Chasing endless summer, p.11
Chasing Endless Summer, page 11
“Yes,” he said. And then, like someone who had just recalled an important thing, he pointedly added, “Dr. Kirkwell says you did very well in your work. We’ve sent all the information about your schooling to your father just in case.”
“In case?”
“In case he wants you to stay, of course. He’d have to enroll you in a school there,” he said, and then began to talk with Franklin Butler about a real estate deal.
How casual this sounded to everyone. Grandfather put as much emotion into it as he would if he said, “Tomorrow is another day,” or something just as inconsequential. Aunt Holly did smile at me, but Uncle Martin looked quite disinterested. I almost felt like sticking a pin in him by asking him right now, in front of Grandfather, how Simon was. I glanced at Aunt Holly. I thought she gently shook her head. Were my thoughts written in my eyes?
Right after lunch the following day, Aunt Holly arrived to take me shopping. Grandfather was out by the garage house, talking with Emerson. He paused when he saw us, and from the way he stared, I thought he might suspect something. Aunt Holly waved. Emerson waved back. Grandfather nodded, and they started to talk again.
“We’re going to see Nattie,” Aunt Holly said, “but we can stay only a half hour at most and then go right to the department store.”
Short of seeing my mother, discovering she didn’t die, this was the most exciting thing I could have wished to hear since the day I was brought here. For the entire ride to the treatment center where Nattie was being cared for, my heart was in a drumroll. Maybe she wouldn’t recognize me, I feared. Maybe Aunt Holly was right: her brain had suffered so much damage that she had lost most if not all her memory. I could be looking at a face painted with a blank stare, a face in which I had hoped I would find the lost love, the happy and beautiful times filled with music and laughter, as well as all those French words and exciting descriptions that enabled me to travel on the tail of her comet.
This could be the biggest mistake of all. “Sometimes,” Mommy had once said, “it’s best not to go back to happier times. If they are gone, that will just remind you of how sad you now are. Press your beautiful memories like flowers into the book you keep closed in your heart.”
The treatment center where Nattie was being attended did not look at all like a medical building. It was a large Queen Anne–style house on beautifully maintained grounds, with gently rolling lawns and fountains, on which large maple and oak trees were sprawling and casting shade and splendor on an already beautiful part of the countryside.
“This is really more of a rest home for the financially well-off,” Aunt Holly said, immediately explaining what looked quite unexpected. I was anticipating a stone or likewise official-looking medical building that more or less resembled a hospital, albeit a private one. “Nattie has friends in high places and was obviously quite well-liked and respected. I don’t know all that much more about her arrangements.”
“Probably the U.S. ambassador to France,” I offered.
She smiled and nodded. “As your grandfather proves to us daily, it pays to have friends in high places.”
We parked near three other cars in the front. I could see there was another, larger parking lot around the right corner and toward the rear.
“There are private nurses here attending people in their suites and I think a doctor and assistant twenty-four seven. The patients keep their identities private. That is why I thought your grandfather might know about this place. If anyone knows the secrets of the rich and powerful, your grandfather does. I’m not a hundred percent positive he doesn’t keep track of the comings and goings involving Nattie.
“But I’m pretty close to a hundred percent,” she added, smiling. “I have a friend who’s a nurse here, and she says Nattie has only the occasional friend-in-high-places visitor but no one else showing any interest, no one asking questions or watching the house. I trust her.”
We got out and walked to the front entrance, which looked like the front entrance of any house. Through the glass windows in the door, I could see sofas, chairs, and tables in the foyer. There was no one sitting at an official greeting desk. We entered. Aunt Holly took my hand, and we stood quietly waiting. After a few moments, a tall, thin nurse with very short dark brown hair appeared.
“Holly,” she said, and turned to me. “This is Caroline?”
“Yes, Maggie. Thank you for this.”
“There’s no sign-in of any kind,” she said. “Just follow me. We’re going to a room on the right at the end of the hallway. The doctor just left her, and she’s resting as quietly as she can. Prepare yourself. She has serious trembles.”
