Willow (6 page)

"How long have you had this in your vault, Mr. Bassinger?"
"He gave it to me about six months or so after he had brought you home to live with him and your mother," he replied.
"You've had this for nearly nineteen years?"
He nodded. "I left a note on it myself instructing my partner to return it to your father in the event of my death. which
I
really expected would predate his. We joked about it often, but he was far more clairvoyant than I knew, apparently," he said, tears coming to his eyes.
We hugged, and I put the envelope in Daddy's desk drawer before I accompanied Mr. Bassinger back to the living room and all the people who had arrived. I would have to wait a while longer to see what was in the envelope. I thought, but it was never far from my thoughts over the next few hours. All that time. I saw how my aunt was studying me, craning her neck in a birdlike way at times to watch for any communication between me and Mr. Bassinger,
When Mr. and Mrs. Bassinger left, he whispered. "Call me if there is anything you need to know as a result of you-know-what," he said.
I thanked him. After another hour, the last guest departed. Aunt Apes, still very curious, pounced.
"What is it Mr. Bassinger wanted that couldn't wait another day or so?" she demanded.
"We're arranging to do what has to be done." I answered cryptically.
"I thought you were still too raw with sorrow for any of that. Isn't that what you told Mr. McRae?" she pointed out. stabbing me with her hard.
penetrating gaze.
"Thank you for all you've done. Aunt Agnes." I said with a smile. "We all had better get some rest." I added as if I hadn't heard her comment.
Margaret Selby was already closing her eyes.
I turned and left them both in the living room. When
I
entered Daddy's office, I closed the door behind me and snapped the lock. Then I went to his desk and, for the first time, sat in his chair. I opened the drawer and put the envelope on the desk. For a long moment.
I
just stared at it All the preparations. the instructions, had frightened me a bit. What did this envelope contain?
Slowly, I worked it open using Daddy's ivory letter opener, and then I pulled out a packet of paper filled with his writing.
I
took another deep breath and began to read the first page. It was a letter to me.
.
Dear Willow,
Let me begin by first begging
_.
for your forgiveness. What you are about to learn should have been something you have known all your life. Just about every other child does, or certainly should. It has been the heaviest burden of my life carrying this secret inside me. The truth of it is that your mother did not know this, either. There were times I feared she would come to suspect it but ironically, her devotion to herself her interest in herself blinded her. Actually, I think of the saying "There are none so blind as those who will not see. She wouldn't look for these revelations. She wouldn't see them if they were right here front of her. Perhaps she was better off Sometimes, it is better to be in some ignorance.
I can't deny I was tempted to leave you in some ignorance, but I knew in my heart that would be unfair. What I did not have the courage to do was to reveal the enclosed while I was still alive. There are several reasons for my cowardice, I suppose, but none of them justifies it.
Even so, I beg for your forgiveness. Believe me when I tell you I have suffered more than you will, and believe me when I tell you my most important reason was always to be sure you would be a happy person, I hope and pray you still will be.
I know I never said it enough, and it can never be said too much, but I want you to begin with this knowledge:
I love you, Willow,
I love you.
Daddy
.
The tears rolling down my face were falling onto the paper. I pushed it aside and flicked them off my cheeks as fast as they were coming. For a long moment. I sat there, fighting to catch my breath, fighting to ease the ache in my chest. It finally subsided. I swallowed the lump in my throat and sat forward again, my fingers trembling as
I
peeled away the top sheet and began to read the next page.
It began:
If someone had told one that someday I would fall in love with one of my patients, I would have recommended that he or she become one of my patients.
Now I have to admit that this most improbable event has occurred.

3
The Truth Revealed
.
I
don't know how many times my father's

miniature grandfather clock bonged the hour.
I
never heard it after I began to read his diary. I was mesmerized, fascinated to the point of forgetting time, forgetting fatigue. I was glued to his chair and read through most of the night, pausing occasionally to take a breath, to cry, to laugh. Often,
I
lifted my eves from the pages to ask myself again and again, were these my father's words? Were these the words, the descriptions, the utterances of the man
I
knew?

The author of these words did not seem like a man who saw the world through a doctor's clinical eves. This wasn't the organized. at times unemotional man I knew, the man who was afraid to hug me, to hold my hand, to kiss my cheek, the man I never saw cry, not even at my adoptive mother's funeral.

