What She Left for Me (33 page)

“I don’t want him to go to jail,” she said in frustration. “He didn’t rape me. He loved me.”

“Grown men—fathers—do not show love in that way, Eleanor. You may have been taught that there was nothing wrong with what took place, but this was a hideous thing. You were a victim, and you need counseling and help or you’ll never be a productive human being.” She went back to her clipboard. “We’ll have to make sure you aren’t pregnant. If you are . . . well . . . there are ways to take care of it. We can’t openly talk about that kind of thing. . . . It’s not really legal . . . but there are ways.”

Eleanor had no idea what the woman was talking about. The rest of the day gave her no more understanding, however. It turned into one nightmarish situation after another. Without being given the chance to protest, Eleanor found herself whisked away to an examination room, where she was told to strip and prepare for her exam. The experience was more frightening and painful than anything she had ever had to endure. She wept silently as they continued what they called their “exam,” then without consoling her or offering her an explanation, told her to get dressed and be ready when the nurse came to draw her blood.

Eleanor felt violated and exploited, and she longed to fight them all, but she was far too defeated. Things only went from bad to worse as she was put into the company of other inmates. The girls there were not kind or understanding. They wanted to know what crimes Eleanor had committed to land herself in the detention center, and when she refused to tell them, they beat her up.

That night as she lay in her bunk, she wondered how life had ever gotten this crazy. She wanted to make it all go away—to wake up and realize it had all been a bad dream. But for two weeks, this was the only world she knew. Invasive . . . condemning . . . deadly.

On the day the guard came to take her to the office for release, Eleanor felt no excitement, no hope. They were no doubt sending her to another foster home; they’d already told her this would be the procedure. Eleanor tried to figure out a means of escape as she sat outside the administrator’s office. Maybe she should go along with their plan, then sneak out of the foster home in the middle of the night when no one would see her. That would give her a good head start, and this time she’d know better than to just walk along the street.

“Eleanor Templeton,” the secretary announced, “you’re to go inside now.”

Eleanor stood up and entered the office. There were three people staring at her—smiling. Even the administrator was smiling. It gave Eleanor the creeps.

“Have a seat, Eleanor. I have someone I want you to meet.”

She plopped down on the red leather wing-backed chair and said nothing. The woman sat to her right and the man sat on the opposite side of the woman. Eleanor knew they were watching her, but she refused to even look at them.

The administrator took his seat behind the desk and shuffled through a stack of papers. Clearing his throat, he picked up her file. “Eleanor, this is your aunt and uncle.”

She looked at the man oddly. “I didn’t know I had an aunt and uncle.”

“I’m your mother’s sister,” the woman explained. “My name is Taffy, and this is Cal, my husband.”

Eleanor crossed her arms and pressed her body against the back of the chair. “So what?”

“The court is appointing them as your guardians. You will live with them from now on. If you run away or cause them any problems, you’ll be brought back here.”

She wondered about the couple. The woman looked nothing like her mother. Were they really related to her?

“I don’t even know these people. How do you know they aren’t lying?” Eleanor protested. “Besides, what about my brothers? No one has told me anything about my brothers. And what about my dad? What about my mom? Did they have a funeral?”

Taffy knelt down beside Eleanor’s chair. “We had a small funeral, and once you leave here with us, we’ll take you to where we buried her.”

Eleanor stiffened as the woman reached out to pat her arm. “What about my brothers?”

The administrator shook his head. “That isn’t information I can give out.”

“We will look for them, just as we have looked for you,” Taffy declared. “We really do want to help you. Please give us a chance.”

Eleanor found no condemnation in Taffy. Not then, and not five weeks later when the woman realized how hopelessly inept Eleanor was at social and living skills.

Living with Taffy and Cal was something of a dream after Eleanor’s other experiences. Her aunt and uncle were rich for one thing, and Eleanor didn’t want for anything—except understanding of where the rest of her family had gone.

