"Sure, Karen. I'd like to introduce you to someone. This is Alice," Aunt Zipporah said, and my mother nodded at me, not so much with suspicion, I. thought, as resentment.
Did she think I had replaced her as Aunt Zipporah's best friend?
"I don't remember you painting, Karen," Zipporah said as we all sat on the grass.
My mother leaned back, propping herself on her hands, and closed her eyes to welcome the sunshine on her face. She had a wonderful
complexion, rich peach with not a wrinkle or blemish in sight.
We have the same mouth, I
thought, and for the first time in my life I considered the real possibility that I was pretty.
Her eyes suddenly opened and she turned to me. "How long have you lived here?" she asked me sharply. "All my life," I said.
She stared at me so long that I had to shift my eyes from hers and look to Aunt Zipporah for help.
"Alice paints, too, Karen."
"Oh? Yes, I think I recall you," she said. "Maybe. You sat in the back of the room in art class. You were shy. What do we call the girls who are shy, Zipporah?" she asked my aunt.
"Turtles."
"That's right. Turtles. They pull their heads back into their shells and hope the world will go away."
That was the way I was, I thought. She had no idea how right she was about me.
"Alice isn't shy anymore, Karen," Aunt Zipporah said. "That's why I could get her to come with me to see you."
"Oh, well, that's good. How do you like my estate?" she asked us. "I told you I would live in a mansion someday, didn't I? Remember? A mansion twice the size of the Doral House with ten times the grounds. And there are no ghosts here," she said. "They vacuum daily," she added and laughed.
Aunt Zipporah laughed, too.
I saw the way my mother was constantly sneaking glances at me, and I tried not to look back and frighten her off.
"How are your parents, Zipporah?"
"They're fine. Everyone's doing fine, Karen."
"Good. I like your parents. I know I told you a hundred times that I wish they were my parents." She sat forward abruptly. "What do you like to paint?" she asked me.
"Scenes in nature, animals, birds, things like that."
"Sometimes I paint those things," she said. "I'm doing something different this time."
I gazed toward her easel. "Can I look at your picture?"
She thought a moment, then nodded. "It's not done," she said when I stood up.
I walked over to the easel and looked at the canvas. My heart nearly stopped, and I gasped. Aunt Zipporah was looking at me. I brought my hand to my heart and stared.
"What is it, Alice?" she asked.
I shook my head.
"It's very nice," I said. "It's very good."
My mother rose and walked over to stand beside me. We both looked at the picture.
It was a picture of her standing by the window in the attic looking out, a picture very much like the last one I had done up there.
Aunt Zipporah joined us.
"That's interesting, Karen," she said.
My mother nodded. "I don't know why, but it just came to me. We've spent so much time up there, haven't we, Zipporah?"
"Yes."
I took a deep breath and said, "The girl in the picture looks like she wants to be outside."
"Yes," my mother said. "She does."
"She doesn't want to be a turtle anymore," I added. For a moment neither of them spoke, and then my mother laughed and Aunt Zipporah laughed. We all laughed.
Aunt Zipporah put her arm around my mother's shoulders and squeezed her and kissed her cheek.
"It's so good to see you, Karen."
"It's good to see you. And you, Alice," she said, suddenly reaching to take my hand. "You come over here and you tell me all about yourself."
She tugged for me to follow her back to the place on the lawn.
"Go on," she urged after we sat. "Tell me all the things you like and tell me all the things you hate," she said, scrunching up her nose. "Especially the zeros. We have lots of zeros in our school, right, Zipporah?"
"Right," Aunt Zipporah said, then she added, "why don't you two talk and get to know each other? I want to take a walk and look over the grounds. Is that all right, Karen?"
My mother looked at me and then back at her and nodded.
"Well?" she asked me. "Don't you want to talk about yourself?"
"Yes," I said. "If you want me to, if you'll listen." She laughed. "I have nowhere else to go," she said. "Neither do I," I told her.
And the journey back began.
