Garden of Shadows (12 page)

"It's remarkable," Mrs. Steiner said, "how they are always at it. I can't get into that bedroom to clean!"

"Such a contrast between the elder Mr. Foxworth and his bride and Malcolm Foxworth and Olivia," Mrs. Steiner said. "I can't recall them ever showing affection for each other so openly."

"Affection for each other?" Mrs. Wilson said. "Olivia is so cold. Those gray eyes of hers are like two granite slivers. I'm so happy the boys have his eyes."
"Yes. Whenever Alicia is in a room, there is such light and happiness, even if Olivia is in the same room. Alicia's brightness is too strong for Olivia's cloudy face," Mrs. Wilson said. "I wish she were the real mistress of Foxworth Hall, as she should be. She is just too sweet to exert her authority."
"It would be as different as night and day, wouldn't it? One has a constant smile on her face, and the other has only a scowl, no matter how hard I work. She told Mary to dust after me in the foyer yesterday."
"When a woman is unhappy in love, she takes it out on whoever is around," Mrs. Wilson said.
"Which is why I wish Alicia were the true mistress of Foxworth Hall."
I stepped away from the door, my heart beating so hard and my rage so strong, I was afraid what I would do if I heard any more. Was Alicia conniving to win over the servants? She would never criticize any of them. She was making me out to be the ogre. And their obscene passion for each other was something the servants admired? Where was decency? Where was self-respect? How could they be so loving and hot- blooded anyway? I wondered. Was it real or just a show?
One day, intrigued with their passion and energy, I followed them up the spiral staircase. I went into my room and placed my ear to the wall by my dressing table. What I heard brought the blood to my cheeks.
Their kisses were one ' thing, but the sounds of Garland's moaning in passionate ecstasy and Alicia's little cries were overwhelming. I heard them in their bed and I knew exactly when Alicia was experiencing the climax, of her lovemaking, or should I say the climaxes, for she cried out loudly each time, and each time Garland said things like, "Oh, my love, my love. It's good, is it not? I'm far from an old man."
Sometimes they would grow very quiet afterward and I would think they were both asleep, but soon I would hear her pleas for more and their passion would begin again. Then I would lie in my own bed and try to imagine what it would be like if Malcolm made love to me the way his father made love to his bride. Never did I feel the need to cry out the way she did and never did Malcolm say the things to me that Garland said to her when she was in his embrace.
Their lovemaking, whether it be night or day, was soon something to which I looked forward. Listening to them, imagining them in bed together, I could find far more excitement than I could in reading my novels.
One day I listened to them talking in the dining room and understood that they were going for a walk for the express purpose of making love by the lake. Just thinking about such a thing made my heart flutter. My face flushed so, I had to go and dab cold water on my cheeks. Looking out of a window, I saw them start off toward the path that led to the lake. Garland carried little Christopher in his cradle. I watched them disappear around a corner and then I followed them.
I felt guilty about it, but I couldn't turn myself back. It was one thing to listen through the walls, but to actually see them making love was too great a temptation. They were too far ahead of me to know I was following.
There was a clearing near the dock where we kept a canoe. By the time I was close enough to spy on them, they had spread their blanket out and they were lying upon it. The baby was asleep.
Alicia's figure had returned rapidly after she gave birth. It was impossible to look at her and know she was already a mother. She looked younger and more vibrant than ever. Her bosom was still high and her waist was so tiny. She had the perfect hourglass figure.
Her hair spilled down around her shoulders. She sat in her blouse and skirt and embraced her knees as she looked out at the lake. Garland sat beside her, leaning back on his hands. They were like that for the longest time, and I began to feel very silly and guilty about spying on them. I continually looked behind me to be sure Olsen or some other servant wasn't close enough to see what I was doing.
Suddenly Garland turned to Alicia and kissed her on the neck. She dropped her head back and closed her eyes as though that single kiss was a key opening the doorway to her ecstasy. I pressed my fingers against my own neck and watched in fascination as Garland brought his lips to the bodice of her blouse, untying the string that held it together.
