Willow (8 page)

4
A Fateful Decision
.
The Willows was Daddy's baby from the

beginning. He had been a practicing psychiatrist for nearly five years before he learned of a rather sophisticated rest home that was going out of business not more than fifteen miles from our estate in Spring City. He brought the investors together, and they visited the facility.

What attracted Daddy immediately was the location. The home had been constructed on a hill overlooking the Congaree River. The structure was surrounded with open field but also at least eight hundred acres of open pine woods composed of longleaf, labially, and pond pine. The woods contained a wide variety of ferns, legumes. and wildflowers.

It had always been a linchpin of Daddy's philosophy concerning therapy that nature and the immediate environment had a dramatic effect on the mental well-being of his patients. There was a peacefulness, calm and tranquility about the Willows that made it so attractive to him.

What gave it its name and what was so unique about it were the six wonderful weeping willow trees in the front that rose to heights of close to forty feet. The original owners considered them to be the most romantic trees because of how gracefully they bowed and stirred with the breeze. The branches were full of olive-green leaves that hung in pendulous curtains to the ground.

Behind them, the building loomed. It was eclectic in style, with a number of Italian Renaissance features and a unique recessed porch that always made me feel as if I were entering a tunnel or some dark, mysterious world. It was a three-story building that had been expanded over the years.

Mainly because of the way my adoptive mother characterized Daddy's clinic as a building full of insanity, I had always been afraid to go there. My heart would pound just approaching the property. Daddy was very careful to keep me away from any direct contact with patients who had severe problems. And despite what my A.M. said, the people I saw enjoying the lounge, watching television, playing board games, or just reading generally didn't look any stranger to me than the people I saw on the outside. Still.
I
was afraid to look directly at them for long. Once. I caught sight of a young girl, probably no more than fifteen, marching through the hallway angrily, her long black hair stringy and knotted, her hands clenched into fists, and her arms extended and locked at the elbows. She turned her head toward me as if she could feel my eyes on her. and I gasped because her eyes were wide and furious. The attendant moved her along, and as she disappeared around a corner.
I
could see her shoulders lifting as if her whole upper body were going to break away and float to the ceiling.

I had a nightmare about it and woke up crying. My adoptive mother bawled out Daddy, warning him that he would only nurture the disturbances within me if he brought me back to that world. She loved to say that. "back to that world." as if I could actually recall my birth in the clinic.

Even now, even after all these years, I could feel the trembling in my body as I drove into the parking area.
I
actually had trouble breathing and had to sit in the car for a moment after I had turned off the engine. I took as deep a breath as I could and stepped out. With my head down, just like when I was a little girl walking toward that entrance. I started for the building.

For as long as I could remember. Edith Hamilton had been the receptionist. She sat behind a horseshoe-shaped desk, now covered with computer equipment. The sixty-year-old woman smiled at the sight of me. She had dark brown eyes and hair that was becoming completely Confederate gray. She kept it styled short and neat, almost like a helmet. At the funeral yesterday, she was crying harder than most, I recalled how my adoptive mother had accused Daddy of encouraging Edith to have a crush on him.

"No woman dotes on a man as much as she does without fantasizing about him in bed," she declared.

Of course. Daddy denied it all. Now. I thought to myself how ironic it was that my adoptive mother had accused Daddy of harboring romances in his clinic. If only she had known how close to the truth she was.
I
thought.

"Haw are you. dear?" Miss Hamilton asked as
I
approached. She came around her desk to embrace me. Just the sight of me brought tears to her eyes, and that brought tears to mine. "I'm all right. Edith."

She always insisted I call her Edith. She was a divorced woman who had returned to her maiden name but insisted I call her Edith, even when I was only six or seven years old. Her marriage hadn't lasted a year, and she had never found anyone after that. I wondered if perhaps she had gone to Daddy for some sort of counseling-- and maybe my adoptive mother was right, regardless of what Daddy thought, maybe Edith had dreamed of being with him and let that fantasy take control of her life, Here I was being an amateur psychoanalyst already, I thought, and laughed at myself.