The man in these pages was a man who could feel things deeply, whose emotional roller coaster went from deep melancholy to utter ecstasy, whose pronouncements of love brought a blush to my cheeks, whose words rivaled the pages of the best romance novel.

He moved quickly into a warm, detailed description of how he fell in love with his patient Grace Montgomery, and even how he began to make love to her. The clinic, which to me had seemed a cold, bare world, suddenly took on the ambience of a romantic escape. He actually wrote: I couldn't wait to get there every morning. It was as if I had found the doorway to paradise.

Daddy's descriptions of the views of the river running behind the clinic, even the halls and the rooms in the evening, the music he used to calm patients-- all of it took on a beauty and warmth I never knew existed for him.

When you're with someone you love, he wrote, the most mundane things suddenly become wonderful.
I found myself falling in love with my father through his wonderful expressions of love, through his obvious joy and his renewal of youth and excitement.
Daddy explained how he kept Grace
Montgomery at his clinic far beyond what was necessary and how happy she was, because not only was she just as much in love with him as he was with her, but she had reasons to avoid hurrying home to Palm Beach, Florida. He never got into those reasons.
It surprised me at first that Daddy would have permitted her to become pregnant, that he wouldn't have taken the proper precautions, but the love affair he described and their times together rang with spontaneity, with the sort of impulsive action more often associated with much younger people. It was truly as if their love affair had rejuvenated them both, brought them both back to a time when they were hardly more than teenagers.
They discussed abortion. but Grace
Montgomery fervently wished to give birth to the child she believed embodied their great love. At first, he was opposed, but soon he gave in to the idea, and then he made plans to adopt the child-- who, of course, was me.
He elaborated on the deception and then revealed that he had made an agreement with my adoptive mother. In exchange for allowing him to take in this foundling, he gave her money and autonomy. She could go anywhere she wanted, do anything she wanted, and have anything she wanted. All those discussions they used to have over changes in the house or their lives were more show than substance because the outcome was determined at the start. She would get her way no matter what. He was permitted only to attempt to give her some reasons to change her mind, but she rarely did.
Her aloofness from me and her criticism of me made far more sense now. She did not know that my father was my real father, but that did not change her resentment of me and of his determination to keep me and make me a member of the family. In the beginning, she offered to try to mold me into what she considered an acceptable child and young woman. It was, according to my father, something of an interim peace agreement.
No matter how much he reassured her that there was no terrible madness gestating in me, she clung to the belief that I would someday prove to be
unbalanced. It was why he was so instrumental in acquiring Amou. He knew from the beginning that she would be more of a mother to me than my adoptive mother would want to be or could be.
He then went into a long explanation of how and why he married my adoptive mother in the first place. Despite what I saw of her in our home at times, I would have to agree with him that she could be a very charming woman. They apparently had some good years in the beginning.
Not long after my birth and subsequent adoption, my real mother left the clinic. His
description of their parting brought a flood of tears to my eyes. They both knew that his career, all his good work, all he had built up during his life, was in jeopardy, otherwise.
By the time I finished reading, I was truly physically and emotionally exhausted.
I
put all the pages back into the envelope and then hid it well under a pile of folders in one of my father's file cabinets. It terrified me just to imagine Aunt Ames getting her hands on it.
I went up to my room, my heart tossing and turning in a sea of emotions. When my head finally rested on my pillow, I felt as if I were sinking in that sea, all of the sadness, the joy, the fears. and the pleasures I'd read of and felt washing over me. I tossed and turned as if my bed were a small boat being rocked in a storm and actually woke up more exhausted than I was when I had gone to sleep.
Aunt Agnes didn't temper her voice in consideration of my still being asleep. I heard the house echoing with the orders she was shouting at the temporary hired help. It sounded as if she were rearranging the furniture below. Doors were slammed, and there were heavy footsteps up and down the stairway. The weight of what was to come kept me from rising, but I had to find the strength to face the day.
