Willow (25 page)

"We thought you had gone off to do some interview," Asher said.
"Where have you been. dear?" Bunny asked.
I
told them what I had been doing and my bargain with Linden. Asher seemed amused. but Bunny looked concerned.
"I don't know if she should be spending so much time with them. Asher, and especially with Linden, alone on the beach like that."
"Oh, he's harmless," Asher said.
"I was hoping you would go with me to the meeting of the committee planning the Cancer Ball," Bunny complained. "You would see and meet many wealthy Palm Beach residents. It will be so much more enjoyable, and you can learn so much more than you possibly could from Grace Montgomery and Linden."
"I appreciate that." I said. "but I've already made these arrangements."
"Oh, they won't even remember or care." Bunny insisted, waving her hand in the direction of the beach house as if there were some smoke in the air she could clear away.
"However. I would remember. and I do care." I said.
"Let her carry out her own business in the manner she sees fit, Bunny,," Asher gently
reprimanded.
"I'm just trying to help her." she protested. "She's a stranger here. She doesn't know these people. She doesn't know whom to see and whom not to bother with, does she?"
"I appreciate that. Bunny. Thank you,"
I
said. "Then you're coming along?"
"No, I can't," I said.
"I have to get ready to go." she said with a pout. How could a grown woman be so spoiled and childish, and how could she have a son like Thatcher? I wondered. "I'll be leaving in an hour should you change your mind," she told me, and marched out of the room.
Asher shook his head and smiled after her. "Bunny is very used to getting people to do whatever she thinks they should. She's actually like a fragile piece of expensive china that we have to set down gently all the time. It takes so little to shatter her happiness, especially these days." he added.
"Why these days?"
"She's feeling... older. We are no longer permitted to acknowledge her birthday, no presents, no special dinners, and especially no parties. Women here lie about their ages more than women in Hollywood. She still refuses to permit Whitney's children to refer to her as Grandmother or even Nana. They have to call her Bunny, just like everyone else," he said with a smile. "Actually.
I
think they enjoy calling her that. I think to this day, our granddaughter Laurel thinks Bunny is a cartoon character come to life."
"How old is Laurel?"
"Twelve. Our grandson Quentin is fourteen. He's a very serious young man. Bunny has a harder time with him, but they're both beautiful, talented kids. You'll meet them on the weekend at the party." he said.
Jennings appeared. "Lunch. Mr. Eaton," he announced dryly.
"Oh, wonderful." Asher said. "Will you join me for a bite. Isabel?" He stood up and held out his arm. Even at midday, he was wearing a light blue sports jacket, a dark blue cravat, a white shirt, and white pants with a pair of boat shoes.
"Yes, thank you." I said. smiling. I could see from whom Thatcher had inherited his charm.
"So what do you think of all this?" he asked, sweeping his arm over the patio, across the grounds and the private beach, the pool, the buildings and gardens,
"It's very impressive,"
I
said "It is truly more like a hotel than a home. You have everything here, anything anyone could possibly want."
"Yes," he said. laughing, "I believe it was Ogden Nash who wrote about the rich.
I don't mind their having a lot of money, and I don't care how they employ it. But I do think that they damn well ought to admit
^.
they enjoy it."

We both laughed. To a certain extent. I liked him for his lack of modesty concerning his wealth. So many people I knew through Daddy and especially through my adoptive mother were secretive about their money. They made excuses for spending and tried to justify every extravagance as if they were worried some envious person would try to take it all away from them or they would be cursed for having so much. That was certainly not the case here. Even in the short time I had been here. I saw that people wore their wealth like badges, outbuilding, outdriving, outdressing each other, and, as Thelma Carriage had said yesterday, even out-partying each other.

"Did you always live like this. Asher?" "Yes. I suppose so," he said.
As usual, a literal banquet had been prepared for just the two of us: platters of prawns, salads, roast beef. turkey, and poached salmon plus a dessert table. The two maids stood behind the tables looking as if they would soon compete for the opportunity to spoon some creamed onions onto Asher's plate or mine. We just nodded or pointed to something, and they filled our plates and brought them to us after we sat.
