Dollenganger 05 Garden of Shadows Read online

  Eventually, I began to hear things being said about me. Those in conversation didn't realize I was within earshot or simply didn't care.

  One woman asked another why Malcolm Neal Foxworth, a man with such looks and wealth, would burden himself with someone so tall and plain, stern and Yankeeish as me.

  "Knowing Malcolm," the other said, "it has to have something to do with business."

  I could see from the way others were talking softly and looking at me that as the reception wore on, I had become the subject of ridiculing remarks. I even heard someone criticize my dress. She said I looked like I walked out of a museum.

  "Maybe she's a statue brought to life," her companion replied.

  "You call that 'brought to life'?"

  They laughed and laughed. I looked hopefully for Malcolm. But he was nowhere to be found. From out of nowhere Mr. Patterson appeared, and took my arm. "Let's get that husband of yours to help me see Mrs. Patterson to the car. I'm afraid she's had a bit too much to drink."

  Before I could stop him, Mr. Patterson had swung open the library doors. I was shocked to find Malcolm seated behind his desk, with Amanda Biddens draped across the mahogany top. He had a silly smile on his face. His hair was ruffled, his tie askew. "Olivia," he called, "come meet Amanda."

  She propped her head on an elbow and looked up at me. "Don't you remember, Malc?" she cooed. "I've already been introduced to your bride."

  I was practically shaking with rage and humiliation, but once again Mr. Patterson intervened. "Malcolm old mart, I need some help with the little missus again," he said pointedly. Cheerfully, Malcolm rose, and without so much as a look my way, followed Mr. Patterson out the door. Through one of the windows, I could see them lifting Mrs. Patterson into the chauffeur-driven car, her entire leg exposed all the way up to her garter. Her foot was bare. Malcolm retrieved her shoes from the drive and tossed them into the backseat. Amanda, hovering beside me, said teasingly, "Your husband always was there for a damsel in distress. I'm glad to see marriage hasn't changed that."

  I was glad when the reception began to wind down. Guests sought us out to say their good-byes and wish us good luck. Malcolm had to take a position beside me again. He reverted to his usual self and became more dignified. I knew that the women who promised to call on me would never do so, but I didn't care about it.

  By the time the last couple left, I was exhausted, hurt, humiliated, but grateful it was over. I told Malcolm I was tired and I was going up to my room.

  "It was rather a nice affair, don't you think?" he asked me.

  "I didn't think much of the guests, especially the women," I responded. "Although I saw you did."

  He looked at me with some surprise in his face as I pivoted and ascended the staircase. I felt defeated and let down. Malcolm should not have gone into the library with that lascivious woman, leaving me in that crowd of vipers. If this was what Virginia society was, I was glad they didn't take to me, I told myself.

  And yet, I couldn't help thinking about the way some of those women moved about--the freedom they seemed to enjoy, the confidence they had in their own looks and desirableness, and the way the men in the party looked at them. No one looked at me that way--with eyes filled with admiration and longing.

  My exhaustion wasn't as much physical as it was mental and emotional. When I slipped under my blanket and lowered my head to the pillow, I felt like crying. The reception that I had hoped would give me the respect I longed for had done just the opposite. How could I show my face anywhere now after the way Malcolm had behaved at his own wedding party? I hugged my pillow in solace and fell into a tortured sleep. Demons in the guise of flappers haunted my dreams, so that I never slept for more than a few minutes, and my tears fell again and again until I broke out into sobs. Finally, I sobbed myself to welcome sleep.

  Sometime before morning I heard the door creak open, and when I opened my eyes, I saw Malcolm Neal Foxworth, naked in the moonlight, his manliness looming over me. "I want a son," he said.

  I shuddered and glared my eyes at him, but I didn't say a word.

  "You must concentrate on what we are about to do, Olivia," he said as he climbed onto the bed. "That way we have a better chance of succeeding."

  He peeled back my blanket and came at me. I was frightened by his intensity and determination. Once again, he gave me no tenderness or affection.

  I turned into him, hoping for a kiss, listening for some soft words, but his face was stone serious, his sky-blue eyes curiously lifeless. It was as though he had turned them off and was seeing only what was behind them.

