Wicked Forest (26 page)

But I suppose that's all nonsense," she said quickly. "Just romantic nonsense. I wish you the best." She left to speak to someone else on the way into the brunch.

The brunch itself was wonderful and in my mind probably rivaled the wedding feast itself. There were lobster, shrimp, and fish dishes, a variety of meats and poultry, each at a table with someone there to slice and serve. The platters of vegetables were beautifully displayed, many covered in sauces that made it impossible to know what they were until you asked. The champagne continued to flow as well as wine.

Mother and I sat with Bunny and the Carriage sisters, who provided an ongoing commentary about each and every guest at the shower. In minutes we knew whose marria.ae was in trouble, who had problems with her children or siblings, whose husband was in some financial trouble., and who was richer than she was a year ago.

Before we were herded into the parlor for the opening of my gifts. Manon Florette approached me.

"You see from that little bridal-shower game how catty most of them can be. You need allies here.

Willow. You need friends like us. I'll call you and let you know when we're meeting again," she added before I could respond one way or another.

From the way Mother looked at me. I thought she might have overheard, but she said nothing. I was happy at how busy she was, at how many women, for one reason or another, wanted to speak with her.

Whether she liked it or not, she was famous to them.

They seemed to bathe in her notoriety. She was surprised at how many invitations she received. As Thatcher had predicted, we were suddenly "the flavor of the month."

The stack of gifts in the parlor looked big enough to require a decent-sized pickup truck to deliver. While we were having brunch, Whitney had assigned a servant to pile them neatly, the larger gifts on the bottom, so that it looked like a pyramid. The shower guests all sat in a circle and waited for me to unwrap each before they chanted their oohs and aahs.

There were silver and gold candleholders, jewelry boxes. And expensive vases. The girls from Manon's Club d'Amour gave me all sorts of lingerie—even leather! —which brought lots of laughter and comment. Opening each gift and hearing commentary about it was tiring. I was happy when I was finished.

Whitney told me it would all be delivered to the house.

"I imagine you will want it delivered to the main house," she said. "since it's only a matter of days now until my parents move out and you and your mother and brother move in. I understand Thatcher is going to stay rather than move out and then back in again."

"Yes," I said, holding my smile and not blinking. "Delivering everything there sounds sensible, then, doesn't it?"

"That's why I thought of it," she said. Turning to the guests, she cried. "Onward to dessert. ladies:'

If any guest was worried about her diet, she did a fine job of hiding that fact. Most of them had to have a taste of everything. The setting was magnificent. Under a blue sky with a few puffy clouds moving lazily from the south. I couldn't have had a more beautiful afternoon on which to celebrate the event. Whitney and Hans had an English maze below their tiered patio. The flowers and trees were breathtaking. There were two pools, one for adults and one for children, cabanas, and barbecue pits. She had a trio playing light classical music. It was very difficult to do as Jackie Lee had advised Mother and keep the exclamation points off the ends of ray sentences. Whitney moved about like a queen. At one point. I gazed up at the house and saw Laurel, her face framed in a slightly opened curtain, looking down at us like an imprisoned child.

Daddy once told me there were all sorts of prisons: "People you think have the most freedom are often incarcerated by their lifestyle or their own nightmares and thoughts. They move about in cages, and it is my job, and someday perhaps yours. Willow, to help them step out."

He would certainly say that here, I thought.

Just before it all ended. Thatcher made a surprise appearance, charming everyone with a little thank-you speech, thanking his mother and sister for welcoming me to the family so enthusiastically.

Bunny soaked it all up and spoke as if it was her original idea for Thatcher to ask me to marry him.

Mother and I could only glance at each other and smile.

"I guess we made quite a haul here." Thatcher commented. "I saw the pile of gifts being loaded into a van."

He kissed Whitney. then said he had to fly off and get back to earning enough money to keep me in the style to which he was accustomed, which brought lots of laughter. Just before he left. Manon Florette called out to him and asked if I was going to be welcomed as a surprise guest at his bachelor party.