"How can you eat like this every day?" I wondered without hiding my astonishment,
"Oh. I don't think we eat like this every day. We have the opportunity to. but we don't." he said nonchalantly. His eyes twinkled a bit.
"I
suppose my son has been voicing his criticism of our lifestyle. Does he have a laundry list of complaints?"
"Not really."
I
said. trying to be diplomatic about it. At least. he hasn't made it a major topic of discussion."
"Oh? I'm sure he will. He takes after my grandfather." Asher confided. "Serious. full of ambition, and very competitive. He hates coming in second and goes into a depression if he loses a case or doesn't settle it to his liking.
"I'll warn you right now," he added. "he doesn't take well to rejection, and if he's set his eyes on you, he'll come at you from now until the end of time."
"You make him sound dangerous," I said. smiling.
He shrugged. "There are all sorts of dangers out there." he replied, gazing at the sea. "Physical ones can sometimes be the least painful or frightening. I'll give you some thoughts to help your study of this world here. The wealthy can buy out of most of the problems that plague ordinary folk. I have never worried about an automobile breaking down, an appliance going bad, an electric or plumbing problem, much less a bill. and Bunny certainly hasn't, either. Everything becomes relative in a sense. however. She might have a fit if the restaurant she goes to with her friends doesn't have the vine she wants or the champagne or the appetizer. She could even get sick over the disappointment.
"If our children have problems, we hire therapists, tutors, specialists, and hardly skip a beat in our daily lives. If our marriages come apart, we hire good lawyers and work out dissolutions and then go off to the Cote d'Azur to recuperate from the tension. Sometimes, we don't even let death disrupt us. The husband of a rather wealthy, well-known woman died last year just at the beginning of what we call the season here. She was so annoyed that she would miss certain events mourning his passing that she put his body on ice and postponed the funeral.
"Most of this is nothing more than amusing to me, but to my son, it's practically criminal. Yet
I
will tell you," he added. His face suddenly turning very serious.
"I
don't think he's anywhere nearly as happy as Bunny and
I
are. He broods too much. He has some demons to get out of his system." He looked toward the beach house.
"Sometimes," he continued, almost in a whisper now, "I think he's more like Linden Montgomery than he knows."
He looked at me-- expectantly,
I
thought.
"I
don't know either of them well enough yet to agree or disagree.,"
I
said.
He nodded and smiled, "Very good answer."
"It's the truth. Asher."
"I'm sure
it
is." he said. "Well. I guess I've been a little like Thatcher here. I didn't mean to be so serious. It's your fault," he said, pointing a finger of accusation at me. "You're too serious. Isabel. You're too focused. Where's your hedonism when you need it the most?" He laughed at my expression. "Take advantage of us."
"I
already have."
I
said "Your hospitality..."
"No, no, that's not even a drop in the bucket. Feel free to do anything you want. Bunny would love to take you on a shopping spree for clothes. for example. Just mention it to her."
I couldn't help the way my mouth gaped. How could anyone be so rich or unconcerned about being exploited? Why was that amusing?
"Something tells me you are trying to corrupt me, Asher Eaton," I said, and he burst into a fit of laughter.
"I think that's it." he said. nodding. "You're right. People like you make us too aware of our wastefulness and extravagance. We have to corrupt you in order to feel better about ourselves."
"And maybe that's why you're a little annoyed at Thatcher,"
I
suggested.
"Very good," he said. "You could be a social worker for the rich or a psychologist. I suppose." He gazed at the beach house again. "Maybe that's also why Grace and Linden bother Bunny so much. Grace makes her afraid." he said.
"Of what?" I asked, holding my breath.
"Of losing it all and becoming like that... a shadow on the beach, a prisoner of memories. Do you know what is the worst fear and danger to us Palm Beach royals, Isabel?"
"What?"
"Loneliness," he said. He looked at the beach house again. "Loneliness."
