Casteel 04 Gates of Paradise (21 page)

It was he, the tall, lean figure I had seen from my window!
Like a guest everyone had forgotten to invite, he had appeared in the background to share the ceremony of mourning, quietly, unnoticed, and then he had disappeared so quickly. Indeed, no one but I seemed to have noticed.
I took a sedative and rested. I awoke late in the afternoon. The great house was so quiet, and the sedative had put me into so deep a sleep, it took me a few moments to realize where I was and what had happened. At first it all seemed like some dream, some long nightmare; but the sight of my waiting wheelchair and the medicines, towels, and lotions lined up on the long vanity table were evidence that this was, unfortunately, no dream.
When I gazed out the windows, I saw that the cottony clouds had flattened into a dark gray blanket, making the afternoon dismal and dark, a fitting aftermath to the morning's ceremony. I pulled myself up into a sitting position and poured myself some water from the blue plastic jug on the night table beside the bed. The stillness around me was puzzling. Where was Mrs. Broadfield? Tony? Had Drake gone back to Boston?
I rang the little bell hung from one of the posts and waited. No one came. I rang again, this time a little longer and louder. Still no one came. Had they expected me to sleep longer? Most likely, I thought, but now I was hungry. I had slept through lunch and it was closing in on dinnertime.
"Mrs. Broadfield?" I called.
Strange that she wasn't just outside my door. She always came running on a moment's notice. The continued silence frustrated me. Confined to a bed, always dependent upon others . . . it made me angry. Driven by this frustration and anger, I leaned over and stretched out until I could grasp the arm of my wheelchair. I would show them all. Why was the chair left so far from my bed, anyway? I wondered. It was almost as if Mrs. Broadfield wanted me trapped.
I pulled the chair close to the bed and
unfastened the right arm. I had never done this before, but I felt sure I could do it now. Sliding myself to the side of the bed, I had to pull my legs along like two long leaden weights.
I locked the chair wheels so it wouldn't move, took a deep breath, and pulled myself of the bed.
First I was on my left side on the chair; then I turned my body so I was on my back. After that I pushed down on the arms of the chair, lifting my uncooperative lower body slowly until I was in the sittin
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Buoyed by this success, I realized I could lift my legs by grabbing under my thighs. My feet dangled stupidly below. I swung them onto the footrests and finally sat back, exhausted. But I had done it! I was not as helpless as they would all make me think! I closed my eyes and waited for my thumping heart to calm.
Once again! listened for sounds from without, but heard only a deep silence. I inhaled deeply and released the wheels so I could move myself forward to the doorway. Once there, I paused and looked about the sitting room. There was no sign of Mrs. Broadfield, no open magazines or books, nothing.
I wheeled myself through the sitting room to the corridor. The air was cooler out there; the lights were still dim and the shadows long and dark. I started to turn left to head for the stairway, where I expected I would stop and call down, but I was tempted to explore on my own, to employ my newly realized mobility for adventure. Where was Tony's bedroom? I wondered. Wasn't it down this way? Maybe he was in it. Perhaps the morning's activities had tired him out as well. Using that as an excuse to quiet my frightened heart, I wheeled myself on. Every once in a while I paused to listen, but heard nothing.
I continued on until I reached an opened double doorway. I could see that the design of this suite was much like the one I was in. A single lamp was illuminated, but when I pushed ahead and entered, I saw no one.
"Tony? Anyone here?"
Whose suite was this? I wondered. It didn't look like it would be Tony's. There was something feminine about it. Then I caught the strong scent of jasmine. My curiosity was like a magnet, much stronger than caution, pulling me along, drawing me forward to the second entryway, the doorway of the bedroom.
I wheeled myself into it and stopped. On the chair before the white marble vanity table was draped an ivory float trimmed with peach lace. The table itself was crowded with powders and skin creams, lotions and bottle after bottle of perfume. What drew my attention quickly, however, was the blank oval of bare wall. The glass in the mirror that had once hung over this vanity table had been removed. Why?
When I turned to the left, I saw that the same was true for the wall mirror and the mirror that had been on the closets. Both were only frames. Steeped in curiosity now, I wheeled farther in and saw the red satin shoes beside the king-size canopy bed, a bed almost the duplicate of mine. Over the bed had been laid a cherry-red crinoline party dress with puffed sleeves and a frilly collar. The quilt was turned down on the bed the way it would be had someone just gotten out of it.
