Garden of Shadows (26 page)

He looked at Joel and then turned away.
I went to Joel and the two of us walked out to the front doorway arm in arm. John Amos, already assuming some responsibility, had brought Joel's trunk to the car. He took the suitcases and carried them out as well.
Joel and I stood in the great doorway of Foxworth Hall and looked out at the car and the darkness that now surrounded us.
"I am sorry to leave you at this time of grief," he said, "but I fear if I don't go now, I will never go. Mal would have wanted me to go. I can almost see him standing there by the piano, smiling, cheering me on," Joel added, smiling at the image.
"Yes, I suppose he would," I said. I envisioned Mal as well, and the vision filled my heart with a heavy aching. It gave birth to a little gray bird of anxiety that fluttered wildly in the cage of my ribs, but I hid these feelings from him. "How I will miss you, Joel," I said, grasping his hands in mine and bringing them to my lips to kiss them. "You are my only son, my beloved Joel, it's only you now. Please go with God, and be happy."
"Thank you, Mother." He leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek. I held him for a long moment and then he rushed down to the car. He waved once more and then got in.
John Amos and I stood watching the car go off into the cold autumn night, its taillights fading like two bright red stars dying away in the universe.

I GRIEVED. I GRIEVED FOR THE LOSS OF MY MAL; I GRIEVED for the bright happy summer when all my children had been around me, joyous and strong--a time that was to never come again. The only brightness in that long gloomy winter were occasional notes from Corinne, who barely seemed able to recover from Mal's death, and an occasional letter from my Joel. Joel, once a weak and frightened boy, a boy who finally stood up to his father, had found himself in Europe.
Signore Joel Foxworth,
read the Italian paper he sent.
The brilliant young pianist, Monsieur Foxworth,
the French papers said,
"a talent to watch in the future."
Pride bloomed again in my heart, pride that John Amos continued to warn me against: "Pride cometh always before the fall, Olivia, remember the words of God, let them be your guide." My pride, however, was not self-pride, but pride in the only son God had left me.

I loved to brandish the glowing reviews of Joel's musicianship in front of Malcolm's face. "You thought your son was a failure, Malcolm," I sneered. "But look how the world worships him!"

Then one day, the first day of spring, just as the world, and me with it, had begun to open its arms to life again, a telegram arrived. No good news had ever come my way in a telegram, and I sat and stared at the yellow envelope, trembling, afraid to open it. "Joel," I whispered involuntarily, for somehow, even before I opened it, I knew what was inside.

HERR MALCOLM FOXWORTH STOP WITH DEEPEST REGRETS I AM TO INFORM YOU YOUR SON JOEL WAS LOST IN

AN AVALANCHE STOP WE HAVE BEEN UNABLE TO RECOVER HIS BODY AND THOSE OF HIS FIVE COMPANIONS STOP MAY I EXTEND MY HEARTFELT SYMPATHIES

I crumpled the telegram in my hand, and stared out the window. I didn't cry or moan; for this son, my second son, I had no tears left to shed. They had flowed and flowed out of me for Mal, and now my heart was bone dry and barren. I grieved like a desert grieves; a desert that allows nothing to grow, a desert where the only passion is the blowing of sand, the shrouding of all that lives. Once again my world had turned utterly, irrevocably gray.

Malcolm, too, acted strangely. At first he refused to believe Joel was really dead. I showed him the crumpled telegram the moment he returned from a business trip. I said nothing. I just handed it to him to read as soon as he came through the front door.

"What kind of a thing is this?" he said. "Lost in an avalanche?" He handed the telegram back to me as though it were a business idea he was rejecting, and he walked away to busy himself with his paperwork in the library.

But when the official documentation arrived, a police report, neither he nor I could deny it to ourselves. Then I cried; then my heart tore; then I found the hidden well of my tears just under my parched soul. The memories rushed back over me, and all I could see throughout that big house were Joel and Mal sitting together or walking together, playing together and eating together. Sometimes a shadow would fall in such a way that I thought I saw their faces in the darkness. Sometimes I would secretly visit the nursery, and almost see the three of them, Christopher, Mal, and Joel, Mal acting as though he were their teacher and Joel and Christopher looking up at him with full attention. I would lift up their old toys and hold them to my breast, weeping
uncontrollably.

Malcolm went into seclusion in the library. I was incapable of preparing for Joel's memorial myself, and if it weren't for John Amos, my beloved second son, my sensitive Joel, might not have had the proper service to welcome him into God's home. John Amos was such a help to me, he even traveled to Corinne's boarding school to deliver the tragic news to her in person and to bring her back to Foxworth Hall. On the morning of the memorial service, Corinne and I donned the same black dresses we'd worn for Mal's funeral, and drifted like two ghosts down the winding stairs to the rotunda. A black-veiled carriage, hired by John Amos, awaited us before the front door. John waited stoically by the door of the carriage.

