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"I should start something new, do something special for her, don't you think? I'll do something cheerful, something that will bring a big smile to her face again. I know just what I'll do, too," he concluded. He threw his napkin to the table. "I'll start on it immediately. It will be one of the fastest works I've completed.
"You'll be happy with it, too." he declared. standing. "Now, don't you go and tell her and spoil my surprise. Willow. Promise?"
"I promise. Linden," I said.
"Good. Good. I'm sorry I have to leave you. but I have to get to work," he said, and left the dining room.
I sat looking after him.
And for a moment, as fleeting as it was. I wished I had some way to run from it all. too.
.
Mother died three days later. The call came in the morning just before I was going to leave for a class. I had hoped to go to it and then to the hospital. I hadn't taken Linden back to the hospital since they had brought Mother there in the ambulance. He was still having a very hard time accepting how seriously ill she was, and even that she was in the hospital. Although he had faced that fact with me at dinner the night she was admitted, he continued to make remarks about her resting in her room. I tried to reinforce reality by describing her condition and my hospital visits afterward. He would listen, grow silent, and then beam with new excitement about his current art project.
Overwhelmed by hearing from my attorney about my separation from Thatcher, trying to concentrate on my studies, and thinking about Mother. I decided to let Linden live in his fantasy, but when the hospital called with the bad news. I had to bring down the curtain on illusions in our house.
The news made me numb. Surprisingly, I didn't burst into hysterical tears. as I kept expecting I would. I had sobbed softly on and off during the days after Mother's collapse, but I think there was a part of me that was very similar to Linden, a part of me that held on to fantasy, that dreamed of her snapping her eyes open and smiling up at me and asking. "What happened? Why am I here, and when can I go home?" The dream brought a smile to my face and put energy into my steps, at least for a little while.
Perhaps I had mourned her in advance. I thought after I received the call, or perhaps I was anticipating so much difficulty with Linden that I knew I couldn't afford to be devastated. When you have to be strong, when there is absolutely no alternative to that, you somehow fish deeper in the well of your very being and find strength you never knew you had.
Every dark thought I had experienced since Mother's stroke was thumping at me as I put down my books and started for the stairway. I was carrying news that was so heavy, it made me walk like someone with far too much weight on her shoulders. Before I had come here and burst in on their world, trailing the past in behind me like someone with muddy shoes. Mother and Linden were living an admittedly introverted, secluded life, but a somewhat contented one. She was living with her happiest memories, dreaming of my father's promised arrival, and Linden was secure in his dark art. Was I the one who had made him unhappy with himself, opened up doors he had forgotten existed, made him look at the blinding light that exposed and reminded him of his failings? Had I brought back the painful memories for Mother and given her night after night of tortured sleep?
After my father had died. I had felt so alone and frightened. My boyfriend. Allan Simpson, was too self-centered to provide any real comfort for me, and my aunt and my other relatives were not close enough to give me a sense of real family. I '.vas truly desperate myself when I set out to find my mother and have a family again. Maybe I was the selfish one. Maybe I should have left well enough alone.
Now guilt, more than grief, put the darkness in my face and the emptiness in my eyes. Maybe love is too complicated. I thought. Maybe we paint our days and lives with colors that will always fade. We manufacture one illusion aft
er another to keep ourselves from admitting the only truth that has been with us since we began, a truth I had tried to deny and defeat by coming here: We are alone. In the end, no one wants to hold our hands and go with us. They mourn us for as long as they can, but they do not go with us into the shadows.
I knocked on Linden's studio door. He didn't reply, so I opened it and looked for him. He was standing by the window that faced the sea.
"Linden," I began. the hospital just called us." He didn't turn.
"Linden."
He shook his head, and then turned to me.
"She's out there again." he said, frowning. "She'll never stop waiting for him. I don't know how many times she has walked to the end of that dock and stood, sometimes for hours, staring out at the sea, expecting him.
He raised his arms and held his hands out toward me.
"How can we stop her? How can we get her to see how foolishly she's behaving? All it does is make her sadder, and that will make her sicker."
"She's not out there. Linden. We took her to the hospital. She had a stroke. The hospital just phoned to say she has passed away. There wasn't anything more that they could do for her.
Mother is gone. Linden."
I hated the sound of my own voice. I resembled the walking dead.
He shook his head.
"No. I just saw her," he insisted, refuting my words. "She's out there. Look for yourself." he said, timing back to the window. He stood there. I didn't move. After a long moment, he turned back to me, and this time he had tears streaming down his cheeks. "She was there," he contended. "I saw her. I did,"
"I know you did. Linden. I know," I said, and moved to embrace him. I held on to him tightly. His arms hung limply for a moment, and then he clung to me, his tears falling on my cheeks. too.
I pulled myself back slowly.
"I've got to go to make arrangements. Linden. Do you want to come with me?"
