Synopsis
Book by Andrews VC
Extrait
Chapter One
An Early Baby
I was too young to remember her before she died, but my mother had a nanny, who, according to the way Mommy talks about her, was more of a mother to her than certainly her stepmother was. Sometimes I think how weird it is that Grandmother Grace, Mommy, and I have each had at least one stepparent in our lives. Are some people meant to be brought up that way? I asked Mommy about that, and she said so many marriages end in divorces these days that it is not at all uncommon for a child to have stepparents.
"People marry and remarry the way teenagers used to go steady and break up to go steady with someone else years ago," she says. She's very bitter about it, although she would be the last one to admit to that. Psychologists, both she and Miguel remind me, are not supposed to be judgmental.
"We help our clients make those decisions on their own. We don't impose our values on them," she said.
However, I have heard her angrily remark many times that the marriage vows should be updated. "They should be rewritten to say, 'Do you take this woman to have and to hold -- for a while or until you get bored?' "
Sometimes she is so down on male-female relationships that I have to wonder if I will ever find anyone with whom I might be happy and spend the rest of my life. According to what he has told me and how he acts, my stepfather, Miguel, has no doubts about it. He seems to be very happy and very determined to spend the rest of his life with Mommy. I have never said anything to her about it, but I think he loves her more than she loves him. I know he makes her happy. He makes her laugh a lot, and I can see she enjoys her conversations with him, especially when they are discussing social and psychological topics. But sometimes, more often than ever, I think, she can be very distant. Her eyes take on a glazed look, and she stares at the sea or suddenly goes off to walk alone.
She steals away when Miguel or I least expect it, walking through the house on "pussy willow feet." I have watched her without her knowing, observed her on our beach, and have seen her moving slowly, as slowly as sand sifting through your fingers, idly watching time go by, her face sometimes taking on that dreamy far-off expression, her beautiful lips in a soft smile. It makes me think she hears voices no one else can hear, remembers a whisper, a touch, or even a kiss she has lost. Something wonderful slipped through her fingers years and years ago, perhaps, and now all she can do is resurrect the memory.
"All our memories are like bubbles, Hannah," she once told me. "They drift by and burst, and all you can do is wait for another chance to blow them through your thoughts so they can drift by again. Reach out to touch them, and they will pop and be gone. Sometimes I envy people who have suffered loss of memory and who are never tormented with their pasts. I even envy Linden, lost in some world of his own."
I hate it when she talks like that. It makes me think she would like to return to a time before I was born, as short as that happier period in her life might have been, and if she could, she would sell her soul to do so.
How can she be unhappy here? How could anyone? We live on an estate called Joya del Mar. We have an enormous main house with halls so long and rooms so large, you could bounce your echo along the walls. The property is vast, too. On it we have a beach house, our own private beach front, a magnificent pool, beautiful patios and walkways with enough flowers and bushes to fill a small public park. She doesn't have to do any household chores. We have a cook, Mrs. Haber, and a maid named Lila who has been with us nearly ten years. Twice a week a small army of grounds people manicure our property.
Professionally, Mommy is very successful. She has a psychotherapy practice with an office in West Palm Beach, not far from the magnet school I attend. Magnet schools provide a more specialized curriculum. Mine emphasizes the arts, and since I like to sing, Mother arranged for me to attend the A. W. Drefoos School of Arts in West Palm Beach. We get up and go together most of the time, or my stepfather takes me.
This was the year they were supposed to buy me my own car so I could drive myself places, but they have yet to do it. They have this idea that I should first find some sort of part-time job to at least pay for my own gas and insurance.
"When you accumulate enough to pay for at least one year's insurance, we'll get you the car," she has promised.
She also promised to help me by looking for a job that could fit into my schedule. I moaned and groaned, wondering aloud in front of them if my taking on a job wouldn't hurt my schoolwork. Miguel laughed.
"Oh, having a vehicle and driving all over the place won't cut in on your study time?"
I hate having parents who are so realistic. The parents of other girls my age accept at least a fantasy or two. However, it is very important to Mommy and Miguel that I develop a sense of value, the one sense they both insist is absent in Palm Beach.
"Here, people would think it justifiable to go to war over a jar of caviar," Mommy once quipped.
