Cutler 3 - Twilight's Child (19 page)

"I still find that difficult to believe," I responded. "I think I always will."

"I know," Bronson said, nodding. "How can a child ever understand why her mother would give her away? Perhaps, though, you will find it in your heart to forgive her someday."

I bit down on my lower lip and shifted my eyes. Numbly, I shook my head.

"Maybe it's because you are a man and you are so in love with her still that you can find it easy to forgive her for her selfishness. I can't make any promises," I said.

"All that I ask is you try," he replied. "Would you like some more sherry?" he asked, rising and going to the bottle.

"Yes, thank you," I said. He poured me a glass and gave himself another.

I waited until he sat down again.

"Tell me," I said, "how much of all this did Randolph know?"

"Laura Sue told him everything, but he refused to hear. Early on, he withdrew into his own world, but it was his mother more than anyone who drove him into it. I knew him well enough to see that he was very insecure and even ashamed that he wasn't living up to his mother's expectations. She punished him in little ways for his having married Laura Sue against her will. It was the only thing he had ever done in defiance, and she wouldn't forgive him for it.

"My feeling is that she made him feel less than a man, and that was the reason he became what he became. I don't think Mrs. Cutler minded. In fact, she was probably happy about what he turned out to be when it came to Laura Sue."

"What do you mean?" I asked, catching something hidden between the lines.

"Randolph still doted on Laura Sue, pretending as if they were still man and wife in every way. I think in his own way he still loved her very much, but he and Laura Sue had stopped sleeping together soon after his father had raped her," he said.

"Stopped sleeping together." I let the sherry warm my chest, and then I sat up. "But that can't be," I said, realizing the chain of events. "Clara Sue . . ."

"Is my child," he confessed.

Bronson sat back, exhausted from his revelations. His face was flushed from that and from the glasses of sherry he had drunk, one after the other, to fortify his courage. His story had left my mind in a turmoil. My heart was racing. I felt as if I were drowning in a sea of conflicting emotions. I hated my mother and I pitied her; I pitied Randolph but hated his weaknesses. I thought less of Bronson for permit-ting Mother to torment him so and keep him on a string all these years, yet I admired him for the loyalty and love he gave to his sister.

Most importantly and most tragically, I saw that there was always something keeping people from doing the right things, the things their hearts told them to do. Ironically, if Mother had been less self-centered, she might have married Bronson and had a wonderful life. She would have avoided the horror of living under the thumb of Grandmother Cutler.

"I'm tired," I said, breaking the deep silence that had fallen between us. "I'd better go home."

"Of course," he said, jumping up. "Let me have my driver bring up the car."

While he was gone, Bronson's confession reverberated in my mind. Clara Sue was his. Now I knew why there was something familiar in his mother's face in the portrait. I had seen resemblances to Clara Sue. Since we had different fathers and her father was not a Cutler, the cords of blood that tied us together weren't as thick as I had once thought. I found myself feeling grateful about that. She and I had such different personalities. I didn't think I was capable of being as hateful or as vicious and cruel, not that Bronson struck me as a father from whom she could have inherited such qualities.

Another irony that didn't slip past me involved Clara Sue and me. She would end up living with her real parents, but not knowing it; and I, because of the turn of events, had lived with people who were not my parents, and I didn't know it for most of my life. For both of us, family had been built on deception.

That was why I was so silent when Bronson, escorting me out of his house and to the car, turned to me to say, "I hope that now we can all be more like a family." I stared at him bleakly, as if he spoke of pipe dreams made of smoke. To me the concept of family had become mythical. It was like a fairy tale. What was it like having parents and brothers and sisters whom you loved and who loved you? What was it like caring about one another, remembering one another's birthdays and celebrating each achievement, each wonderful new thing each of you did? What was it like being in a home on a holiday like Thanksgiving and having a family gathered around a full table with everyone laughing and smiling and being thankful all were here?

"Dawn," he said, seizing my arm as I started to get into the limousine. I turned to him, and he riveted his pleading eyes on mine. "I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive us all our weaknesses and sins."

"It's not for me to forgive anyone for anything," I said. I lowered my eyes and then lifted them to meet his agonized gaze again. "Thank you," I said, "for trusting me with your story and caring enough to want my understanding."

He smiled, his blue eyes now gleaming.

"Good night," he said.

"Good night. The dinner was wonderful," I added. The driver started the engine and took me away. When I looked back, Bronson was still standing in front of his house, watching me go.

As we careened around the turns going down the hill from Bronson's beautiful home I could see the lighted windows in houses below. Inside, perhaps, families were gathered in their living rooms, talking or watching television or listening to music. The children had no doubts that they were with their parents. Again ironically, many of them probably wished they owned a glamorous and famous resort like Cutler's Cove. They thought their lives were boring and uneventful, and they longed for the excitement we had.

Yes, we lived in castles, but the moats that surrounded us were filled with lies and tears. The rich and the famous lived behind billboards; their houses were like movie sets, facades, glittering but empty. What person living what he considered a mediocre life would want to trade places with Bronson Alcott once he knew the truth about how the man had suffered?

Suddenly, looking out over the ocean and seeing the quarter moon peek through two soft white clouds, I became melancholy. I wished I could fall back through time and be a little girl again, the little girl who thought she was running home to her real mother when she cut her finger and needed love and attention. I wanted to burst through the front door of whatever poor and shabby cottage or apartment we were living in at the time and throw my arms around Momma Longchamp and feel her arms around me and her kisses on my hair and face. I wanted all the scratches and cuts and bumps to go away in seconds.

