Amber House: Neverwas (13 page)

so obviously wished were there. Responsibility. Maturity.

I smiled at my self-betrayal — maybe even my subconscious-

ness agreed that I needed to grow up.

N

o51

At eight o’clock, Mom, Maggie, Sam, and I piled in the car and

set off for an all-day trip to Baltimore. Mom had a long list of

errands that included everything from taking care of stuff for

the exhibit to helping with a “Santa” party for some of the young

patients at Johns Hopkins. Sam was lucking out — he was meet-

ing up with Dad for part of the day and then heading to the

Anchor Bay Aquarium for the rest. I was stuck following Mom

around the entire time.

Our first stop was the gallery where Mom was dropping off a

bunch of old yellowed photos to be mounted. They’d been taken

by her grandmother’s grandmother, Maeve McCallister, in the

last half of the 1800s.

Near the Old Harbor, in the part of Baltimore known as Fell’s

Point, we drove down a narrow cobblestone street lined with

nineteenth-century brick commercial buildings. The area had

been transformed into one of those ultra-hip art districts:

antiques shop next to café next to art gallery. Mom parked in

front of a place so understated it didn’t even have a name, just a

large three-digit number in brushed stainless steel. Which I fig-

ured was the owner’s way of saying, “If you don’t know who we

are already, you don’t belong inside.”

A tall slim man in casual but expensive clothes greeted Mom

at the door, gave her many air kisses, handed her an espresso in

a tiny cup, and gushed over her box full of Maeve’s photos. “I am

so honored to have the chance to do this for you, Anne —

McCallister was such an important pioneer in photorealism.” He

led her to an interior office. “You
must
see the shipment of paintings I just got in,” he told her. Sammy and I followed along,

apparently invisible.

My mother gasped as she walked through the door. “Oh,

Oskar, a Klimt!” The painting she’d fixated on was pretty: pas-

tel colors with lots of gold and these sort of Byzantine geometric

things worked in all over. The rest of the stuff was “modern” and

52 O

beyond my ability to appreciate, but my mother was still gush-

ing. “Pechstein. Dix. Schiele. Beckmann. Where in the world

did you find these? So many banned artists!”

I knew from my mother that the Nazi government had a long-

standing policy of destroying the works of Jewish artists and

anyone else they found “depraved” or “subversive.” The life’s

work of many of her favorite painters, guys with names like

Picasso and Braque and Miró, mainly existed only in photo-

graphic reproductions.

“Who knows how they found their way off the continent?”

Oskar said. “But a private collector in New York offered them to

me. He needs to liquidate, raise funds.”

“Send me your listing when you have them priced. I’m very

interested.”

N

Our next stop was Johns Hopkins. We met Dad in the lobby just

as a tour guide was concluding her biography of the hospital’s

founder: “We are all the beneficiaries of the hardships Mr.

Hopkins endured and surmounted. In some sense, we are the

children he and his beloved Elizabeth never had.”

The tour group headed up the stairs while we turned down

the hall, heading for another building. “It’s kind of crummy

when you think about it that way,” I commented.

“What?” Mom said.

“Well, that Johns Hopkins had to suffer so the rest of us could

benefit.”

“That’s what makes someone a hero,” my father said. “Sum-

moning up the strength to sacrifice for somebody else.”

I thought to myself that it kind of sucked to be a hero.

Dad and Sam went off “in search of trouble,” as Mom, Maggie,

and I found our way to the hospital wing named after Gramma:

o53

the Warren Neurological Research Clinic. Part of the work done

there was studying and providing therapy for children who had

neurological abnormalities. Some of them were like Maggie and

my little brother — autistic — except a little more trapped

inside themselves by their odd neurological wiring.

Gramma had both the ability and the compulsion to make

the kind of enormous charitable donation it took to build this

facility because of two of our seafaring ancestors — a man

named Dobson who’d built a fortune in the slave trade, and his

son-in-law, the Captain, who’d also dabbled in slaving but

went on to accrue even greater wealth and power through

positions of influence in the colonial government. “Ability,”

because Gramma had inherited a ton of money; “compulsion,”

because she’d inherited a ton of guilt along with it. This research

facility was just one of her causes, all of which
we
had now inherited.

Thus, the reason for our presence there — to attend the

unit’s holiday party for its youngest patients. Senator and Mrs.

Hathaway were also making an appearance.

I wasn’t surprised to see Richard there too. He was clearly a

valuable part of the whole Hathaway package. I watched him

work with the kids, getting down on the floor with them, help-

ing them open packages and find something to enjoy inside.

Which wasn’t always easy with these kids — they didn’t neces-

sarily “get” the intended purpose of a toy.

He was something of a mystery to me. I really didn’t expect

extremely good-looking people to be generous and empathetic —

it was too easy for them to get by on charm. But Richard seemed

willing to go the distance. I couldn’t imagine any guy more per-

fect. So why did it feel like I was always waiting to discover his

secret flaw?

Near the end, he pulled me aside to ask me if I wanted to

drive back to Severna with him. I had to shake my head — the

54 O

errands weren’t done yet. “Mom and I need dresses for the New

Year’s Eve gala.”

He shook his head. “Come on, Parsons, don’t tell me your

mom still helps you pick out your clothes?”

I refused to let him ruffle me. “Nah, Hathaway, I help her pick

out hers.”

He laughed and excused himself — his father’s aide had beck-

oned. I was left staring up at the brass letters that declared this

building the F. C. Warren Research Facility. I was confused.

“F. C.?” I asked out loud.

And was answered by a silky female voice, “Fiona Campbell.”

Claire Hathaway had snuck up behind me.

“But I thought Gramma built it, after Maggie’s coma.”