"Dr. Price is waiting for you." she told me. "You know where his office is now?"
"Yes,"
I
said. He had moved to the office adjacent to Daddy's a few years ago.
I started for it. It was just a habit of mine now to walk through the corridors without moving my head very much. I had never wanted to look to the right or left, into the recreational rooms or the small cafeteria, to see the patients. But today I couldn't help thinking my mother was here once, sitting at that card table or working on her arts and crafts. Maybe she was like that woman seated in front of the window, looking at it as if it were a television set. In her mind, she could be seeing some of her favorite programs. How odd all this was to me in light of what
I
now knew.
I
knocked on Dr. Price's office door and entered. He was standing by the window with his hands behind his back and turned to smile at ine.
"When you drove up in your father's car just now. I had the wild fantasy that everything that has happened was just a nightmare and he would be stepping out of the automobile."
"How
I
wish that were true." I said.
He nodded. "Going back to college today?"
"I
expect to yes."
"That's good. Get right back into the ebb and flow of things, occupy your mind, stay busy. That's what I'm doing. whether
I
like it or not." he said, nodding at a pile of folders on the corner of his desk. "We're at full capacity, you know."
"I
don't know whether to say that's good or bad."
He laughed. "You're right, a doctor with no patients would starve. Police need crooks, mechanics need broken-down cars: doctors need sick people.
I
suppose you could divide the world between people who make a living off someone else's trouble and misery and those who make a living off people's extravagances.
I
should sell jewelry," he quipped. and
I
laughed again.
We were both obviously very nervous,
"I'll let you read this." he said, putting his hands on a folder at the center of his desk. "I have to see a few patients, and that will take a while. When I return. I'll try to answer any questions you might have, and then I sincerely hope you put it all behind you. Willow. Devote yourself to yourself now. That's my best advice, and I feel certain it would have been your father's as well."
"Thank you. Dr. Price."
He stared at me a moment and then handed me my mother's file. Under my breast, my heart sounded like heavy rain against a window.
I
sat on the leather settee. Dr. Price took one more glance at me and left the office. I was alone with the truth.
I remember when
I
was in my early teens. I found one of Daddy's patient folders on a table in the den. I knew it was supposed to be very private. It was like looking into someone's head, as if you had Superman's X-ray vision but could see more than just a brain; you could see that person's very thoughts, dreams, memories, and fantasies. What was more private than your thoughts? What trust or what great and desperate need it took to be honest about them! To tell another person, a stranger, who was
supposedly trained not to react as any other person would, not to laugh at you or look at you strangely and make you feel foolish. You couldn't be more naked.
I was terrified I'd be discovered if I looked into that folder, but the temptation was too great. My adoptive mother was always telling me I was on the verge of becoming one of Daddy's patients. Here was one. How alike were we?
Taking care to be sure no one would see me do it.
I
had opened the folder and begun to read. It was very disappointing. The writing was so technical. I didn't understand much at all. I knew it was about a seventeen-year-old boy who had a schizophrenic disorder. He believed his parents had conspired with television producers, radio producers, and music producers to control him and as a result suffered a psychosomatic hearing disorder. In other words, he was deaf.
Reading that had put such terror and fear in my heart. I felt as if my fingers were burned by the pages and shut the folder as quickly as I could. Would such a horrible thing happen to me? Was my adoptive mother right? What had
I
inherited? What horrible mental illness waited outside my door looking for an opportunity to take hold of me and turn me into a name on a folder like this?
I
was afraid to ask Daddy about any of it, afraid to let him know I had snuck a peek at one of his very private folders, and yet I longed to be reassured. Surely, he sensed it in my questions. Years later, on one of our walks together after my adoptive mother's death.
I
confessed about the folder. He laughed and said. 'I had a suspicion you were into that one, worrying about your hearing, your sight, afraid you might wake up one morning and be unable to speak."
"Whatever happened to that boy, Daddy?" I asked.