"What's good for the goose is good for the gander, Thatcher,' she said.

"I think if she takes a gander at that party, she'll want to cook the goose." he replied, and gave me a quick kiss on his way out.

It would have been a long, exhausting shower party, even without the added tension both Mother and I felt, so neither of us was surprised at how tired we were when it all finally ended.

"All I want to do is sleep." I told her as we drove out the gates.

When we arrived home. Linden greeted us with a phone message my cousin Margaret Selby had left.

She and my aunt. Agnes Delray, had decided they would attend my wedding after all. and Margaret would be one of my bridesmaids.

"Thatcher called. too," Linden said. "for me. He wants me to go to his bachelor party."

"Oh, that will be nice. Linden. What did you say?"

"I said I'd think about it. Do you want me to go?" he asked me.

"Only if you want to. Linden. I don't want you to do anything that you think will make you unhappy or uncomfortable."

He nodded, thoughtful, then said abruptly. "I'll go."

"Remember, von shouldn't drink with your medication. Linden." Mother warned him.

He minted and left us. "I'll remind Thatcher." I told her, "He'll look after him."

"I know we want him to get out, to mix with people. but I can't help but worry." she said. Then she sighed and added, "I suppose that's a mother's curse, always to worry. Wait until you're a mother. You'll understand."

"I understand now." I assured her.

One week later, the moving van arrived to pack up Bunny and Asher Eaton's things, I was at college, but when I returned the truck was still there. I spotted Linden on the sidelines, watching the moving men load the van. The pleasure in his face was quite evident, and I thought he resembled someone whose country had been under occupation for years now watching the defeated army in retreat. After all, for most of his life, he had been relegated to the back of the property and treated like an unwanted, weird person to be ignored and avoided as much as possible.

How often had he looked up at the main house, perhaps the windows of a specific room, and thought about his and my mother's situation? Years of resentment festered in and around his heart.

Bunny had assured my mother and me that her maids would leave the house immaculate. Linden said we should have it fumigated.

"She'll be too proud and too afraid of any criticism to leave it any other way. Linden," Mother assured him.

Thatcher and I had discussed the costs of running the grand home, and he had decided that since we were making it our home, he would take over the upkeep and we would maintain the two maids_. Joan and Mary, and, at his own request. Jennings, who was not eager to be packed off with Bunny and Asher.

There would be little, if any, transition problems.

Jennings and the two maids then came to the beach house to begin to transfer our things. We had already determined that Thatcher's suite would become our suite. Mother would have what was once Bunny and Asher's suite. and Linden would have the bedroom next to the room he was going to use as his studio.

One room that had remained untouched, even when Bunny and Asher lived here, was the bedroom that my mother had when she was living here with Jackie Lee and Kirby Scott. The Eatons had treated it as if it were the scene of a murder. It was while she was in that roam that my mother had been seduced and raped by Kirby Scott, I could see from the way she glanced at it and how her steps quickened when she passed it that it still carried the weight of those horrid memories for her. Linden mumbled that it should probably be walled up.

As Whitney had made a point of remarking.

Thatcher was staying. Even though we weren't getting married for almost another six weeks, there was no point in his moving himself out and then moving himself back in. We didn't expect it to be any great shock in Palm Beach.

"I'll be so busy. getting ahead on my work to make time for our wedding and subsequent

honeymoon anyway." Thatcher said, "that I'll practically be nonexistent."

During the first week of our settling in, he was going on a fishing trip with a client. It was something he had been promising to do for some time, and he'd decided it might be a good time to do it.

"To give you, your mother. and Linden a chance to get settled in and adjusted without me hovering about." he explained. "Although I'll miss you."

He was to be gone four days. They were going down to the Keys and then around through the Gulf and back. Between my college work with finals approaching and our moving into the house, I didn't have all that much time to spend with him anyway.

