Casteel 04 Gates of Paradise (13 page)

Tony wheeled me through two wide, double doors into the first room of the two-room suite. The sunlight through the pale ivory sheers was misted and frail and gave the sitting room an unused, unreal quality. Just like the living room below, this room seemed more like a museum than a room to live in. The walls were covered in a delicate ivory silk fabric, subtly woven through with faint Oriental designs of green, violet, and blue.

A maid in a mint-green uniform with a laceedged white apron was removing plastic covers from the two small sofas, both upholstered in the same fabric as the fabric that covered the walls. She fluffed the soft blue accent pillows which matched the Chinese rug. After having had Mrs. Avery as our maid for so many years, I thought of maids as elderly women, and so I was surprised to see so young a woman working at Farthy. She looked no more than thirty. Tony introduced her.

She turned and gave me a warm smile. She was a plain-faced woman with dull brown eyes, a rather round chin, and puffy cheeks. I imagined that because she was cursed with a dumpy body, a small bosom, and hips so wide they made her look like a church bell, she was doomed to be a domestic servant, always cleaning and polishing in someone else's house.

"Please to meet you, miss." She made a small curtsy and turned to Tony. "I've finished up in the bedroom and just had these covers to remove and store."

"Very good. Thank you, Millie. Let's go see your bedroom," Tony said, pushing me on through the sitting room. We stopped just inside the doorway so I could take it all in. I could hear Mrs. Broadfield in the bathroom washing out basins and preparing things.

As I slowly scanned the room, I kept trying to imagine the first time my mother had seen it. She had been living with Cal and Kitty Dennison, the couple who had paid five hundred dollars to her father for her.

Now I thought, she had lived in a shack in the Willies, poorer than a church mouse, and then lived with this strange couple, the Dennisons, and then suddenly arrived here in this mansion where she was presented with a magnificent suite of rooms. She must have paused in this doorway, just as I was now pausing, and looked with charmed, astonished eyes at what was before her: a pretty four-poster bed with an arching canopy of blue silk and ivory lace, a blue satin chaise, crystal chandeliers, a long dressing table with a wall of mirrors, and three chairs that matched the sofa and love seat in the sitting room.

The room looked as though it had been left as it was the day my mother departed. Silver-framed photographs sat on the long dressing table, some standing, some facedown. A hairbrush lay on its side. A pair of wine-red velvet slippers were tucked under the chair by the table, slippers that matched the robe Tony had brought me at the hospital. Was it a new robe, as I had thought, or had he taken it from these very closets?

I detected a vague, musty odor, as if the doors and windows had been kept closed for years. Fresh flowers had been placed everywhere to freshen the staleness.

The closets were full of garments, some in plastic bags, some looking as if they had just been hung. I saw the dozens and dozens of pairs of shoes, too. Tony realized I was staring at the clothing.

"Some of those belonged to your mother and some to your grandmother. They were remarkably close in size. Just your size. You won't need to send for a thing. You have an enormous wardrobe right here, waiting for you."

