Cutler 3 - Twilight's Child (7 page)

"Oh, dear," she said quickly, "I didn't realize how getting dressed to look decent and visiting with someone would tire me. I'm afraid I have to take a little rest, Dawn." She turned to go into her bedroom.

"Mother, wait. I came up here to see you for a reason," I said. She paused, a look of impatience on her face.

"What is it now, Dawn?" she huffed.

"It's Randolph. He doesn't look very good to me, and he's doing very strange things." I told her what had transpired in the laundry. She shook her head.

"There's nothing new about all that," she said. "Randolph is Randolph," she added, as if that explained it forever.

"But don't you think he's worse? I mean, he's no longer concerned about his appearance, and—"

"Oh, Dawn, he'll snap out of it. It's just his way of mourning the death of his precious mother. Please, I have my own health to worry about these days."

"Yes," I said, "but yours appears to return on demand," I added caustically.

"I'm too tired for this," she replied. "Much too tired." She continued into her bedroom and shut the door quickly. I left and went to my room, where I found Mrs. Boston rocking Christie in her arms and singing a lullaby. The sight made me smile.

"Oh, Dawn," she said when she realized I was standing and watching her. "I was just putting her back to sleep."

"Thank you, Mrs. Boston. I know you have so much of your own work to do without adding mine."

"Oh, I don't consider this work, Dawn," she said, carefully placing Christie back in her cradle. "Has your mother's guest gone yet?" she asked.

"Yes, he just left," I said, catching some disapproval in her voice and eyes. "Do you know him, Mrs. Boston?"

"Everyone knows Mr. Alcott. At one time, a long time ago," she said, "he was a frequent visitor at the hotel."

"Is that right?"

"Yes. Your mother had many gentleman callers," she said, "but he was the only one who came around after she married Randolph."

"Isn't he married himself?" I asked. Now that I recalled, I hadn't seen a wedding ring on his finger.

"Oh, no. He's still one of the most eligible bachelors in Cutler's Cove."

"I wonder why he never married. He's a very handsome man," I said. Mrs. Boston had that look on her face that told me she knew the gossip. "Do you know why?"

She shrugged. "You know how it is around the hotel—people talk."

"And what do they say, Mrs. Boston?" I pursued.

"That your mother broke his heart so bad, he couldn't love anyone else if he wanted to. But that's enough of this idle chatter," she added quickly, pulling her shoulders back. "I do have work waiting."

"Mrs. Boston," I called as she started toward the doorway. She turned. "When did Mr. Alcott stop being a frequent visitor?" She tightened her lips as if she wasn't going to add any fuel to the fire.

"Right after you were born and stolen away," she said. "But that don't mean they stopped seeing each other," she added, and then she bit down on her lower lip as if to stop a runaway mouth. "Now don't make me into some gossip monger and ask me anymore." She pivoted before I could and was gone, leaving all sorts of questions dangling in my mind.

3

DURING THE MONTHS THAT FOLLOWED, CHRISTIE GREW RAPIDLY. The features of her tiny face became more and more distinct, as did her personality. She continued being a contented, happy baby who cried only to let us know her diaper was wet or that she was hungry, but she wasn't one who craved a great deal of attention and had to be doted upon, even though everyone in the hotel enjoyed doing so. Whenever I brought her down with me the receptionists, the chambermaids, even the dining room staff were drawn to her, eager to hold her or pinch her plump cheeks. She would smile and pummel their faces gently with her tiny pink fists.

Her curiosity and remarkable perception kept her occupied. There was nothing she looked at that didn't attract her interest. She could be content sitting for hours turning a toy in her hands, tasting it, testing its firmness and tracing its shape with the tips of her fingers. Whatever she reached, she explored, and when something made her laugh she slapped her hands together and widened her eyes, revealing a joy of life that made everyone around her feel good. On the grayest of days Christie brought sunshine and warmth.

When I sat her in my lap she would inevitably explore my face with her fingers, touching my nose, my lips and occasionally going "Ooooh." If I smiled, she smiled. If I stopped to gently chastise her, she would grow serious and always listen. Often I would play peekaboo with her, lowering the blanket to reveal my hair and forehead. But she would laugh only when she saw my eyes. Then she would explode in delight.

By the time she was nine months old her hair had grown down to the base of her neck, and I could comb and brush it. She was already very feminine, a little lady, eager to sit quietly to have her hair brushed, happy to be bathed, and attracted to any affection or loving caress. Whether it was I or Mrs. Boston who sang to her, she would lie quietly and listen intently, her eyes so still, we both felt she had already memorized our songs and was waiting to hear the parts she knew would come.

Any musical expression interested her, whether it be our singing or the radio and records. Crib toys that played tunes were her favorites, and if she cried for anything to be done, other than to be fed or changed, it was to have me pull the cords that set the toys tinkling. Everyone knew she had a propensity for music, and on her first birthday she was flooded with picture books that had built-in music boxes, windup toys that played children's songs, recorders and a toy piano for her to play. That was her favorite. She was already fascinated with her ability to produce melodic sounds.

