Wicked Forest (2 page)

I lifted my head from the pillow and, after realizing where I was, listened keenly. The steps sounded more like someone shuffling along in shoes with sandpaper for soles. I heard the hinges of the front door squeak like impish tattletales. The whish of the wind rushed into the house, and then I heard the door close. I glanced at the illuminated face of the clock on my nightstand and saw it was nearly 3:30

A.M. Who would be walking about at this hour and far what purpose? Was my mother still going out to the dock at night with a lantern, dreaming of my father, who had promised to come to her someday?

Such hope died hard, even in the face of the cold reality of his death, I thought, and my heart cried for her.

Despite my fatigue. I slipped my feet into my slippers and scooped up my pink and white velour bathrobe to hurry out to see what was happening.

The house was dark, but the rain clouds had been driven off by a stern easterly wind and there was enough of a first-quarter moon to illuminate the hall and entryway. On the other side of the house and above were housed the maids and the Eatons' butler.

Jennings. but I knew it was our front door I had heard open and close.

I brushed back my hair and stepped out to the loggia, facing the sea. The water looked choppy, the starlit whitecaps higher than usual. At first I thought there was no one out here and perhaps I had imagined it all. but then, looking to my right. I saw Linden walking in bare feet slowly, very slowly, and wearing only his pajamas!

My first inclination was to turn back and fetch my mother. but Linden was moving closer and closer to the water. The frightening thought occurred to me that my return might have had a terribly negative effect on him, something my mother had not realized, so terrible in fact that it had revived his suicidal urge.

Would I be responsible for another near-tragedy?

Panic seemed to add a hundred pounds to my weight.

Even so. I shot forward and hurried after him. The wind whipped my robe about my legs and threw sand up into my face as if nature herself wanted to keep me from reaching him.

"Linden!" I screamed, "What are you doing?

Where are you going? Linden!"

He didn't turn, nor did he change his pace, which was a very slow, dreamy gait, his arms stiffly at his sides. I broke into a rim, losing my slipper once, getting it back on, and running until I reached him moments later.

"Linden!"

There was no question I was close enough so he could hear me, but he continued to walk, his head lowered. I reached out and seized his right arm at the elbow. It was enough to stop him, but he didn't turn and he didn't speak. He just stood there, his shoulders swaying as if he were still walking.

"What is it? Why are you doing this? Where are you going?" I fired at him, yet he still didn't turn.

"Linden!"

Finally, his shoulders stopped moving and he stood deathly still, his head down, the strands of his long, blond hair hanging limply like a small curtain over his face.

I moved around to stand in front of him and saw that his eyes were closed. In fact, he looked asleep!

"Linden? Are you all right?"

Without responding, he turned slowly and

started to walk again, lifting his feet as though the beach were made of sticky tar.

He's sleepwalking, I realized, I had never seen anyone do it before and it was frightening. It was like being drawn into someone else's nightmare. I caught up to him again, my heart pounding.

"Linden," I said softly. "Linden, please wake up. You're outside, on the beach."

I shook his arm gently, not sure what effect an abrupt awakening might have on him and how he might react in light of his recent head injuries and subsequent operation to relieve the pressure the blow had put on his brain. Opening his eyes and finding himself on a beach and not in bed might trigger some horrible response. The doctor had spoken of post-

traumatic symptoms. I recalled, Perhaps this was one of them. He might go into a hysterical rage and harm himself. and I wasn't strong enough to stop him.

He continued to walk toward the house. but I think if I hadn't nudged and turned him when we drew closer, he might have gone past it Fortunately, he made it to the loggia and then permitted me to guide him gently down the hallway toward his bedroom. I anticipated my mother waking, but she didn't, and so it was left to me to get him back into his bed. He was stiff. but I was able to get him under the blanket.

Amazingly, he never woke, he never uttered a sound.

