DeBeers 05 Hidden Leaves (4 page)

I knocked on Grace's door and then stepped into the room. She had the curtains drawn, and as I've already written, it was a rather dark, dismal morning. She was in bed, her blanket drawn to her chin, staring up at the ceiling, not caring about or taking notice of my arrival.
"Good morning. Grace." I said and crossed to the windows to open the curtains and let in whatever light we had. Then I turned on a nightstand lamp. She blinked rapidly before turning toward me. "Still tired?" I asked. "Didn't you sleep well?"
The pills make me sleep. but I don't have any reason to get up," she said.
"Oh, that's not true, not true at all." I told her and pulled up the desk chair. "You have lots of reason to get up and to get well again."
She raised her eyebrows skeptically.
"You have someone waiting for you at home, someone who needs you and will need you for a long time to come," I said.
"He has my mother," she replied.
"It's not the same thing. Grace, You 'claw that better than I do."
"No, I don't. He's better off with my mother." "Is he? Do you really think so?"
She turned away.
"I haven't been doing this all that lang. but I have had the benefit of so many wise and talented doctors under whom I assisted." I continued softly. "If there is anything that is true about all of us, it's that there is a very, very special relationship between a mother and her child. Nothing can substitute for it, and many of the problems I've seen come about because something happens to that relationship. Both the mother and the child need each other. Grace. It's true for the child and his or her father, of course. but I believe and many of my colleagues believe that because a mother carries her child, there's something a little more involved.
"I'm sure you miss Linden terribly already and that's good. Grace. Don't be afraid to admit to that. That's hopeful," I concluded.
She was blinking away new tears as rapidly as they emerged, "I can't be any good to him like this and I'll never be better." "Yes, you will. Sure you will."
"I'm afraid,' she said. "Afraid that I will bring him bad luck, too," Now there you go saying that again. Okay," I said, sitting back with my arms crossed over my chest. "how was it decided that you should be the one to bring bad luck to people. Grace?"
"I don't know."
"Did you do something terrible before you were born?" I asked. She looked at me. "Of course not." she said. "How could I?"
"Did you do something terrible when you were younger?"
"No."
"Was your father a bad man?"
"No!" she said emphatically.
"Your mother, she did something terrible?"
"No."
"So why were you chosen? Why are you being punished?"
"I don't know."
"I know many people who have suffered great tragedies in their lives, and many of them were involved with me in one way or another. Grace. Why shouldn't I say I'm bad luck to them? I'm cursed?"
She turned away. "I don't know." she muttered.
"Maybe," I said softly. "you don't know the answer because it's the wrong question. Neither you nor I am bad luck to people. Unfortunate things happen to people. Sometimes it's their own faults; sometimes it is just bad luck, coincidence, whatever, but you can't blame it on yourself, your contact with them, Grace."
She just shook her head.
"You just don't want to come to the realization that bad things can happen to people at any time, for any reason. Life is fragile. None of us likes knowing that. Grace, but your finding fault in yourself doesn't change that."
She looked at me and I smiled.
"I'm just as afraid of life at times as you are, Grace, but we've got to put it aside if we're to go on and be of any value to anyone, least of all ourselves."
She almost smiled.
"I haven't had breakfast yet." I said. It wasn't entirely a lie. I had only some juice, coffee, and a piece of toast. I was in too much of a hurry to get here. "Get yourself up and dressed and we'll have it together."
"Don't you have other patients to attend to?" she asked with some suspicion. Was I spending so much time with her because she was so ill? she probably wondered,
"Oh, certainly, but I can't work on an empty stomach, now can I?
I
asked her and she gave in to a small smile. "I'm going to my office to check on my messages and such. I'll meet you in the dining room. okay?"
I reached out and touched her arm. "Okay?"
She nodded,
"Good." I said. rising. "Sorry the weather is so poor today.
I
was going to suggest we go for a walk. Maybe it will clear up later. My driver Miles thinks it might."
"A walk?"
"Sure. 'Wait until you see our gardens." I told her.
She shook her head, a look of confusion sitting on her face. "What's wrong?" I asked.
"This doesn't feel like...
^-.
"Like what?"
"A place for crazy people." she said.
"It isn't," I told her. "It's a place for people who want to be happy only. That's why I spend so much time here," I told her, and she widened her smile.
What a beautiful smile, I thought. I felt like an artist repairing a great painting.
You see, Willow, I think I was already too far gone as a man to forget it and be only her doctor.

