And when we got there and I was face-to-face with her, should I come right out and tell her who I am? Would Zipporah? Would that be psychologically damaging to my mother and cause new problems? What if that drove her to try suicide, too? That's all I need, I thought, another reason to believe I can bring only bad things to People.
I finally settled on a blue skirt and light blue blouse. I styled my hair the way Rachel had shown me and put on just a little lipstick. Aunt Zipporah wore one of her newer skirt and blouse outfits, too, and brushed and pinned her hair. She wore no hair bands or any of her Indian jewelry either. The two of us were as simply dressed as we could be.
"Ready?" she asked me when I walked out of my room. She was waiting in the kitchen, sipping some coffee and looking out the window.
I nodded. "Do I look all right?"
"You're fine," she said. She put her coffee cup in the sink and smiled at me. Then I followed her out to her car.
It was a perfect day for a drive--sunny, with only a few scattered clouds looking permanently pasted against a deep turquoise sky. The brightness brought out the vibrant mint green in the leaves, giving the forest and the tall grass a richness that suggested nature was bursting with new life. Even the shadows looked intimidated and retreated.
We drove in silence for a while. The trip would take us the better part of two hours.
"I don't want you to think I've never inquired about your mother over the past dozen or so years. 1 was very interested in her condition right after . . . after it all was settled, but I didn't want to get too involved because I didn't want to upset my parents any more t
han they had been."
"I understand," I said.
She looked at me. "Do you? I felt so terribly guilty about everything. I knew I had luirt my parents deeply, especially iny,. father, because he had defended me when the police were being very inquisitive. After the truth came out, I had done great damage to his legal reputation. Your grandfather was, and is, too sweet a man to have made me feel any more terrible than I did, but all I had to do was look at his face and I could see the pain I had caused, both Jesse and I had caused. Your mother's name was almost a curse word after that. To show any interest in her was truly like throwing salt on a wound, so I found new friends as quickly as I could, especially at college, and tried to keep myself involved in everything I could, any activity I could.
"It got so I didn't enjoy returning home because I would start thinking about Karen, about your mother, and remember every detail about that time with her hidden in the attic. I would even break out in cold sweats thinking about it.
"Sometimes, I wonder if I didn't get married quickly just so I could avoid going home. Don't ever suggest such a thing to Tyler," she added quickly. "I mean I do' love him very much and he's brought me so much joy, but there are lots of reasons, deep reasons sometimes why we do serious things in our lives. Nothing is simply black and white. But," she said, smiling at me, "I don't think I have to tell you that"
I. just nodded. I didn't want her to stop talking. First, it was soothing for me, and second, she was telling me more about a time that had been forbidden to me.
"Anyway, from time to time, I did try to learn how your mother was doing. Not being a member of her immediate family or anything it was difficult, but one day, years later . . . in fact, I was already married and living here . . . your grandfather told me about her. Unbeknown to me or even to Jesse, he had periodically inquired about her discreetly. Your grandmother never knew about it and doesn't to this day, I believe. I mean, she knew some of the basic things we all did in the beginning, but as far as I know, she didn't make inquiries even though, being a nurse, she might have had an easier time finding out things than any of the rest of us."
"It was always hard to get Grandma to tell me anything about her, and it still is."
"Yes, I know. I didn't know until years later that part of what my father agreed to do when he and your grandmother took you in to live with them was to pay for your mother's stay at the clinic and treatment there. This better place was part of the arrangement your grandfather made with the district attorney in a plea bargain. Karen would have had a much harder time of it if your grandfather didn't take on her case.
"I've never been there, of course, but from what know, it's a very nice place and doesn't look like any insane asylum or anything. The patients are people from well-to-do families, some suffering from addictions and others from different psychological conditions, so your grandfather was a great deal more involved in it all than people knew, than even I knew at the time."
"1 always suspected something like that," I said.
"From what I know," she continued after a short pause, "Karen hasn't made much progress. She is stuck in time and resists all efforts to cause her to accept where she is and what's happened to her. She's kind of like Baby Jane. You ever see that old movie with Bette Davis and Joan Crawford?"
"I think so," I said.
"Now, you wouldn't just think so if you had seen it," she said, smiling. "Bette Davis is sort of stuck in time when she was a child star.
"I guess in a real sense your mother was a child star. When I think about us back there, about her, I realize she was always performing in one sense or another. I told you how we would make up our own world in the attic and how we did similar things in the village and in school. She rarely let go of that. She rarely walked off the stage, and when she did, when she was up in our attic hiding, she remained in the wings and pushed me out on the stage to be her surrogate so she could live vicariously through me while she was in hiding.
"She's still in hiding, Alice. In a sense, she's never left the attic."
"Maybe that's why she doesn't remember me, won't remember me," I said.
Aunt Zipporah tilted her head.
"What do you mean? How does that follow?"
"If she remembers me, remembers having me, remembers all that came afterward, she leaves the attic," I said.
Aunt Zipporah nodded.
"Yes, maybe. You always surprise me, Alice. Just like she always did," she added, and we rode on for a long while, swimming in the pools of our own thoughts, focused and concentrating like two devoted athletes determined to cross the English Channel.