"But Tony, some of these things have to be out of style."
"You'd be surprised. I noticed that many of the old styles have returned, Why should we let all that go to waste, anyway?"
Mrs. Broadfield came out of the bathroom and turned down the blanket on the bed.
"I was going to have a regular hospital bed brought in," Tony explained, "but I thought this would be more comfortable and pleasant. We have extra pillows, a hospital table, and a pillow with cushioned arms for when you want to sit up and read."
"I don't want to go right into bed!" I insisted. "Wheel me to the windows so I can see the view, please, Tony."
"She should get some rest," Mrs. Broadfield advised. "She doesn't realize how tiring it is to leave a hospital and make such a trip."
"A few more moments, please," I begged.
"Just let me show her the view."
Mrs. Broadfield folded her arms under her heavy bosom and stood back, waiting. Tony wheeled me to the windows and opened the curtains wide so I could look out over the grounds. From this
perspective, looking to my left, I could see at least half of the maze. Even in the late-morning sunlight the paths and channels looked dark, mysterious, dangerous. When I looked out to my right, I saw beyond the driveway and the entrance to Farthinggale. In the distance I recognized what had to be the family cemetery and I saw what I was sure was my parents' monument.
For a long moment I could not speak. Pain and mourning claimed me and I felt lost, helpless, paralyzed with grief. Then, shoving the memories away and taking a deep breath, I leaned forward to get an even clearer view. Tony saw what had caught my attention.
"In a day or so, I'll take you out there," he whispered.
"I should have gone right to it."
"We've got to worry about your emotional strength. Doctor's orders," he reminded me. "But I promise to bring you out there very soon." He patted my hand reassuringly and stood up straight again.
"I guess I am tired," I confessed, and sat back against the chair, closing my eyes and taking a deep breath. Two tears slipped between my lids and fell like drops of warm rain onto my cheeks, zigzagging to the corners of my mouth. Tony took out his folded handkerchief and gently wiped them away. I mouthed a thank-you and he turned my wheelchair and brought me to the bed. He helped Mrs. Broadfield lift me onto it.
"I'll get her into her nightgown now, Mr. Tatterton."
"Fine. I'll be back in a few hours to check on things. Have a good nap, Annie." He kissed me on the cheek and left, closing the bedroom doors softly behind him.
Just before the doors closed, I caught a glimpse of his face. He looked ecstatically happy, his eyes blazing and bright like the blue tips of gas-fed flames. Did doing things for me fulfill his life so? How ironic it was that one person's misery provided an
opportunity for another person to regain his
happiness.
But I could not hate him for it. It wasn't his design that brought me here, and what would I fault him for anyway--providing the best medical treatment money could buy? Turning his home and his servants over to me for my recuperation? Doing everything he could to ease my pain and my agony?
Perhaps it is I who should pity him, I thought. Here he was, a lonely, broken man living alone in a mansion echoing with memories, and all that could bring him back to life was my own misery and misfortune, If our family tragedy hadn't occurred, I wouldn't be here and he couldn't do what he was doing. Surely one day he would realize this and it would make him unhappy again.
Mrs. Broadfield began to undress me.
"I can do this myself," I protested.
"Very well. Do what you can yourself and ni help you with the rest." She stepped away and took out one of my nightgowns.
"I want the blue one," I said, deliberately rejecting whatever she had chosen. Without comment she put the green one back and took out the blue one. I knew I was being petulant, but I couldn't help it. I was angry about my condition.
I unfastened my dress and tried to lift it over my head, but when I had been placed on the bed, I had sat on the back of the skirt. I had to lie on my side and work the garment up awkwardly, grunting and struggling in a way that I was sure made me appear pathetic. Mrs. Broadfield just stood aside and watched me, waiting for me to call for help. But I was stubborn and determined and I turned and twisted my upper body until I worked the garment over my waist and then tugged it up over my bosom. For a few moments I felt stupid because I wasn't able to get it over my face. And I had exhausted myself with the effort. I had to catch my breath, and I couldn't believe how my arms ached. I was far weaker than I had realized.
Finally I felt Mrs. Broadfield take hold of the dress and complete the job. I said nothing. She placed the nightgown over my head and brought it down after I put my arms through the sleeve holes.
"Do you have any bathroom business?" she asked.
I shook my head. Then she guided my head to the pillow and brought the blanket up and over my body, tucking it snugly around the bed.
"After your nap, I'll bring you some lunch." "Where do you sleep, Mrs. Broadfield?"
"Mr. Tatterton has set up a room for me across the hall, but I will spend most of my time in your sitting room and leave your bedroom doors open."
"This must be a very boring job," I said, hoping to encourage her to reveal something about herself, her feelings. I had been with her practically every waking moment for over two weeks, but I didn't know the first detail about her life.
"It's my life's work." She didn't smile after she said that, as most people might. She said it as if it were something that should be immediately obvious to me.
"I understand, but still ."
"It's not every day that I get to look after a patient in such rich surroundings," she added. "This looks like a very interesting house with very interesting grounds. I'm sure I won't be bored. Don't you worry about that. Worry about doing all you have to do to get yourself well again."
"You've never been here before?" I inquired.
"No. I had no reason to be here. Mr. Tatterton hired me through an agency."
"But the grounds . . the building . . ."
"What about it?"
"Don't you think it's all quite run-down?"
"That's none of my concern," she said sharply.
"You're not surprised?" I really wanted to say "disappointed," but I was afraid she would think me a very spoiled and ungrateful person.
"I imagine it must be an enormous expense to keep such a place up, Annie. Besides, as I told you, that's not my concern. Your health and recuperation are my only concerns. You should put most of your concentration on that, too, and not worry about how the grounds are being maintained. Are you going to try to get some rest now?"
