Adam's Daughter (21 page)

“Well, I’ve never heard of a girl doing it, but that’s no reason why you couldn’t. Girls can work just like boys.”

“How come you don’t?”

Elizabeth brushed the hair back from Kellen’s forehead. “I stay here with you. I like that better.” She paused. “But when I was your age, I dreamed about doing things, too. I wanted to go to Paris and be a dress designer.”

“Like how you draw clothes for my paper dolls?”

“Something like that.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“When
I was your age, girls didn’t do things like that.” She rose, switching off the lamp. “Come on, it’s past your bedtime.”

“Mommy?”

Elizabeth paused just inside the door. “Yes?”

“Do you think I could really be a magnate?”

“I don’t think there’s anything you couldn’t be, sweetheart,” she said softly. “Sleep tight...”

“Don’t let the bedbugs bite,” Kellen
said.

Adam decided he wanted to throw a New Year’s Eve party. It was a payback, he told Elizabeth, to all his political and club cronies and important advertisers, and a chance to return social obligations he had been too busy for in the past year.

“It’s been a hell of a good year for us, Elizabeth,” he said. “Let’s really celebrate with a bash.”

He didn’t tell her he also hoped planning a party would buoy up her spirits, as it always had in the past.

As usual,
Elizabeth did a stunning job. The house was ablaze with holiday decorations, the dining room given over to a giant buffet. The beautiful old Kashan rug in the foyer was rolled up and everyone danced under the chandelier to tunes played by a small jazz quartet. Everyone important in town came, and a few famous faces dotted the crowd. Adam was so festive that many of his friends commented on it. But none so succinctly as Josh.

“I’ve known you for almost fifteen years,” Josh said. “And I never thought I’d be able to say this. You’ve changed, Adam. You’re a different man.”

“I’m a happy man, Josh,” Adam said.

Hours later, after the last guests had gone, Adam lay on the bed, watching Elizabeth as she combed out her hair. He was heady with
champagne and the success of the evening. He went to Elizabeth, filling his hands with her heavy soft hair, arching her neck back so he could kiss her.

“I love you so much,” he whispered.

When he pulled away to look at her face, he paused. Her just-cleaned face had a waxy pallor, and there were deep circles under her eyes. She had disguised it earlier with makeup.

Adam stepped back to look at her better. “Elizabeth, are you all right?” he asked.

“I’m just tired, Adam,” she said. “So very tired.”

The party had taken too much out of her, he thought, berating himself for putting her through it. “Let’s go to bed,” he said.

She allowed him to tuck her in like a child, and by the time he slipped in beside her she was asleep. He turned out the light and lay there in the dark. It was quiet except for an occasional car horn or the laugh of a late reveler in the street. When the gray light began to creep around the edges of the drapes, he was still awake, listening to her breathing and feeling a small pit of fear growing in his stomach.

CHAPTER TWENTY-
SIX

After the New Year’s party, Adam began to pay closer attention to Elizabeth’s behavior. For a week, she stayed in bed, too tired to get up. The doctor said Elizabeth had a virus and prescribed antibiotics and massive doses of vitamins. But after a month, Elizabeth was no better. When the doctor suggested Elizabeth go to the hospital for tests, Adam agreed with great reluctance. After what she had gone through with the miscarriage and Kellen’s difficult birth, the mere idea of putting Elizabeth in a hospital made his blood run cold.

The tests revealed nothing
other than the previously diagnosed anemia. Elizabeth was sent home with antidepressants and a strict diet.

The drugs seemed to help Elizabeth’s mood somewhat, but by spring, Adam noticed an alarming change in her behavior. She seemed at times disoriented and she was beginning to forget things easily
—- where she had left her keys, that someone was coming to dinner, where Kellen had gone for the day. The doctor prescribed a stronger antidepressant. When she showed no improvement, Adam angrily dismissed the doctor and found another.

The new doctor said her depression was a reaction to an old undiagnosed bout with hepatitis, and he gave her new medications. Elizabeth did not respond and, in fact, grew worse. Her appetite waned; she developed insomnia and began to have crying spells. And still she talked, almost obsessively now, about not being able to have children.

In fearful frustration, Adam finally sought the help of a psychiatrist. He told Adam Elizabeth’s obsession with pregnancy was the cause of all her ills, and prescribed yet more antidepressants and a new antianxiety drug. Elizabeth improved slightly, and Adam grew hopeful. She allowed a few close friends to visit and one night even went to the opera with Adam, though they had to leave at intermission. She even felt well enough occasionally to come down to dinner.

One night, Elizabeth was sitting at the table in a blue silk dressing gown, her hair pinned up. Kellen, delighted her mother was there, chatted away to keep spirits high. She began to talk about weddings, and Elizabeth sat quietly, half listening.

“Mommy, what was your wedding to Daddy like?” Kellen asked.

Elizabeth’s pale face was a blank, and Adam held his breath, curbing his urge to prompt her memory. Then, she smiled slightly.