In the beginning I tried to look after Christie and learn about the hotel business every day, but as it drew closer to spring and the business and activity increased for the hotel, I decided I needed help with her. I found out that Sissy, the young black girl who had been my chambermaid partner when I had first come to the hotel years ago, was in need of employment again. Grandmother Cutler had fired her for helping me find Mrs. Dalton, the woman who had taken care of me when I was born.

Mrs. Boston knew Sissy and her mother very well, and she thought Sissy would be ideal as a mother's helper. Sissy was overwhelmed with the changes that had come about for me since she and I had last seen each other. She didn't look much different from that day. We sat and talked for a while, reminiscing. She told me Mrs. Dalton had passed away.

"She was a very sick woman when I met her," I said. Sissy nodded sadly. "I was very sorry to hear that Grandmother Cutler had punished you for helping me, Sissy. I hope it didn't create too much hardship for you and your mother."

"No, we've been all right. I worked in a department store for a while, and that's where I met Clarence Potter."

Sissy explained that she and Clarence were practically engaged, and as soon as they had both saved up enough money they would get married.

"But I'd love to help take care of Christie until then," she emphasized.

Christie took right to her. Sissy was patient and gentle and almost as thrilled with every new thing Christie did as I was. She couldn't wait to come down to the office to tell me Christie had stood up and taken a step, and she was claiming that Christie said her own name when she was only eleven months old. Christie was precocious and did develop faster than normal babies. She was barely over thirteen months when I distinctly heard her say, "Momma."

As soon as I heard her pronounce "Momma" with some clarity I began to teach her other words, and everyone who heard her utter the syllables remarked at how brilliant she was. One of the words I wanted her to be able to pronounce was "Daddy." I was hoping that when Jimmy pulled his next leave and came to the hotel, she would greet him with it.

Not a week went by that Jimmy didn't call, or write when he wasn't able to get to a phone. My letters to him were volumes. I filled page after page, first describing all the things Christie had done, and then I described my activities at the hotel. I'm sure I bored him to death with my details concerning accounts and purchase orders and meetings with Mr. Dorfman, but Jimmy never complained.

"Everyone here's jealous of the mail I receive," he told me over the phone. "Some guys get nothing from their families."

Jimmy had tried to return on leave a number of times, but something always came up that kept him away. Finally he was able to get a weekend free. What he didn't tell me until he was about to leave again was that he had volunteered for a final six months of duty to be spent in Panama, guarding the canal.

"The deal is that I can get discharged six weeks earlier than I'm scheduled if I do this, so I figured it was worth it," he said. He kissed my trembling chin. "That means we'll be married six weeks earlier, you know. Aren't you happy about that?"

"I am, Jimmy," I said. "But I don't like the idea of your being so far away again."

"Well . . . you're going to be so busy now. Time will pass quickly for both of us. Anyway, we can make definite plans, wedding plans," he pointed out.

I knew he was right, and we did have a wonderful weekend together. The hotel had two sailboats and a motorboat down at the dock, and we went motorboating. It was nearly summer, so it was already very warm. We anchored the boat a mile or so offshore, and I went swimming while Jimmy did some fishing. Mrs. Boston had packed a picnic basket for us. We stayed out all day and watched the sun begin to fall below the horizon, making the sky orange and turning the ocean into a dreamy dark blue. He and I sat in the boat with his arm around me, and we just let the waves rock us soothingly as we gazed back at the shore. The Cutler's Cove Hotel was visible on the hill overlooking the sea.

"It's very beautiful here," Jimmy said. "I'm sure we're going to be happy. That is," he warned, "if you don't turn into one of those crazy businesswomen who work, work, work all the time. I've heard about them, and Grandmother Cutler was like that, from what I've learned."

"I'll never be like that, Jimmy."

"Yeah, you promise now," Jimmy said, "but I can see in just the short time I've been here watching you around the hotel—signing this, talking to some department head about that, listening to this one complain and that one—that you like it already."

"I'm just trying to learn everything as quickly as I can, Jimmy. You saw Randolph and how terribly distracted he is.

He doesn't do anything to help run the hotel, not really. It's fallen on Mr. Dorfman, Mr. Updike and me," I explained. "But I'll always have time for you."

"Don't make promises you can't keep," he admonished. "I won't. Jimmy, you're scaring me. Now stop it," I said. He laughed and kissed the tip of my nose.

"All right. We'll take it as it comes, Mrs. Longchamp," he said. I smiled at the sound of that, and we talked about our wedding and about our honeymoon. Jimmy wanted us to go to Cape Cod.

"It will be nice at that time of the year, spring, and I remember how Daddy used to talk about going up there all the time," Jimmy said.