"Yes," I said weakly. She was a good and efficient nurse, perhaps even an expert nurse when it came to someone in my condition, but I missed having someone warm and friendly to be with. I missed my mother, being able to run to her with every trouble, even if it was just a bad feeling. I missed bathing in the warmth of her eyes and the softness of her voice; I missed having someone who loved me as much if not more than she loved her own life. Mostly, I missed her wisdom, a wisdom I knew came from years of hardship and difficult experiences.
"Hard times ages ya like bad weather ages the bark on a tree," her Willies granny used to say, the very granny I'd been named for. "If yer smart, that's the tree yall lean on."
It hurt me to think I had no one to lean on anymore. Drake was already quite involved in his new and exciting business world. Luke was off to college and certainly occupied by all his new interests and responsibilities. I wasn't sure about Tony yet. He was so kind to me, and yet, yet, shadows hung over my thoughts. Why had Mommy been so set against him?
"I'll return in a few hours," Mrs. Broadfield said. "If you get thirsty, there's a fresh glass of water right here on the night table. Can you reach it?"
"Yes."
"Fine. See you soon."
She turned off the lights, closed the curtains tightly, and left the room.
Now that I was alone, I sat up in the bed to really study the room. What could it have been like for my mother the first night she was here? She had come to live with people she had never seen before, strangers to her, even though they were relatives. In a real way we had both come here as orphans: she made an orphan by her father, who sold away her family; and I, made an orphan by Death, jealous Death, who came and stole away my parents.
And she knew almost as little about her family background as I did. She must have gone through Farthy like an explorer, out to discover who she really was. Only, she wasn't at the mercy of nurses and servants and confined to beds and wheelchairs. She could at least explore.
Oh, I couldn't wait to get well again, to be on my feet and be whole. I couldn't wait for Luke to come and explore our childhood dreams with me.
Luke. How I missed him, needed his comfort. I hadn't heard from him for days now, because of what had happened in the hospital. But surely I would hear from him soon. I turned to look at that night table.
No phone!
There's no phone. How could he call? A flush of heat and panic swept up through my chest.
"Mrs. Broadfield!" I called. "Mrs. Broadfield!" Had she gone away, thinking I would fall asleep?
"Mrs. Broadfield!"
I
heard the scurrying footsteps, and a moment later she appeared.
"What's wrong?" She flicked on the lights.
"Mrs. Broadfield, there is no telephone in this room."
"My God, was that why you screamed like that?" She put her palm against her chest.
"Please, haveTony come up here."
"Now, Annie, I told you to take a nap, and you said--"
"I won't take a nap until I see Tony," I insisted, and folded my arms under my bosom the way Aunt Fanny often did when she insisted on having things her own way. I could be just as stubborn and determined to have my own way.
"If you insist on acting like this, you'll prolong your recuperation for months. Maybe you'll never recupenn ate,,"
"I don't care. I want Tony."
"Very well." She spun on her heels and left the room. Very shortly afterward I heard Tony coming, so I worked myself up into a sitting position.
"What's wrong, Annie?" he asked, his eyes full of alarm.
"Tony, there is no telephone in this room. I can't call anyone and no one can call me. It was all well and good at the hospital. I understood because I had had a bad time, but I'm going to be here for a while; I must have my own phone."
Tony's face and shoulders relaxed. He glanced quickly at Mrs. Broadfield, who stood beside him in a stiff posture of annoyance.
"Oh, of course you will. In time. I spoke to the doctor about that just before we brought you out here. He requested that we keep you quiet for a while longer and then ease you back into things. In fact, he'll be here himself day after tomorrow to give us an evaluation of your recuperation and let us know just how to proceed."
"But surely talking to someone like Luke or Drake or some of my old friends--"
"Drake will visit you today, and if Luke wants to come later on, he may. I'm following the doctor's orders, Annie. If I didn't and something else happened to you, I would feel entirely to blame."
I stared at him. He had his hands out, almost as though he were pleading for me to do what was good for myself. I felt ashamed and shifted my eyes toward the windows.
"I'm sorry. I just . . . I'm in a strange place and--" "Oh please, don't think of this as a strange place. This is your ancestral home, too."
"My ancestral home?"
"Your great-grandmother lived here, your grandmother lived here, and your mother lived here. Very soon you'll feel right at home. I promise."
"I'm sorry," I said again, and dropped my head back to the pillow. "I'll take my nap now. You can turn out the lights."
He came to the side of my bed and fixed the blanket. "Sleep well."
After he left I looked toward the doorway and saw Mrs. Broadfield silhouetted in the light from the hallway. She looked like a sentinel standing guard. I imagined she was waiting to be sure I was going to do what I had been told.
I was tired and defeated and lost, so I closed my eyes and thought about my mother and the first time she had closed her eyes and put her head down on her pillow on this bed. Did she wonder about her own mother in this room and her life at Farthy? Were there just as many mysteries about her mother's past as I felt there were about mine? It was as if I had inherited
_*
my grandmother's and Mommy's fears.
Surely, my grandmother Leigh must have felt strange and alone when she had first been brought to Farthy by her mother, my great-grandmother Jillian. Everything might have been newer and fresher in Farthy, the colors brighter, the rugs and curtains clean and new, the halls shiny and the windows clear. There were many servants about, gardeners, housekeepers, but still, from what I understood, Leigh had been uprooted, taken from her father to live a new life here at Farthinggale with a step-father, Tony Tatterton. She had gone to sleep listening to the same sea breeze push at the windows and thread through the shutters.
And then years and years later, her daughter, my mother, found herself here, going to sleep to the same sounds, perhaps feeling just as alone. In time the great house became home to both of them, as it might now to me. In a real sense Tony was right. I shouldn't feel like a stranger in Farthy. Too much of my past lived here. But all the unanswered questions, the lingering mysteries, the dark shadows that surrounded me and my presence here, made it so confusing.
Perhaps with every passing day another shadow and another mystery would disappear, until Farthy was brilliant with light again the way it might have once been for my grandmother Leigh and for Mommy.
Funny, I thought, but it's as if I'm in the middle of the maze outside, trying to find my way back.
But back to where?
Back to what?
I fell asleep counting questions instead of sheep.