Cutler 3 - Twilight's Child (23 page)

So much of the time we lived like two orphans, and orphans have less time to be children. It's as if some strange adult, someone with a dark face, takes our hands and makes us run faster, pulls us along and then suddenly lets go and leaves us dangling, wandering, searching for our identities, hungering for a place to call home. I wondered if we would ever find it.

All I could do was hope that Jimmy was right. We had been through so many storms, and we had always managed to find a rainbow waiting.

Where was the rainbow waiting now?

PART TWO

9

DESPITE MY HOPES AND EXPECTATIONS, THE RECUPERATION FROM my miscarriage took months and months. Even though Dr. Lester assured me I was recovered physically, I was continually tired and listless. Even after I had become pregnant, I was used to working an endless stream of hours without so much as pausing to go to the bathroom, but now I found a mere hour or-so seemed to exhaust me. I had to retreat to take frequent naps. Sometimes I would just lie there with my eyes open, wondering and dreaming about the baby I had lost.

Jimmy tried to get me to take a winter vacation. He wanted to go fishing in the Florida Keys, but I kept postponing it until he finally gave up.

"You're behaving like a bear in hibernation," he told me. I did welcome the gray, cold days because they drove me to sleep, and sleep seemed to provide the only hours of relief.

Nothing excited me, not even Jimmy's plans for our house. I tried to show interest, but he took one look at my face as he explained the architectural drawings and saw that I wasn't really listening. I knew he had deliberately thrown himself into this project soon after my miscarriage in the hope that it would plant new seeds of happiness and joy in the garden of our marriage. He was trying so hard, every way he could, to pull me out of the doldrums.

Finally, one spring afternoon when he came up to our room and found me staring blankly up at the ceiling, he exploded. I hadn't seen him in this sort of a rage since our early days when Daddy Longchamp would rip us abruptly out of one place to speed us through the night to another, making us leave treasured possessions and new friends behind.

Jimmy threw up his hands and almost made me jump out of my skin with his outburst.

"This can't go on, Dawn!" he exclaimed. He paced in front of me, pounding his feet down so hard, the whole room shook. "You're letting everything get the best of you. Everyone's noticed it and is upset. It's even affecting Christie."

"I'm sorry, Jimmy," I said. My tears began to rise against the floodgates, threatening to overflow and send torrents down my cheeks.

"It's not enough to apologize, to lie there day after day, night after night, for months and months, feeling sorry for yourself. A terrible thing has happened, I know. I hate that it has happened, but we can't change that now. We've got to go on and build anew," he lectured.

"I've spoken repeatedly to the doctor, and he assures me there's no physical reason for you to be this way," he added. "What you've been doing," he fumed, "is letting Clara Sue win, giving her the satisfaction of knowing she's succeeded in destroying you, and in destroying you, she's destroyed us." He flopped into a chair, lowered his head to his chest and folded his hands in his lap, exhausted.

I couldn't stand to see Jimmy so unhappy, looking so beaten down. I hated myself for doing this to him. He had been so patient and loving and understanding, but even he had limited tolerance. For the first time I realized that I could very well drive him away from me. What was I doing? I had to get hold of myself.

"Oh, Jimmy, I'm sorry," I repeated, sitting up. "I don't mean to be this way. Really, I don't. But every time I try to snap out of it a dark gray cloud sweeps in and makes me feel as if I will live under stormy skies forever."

"Dawn, you're beginning to sound and act more and more like your mother," he replied. "Is that what you want to happen to you? Do you want to become that sort of invalid, just lying around all day and night moaning and groaning about how hard life has been to you?

"Well, it has been hard, and it might even be harder before we're through, but we're still very young, and we've got to be strong and do the best we can to overcome every defeat. What about Christie? What about our new baby when he or she finally comes? What about each other?" he pleaded, his eyes filled with tears.

I swallowed mine back and bit down on my lower lip. Then I nodded.

"You're right, Jimmy. I am being like Mother, self-centered, self-pitying. It's not fair to you," I confessed.