  What did he see as he had his way with me? Did he envision Amanda Bidden? His mother? Someone else? Was he making love to some dream woman? In his mind did he hear the words of love? It wasn't fair.

  I fell back against the pillow and turned my face away from his. My body shook and trembled. When I felt his seed emerging, I looked into his glassy eyes and thought I could almost hear him willing it to find its destination.

  Afterward, he fell against me like an exhausted marathon runner, but I was grateful for the way he clung to my body. At least there was some warmth in that.

  "Good," he muttered, "good," and backed off me. He put on his robe and gazed at himself in the mirror as if his image would now congratulate him He saw something very pleasing in his own contented smile and smiled at me. "I hope, Olivia," he said, "that you are as fertile as I expected."

  "You can't command nature, Malcolm. Nature is neither your servant, nor mine."

  "I want a son," he repeated. "I married you because you are the serious type of woman who can be mistress of a great house, but also because you have a full body that can provide me with the children I require," he said. I stared at him, unable to respond. His eyes were hard; he was a stranger to me.

  I knew that everything he said was true--a woman should be a good wife, a good mistress of her husband's house, sensible and reliable, someone on whom he could depend, and, of course, a good breeder of children; but all of this was missing something even more important, and that was love.

  I would live in this big house and have everything a woman could want materially. People living below in small houses and with small incomes would be envious of me whenever I came down from the hill, but could anything grow strong and beautiful in Foxworth Hall if there wasn't love and affection to nourish it? I thought of all the shadows, all the damp and dark corners, the dimly lit hallways, the cold, closed rooms, that dusty, dingy attic filled with the dead past, and I shuddered.

  "Malcolm, when you first looked at me, when you courted me, there must have been stronger feelings, feelings that--"

  "Please," he said, "don't talk to me about feelings. I don't want to hear about bells ringing and the world turning rose-colored. My mother's letters are filled with such silly references."

  "Letters?"

  "She wrote to my father when they were courting." "Where are her letters?"

  "I burned them, turned them back to the smoke they were. I have a busy day tomorrow, Olivia," he said, obviously wanting to change the subject quickly. "Get a good night's sleep," he said. And with that, he left my bedroom.

  In his wake he left a deep, deadly silence, like the silence that comes before a great storm. Even his footsteps echoing down the hallway sounded miles away. I embraced myself and sat up in my bed.

  No wonder he clumped me with the servants when we first drove up to Foxworth Hall. In his mind I was hired on to perform a role, fulfill a specific set of functions, just the way a house servant would be hired. No wonder when he spoke about having a son it sounded like a command.

  6 Fathers and Sons

  . MALCOLM HAD HIS WAY. OUR FIRST SON WAS BORN NINE months and two weeks from the date of the reception to introduce me to the fine Virginia society. We named him Malcolm, for his father, but we called him Mal so it would be easier to distinguish between them. By this time I knew without a doubt that Malcolm was a strong, forceful man who always got whatever he wanted. He
was always a winner because he never entered a battle without first assuring himself that the odds were on his side. This was the way he conducted business; this was the way he conducted his life. I had no doubt that he would go a long way toward becoming one of the richest men in the world before he died.

  After Mal was born, my hopes for love were born again for a short time. I thought that Mal's birth would bring Malcolm closer to me. Since I had come here, I had been treated more like a maid than like a wife. Malcolm worked all day, every day, returned late at night, hardly ever even sharing dinner with me. We never went anywhere, and the "society" whom I'd been introduced to at the reception seemed to have quickly forgotten my existence. Now that the son Malcolm so wanted had arrived, I thought he might want to have a closer family life, and would perhaps become more of a loving husband. I looked upon the birth of the baby as the coming of something wonderful for our marriage. Mal would be a bridge between his father and myself, drawing us toward each other in ways neither of us expected.

  Like any other mother, I was thrilled at each coo, at each smile, at each new accomplishment of my wonderful, adorable son. And I waited for Malcolm's return each day with happy news of our son's progress.

  "There's no question he recognizes you now, Malcolm!"

  "Today he crawled for the first time!" "Today he said his first word!"

  "Mal began to walk today!"