The house, a palatial mansion in upstate New York, was something Eleanor couldn’t have even imagined. She wished she could share it with Sapphira. The bedroom Taffy gave her was bigger than most of the houses Eleanor had grown up in, and the furnishings were tasteful and expensive. Including the fine china cup Eleanor had just broken.

“I’m sorry,” she said, bending down to pick up the pieces.

“A lady must never bend over like that,” Taffy instructed. “Crouch down, bending your knees. Keep your legs together and then pick up the pieces. Like this.” Taffy showed Eleanor by example. “You’re wearing a skirt, and when you bend over like that people can see . . . well . . . all the way to China,” she said with a laugh. She smiled at Eleanor as she attempted to squat. “There, that’s better.”

They cleaned up the mess without a single word of condemnation from her aunt. Eleanor didn’t quite know how to take it. “I’m sorry about the cup,” she finally said.

“Nonsense. It’s just a thing—meant to be used. You didn’t mean to break it; it was an accident.” They both took their seats, but Eleanor felt awkward and all thumbs as Taffy poured her a second cup of tea. “Let’s try again.”

“Why is this important?” Eleanor asked.

“Because you’ll be invited to parties and teas. You need to learn some social skills in order to keep from breaking other people’s china. Besides, we want to put you into a very nice school, and unfortunately there are many rules and structured routines that need to be followed.”

“I don’t want to go to school,” Eleanor said, shaking her head. “They’ll just be mean to me.”

“Not for the prices we’ll pay,” Taffy said, laughing. “Actually it’s a very nice school with very well-behaved young ladies. But you have very little composure. You simply weren’t taught, and I’d rather work with you prior to sending you there. That way they won’t laugh at you, because you’ll perform just as well as they do.”

But it wasn’t quite that simple. In fact, it was nearly a year and a half before Taffy felt Eleanor could handle such an adventure. In the meantime, a private tutor was hired to help Eleanor learn the things that would be expected of her in a structured schoolroom.

Eleanor learned fast, faster than anyone expected. She had a great love—a passion actually—for numbers and reading. She flew through her studies and impressed everyone with the way she managed to catch up to her age group. By the time she was sixteen, Eleanor was enrolled at a posh day and boarding school, feeling confident of being able to hold her own with any of the prim young women who had been born to a life of privilege. But something else happened to Eleanor along the way. In order to survive, she was determined to never care about anyone again. She even guarded her heart against the vivacious Taffy.

That was probably the hardest part. Taffy had done nothing but love her and give to her. Taffy gave her time, her money, her love. Eleanor could find no fault with the woman, but neither could she yield her heart to Taffy. There was too much danger in loving other people. Hadn’t she already realized that?

Eleanor graduated shortly before her nineteenth birthday, and the feeling was unlike anything she’d ever experienced. She had accomplished something for which people praised her. Her teachers and the principal commended her performance as near genius. As she presented the valedictorian speech to her small graduating class, Eleanor knew she had accomplished something no one had ever believed her capable of doing. Well, no one but Taffy. Taffy had made it clear that Eleanor could be whatever she wanted to be, and Eleanor had come to believe it.

“We’ve bought you a new car for graduation,” Taffy announced. “But that isn’t all.”

Eleanor looked at Taffy and then Cal. Both had been so good to her. She had never known life could be like this. So calm, so ordered . . . so peaceful. Here at last was the place where she could feel content. Gone were the memories of her father’s sinful wrongs against her and her mother’s suicide. Gone was even the worry about what had happened to the brothers no one seemed able to track down. None of it mattered anymore, because Eleanor simply would not allow it to matter.

“We’re going to Europe,” Taffy announced. “Just you and me. We’re going to do the grand tour.”

“Europe—really?” Eleanor asked.

Taffy laughed. “Yes. Our bags are already packed; what little we’re taking, that is. We’ll shop and buy all new clothes in Paris and London. We’ll have the most marvelous time—you’ll see.”

