Garden of Shadows (Dollanganger) Read online

  “What is it?” I asked finally.

  “We discussed his will. He’s drawing up a new one, of course.”

  “Of course. You expected he would.”

  “I am to get the house and the business in the event of his death; however, Alicia and Christopher can live here as long as they want. Alicia is to get three million dollars in stocks from our various investments, and Christopher two million, held in trust. I will serve as administrator of their income, investing it as I see fit. He’s more dependent on me than I had thought.”

  “All that should make you happy,” I said.

  “My father recognizes my financial abilities, something you should also consider.”

  I stared at him. “I’m not doing so badly with my own investments,” I said.

  “You’re making a fraction of what you should.”

  “Nevertheless, it is I who am making it.”

  “Stubborn foolishness. Is that a Winfield trait?”

  “I would have thought it a Foxworth trait. You continually tell me how foolish your father is, and who could be more entrenched in his own ideas than you?”

  Malcolm’s face reddened, but he didn’t pivot and leave the room as I had expected he would.

  “I wanted you to know these details,” he said, “because I want you to tell me if you sense or learn that my father has any intention of changing them. Alicia tells you everything, apparently. I’m sure she’ll be telling you about this. I suspect she’s not going to be all that happy with the arrangements and she’ll be using her charms to get him to give her more.”

  “You want me to be your spy, spy on your father and his wife?”

  “Don’t you?” he asked sharply.

  My face whitened. He smiled, a cold, wry smile that left a layer of ice over my heart. He didn’t wait for my response.

  “It’s in your own interest to do what I ask, and in the interest of the boys,” he said, and left the room without so much as a glance at the children. Never, since they were born, did Malcolm ever kiss the boys good night.

  I looked down at them. They were both already asleep. How good it was that they were still too young to understand their father’s words. But what lay ahead for them when they were older and they would have to deal with what he wanted for them and demanded of them?

  I sat there wishing they could remain babies forever.

  Alicia wanted to move into the Swan Room and Garland decided they should. She had always been fascinated by the room and the furniture and often asked questions about it. I saw how nervous Malcolm became whenever she brought up the room in conversation, but I never thought she would want to move into the room that had belonged to Garland’s first wife. A second wife shouldn’t want to revive her husband’s memories of his first wife, but either she was incapable of understanding this, or she didn’t care.

  In any case, one evening at dinner Garland announced that Alicia was moving their things into the Swan Room.

  “And the small swan cradle is so perfect for Christopher,” she said.

  Malcolm stopped eating.

  “That room belonged to my mother,” he said as if no one knew.

  “And it still does,” Garland said. “Your new mother,” he added, embracing Alicia.

  “I hardly can think of someone so much younger than myself as my mother,” Malcolm snapped, but neither Garland nor Alicia seemed to care.

  “I don’t want to change a single thing,” she said. “Everything has been kept so clean and polished anyway. It all looks brand new.”

  “No one’s ever slept in that room since … since my mother deserted me!” Malcolm exclaimed.

  “Well, it shouldn’t be kept like a museum,” Alicia said, and laughed. She didn’t mean it to be a cruel remark, I know; but it cut into Malcolm like a blade through the heart. He actually winced in pain.

  “A museum. I like that. A museum,” Garland said. He joined her laughter.

  Afterward, Malcolm ranted and raved about the disgusting way his father gave in to every whim and wish of Alicia’s.

  “He’s spoiling her just the way he spoiled my mother,” he told me.

  “How could you know?” I asked. “You were so young.”

  “I was a precocious child; I saw, I knew. There wasn’t a dress she saw and wanted that she didn’t get. She had enough jewelry to open her own shop. He thought that by buying her endless things, he could keep her happy. I understood a great deal more than other children my age.”

  “I believe that,” I said. “Your father is forever telling me how hard it was for your mother to handle you. You were too smart, he says. She couldn’t discipline you because you were always finding ways to get around her punishments or prohibitions. You knew she didn’t have the patience or tolerance for endless discussions. He thinks she ran away from you.”

