Gates of Paradise (Casteel 4)

"Yes, that part is so."

"How did such a thing happen?"

There was a smile around his eyes again.

"When you ask like that--so passionately--you remind me so much of your mother when she was your age. I think you are just as attentive a listener. Will you listen?" he asked, sitting back again.

I nodded, somehow scared by his new, serious tone of voice.

"What I told you was true: I was a sickly, melancholy child and teenager. All my young life I was depressed by heavy, sad thoughts. My brother Tony, who was more like a father to me, tried his best to get me to change, to be more hopeful and optimistic, but it was as if a gray cloud had been planted over my head when I was born and it grew wider and wider and wider until one day, when I looked up, all I could see was an overcast sky, no matter how bright and blue a day it was.

"Can you understand that?"

I shook my head because I couldn't. I couldn't understand how anyone could go on living his life forever under overcast skies. Sunlight was so important; it was important to flowers and trees and grass and birds, and especially to young children who needed to bathe in its loving warmth. How else would anything grow? He anticipated my thought.

"I couldn't grow into a healthy young man, not with these doomsday thoughts hanging over my head all the time. The worse I became, the more concerned Tony became and the more time and energy he devoted to me. His wife Jillian was a self-centered woman who was in love with only her own image in the mirror and expected everyone around her to be so enamored. You can't imagine how jealous she was of anyone or anything that would pull Tony's attention from her, even for a moment.

"So, eventually I moved into this cottage to live and to work on the Tatterton Toys. it was a very lonely existence; most anyone would have gone mad, I know, but I wasn't as lonely as you might think, for I made my toys my world, my tiny people my people, and imagined stories about their lives."

He shifted his eyes about the room, gazing at some of the toys, and laughed.

"Maybe I was mad. Who knows? It was a good madness, though. Anyway," he said, leaning forward again, "I was plagued by thoughts of my own death. Winter was an especially difficult time because the nights were so long, giving too much time for too many dreams to be born. I would try to hold back sleep until just before dawn. Sometimes, I succeeded. If I saw I couldn't, I would walk about outside and let the fresh cold air wash my dreary thoughts away. I would walk the trails between the pines, and when my brain was cleared, only then did I come back in here and try to sleep again."

"Why did you stay here during the winter? You were rich enough to go anywhere you wanted, weren't you?"

"Yes. I tried to escape. I spent winters in Florida, in Naples, the Riviera, all over the world. I traveled and traveled, searching for an avenue of escape, but my winter thoughts were like excess baggage, always with me. I couldn't shake them off, no matter what I did or where I went, so I returned defeated, unable to do anything but accept my fate.

"Along about that time, your mother came along. She was a flower planted in the desert . . . a cheerful, bright and beautiful person. I knew she had been through hard times already during her young life, but she seemed to be able to cling to that optimism and innocence that characterizes young people, that makes older people so envious.

/> "You have that same wonderful light in your eyes, Annie. I can see it. Even though some terrible, horrible things have happened to you and the people you love, that brightness is still there, burning like a large candle in a dark tunnel. Someone very lucky will be guided by your light out of the darkness of his own sad thoughts and will live happily in the warmth of your glow. I know it."

I couldn't help blushing. Few men had ever spoken to me this way.

"Thank you," I said. "But you haven't told me what drove you to ride a horse into the sea."

He sat back and tucked his hands behind his head again. I could see that was his favorite position. For a long moment he thought, his eyes fixed on the ceiling. I was patient, for I could sense how difficult it had to be for someone to explain why he had wanted to end his life. Finally, he sat forward again.

"Seeing your mother, seeing the brightness and the life, filled me with some hope for myself in those days, and for a while I was different. I even thought,. . believed it was possible for me to find someone like her and marry and raise children . . . a daughter much like yourself, perhaps.

"But my melancholy returned when I could find no one like her. I was depressing to most women, you see, for most didn't have the patience to deal with my temperament. One day, during a party that Tony had arranged to cheer me up, I decided I would turn the tables on Death . . Death who had pursued me my entire life, Death who sat in the shadows smirking, waiting, haunting me with his dark, gray eyes, his patient posture . . waiting for his opportunity. I decided to take the opportunity away. Instead of spending my life attempting to flee from what I knew would be his inevitable grasp, I charged forward at him and so surprised him with my action, he did not know how to react. I rode Jillian's wild horse into the sea, fully expecting to end my wretched existence.

"But as I said, Death was surprised and couldn't take me. I was cast back on the shore, alive. I had failed even at this.

"However, I realized I had given myself an opportunity to escape in a different way. I let everyone believe I had died. It enabled me to become someone else, to move about like a shadow and not be troubled by people who wanted to cheer me up. I only depressed them anyway, because when they failed, they had to contend with me in my gray, dark state of mind.

"This way I bothered no one and no one bothered me. But one day my brother discovered my existence. He had been mourning my death so hard anyway that I could no longer keep my life from him. We made a pact . I would live here, anonymously, and he would maintain the fiction of my death. After a number of years had passed, when most anyone who had known me had left or died, we told people I was a new artisan, creating toys in Troy's style.

"And so, no one bothers me and I can continue as I am, as I told you: working, living in my memories and my peaceful solitude.

"Now you know the truth and I am dependent upon your promise to keep it locked in your heart."

"I won't tell anyone, but I wish you would come back to the world on the other side of the maze. I wish, somehow, I could bring you back."

"How sweet you are sitting there in your wheelchair wishing you could help someone else."

We gazed at one another. There were tears locked in the corners of his eyes, for he knew that if he released them, my own tears would come bursting forth.

"Now," he said suddenly, clapping his hands together. "You say you stood on your own yesterday?"