I do understand why she doesn't like the Palm Beach social world. My maternal grandmother Grace wasn't treated well here, and Mommy blames many of her own difficulties on that. At times Palm Beach doesn't seem real to me, either. It's too perfect. It glitters and feels like a movie set. When we cross the Flagler Bridge into West Palm Beach, Mother claims she is leaving the world of illusion and entering reality.
"Rich people here are richer than rich people most everywhere else," she told me. "Some of the wealthy people here are in fact wealthier than many small or third-world countries, Hannah. They keep reality outside their gold-plated walls. There are no cemeteries or hospitals in Palm Beach. Death and sickness have to stand outside the door. While the rest of us get stuck in traffic jams of all sorts in life, the wealthy residents of Palm Beach fly over them."
"What's wrong with that?" I asked her. "I'd like that."
"They haven't the tolerance for the slightest inconveniences anymore. Sometimes it's good to have a challenge, to be frustrated, to have to rise to an occasion, to find strength in yourself. You need some calluses on your soul, Hannah. You need to be stronger."
"But if you never run out of money and you can always buy away the frustrations, why would it matter?" I countered.
She looked at me very sternly.
"That's your father talking," she replied. Whenever she says that or says something like that, I feel as if she has just slapped me across the face.
"You'll see," she added. "Someday you'll see and you'll understand. I hope."
Should I hope the same thing? Why do we have to know about the ugly truths awaiting us? I wondered that aloud when I was with my stepfather once, and he said, "Because you appreciate the beauty more. I think what your mother is trying to get you to understand is that not only do these people she speaks of have a lower threshold of tolerance for the unpleasant things in life, but they have or develop a lower threshold of appreciation for the truly beautiful things as well. The Taj Mahal becomes, well, just another item on the list of places to visit and brag that you have seen, if you know what I mean."
I did, but for some reason, I didn't want to be so quick to say I did. Whenever Mommy or Miguel were critical of the Palm Beach social world, I understood they were being critical of my father and his family as well, and even though they weren't treating me like a member of that family, I couldn't help but think of them as part of me or me, part of them. I'm full of so many emotional contradictions, twisted and tangled like a telephone wire with all sorts of cross-communication. It's hard to explain to anyone who doesn't live a similar life so I keep it all bottled up inside me. I never tell anyone in my classes at school or any of my friends about these family conflicts and feelings.
Feelings, in fact, are often kept in little safes in our house. There is the sense that if we let too many of them out at the same time, we might explode. Everything is under control here. We're never too happy; we're never too sad. Whenever we approach either, there are techniques employed. After all, both Miguel and Mommy are experts in psychology.
Daddy is always urging me to be different from them, warning me that if I'm not, I'll be unhappy.
"Don't be like your mother," he says. "Don't analyze every pin drop. Forget about the whys and wherefors and enjoy. She's like a cook who can't go out to eat and take pleasure in something wonderful without first asking the waiter for a list of every ingredient and then questioning how it was prepared, always concluding with 'Oh, if he or she had done this or that, it would be even better.' Don't become like that, Hannah," he advises.
Maybe he's right.
But maybe, maybe I can't help it. After all, I am my mother's daughter, too, aren't I?
Or is my mother going to forget that I am her daughter? Is she hoping for that little loss of memory she often wishes she had?
I have another fear, a deep, dark suspicion that I remind her so much of my father that she can't tolerate it anymore and that was and is the real reason why she finally wanted another child, a child with Miguel.
Perhaps it is my imagination overworking or misinterpreting, but all throughout these last months of her pregnancy, I felt her growing more and more distant from me. She had less time to talk to me about my problems and concerns. Helping me find a suitable part-time job and getting me my own car seemed to have slipped out of both her and Miguel's minds. She had more concern for her practice, finding ways to continue to treat or have her clients treated while she was recuperating from giving birth than she had for me. She wanted to stop going to work the last month, and she was always very busy trying to make arrangements. I could see that even our morning ride together had changed. How many times did I say something or ask something and she didn't hear me because her ears were filled with her own worries and thoughts?
"What was that?" she would ask, or she would simply not respond and I would give up, close up like a clam, and stare out the window wishing I had woken with a cold and stayed home bundled up and forgotten.