"He talked about going to a lot of places, Jimmy," I reminded him. Daddy Longchamp was full of dreams in those days, dreams and hopes.

"I know, but this one was kind of like the magical place for him. Well, he and Momma never got there, but we will. Okay?"

"Yes, Jimmy. I can't wait."

And I couldn't, but I buried myself in work, and time did pass more quickly. That summer both Philip and Clara Sue went abroad on student programs. I was glad Clara Sue wasn't around; I could never forgive her for what she had done with Christie. I let it be known that I thought it had been cruel and sick. Of course, she continued to deny she had done it. Whenever she did return to the hotel for a weekend the following fall, she didn't miss an opportunity to mock my upcoming marriage to Jimmy.

"Is he going to get married in his uniform?" she taunted one day, "and say 'Yes, sir' instead of 'I do'?"

One of her favorite things was to belittle my engagement ring. "It looks like a piece of glass," she would say, "but I'm sure Jimbo thought he was buying a diamond."

"Don't you dare call him Jimbo," I flared, my eyes full of fury. She would just throw her hair over her shoulders, laugh and saunter away, satisfied she had gotten a rise out of me.

I thought she grew meaner and meaner with each passing day, and I found it hard to accept that we shared any blood at all. True, we had similar hair color and eyes, and there were characteristics in both our faces that resembled Mother's facial features, but our personalities were like night and day. And Clara Sue continued battling her weight. Though her figure was fuller and more voluptuous than mine, if she wasn't careful, she put on extra pounds. She had no self-control when it came to sweets and was constantly on a diet. She never lacked interest from the opposite sex, and because of her increasingly promiscuous behavior—so I heard—she had a following of boys at school.

Philip rarely came home. He was doing exceedingly well at college, making the dean's list, becoming president of his fraternity and captain of his rowing team. Occasionally, when Mother decided to act like a mother, she would show me and Mrs. Boston some of the clippings about him in the college newspaper.

Neither Philip nor Clara Sue seemed concerned or interested in their father's increasingly bizarre behavior and physical degeneration. I could tell that they both viewed him as an embarrassment. I tried bringing him out of his depression by asking him to do real work from time to time and bringing-him real problems, but he rarely completed any task, and eventually someone else had to do it.

The only time he seemed to snap out of the doldrums was when Sissy or I brought Christie around to see him. He would permit her to crawl around his cluttered office and touch everything. By the time she was fourteen months old she was picking things up and holding them out, saying, "Waa?" We all knew that meant she was asking, "What is this?" Randolph had great patience for her. I realized she was providing him the only respite in his otherwise dark and dreary day. He would answer every time. She could spend hours in his office questioning him about every single item, from a desk weight to a small baseball trophy he had won in high school. He would sit there and talk to her as if she were twenty years old, explaining the history behind everything, and Christie would stare at him, wide-eyed, her body still, listening as if she understood.

Mr. Dorfman had been right about the hotel running itself. It was as if Grandmother Cutler had tossed a ball into space and it continued to fly under that initial momentum. Of course, guest after guest pulled me aside to tell me how much he or she missed her. I would have to pretend I did, too. What did interest and fascinate me were some of the stories the old-timers told about her. Some of these guests went back thirty years or more at the hotel.

The woman they described was clearly a different person. Their descriptions were filled with adjectives like "warm" and "loving." Everyone talked about how she made that extra effort to make him or her feel at home. One elderly lady told me that coming to Cutler's Cove was like "visiting with my own family." How could she have put on one face with these people and another, drastically different face with me and with Mother? I wondered.

Despite my distaste for her, I couldn't help being intrigued, and I would often spend hours thumbing through papers in the file cabinets, reading letters from guests and copies of letters she had sent to guests, searching for clues, for an understanding of the woman who loomed so hatefully in my mind even now, nearly two years after her passing.

No one except Randolph—not even Mrs. Boston—had gone into Grandmother Cutler's room upstairs in the family section of the hotel after her death. Her things remained just as they had been the day she had died—her clothes still hung in the closets, her jewelry was still in the jewelry cases, her perfumes and powders were still on her vanity table. I never passed her closed doorway without getting a chilling feeling, and I couldn't help but want to go in and look at her possessions. It was like being fascinated with the devil. I resisted the temptation for as long as I could, and then one day I tried the door impulsively and was surprised to discover it was locked. When I asked Mrs. Boston about it, she told me it was what Randolph wanted.

"Only he has the key," she said, "which is fine with me. I don't fancy going in there," she added, and she shook her body as if just talking about Grandmother Cutler's old room filled her with bad feelings.

I left it at that. I had too many other concerns now that I was forced to take on more and more responsibility in the running of the hotel. The staff heads grew more confident in me, too, and came to me more often with their problems and questions. One day Mr. Dorfman came into my office purposely to compliment me for how well I had taken on my duties.