“Oh, no,” she said. “The building’s several decades older than

Maggie. It seems Fiona was quite interested in neurological

anomalies.” Claire gave me her usual small smile.

What kind of “anomalies” had my great-grandmother been interested
in?
I wondered.

“Did you know she was treated here? Well, not ‘here’ exactly,”

she amended. “She had the building that stood here before this one

razed to the ground, and most of the staff fired, as a precondition

to the very generous endowment that made this facility possible.”

“I guess,” I said, “she
really
didn’t like the way they’d treated her.”

Claire rewarded me with a small musical laugh. “I guess she

really didn’t,” she agreed, “and who could blame her? Psychiatric

medicine was still so barbaric in the thirties. Electro-shock

treatment. Lobotomies. Primitive drugs. I’m under the impres-

sion Fiona was given a little helping of everything.”

The girl in my dream
, I thought,
who’d pleaded for her father’s belief.

“She must have been an amazing woman, don’t you think?”

Claire said. “After all she suffered, she still had enough gray

matter left to build this hospital wing. I never met her myself,

but my father knew her. He said she was very beautiful and

o55

remarkably cogent for someone reputed to be completely out of

her mind.”

I couldn’t stop myself from asking, “Why did people

think that?”

“She seemed to have been somewhat delusional,” Claire said.

“Maintained all her life that time had” — she shaped her fingers

into little air quotes — “ ‘gone wrong’. She was also obsessed

with a purported relative who apparently didn’t actually exist.”

Claire pointed to a small plaque below the brass letters: “In

memoriam: A. M.”

“Who was A. M.?” I blurted.

Claire lifted her eyebrows. “Who knows?”

“Sarah?” My mother’s voice. It held a climbing note of con-

cern. As if she suspected Claire was dishing gossip about Mom’s

grandmother. “Time to go, honey.”

I said to Claire, to excuse myself, “Nice talking to you.”

“Yes,” she agreed with her same little smile, “very nice.”

I left to trail after Mom and Maggie to the year’s last board

meeting for Gramma’s foundation.
Or was it Fiona’s?
Which was now Mom and Maggie’s foundation. And was one day expected

to be
mine
. Whether I wanted it or not.

N

The head of the board, Mrs. Abbot, seemed pretty anxious to

settle the question of who was going to be in charge now that

Gramma was gone. “We worked so long and intimately with

Mrs. McGuiness, you can rest assured that we are doing every-

thing possible — all that she wished — for the patients of her

foundation.”

“Students,” Maggie said.

The woman turned, a condescending smile on her lips.

“What, dear?”

56 O

“Students,” Maggie repeated. “The children we help are not

sick. They are not patients.”

Mrs. Abbot widened her eyes and said tolerantly, “Isn’t that

just a question of semantics?”

My mother spoke up then. Firmly. “I think my sister is mak-

ing a very important distinction. Our clients are not ill and not

in need of medical care. They are students learning skills that

will help them cope with the world. I think that shift in atti-

tude will be one of the things my sister and I bring to this

foundation.”

She’d surprised both me
and
Mrs. Abbot. I didn’t know Mom

could be so calm and polished. And implacable. I understood she

had just gently let Mrs. Abbot know
exactly
who was going to be in charge now that Gramma was gone.

N

Maggie slipped away to find Sammy then, for their trip to the

aquarium down by the harbor. Mom delivered herself of several

parting bits of advice before she let her little sister escape, as if Maggie hadn’t traveled alone to a half-dozen different countries.

But Maggie accepted them all with a smile. I wished I was going

with her. But Mom and I headed downtown to Stewart’s

Department Store. A local business, but similar enough to what

I was used to in the Northwest for me to hope to find something

to wear to the gala.

We took a copper-and-glass elevator up to the ladies’ depart-

ment and made a beeline for the formal wear. A sales associate

materialized when it became clear my mother and I were brows-

ing through the selection of designer gowns. She guided my

mother from one option to another — lots of cinched-waist,

corset-requiring satin numbers. But then I noticed a familiar-

looking silhouette. A lipstick-red chiffon creation that swept

o57

down in clean curving lines to the floor. More fitted in front,

fuller in back, strapless with a heart bodice.

“Is that a Marsden?” I asked the clerk.

“You have an excellent eye, miss. That dress is one of our

newest arrivals. Imported.”

Yep, I thought, I knew my Marsdens — the fluid blend of

vintage and modern, the mind-boggling attention to minuscule

detail. Her designs regularly graced Astorian red carpets and

showed up in our magazines. And they reflected our current

trends, no corset required.

“I’ll take that,” I said.

My mother made an involuntary movement, as though she

wanted to physically stand between me and the dress. “Don’t

you worry . . . you’ll get cold?”

My mother’s code for too much shoulder and décolletage. I

just smiled innocently and opted to take her literally. “I’ll be

fine. I saw a velvet cloak when we walked in, in a crimson that

will go great with this. It’ll be perfect.”

My mother knew not to argue. When it came to clothes, I was

every bit as opinionated and stubborn as she.

N

We picked up Maggie and Sam at a café near the aquarium. It

was dark when we set off home. The light rain-become-snow

that had been falling since we arrived in Maryland was dusting

the windshield with white feathers. We stopped at an intersec-

tion in a worn-out neighborhood and saw the flashing lights of

several police cars across the way.

I leaned forward to see what was going on, but my mother put

up her hand. “Don’t look.” Which of course made me try even

harder.

The police were clustered around a black man on the ground.

58 O

One officer seemed about to hit him with his night stick. But

something he saw stopped him.

Materializing out of the darkness, appearing one by one at the

edges of the red-blue pool of light, people came to stand witness