4
The Sound of Her Laughter
.
Willow, I'm sure you are probably asking

My conversations with patients comprise the spine of my efforts to help them. Their words are the main source of revelations about their inner selves. Their actions or lack of actions are the reasons why they are brought here, of course, but the cause of those actions and inactions, what gives birth to them, that takes deep digging. Willow, and my principal tool is my questioning and their responses. I'm trained to remember what they say as it is, but with my added emotional involvement, I found Grace's words carving themselves not only in my mind, but in my heart as well.
I
don't know if you will have fallen in love by the time you read this, but if you have, you will understand.

We took our walk after breakfast. Before that. I conferred with Dr. Price and asked him to pick up two of my other patients who had sessions scheduled with me that day so I could shift my efforts and give Grace Montgomery more time. One of them was Sandy.

Ralston Price and I have been together ever since medical school. I have had and have at this moment no closer associate. When two people have gone through as much as Ralston Price and I have together, we can read each other almost as well as we can read ourselves. Up until this occasion, there were few secrets between us. For example. Ralston knew how my relationship with Alberta had changed, or should I say, drifted into something much less than it ever was. The truth was he was never fond of her and she was definitely never fond of him. She once told me his eyes were too close together, and her grandmother had drilled it into her head that a man with close eyes was sneaky and never to be trusted. I actually pulled out pictures of great men in history to illustrate how foolish that superstition was, but when Alberta formed an idea, it was formed in stone and rolled around in her mind forever.

After I made my request. Ralston raised his somewhat bushy light brown eyebrows and relaxed his lips into that somewhat impish smile of his.

"What is the reason for this intense approach. Claude?" he asked. "And with a patient you have hardly met?"

"I think I can make significant progress in a short period. She's reachable." I said. "It's more of a case of having someone she trusts. She's already quite forthcoming."

