Even though I'd been here in the old vineyard mansion barely three days. I could sense the pain in Mrs. Westington's heart whenever she mentioned Rhona. She tried to put on a hard shell and pretend she couldn't care much less about her daughter, but the way she shifted those dark gray eyes nervously and tightened her thin fingers around the pearl head of her brown walking stick at the slightest reference to Rhona told me she still suffered sharp pangs in her heart from the great disappointment. She couldn't simply write her off and forget her as she claimed, waving her hand and declaring. "It's as if she never was, far as I'm concerned. Never was."
Trevor Washington said. "Asking a parent to deny her own child is like asking a flower to deny the rain. Mrs. Westington can pretend all she wants, but it can't happen. Blood's blood. It can't be ignored no matter what you do."
He whispered this to me after one of Mrs. Westington's tirades about her ungrateful daughter, but I was positive Mrs. Westing-ton had heard him. It didn't take me long to see that she didn't miss much going on around her, despite her age and fragile appearance.
I was surprised her loyal employee would say anything negative or critical about her to me, but right from the beginning, Trevor was willing to take me into his confidence. Perhaps he was desperate for company, desperate for someone who not only could hear but was willing to listen. After all, he had no family of his own and was working for an elderly lady and a deaf fourteen-year-old girl. Loneliness had found a home in his world. too.
Mrs. Westington told me about his tragedy. "He lost his young wife to a raging bone cancer that gobbled her up like some monster with metal teeth. That poor beautiful girl withered like one of his grapes on the vine and that tore his heart to shreds. There's a line in the Bible that fits him," she said. " 'If you should die. I will hate all womankind.'
"That in a nutshell is the story of Trevor Washington. The man married himself to this land and this family with the dedication of a monk. And I'm not flattered by it. I'm saddened by it," she said.
"He has no other family?" I asked. "He has some elderly aunts and some cousins, and his mother is still alive."
"She is?"
"She's ninety-three and lives in a nursing home in Phoenix. Arizona. He visits her regularly, but he says she's in that limbo between life and death where she doesn't remember anything, including him and his visits. Of course, he noes anyway."
After Mrs. Westington's husband died or as she says. "kicked the bucket," she closed the vineyard. She knew Trevor had to manufacture most of the work he did, but she would never let him go. The old three-story house was large enough to require him to provide regular maintenance and I knew he had a pet project: fanning a small portion of the once fruitful and vibrant vineyard, and then processing his harvest into Chardonnay wine. I understood that he grew enough grapes to produce 50 to a 150 cases of the Chardonnay that had built the Westingtons" their small fortune. The remainder of the property was overgrown.
Although the house still had its original charm and style, all of the furnishings looked worn and tired. It was truly as if it had aged alongside Mrs. Westington. Frayed sofas, worn rugs, a cracked figurine on a rickety looking pedestal, all of it, like her, nevertheless still had character. Giving anything away or throwing anything out would be like deserting old friends. Right from the moment I set foot in the home. Mrs. Westington would nod at something and tell me its history and why it was still important to her. This was a present; that was something she had bought on a trip East or a vacation. I imagined she recited these anecdotes to anyone who entered so as to justify why someone with her bank account wouldn't replenish, restore, or buy new and more fashionable things.
"Because people today treat their possessions with such disdain, they treat each other likewise," she declared before I could even think of asking such questions. "People who have no respect for what their ancestors left them have no respect for themselves.
You don't get tired of things that had meaning." she lectured.
However, the bedroom I was using had been Rhona's and the furnishings were newer than most everything else in the house. I was sleeping in a beautiful white and pink canopy bed. The matching dresser, armoire, and vanity table had the same pink swirls in them and there was a soft, milk white area rug surrounding the bed. The only blemish was a deep yellow stain Mrs. Westington said was Rhona's fault. She had spilled wine and not told anyone about it.
Curious about the daughter who had lived here and then run off, deserting her own flesh and blood. I did search the dresser drawers and the closet for clues, but I discovered nothing that would tell me why. I found packs of old cigarettes she had probably kept hidden and some grains of what I knew was pot. Mrs. Westiagton had taken down posters of rock stars and scantily clad male models and shoved all of it to the rear of the closet. I found some jewelry in the vanity table drawer, but none of it looked expensive. Most of the makeup was dried out and the colognes smelled too old to be used.
>
The most surprising thing I found was a dildo. I knew what it was because my sister's lover. Celia, had one on the small night dresser next to her and Brenda's bed. She called it Mr. Feelgood. Brenda would get furious with her if she talked about it in front of me, but nevertheless, she once had a birthday party for it and put it in the center of a cake. Of course. I wondered now if most women, heterosexual or homosexual, used them. I quickly put it back where I found it, buried under a pile of Playgirl magazines deep at the rear of Rhona's closet.
