Garden of Shadows (Dollanganger) Read online

  Throughout it all, Alicia continually turned to me for guidance. I knew she was trying to reach out, to get me to help her, especially with her relationship to Malcolm; but I remained distant, cold, and disinterested. What I wanted to happen was beginning to happen. The cheeriness went out of her voice. She wasn’t as bubbly and energetic. She stopped going out with her young girlfriends and spent more time alone, waiting for Garland to come home or to wake from a long nap, avoiding Malcolm in any way she could. She kept herself busy with Christopher, who was now nearly two and a half. In fact, she spent a good deal of time with the children. She was the one who started Mal on the piano, much to Malcolm’s displeasure. Both Joel and Mal showed a natural talent for music, but Malcolm had the idea that musicians were weak, effeminate men who made little money.

  I began to think that it was her way of getting back at him—teaching the boys something about music. I let that go on because the boys enjoyed it so much and because it annoyed Malcolm so much.

  For a time I was like someone in the audience observing the unhappiness, taking pleasure in some of it, even though it did little to relieve my own sorrows.

  I did not understand that my selfish pleasure permitted something else to grow. Without realizing it, I had opened Foxworth Hall to more demons of the heart and of the mind. They took their places in the shadows and waited for their opportunity to act.

  It wouldn’t be long before the opportunity came and the demons would bring with them more misery than I had ever imagined could live in the cold, empty rooms of Foxworth Hall.

  9

  Days Colored Black

  THE MONTHS PASSED, EACH MUCH LIKE THE ONE BEFORE it, filled with tensions I thought were the result of Malcolm’s attitude toward Alicia. His belligerence showed in his sharp, often biting comments and in the way he often ignored her. He was more irritable about many things, especially Mal’s love of music. One afternoon he came home early and found Mal at the piano with Alicia at his side, teaching him the scales. I was crocheting a sweater for Joel and enjoying the way Mal was intuitively able to pick the right notes. There was no question that he had talent which, if properly nurtured, might grow into real musicianship.

  Malcolm heard the piano and came to the salon, the rage already burning in his eyes. I looked up from my needlework just as he came charging through the doorway. He slammed the piano shut with such violence, he almost caught poor Mal’s hands beneath the lid. I think he wanted to do that to end Mal’s piano playing forever. Alicia gasped and embraced Mal as the two of them looked up at the towering Malcolm.

  “What did I say about catering to these musical whims?”

  “But, Malcolm, the boy is talented. He’s a prodigy. Look at what he can do at his age. Let us show you,” Alicia pleaded.

  “I don’t care what he can do on a piano. Will that make him competent in business? Will that enable him to walk in my footsteps? You are turning him into a soft, effeminate man. Get him off that piano bench,” he said, but Alicia didn’t release her embrace of him. “Mal, stand up,” he commanded.

  Mal moved away from Alicia and stood up, his lips trembling. He was afraid to cry, knowing how that would anger Malcolm even more. Usually, he sobbed silently, taking deep breaths and heaving up his shoulders. Joel, who sat on the floor playing with Christopher, looked up with the same terror in his eyes. The two boys shared their fear of their father. Whenever one was yelled at, the other would respond as if it were he. Christopher, on the other hand, simply looked interested in the sudden activity and noise. Alicia turned to me, hoping I would come to her aid.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “The boy must learn never to disobey me. I told him to spend his spare time on his school lessons, not on the piano.”

  “He’s not disobeying you,” I said, “if his mother and his grandmother permit him to do it.”

  “He’s disobeying me!” he repeated. “He knows what I said about it.” He reached forward and took Mal by the back of his neck, nearly lifting the terrified child off the ground, and dragged him out of the salon to the library for a whipping. Almost immediately, Joel began to cry. Christopher looked confused.

  “Malcolm, don’t!” Alicia screamed after them.

  “Concern yourself with your own offspring,” he said, spitting his words back at her, “and leave my boys to me.”

