Cutler 3 - Twilight's Child (21 page)

"Don't remind me," she said, and then she gave out a deep sigh. "I suppose everyone in the community will be talking about it soon," she added, once again speaking as if my becoming pregnant was a scandal.

"I think they will have more interesting subjects to amuse them, Mother. If they don't, their lives must be terribly boring."

"You don't realize who we are in this community," she lectured. "Everything we do, everything that relates to us is news here. Why—why, we are their royalty, their celebrities. Like it or not," she said, "we live in a fishbowl."

"You didn't always think that way, Mother," I said. "You certainly didn't worry about being under glass," I reminded her. It came out a great deal sharper than I had intended, but Mother was making me angry. I didn't ask to be put on display and have my every little action and decision put under a microscope.

"I was young and foolish and very unhappy then," she retorted. "I thought you understood that," she added, with tears in her voice. "Oh, do what you want. You never listen to anything I say anyway," she complained. "I'm always wrong in your eyes, no matter what I say or try to do."

"I listen, Mother. I just don't agree," I said.

"Why must our conversations always degenerate into arguments?" she asked, her voice dreamy, wistful, as if she were asking someone else in the room with her. "Anyway," she said, jumping to another topic, "Bronson and I have decided to go on a cruise in the fall . . . Italy, the Greek Islands. Bronson suggested I ask you if you and Jimmy wanted to go along, but I suppose now, with your new motherhood on the horizon . . ."

"Thank Bronson for thinking of us, Mother," I said. "I'm tired now. I have to go lie down."

"That's just what I mean," she snapped. "You're in the middle of your high season, and you go and get yourself pregnant. You don't even have the strength and energy to talk to me on the telephone. Honestly, I don't think any of my children has a brain."

"It must be so hard for you, Mother, to have all this wisdom now and not have anyone listen," I said, but she didn't understand my sarcasm.

"Exactly. That's it exactly," she agreed. By the time I cradled the receiver I was laughing.

I suppose I had really anticipated what Mother's reaction to my being pregnant again would be, but I had no way of knowing how Philip would react. When I told him, he stood staring at me for a moment, his eyes far off. Then he blinked and smiled, and his eyes gleamed. He rushed forward to hug and kiss me and offer his congratulations, but everything he said sounded odd. It was as if I were having his baby and not Jimmy's.

"We're going to have to adjust some of the work around here and make sure you're not stressed. We can't have our little mother made tired. No more standing for hours in the dining room doorway at dinner to greet the guests, and no more parading around to see how their food is. Let me handle all that. And just buzz me in the office if someone calls you to go all over the hotel to check something," he pleaded. "Our new baby's got to have the best care and protection."

"Thank you, Philip," I said. I shook my head in astonishment after he kissed me on the cheek again and rushed out to check on a room assignment problem I was about to solve. Was there something about this hotel that forced people to dwell in illusions? First Randolph, and certainly Mother, and now Philip? I hoped it would never happen to me.

With Jimmy hovering around me all day to be sure I wasn't doing too much, and now with Philip popping in and out to check on my condition, I began to feel like the specimen under glass Mother suggested I was. Both Philip and Jimmy had the staff spying on me and reporting to them if I went traipsing up and down stairs or into the basement to see about something. Every time I went outside and walked over the grounds I saw bellhops and chambermaids gawking out of windows or around corners. Moments later either Jimmy or Philip would be at my side to see what it was I had intended to do. If I so much as lifted something that weighed more than a pound, someone would drop whatever he or she was doing and fly over to assist. Carrying Christie up or down the stairs was enough to set off an air-raid siren. Sissy did her best to intercept and finally confessed that both Philip and Jimmy had ordered her to prevent me from doing anything that could in the least way be thought of as work.

At first it was amusing, but after weeks and weeks of it I began to get annoyed, and I let both Jimmy and Philip know in no uncertain terms one evening when they both showed up to escort me to dinner. First Jimmy arrived at my office, and then Philip popped in behind him.