"I'm happy to say we were able to move him on to a residence house where he continued to make slow progress toward a normal life. He was very intelligent and quite a challenge. There were some medications that helped and medications he has to remain on for the rest of his life. I'm afraid; but it's good to have drugs that can help people like him."
I had wanted to ask him about my real mother then. but I was actually afraid of the answers. I didn't know he was my real father, of course. It might have been different for me if I had known. I might have asked. But back then. I didn't want to know what was possible in my future. and I knew if I learned about her. I would be forever expecting some terrible thing to happen to me. It was better to remain in the dark about it--which was really Amou's advice the night before_.
I
thought as I contemplated the folder now in my hands.
However. I had come too far. and Daddy's romance gave me a sense of some security. He couldn't fall in love with someone who was as sick as that young man, could he? She had left the clinic. She had been cured, hadn't she? She was certainly capable of a great love affair. I was no longer afraid.
I opened the folder and read about Grace Montgomery's history of depression, which brought her to Daddy's clinic when she was just twenty-five. She had been referred by a Dr. Donald Anderson, who had a psychiatric practice in Palm Beach, Florida. After some psychoanalysis, she revealed her stepfather often behaved inappropriately. This grew to the point where he forced himself on her, and she became pregnant.
She apparently kept her pregnancy hidden because of her own embarrassment and feelings of failure. Toward the end of her pregnancy, she was practically kept under house arrest by her mother: then she delivered and went into a deeper depression. She had been treated with various drugs for some time before finally being referred to Daddy.
She was suffering all the symptoms of acute melancholia: low self-esteem, inability to find pleasure in anything, insomnia, and a tendency toward being suicidal. I read how Daddy adjusted her medications and soon began to make progress with her in therapy. The date of her release from the clinic was shortly after my own birthdate. With that was the simple notation that she had returned to her family in Palm Beach for follow-up as needed with Dr. Anderson.
Much of the folder contained technical medical data, lists of medications and dosages. Aside from the brief account of her history, there was little to give me a sense of who she was. There were no pictures and, other than the paraphrasing of some of the
information she gave in the therapy sessions, no statements by her.
I
could have been reading any other dysfunctional person's psychological history.
I
was sitting and thinking about all this when Dr. Price returned. "What else can you tell me about her. Dr. Price?" I asked him immediately.
"Not much," he said. "Remember, she wasn't my patient really. She was your father's."
"Have you ever heard from her or about her since?
I
mean from her doctor in Palm Beach?"
"No. My guess is that was a decision your father and she had made." he added. He took the folder from me and sat behind his desk. "You have to remember, this was all quite a long time ago. 'Willow."
"I know. I'm nearly nineteen," I said. He smiled.
"At least, from reading that, you can be reassured that you're not in the line of fire of some mental malady. Her problems were related to the behavior of the people around her. You've had quite a different upbringing."
I raised my eyebrows. "My adoptive mother could easily have tilled every available room in this place. Dr. Price."
He laughed. "Yes, but your father was there and that wonderful housekeeper who was much more of a mother to you, anyway. What was her name?"
"Amou."
I
said.
He smiled, "That was your name for her. In other words, you had love in your home, the sort of love she" --he put his hand on my mother's folder-- "apparently never had. Go on back to college. Willow. Make a life for yourself, and please, please keep in close touch with me."
I
rose. "Thank you. Dr. Price."
We hugged, and he escorted me to the door. "The day she left." he began.
"Yes?"
"Your father watched from under the willow trees. He stood out there and saw the car come for her. I was standing by my window looking out at him. I could feel the pain in his heart. It was that palpable, even from some distance. Her car left the grounds, and he turned and walked off and didn't return to his office for hours."
That was Daddy... his precious walks."
"Yes, but I always admired him for his ability to lose so much and yet to rebound, to continue his great work, and to find purpose in life. You've got to do the same. Willow."