"Not just me," he corrected quickly. "It's not fair to yourself, either. Now I insist," he said, rising, "that you get yourself up from that bed and follow me outside."

"Outside?"

"I'm about to break ground for our new home," he announced, “and that requires some celebration."

"You're about to break ground?" I asked incredulously. All this was going on around me, and I hadn't even noticed. Before the miscarriage I had gotten so a doorknob wasn't changed on a room without my knowing about it.

"Yes. I rushed things along as soon as the warm weather permitted," he admitted. "I want us to be living in our own home by this summer season. I've come to the conclusion that you might have been right about our lives in the hotel. Not that I believe in ghosts and all that sort of thing," he added quickly, waving the idea away. "But I do believe that being in these same surroundings day and night might be taking its toll. Grandmother Cutler left her mark on too much here. We don't have an opportunity to get away from it for a while, no relief. And I know how it plays on your mind all the time.

"Living in our own home, away from the hotel, even though it's still technically on hotel grounds, we'll feel free, more like we're in our own world—a world we're designing, and not one we're inheriting already designed by someone else," he explained.

"Besides, Philip is getting married at the end of his last college term and wants to live here with his wife. I think," he said, perceptively and perhaps prophetically, "it will be better for us to be further apart, better for all of us to have some privacy."

Suddenly what Jimmy was saying and doing did excite me. I would never forget how Mother looked when she left the hotel to marry Bronson Alcott, how she seemed to have had a burden lifted from her shoulders, escaping from under Grandmother Cutler's shadow. She was happier, more energetic and alive. Why couldn't the same be true for me? "You're right, Jimmy. Let me just wash my face and freshen up. I do want to be part of it and see the ground-breaking."

"Well, that's why I came up here to get you, and when I saw you laid out again and moping about, I just couldn't stand it. I'm sorry I was so angry," he said.

"No, Jimmy. You had every right to be. In fact, I'm glad you were," I said, and I kissed him. I washed my face and threw on a cable-knit blue sweater, and then we went down and out a rear entrance of the hotel.

Jimmy had chosen a house lot a good half mile or so south of the main building. It was on a rise and provided an unobstructed view of the ocean, yet there were enough trees and bushes to give us a sense of privacy.

"I thought we'd get a couple of those golf carts to ride back and forth to the hotel," Jimmy said as we walked toward the lot. "Not that it's so far."

"It isn't, and I know enjoy the walk," I said. I was enjoying this one. The early-spring day was clear and crisp with just a few scattered clouds drifting across a sharply blue sky. Leaves had begun to turn rich green, and bushes were filling out. The brightness and fresh air brought a crimson tint to our cheeks. I could feel my skin tingle at the welcome daylight. I felt like a flower that had been kept on the windowsill and teased by the sunlight. Finally I was outside, blooming again.

The bulldozer operator was waiting and talking with Buster Morris when we arrived. They both looked up expectantly. Then Buster produced a bottle of champagne and four glasses he and Jimmy had kept hidden, awaiting my arrival. I laughed. It felt so good to do it. It was as if I hadn't laughed for ages and ages.

Jimmy poured the champagne and lifted his glass to make a toast.

"To our house. May it be the home of love and happiness forever and ever."

"To our house," I said.

"Hear, hear," Buster said, and we all drank.

"Okay," Jimmy announced. "Let 'er rip."

Buster stepped back to watch with us as the bulldozer began to clear the land and tear out the ground for our foundation. Jimmy took my hand.

"Congratulations and good luck, Mrs. Longchamp," Buster said.

"Yes, Mrs. Longchamp. Congratulations and good luck," Jimmy said, and he kissed me.

At least once a day after that I would either go out with Christie or join Jimmy to watch the construction of our new home. Working closely with an architect, Jimmy had designed a two-story classical revival with a two-tiered entry porch supported by four simple columns.