"I'm afraid Malcolm will not be attending the service," he announced. "He asked me to escort you there."

I lifted my veil and looked around. The servants were waiting, all dressed in black, ready to attend the services and mourn the beautiful little boy they had watched grow into a man. But the boy's father was nowhere to be seen. I stormed into Malcolm's library. He was seated at his desk, but he had his back to it. He had turned the chair around and was facing the window behind him.

The sky was a pale gray and the air had turned rather cool for a March day. It was a day without promise of sun, a mirror of my life.

"How dare you not attend your son's service," I shouted. He didn't move or acknowledge my presence in any way. I suddenly became frightened for him. Was it pity I felt? Pity for a man who tried to destroy his sons' spirits? Pity for Malcolm Foxworth? He looked so small and lost surrounded by all his possessions, his hunting trophies, his business ledgers, his precious
objets d'art,
the ghosts of all the women he had seduced in his study. I leaned over him and gently touched his back. "Malcolm," I said quietly, "this is a service for our son, your son." He lifted his hand slowly and then dropped it back to the arm of the chair. "How can you not attend?"

"It's wrong," he finally said. His voice sounded strange to me, like an echo distant and hollow. "A funeral without a body. What are we burying?" he stammered.

"It is a service in honor of his memory, in honor of his soul, Malcolm," I said, coming farther around until I almost faced him Still, he did not turn my way. He shook his head.

"What if they found him alive after we had such a ceremony? I won't go through the mockery of it. I won't be part of it," he said, his voice still drained of energy, his face unchanged.

"But you saw the police report. You read the details. It was an official document," I said. What point did it serve to ignore reality now? Why, of all people, was Malcolm attempting to do it?

I believe he thought he could postpone reality, postpone the aching guilt. I believe he believed that if he attended the memorial service, there would no longer be any way of avoiding the truth.

"Go," he said. "Leave me be."
"Malcolm," I began, "if you--"
He spun around in his seat, his eyes bloodshot,

his face so contorted with anger and pain, I hardly recognized him. I actually stepped back. It was as though he had been possessed by some dark creature, perhaps the devil himself.