People began arriving soon after breakfast, and the steady flow never stopped until close to nine that night. The one visitor who interested me more than anyone at the moment was Dr. Renaldo Price, the chief administrator at my father's clinic. He was a man of about fifty but with a completely gray head of hair. He had been with my father from the beginning and surely knew the secrets that were buried in the envelope I had hidden under the files in Daddy's office.
I didn't see him very often. My adoptive mother was never fond of socializing with Daddy's
colleagues, especially the ants at the clinic.
"What could be worse than sitting at a dinner table with a Troup of psychiatrists?" she flippantly told him. "Everyone will be analyzing everyone else. I'd be afraid to utter a sound. and I'd be so selfconscious of every gesture. I'd be on pins and needles. I'd rather go to dinner with some of your patients," she said.
At first. he thought it was funny, but as time went by. I was sure he regretted the limitations she imposed. He was fond of his staff and enjoyed being with them. Slowly, piece by piece, she took apart the house of pleasure he had constructed, I thought. Maybe that was why he was so vulnerable to Cupid's arrow, even in his own clinic and with his own patient.
The few times I was able to meet and speak to Dr. Price, I found him to be a very kind, gentle man, with a fatherly demeanor about him. When he looked at me with his soft, hazel eyes. I felt he was really looking at me, listening to me, and wasn't like so many adults
I
knew, being polite, half distracted, not believing
I,
a child, was worth the investment of attention. One other thing made me feel comfortable with him: he never talked down to me. He spoke to me just the way he would speak to any adult and made me feel the things
I
told him were important and significant.
Now, here we were years later, neither of us feeling particularly talkative. Nevertheless, we spoke for a while in the living room. The chatter of the visitors had grown quite loud, overwhelming, in fact. Just like so many of these sad affairs I had attended with my father in the past, people were renewing old friendships, moving the conversation away from the tragedy to more comfortable zones. They were like horses with blinders, afraid to turn right or left for fear of catching someone wiping away a tear or speaking through trembling lips.
Margaret Selby was certainly helping the younger people feel at ease. She was rattling on and on about her impending wedding, reviewing the details as if she were embarking on a military campaign instead of a social event. She pounced on my cousin Lance the moment he entered the room, hardly giving him time to greet me or Aunt Agnes. I laughed to myself as
I
watched him searching for some avenue of escape, but she was relentless-- and whatever she was saying brought blush after blush to his face.
I
had to admit. Aunt Agnes's arrangements were well suited to all this. Despite the darkness of the occasion, it soon took on a festive air. It disturbed me, but at the same time, I understood everyone's need to get their hands out of the coffin, so to speak, as quickly as they could, especially the relatives.
Most of my relatives were little more than strangers to me, names, voices, faces I passed quickly when I thumbed through family albums. They could have been faces in a mail-order catalogue, for all
I
cared or knew, and they were as insignificant to me now.
"You're holding up well, Willow." Dr. Price told me. "Your father would be very proud of you." He looked out the window so I wouldn't see the tears filling his eyes.
"Take a walk with me. Dr. Price?" I asked. He looked surprised but pleased by my request.
Once again. Aunt Agnes's eyes followed me like a searchlight until I was out of the room. I led Dr. Price out the rear door and walked with him toward one of my father's famous paths.
It was an unusually warm fall day with a few clouds looking like small dabs of whipped cream on blue icing. The breeze was gentle, barely lifting the leaves or stirring the grass. This was hardly a day for bereavement.
I
thought. It was more of a day to celebrate life,
"Your father was very proud of your college work the first year. Willow," Dr. Price said. He smiled. "I remember him telling me, 'I wasn't on the dean's list the first semester of college. I guess I can't call her a chip off the old block.'
"
"How could he. anyway. Dr. Price? I am an adopted child. aren't I?"
I
asked pointedly, my eyes fixed on his.
He shifted his gaze guiltily away, pretending interest in the flight of a sparrow.
"Right?" I pursued.
"Your father wouldn't have treated you any differently had you not been," he said. "Believe me."
"Oh. I believe you. Dr. Price, but perhaps that was because I really wasn't some orphan, some stranger, someone not of his blood,"
I
said.
He looked at me, his face freezing, his eyelids holding wide.
"Let's sit for a while." I suggested, pausing at one of the stone benches.