  Each announcement should have had us

  hugging and kissing, grateful that we had a healthy child. But Malcolm reacted to everything the baby did with a surprising indifference, as though he had expected no less. He took it all for granted and never showed a father's delight and happiness.

  If anything, he was impatient with the baby's progress. He was intolerant of the growing process and didn't want to be around to watch the baby make his small but continuous movements forward. He hated it when I. brought the baby to the dinner table and ordered me to feed Mal before our own meals. Rarely did he go into the baby's nursery.

  Before little Mal was two years old, I was pregnant again, made so by another swift and loveless encounter. Malcolm was determined to have a big family; and now he wanted a daughter. This second pregnancy proved harder for me, I don't know why. I was sick in the mornings. Late in my pregnancy my doctor told me he wasn't happy about how it was going. His fears proved accurate, for during the seventh month I nearly had a miscarriage and then, just at the start of the eighth month, Joel Joseph was born prematurely.

  From the start he was a small, fragile, sickly child, with pale thin hair and blue Foxworth eyes. Malcolm was upset that I hadn't given him a daughter, and angry that Joel was not a healthy child. I knew he blamed it on me, even though I did nothing to endanger the baby and followed all of the doctor's orders concerning nutrition.

  He said, "The Foxworths are noted for being healthy and strong. Let it be your goal and

  responsibility to see that this baby of yours changes and becomes what I would expect my sons to be-- strong, aggressive, assertive, manly in all ways."

  One day after the Foxworth family doctor, Dr. Braxten, had come to see me, Malcolm came up to my room. The doctor told him he didn't believe I would be able to have any more children.

  "That's impossible," Malcolm thundered. "I have not gotten a daughter yet!"

  "Be reasonable now, Malcolm," Dr. Braxten calmed him.

  Didn't Malcolm care at all about my health?

  Neither the doctor nor I anticipated Malcolm's vehement reaction. His face became bright red and he bit down on his lip as if to keep himself from speaking. Then he stepped back, looking from me to the doctor and then to me again.

  "What is this, something you two have concocted?"

  "Pardon me, sir," Dr. Braxten said. He was a man in his late fifties, who was highly respected in his field. The doctor's face paled almost to the shade of his thatch of gray hair. His large fishlike eyes, magnified beneath those thick-lensed glasses, widened.

  "Are you standing there and telling me I will never have another child? Never have a daughter?"

  "Why, yes . . . I .

  "How dare you, sir? How dare you presume?"

  "It's not a matter of presuming, Malcolm. This last pregnancy was quite difficult and--"

  "I'll hear no more of this," he said, and turned to me with as hateful a face as I have ever seen him wear. "I won't hear of it, you understand?" Then he spun around like a marionette on strings and stormed out of my bedroom. Dr. Braxten was embarrassed for me, so I didn't prolong his stay any longer.

  Of course, I was shocked by Malcolm's attitude, but by this time I had hardened myself against his tirades and terrible remarks. He didn't bring it up again, and I didn't discuss it with him. I wasn't sorry I couldn't bear him any more children. He wasn't a man who enjoyed the children he had.

  He seemed to ignore Mal and to blame Joel for not being a daughter, the daughter I never realized he wanted so much. He was even more intolerant of the sound of Joel's crying and often spent days without seeing or speaking to either child. If he had been intolerant, of Mal's growing process, he was an ogre about Joel's. God forbid the baby messed his diaper in his presence or spit up food while Malcolm was in the room.

  Sometimes, I thought he was ashamed of his little family, as if having only two children was a blight on his manhood. It wasn't until Mal was nearly three years old that he took the four of us anywhere together.

  We went to tour his fabric mills. All the while, whenever he pointed something out, he spoke to Mal as though his infant son would understand.

  "This is all going to be yours someday, Mal," he said, speaking as though Joel wouldn't be alive after he died or as though Joel didn't matter. "I expect you will expand it, make it into something of a Foxworth empire."

  We returned to Foxworth Hall on a bright spring day. The leaves were bursting out to say hello to the fresh April sunlight. My boys pointed at the robins eating fresh worms from the grass, and jumped and giggled like merry spring lambs. As I entered Foxworth Hall, Mrs. Steiner rushed out to meet me.