"Go!" he ordered me. "Leave me be." Then he turned away.
I stood there looking at him for a long moment and then left him alone in the shadows, staring into his own thoughts.
Most of those who had attended Mal's funeral attended the service for Joel. No one came to me directly to ask where Malcolm was, but I heard the whispering around me and saw people questioning John Amos. Corinne stood by me, but she looked lost and forlorn without Malcolm to hold on to.
Malcolm kept himself shut up in the library for days afterward and, oddly enough, permitted only John Amos to bring him any food and drink. Whenever I went in to speak with him, I found him still sitting in shadows, staring out the window. He barely responded. Only later did John Amos tell me that Malcolm was going through a religious
transformation.
One night toward the end of the week, I sat alone with John at the dinner table. Corinne had no appetite. She had gone to speak with Malcolm, hoping to cheer him up and blow away the clouds of gloom that hung above us in Foxworth Hall. She loved her brother so; but she was young, and the world was before her, and she wanted to begin living again.
Suddenly, she stormed out of Malcolm's study. "It's hopeless," she announced, "Daddy won't stop mourning! No one will! I love Joel and Mal, too, but I want to live, I want to be able to smile and laugh again. I must!"
John was reading a passage from the Psalms. We often sat together like this and read from the Bible. We would talk about the scriptures and John would find ways of relating it to our lives.
"Mama," Corinne pleaded. "Is it so wrong for me to want to live and be happy again? Is it so wrong for me to want to attend parties again, and dress in beautiful clothes again, and see my friends again?"
John Amos looked up from the Bible, but he didn't stop reading. Corinne stood there impatiently until he reached the end of a section and paused.
"I can't get Daddy to talk to me," she said. "He won't even come to the door." She looked from me to John Amos, who put the Bible on his lap and sat back. Sometimes, when he looked at her, he reminded me of a man studying a fine jewel, turning it over and over in his fingers to catch the way the light was reflected by it.
"Your father is in deep meditation at the moment," he said. "You really shouldn't disturb him."
"But how long will this deep meditation go on? He doesn't eat with us; he doesn't sleep in his room, and now he won't even talk to me," she protested.
"You of all people should feel sorry for him," I told her. I put on a stern face. "And appreciate what he's going through."
"I do. That's why I want him to come out, but he won't come to the door when I knock and call. I can't stand this . . . this horrible sadness."
"At this particularly sad time," John Amos began, "we shouldn't be thinking about our own discomfort. It is very selfish to do so. You should be thinking about your lost brother," he added softly but firmly.
"I have thought about him and thought about him. But he's dead and gone. There is nothing I can do anymore to bring him back!" she exclaimed, her eyes wide, her face filled with pent-up energy.
"You can pray for him," John said softly. I saw how his calm, pious tone added to her disappointment.
"But I have. How much can I pray?" She turned to me.
"You can pray until you stop thinking of yourself first and think of him. It doesn't surprise me that you are this way now. Your father has spoiled you and made you self-centered," I told her. She pouted. I knew how frustrated she was. Corinne could not tolerate refusal, and refusal was everywhere around her now.
"Join us in prayer," John said, gesturing toward her empty chair.
"I'm going to go back to Daddy to try to get him to talk to me," she said, and turned away quickly. "Corinne!" I called.
"It's all right," John said. "Let her go for now. I will speak to her later." He turned back to the Bible.
I sat with John and prayed and studied the Bible and waited. The lights were low, memorial candles burning everywhere. Foxworth Hall had been turned into a tomb. Through the imposed silence, the slightest footsteps echoed. Gloom not only hung about the walls of Foxworth Hall, turning everything gray and dull; it hung from the trees, filling the world with cobwebs of sorrow. It rained on and off for days, the drops tapping on the windows and roof, hammering in the misery.
John Amos was a great comfort during these days. Dressed in black, his face pale and ascetic, he moved about the rooms with the grace and stillness of a monk. He commanded the other servants with a gesture, a look. No one raised his voice for fear of shattering the solemn air he created whenever he entered a room. He seemed to slide over the floor, ooze over the walls and around corners. Sometimes he simply materialized in a room. Even the maids who brought out my dishes and glasses struggled to maintain the greatest silence, watching him carefully out of the corners of their eyes to be sure his face showed no disapproval.
One night after I had eaten, John brought me my coffee. He put the coffee cup and saucer down before me as though they were made of air, and stepped back. I looked down the long table and thought about Malcolm still refusing to come out of his study.
"How long does he intend to remain in there?" I asked. I, was beginning to feel Corinne's impatience.
"He has become Job," John Amos responded in a stentorian voice. He sounded like an Old Testament prophet predicting Malcolm's destiny. He didn't look directly at .me when he spoke. It was as if he were speaking to a full congregation of devoted followers.
"Only now when he asks why hast God forsaken him, he knows the answer. The Lord has smitten his two sons, taken from him his male seed, his Foxworth lineage, something he cherished almost as much as life itself."
"You spoke to him directly about it?" I asked, fascinated by any change in Malcolm. I had always thought him molded so solidly in his form that the slightest change would crack and shatter him.
"We knelt beside each other on the floor of the library just an hour ago," John said. "I recited the prayers. I told him God was wrathful and angry and that all we could hope for was some respite from His vengeance. Knowing what I knew of his life, I talked about King David and his taking of Bathsheba, how David had turned his back on his God and how God brought down His vengeance on his house. Malcolm understood.
"He no longer blames you or the boys for what happened to them; he blames himself and he is trying to come to terms with that. He understands that he can do such a thing only by giving himself over to Jesus Christ our savior," John said, his eyes lifted toward heaven. "Let us pray for one another," he added. We both bowed our heads, he standing beside me, me sitting at the table.
"Oh, Lord, help us to understand Your ways and help us to help one another. Forgive us our weaknesses and permit us to grow stronger from our travail."
"Amen," I said.
The mood in the house did change when Malcolm finally emerged from his self-imposed exile. He was indeed different. He looked physically weaker and older, and in many ways he reminded me of Garland during his final year. He didn't stand as straight or walk with his usual self-confidence and arrogance. When he spoke to me or to the servants, his voice was lower and he often looked away, as though facing anyone straight on would expose his guilt.
