Wicked Forest (DeBeers 2)

what that meant or if there was any sensible meaning

at all in that twisted cloud of thoughts, dreams, and

memories that swirled about like a tornado in his

troubled head.

As with the answers to so many new questions

about my life and my future, it waited out there for me

like the fruit on the forbidden Tree of Knowledge.

Pluck it at your own peril, Willow De Beers, I

thought.

And hope that, like poor Adam and Eve, you

don't get driven out of paradise,

1

Return to Joya del Mar

.

Now that I was here. that I had made the firm

decision to be involved with my real mother's life and family. I felt like someone who had gotten off the roller coaster. I was a bit shaky regaining my footing, but finally, time had slowed down for me. I could take a deep breath and let my memories, especially my most recent, the ones that had been stringing along behind me like so many ribbons in the wind, catch up and be stored in the safest places in my brain. They were no longer to be ignored. but I could draw upon them for lessons and wisdom to guide me through the days ahead.

Right before I left for my second year of college. Daddy and I had a wonderful after-dinner hour or so together on the rear patio of our South Carolina house. Quiet moments together like that were as rare as shooting stars. I hadn't the courage to ask for them. Puppies unabashedly snuggle at the feet of their loving masters, hoping to be stroked. I envied them for th

eir obvious play for love. Growing up in a home in which my adoptive mother always made me feel like an uninvited guest made me timid and quite withdrawn as a child. It took very little to get her upset with me. I clung so hard and so close to my nanny Amou's skirt, I am sure people who saw us thought I was attached to her hip.

I remember I would try to turn and twist in a way that would keep me hidden from my adoptive mother's critical eyes whenever she was in the same roam or passing by Those eyes stabbed me with accusation and contempt. Amou was truly my shield, my protection. Her warm voice and touch gave me enough reassurance to challenge nightmares and keep the dark clouds away most of the time.

I wasn't afraid of going to Daddy for comfort, but now, of course. I understood that in those early years, when he was concerned about pleasing my adoptive mother and keeping his secret life and love just that, secret, he put up a wall of firm, correct authority between us and, especially in front of my adoptive mother, remained as aloof and objective as he could. He was, in other words, the psychiatric doctor first, the counselor, the therapist, and my father second.

Always the one who relied on reason and logic, he put me through the behavioral catechisms as soon as I was capable of answering a question with a yes or a no. My adoptive mother would rail against my sloppiness or my forgetfulness. She would pounce on my failure to keep my things well organized, even when I was only three. Even then I noticed how she would turn to my father and, like a prosecutor in a courtroom, make an argument for declaring me guilty of some horrid imperfection, some mental weakness, and demand a punishment. By the time I was five. I thought she would ask for the death penalty.

Daddy rarely contradicted her openly. He would show some form of agreement with a nod or a widening of his eyes and then turn to me, the defendant, and begin his soft but well- constructed series of reasonable questions.

"You want your room to look nice, don't you. Willow? You want to be able to bring your friends here? You want to make less work for Isabella. right?"

Isabella was Amou's real name. I called her Amou from the first day I could pronounce a word. She called me Amau Una, which in Portuguese means "loved one." and I just picked up on that. My adoptive mother hated nicknames and tried to get me to stop calling my nanny Amou. but I resisted, even in the face of her fiery eyes of anger that threatened to sweep over me, engulfing me in the blaze.

Of course. I nodded in agreement with every question Daddy would ask, and somehow, my acquiescing to that sort of reprimand satisfied my adoptive mother enough to lower the flames of her rage and enable me to escape from her circle of heat. My eyes were glassy with tears, of course, but most of the time I didn't permit a single one to escape. It was almost as if I instinctively knew as an infant that weeping in front of my adoptive mother was some sort of acceptance of how she characterized me. the child of a mentally ill woman, a bundle of promising new problems just waiting to give themselves expression.

Afterward. I sometimes caught the look of sadness and disgust on Daddy's face, but it was there for only an instant or so. He had to maintain his selfcontrol. He had to treat me like the child of a stranger. the charity case my adoptive mother believed I was, I could only imagine what havoc she would have wreaked upon Daddy if she had known the truth. Not only would she have put him through a nasty divorce, but she would have driven him out of his profession and, therefore, out of his reason to be. Keeping their love affair buried in their hearts was a price and a sacrifice both my father and my real mother knew they had to pay in order for me to exist at all.

I feel certain now that Daddy would have told me all of the truth in a face-to-face meeting eventually and not left it for me to read as part of some postmortem. He was just waiting to be sure I could handle it and not be harmed or horrified by it. In a real sense, he had to reinvent himself for me first, change from one sort of man to another, from a guardian to a father, from someone merely full of concern and responsibility to someone full of love. He was in the process of doing just that before he died. Perhaps he waited too long, but none of us ever really believes in the end of ourselves. We always feel there will be one more tarn to make, one more mile to go, one more minute to enjoy, and the opportunity to do what must be done will not be lost.

Fortunately, after his death. Daddy had left me his diary, his insurance policy for the truth, and after reading it, I knew more about who I really was and what I had to do. My closest relative. Aunt Agnes Delray, my father's widowed sister, tried to stop me. Like everyone around me, she wanted to deny reality and truth.

"I'm so glad you're enjoying college, Willow," Daddy began that warm spring evening that now came up vividly out of my pool of memories. I recalled how the stars had burned like the tips of candle flames growing stronger with every passing minute.

"I am. Daddy. I love all my classes and enjoy my teachers. In fact, some of my new friends think I'm too serious about my work."