His head moved in a slow tilt to the right as his skepticism fattened and fattened right before my eyes.
"I see, and you were able to make this analysis in one day?" he asked, one eyebrow higher than the other.
"Yes. I was."
I
said "And she has a little boy waiting for her at home." I practically shouted at him.
He pressed his lips together and uttered that famous "Ummm" of his. Then he flipped the pages of his calendar and nodded. "Okay, Claude. Let's see how it goes for a while. I'll take on those other patients for you."
"Thank you, Ralston."
I started out of his office and he said. "Claude." I turned, "Don't reach too high. Remember our wings of wax." he reminded me, I nodded.
He was referring to that myth of Icarus, the boy who, with his inventive father, tried to escape an island imprisonment with wings attached by wax. He was warned not to fly too closely to the sun or the wings would melt. We psychiatrists like to use it to illustrate how arrogance can be your downfall.
Like Icarus. I was not to listen to the warning, but this was a happy fall. Willow. Without it, you wouldn't have been born and I wouldn't have known true love. I'd gladly fly too close to the sun repeatedly if it meant I'd have you and Grace's love again and again and again.
After breakfast. as I had suggested. Grace and I took that walk. I found that when one of my patients reached the point where he or she could be
comfortable outside my office. I would try to get him or her to take one of my famous walks. Somehow, without spending much time with her. I knew Grace would be more comfortable. She was curious, however, even suspicious about this almost
immediately.
"Dr. Anderson never spoke with me out of his office," she said. "Even if he saw me somewhere else, which was not often, he would barely say hello, especially if I was with my mother. She didn't want anyone to know
I
was seeing him."
"I'll tell you a secret. Grace.
I
make it seem as if we're just going on a walk, but it's way more than that.
I
try to sneak up on my patients and doing things that are a bit unorthodox helps."
She liked that. She enjoyed my honesty. With her head slightly lowered, but holding on to that soft Mona Lisa--like smile on her lips, she walked along.
I
confess I couldn't take my eyes off her. Willow, and no matter how twisted and troubled she was inside herself. I sensed that she knew I couldn't. We doctors, especially we psychiatrists, like to pride ourselves on our stoical expression, what you called my doctor mask. and I know I rarely, if ever, unmasked myself. but with your mother, right from that first clay, it was as if my doctor mask was made of a thin layer of ice and either melted in the presence of her beauty or slipped off.
As we walked.
I
asked her about her youth, prodded deeper and deeper into the origin of these terrible fears that plagued her. I quickly understood that even as a little girl she was worried about her father, worried that when he went away, he would never come back. It made every return special. wonderful. It wasn't hard to see that these sort of emotional ups and downs took its toll on an impressionable child.
However, every time her father returned, her confidence in him grew.
"I
thought Daddy was indestructible." she admitted. We were sitting on a bench by now, looking out over the field and hills behind the clinic. The threat of rain had passed, and as Miles had predicted, the gray overcast sky was shattering like brittle china, slices of sunlight forming a web of promise behind them.
"He was so strong," she said. "so tall and handsome and confident, and I saw how other men looked up to him and saluted him and snapped to attention when he appeared. How could he die? How could he not come back to me?"
"And so you thought if that could happen to him, it could happen to anyone. In fact, you expected it to happen to everyone you loved, didn't you. Grace?"
"Yes." she said, her eyes widening a little. She nodded. "Yes."
"People like to say the only thing certain to expect is death and taxes. None of us has any more assurances than that. Grace. You can't predict much more and definitely not someone else's future. Here I am a psychiatrist. I'm supposed to know how to read people's minds and anticipate what they will do, but it's not an exact science. Actually, that's what makes people interesting to me."
"What?" she asked me. Our eyes locked.
"That they are unpredictable, that even a man like I am might do and think unexpected things, might do something out of character."
She held my gaze a moment longer and then looked dawn.
"You put too much on yourself, Grace." I said. "Those pretty shoulders shouldn't have to carry that much weight, carry other people's futures and fate. Not that
I
couldn't see why someone, some man might want to trust you with all that."
She didn't look at me, but I could see just a slight tint of crimson rise to the surface of her cheeks.
"I read about all the people you thought you somehow injured just by being close to them. Every one of them had his own history, Grace. Every one of them made decisions without you present and all had done significant things before they even knew you. Many of the things they already had done influenced what eventually happened to them. Please consider that whenever you think to blame yourself."
She almost nodded.
"Dr. Anderson said similar things to me," she told me. "Well, he wasn't wrong, Grace."
"Somehow." she said, turning to me. "it didn't sound as convincing as when you say it."
I smiled. "I told you it's more effective to do unorthodox things with your patients."
Her smiled widened.
"If
you're up to it."
I
said. "I'd like to show you the view from that rise there." I nodded toward the hill about a thousand yards or so ahead of us. "It's quite beautiful."
"Sneaking up on me again. Dr. De Beers?" she asked and
I
laughed, Then she looked out toward the hill, and after a long moment of decision, as if this one would change her life somehow, she said. "Okay."
Sometimes, Willow, your mother's voice sounded like the voice of a little girl. She retreated to that innocent vulnerable state, and when she did, my heart went out even more to her.
It
took all my professional bearing to keep from putting my arm around her and pressing her to me. I so wanted to kiss that cheek, to touch her hair, to trace the perfect lines of her perfect lips. but
I
shut all that up in the deepest place in my mind and rose from the bench we were on to walk again. She kept her anus crossed under her breasts, her head slightly lowered, her eyes mare thoughtful now.
I
am writing this just after your tenth birthday. Willow. so I don't know how often you might have visited me at my clinic before you actually read this. but I do know that when you are old enough. I will take you far the same walk I took your mother that day.
I
might have the courage to reveal everything to you then, and if I do, there would be little reason to have my attorney iiive this to you.