  Alicia buried her face in her hands and then looked up at me. Joel had come running to my chair to embrace my leg.

  “How can you permit him to do such things?” she asked.

  “I can hardly prohibit him from expressing his opinion about his own children, especially in his own house.”

  “But you’re the mother; you should have something to say, shouldn’t you?”

  “Are you trying to engender an argument between my husband and myself?” I responded. I knew she wasn’t, but I wanted her to think I believed it.

  “Of course not, Olivia. Oh, dear,” she said, “I feel responsible. I’ve been encouraging him and you’ve permitted it,” she added as though just realizing it. “You shouldn’t have if you knew it was going to come to this. Malcolm is so cruel. Aren’t you afraid for little Mal?”

  “He will be all right,” I told her. “If he wants something enough, even his father won’t stop him. He’s more like me when it comes to that. Try to ignore Malcolm. Stay away from him,” I added, filling my words with another meaning. “The house is big enough.”

  “I feel so sorry for him, though.” She was crying. She got up and left the room.

  I didn’t call her back to comfort her; I was happy that there were strong differences between her and Malcolm. As long as there were such differences, I had no fear that she would ever respond to his amorous approaches.

  Then things changed again.

  On the occasion of Christopher’s third birthday, Garland and Alicia held a party and invited a number of neighboring couples who had children Christopher’s, Mal’s, and Joel’s age. The foyer of Foxworth Hall sounded like a school yard. There were children all about. Alicia arranged for games and hung colorful paper streamers and balloons. Mrs. Wilson made a huge birthday cake decorated with all sorts of bright little animals.

  Malcolm went to work in the morning, but Garland remained home to help with the party, something Malcolm thought was a ridiculous thing for him to do.

  “He’s ludicrous when it comes to Christopher,” Malcolm told me that morning after breakfast. Garland and Alicia had left the table to prepare for the party. “He acts like a man in his dotage. You would think it was his first child.”

  “Perhaps he is proud of not only having been able to have a child, but having one so handsome and bright,” I said. Malcolm’s eyes narrowed, and for the first time I understood that he was jealous of Garland’s attention to Christopher. “Didn’t your father give you the same kind of attention?”

  “Hardly. It was the other way around. I had to practically beg him to take me along on his business trips. After my mother left, he was so weak, he even tried to blame me for driving her away. I’ll never forgive him for that. My mother loved me more than anything, and it was his own inadequacies that forced her to abandon me. Don’t you understand, every time he looks into my blue eyes, he sees Corinne. He knows he could never make her love him the way she loved me. Oh, she must have hated him … otherwise she never would have left me. I’ll never forgive him for losing her.”

  For the first time in years, I actually felt sympathy for my husband, and I reached out to touch his trembling hand. “But he spent more time with you when you were older, didn’t he?” I asked, hoping to calm his agitation.

  “Not until I was much older and I could relieve him of some of his business responsibilities. I was sent to one private school after another until college, anything to keep me out of his sight. When I was away from home, he never wrote or answered any of my letters. One Christmas vacation I returned home from boarding school and found a house full of servants, but my father gone on one of his
safaris. It never occurred to him to take me along. I had no friends to speak of, so I spent the entire holiday vacation wandering about Foxworth Hall, listening to the echo of my own footsteps.”

  “Malcolm,” I said, seeing he was in the mood to talk about his past, something he rarely liked to do, “I’ve always meant to ask you. After your mother left, did she ever write to you? Did you ever hear from her?”

  “Not a word, not a card, nothing. When I was young, I used to think my father was hiding her letters to me and I would stay alone up in my room for hours writing her endless letters that were never mailed. I would plead for her to come back to me. I was only five years old! I needed her! I couldn’t comprehend what possessed her to turn her back on her loving son. If I could talk to her right now, that’s all I’d want to know.”

  “What good would that do you now?” I asked.

