs to my room.

  .

  Before I went to sleep. I reached my mother on the phone, and she told me Linden's physical condition was improving, but he was still "like someone caught in a fog."

  "They have recommended a therapist, and he's coming to see him in the morning." she told me.

  "That will be goad. I'm sure he or she will be able to help him. Mother."

  "I hope so. It's heartbreaking to see him like this."

  "He'll improve." I promised. I paused, wondering if I should ask. She seemed capable of reading my mind through the phone line, however.

  "Has Thatcher called you?" she asked.

  "No, not y
et. Have you seen him?"

  "When I returned from the hospital. I saw his automobile was here. but I haven't spoken with him. It looks like they're having some sort of a dinner party, too. There are about a half dozen cars." she said. "How are you doing?"

  "I'll be all right," I said "I think I had better stay here and tend to my problems and decisions."

  "Absolutely, Willow, And please, return to college. Don't put your life on hold because of me. I couldn't stand la-lowing I was responsible for anything like that," she pleaded.

  "I'll see. Don't worry."

  "I'll put it all in a hole and cover it," she told me, repeating the advice my father had given her. I smiled, and we said goodbye.

  I wandered through my house, looking into rooms and remembering so much. seeing Amou, my father, even my adoptive mother, as they had all looked to me when I was very young and not yet aware of all the dark and troubling things waiting for me outside these doors. I ended up sitting in my father's office. The books and papers had been shoveled around, presumably in Aunt Agnes's attempt to get things looking organized after whatever delusions Miles had suffered in here.

  Poor Miles, I thought,

  I sat thinking of him until the miniature grandfather clock bonged midnight. I realized that Thatcher had still not called. I fought back thinking about it and, finally exhausted, went up to bed and fell asleep almost immediately, only to be awakened in the morning by the sound of vacuum cleaners and voices below and outside. I looked out and caught sight of Aunt Agnes throwing orders at people as if she were a slave owner overseeing a plantation. She had window washers doing every pane in the house, the landscape people cutting and trimming, even people painting and touching up railings and shutters.

  I put on my robe and went down to get some breakfast. While I sipped my coffee in the breakfast nook, she came marching in, screaming at the army of maids, demanding they get under the furniture and polish every piece until they could see their faces reflected in it.

  "Don't you think you're overdoing it a bit, Aunt Agnes?" I asked dryly,

  "Overdoing it? I had nightmares last night imagining what my father would have felt like to come home to find this place in the condition it was in. This is prime property and must not be undersold.