Daddy ignored her, but Ian looked happy.
I wondered if he ever would look happy again.
25 Daddy Comes Home
. I didn't go swimming. I would go later, but not very often that summer because Grandmother Emma didn't hire anyone else to look after me.
I was very lonely.
I really didn't understand everything that happened until much later, but Mr. Ganz was right about what the police could do and couldn't do. They brought in two forensic detectives who went into Ian's room and found traces of the rodent poison. Later, he admitted to putting it into Miss Harper's glass of water, which she kept by her bed when she slept.
While she was taking a bath, he snuck into her room and did it. He was very upset about her reading his journal, he said. He told the police that it was more than a violation of someone's privacy; it was a violation of their very soul.
He went into great detail about some of the other things in his journal, his notations about people, animals, and plants. Everyone agreed he was one of the most intelligent young boys they had ever questioned. I don't know why Grandmother Emma told me that, but she did. It was almost as if she was trying to save some face, to brag about one of her grandchildren, despite it all.
She couldn't keep the scandal out of the newspapers or off television either. It seemed Mama was right, opening closets and drawers would release the brown moths and disgrace would generate so much gossip, the moths would circle the mansion for a long time.
It had a very bad effect on Grandmother Emma's social life. Her friends started to avoid her, decline her invitations, and not invite her to their affairs, dinners, and teas. I began to realize that she was drifting into a world cloaked in as much loneliness as mine.
Daddy was still in the physical therapy hospital and Mama was still in a vegetative state. Finally. Grandmother took me to visit them both. Daddy was almost as quiet as Mama was. He had learned how to use his wheelchair and was being taught how to do more and more things for himself, but Grandmother Emma said he was a reluctant learner and so it was taking longer and longer to get him released to go home.
When he learned about Ian and what had happened, he said he wasn't surprised. "I always knew that kid was weird," he said, as if he were talking about a neighbor's child and not his own. He didn't seem sorry or sad for Ian at all. He was too involved in his own misery and went right to complaint after complaint until Grandmother Emma threw up her hands and told him if he didn't snap out of it, she would stop visiting him.
All the while she was overseeing the
supermarket, and then I learned one afternoon that she had managed to sell it to a supermarket chain, and in her words, "Get that albatross off my back."
Daddy had no business at all now. I thought. I even said it, and Grandmother Emma said, "Why would he need one? He couldn't run it properly when he was healthy."
Anticipating that he would come home soon, she had the bedroom and bathroom that he would use redone to accommodate a person in a wheelchair. She had a special bed put in as well. Before the summer ended, she hired a fall-time nurse and made arrangements for a therapist to work with Daddy at our home. She said neither she nor Nancy was equipped to deal with such a situation and they would need all the help they could muster.
It's difficult enough when a normal person suffers such a catastrophe, but a spoiled person such as your father makes it nearly impossible," she told me.
I wondered if she ever felt sorry for him at all. I still never saw her cry about him or speak about him with a tone of pity. If she spoke about him at all, it was usually to complain about his attitude.
I found that she talked to me a great deal more. I was permitted to be with her more often in the living room or she would linger at dinner and she would sit outside and watch me either swim or just play croquet. She took me to Dr. Dell'Acqua for a checkup and we were both very happy to hear that the medicine was working. I had not had another period and she thought my growth spurt was in check. Grandmother took me shopping twice for more clothing, new shoes, and even, to my surprise, to buy a computer game I could hook into the television set.
There was just one thing she was adamant about not doing with me, and that was visiting Ian. She was quite clear and firm about it, so that I was afraid to ask.
"Isn't he afraid?" I did ask.
"Hardly." she said. "The truth is. I'm sure the caretakers are more afraid of him than he is of them."
I was never quite clear about those caretakers or where Ian was. However. I began to pick up bits and pieces from conversations I overheard Grandmother Emma have with Mr. Ganz and other people, some very important people. Despite the fact that she had lost and was losing the friendship of many of her rich and once powerful friends, she was still Emma March and we were still one of the most prominent families in Bethlehem.
Because of Ian's age, he was considered a juvenile offender, but Grandmother Emma was able to get the court, the district attorney, and everyone else involved to agree that Ian need psychological help more than any form of punishment. He was sent to an institution for the juvenile mentally ill and it was unclear to me if he would be there for a long time and then go to a real prison or be released to come home someday. Grandmother Emma never wanted to discuss it with me. She wanted to shoo it all off as she would the moths.
I never knew what Miss Harper had done with Ian's things. Grandmother Emma had everything left taken out as well, all his clothes and shoes especially. His room was closed up the way Daddy's used to be, with Nancy cleaning it occasionally. I hoped she was doing so for his eventual return.
Grandmother Emma asked me if I wanted to return to my room now or remain where I was. I decided I would be quite lonely on that side of the mansion all by myself, so I told her I would stay in Daddy's old bedroom. She seemed very pleased by my decision. She told me my old room would be the nurse's room when she arrived.
Everything that had belonged to Miss Harper was returned to her mother, of course, and for the time being. Daddy and Mama's old bedroom was closed down as well.
"The house is in retreat," Grandmother Emma muttered one afternoon when she thought about all this. She became very quiet and very sad about it.
I was actually finding myself feeling sorry for her almost as much as I was for Mama and Daddy. Ian, and myself. She wasn't moving as quickly as she used to. Her steps were softer in the hallway. She spent less time in her office and rarely left the mansion. Her business manager and her attorney came more often to her than she went to them, and there were many nights when I took dinner alone and learned she was having hers in her room. The loneliness was beginning to slow me down, too. I lost interest in all my toys and games and I didn't even watch television that much.
Ironically. I spent more time reading the textbooks Miss Harper had left than reading or doing anything else. Ian had thought it was a good idea for me to do it and I felt closer to him by doing what he approved. I looked forward to the day we would see each other again and I could tell him how much I had learned. He could ask me questions and I would answer them so well he would be impressed.