  “You wouldn’t understand,” he said, and left me rather than continue the conversation.

  I was surprised to see him return home on the day of Christopher’s birthday party in time to attend the festivities. It wasn’t beyond him to ignore the boy’s special day, even though it would hurt his father. What surprised me was the way he looked at Alicia when he set eyes on her in the foyer, where she was entertaining the neighboring children.

  She was wearing one of those sack dresses that made women look more like boys, although she didn’t wear any flattener to keep her breasts from poking up against the flimsy material. She had her hair up and she wore two strings of enormous pearls. At a party, with people around her, she grew radiant and alive again. She looked as she had when she first arrived at Foxworth Hall. Even Garland seemed regenerated; the tired, worn expression he had been wearing lifted like a mask.

  Alicia’s laughter echoed through the large room. The children were delighted with her warmth and gaiety. They trailed after her, vying for her attention. Our two boys were at the forefront, chanting her name.

  Malcolm stood like a statue watching her. I expected to see that characteristic sneer, that hateful look in his eyes, but instead, I saw his face soften and his lips relax. He looked like one of the children, enamored of her.

  Something wild and frightening burgeoned in my heart. He was looking at her with the kind of longing only a man in love had for a woman. What I thought had died had not. It had been hibernating, sleeping like some giant bear, waiting for spring. Alicia’s beauty was that spring. It tempted him, awoke the strong feelings in him, and beckoned him in pursuit once again.

  I heard it in the way he addressed her when they spoke. I saw it in his eyes, eyes that would not move from her as she went about the foyer, conducting the party. He was satisfied sitting in a chair, sipping tea, and observing Alicia all afternoon.

  Long after the party ended and the guests were gone, Malcolm remained in the foyer watching Alicia supervise the cleanup. Garland, tired from the activity, retreated to his bedroom to rest. I saw to bathing the children and preparing them for bed.

  Alicia announced she was retiring to the Swan Room to relax with a good book.

  “Wasn’t it a wonderful little party?” she asked me.

  “The children enjoyed it,” I admitted. “One wonders, though, if a three-year-old can appreciate such festivity.”

  “Oh, Olivia, sometimes you sound just like Malcolm,” she sighed. I was sorry he wasn’t close enough to hear that.

  I watched her go up the spiral staircase and then I went to gather my needlework and take it up to my bedroom. I didn’t rush right upstairs. The servants had some questions about some of the glassware and Mrs. Wilson wanted to discuss the menu for the coming week.

  What happened next was later told to me by Alicia, but she was in such a hysterical state at the time, it was difficult to understand all of it.

  I was halfway up the staircase when I heard her scream. That was followed by a loud crash against the wall of the Swan Room. I hurried up the remaining steps and rushed down the hallway to her doorway in time to see Garland crumple on the floor, clutching his chest. He was in a nightdress; apparently he had been woken from his sleep, and had come running barefoot to the Swan Room.

  Alicia was sprawled over the bed, her nightgown torn from the right shoulder to the waist, her breasts exposed. Malcolm stood over his father’s collapsed body, his hands clenched into fists, his face beet-red, his eyes bulging. There was a long scratch down the right side of his face.

  “What’s happened?” I screamed.

  “Quick, call for the doctor,” Malcolm commanded, gathering some control of himself when he set eyes on me. I looked at Alicia, who was now crying hysterically and trying to cover herself with the torn shred of her nightgown. Garland wasn’t moving, so I rushed to the nearest phone, the one in the trophy room, and called Dr. Braxten.

  By the time he arrived, Malcolm had dragged Garland’s body back into his own bedroom and placed him on his bed. Alicia, wearing a robe over her torn nightgown, was at Garland’s side, sobbing and holding his limp hand.

  “What happened?” Dr. Braxten asked, rushing to the bed. Malcolm looked first at me, then at Alicia before replying.

  “He had an attack of some sort and yelled out. By the time I arrived, he was like this,” he explained.