  “He says that?” He clenched his teeth. “It was he who couldn’t handle my mother. Do you think she would have run off with another man if he had been the firm, strong husband he should have been? Why, she even had her own personal funds,” he added, “so that she could afford to pick up and go wherever and whenever she wanted.” He stopped abruptly and left the room as if he had said too much.

  Could this be why he wanted complete control of my funds as well as his own? I wondered. Did he harbor the same fears in relation to me, afraid that I might leave him and go and do what I wanted whenever I wanted … something that would be an embarrassment to him, but even more than that, something that would be a reminder of what his mother was and what his mother had done to his father?

  It didn’t matter what he thought about my money, nor did it matter what he thought about what Alicia wished. The next day Alicia’s things were moved into the Swan Room and the doors were opened. Whenever Malcolm and I walked past it together, he would speed up as though he could be burned by the light spilling from the room into the hallway. He wouldn’t look into it. He would act as though it no longer existed. At least, that was what I thought, until one day he made a remark that left me wondering.

  “It’s disgusting what goes on in that room now,” he said, and I understood that he either came upon the room when they were making love or he put his ear to the wall in the trophy room and listened in. Could he have done that? Would he have done that? Curiosity took me to the trophy room one day when he was at work and they were in the Swan Room.

  Early in our marriage Malcolm had made it clear to me that the trophy room was to be his private sanctuary, a man’s room in every sense of the word. No matter when I walked past it or looked into it, it reeked of cigar smoke. By now the odor was embedded in the walls, I thought. In some ways it reminded me of my father’s study, but there were many differences. My father had one stuffed deer head with antlers given to him as a gift from a very satisfied customer. Malcolm’s and Garland’s trophy room was just that—a room filled with animal trophies.

  There was a tiger head and an elephant head with its trunk uplifted. Garland’s father had killed them both on safari. Garland had shot a grizzly bear, an antelope, and a mountain lion on hunting trips in western America. Malcolm had just begun his own collection. Two years ago he killed a brown bear. Now he talked about going on an African safari, as soon as business permitted him to take that much time off. Garland kept telling him he could go, that he would watch after things while he was away; but Malcolm wouldn’t hear of it.

  On the far wall there was a stone fireplace at least twenty feet long. There were windows on either side, draped with black velvet curtains. The mantel was covered with artifacts from various hunting expeditions. Against one wall was a dark brown leather couch and matching settee. Facing it were two rockers and one black leather chair with a small table beside it. Ashtrays were everywhere.

  I closed the doors softly behind me and made my way to the wall on the left. On the other side of that wall Garland and Alicia lay in the swan bed. But when I put my ear to the wall, as I often did now in my own suite, I could barely hear their voices. Thi
s wall was too thick. Disappointed that my suspicions weren’t proving true, I turned away when I saw a picture of Garland when he was much younger, dressed in his safari outfit, one foot on the carcass of a tiger. The picture was tilted. I moved it, intending to straighten it, and I discovered the hole in the wall.

  It wasn’t very large, but it had obviously been dug out neatly with some sharp instrument. I brought my eye to it and saw Garland and Alicia naked in the swan bed. I gasped and pulled myself back, looking about the trophy room, terrified that I would be discovered.

  How long had this hole been here? Did Malcolm dig it out as soon as Alicia moved into the Swan Room? Or had this hole been here for years and years, perhaps dug out by a five-year-old boy?

  I left the picture frame the way I had found it and slipped out of the trophy room, now feeling more like a burglar who had robbed the room of some great secret. I would never reveal to Malcolm what I had learned, I thought. I was sure he would deny knowledge of it, but what would be far worse would be my own embarrassment in letting him know that I knew he was more interested in his father’s and Alicia’s lovemaking than he was in our own.

  Was he so taken with his father’s bride? Did spying on them titillate him the way it had titillated me? My questions were answered one hot summer day.