She paused and leaned toward me.
“She’s far from the woman you remember, Caroline. She shows little recognition of anyone who’s come, and she cannot manage pronouncing a single word. She’s lost a lot of weight. We do as best we can to keep her hair looking nice. That’s the hard, cold truth.”
She looked at Holly.
“Do you really want to do this?” Aunt Holly asked me.
“Yes,” I said firmly.
Maggie nodded and, without another word, turned and began to walk down the corridor. Aunt Holly held tightly to my hand, or was I really holding tightly to hers? We passed other rooms with the doors either closed or partially opened through which I could see a nurse or a doctor speaking with an elderly lady. The floors and halls were immaculate. It was only once I was here, inside, that the house, which resembled an ordinary home, took on the look of an institution.
Before you meet someone whom you once knew but haven’t seen in a while, you envision them the way they were when you last saw them. What I recalled the most about Nattie was how intensely she would look at you when you spoke to her or she spoke to you. She was a little taller than my mother, attractive, but her figure wasn’t as perfect. She wouldn’t be on the cover of Vogue or a similar magazine, as my father would claim my mother would. Nattie was a little wider in the hips, with a smaller bosom, and thus did not have the hourglass figure my mother had. She did have beautiful kelly green eyes that were habitually lit with intelligence. She seemed capable of being interested in anything and everything just so she wouldn’t miss anything or, maybe more important for me, belittle something I was interested in or cherished. I couldn’t forget how firmly she would take my hand.
Even Grandfather once said at a dinner with the family that you could judge a person instantly from his handshake. “Confidence radiates in a man’s fingers and grip,” he said, eyeing my uncle Martin, whose handshake always looked a bit unsure to me.
“A woman’s, too,” Mommy added.
Whenever she did that, tack on another thought to what he had said, Grandfather would peer at her and change the topic.
I almost stopped before we entered Nattie’s room. I could hear medical machinery and immediately caught a glimpse of a nurse moving around Nattie’s bed. Aunt Holly let go of my hand and put her arm around my shoulders. I heard her take a deep breath. I was holding mine.
Nattie was on her back, looking straight up, with oxygen leads in her nostrils. At the side of the bed was a device to help get needed body movement. Someone had trimmed her amber hair so that it didn’t hang below her ears. Ironically, to me it looked just as bright and healthy.
There was nothing warm and homey about her room. It was as if I had just left the building we had entered and walked into a hospital. The walls, at least, were a light pinkish tone, and the windows were wide, accepting as much sunlight as they could with the wooden shades opened. There was a television mounted on the wall. I imagined the bed was lifted for her to see it, but from the way her arms lay, her hands looking frozen in a curl, I was sure she had no control of any remote. Beside her bed was a pitcher of something she could drink with a straw.
What struck me the most, perhaps, was the amount of weight she had lost. It was as if her body was sinking into itself. I could see bones where I never could, and her full cheeks looked like they were being pulled in at the middle. The nurse paused after checking an intravenous drip and looked at us. Nattie showed no sign of realizing someone else was there.
“Hey, Nattie,” she said. “You have guests.”
Nattie didn’t turn her head toward us. I realized almost instantly that she couldn’t. The nurse adjusted her pillow so that her head tilted in our direction. She was looking right at me now, but my heart was shriveling in disappointment. There was no recognition in her vacant eyes. Aunt Holly squeezed my shoulder gently. I stepped ahead of her, almost reaching the bed.
“Nattie,” I said.
She blinked rapidly and then made a gruesome sound. Aunt Holly embraced me quickly, but I didn’t retreat. I repeated her name. I could see the struggle in her face as she struggled with the sound until I was sure she was saying “Sweet.”
I was crying, but I started to sing the song my mother and I would dance to: “Where it began, I can’t begin to knowing…”
She stopped making the sound. I wouldn’t say she smiled, but a soft moment of quiet and love seeped into her face. I reached for her hand and held it. Slowly, almost unsure of itself, a tear emerged from her right eye. I looked at the nurse. She was crying, too. I didn’t cry.
