Twilight's Child (Cutler 3)

"What is it, Mother?"

"I'm so happy you're here . . . to lean upon," she said, smiling through her crystal tears.

"Well, you can thank the security guard who recognized Daddy Longchamp and told the police so they could come and get me," I replied. Her smile wilted.

"How can you be so cruel to me at a time like this?" she cried.

Jimmy's words returned: ". . . for the Dawn I knew wouldn't be worried about revenge." Was he right? Was I changing? Was I permitting Grandmother Cutler to make me into someone like her and, in effect, destroy me?

I softened.

"I'm sorry, Mother," I said. She looked pleased. "I'll do what I can to make things easier for you."

"Thank you, Dawn. Dawn," she called again as I reached the doorway. "I did love him . . . once," she said in a small, sad voice.

"Then when you mourn him, Mother, mourn the man he was and not the man he became," I advised, and I left her sobbing into her lace handkerchief.

Both Mr. Updike and Mr. Dorfman thought that just like Grandmother Cutler's funeral procession, Randolph's should stop at the front of the hotel for a last good-bye. The minister would say a few words from the front entrance. Mother moaned as if in dire pain when I told her.

"Not that again. Oh, what dramatics," she cried. But she went along with it. In fact, once the funeral arrangements were all confirmed, she suddenly had a burst of new energy. She decided that the dress she had worn to Grandmother Cutler's funeral was not good enough for Randolph's.

"I didn't care what I looked like then," she explained. "But this is different."

One of the dress designers she favored was summoned to the hotel with an emergency air and was put to work creating a fashionable black dress. Mother wanted a tight waist and fluffy sleeves with a rather low-cut bodice. The designer was surprised but did what she asked. When I saw the way she was dressed on the morning of the funeral, I thought she had prepared herself for some sort of costume ball. All that was needed was a black mask. She had had her nails manicured and polished, her hair washed and styled, and had even called the beautician to give her a facial because she claimed hours and hours of crying had made her look like an old woman.

Not once during the entire time between Jimmy's and my return from our aborted honeymoon did Clara Sue show herself. Like her mother, she insisted on all her food being brought to her room. I was told she was on the telephone constantly, speaking with her school friends, however. When I did see her on the morning of the funeral, she turned away.

The family was supposed to ride together in the hotel limousine, but some of Clara Sue's local friends were there, and she decided she would ride with them. I was surprised Mother didn't protest.

"I don't have the strength for that sort of thing this morning, Dawn," she told me when I pointed out how insensitive it was for Clara Sue not to be at her side. "Let's just get underway and get it over with as quickly as we can."

The sky was mostly overcast and gray, but fortunately the clouds held back their rain. The crowd of mourners was so great it overflowed out the door of the church. People stood on the steps and around the lawn listening to the minister's eulogy. Clara Sue at least joined us in the family pew, standing beside Philip. Directly behind us sat Mr. and Mrs. Updike, Mr. and Mrs. Dorfman and, at Mother's request, Bronson Alcott. From time to time I caught him patting her sympathetically on her arm. Once she reached back to squeeze his hand.

I had to admit that she looked elegantly beautiful, like a dazzling bright pearl encased in a black shell. Periodically, almost as if she had it timed, she would dab her eyes with her lace handkerchief and take a small breath, closing her eyes. Then she would open them and gaze at someone to smile gratefully at his or her look of condolence.

After the eulogy, during which the minister stressed the great contribution the Cutler family had made and was making to the community, the mourners streamed out to get into their cars and follow the hearse to the hotel. The entire hotel staff gathered around. There the minister spoke about the great traditions the Cutler family had created and how the hotel had been more than a business for Randolph; it had been a home. There was barely a dry eye in the crowd when the minister said, "And so we bid you a final farewell, Randolph Boyse Cutler, and now take you to your place of eternal rest. Your work here has ended."

Some of the staff members cried openly and had to be comforted by others. When we passed through the arch of the cemetery I closed my eyes, for the memory of that day when I had discovered the small tombstone, placed there to symbolically indicate my own death, returned sharply.

Randolph was to be buried right beside his mother and father. My mother gazed at me as the coffin was brought to the grave. I could see her thoughts. Once again she was telling me Randolph was where he wanted to be. But no matter how much he loved and admired his mother, I didn't think he wanted this sort of end for himself. He was a troubled, lost soul, wandering through a maze of memories, searching for some meaning to his life after the light of it had been dimmed.

The minister offered his final prayers, and the crowd of mourners began to disperse. As Jimmy and I turned to go, Clara Sue, who had been standing just a little ways down from us with her friends, spun on her heels and glared at me. Her face wasn't filled with sorrow so much as it was filled with anger and jealousy at the way people were shaking my hand, embracing me and offering their expressions of sympathy. It was her own fault for not standing with her family, I thought.

Surprisingly, she stepped right in my path as I began to leave the cemetery. She seemed to pull in her breath and straighten her spine.

"Are you satisfied?" she cried. Her face flamed furiously.

"What?" Stunned, I looked from her to Jimmy and back to her. A small crowd of mourners had heard her outburst and stopped to listen.

"Ever since they brought you back, this family's been falling apart piece by piece. Then they gave you control of our hotel, and my father became nothing . . . nothing!" she screamed, her eyes blazing and wide.

"That's not true, Clara Sue," I began. "Randolp

h was suffering long before—"

She shoved her face closer to mine and narrowed her eyes to sinister slots as she continued to lash out.

"Don't you tell me about my father. You have everyone else fooled, but not me," she spat. "You caused trouble for all of us and made my grandmother sick to death. Now you've done the same thing to my father."