  Alicia and I had finished feeding the children. It was one of those rare days when Garland went to the offices. Christopher was now a year and a half old. Joel was two and a half and Mal five. It was Malcolm’s decision that a tutor would be brought here to give both Mal and Joel their primary education. The classroom in the attic that had been Malcolm’s classroom and his ancestors before him would now be theirs. For this purpose he hired an elderly gentleman, Mr. Chillingworth, a retired Sunday-school teacher. Mal hated him and I found him quite cold and much too firm in his manner with a five-year-old, but Malcolm thought he was perfect.

  “Discipline is what they will need during these early years. It’s when they will form their study habits for the rest of their lives. Simon Chillingworth is perfect for the task. He was my Sunday-school teacher,” he said.

  Nevertheless, every time Mr. Chillingworth arrived to tutor Mal, Mal resisted, sometimes clinging to my skirt and begging me to keep him downstairs. But Malcolm was intractable. The only thing I could do to ease Mal’s fear was to permit Joel to go up with him, even though Joel was too young for lessons. Malcolm approved of Joel’s attendance because he thought the little boy would learn something just by being present.

  Mr. Chillingworth arrived after lunch for his three and a half hours tutorial session and Mal and Joel went up with him. I felt sorry for them up there in the hot attic on this particularly warm summer day, and offered the north salon, the coolest one, to Mr. Chillingworth. But he wouldn’t hear of it.

  “There’s a sufficient breeze from the dormer windows,” he claimed, “and I want the use of the black-boards and desks. The children must learn to cope with discomfort anyway. It makes us stronger Christians.”

  I dressed the boys as lightly as I could and shook my head in pity. Alicia was practically in tears for them. She vowed to say something to Malcolm that night, but I forbade her.

  “I don’t need you to speak for me,” I said. “And I’m not in total disagreement with Malcolm,” I added. It was a lie, but the idea of Alicia getting Malcolm to do something I had wanted him to do was infuriating.

  “Very well,” she said, “but the poor boys.”

  She took Christopher up for a nap and returned shortly after, still complaining about the heat and the stuffiness in the house. I retreated to the cool salon to do some reading, but she was too restless and too flushed to relax.

  “Olivia,” she asked, “don’t you ever want to bathe in the lake?”

  “Bathe in the lake? No. I don’t even have a bathing suit,” I said, and turned back to my book.

  “We could go for a quick cool dip without suits,” she said.

  “Without suits? Hardly,” I said, “and besides, I don’t have any inclinations to do so.”

  “Oh. Too bad. Well,” she said, “I think I might just do it.”

  “I don’t want to hear about it,” I said. “It’s not something a lady should do,” I added.

  “Fiddlesticks,” she said. “Garland and I have done it often.”

  I know I blanched, for I had spied on them once when they had. She didn’t seem to notice my guilt. Instead, she left to get some towels and head for the lake.

  As soon as I heard the front door close, I peered out the window to see her hurrying off toward the lake. Before she disappeared from view, however, Malcolm drove up. I was surprised to see him home so early, but I knew he wasn’t above checking on Mal’s tutorial. I saw him looking at the disappearing Alicia.

  Then, to my surprise, instead of coming directly into the house, he followed in her direction. The hot summer breeze fluttered the lace curtains; insects trying to escape the direct sunlight beat their frail bodies against the screens. For a moment I was unable to move.

  Then I rushed out of the salon and out the front door. I moved quickly but stealthily, the way I had when I wanted to spy on Alicia and Garland. What was Malcolm intending to do? Why had he followed her? Before I reached the lake, I heard her voice and crouched down behind a large bush to peek out at them.

  Alicia was already undressed and in the water. Malcolm stood on the bank, his jacket and shirt off.

  “Don’t come any closer,” she warned, crossing her arms over her breasts and keeping herself down in the water. “Just go on back to the house, Malcolm.”

  He laughed.

  “Perhaps I should take your clothes back with me,” he said, teasing her with a movement toward her garments.