As you know, we have some beautiful grounds at our home, but because of the hills here at the clinic. I have this wonderful view to share with my patients. From the crest I brought your mother to, we could see the river snaking along, its surface now gleaming with an opalescence in the strengthening late morning sunlight.
"My mother used to tell me rivers are the circulatory system for the earth, carrying the earth's blood: water. She was a very intelligent, well-read woman and she had a big influence on me and my success in science," I said. "It was like having a home study program."
I
remember thinking
I
never talked about my personal life like this with any of my patients, but ever; time I did, it brought a new smile to Grace's lips. Was I doing it just to win her trust, something a doctor needs to help his patient, or was I doing it because it felt good to speak about myself whenever I was with her, because it was something special?
"I read where you wanted to become a teacher. Do you still want to do that?" I asked her.
She looked at me, and
I
could see the idea of her ever becoming or doing anything with her life anymore seemed incredible.
"I don't know," she said timidly, as someone afraid to have any hope would.
I was angry, angry at all the events, the people, the forces that had turned this remarkable, beautiful, promising young woman into an unconfident, weak shadow of what she had every right to be.
"Now, you listen to me," I said, seizing her just below the elbow and stopping her on the path. "You're going to have a future. Grace Montgomery. You're not going to be here or in the care of doctors forever." I said with steely eyes of determination.
"'What makes you so certain of that?" she asked, obviously impressed with my firmness.
"Experience, years of study, and..."
"And what?"
"Faith," I said. "Faith in you. Grace."
"But you hardly know me. You're read the file Dr. Anderson sent to you, but that's not me."
"I know it's not."
"Then how do you have any faith in me?"
"Maybe it's the faith
I
have in myself," I said, trying not to sound too arrogant.
"You're not what
I
expected." she said again after a long moment, and this time we both laughed.
Oh. Willow, the sound of her laughter... it was truly music,
a
free and melodic song. It had been sa long since
I
shared such a happy, carefree moment with anyone. I felt a little liberated myself. Suddenly it was brighter
than
I
had
thought. Those clouds were fleeing. The sun was making every color more vibrant, the very air we breathed was sweeter.
I
wondered to myself.
Is this what is meant by falling
^-
in love?
As a psychiatrist. I often had trouble with such romantic concepts. Nothing in the world seemed magical to me before I met your mother. Willow. Everything
had an
explanation either at the bottom of good scientific analysis or in its very physical qualities.
We were living in a world in which more and more accurate prognosticators were designed and created to predict what people would do, how they would vote, what they would buy, and even, in some people's way of thinking, whom they would love.
I was part of that world, one of those prognosticators. If anyone should be skeptical of magic, it was I. Willow, but I loved the possibility that there was magic in the world, that there were things that we were incapable of anticipating.
I couldn't remember enjoying a session with any patient as much as I was enjoying this walk with your mother. I wished it would go on
and
on and even considered walking with her down to the river's edge.
I
was invigorated. I felt gigantic. I could cure her in one session. Ralston would be waving his finger at me. I thought. but I didn't have a chance to do any of that on our second day.
"Dr. De Beers!" we heard someone shouting.
I
turned
and
saw Nurse Gordon hurrying toward us. "Come quickly!" she cried. gesturing.
"Let's hurry back. Grace," I said.
"
^-
What's happening? What's wrong?" I asked as we drew closer to Nadine Gordon.
"Sandy," she said. "She's jabbed a fork into her stomach! She's in the infirmary." She looked at Grace and then turned back to me. "She was supposed to be with you this hour."
"Dr. Price was going to see her,"
I
said. "Didn't you get the new orders?"
"No. I was involved in another situation with the Masterson boy. He was having one of his tantrums in the recreation room and your young doctor Wheeler was overwhelmed," she shot back at me and started for the clinic.
I
hurried after her and told Grace to try to relax, go to the arts and crafts room. perhaps. She nodded and went off while I hurried to the infirmary, where I found Ralston conferring with Thomas Wheeler, the young doctor,
"What happened?"
"Hallucinating again, She believed one of the dark figures got into her and she was digging it our
"How terrible," I said.
"An inch or so to the right and she might have bled to death." Ralston told me. "I thought Nadine Gordon was bringing her to my office, and
I
got distracted during a phone call and didn't notice the time."
"I did leave written instructions for Nurse Gordon to take her to see you," I said. "She's usually right on that, but she said she had some difficulties in the recreation room with Billy Masterson?"
"Yes, he was acting out." Dr. Wheeler said.
"But I was handling it just fine." he added defensively. "She could have attended to her own duties, especially if she had some orders from you to follow."
Ralston leaned toward me to whisper, "You should have given her the orders orally. Claude."'
"Yes." I said, now feeling terrible. This is not something I would have done before, I told myself. I'm too distracted.
"All right. Dr. Wheeler," Ralston told him. "Let's get back to our schedule. Things are under control."
He nodded and left us.
"Where were you anyway, Claude?" Ralston asked me.
"I took Grace Montgomery for a walk. She was a great deal more at ease out there. I was making good progress with her."
"Ummm. Okay, let's check on Sandy and get back to our other patients," he added.
I didn't see your mother again until the end of the day. She had spent a good part of her afternoon in the arts and crafts room. We had a former art teacher working for us. Joan Richards. She was very good with the patients and often joked that she saw little difference between her working with mentally disabled people and teenagers. Grace took to her quickly and had already begun work on creating a doll.
It wasn't hard to analyze that. Willow. Your mother was recreating Linden, her own baby. Nothing underlined her need to be with her child as much. In subsequent sessions with her I would come to understand that Grace resented her mother's assuming her role. She was even bitter about it at times. I encouraged her to express that. From a psychiatric point of view, it's good to get the patient to let it all out, so to speak, to get her to bring her darkest, most troubling thoughts up from the depths of her turmoil and express it. Once she does, it's the beginning of her ability to deal with it and overcome the problems. (This sounds like it comes from a manual on psychiatry, I know, but I have a suspicion that by the time you read this, you will appreciate the occasional comments.)