The house would have five bedrooms, a den, a living room, an office, a large dining room and a large kitchen with maid's quarters right behind it. He had been impressed with Bronson Alcott's marble entryway floors and stairway and included both in our design. Once the structure was planned, the details for the interior were to be left up to me. Bronson, and especially Mother, came around often to offer their suggestions. Anyway, Jimmy's ulterior motives worked. I became very involved with the house once it was underway and buried myself in design and decor magazines. It was very exciting as more and more of the house was completed and I began to envision it.

Once Christie understood this was going to be our new home, she had to know immediately where her room would be. After Jimmy pointed it out and walked her through the framing, she was after both of us all day to take her out so she could visit her future residence. And when the house was more than half completed it became one of the regular sights for hotel guests. Neither Jimmy nor I was ecstatic over the idea that guests would be coming by to look things over, but for the time being it was hard to keep them away. Jimmy decided that afterward, when the house was completed, we would build a pretty fence around it so that the guests would understand it was not really part of the hotel property.

"One of the bedrooms is for your younger brother or younger sister, when she comes," Jimmy told Christie one afternoon when the three of us were inspecting the day's work.

"Where is she?" Christie asked. "I can't find her," she said, holding her hands up and shrugging. She was almost three by now and quite precocious. Developing by leaps and bounds, she astounded everyone with the things she would say and do. She had begun to explore the piano keys herself and tap out combinations of notes that were far more than musical gibberish. Sissy complained that she knew all the children's stories by heart and would announce the endings before she was halfway through reading them to her. We had to get her books and toys designed for a child twice her age.

"I don't know where your little brother or sister is, Christie," Jimmy told her, shifting his eyes to me as he spoke. "She or he is hiding in your mommy."

I knew what he meant. We had been trying for months to get me pregnant again, but for some reason it hadn't happened. Dr. Lester had told us both on more than one occasion that there was no reason 1 shouldn't get pregnant. I knew Jimmy suspected I was somehow mentally against it and that that was preventing it from happening.

"You're not afraid of getting pregnant again, are you, Dawn?" he asked me one night a few days later.

"No," I said, but I said it too quickly. Deep inside I guess I was afraid. I had snapped out of my depression and become actively involved with the hotel and our house, but I couldn't throw off this dreary, heavy feeling that a curse hovered over me. It made me worry about bringing another child into the world.

"You shouldn't be," Jimmy insisted. "There are only good things ahead for us."

"I'm trying, Jimmy. I am," I said, but instead of thinking about it and hoping for it, I buried myself in the impending summer hotel season. Along with finishing the house, that kept all of us quite busy.

Then, about a week after the formal invitations for Philip's wedding went out, Mother and Bronson decided to throw a small dinner party for just the family as a way to introduce Betty Ann Monroe, Philip's fiancée. I wasn't going to attend if Clara Sue would be there, but Mother guaranteed she wouldn't.

Clara Sue had been sent away to a finishing school, and Bronson had made a sizable donation to it as a way of insuring that they accept and keep her. It was far enough away, too, in Florida. From what Philip told me, he had had no contact with her since she had attacked me.

"I'm still quite ashamed of her," he explained to me on the telephone, "and I don't intend to invite her to my wedding. Not that she cares."

"I don't know how you can do that, Philip," I said. "No matter what, she's still your sister, and it would just fan the flames of gossip around here. You know what that would do to Mother," I reminded him.

"But you won't come to the wedding if I do invite her, will you?" he asked.

"I don't know. It's been nearly a year. I suppose I can ignore her in a ceremony and a party this big," I said.

"I don't want to take that chance," Philip replied. "Your coming means far more to me, Dawn."

Finally I promised him I would come even if Clara Sue attended as well. He was so grateful, I became embarrassed and looked for an excuse to end the conversation.

I still had a hard time accepting compliments from Philip. I could sense his underlying passion for me, the words between words, the feelings just below the surface that behaved like little animals threatening to break out any moment. I only hoped that his marriage to Betty Ann would put an end to it. But when I finally got to meet her, I wasn't optimistic.