But they don't go away in seconds anymore. They linger in our hearts, I thought, because we have no one but ourselves to comfort us.

As we turned into the driveway and climbed toward the hotel I felt some of the gloom lift from my heart, for I knew inside that Jimmy and Christie were there for me. It was important—more important than ever, I thought—that we hold on to one another and love and cherish one another dearly.

The hotel was quiet. Most of the guests had gone to their rooms. Some lingered in the lobby, talking softly, and a few sat outside. I hurried up to our suite, stopping first to look in on Christie. She was fast asleep, her face turned. She still embraced her teddy bear. I fixed her blanket and kissed her cheek and then went in to tell Jimmy everything Bronson had revealed.

He listened attentively, shaking his head in amazement every once in a while. When I was finished I made him hold me tightly.

"Oh, it was terrible, Jimmy, terrible to sit there and listen to him describe how cruel and mean the people who were supposed to love one another had been to one another," I cried.

"Our lives won't be like that," he promised.

"Maybe there's a curse here, Jimmy. Maybe we won't be able to help ourselves," I said fearfully.

"The only curses here are the curses people make for themselves," he said.

"Jimmy," I said, pulling back from him, "I want us to have our baby right away."

He didn't answer, and I saw that darkness around his eyes that always suggested something sad.

"What is it; jimmy? Why doesn't that make you happy?" I asked.

"It makes me happy. It's just"—he stared at me a moment—"I got a letter from Daddy yesterday."

"Daddy Longchamp? Why didn't you say so? What did he say? Is he coming to see us?" Jimmy shook his head. "What is it, Jimmy?"

"Edwina had a miscarriage," he said. "I didn't want to tell you because of all that was happening here. She's all right, but they were both upset."

"And so you're afraid of my becoming pregnant now?" I asked.

"It's not that. You're so involved with what you're doing that you barely have time for Christie and me at the moment."

"Having our baby is more important than anything else I'm doing."

Jimmy lay back against his pillow and watched as I got undressed. Naked, I crawled in beside him and cuddled up against him, feeling his desire for me quickly stir. Even so, he remained a bit hesitant.

"Don't do this because you're feeling gloomy, Dawn," he warned. "There should never be any regrets."

"There never will be," I swore, and then I brought my lips to his and kissed him long and hard, making my embrace more and more demanding until whatever reluctance he had in him evaporated under the heat of my passion. He pressed on lovingly. As he drove me higher and higher, the despondency that had invaded my heart began to retreat. I turned to look out the window and saw that quarter moon slip past the clouds and blink brightly against the inky sky.

The past can't hurt us, 1 thought, if we build a fortress out of our love.

Mother did not emerge from her suite the next morning, nor did she come out for lunch or go anywhere. Jimmy had told me she had cried softly in the hotel limousine all the way back to the hotel once they had left Bronson's house. Bronson had tried to paint a different picture of her for me; he painted a portrait of a little girl to whom her father barely paid attention, a little girl who grew up to become a beautiful but fragile and insecure person, trapping herself in a marriage that proved horrifying. I knew that much of his description evolved from his desperate and undying love for her, and that she wasn't the lily-white victim he had portrayed her to have been; but I was also haunted by the fear that I was becoming too hard and too cold.

Tired of hating and fighting, I got myself to go in to see her.

She was lying in bed, looking much like she used to look before my wedding and Randolph's passing: weak and despondent. The tray of food Mrs. Boston had brought in to her lay on the nightstand, barely touched. She had her eyes closed, her head sunk in the large pillow, her hair falling around her. I was surprised to see that she hadn't put on any makeup.

"What's wrong with you today, Mother?" I began. She let her eyelids flutter open and stared at the ceiling for a moment before responding.

"I'm just so tired of arguments," she said. "So tired of hateful words. It's made me sick. I was never a very strong person to begin with, Dawn," she added, lifting her head and sliding up slowly, "and years and years of turmoil have taken their toll. I feel like surrendering to Father Time and his despicable companion, Age. Let what will be, be," she said, and she let her head fall back on the pillow again.

Her performance brought a smile to my face, but I turned quickly to hide it.

"But Mother," I said, "what about your plans to marry Bronson and start a wonderful new life? Bronson won't want to marry a wrinkled-up, gray-haired hag, will he?" I teased.

"Bronson won't marry me if you oppose it and make it seem like another scandal," she said sadly, with funereal eyes. "He says we must all like one another or it won't work."

"I'm not opposing it," I said. "I'm not one to cast stones. If the two of you want to get married, get married," I said, and at my words she lit up like a Christmas tree.

"Oh, Dawn, do you mean that? Do you really? That's wonderful," she cried, sitting up again.

"Are you going to have a wedding here, too?" I asked, wondering how it could all be planned in a week's time.

"Oh, no, no. We're past that sort of thing. We're going to New York to be married by a supreme court judge and then see dozens and dozens of Broadway shows!" she exclaimed. She reached for the food tray and brought it to her bed table. "I've already bought an entire new wardrobe for the occasion," she continued, pecking away at her salad. "That's what I've been doing afternoons these past few weeks."

"So you knew that far back?" I asked.

"What? Oh. Well, I always thought . . . yes," she confessed, unable to think of an excuse quickly, "I did. I know it doesn't sound nice, but what was the point in deceiving ourselves and pretending something we knew would happen wouldn't? We knew what we wanted and what we were going to do eventually. I wanted to prepare and be ready."

"I see. Have you told Clara Sue anything?" I asked, wondering if that might be another reason why Clara Sue had refused to come home for the summer. Mother shifted her eyes back to the food quickly.