Wicked Forest (39 page)

"Better whisper." Thatcher warned. "He might have his ear to our wall. This house isn't built as solidly as you might think. I remember catching Whitney listening to my parents through the walls once. She denied it, of course, but then I did it on occasion. too. It was always disappointing."

Thatcher's parents had a typical Palm Beach socialite reaction to the announcement of my pregnancy. I thought. Bunny immediately skipped ahead to plans for a party. She decided that my due date occurring at the heart of the next Palm Beach Season was actually good planning and congratulated Thatcher for it He accepted her accolades and pretended that we had indeed thought it all out and decided to have a child when it would be most advantageous to social activities. It amazed me how easily he could lie to his parents.

Bunny then went on to give her advice about nursing care and a nanny. She offered to help us choose a name, too, making it seem like that was more important than the child's health.

"I hope you don't go and choose some soap opera star's name, or choose a month. That's so passé, April. May. June... all that nonsense. Thatcher's son should have a very distinguished-sounding name. Or his daughter, of course."

"Like Bunny?" I couldn't resist asking.

"What? Oh, that's just a nickname. When you reach my age here, you find that's just a way of showing affection for you. And," she confessed in a whisper. "it makes you feel younger. But a newborn doesn't need to feel younger, does she? I'll work up a list and send it over."

Everyone wanted to offer names. I was

beginning to think we should run a contest.

Professor Fuentes had a very mixed reaction.

He was happy for me in one sense, but he also seemed disappointed, until I assured him I wasn't going to give up my pursuit of a career, just take a maternity leave from it," I told him. "Thatcher and I have already discussed that."

-"Good, but don't underestimate the attention and time a child will demand." he warned.

"Considering what you have told me about your own early life and adolescence, you know that better than I do."

"I won't," I promised.

"Just be realistic with it all. Willow. Don't overestimate your energy, and be patient with yourself." he advised.

"Thanks," I told him. Then I described the madness orbiting our lives now in relation to finding suitable names.

"If it's a boy, why don't you name him after your father?" he suggested simply.

"And if it's a girl?"

He hesitated for a moment. I could see he had a real suggestion, but he was asking himself. "Do I dare?"

"Go ahead. Professor. Everyone else is putting in his or her two cents, why shouldn't you? Tell me."

"It came to me right after you informed me of your pregnancy," he admitted. "Hannah."

"Hannah?" I smiled.

'I imagine you would like to link her to your mother. Hannah means 'grace' in Hebrew," he said, "I read that the other day."

"I like that. Thank you."

"One more bit of advice," he added quickly,

"Oh?"

"Don't tell Thatcher the idea came from me.

Another man, ego, that sort of thing,- he said, waving his hand.

"I understand."

"Of course you do," he said. smiling.

It made me blush to think what kindred spirits we had become. Was it all due to our shared love of psychology and our fascination with the human mind and behavior?

Like Pandora. I felt warned not to open this box of mystery, to leave it be. Some things were best left un-said, untouched, like beautiful but poisonous flowers.

At school, some of my girlfriends treated my announcement as they would a revelation of cancer.

Their faces immediately flooded with pity, even disgust. The Butterworth twins couldn't have been more antithetically opposite. Loni thought it was just wonderful and rattled on and on about how she looked forward to a husband and a family. Pet curled down the corners of her lips and talked about the burden of motherhood and how men don't appreciate their wives and the sacrifices they have to make for a child.

"And pregnancy itself! I think I'd rather invest in a surrogate mother to carry my egg." she declared.

"What if she runs off with it?" Loni asked her.

wide-eyed.

"Good riddance to them both, then." Pet said.

"How can you blame a fetus?" Loni pursued.

"I don't want to talk about it." she replied. She looked frightened of the whole idea. I assured her I was having a good pregnancy and hadn't even had most of the discomforts women usually exhibit. I didn't want to mention that Linden thought that was a good indication that my baby would be healthy and the birth easier than a first birth often was. They might start calling him Our Nanny too, I feared.