He peeled the garments off her so gently and gracefully, it was as if they melted away. When they were both naked and in each other's embrace, the soothing words between them, spoken too low for me to understand, sounded like a soft religious chant, the cadences were so regular and continuous. I watched them go from great passion to gentle caressing, the words turning to laughter.
When I had seen enough, I turned to go back to the house,and found myself so short of breath and weak, I was afraid to take a step. I heard the baby's cry and their laughter, and I took deep breaths to get control of myself. Finally I was able to walk back to Foxworth Hall.
I went directly upstairs to my bedroom and lay there for over an hour staring up at the ceiling, recalling vividly the love scene I had just witnessed. How much I had been cheated! How much of what should be every woman's was not mine and would never be mine! I felt as if fate were pulling me through a knothole, dragging me to a destiny I never wanted to accept.
Someday, perhaps, my portrait would be painted in dark oils and hung on the walls of Foxworth Hall. With gray eyes and pale lips pressed together so tightly they looked sewn shut, I would regard my descendants. My great-grandchildren would look up at me and conclude that I was a very unhappy woman, a woman haunted by the other austere faces of Foxworth Hall, a woman pained by her own existence. And they would know.
While I was still in my room, I heard Garland and Alicia return from the lake. They were laughing, their voices high and gay. They both sounded so young, I felt as if I were the stepmother and Malcolm was Garland's father.
That night after dinner, Garland and Malcolm had a long meeting in the trophy room. Alicia and I were sitting in the salon, tending the three children. Mal was showing Joel and Christopher his toys, explaining each to each as though they could understand. There must have been some strong filial feeling among them, because the infants were quiet, entranced, attentive.
Alicia and I were crocheting. She was better at it than I anticipated she would be. Apparently, she had learned a great deal from her mother before she married Garland. Alicia smiled at the children and smiled at me.
"It's going to be wonderful for them all to grow up together,", she said. "They'll marry beautiful, brilliant women and raise their families here at Foxworth Hall."
"Maybe their wives won't get along," I said. I couldn't stand her childish fantasies. Just because life was all roses for her didn't mean it would be that way for everyone.
"Oh, but they will. I'm not saying they won't have small differences. Everyone does, but they'll be Foxworths and their children will continue the traditions."
"We're not royalty," I said. "Neither you nor I are queens." She looked at me a moment and then smiled as though she had to humor me. I couldn't believe the audacity that came from such a simple mind I was about to let her know how I felt about her smiling, when finally Garland and Malcolm emerged from their tete-a-tete and they came down to join us.
I could see from the expression on Malcolm's face that their discussions had been intense, and I could also sense that he wanted to tell me something; so I gathered Mal and Joel together, saying that I had to take them up, and left the room. Malcolm followed me to the nursery, something he rarely did. He watched me put the children to sleep.
"What is it?" I asked finally.
"We discussed his will. He's drawing up a new one, of course."
"Of course. You expected he would."
"I am to get the house and the business in the event of his death; however, Alicia and Christopher can live here as long as they want. Alicia is to get three million dollars in stocks from our various investments, and Christopher two million, held in trust. I will serve as administrator of their income, investing it as I see fit. He's more dependent on me than I had thought."
"All that should make you happy," I said.
"My father recognizes my financial abilities, something you should also consider."
I stared at him. "I'm not doing so badly with my own investments," I said.
"You're making a fraction of what you should." "Nevertheless, it is I who am making it "
"Stubborn foolishness. Is that a Winfield trait?"
"I would have thought it a Foxworth trait. You continually tell me how foolish your father is, and who could be more entrenched in his own ideas than you?" Malcolm's face reddened, but he didn't pivot and leave the room as I had expected he would.
"I wanted you to know these details," he said, "because I want you to tell me if you sense or learn that my father has any intention of changing them. Alicia tells you everything, apparently. I'm sure she'll be telling you about this. I suspect she's not going to be all that happy with the arrangements and she'll be using her charms to get him to give her more."
"You want me to be your spy, spy on your father and his wife?"
"Don't you?" he asked sharply.
My face whitened. He smiled, a cold, wry smile that left a layer of ice over my heart. He didn't wait for my response.