"I just came by to see if there's anything I can do," Philip said.

"What can you do, Philip?" I cried, rising up and out of my seat behind the desk like a fountain of anger, gushing. "Can you carry me to the dining room? Can you eat my food for me? And you," I said, spinning on Jimmy, "why did you forbid Sissy from letting me carry Christie anywhere and tell her not to let me lift her out of her playpen or her crib?"

"I just thought"—he held his hands out—"Dr. Lester said—"

"He said, 'Don't do anything you wouldn't ordinarily do.' That's what he said. He didn't say turn me into an invalid!" I screamed.

Unlike my last pregnancy, this one was making me somewhat irritable and blue. I had stopped having nausea, but my temperament had undergone a change. Was it just the pregnancy? I wondered. Or did it have something to do with the work, the hotel, making decisions, becoming the administrator Grandmother Cutler once was?

"Okay," Jimmy said, holding up his hands like a man surrendering. "Okay, I'm sorry."

"We're just trying to look after you," Philip insisted.

"Well, don't," I snapped.

Both wore the same shocked expression.

"I'll just . . . see about tonight's dinner," Philip stuttered, and he left quickly. I sat down again and dropped my head in my hands.

"Dawn," Jimmy said, coming around to put his hand on my shoulder. I started to cry. That was happening to me more and more often, but I kept it hidden from everyone, especially Jimmy. For no reason at all I would suddenly find myself bursting into tears. I had no reason to; the hotel was doing well, Christie was growing more and more beautiful every day, Jimmy and I loved each other very much and wanted our new child very much; but all it would take was a dark cloud slipping over the sun or a point on my pencil breaking, and I would sit there and bawl like a baby.

Often I would awaken during that dim and lonely hour that comes before dawn, and I would lay in the semidarkness and stare around me, feeling strangely out of myself. Was I going mad?

My shoulders shook when Jimmy's hand touched me.

"Hey, what's wrong, honey?" Jimmy asked. He squatted down beside me and lifted my arm away so he could look into my face.

"I don't know," I cried through my tears. "I can't help it. I just . . . can't help it," I added, and I began to sob again. Jimmy raised me to my feet along with him and embraced me, stroking my hair softly and kissing my forehead and cheeks, kissing away the tears as fast as they emerged.

"It's all right," he whispered. "It's all right. You're just tired. Maybe not physically tired, but mentally tired, emotionally tired. A lot has happened in a short time, Dawn. You have to realize that," he coached.

I took a deep breath and swallowed back my sobs. Then I ground the tears out of my eyes and looked into Jimmy's soft, dark eyes, now filled with worry and concern.

"I'm scared, Jimmy," I confessed.

"Scared? What are you scared of? Being pregnant again?" he asked.

"No, not that. I'm happy about that. Really I am. I'm just frightened sometimes, frightened of changing, of becoming someone I'm not, someone I don't want to be. I'm not changing, though, Jimmy, am I? I'm still the same person. I'm still Dawn Longchamp, the Dawn Longchamp you fell in love with, right?" I asked frantically.

"Of course you are," he said, smiling. "I'll tell you when you've become someone horrible, don't worry."

I didn't tell Jimmy, but it felt as if the office were closing in on me, as if Grandmother Cutler could still reach me here, even though I had altered and replaced almost everything, down to the color of the pens. One day, for no reason whatsoever, I had suddenly had three chambermaids come in and wash and polish and vacuum every corner. It was as if I was afraid there was still some trace, something of her that could affect me. I never told Jimmy, but I had nightmares about it. If he had heard about my mad cleaning of the office, he didn't bring it up.

"Oh, Jimmy, I don't want to become someone horrible," I cried, throwing my arms around his neck. He held me tightly.

"You won't," he whispered. "I won't let you. I promise." "Do you, Jimmy? Do you promise?"