Whitney's reaction to my pregnancy came to me secondhand. I received a phone call from Manon Florette, She had been inviting me to lunch after lunch with the others, but I had made excuse after excuse.

"We just heard about your pregnancy," she told me. "Your sister-in-law told Liana's mother in the beauty salon yesterday."

"Oh? I haven't heard from Whitney yet."

No mystery about that."

"Why not?" I asked, my temples starting to ache in anticipation. "She wonders if its her brother's child."

"What?"

"I'm just passing on what Liana was told.

Whitney wonders, because she says Thatcher would never have a child so early in a marriage. She claims he's too smart for that."

"Oh, now he's too smart for that, but according to her, he wasn't too smart with his choice of women,"

I muttered, then immediately regretted it. Like some sort of self-creating beast, one bitter remark fed on another until it spun out of control.

"Exactly," Manon said. "We thought you should know,"

"Thank you. Mallon,"

"You should come to our next luncheon in two weeks, Willow. We are not your enemies. We're your allies here."

I was silent.

"I'll call you and remind you," she told me.

"Oh, and by the way, congratulations."

"Thank you." I said.

The conversation left me feeling a bit

depressed. but I scrubbed it out of my mind like some ugly stain and hoped it wouldn't reappear. Of course, the moment I saw Whitney at an event shortly afterward, it all flashed before me in a red sash of fury. Her first remark, which was almost a compliment, was, "You don't look very pregnant."

"Some„ women don't really show until their seventh or even eighth month. I take it you were not one of those." I said. I wasn't unfriendly, but there was no warmth in my voice. We were standing among nearly a hundred other party guests in a beautiful garden setting.

"No," she said bitterly. "I even hemorrhaged in my third month with Laurel and almost lost her." Her eyes grew small. suspicious. "If you and Thatcher were planning a child so soon, why did you return to college?"

Conversing with someone close by. Thatcher heard her question, and his eyes fixed on me while he waited to see what I would say.

"What difference does that make?" I replied, assuming what I now called my "Palm Beach personality." "We'll hire a nanny and I'll practically not skip a beat. You had a nanny for each of your children until they were twelve. I understand, I don't think I'll need one that long, but if I do. I do." I gave a nonchalant shrug, then smiled at her and added. "After all. Whitney, it's only money. You don't really wonder why it was no concern for us, do you?"

I saw Thatcher's smile widen.

Whitney, who was stone-faced most of the

time, actually blanched.

"That's not the point," she stammered.

"What is the point, Whitney?" I asked, looking as if I really wanted to know.

"I didn't think you were the sort who would delegate those responsibilities to someone else."

"What sort is that, Whitney?" I pursued, stepping closer to her.

"Never mind."

"No, I'm curious. What sort is that, Whitney?

More responsible, caring, loving. what?" I asked, my face in her face.

She was flustered now and in retreat, her eyes shifting from side to side, looking for some avenue of escape, someone else to engage in conversation, but no one was close enough.

"You don't mean neurotic, do you?" I pursued.

Finally, she hoisted those shoulders of hers, giving her the look of another two inches of height, and looking down at me said. "If you must know, I didn't think you had the social background to tolerate so many servants in your life. It takes some getting used to when you're not born to it.'"

"Oh, don't worry about that," I said with a hollow laugh that was loud enough to draw attention.

"When it comes to being spoiled. I'm just as much a socialite as you are."

Thatcher was unable to contain his laugh now.

Whitney glared at him, looked arrows at me, and then walked away. "You're getting the hang of this thing,"

Thatcher whispered.

"Maybe," I said. "but I don't enjoy it half as much as you think. Isn't it time to go?"

Despite the front I put up and how easy the first weeks had been. I did experience some discomfort over the next two months. I didn't have any bouts of nausea and vomiting, but I did find my energy sapped more often and took more naps than I usually did.

As soon as I'd told him I was pregnant.

Thatcher had taken me to an obstetrician he considered one of the best in the area, a client of his.

