Twilight's Child (Cutler 3)

So many good things were happening to us, one after the other, that I kept looking around corners and waiting for that brisk, cold wind to come or the dark clouds to return. Jimmy scolded me about it.

"You've got to stop looking for trouble, Dawn," he lectured. "If there's trouble ahead, it doesn't need you to find it. It will find us, but until it does, let's be happy. Let's enjoy our lives.

"You still don't let yourself relax," he chastised. "Being uptight and nervous makes it harder for the good things to happen," he added. I knew what he meant. The doctor, on more than one occasion, had placed the blame for my not getting pregnant again on my emotional and mental attitudes.

"I'm trying, Jimmy," I said. "I am. I'm just . . . cautious," I said.

"Well, throw caution to the wind for a while, will you? You're working too hard anyway," he complained.

I couldn't deny that. Our expansion of the hotel had proven successful. We were serving an additional one hundred and twenty-five people, and that meant we had to increase the staff and everything that went along with it. Almost everyone's responsibilities grew, not just mine.

In late spring, right around the time Daddy Longchamp came with his family, we booked our first convention. It wasn't a very big one, but it made Mr. Dorfman very nervous nevertheless. It was the most dramatic change I had made at the hotel, because it was something Grandmother Cutler had fought doing for years and years. As Mr. Dorfman inspected and watched everything occur I could see the tension in his eyes. Every once in a while he would look behind his back, as if he expected Grandmother Cutler to come flying down a corridor and furiously chew him out for permitting such a thing.

But it proved successful, and Philip decided he would make conventions a major part of his responsibility. At our weekly meetings we were already talking about another expansion, this time building onto the ballroom so we could book larger and larger groups.

The only truly dark and depressing note in our lives these days came from Beulla Woods. Shortly after Clara Sue's death a dramatic change came over Mother. She began to keep more to herself. Her extravagant formal dinners diminished until she rarely held any, and she was hardly seen going anywhere with Bronson. There were physical changes in her as well. She stopped dyeing her hair and permitted the gray strands to appear. She ceased the multitudes of beauty treatments, the mud baths and facials, and the once-endless stream of beauty experts at Beulla Woods cam

e to an end.

I was so busy these days that I didn't even notice how few times she phoned me and how long it had been since I had last seen her, but one day Bronson telephoned to beg me to visit and see if there was anything I could do to pull her out of the doldrums.

"She's back to being the emotional and psychological invalid she was when she lived at the hotel," he complained. "Some days I can't get her out of the bed, much less the room. And you wouldn't believe the weight she's gained."

"Mother? Gained weight?" Bronson was right: I couldn't believe she would have permitted herself to add an ounce. She had been terrified of having a double chin.

"She lies there and eats sweets all day," Bronson said. "She knows what's happening to her. A few days ago she asked the maid to put a sheet over the vanity-table mirror. She doesn't care to look at herself anymore.

"I know she went to extremes with these things before. I let her spend a fortune on new miracle products to stop aging, but I would much rather have her that way than the way she is now. For the past few days she's barely eaten. All she does is sleep and sleep. It's as if she wants to fade away," he added, his voice breaking.

"I'll be there tonight, Bronson," I promised.

"That's good. Actually, you're my last hope," he confessed. "She thinks so highly of you now. I bring home all the good news about the hotel and the children. I'm very proud of you myself," he concluded.

After I hung up I sat back and thought how ironic it was that Mother depended on me. I couldn't find the hardness in my heart to refuse to help her. If the tragedies of my own life had taught me anything, it was to be more tolerant and sympathetic toward others. In one way or another we were all victims of a sort. Only Grandmother Cutler, whose spirit still haunted us somehow, remained unworthy of any sympathy, I thought.

When I arrived at Beulla Woods later in the day Mother was, as Bronson had described, cloistered in her room, lying listlessly in her great canopy bed. Seeing her without her makeup, unadorned by expensive jewelry, her face pale and her hair unbrushed left me speechless for a moment. It didn't seem to matter, for when I entered the suite she appeared to be in a daze herself, looking through me. Bronson, standing right beside me, whispered in my ear.

"She's worse than I told you," he confessed. "For the last few days she's barely uttered a word to anyone."

I stepped forward.

"Mother?" Her eyes blinked, and her head turned slowly toward me. I saw no note of recognition in her eyes. My heart began to flutter nervously. I looked at Bronson, who stared at her with concern.

"Laura Sue, it's Dawn. You asked about her, and here she is," he said.

Suddenly Mother laughed, but it was a strange, almost hideous peal of thin laughter. Then the mad and bizarre smile left her face, and she glared at me angrily.

"Who are you?" she demanded. "Another one of her nurses? Answer me. Who are you?"

"Oh, dear," Bronson said.

"Who am I? Mother, you don't know who I am?" I drew closer to the bed.

"No!" she cried, cringing. "Go away. Go away. It's not my fault. All of you," she said, turning to Bronson, too. "Leave me alone!" She began to wave her hand in the air as if she were chasing away flies.

"Laura Sue, what's come over you?" Bronson asked, rushing to her side. She seemed to shrivel up under the blanket, shaking her head, her eyes wide.

"I don't understand," Bronson said to me. "What's happening to her?"