"It's in your own interest to do what I ask, and in the interest of the boys," he said, and left the room without so much as a glance at the children. Never, since they were born, did Malcolm ever kiss the boys good night.
I looked down at them. They were both already asleep. How good it was that they were still too young to understand their father's words. But what lay ahead for them when they were older and they would have to deal with what he wanted for them and demanded of them?
I sat there wishing they could remain babies forever.
Alicia wanted to move into the Swan Room and Garland decided they should. She had always been fascinated by the room and the furniture and often asked questions about it. I saw how nervous Malcolm became whenever she brought up the room in conversation, but I never thought she would want to move into the room that had belonged to Garland's first wife. A second wife shouldn't want to revive her husband's memories of his first wife, but either she was incapable of understanding this, or she didn't care.
In any case, one evening at dinner Garland announced that Alicia was moving their things into the Swan Room.
"And the small swan cradle is so perfect for Christopher," she said.
Malcolm stopped eating.
"That room belonged to my mother," he said as if no one knew.
"And it still does," Garland said. "Your new mother," he added, embracing Alicia.
"I hardly can think of someone so much younger than myself as my mother," Malcolm snapped, but neither Garland nor Alicia seemed to care.
"I don't want to change a single thing," she said. "Everything has been kept so clean and polished anyway. It all looks brand new."
"No one's ever slept in that room since . . . since my mother deserted me!" Malcolm exclaimed.
"Well, it shouldn't be kept like a museum," Alicia said, and laughed. She didn't mean it to be a cruel remark, I know; but it cut into Malcolm like a blade through the heart. He actually winced in pain.
"A museum. I like that. A museum," Garland said. He joined her laughter.
Afterward, Malcolm ranted and raved about the disgusting way his father gave in to every whim and wish of Alicia's.
"He's spoiling her just the way he spoiled my mother," he told me.
"How could you know?" I asked. "You were so young."
"I was a precocious child; I saw, I knew. There wasn't a dress she saw and wanted that she didn't get. She had enough jewelry to open her own shop. He thought that by buying her endless things, he could keep her happy. I understood a great deal more than other children my age."
"I believe that," I said. "Your father is forever telling me how hard it was for your mother to handle you. You were too smart, he says. She couldn't discipline you because you were always finding ways to get around her punishments or prohibitions. You knew she didn't have the patience or tolerance for endless discussions. He thinks she ran away from you."
"He says that?" He clenched his teeth. "It was he who couldn't handle my mother. Do you think she would have run off with another man if he had been the firm, strong husband he should have been? Why, she even had her own personal funds," he added, "so that she could afford to pick up and go wherever and whenever she wanted." He stopped abruptly and left the room as if he had said too much.
Could this be why he wanted complete control of my funds as well as his own? I wondered. Did he harbor the same fears in relation to me, afraid that I might leave him and go and do what I wanted whenever I wanted . . . something that would be an embarrassment to him, but even more than that, something that would be a reminder of what his mother was and what his mother had done to his father?
It didn't matter what he thought about my money, nor did it matter what he thought about what Alicia wished. The next day Alicia's things were moved into the Swan Room and the doors were opened. Whenever Malcolm and I walked past it together, he would speed up as though he could be burned by the light spilling from the room into the hallway. He wouldn't look into it. He would act as though it no longer existed. At least, that was what I thought, until one day he made a remark that left me wondering.
"It's disgusting what goes on in that room now," he said, and I understood that he either came upon the room when they were making love or he put his ear to the wall in the trophy room and listened in. Could he have done that? Would he have done that? Curiosity took me to the trophy room one day when he was at work and they were in the Swan Room.
Early in our marriage Malcolm had made it clear to me that the trophy room was to be his private sanctuary, a man's room in every sense of the word. No matter when I walked past
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it or looked into it, it reeked of cigar smoke. By now the odor was embedded in the walls, I thought. In some ways it reminded me of my father's study, but there were many differences. My father had one stuffed deer head with antlers given to him as a gift from a very satisfied customer. Malcolm's and Garland's trophy room was just that--a room filled with animal trophies.