Standing beside the bed and gazing down at him. I brushed his hair from his face and looked again at that scar, that horrible reminder of his sadness, anger, and loneliness. Linden's lips twitched and his eyes moved rapidly behind his closed lids. Then he opened his mouth and moaned softly. After that he was very still again, his breathing regular. quiet.

Satisfied he would be all right. I returned to my own room and tried to go back to sleep, but that wasn't to happen very quickly. Chasing after him and bringing him back to the house had put needles and pins in my stomach. It actually took hours for me to fall asleep again, and just as I did, the bright sunlight clapped its hands in front of me like a mesmerist snapping me out of a hypnotic state and made me open my eyes.

I could hear the muffled sounds of the servants above preparing to go to work at the main house for the Eatons. and I could also hear my mother talking softly to Linden. I did not hear him speak. My body moaned complaints from toes to the top of my head when I forced myself to rise. After I washed my face in cold water to shock out the sleepiness and brushed my hair so I could at least tie it back. I put on my robe and went out to the kitchen where my mother and Linden were having breakfast.

"Oh. Linden," she cried as soon as she saw me approaching. "look who has returned, just as I told you. She arrived last night after you went to bed."

He didn't turn his head or lift his eyes toward me at all. "Hi, Linden," I said "How are you feeling?"

He stared down at his oatmeal and then, as if he hadn't heard a word I said, he sipped some coffee.

"Willow is back. Linden." my mother said.

"Don't you want to say good morning to her?"

He looked at our mother, but he didn't look at me. Again, he sipped some coffee.

My mother and I exchanged a look of concern, and then I smiled back, closing and opening my eyes gently.

"Are you hungry, Willow?"

"I'll just make myself some toast with jam," I said.

'I didn't expect you would be up so early after driving all day and late into the night, and especially after I kept you up so long talking.-' she told me as I went to make the toast.

"Neither did I," I said. "I was awake earlier," I added, wondering if Linden had eventually realized what had happened during the night. I glanced at him to see if he was going to sneak a glance at me, but he didn't. He pushed himself back from the table and stood.

You haven't finished your breakfast yet.

Linden," our mother said.

He shook his head.

"I'm not very hungry this morning," he said, still not looking my way.

I was beginning to wonder if he would speak to me at all. Why wouldn't he at least say hello to me? I guess he truly was angry at me simply for existing, for dropping my mother and father's past in his lap like a ball of cold lead. Perhaps it was the age-old fury that required recipients of bad news to kill the messenger.

He turned, his eyes brushing over me like a passing feather, and walked out and down the hallway.

As soon as I thought he was out of earshot. I told my mother about being woken by footsteps in the hallway.

"I came out because I thought it might be you and something was wrong. I discovered it was Linden and he was out there." I said, nodding toward the beach, "walking in his sleep."

I described what I had done and how he had remained asleep the whole time.

She pressed her lips together and closed her eyelids as if to keep the tears contained. Then she sighed so deeply, I thought she had cracked her heart.

"It's been one thing after another like this since he came home from the hospital. His therapist there predicted his depression would deepen and suggested a more intense therapy with medications. She wanted me to have him admitted to a nearby psychiatric hospital, but I could not do it, even though I have always wondered if he has inherited my manic-depressive condition."

"No. Mother. Your condition wasn't anything genetic," I said firmly. I had read my father's reports about her.

She nodded,

"I was hoping that the medicine they gave him would bring him back to an even keel, that somehow he would improve and we would at least have what peace we had before. but..." She swallowed hard and continued. "This is new. this sleepwalking. though."

She shook her head. "What will we do? Lock his bedroom door?'

"Maybe it will pass. It might never occur again.

It's still too soon after the whole event." I suggested, buoying up her hopes. She nodded, her shoulders and back softening with another sigh.

"Yes, maybe. but I suppose we do have to consider what to do if it doesn't. In any case. I'll call his doctor and tell her about it, even though I know she will only repeat her suggestion to put him in the clinic."

We stopped talking when we heard him

returning. He had put on his windbreaker and was headed for the door.