Before we left the clinic that day, we did have lunch with my mother. She showed us her room and her other paintings, which were mainly scenes in nature and animals, much like the work I had done. She was even more buoyant, talking constantly and eager to show us everything she could, doing just what my father had described--making it seem as if the entire institution was devoted to her every wish and need. Interspersed with all that were her references to things she and my aunt Zipporah had done at school, the comments made as if they were still in high school. As Dr. Simons had told us, she didn't make any reference to any of the tragic events. When she made any mention of her mother, she made it casually, offhanded, almost an afterthought. Neither I nor Aunt Zipporah asked her if her mother had visited her.
Lila Mills, the head nurse who had come to tell us it was time for lunch, came to get my mother and take her to some therapy session. Her reluctance to leave us surprised Lila, but she was gently insistent, and after we promised to return very soon, my mother said good-bye.
"I hope you'll come back, too," she told me. "I will," I said. This was a promise I wasn't
Her face brightened even more. She started away, stopped and then returned to hug me.
Aunt Zipporah's eyes were ready to explode with tears, but she held back, and we both went to see Dr. Simons, who gave me the greatest gift of all.
First, we described our visit, especially my exchanges with my mother. When I told her about the painting and why I thought it was interesting, her face reflected great interest. She asked me questions about my life with my grandparents, deep, prodding questions that. I was reluctant to answer, but I could see from the expression on Aunt Zipporah's face that I should. After a while, however, I felt as if I was being treated as a patient. Dr. Simons could either see that or hear it in my voice.
"Forgive me for being so personal," she said, "but it's all part of the puzzle I' rn here to put together."
She leaned back in her chair and was silent for a few moments, clearly deciding whether or not to say what she was about to say.
"You're both so clearly tied to everything that happens to Karen, that has happened to her; that I have no trouble connecting the dots. I know as much as can be known about her youth, her relationship with her mother and with you, Mrs. James. I don't know all that much yet about her relationship with your brother, but I feel it's coming more and more.
"As you aptly put it when you described the painting to me, Alice, your mother is emerging from the attic. The first step is to want to, to look longingly at the outside world. It's terrifying for her."
"Just as it has been for me," I said.
She smiled. "Yes, I can understand." She pressed her fingertips together and leaned forward. "I have no evidence that would absolutely guarantee a change in any legal decision made about Karen, but it is my firm belief that she was indeed a victim of some sexual abuse and that her expanded fantasies, if you will, were part of her defense mechanisms to deal with it all and especially the dramatic, violent action she was forced to take. She was already someone who was comfortable in her own imaginary world. It wasn't all that difficult for her to continue and go even deeper and deeper until she was totally in that attic."
I felt the lightness come into my body, my heart race with excitement.
"Why didn't this all come out in the legal proceedings?" Aunt Zipporah asked. It was a question on the tip of my tongue as well.
Dr. Simons shrugged. "It's hard to second-guess another forensic psychiatrist. Maybe it wasn't possible to reach these conclusions that early on. Maybe it's because of the time that's passed and the intense and extended opportunities I've had to delve into it all that gave me the advantage. As I said, this is my conclusion from my sessions and psychiatric evaluations. I do intend to submit them. I can't tell you what the result might be.
"Karen still has a ways to go, but I'm
encouraged by what you've told me about your visit and what you've seen. Sometimes, it takes someone out of the box to see more clearly. Sometimes, we're all just too close. So thank you for that."
"No, thank you for sharing this with us," Aunt Zipporah told her.
Neither of us could speak for quite a while after we left for home that day. We were both so deeply entrenched in our own thoughts, our own personal recoveries. I could almost feel the dark cloud lift away from us both. I had dreamed and prayed for this day, this conclusion. There was no evil for me to inherit. I had no power or inclination to contaminate anyone. I was the echo of a scream my mother had voiced before I was born. It was time for that echo to die away.
It was time only for laughter and music.
Whatever guilt and burden my aunt had felt disappeared as well. She still felt she had hurt her parents with the secret she had kept from them, but she also felt less evil. She had never told me what really kept her from having her own child, but it wasn't too long after this first visit with my mother that she announced her pregnancy to my grandparents. We had decided to tell them everything, of course. My grandmother was at first frightened by it all, but in time she accepted everything and in fact accompanied us on one of our future visits with my mother. Each visit brought me closer and closer to her. I could feel 'the oncoming awareness, the revelation, and most important, the acceptance. It was imminent. It would be like being reborn.