"Absolutely," he said. "Now wash your face. Sissy's brought Christie down to sit with us tonight. She's already greeting guests like a small princess."

I laughed.

"I bet she is. She thinks she's a princess," I said. I put my fingers on Jimmy's cheek and stared into his eyes. "Thank you, Jimmy. Thank you for loving me so much."

"Hey," he said, shaking his head. "I couldn't stop even if I wanted to."

We kissed, and then I washed my face, and we went to play our roles as the hosts of Cutler's Cove.

The rest of the summer flew by, maybe because we were so busy and I was so occupied with Christie and with my pregnancy. One day it was the middle of July, and then it seemed like only the day after and we were looking at plans for our Labor Day weekend. As had happened every weekend this summer, we had a full house booked. Twice during the high season I had let the bandleader talk me into singing for the guests on Saturday night. He made me promise to do the same thing on Labor Day weekend, claiming that some frequent guests had actually requested it. I did have guests stop to compliment me on my singing and ask when I was going to do it again. This happened especially at dinner, when I made the rounds to greet people at their tables.

I often missed my music and tried to keep up with my piano playing. I was so happy when Trisha returned for a weekend when she was able to get away from her summer performing arts program. Just listening to her describe her acting classes and her vocal classes made me long to return to those days. As she did every time we spoke or saw each other, she brought me a tidbit of news concerning Michael Sutton.

"His show closed in London earlier than was expected," she told me when she had come to the hotel. "There have been some rumors about him."

"Rumors?" I knew how quickly show business gossip spread and that it was often exaggerated, but Trisha didn't seem to consider this a product of the rumor mill.

"About his drinking," she said. "They say he's actually had to go for treatment in Switzerland."

"How sad," I said.

"I hope he gets whatever he deserves," Trisha responded, but despite all he had done to me, I couldn't harden my heart against him. After all, every time I looked at Christie I saw his face. Her features were getting more and more distinct, and she was getting to look more and more like him. It was as if he were reemerging through our daughter, so it became impossible to hate him. I couldn't help but wonder what it would be like for her when she was old enough to understand and i had to explain who her real father was. I would do it as soon as I could, because I knew her aunt Clara Sue wouldn't hesitate to tell her the first chance she got.

Because Clara Sue had stayed with her friend in New Jersey all summer and because neither Mother nor Philip made any mention of her, I rarely if ever gave her any thought. But on the Thursday before the Labor Day weekend she came to the hotel. I was upstairs taking a nap. I had reluctantly agreed to break up my day with naps, only when Philip and Jimmy promised they wouldn't hesitate to wake me if something important happened. I didn't really believe either of them, but even though my pregnancy had yet to show and I had gained only three pounds, I was feeling more and more fatigue these days, and I found myself stopping to catch my breath more often than I would have liked.

A clap of thunder woke me, and I opened my eyes and gazed out the window to see the sun suddenly take a fugitive position behind an oncoming wall of dark clouds. The thunder crashed again and swiftly came closer, with the swollen, heavy sky zigzagged by frightening electrical bolts, so I didn't hear Clara Sue come pounding down the corridor after she had gone into her old room, now stripped bare.

Apparently, from what I gathered in the first few seconds of my confrontation with her, Mother had not told her I had had her things moved to Beulla Woods. I sincerely wondered if Mother had spoken with her more than once or twice the entire summer.

Once she discovered what had been done, she shoved open my bedroom door and burst in like an angry whirlwind.

Spending her entire summer lying on a beach, eating and partying with her friends, Clara Sue had added more pounds to her voluptuous figure. She looked ten pounds heavier than the last time I had seen her. She was wearing a clingy violet silk dress that fit her like a second skin and showed a great deal of her cleavage. She'd permed her long blond hair and wore heavy mascara and ruby-red lipstick. I thought she looked extremely trashy, but Clara Sue probably didn't care a bit about my opinion. She was darkly tanned, and her cold blue eyes were hard and sharp, sending daggers my way.