“Oh, it was beautiful,” she said softly. She glanced down the table at Adam then back at Kellen. “We got married in this little church not too far from here. Just a small sanctuary, with beams across the ceiling and wooden pews. The pastor was an old man, with a funny little beard.”

She looked at Adam and her eyes came to life. “Do you remember him, Adam?”

“Yes,” Adam said softly. “Very well.”

“I wore a dress made of cream-colored lace,” Elizabeth went on. “And a matching hat with a veil. Your father wore a blue suit and had a red rosebud in his lapel. It kept falling off.”

Kellen was listening intently, her eyes on Elizabeth.

“There were candles,” Elizabeth said. “It seemed like hundreds of candles. And it was raining. A sweet, soft rain that smelled like eucalyptus trees.” She smiled, and for a moment, she seemed like her former self. “I remember it all so clearly, like it was yesterday. But it wasn’t, of course. It was...”

She paused, and very slowly her smile faded and the light left her eyes. “It was...” she repeated in a whisper. Her face crumpled suddenly in despair. “It was...”

Kellen looked at Adam. He felt frozen as the awful seconds ticked by. Tears began to fall down Elizabeth’s face.

“I can’t remember,” she said, her voice breaking. “I can’t remember. I can’t remember when it was!”

Kellen’s face was white with alarm. Adam jumped up and went to Elizabeth. She gripped his arm.

“I can’t remember,” she said. Adam pressed her head against his chest, holding her while she cried.

“It was the summer of nineteen thirty-seven, Elizabeth,” he said, the words coming out in a choke. “July ninth.”

After a moment, Elizabeth’s crying abated into soft sobs. Adam helped her out of the chair and led her upstairs.

Kellen sat at the table alone, staring at the flickering candles, too stunned and too scared to move.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

One by one, Elizabeth stopped doing the things she loved. She stopped accepting visitors. She no longer went out of the house. She lost interest in the garden and stopped arranging vases of flowers. She was disinterested in sex. Finally, Adam stopped approaching her. He continued his frustrating search for answers, bringing in doctor after doctor to examine her. With great apprehension, he even took her back to the hospital, but after a battery of painful tests that left Elizabeth exhausted, doctors still could find no physical cause.

“Please take me home, Adam,” Elizabeth pleaded. Seeing the fear in her eyes, Adam agreed.

He read whatever he could find on depression, and became convinced that he had allowed Elizabeth to unwittingly fall into a habit of drug abuse that was now affecting her mind.

For the first time in his life, Adam was afraid. He hired a team of private nurses to monitor Elizabeth’s medication, and he drastically curtailed his work hours.

But as summer approached, Elizabeth’s condition began to deteriorate at an alarming rate. Adam watched in helpless horror as his wife slipped away from reality and into a world of confusion and physical instability. It came to the point where Adam did not know what to expect. One moment she was withdrawn, the next she was temperamental. Most of the time, however, she hovered in a drugged state of apathy. Finally, Adam had a neurological specialist flown in from Europe. The doctor examined Elizabeth then met with Adam in his study.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” the doctor told Adam. “Your wife seems to have all the symptoms of senility.”

“That’s impossible,” Adam said. “She’s not even forty-two years old.” After he had recovered from his horror, he added, “So what can be done to help her?”

The doctor shook his head. “To my knowledge, nothing, Mr.
Bryant. We just don’t know enough about how the mind works, or why it suddenly stops working.”

Adam stared at the man then looked away.

The doctor began to write out a prescription. “She could become violent,” he said. “I suggest you have these sedatives on hand just in case.” He held out the form, but Adam did not take it, so he set it on the desk between them.

Adam looked up vacantly, suddenly grasping the doctor’s words. “Violent?” he whispered in disbelief.
“There’s got to be something...more that I can do.”

The doctor paused
. “It will get worse, Mr. Bryant. You should think about a hospital —-”

“A hospital? You mean have her committed? I won’t do that! Never!”

The doctor stared at Adam then nodded. He picked up his bag and the prescription form. “I’ll have this filled and delivered. I’ll let myself out.”

He left
, leaving Adam sitting alone in the study, staring at the walls.

In the next week, Elizabeth began to grow agitated. But Adam could not bring himself to give her the sedatives. To do so, he thought, would be a final admission of defeat.
A part of him clung to the belief that somehow, through the sheer force of his love, he could pull her back from the brink of total collapse. He was consumed with a silent raging sense of impotency. For the first time in his life, he had encountered something he could not overcome.

One night, Adam awoke to see Elizabeth standing over him in the dark holding a pair of scissors. He managed to get the scissors away from her and get her back to bed. He found the sedatives the doctor had sent and gave her one. The next day, he moved to another bedroom.

After that, he had to use the sedatives to keep Elizabeth pacified. She lived in a narcotic stupor most of the time, a series of nurses looking to her grooming needs. Adam went to the newspaper office as little as possible, trusting Josh to act as liaison to his editors. He spent much his time sitting by her bedside, holding her hand, talking gently to her, still trying to break through the fog that was growing denser around her every day.