I guess I was right about that, I thought. I guess I have inherited some of Daddy's instinct and perception. Now the question was what would
I
do with it?
Asher apologized again for being too serious and then insisted
I
go look at his game room, where he had a beautiful pool table, a genuine working slot machine, and a set of electric speed cars. He told me he and some of his male friends bet ridiculously high sums of money on the toy car races and swore someone lost fifty thousand dollars one night.
When I looked at the time,
I
excused myself. thanked him for the lunch, and went up to my room to change and freshen up for what
I
had come all this way to do: meet and get to know my real mother.
Just as Linden had promised, she and he were sitting on their patio, having coffee and talking quietly. I paused for a moment and watched them before they saw me approaching. My mother was still dressed only in that housecoat I had seen her in when I first set eves on her. Her hair was tied back, and she wore no makeup. There was, however, a soft, almost meditative peace in her face, just a tiny suggestion of a smile in her lips. She nodded at something Linden had said, and then they were both quiet, both still, gazing out at the sea and looking as if they had fallen back into one of Linden's pictures.
"Hello again." I said, stepping toward them on the walkway. My mother looked surprised, of course. but I thought, or perhaps hoped, she looked pleased. too.
"Hello," Linden said.
At that. I saw the surprise grow brighter in my mother's face. She glanced at him, obviously waiting for him to drive me away. When that didn't happen, she turned back to me.
"Is it always so lovely here?" I asked, edging closer to them.
"No," Linden said sharply. "We have hurricanes and humidity and sand flies. But they're just not permitted on Worth Avenue."
"I suppose there isn't a part of the country that doesn't have something negative about it." I replied, my eyes mostly on my mother, who kept her eyes on me and kept that gentle smile on her lips.
Suddenly, however, some dark thought crossed her mind, and that smile evaporated. She looked as if she were going to get up and go inside.
"I don't want to intrude on your privacy," I said very quickly.
^-
"But I have so short a time to spend here and so few interesting people to speak with about my topic, I've gotten all
I
think
I
can get from the Eatons." I added.
Linden looked very pleased with that remark. "I'm not surprised. That well is rather shallow," he said. He looked at his mother and then at me. "All right," he added. "We'll give you a few minutes of our very busy time. What do you want to know?"
My mother looked more frightened now than surprised. My heart began to pound. I certainly didn't want her to see me as any sort of threat.
I
smiled and looked at the chair beside her. May I?" I asked.
"Go on, go on." Linden said impatiently.
I
sat. "Is this where you grew up. Mrs. Montgomery? Where you spent your childhood?"
"Of course it is," Linden replied for her.
I
acted as if
I
hadn't heard him and kept my eyes on my mother, my silence indicating
I
would wait for her to speak even if it meant sitting here until nightfall,
"Part of it," she said softly. "but not in this house."
"She knows that, Mother," Linden said, practically jumping at her.
"I imagine you must have felt like a princess,"
I
said. "living behind castle walls in such luxury."
"More like a prisoner than a princess," Linden responded. She turned and looked at him hard for a moment and then turned back to me. "No," she said.
"I
did feel like a princess once. You're right. I used to pretend it was a castle with a moat and guards on the walls, a place where I was so safe nothing could touch me, not even germs."
Linden blew air between his lips, shook his head, and turned to the sea. "Some castle, some protection," he muttered.
"I wasn't born here." she continued, "I was nearly sixteen when my mother and I came to live here."
"Where did you live before?" I asked as gently as I could, I felt as if I were moving through a mine field, tiptoeing and hoping I wouldn't trigger some explosion. Linden seemed. as usual, to be on the verge of spontaneous combustion, and my mother looked as if she could burst into tears at any moment as well: just one wrong word, one wrong look, would ignite them both.
"We lived in what people here would call a rather modest home in West Palm Beach." she said. "My mother was a very attractive young woman who had come here from Norfolk, Virginia. My father was a naval officer who was killed in a helicopter accident when I was only fifteen."
"How sad." I said.