It was all so unreal to Eleanor. She thought briefly of her life in the commune and shook her head. Her father had been wrong. The world wasn’t a horrible place with unhappy people. Sure, some people chose to be unhappy, but then there were people like Taffy and Cal who had a great zest for life. Eleanor had never seen her aunt so much as shed a tear or use drugs to escape the pains of her life. And why should she? There were no pains in Taffy’s life—at least none that Eleanor could see.

Eleanor smiled and took the keys Taffy handed her. “Well, before we go, I want to try out my car.”

Taffy laughed and motioned to the door. “But of course. The plane doesn’t leave for six hours.”

Eleanor paused by the back door and looked over her shoulder. “Thank you. Thank you both.”

Thirty

Eleanor looked at Jana. “It was a strange time in my life; things were so perfect and good. Dealing with my past and the guilt was hard, but I kept stuffing it down, refusing to let it harm me. Instead, I focused on other things. Europe was unlike anything I could have imagined. Taffy knew so many people—dignitaries and even royalty. We stayed in wonderful homes, palaces, and rambling estates. I went horseback riding, skiing, boating, shopping. Nothing was denied us.”

“It sounds incredible,” Jana admitted.

“It was. It was like being reborn. I had been so unaware of what the world offered. Even the wonder of sleeping in a real bed and having clean sheets. I’ll never forget how incredible that felt. I experienced movies and television, parties and great wealth. I learned about politics and the games people played in those arenas. It was quite an education.”

“What happened after your trip to Europe?”

Eleanor could see that her daughter was completely drawn into the story, and to Eleanor’s surprise, she found that it was somewhat freeing to share it. Still, there was an awful detail yet to be told: the terrible truth about Jana’s birth.

“I went to college,” Eleanor said absentmindedly.
Should I tell her everything? Will she be able to deal with the truth—especially now, in her condition?
“I went to Harvard. Taffy got us a small apartment in Boston. She was gone a lot with Cal, of course, but when she was there we had a great deal of fun. I worked in a small bookstore, mainly to escape having to be a part of the social scene. I found that I was tired of parties and men trying to entice me into a relationship. I wasn’t ready to be anyone’s girlfriend.”

“I never knew you went to Harvard,” Jana said, shaking her head. “I thought you went to college when I was young.”

“I picked up some classes, but I already had two years at Harvard.”

“What made you quit?”

Eleanor drew a deep breath and shook her head. “I was doing well in my classes, but I became more and more aware of the type of classes I was good at: science. My professors and adviser began to recommend a premed path. When I realized I was taking after my father . . . well . . . it freaked me out.”

“I can understand that,” Jana said softly. “What did you do?”

“I started losing interest in my studies. I skipped class—a lot.” Eleanor remembered it all as if it were yesterday. “I started failing and told Taffy I just couldn’t deal with the stress. I even went to a psychologist for counseling. He told me it was some kind of neurosis and gave me something to calm my nerves. I guess now they’d call it posttraumatic stress syndrome.” She shrugged, realizing the diagnosis wasn’t important. “They determined that I was severely depressed and needed a change of scenery and lifestyle. Taffy decided I should put my education on hold and we would travel. We went all over the U.S. and Europe. I enjoyed the escape.”

“But you didn’t deal with the problem,” Jana interjected, “and that had to make it worse in some ways.”

Eleanor looked at her daughter, and as she recognized the compassion in her expression, she felt a deep sorrow for the lost years between them. Regret was a companion Eleanor had never allowed, but now it seemed she couldn’t avoid it.

“It did make it worse—at times,” she finally admitted. “But I tried to keep from thinking about my problems, and Taffy was a good one to keep me from focusing too long on sorrow.”

“Yes, she’s very good at that.”

Eleanor thought carefully of how she might share the details of her life in those days before she found herself pregnant with Jana. She knew the truth would hurt—maybe forever change the life they had together.