  "Oh, Mrs. Foxworth, I'm so glad you're back. A telegram arrived from Connecticut for you this morning, and I'm sure it's something important."

  My heart skipped. What could this mean? I tore open the envelope as Mrs. Steiner leaned nosily over my shoulder.

  OLIVIA FOXWORTH STOP

  WITH MY DEEPEST SYMPATHIES AND GREATEST RESPECTS I REGRET TO INFORM YOU THAT YOUR FATHER HAS BEEN TAKEN BY THE LORD TO HIS BOSOM STOP

  FUNERAL HAS BEEN SET FOR APRIL SEVENTH

  I crumpled the telegram to my breast, hollow now from grief. April 7 was tomorrow! Little Mal was pulling on, my skirt. "Mommy, Mommy, what's wrong, why are you crying?"

  Malcolm grabbed the crumpled telegram from my hand and read it. "Malcolm, I must go

  immediately, I must go on the next train!"

  "What?" he said sternly. "What do you plan to do with the boys?"

  "Malcolm, I'll leave them with you. Mrs. Steiner is here to help, so is Mrs. Stuart."

  "But I would have to be in charge. Olivia, a woman's place is with her children."

  "He's my father, Malcolm, my only father. I must be there for his funeral."

  Malcolm and I argued the matter until it was too late. By the time Malcolm assented to let me go, the night train had already left, and the morning train I finally boarded arrived in New London five hours after my father's funeral had ended. I went home to find John Amos and Father's lawyer sitting in the parlor.

  My eyes were red and swollen from the tears I shed on that long train ride--tears of sadness for my father, but I know they were also for me. Now I was alone in a different way than ever I had been before.

  Both stood up as soon as they saw me, and John Amos came over and took my hand in his. He had become a man since I'd last seen him. A man now twenty-three years old, tall and stern and kind. My tears began again as he talked to me. "Olivia, I'm so glad to see you. I was surprised by your absence at the funeral, but I know you'd app
rove of it. I saw to it that your father was received by his maker in a most proper way. Now come sit down Olivia, you remember Mr. Teller, your father's lawyer--it seems your father added some rather odd clauses to his will that we'll need to straighten out."

  Mr. Teller, too, took my hand and looked at me with sympathy in his eyes and we all sat in the dark, gloomy room.

  My mind was numb as all the details were explained. Father had left me his entire estate under the sole condition that only I manage the money. Oh--I know what he had done. He had made sure Malcolm Foxworth would never get his hands on my money. Oh, Father, how did you know the truth so long before I did! And why did you let me marry that man! My tears fell and I hid my head in my lap.

  John Amos asked Mr. Teller to leave, telling him we'd make our decisions and let him know before I returned to Virginia.

  What a comfort John Amos was to me! And during the two days I stayed in New London, I poured my heart out to him. By the time I left, John Amos knew more about me than anyone else in the world. And I knew, with his love of God and family, that I could trust him, always. It was a knowledge that grew in me as the years passed, and always, when things were hardest, I would turn to John Amos, writing him long letters and he would write me back with words of comfort from both himself and God--for he soon began studying theology at a New England seminary. He was my only family and he was wise and caring-- so unlike Malcolm. But I returned to Virginia somehow strengthened--I had lost my father--but had gained a brother, an advisor, a spiritual counselor. "Now, Olivia," John said as he saw me off at the station, "return to your husband and boys, and may the Lord go with you. I am here whenever you need me."

  Malcolm showed no regret at all at my father's death. The very day I returned he started in again about my fortune.

  "Well, Olivia, you are now a rich woman, in your right. How do you intend to control your fortune now?"

  I told him I had no plans, I was still mourning my father and was hardly interested in thinking about money right now.

  Weeks passed with our barely speaking, except for Malcolm's almost daily inquiries about my plans for my father's estate. Then one day Malcolm appeared in the nursery to make an announcement that would change our lives completely. It was so rare to see him in the nursery that I greeted him warmly, hoping he had come because he had a father's sincere interest in his children. I was teaching Mal the alphabet, using blocks, and Joel was in his crib sucking on his bottle. The room was somewhat messy because children, especially three-year-old children, drop things everywhere. I usually had it cleaned and straightened by the end of the day.