  “Don’t you dare touch anything! Go away!”

  “Come now, Alicia, surely you don’t enjoy being alone here.”

  “I’m only here for a short dip to cool off. Garland will be home any moment.”

  “No, he’s doing business in Charlottesville. Actually, he won’t be home for quite a while.”

  “Get away,” she repeated, but he didn’t move.

  “I’d like to cool off, too, and it’s more fun to have company.”

  “Go and get your own wife then, and stop pursuing me.”

  “But you can’t possibly be satisfied with that old man.”

  “Garland is not an old man,” she protested. “In many ways he’s twenty years younger than you are. He knows how to laugh and enjoy himself. You know nothing about anything but making money. Why, you don’t even treat your own wife properly,” she said.

  Malcolm stared down at her, but he didn’t continue to undress. Her words had bitten him.

  “You’re just a child,” he said slowly, his anger building. “You married my father because he’s rich, and you expect him to die any day, leaving you a fortune—but it won’t happen that way. I promise you.”

  “Get away from here,” she insisted.

  “I don’t think that’s what you really want,” he said, his voice softening. He dropped his trousers and she moved farther back.

  “Go away!”

  “I told you; I’m hot too.”

  He slipped off his shorts. Now, naked, he started into the water toward her.

  “You don’t want to scream,” he said. “We don’t want the servants here. Garland might not understand.”

  “You devil,” she said. She swam to the right and he went after her.

  “You are so beautiful, Alicia,” he said. “So very beautiful. You should have been my wife, not his.”

  She didn’t wait for him to reach her. She kicked up and swam toward the shore. He started in pursuit, but when she reached the shore, she turned on him.

  “Leave me alone!” she screamed. Her loudness froze him in the water. “Leave me alone from now on, Malcolm, or you will force me to tell Garland how you keep trying to seduce me.”

  What was she saying? This wasn’t the first time he had tried something like this?
/>
  “I’ve protected him from knowing what you try to do, just to give this family some peace—but no longer! I hate and despise you, Malcolm Foxworth. You’re not half the man your father is, not half!” she yelled. She emerged from the lake and scooped up her clothing and her towel, wrapping it about her quickly, and then headed for the bushes, fortunately not close to me.

  I watched Malcolm. He stared after her a moment and then he started out.

  “My mother didn’t believe that,” he muttered, just loud enough for me to hear. “She ran off easily enough with some man not worth a cent.”

  He went to his clothing instead of pursuing her. She was nearly dressed and on her way back to the house anyway. I crouched lower in the bushes. I was disconsolate, so alone and betrayed, over and over. Slowly, slowly, I sank to the ground and began to cry silently. Where was security, truth, and honesty? Malcolm used me to fit his purposes and pursued me for my money, money he still hoped to control. There wasn’t the slightest bit of love between us.

  After he dressed, he began to make his cautious way back to the house, ever careful of his expensive clothes amongst the briars. He talked to himself as he went by me.

  “She’ll pay for this day of insult, and pay dearly,” he mumbled. “The damned little conniving slut can’t possibly love an old man like my father. She’s playing her game. From now on, I’ll play mine more subtly.”

  From that day on, whenever Garland was out of sight, Malcolm treated Alicia with disgust, disdain, and rudeness that bordered on cruelty. At times I was moved to take her defense, to confront him with the scene I had witnessed at the lake, but I never did.

  Despite the way she had rejected Malcolm, I was angry at her for being so beautiful and tempting. I let the fire burn between them—Malcolm’s fire of passion and anger, a fire that burned and singed her.

  Garland was either blinded with love or too skeptical of anything Alicia told him about Malcolm, for as far as I knew, he never confronted Malcolm. Something was happening to him anyway, I thought, as time went by. He and Alicia were still passionate and loving with each other, but Garland seemed to be aging quickly. I noticed him taking longer naps by himself. His usually voracious appetite diminished. During their second winter at Foxworth Hall, he had a long, disabling cold that nearly became pneumonia.