I wondered why Mrs. Westington hadn't gone through this room and at least had her cleaning lady. Lourdes, throw out some of this, Had she been living with the hope that her daughter would have a surge of remorse and return? Even after all these years? Mrs. Westington didn't strike me as someone who permitted herself any illusions, but all of us, even someone like her, cling to that life preserver called hope.
As I became more awake. I remembered that today was the day Echo's tutor. Tyler Monahan, was coming, Mrs. Westington told me he had been on a trip and had returned. He worked with Echo weekdays for five hours a day. Mrs. Westington explained that he had been a teacher in a school for the disabled in Los Angeles and had returned to the nearby town of Healdsburg to help his mother. Lee Monahan, with their chocolate wine sauce business after his father had died suddenly of heart failure. That was nearly two years ago. Up until then. Echo's education had been basically catch as catch can, the instructors being those teachers at a relatively close school for disabled children. None of them were willing to devote as much time as Tyler Monahan did, or with any regularity. and Mrs. Westington was unwilling to have Echo attend the special school and sleep away from home.
Although she never came right out and said it. Mrs. Westington had lost her daughter to bad influences and she was afraid of something similar happening to Echo, who because of her disability, was perhaps more vulnerable. According to Mrs. Westington, whatever bad genes Rhona had inherited from her father. Echo could have also inherited, and then there was the mystery of who her father was. too.
"He couldn't have been much," Mrs.
Westington insisted. "Not if he was with Rhona. He probably doesn't even know he has a child, which is for the best. I'm sure."
I really didn't know how long I would remain here. but Mrs. Westington wanted me at least to stay long enough to have Tyler tutor me so I could pass the high school equivalency exam. She convinced me I was of some real help for her with Echo. which made me feel a little better about taking so much from her. Of course. I knew I had to develop the methods to communicate with Echo. In just the few days I had been here. I had already begun to learn a little signing on my own. Trevor was fairly good at it and so was Mrs. Westinton, although she seemed to be able to communicate with Echo just as well through a look or a gesture. For example, even though Echo couldn't hear it, if she saw Mrs. Westington tap her cane. Echo understood her grandmother wanted her to do something promptly.
What amazed me about Echo was how conscious she was of other people's hearing ability. I realized it again this morning when not five minutes after I had awoken. I heard a knock on my bedroom door. I cried. "Come in." The door didn't open. I heard knocking again and I realized it was Echo. so I got out of bed and opened the door. She was standing there, already dressed, smiling at me and signing good morning. I signed back and combined some of my own gestures with words, telling her I would shower and dress quickly so we could go down to breakfast. She was very good at reading lips and understanding my little mime shows.
Right from the first time I set eyes on her. I thought she was a cute girl who had the potential to into a very attractive young woman. Her curly black hair had been poorly cut too short. It looked like a bowl had been placed around her head. so I suspected her grandmother had done it. but Echo had striking Kelly green eyes, a sweet, small nose that was turned up full lips, and a slightly cleft chin. She didn't wear a bra. Maybe she didn't even own one, but her breasts clearly looked firm and already quite shapely. She was developing a very nice figure, a figure I, obviously twenty or so pounds overweight, envied.
I turned and hurried to the bathroom to shower and dress. While she waited for me, she looked at some of the posters and pictures of Uncle Palaver I had lying about the vanity table. She was amused to see Mr. Panda on my bed. I wrote out his name for her and told her it had been a present from my father. She held it in her hands more lovingly and looked at it more intently then, because not only had she never gotten a present from her father, she didn't know who he was and had never met him.
"Would you like to keep Mr. Panda in your room?" I asked her, and her eyes brightened. She nodded quickly. The teddy bear had always brought me comfort. I thought. Maybe it would do the same for her.
She wondered about some of my other things, especially Uncle Palaver's, which I had brought in from the motor home the night of his funeral. I promised to show her more of them later.
He had left instructions for cremation and the ceremony, attended only by me. Mrs. Westington, and Trevor Washington, was very short. On our way back. I asked her if she minded my bringing the Destiny doll into the house. I felt guilty leaving the doll in the motor home, sprawled on the bed upon which Uncle Palaver had died. Living with Uncle Palaver and watching him treat his doll so reverently had obviously left an impression on me.
"Not just yet," Mrs. Westington replied. "It will take a while to get Echo to understand it all," she suggested.