In the meantime Duncan and I had a successful senior year. We both went out for the school play and won big parts. He was a much better student than I was and helped me with homework often. We were an item on and off but never committed to anything much more. He surprised his mother, as well as me, by deciding to apply to Michigan State and become an English major with the intention of eventually becoming a journalist. He would always write poetry, and he talked about his great novel to come.
Uncle Tyler gave him a part-time job at the cafe to help him earn money for college. He worked as a waiter, but he often used his culinary skills to fill in as a short-order cook, too. The cafe was busier than ever, and with our weekends working, our schoolwork and my frequent visits to see my mother, the year seemed to fly by. It was the happiest year of my life.
My grandparents visited as often as they could. I was reluctant to return, even for Thanksgiving, but I did. My grandfather decided to take us on a holiday during the Christmas recess, so I went with them to Florida, but during the spring break I remained at the cafe, working. It was a very busy time, because tourists were coming around since the weather was so much nicer.
In mid-June Aunt Zipporah gave birth to a girl she and Tyler decided to name Patience because, according to my aunt's doctor, the baby was two weeks late. Of course, everyone kidded them about it, but I thought it was a pretty name and quite clever.
A week before graduation, my father surprised me by calling to say he and Rachel were going to fly east to attend. They would come with my
grandparents. Rooms were booked for them at a nearby motel. When they arrived, I introduced Duncan to them, and they all got along well. My aunt and I talked about my mother with my father, while Rachel went on a shopping spree with my
grandmother, looking for graduation gifts for me.
He had great interest in all that we had to tell him. He explained to us why it had been and still was difficult for Rachel, but he also said she was accepting it more and they would soon be telling the twins the truth about me. He said it was Rachel's idea to start that revelation gradually but early enough for them eventually to completely understand as they grew older. My father said he realized that he would have a difficult burden explaining how and why it all had happened.
"You know, your kids always see you as invulnerable, a hero, perfect," he said.
Afterward, he and I spent some private time together. He knew I had decided to stay close to home my first college year and attend the State University of New York at New Paltz, but he surprised me by suggesting that I consider transferring to the University of Southern California after the first year. He said he and Rachel had discussed it and decided they would welcome me to their home and contribute to my college education. I told him I would keep it in mind. It was exciting to think about. I had already decided I wanted to go into psychology and do something in that field.
A few weeks after graduation, I returned to the Doral House with Aunt Zipporah to celebrate my grandfather's birthday. Despite all that had happened and was happening, I was still nervous about spending time there. After dinner and our singing "Happy Birthday" to him over his cake, I went up to the attic. It was strange, but when I looked at it now, it seemed so much smaller to me--even claustrophobic. I didn't want to stay there long and went back downstairs quickly.
My grandfather winked at me and suggested we take what used to be one of our famous walks while my aunt and my grandmother visited together.
We couldn't have had a better summer evening for the walk. The sharp, cool night air made the stars look even brighter, so that even though there was no moon, we could clearly see the old country road ahead of us.
"Are you going to show me the land you're going to buy and develop again, Grandpa?" I kidded.
"Well for your information, young lady," he said, "I did buy the land. With a group of investors," he added.
"I'm impressed," I said.
"You should be. Your grandfather is a real wheeler- dealer."
I laughed and we walked silently for a while. It really wasn't silence for me, however. Just being beside him, feeling his love and strength, spoke volumes to me. He was really what had made me feel safe here despite it all.
"So," he said, pausing and looking out at his potential housing development, "have you killed all your demons? Have you found what you were looking for by leaving here?"
"I think so, Grandpa. There's nothing to frighten me here anymore. A shadow is a shadow and nothing else."
"And the attic?"
"Is just an attic," I said.
"Good. Because I'm keeping the house," he said. "With all you grandchildren popping up, I'm going to need it."
"You were never afraid, were you, Grandpa?" I asked. "Afraid? Sure. Many times, but the trick is to make that fear work for you. I think that's what you did, Alice. You used it to make yourself stronger."
"Then I learned it from you," I said.
He was silent. The darkness hovered around us, simmering but staying back.
We were too bright.
We were lanterns who would lead those we loved for as long as the flame within us burned.
There was no greater gift to give.