I was Daddy: strong, determined, and self-confident.
“I’m going to be okay, Nattie,” I said. “I have Mommy near me, always.”
I leaned over to kiss her cheek.
“À bientôt, ma chérie,” I whispered, and stepped back.
She started to make that guttural sound, stopped, and closed her eyes as I let go of her hand and stepped back.
“I’m sorry,” the nurse said.
She wasn’t apologizing for what had happened to Nattie. She was apologizing for ending this short visit. Even these minutes had clearly exhausted Nattie. I practically fell back into Aunt Holly’s arms. She turned me, but at the door, I looked back. Nattie’s eyes were open, and I will swear to the day I die that she was smiling.
Neither of us spoke until we were in her car and pulling away.
“I hope this wasn’t a mistake,” Aunt Holly said. “Not that your grandfather would find out but that it was so painful for you.”
“No. I have something about her to take with me, Aunt Holly. Forever.”
She smiled and nodded. “Let’s get you some really fancy Hawaiian outfits, shorts, blouses, a few bathing suits, sandals—all of it,” she said. “We’ll spend as much Sutherland money as we can. And you need new suitcases, a new purse, carrying bags, hats, sunglasses, and a good travel watch.”
“That sounds like a lot.”
“It is. So what?” she said, laughing.
I sat back. It almost seemed like I was doing something wrong by looking forward to my future with Daddy, wrong to permit an iota of happiness, with Nattie back there and Simon in a clinic, but it was too powerful a new feeling to be denied. I ramped up my enthusiasm and, like a starving panther, attacked the choices in the department store, my eyes surely showing the dazzle of new things and new hope.
When we drove up to the grand front entrance of Sutherland, Emerson came hurrying from the garage house. At first, I thought something might be wrong, but he was just so eager and pleased to help us carry all my new things into the mansion. As if drawn by our pleasure, Clara Jean and another maid rushed to the foyer to help. The commotion brought Grandfather to his office doorway.
“You could have had her buy things in Hawaii, too, you know,” he told Aunt Holly.
She laughed, which surprised him.
“And miss the pleasure of my doing it?”
“Women,” he said.
“Yes. Thank heaven,” she replied.
He looked at me. “I’ve set aside an hour tomorrow for you. We’ll discuss your leaving Sutherland and what I expect of your behavior. Your flight is arranged for Hawaii in the evening, so you can sleep some on the plane. You should be as fresh-eyed as you can be when you arrive.
“Get all that organized,” he ordered Aunt Holly. “Martin is arriving an hour before dinner tonight. We’ll be discussing Simon.”
“What about him?” she fired back.
I didn’t think he’d answer. He looked more like he would just step back and close his office door, but he didn’t.
“His future,” he said, and then stepped back and closed the door.
Aunt Holly looked at me.
And just like that.
As a pin would puncture a balloon.
All the air in our excitement and fun whooshed away and left us folded inside ourselves.
CHAPTER SEVEN
I wished I could be in Grandfather’s office to hear about Simon, too, but I knew that would be difficult. If Grandfather said anything at all about Mrs. Lawson’s tumbling to her death, his eyes would be on me, and it could all begin again, because I didn’t know how to block out the windows in my face. I didn’t want to say anything that could get Simon into trouble and hurt his self-confidence.
“You’re either born with the ability to deceive or you learn it well from those who do it well around you,” Daddy had told me when he was questioning me about Mommy and Nattie during those early days. I wasn’t sure if he meant Mommy was teaching me how to be dishonest. It was almost impossible to lie to my father anyway.
When dinner began that night, I thought I would learn nothing new about Simon. Aunt Holly hadn’t mentioned anything, so I assumed that they had talked only about Simon’s condition. However, I was surprised that we had an additional guest at the table, Cornell Witmor, Grandfather’s attorney. He, as well as Franklin Butler, apparently had been at the meeting with Uncle Martin and Aunt Holly. They began, like most nights, talking business and politics. We ate and, like always, Aunt Holly, Uncle Martin, and I just listened. I did notice Uncle Martin and Aunt Holly were so quiet that they didn’t say a word to each other or raise their eyes from their food much.