His complexion never regained its healthy, virile look; his blue eyes dimmed like weakened light bulbs. He moved through Foxworth Hall like another shadow, robed in a funereal atmosphere, spending most of his time reading the Bible and talking with John Amos. Sometimes the three of us sat together and read the Good Book. John would do most of the reading and a good deal of the explaining.
I felt that God had sent John Amos to us, that John's letters to me and his arrival at Mal's funeral was all part of His overall plan for Malcolm and myself.
It was Corinne whom John saw as the greatest challenge. She was rebellious. She said, "If God is a kind God, He wouldn't ask us to give up all the pleasures the world has to offer us."
"Who said God was kind?" John Amos posed the question.
But Corinne would just giggle and shrug her shoulders. "I believe God made us to find happiness on earth," she would say, tossing her head. Sometimes she would even chuck John Amos under the chin and admonish him to cheer up. "God said let there be light."
I noticed that she could never enter a room without his watching her and speaking to her and getting her to speak to him. He seemed to dote on her in much the same manner Malcolm had.
He was not beyond bringing things up to her room to her. But soon she was back at school and we were childless again.
"It is so good to have you with us," I told John, "at these, our greatest times of need. Even Malcolm has come to believe that and I am grateful."
"I am glad to be here, Olivia."
That summer Corinne blossomed into a truly beautiful young woman. She looked more and more like Alicia every day. The Foxworth traits she inherited only complimented the delicate features her mother possessed. Her hair grew more golden as the summer progressed, her eyes took on the deep blue of the midsummer sky, and her complexion was as soft as a summer cloud. It was as though some divinely inspired artist had fashioned her. Corinne knew how beautiful she was. I could see her confidence and her ego growing. She revealed it in her walk, the way she held her shoulders back and her head high. She knew the power that such beauty possessed too. I saw the way she looked at men, flirted with her eyes and her laugh, even turning her coquettish devices on John Amos. It was already important to her that when she walked into a room, all eyes be on her.
With midsummer beauty now in and out and around our house, I felt a sense of optimism and hope. Because of our new faith in God, Malcolm and I had settled into a more comfortable and cordial
relationship. Our strengthened faith and commitment was our common ground.
And so when the letter from Alicia arrived, I felt it was part of God's great new design for us. I recognized the handwriting immediately. The letter was addressed to Malcolm, and when I looked at the return address, I felt excited. Gradually, through Corinne's development from a child into a woman, Alicia had been coming back to us. Now, when she was looking so much like her mother and Alicia was heavily on my mind, Alicia's letter had arrived. From the name she used, I quickly gathered that she had remarried.
I held the letter in my hand for a long moment, considering what Malcolm's reaction would be when he discovered I had opened and read it. But then I thought, after what had happened and after what I had done, anything pertaining to Alicia now was my affair as well as his. He had no right to privacy when it came to her. I opened the envelope and took out the scented pink stationery.
Dear Malcolm,
By the time you have received this letter, I shall be that much closer to the end of what has become a rather sad and disappointing existence. But be assured I am not attempting to encourage any sympathy for myself. I am beyond that and I have come to understand and accept the inevitability of my own impending death. Knowing your love of details, I will tell you that I have been diagnosed as suffering from breast cancer, a cancer that has spread too rapidly for there to be any medical rescue. No handsome young and brilliant doctor will sweep into my hospital room and work any magic. Death's, grip is too tight. The Grim Reaper, as Garland used to say, has his hand firmly about my throat. But enough about me.
I remarried shortly after leaving Foxworth Hall to return to Richmond. I married a doctor, but a smalltown general practitioner, whose patients often paid him in jars of fruit and pickles. Despite my money, we lived a rather simple life in his modest home. In fact, he didn't want to know about my money. It was always a source of pride for my new, devoted husband that he be the provider.
So I took your advice and left my fortune in the stock market, but unfortunately, not being very wise about these matters, I did not withdraw any of it in time to avoid the famous Black Monday. To put it simply, I lost all of my fortune in the Depression. Of course, my husband, being a man of simple tastes, did not mourn this loss.
Shortly after that he passed away from a chronic illness that suddenly intensified. Being the man that he was, he kept the seriousness of his illness a secret from me until it was no longer possible for him to do so.
However, all this has left me with another great deep and tragic disappointment--my inability to send Christopher to medical school.
Christopher has grown into a fine young man, as handsome as his father. He is very bright and at the top of his high school graduating class. All of his teachers encourage him to go on in the pursuit of his dream to become a physician.
Now, with my life coming to its tragic end, my fortune gone, my new husband no longer around to be of assistance, I have no one to turn to but to you. I beg of you, consider my request, if not for my sake or for Christopher's, then for Garland's.
Find a place in your heart for him. Take him in and send him to medical school. He will be an endless source of pride to you.
Of course, he knows nothing about Corinne or about the events that led up to my departure from Foxworth Hall. He knows he is the son of Garland Foxworth and he has a stepbrother, but other than that, he knows very little about his family background. I will leave it up to you to tell him what you wish.
I know that Olivia will love Christopher and he will love her. I remember how wonderfully she treated him while I was up in the north wing. He is a polite and respectful young man who will bring only joy and happiness to you both.
Malcolm, I beg you from a dying bed, to find it in your heart to grant this wish. Put aside any bad feelings you might have for me and for the sadness we all experienced and think only of your father's son, a boy driven to become a doctor, and help him reach his goal.
I know God will bless you for it.
Hopefully yours,
Alicia
I put the letter down, and sighed. Memories of caring for little Christopher rushed back. Surely the return of this golden-haired child was God's way of forgiving us our sins. He had taken Mal and Joel and now he was giving us Christopher.
Even Alicia's tragic end was part of God's plan. From what she said in her letter, I couldn't help but believe Malcolm had invested her funds in poor stocks as a form of some revenge. He was obligated to rectify his wrong. I was determined to convince him. Before doing so, I discussed my thoughts with John Amos and he was in total agreement.