"He was a very handsome man with a promising career ahead of him. My mother used to call him the admiral because she truly believed he would become one someday. I remember that. It got so she even referred to him that way when she spoke to me. 'The admiral's coming home this weekend.' she would say.
I
was young enough to believe he had the stripes and the rank, and he would laugh and tell my mother she had better stop calling him that. or I would be telling all my friends at school my father was an admiral in the U.S. Navy. We were very happy then," she said, her smile deepening with her memories.
"How did you come to live here?" I asked. If she only knew I was learning about my own family, I thought.
"My mother was a very independent, strongminded woman. She wasn't going to waste away as some navy widow, not for a second. One day, she picked us up and moved us to West Palm Beach. She had a background in the service industry."
"A waitress." Linden interjected with a smirk.
"Yes, she was a waitress when she and my father first met, but she was capable of being a manager. as well. She got a job as a waitress in a friend's restaurant, one of the better West Palm Beach restaurants, and there she met Winston Montgomery, who was Linden's grandfather."
"He was never my grandfather," Linden insisted on correcting.
"In name," she said. "but really more because he was very kind to me. Right from the beginning, he treated me as if
I
were truly his very own. I never felt unwanted or like some second-class citizen, not with Daddy Winston. as
I
used to call him."
"Daddy Winston," Linden muttered.
"He gave my mother whatever she wanted. He couldn't do enough to make her happy. He built onto the main house for her, but he was somewhat older than she was, and my mother was never fully accepted by Palm Beach society. We were in the social directory because of my stepfather. but..."
^-
The Sears catalogue," Linden inserted,
"The Who's Who," she continued. "My stepfather was rich and powerful enough to keep anyone from blatantly snubbing my mother, but she was snubbed nonetheless."
"She was lucky," Linden said.
"Winston died when I was twenty-one, and my mother took up with someone for a few years."
"She knows about all that," Linden said. "Don't you?"
"Not really," I said. "But I'm not here to dredge up any unpleasant memories for you. Mrs.
Montgomery."
"That's nice," Linden said dryly.
She simply held her eyes on me. I felt very selfconscious and looked away quickly. "If you had to list five or six things that you lost when your family lost its wealth and position in Palm Beach, what would be number one in your mind?" I asked her.
Linden looked just as interested in her answer.
She smiled at me and then sat back a moment. "Having no sense of yourself," she replied.
"You mean now, you don't know who you really are?"
"Oh, no." she said. "When we were in all that, when we were part of all that. I never knew who I was, and I don't think my mother did, either. We were defined by what we owned. But those things come and go or fade or go out of style so quickly. No, no," she insisted, "It's only now, only afterward, that
I
have a sense of myself." She smiled. "It's like being in spotlights or in the headlines. It's glamorous, exciting even, but you never get to look at anything, really look at it, especially yourself.
"My mother used to look in her mirror and wonder what happened to the woman who used to look back. I remember her saying that. I remember it very well because it happened to me. too.
"When the lights went out, we stood in the much dimmer light, but we could see things we had never seen before." she said. "I think we saw the people we had been and lost."
She laughed. "Don't misunderstand me. I'm not against being rich. I've been both rich and poor, and rich is better. I'm just against being so absorbed in the glamour that you forget you're just another member of the human race. Maybe it's easier for that to happen here."
"No cemeteries or hospitals." I murmured, more to myself than to her and Linden, but they heard.
"Yes," my mother said, smiling. "Maybe you understand. I'm sorry. I'm a little tired suddenly." She rose. "It's nice to have met you I hope you'll come by again," she said.
"I'd like that."
"Me, too," she said. She glanced at Linden.
He had been sitting there as much in awe of his mother as I was,
I
thought. He blinked his eves and nodded.
"Yes, yes." he said. "Go rest, Mother." "Have a good day." she told me.
We watched her go into the house, and then I stood up. I truly felt as if I had crossed a barrier of time. I had cleared away some fog and had a long look at my own past, hidden and buried for so long.