.
I decided to leave without any other good-byes.
I felt confident that Mommy would make up a story to tell to Mel Jensen arid the others. Lying came as naturally as breathing to her now. Maybe it always had. I took a cab to the airport and arranged to fly what they called the red-eye from Los Angeles to Boston. For a while I flirted with the idea of returning to New York to visit with Holly and Billy, but the summer was drawing to a rapid end. I still had my last year of high school to complete, and I was tired of throwing myself into other people's lives.
It was time to grow up anyway I told myself, to put my childhood beliefs back into my box of fantasies and close the lid forever on my past, on my hope of having a real mother and a real father. I was truly an orphan. The only man who had wanted to be my father was dead, and the man who really was my father had kept it a secret and was happy that he had escaped responsibility.
In a real sense, my mother had died twice: first, when she and Richard Marlin had invented their deception and sent a dead stranger back in my mother's coffin; and now, when I had found her and had failed to revive any real mother--daughter feelings in her. She was truly a stranger to me. I shed no tears walking away from her and I could hear her sigh of relief as she closed the door behind me. Her ordeal was over. She could go back to living the life, and the lie, she always wanted.
On the flight back to Boston, there wasn't anyone in the seat beside me on the plane, and for that I was grateful. I was in no mood to make
conversation, and after my near tragic experience with that man in New York who had tricked me into taking his drug-laden briefcase, I was wary of strangers anyway. I simply closed my eyes and welcomed the drowsiness. I slept for most of the trip.
When I arrived in Boston, I made my way to the bus stop and bought a ticket to Provincetown. It was late morning by the time the bus headed out on the highway. I didn't leave enough time to get breakfast, but I had little appetite anyway. I felt numb, beaten, drained of any resistance and energy. The monsters in the shadows were too big and too powerful and there were far too many. It was better to retreat and to accept and be what fate seemed determined to have me be.
With that darkness well entrenched in my heart, I thought it was best to take a taxi to Grandma Olivia's and Grandpa Samuel's as soon as I arrived in Provincetown. Grandma Olivia was the true monarch of this family. She seemed to be the only one capable of determining destiny. She was the one who had decided how my grandmother Belinda would live and where she would live. She was the one who ruled Uncle Jacob and Aunt Sara's family. She even dominated Judge Childs. Certainly, she was the one who ruled her own house, and despite what my mother believed, Grandma Olivia was the one who had banished Mommy to a poorer, harder life in the coal mining town of West Virginia.
It was time to recognize that power and bend to it. I had no more defiance in me. I felt like a flag at half mast.
When the taxi pulled up the driveway of Grandma Olivia's house, my sense of defeat
thickened. I moved lethargically, exhausted, my head down, up the walkway to the front of the house and pressed the buzzer, resembling someone who had come to offer her surrender.
Above me, the late afternoon sky had turned a deep, dark blue. The air smelled fresh, crisp, but I was much too nervous to enjoy the beautiful day. Grandma Olivia's maid, Loretta, opened the door and stood looking at me, her face wearing a mask of
indifference. I imagined working for Grandma Olivia had toughened her. She moved through her day like some cog in a machine, reliable, consistent, but uncaring. She revealed no reaction to my appearance. I could have been a traveling salesman, for all she cared.
"Will you please tell my grandmother that I am here, Loretta," I said in a tired voice and stepped into the house. She lifted her eyebrows and gazed at my suitcases.
"She doesn't have to tell me," I heard and turned to see Grandma Olivia at the top of the stairway, gazing down at us with her regal posture. She wore clothes of mourning, a 'Mack blouse and a black ankle-length skirt, which somehow made her look taller than she was. Her white hair was brushed arid pinned back as usual, and there wasn't the trace of any makeup on her pallid face.
"That will be all, Loretta," she continued as she took a step down. "You can return to your dinner preparations."
"Yes, ma'am," Loretta said with a slight curtsey. She hurried away. "So you've returned, as I knew you would. Giving you that traveling money was a waste, but it's your waste, not mine," she added. "I will keep the document you signed and deduct it from your trust fund."
She continued her descent, sliding her hand along the mahogany balustrade as she walked, her head high, her shoulders and back perfectly straight.
"I don't have to ask you what happened. I can see it on your face: disappointment, disillusionment. Or should I say a final awakening? At last you see her for what she is?" she asked, not hiding her pleasure.
"It's because of the man she's with --" I began. "Oh, don't blame it on someone else," she interrupted with a wave of her hand. "It was always that way with Haille. Someone was eternally making excuses for her, finding someone or somewhere else to place the blame and the responsibility for her selfish, cruel acts." She paused and smirked. "I assume she faked her death in order to end even a semblance of responsibility for you," she said smugly. Her eyes were unflinching. She had the confidence of a predator who knew she had her prey trapped.
"Yes," I murmured, my own eyes down. Even now, even after all I had been through, I still couldn't help being ashamed of Mommy.
"Humph," Grandma Olivia said. I looked up at her, tears burning under my eyelids, but kept trapped there, the last vestige of my pride. She shifted her eyes away from me, but when her gaze returned to my face, I thought I detected a hint of sympathy. "Well," she continued, "I suppose it was something you had to do, something you had to see for yourself. You can provide the details at some later time, if you like. I certainly have no burning desire to hear them.
"But," she continued with that characteristic strength I hated, respected, and envied all at the same time, "that part of your life is over and we must go on. This family must continue to strive to maintain its position of respect in the community. It would be best, obviously, if no one hears of this scandal. As far as I'm concerned, we buried your mother. I'm not going to go and dig up some unfortunate soul. Haille's as much dead to me anyhow, and from the looks of you, you feel the same. Who have you told about all this?"
"Just Cary," I said. "Kenneth Childs will know, too." She thought a moment.
"Kenneth will keep it to himself. I'll have a word with Cary to ensure he does the same," she said with a curt little nod of her head.
"You don't have to worry. Cary doesn't gossip, especially about our family," I said and she smiled, but a cold, hard smile that turned her stone eyes into glittering glass.
"Our family, is it? That's good. That's what I want to hear." She nodded, her smile softening just a bit. "You did right coming here," she said. "You have good sense. As we discussed before you went on this futile journey, you will live here from now on." She paused, her face hardening again. "You know, I am sure, about my son's passing while you were away?"
"Yes," I said. "I'm sorry."
"So am I, but we bury the dead so the living can continue to strive. Jacob was a good man, but he was a sufferer. He took things too much to heart and his heart was so weighed down, it collapsed. There's a lesson to learn," she said widening her eyes at me. "You have to build a casing around your heart to protect it. You don't give away you-affections, your sympathies, your feelings cheaply, because every time you do, it costs you.