Dr. Herman Marko, a man in his late forties. Dr.

Marko was very good at explaining everything, but he had a contrived pleasantness about him that gave me the impression he was kind and friendly only to the point of necessity. I told Thatcher I thought he was a man who counted his smiles and spent them as efficiently as an IRS examiner.

Thatcher retorted with his standard response to comments I made about the friends and associates to whom he introduced me: "You're analyzing too much.

Just relax. Stop being the psychiatrist's daughter."

I was sensitive enough about it to consider that he might be right, so I put aside my negative feelings.

After my sixteenth week, I had an ultrasound that Dr.

Marko declared proved without a doubt I was going to have a girl. That was when I suggested the name Hannah to Thatcher. He didn't seem very excited about it and simply replied, "We have time to decide."

Whenever I returned home after a doctor's visit.

Linden was there to greet me and question me about it. He was, as was Mother, very excited to hear that we were having a girl. In the beginning, I thought Linden's interest in my pregnancy was sweet and loving, and both Mother and I were amused and delighted with his questions, the way he doted on me, and offered suggestions: but gradually, something about the intensity of his questions and the way he reacted to some things I told him— pressing his lips together hard, turning his eyebrows in under the folds of his forehead, stiffening his body— began to concern me.

He was, it became evident, second-guessing the doctor. He began to challenge his opinions. offering me contrary documentation about the recommended vitamins, exercises, and diet, and about the doctor's reactions to my symptoms and complaints.

"You're better off staying away from doctors,"

he muttered one day. "Get a good midwife."

Of course. I thought he wasn't really serious.

but the comments and complaints he made to Mother assured us both he was. Eventually. we had to sit him down and talk to him to try to relieve his anxieties.

"It's going fine. Linden," I said. "I'm doing very well. Nothing I am experiencing is out of the ordinary."

"Some of the things they do can affect the child," he insisted. "Later on, I mean. They treat you like just another statistic, another scientific fact, and nothing more. There's nothing personal about modern medicine. They think we are all here to support the bottom line. Doctors,‖ he spit.

After he left us. Mother turned to me and said she was beginning to understand.

"What do you mean?"

"Linden blames some of his difficulties on the way I gave birth to him. As you know, my pregnancy was something Jackie Lee and I hid from the Palm Beach world. It was her idea that we would try to get people to believe she was Linden's mother. and that way, I wouldn't suffer any disgrace. I think in retrospect it was her way of protecting her own reputation as well. for she didn't want to be known as the woman who had failed to see Kirby Scott's lecherousness and protect her only daughter. People would wonder where she was while all this was going on.

"Jackie Lee found a doctor who would be discreet, and as you know. I gave birth to Linden in the house. I'm sure in his mind he considers all that—

the subterfuge, the cover-up. the subsequent lies and deceptions, my condition, all of it—responsible for his difficulties,

"Despite his anger and his refusal to be social, he does understand that he is not mentally healthy."

She dabbed away the tears.

"He has told me many times he knows what he is like and what's wrong with him, but he accepts it, just like any disabled person."

"Yes," I said. "I understand. We shouldn't cause him to feel bad about caring. I'll speak to him later."

She smiled.

"He's so lucky to have a sister like you."

And I'm lucky to have a mother like .you," I replied.

We smiled and hugged each other. Despite the majesty of our estate, the beauty of our property, and the protection it gave us from the problems most people had to face outside our walls, we still felt vulnerable.

We walked on marble floors. We had servants to help us. We had an army of professionals out there to call upon when we needed them, but we couldn't help looking over our shoulders from time to time or pausing to listen for the footsteps of malevolent fate lurking behind the curtain of some shadow, waiting eagerly for an opportunity to lunge at us and steal away the happiness and hope we had so recently enjoyed.

There was no doubt "It" was out there. Like that dark ship Linden often saw slinking over the water in the darkness. It came from the horizon, rising and falling with the waves. relentless. Its prow directed at Jaya del Mar, Its ghostly sailors poised. eager.