If we thought that Bunny's having moved away would slow down her planning and plotting of the wedding, we were in for an immediate surprise. She actually returned the day we moved in to discuss the bridesmaids' gifts. A friend of hers whose daughter had married in Rome recently had what she thought was a wonderful idea: a picture of the bride and the groom and their immediate families put on the face of a table clock.

"Every time they check the time, they'll be reminded of your wonderful affair, and instead of an ordinary alarm, it will play your wedding song. What do you think?"

"I think a picture of the wedding party itself would make them happier. Then they could see themselves in the photograph," I offered, Her face flooded with disappointment.

"Oh. But wouldn't that be too many?" she followed up quickly, hoping to change my mind.

"We'll just get a bigger clock. Bunny. No problem." I said.

She thought a moment, then smiled and said. "I might do one of the immediate family, just for myself, as well."

There was no defeating her if it came down to simply a matter of spending more money, I thought.

All of her life she had bought happiness.

But would there be a time years and years from now when she would be surrounded only by things, when she would realize something important was missing?

What was it? she would surely wonder. Was it more jewelry? More high-style clothing, new furniture, a painting, a new car?

Wrapped in her furs, she would still shiver. The chill of something dark and dreadful would pass through her bones, and she would look out at the sea from her mansion or from her expensive patio and see a flock of birds moving as one, sailing with grace against the azure sky.

And suddenly she would know.

It was loneliness.

That deep darkness in her heart was loneliness.

And nothing she had bought and nothing she had been given would take it away.

11

My Own Boo Radley

.

A week after we moved into the main house.

Linden finally brought up the new portrait he was going to do of me and how he was going to do it.

"I know how busy you are with your

schoolwork and getting ready for this grand wedding ceremony," he said. "I have therefore decided not to ask you to spend hours and hours posing for me in my studio.‖

"'Really?"

"Yes, but what I have to do is develop an idea and plant it in my mind, and do you know how I am going to do that without your posing?" he asked. He was so excited and enthusiastic about it that all I could do was shake my head and smile.

"How?"

"I'm going to take dozens and dozens of candid photographs of you. I've been reading about some other artists and how they work," he quickly continued before I could respond. "This one artist I admire. Arliss Thornbee, believes you have to submerge yourself in your subject, eat, sleep, and breathe nothing else until your artistic subconscious forms an image so powerful it cannot be denied and you as artist are merely a communication device, a transmitter bringing the idea out and onto the canvas.

Isn't that a truly interesting and exciting idea?"

"Yes." I said. but I also felt a bit of a twang in my heart. Some tiny alarm, like the tweep of a baby bird alone and vulnerable in its nest. "But is that healthy? I mean, to permit yourself to be consumed by one thing?"

"It's only until the artistic subconscious has completed the vision," he explained.

"Why do the photographs all have to be candid?" I pursued. He shook his head, his face filling with disappointment.

"I would have thought you of all people would know why. Willow, When people pose, when they are prepared, they do things to hide their true inner selves.

You're the daughter of a psychiatrist and you want to be one. too. You should know that, should know that first you have to strip away all the subterfuge, the masks and devices people use to hide their true selves.

The best photographs are the ones a photographer takes of an unaware subject."

But now that you've told me what you intend to do. won't I be aware?" I asked softly.

He smiled.

'Now you are, but you won't be like me. You won't be thinking about it day in and day out. and I'll know when to snap that picture," he said with more confidence than I had ever seen him exhibit,

"How long will this preparation take?"

"Maybe a week or so. I don't want to give you an exact time frame or you will be anticipating. One day soon I'll let you know the portrait is ready. Okay?

You still want me to do it, don't you?" he added when I hesitated.

"Oh, yes, of course," I said.

"Good. Good." he muttered, and went off with a tight smile on his lips like someone who has just gotten his opponent to agree to something that would place the opponent at a disadvantage. It troubled me, but he was right: I was too busy and too occupied with other things to think about it all the time.