After our dinner dishes were cleared and we were waiting for dessert, Grandfather stroked his mustache and then turned to me, clasping his hands and resting his elbows on the table. Everyone sat back. The way the others were all looking toward the ceiling, as if they didn’t want to hear what he was going to say and didn’t want to make eye contact with me, felt weird and made me even more nervous.
“Your cousin Simon has described something to his psychiatrist that is very disturbing for us all, Caroline. Fortunately, the doctor is someone I have assisted in building his practice and helped, as of yesterday, actually, to make good investments for him in the stock market. I am assuming that this will all be as much news to you as it has been to us, and of course, nothing said leaves this table.”
I don’t think I even blinked. Every part of me was frozen in place. Should I immediately begin denying? I couldn’t speak even if I wanted to be emphatic about it. When it came to looking into you, Grandfather Sutherland went deeper than my father.
“Simon revealed that he was very angry at Mrs. Lawson. I knew he wasn’t fond of her, but this turned different because of what happened to her.”
I just stared at him. Were my eyes even blinking?
“All he has claimed about it so far is that he was drinking and she caught him. She bawled him out and was threatening to tell me. The doctor prodded his memory, and Simon recalled marching up to her to try to convince her not to tell me anything. He admitted that he might have frightened her when he got too close to her. Because of Simon’s doctor’s carefully worded questions, he finally admitted that she pushed at him so hard, pressing her palms to his chest, that she caused herself to fall back on the stairway and lost her footing. After that, his memory disappears. Maybe conveniently.
“Since what he’s told his doctor is protected private information, the detectives will not be informed and brought back here, nor will they be permitted to question Simon any further. He was exuberant in his angry reaction to Mrs. Lawson but claims he was not lethal. Do you understand the difference?”
“Yes,” I said in a voice I could barely hear myself. “He didn’t deliberately push her back. She sort of bounced off him.”
Grandfather looked at Mr. Witmor and then at me, intensely again. “And you have nothing to add or correct about that?”
“No, Grandfather.”
“Then it remains an accident, and Simon continues on his path to recovery.”
He slammed his palm on the table. The plates and silverware jumped.
“Clara Jean,” he said. She was standing in the doorway. Servants at Sutherland had no ears until Grandfather permitted them. “We are looking forward to Mrs. Wilson’s apple pie crumble.”
“Yes, Mr. Sutherland,” she said, and hurried off.
I could feel Aunt Holly’s eyes on me. I was afraid to look at her, because now, more than anyone, even Dr. Kirkwell, she saw into my heart. Of course, I had more to add to what Simon had told his doctor. Mrs. Lawson had caught us together, with me naked beneath a towel and Simon slurping from a bottle of bourbon. He had charged out after her. My words would bring back the detectives. I swallowed them all back, practically choking on the thoughts, and drank some water.
Thankfully, the conversation returned to business and politics.
However, afterward, before she and Uncle Martin left, Aunt Holly came to my room. I was already there, sitting on my bed and gazing at the nearly packed new suitcases, almost in a stupor.
I looked up when she entered. She closed the door and leaned back against it.
“I don’t want you leaving for a new start carrying a heavy load of guilt with you, Caroline. Simon is a force unto himself. He’s my son, but I know what he’s capable of doing. If you want to know the truth, the truth is I am happy he’s suffering some mental anguish right now.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really. It means he is permitting his conscience some air to breathe. Even as a small child, he could rationalize and explain away something he did wrong. He was as good as a lawyer before the Supreme Court every time, too. However, in elementary school, way before we permitted him to begin homeschooling and acceleration, he hurt some of his classmates. We knew he wasn’t popular; he rarely was invited to birthday parties his classmates’ parents gave for them, and his teachers always made a point of telling us that he’d deliberately sit in the rear of the classroom and the cafeteria, as far away from the others as he could.