"Iwill." I promised.
"Good."
He kissed me goodbye. and I left the clinic after saying goodbye to Edith as well. I got into Daddy's car and drove away. imagining Daddy standing under the willow trees the day my mother left him forever and ever. She had left me, too, of course.
But I wasn't trapped the way Daddy was trapped. I wouldn't be left behind forever. I was suddenly very determined about that. The decision was made back in the clinic the moment I opened that folder.
I drove on.
.
I arrived back in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, early in the evening and went directly to my apartment. After I settled in. I called Allan.
"I'll be right over," he said the moment he heard my voice.
That filled my heart with joy.
I
needed him more than ever. He really did rush over, and in less than a quarter of an hour, he was at my door. The moment
I
opened it, he took me into his arms, and we kissed. He held me tightly, stroking my hair and telling me how much I had been in his thoughts. How I wished he had rushed over and held me like this before I had left.
"You poor kid." he said, leading me back into my small living room.
After my first year. I wanted to be on my own. Life in the dormitory was not terrible, but I wanted to be more serious about my studies than most of the girls around me. In so many ways,
I
felt older. I did think about finding a roommate to share the expenses. but I went ahead and found a decent two-bedroom apartment first, turning the second bedroom into a study for the time being. Maybe I was being too cautious. but I wanted a roommate who had the same strong focus that I had on a career for herself.
My seriousness about my career and education was one of the things Allan said drew me to him. He said we were so alike in our determination to make profitable use of our time and fulfill our ambitions. Other girls were fluff to him. He said their heads were full of cotton candy and they were as forgettable as a glass of club soda.
He pressed his forehead to mine and held my shoulders, something that always made me laugh.
Are you all right?"
"Yes," I said, but in a small voice, the voice I had when I was five or six.
We went to the sofa.
"Losing both your parents before you're twenty." He sighed. "That's got to be terrible, even for someone who was adopted." He sat beside me, holding my hand.
We hadn't been dating very long before
I
told him I was an adopted child. I didn't tell him my mother was a patient in my father's clinic and that I was born there. Up until now, I was afraid to face that myself and was afraid of what Allan would think of me if he knew.
I didn't even have to tell him I was an adopted child. Maybe it wasn't politically smart. but I have always tried to be as honest with people as
I
could be, avoiding half-truths and little white lies that when strung together usually created enough falsity to hang yourself. I blamed all that on Daddy or his nearly obsessive determination to face reality and to avoid illusions. He had an effective way of getting me to be like him in that respect. Usually, he would ask a simple question in a very calm voice,
"That's not what you saw, now, was it, Willow?" Or "That's not what really happened, was it?"
Who else but someone so steeped in reality he couldn't live with the smallest of fantasies would send the love of his life away, refusing to fool himself and her about their future prospects together, even if it would mean a little more time to be with each other?
"A great deal happened while I was home for this terribly sad event. Allan," I began.
"I bet," he said. "You have anything cold to drink?" he asked, half listening to me. "My throat feels like ten-day-old bread."
He jumped up, went into the kitchen, and opened the refrigerator. "I'm having a beer," he shouted back to me. "You want anything. Willow?"
"No."
He poured himself a glass and returned, smiling.
"I aced Heller's exam," he said. "He posted the grades this morning... one of his A-h's, and you know how hard it is to get that out of Heller. I don't think he gives out more than two or three a semester," he said proudly.
He brushed back some wild strands of his flaxen blond hair and sprawled on the sofa, putting his legs over my lap. He sipped his beer and then laughed.
"What?"
"I half expected you would greet me with how right that Portuguese nanny of yours was about the dreads." he replied smiling
"'Well, she was, wasn't she?"
He shrugged. "Coincidence. I believe just about everything we ascribe to spiritual powers is basically just that. Anyway, it's over. You're here. and I'm going to do all I can to help you get back on track and stay on the dean's list." he continued. He drank more of his beer.