  The doctor placed his stethoscope on Garland’s chest and listened for a heartbeat. Then he checked his eyes and his pulse.

  “Must have been a heart attack,” he said softly. “I’m sorry. There’s nothing left for me to do.”

  Alicia wailed and threw her body over Garland’s.

  “No! No! No!” she screamed. “It can’t be. We just celebrated our son’s birthday. Please, no. Please. Garland, wake up! Show them you’re not dead! Garland! Garland!” Her sobbing was so intense, it shook the bed.

  Malcolm turned and fled. He didn’t look at me on the way out.

  “I’ll contact the undertaker,” Dr. Braxten said softly. He looked back at Alicia. “It’s best they get here as soon as possible.”

  “Of course,” I said.

  “He did come to see me a few weeks ago,” Dr. Braxten explained, “and I told him I wasn’t happy with his heart then, but he made me swear not to tell anyone, especially Alicia. He was that kind of a man.”

  “Yes,” I said, understanding Garland’s motives. He never wanted to admit his age. He did everything possible to make life rosy for Alicia.

  “Will she be all right? I can give her something to help her sleep,” he said. I went to her, hesitating to put my hands on her. Finally, I touched her shoulder.

  “Alicia, the doctor wants to know if you want him to give you something to help you sleep.”

  She shook her head and then raised herself slowly from Garland’s body. She wore a dazed look and gazed about the room as if she were in a dream. The doctor moved to her.

  “It will be better for you if you go back to your own bed,” he said. “Sleep is the only cure for such great sorrow.”

  She nodded and permitted him to help her to her feet. As he walked her to the door, she looked back at Garland’s corpse and began to cry hysterically again. I followed them out and closed the door behind me.

  Malcolm was nowhere about. He had retreated to some room in the house, but I wasn’t interested in locating him at the moment. I went with the doctor and Alicia to the Swan Room. Alicia permitted him to put her into her bed like a child.

  “You should stay with her for a while,” he told me.

  “Of course I will,” I said. I felt quite dazed by the events myself, but I was never one to lose control and dignity. It pleased me that the doctor sensed my ability to handle affairs in the midst of a crisis. Alicia was, after all, more like a child.

  “I’ll go call the undertaker,” he whispered. “Call me if you need me.”

  “Thank you, Dr. Braxten.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “He was a fine … I’m sorry,” he added, and left.

  I looked down at Alicia. She had turned her face into the pillow and was sobbing softly. I went to
the doorway and closed the door, locking it behind me. I didn’t want us to be disturbed for a while. Then I returned to the swan bed and sat down beside her.

  “Alicia,” I said. “I must know what happened here before I came upon the terrible scene. What was Malcolm doing in your room?” Her sobbing intensified. “Alicia, you must tell me. You have no one else now,” I added, thinking that was a good point to bring up at this moment. It struck home, for her sobbing lessened and she began to turn to me. She pressed her hands against her face as if to stop the tears, and then brought the blanket to her face.

  “It was horrible, horrible,” she began.

  “What was?”

  “I was just lying here, reading, feeling so good about the party and how happy everyone was. Garland …” She started to cry again. “He was so proud, so happy.”

  “What happened here?” I asked, pursuing.

  “I didn’t lock my door. Sometimes … sometimes Garland comes to me in the middle of the night,” she said. “When I heard it open, I assumed it was Garland, but it was Malcolm,” she said, looking at the door quickly, her face twisting as though the entire scene were being reenacted before her very eyes.

  “What did he want?”

  “He wanted—” She stopped as if telling me were the most indecent thing she could do. “He wanted me,” she said, her anger growing. “He came to my bed. I told him he shouldn’t be in here. He laughed and said not to worry. Garland was asleep. He said terrible things to me. He told me Garland was too old to satisfy me now, that now I would need him more than ever and it was all right since he was Garland’s son.”