However, my school, my teachers and some of the friends I had filled my life with more joy now. Staying home would have been punishing myself for no reason, or at least, no reason for which I could be blamed. In fact, some of my girlfriends actually felt sorry for me. They thought it would be weird if their mothers became pregnant like mine at this point in their family lives.
"I can tell you right now what's going to happen," Massy Hewlett declared with the authority of a Supreme Court judge. "You're going to end up being the family baby-sitter, and just when you should have more freedom to enjoy your social life."
"No," I told her. "They have already decided to hire a nanny. My mother had one when she was little. She didn't need one when I was born because she wasn't working yet, but she has to get back to her clients, so it's different now."
"It's not the same thing," Massy insisted. "You'll see. Older mothers are more neurotic. They have less tolerance, and they tend to exaggerate every little thing the baby does. A sneeze will become pneumonia."
"Don't you think Hannah's mother would be aware of all that?" Stacy Kreskin piped up. "She just happens to be a psychologist, Massy. It's not going to be the same for Hannah."
"We'll see," Massy said, refusing to be challenged or corrected. To Massy, being right was more important than being a good friend. It never even occurred to her that she was making me unhappy. I don't think she would have cared anyway.
Reluctant to be defeated, she simply shifted to another level of criticism.
"Even if she doesn't find herself baby-sitting or being asked to hang around the house, she'll feel like she doesn't exist anymore. There's a new king or queen. It happened to me!" she cried, shaking her head at the looks of either skepticism or disapproval. "My baby sister is nearly eight years younger, so I should know, shouldn't I? I'm just trying to give her a heads-up about it."
Our little clump grew silent and then broke away like blocks that had lost their glue and exploded, sailing off in a variety of directions. I was left alone to ponder the way my world would change, feeling as if I was floundering on the border between childhood needs and adult responsibilities. Should I be whining about the way our lives were changing or should I accept and adjust?
Maybe I shouldn't care. Maybe I should be happy. I'll be more on my own. I won't be on everyone's emotional radar screen. It's good to be ignored, isn't it? Or will I feel more unloved and unwanted than ever?
The conflict in me kept me so distracted, I felt like I was lost and drifting most of the time. Sometimes I felt I had stepped into the quagmire of emotions. I had to face it and find a way out. Now, with Mommy's water breaking and little Claude on the threshold of our home and family, there was no more putting it off for later. Whether I liked it or not, whether I was ready or not, the whole situation was in my face. It was all happening and it couldn't be ignored.
There was going to be another child in this house, a little prince.
The princess would have to step aside.
On those rare occasions when either Mommy or Miguel were unable to drive me to school, our head grounds keeper, Ricardo, drove me in his pickup truck. Unfortunately for me, these occasions were so rare, I couldn't use them as an excuse or reason for them to get me my own car before I had a suitable job or earned the year's worth of insurance.
"What good is my driver's license?" I whined more than ever lately. "I don't get much of an opportunity to use it. It's not safe for someone to drive as little as I do."
"Now, there's a good one," Miguel teased. "In order to make the highways safer, we should increase the number of teenagers with their own cars."
"I'm sure we'll make it all happen soon," Mommy promised. "As soon as I get free of these other issues, I'll help you find suitable employment, and Miguel will look into what car we should get for you. Soon," she repeated.
Soon: That was an easy word to hate. Adults, especially parents, used it as a shield to ward off requests and complaints. It was full of promise, but vague enough to keep them from having to make a real commitment.
Even rarer were times when Mommy's car was there for me to use. Right up to the last week of her pregnancy, she wanted her car at the house. It made her nervous not to have it available for an emergency. Ricardo could drive her anywhere if Miguel wasn't home, or even I could.
The morning Mommy's water broke, Miguel asked me if I would rather go with them to the hospital and wait for my baby brother to be born, but I told him I couldn't. I had an important English exam to take. I didn't, but I didn't want to be at the hospital. From simply listening to conversations Mommy and Miguel had about different clients of Mommy's, I knew enough to describe myself as being in denial. I resented little Claude so much I refused to admit to his coming and being. I actually imagined Mommy returning from the hospital without him and Miguel explaining it had all been an incorrect diagnosis. It had turned out to be a digestive problem easily corrected....
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