"Where are you going. Linden?" Mother asked.

As if the question required a great deal of consideration, he took a moment to respond.

"For a walk." he said.

"I'll come out to join you in a while." I suggested. "If you don't mind."

He paused. For a moment I thought he was

finally going to turn and speak to me, but he didn't respond. He continued toward the front door,

"Don't go too far," my mother called to him with urgency in her voice.

"I've already gone too far." he said, opened the door, and left us both looking after him wondering what that meant or if there was any sensible meaning at all in that twisted cloud of thoughts, dreams, and memories that swirled about like a tornado in his troubled head.

As with the answers to so many new questions about my life and my future, it waited out there for me like the fruit on the forbidden Tree of Knowledge.

Pluck it at your own peril, Willow De Beers, I thought.

And hope that, like poor Adam and Eve, you don't get driven out of paradise,

1

Return to Joya del Mar

.

Now that I was here. that I had made the firm decision to be involved with my real mother's life and family. I felt like someone who had gotten off the roller coaster. I was a bit shaky regaining my footing, but finally, time had slowed down for me. I could take a deep breath and let my memories, especially my most recent, the ones that had been stringing along behind me like so many ribbons in the wind, catch up and be stored in the safest places in my brain. They were no longer to be ignored. but I could draw upon them for lessons and wisdom to guide me through the days ahead.

Right before I left for my second year of college. Daddy and I had a wonderful after-dinner hour or so together on the rear patio of our South Carolina house. Quiet moments together like that were as rare as shooting stars. I hadn't the courage to ask for them. Puppies unabashedly snuggle at the feet of their loving masters, hoping to be stroked. I envied them for their obvious play for love. Growing up in a home in which my adoptive mother always made me feel like an uninvited guest made me timid and quite withdrawn as a child. It took very little to get her upset with me. I clung so hard and so close to my nanny Amou's skirt, I am sure people who saw us thought I was attached to her hip.

I remember I would try to turn and twist in a way that would keep me hidden from my adoptive mother's critical eyes whenever she was in the same roam or passing by Those eyes stabbed me with accusation and contempt. Amou was truly my shield, my protection. Her warm voice and touch gave me enough reassurance to challenge nightmares and keep the dark clouds away most of the time.

I wasn't afraid of going to Daddy for comfort, but now, of course. I understood that in those early years, when he was concerned about pleasing my adoptive mother and keeping his secret life and love just that, secret, he put up a wall of firm, correct authority between us and, especially in front of my adoptive mother, remained as aloof and objective as he could. He was, in other words, the psychiatric doctor first, the counselor, the therapist, and my father second.

Always the one who relied on reason and logic, he put me through the behavioral catechisms as soon as I was capable of answering a question with a yes or a no. My adoptive mother would rail against my sloppiness or my forgetfulness. She would pounce on my failure to keep my things well organized, even when I was only three. Even then I noticed how she would turn to my father and, like a prosecutor in a courtroom, make an argument for declaring me guilty of some horrid imperfection, some mental weakness, and demand a punishment. By the time I was five. I thought she would ask for the death penalty.

Daddy rarely contradicted her openly. He

would show some form of agreement with a nod or a widening of his eyes and then turn to me, the defendant, and begin his soft but well- constructed series of reasonable questions.

"You want your room to look nice, don't you.

Willow? You want to be able to bring your friends here? You want to make less work for Isabella. right?"

Isabella was Amou's real name. I called her Amou from the first day I could pronounce a word.

She called me Amau Una, which in Portuguese means

"loved one." and I just picked up on that. My adoptive mother hated nicknames and tried to get me to stop calling my nanny Amou. but I resisted, even in the face of her fiery eyes of anger that threatened to sweep over me, engulfing me in the blaze.

Of course. I nodded in agreement with every question Daddy would ask, and somehow, my acquiescing to that sort of reprimand satisfied my adoptive mother enough to lower the flames of her rage and enable me to escape from her circle of heat.