He looked back at the house and then sat beside me. We were both quiet for a long moment. The sparrow he had been watching perched itself on the fountain in front of us, strutted about, and then looked at us curiously. Something else caught its interest, and it was off again,
"How did you find out?" Dr. Price asked finally. He told me," I said.
He turned sharply. He told you? But he vowed to me he never would."
"While he was alive, perhaps, but he told me after he died," I said.
"I don't understand," Dr. Price said, shaking his head. "He left me his diary."
"Diary? Claude kept a personal diary? How extraordinary," he said.
"You've known from the beginning, haven't you?" I asked him.
"Well, maybe not from the very beginning. I don't know what he wrote, but from what he described, it wasn't exactly an instantaneous thing. Of course, no one knew anything, although we had a nurse back then. Mrs. Gordon, Nadine Gordon, who had deep enough suspicions to question some of the therapy. Actually. I think she had a crush on your father herself. She left about five months before you were born. She gave no reason, just her notice, and as far as
I
knew, neither your father nor anyone else at the clinic has ever heard from her.
"Look," he continued, "I'm not going to say it didn't border on unethical and certainly
unprofessional. If it had involved anyone else but your father,
I
wouldn't say 'border.' I would say flatly that's what it was, and if the physician was under me, he would have been fired on the spot. but.. ."
But what, Dr. Price?"
"But
I
do believe your father made every effort for it not to happen the way it did. He even tried moving her to my patient load, but she began to regress badly, and we made the medical decision to shift her back to him. I might add they were both equally unhappy. anyway. The doctor was taking on the symptoms of the patient."
"What were her symptoms. Dr Price?"
He raised his eyebrows. "Now. Willow, you know what patient-doctor confidentiality means."
"But this is different. We're talking about the woman who was my real mother," I pointed out.
"Only biologically. You had no relationship with her, and it was a long time ago. She has a new life. It wouldn't be right to dig up her past, now, would it?"
I
stared at him and then turned away.
"I
don't know if you knew much about my childhood here, Dr. Price."
I
said, looking out at the sprawling lawn and woods in the distance. "My adoptive mother didn't know
I
was really my father's child, but she knew I was born in the clinic and that my biological mother, as you call her, was a patient in that clinic.
I
grew up with her waiting for me to act out, have a breakdown, dance naked in the streets. whatever. Every child has imaginary friends, but she interpreted it as the beginning of schizophrenia. If
I
cried.
I
was paranoid; if I was shy, I was depressed; on and on until..."
"Until what?"
"Until
I
began to wonder about myself. I know that there are some forms of mental illness that can be inherited. I have a right to know why my biological mother was in the clinic. What was her diagnosis, her prognosis? How is she doing now? Is she in a clinic somewhere else, for example?"
He leaned forward and stared at the ground. "I haven't looked at her file for years," he said.
"Is the day after tomorrow too soon for you to look again?" I asked. Tomorrow was Daddy's funeral.
He looked up sharply. "Are you returning to college immediately?"
"I expect to, yes," I said.
"Good. Perhaps we should go back inside," he suggested, rising.
I stood up, and he held out his arm. We started toward the house.
"Well?" I asked before we stepped back inside.
He nodded. "I'll look at her file the day after tomorrow," "I'll stop by the clinic then," I said.
He shook his head and looked at me with a small smile playing on his lips. "There's no doubt in my mind you are the daughter of Claude De Beers. You have his grit and determination, that's for sure." he said.
"I think deep in my heart I knew. All these years. I knew, He told me in the way he gazed at me from time to time, the way he watched me at work and at play. I think he was afraid to tell me while my adoptive mother was alive, and afterward. I think he was afraid for exactly the reasons I'm asking you to look into my mother's files. He was afraid that once I found out what her problems were. I would live my whole life waiting for the second shoe to drop, expecting something similar to be wrong with myself and, perhaps because of that, never having a real relationship with anyone.'
"Then maybe you are better off leaving well enough alone, Willow." he said.
"It's not well enough, Doctor," I said.
He nodded and then smiled. "Okay," he said. "Okay."
.
It was another exhausting day for me. Margaret Selby, on the other hand, seemed energized. According to her, everyone was excited about her upcoming wedding and grateful they had been invited. It was all she could talk about after everyone had left, Even Aunt Agnes looked embarrassed and finally told her to go to bed.
"Tomorrow will be a terrible day for us all. Margaret Selby. It will take strength."