Farther to the right I saw that the dresser drawers had been left open. It looked as though someone had come into the room and rifled through those drawers, searching madly for some precious hidden valuable. Undergarments and stockings dangled over the sides.
On top of the dressers and tables jewelry boxes lay open. I saw glittering necklaces, bejeweled earrings, diamond and emerald bracelets scattered everywhere randomly. I felt I was definitely intruding on someone and began to back myself out. Suddenly I had backed myself into a wall. But when I turned around, I looked into the hot eyes of Mrs. Broadfield.
Her face was blazing red. She looked as if she had been running at full speed. Her usually perfectly brushed-back hair had rebellious strands popping up like ruptured piano wires. Because I was seated so low and looking up at her, her nostrils seemed larger, bull-like. Her bosom heaved with her heavy breathing, rising and falling against her tight, aseptically white nurse's uniform. The buttons looked as if they would pop and she would explode right before my eyes. I actually began to wheel myself away, but she reached down and seized the arm of the chair, preventing any more movement.
"What do you think you are doing?" she demanded in a harsh, threatening voice.
"Doing?"
"I came into your room and discovered you weren't in your bed, the wheelchair gone." She took a deep breath and pressed her hand against her lower throat. "I called for you, knew you weren't downstairs, and then began searching the corridor, never expecting you had gone down this way. I couldn't imagine . . . I thought for sure something had happened to you in one of the rooms."
"I'm fine."
"You don't belong down here," she said, getting behind my chair and wheeling me out quickly. "Mr. Tatterton specifically asked that no one come down here. He's going to blame it on me, think that I brought you," she said, coming out of the suite and looking carefully up and down the corridor before preceding any farther.
I thought she was being ridiculous, sneaking me back to my suite like this. "Tony surely wouldn't mind my coming down this side of the corridor," I exclaimed, but she didn't slow down. It was obvious she was petrified she would lose her position.
"If he finds out, I'll tell him it was all my doing, Mrs. Broadfield."
"That won't matter. I'm responsible for you. I step out just for a few moments to take a short walk and get some fresh air and look what happens. You wake up, drag yourself into the wheelchair, and go wandering off through the house."
"But why would Tony mind?"
"Maybe there are sections of this house that are no longer safe . . . weak floorboards or something. How would I know? He told me what he wanted. It was simple enough. Who would have thought you would do this? Oh dear." She turned into my suite quickly.
"I'll ask him when he comes in."
"Don't you dare mention it. Maybe he won't find out and it won't matter."
She stopped at my bed and stepped back, looking at me and shaking her head.
"There's someone else living here, isn't there? Who is it?"
"Someone else?"
"Beside Tony and the servants, you and me. That room's being used."
"There's no one I've seen. See, you're starting to imagine things, make up stories. Mr. Tatterton will be furious. Don't say any more about this," she warned, her eyes narrow and cold. "If I get in trouble because of this . . . both of us will suffer," she added, the tone of threat quite clear. "I'm not losing this job because a crippled girl violates rules."
Crippled girl! No one had ever put the label on me. Rage filled me until it spilled out my eyes in tears. The way she had pronounced "crippled," she had made it sound less than human.
I was not a crippled girl!
"I called for you," I asserted. "I was hungry, but there was no one here. Even after I got into the wheelchair, I called."
"I just took a short break. I was coming right back. If only you would be a little more patient."
"Patient!" I exclaimed. This time when my eyes met hers, I didn't shift them away. My rebellion rose like a giant fire. I glued my gaze to hers, the rage pouring out. She stepped back as if slapped. Her face became horribly animated, her mouth working as if to find the right shape to phrase words, her eyes growing large and then small. The veins in her temple became prominent in the light, the outline of their weblike shape pressing up against her thin, scaly skin. She took a few steps toward me.
"Yes, patient," she repeated disdainfully. "You've been brought up spoiled. I've had patients like you before--rich young girls who have been pampered and given everything they've ever wanted whenever they've wanted it. They don't know what it is to sacrifice and struggle, to do without, to live through pain and hardship.
"But Ill tell you something," she continued, her face distorted in a mad smile, "rich, pampered, spoiled people are weak and they don't have the strength to fight adversity when it strikes, so they remain crippled . . . they're invalids, trapped by their own wealth and luxury, stupid blobs." She pressed her hands together and rubbed them vigorously, as vigorously as she would if she were out in the cold. "Clay to be molded, no longer able to mold themselves into anything. Oh, they're still soft and pretty, but they're like. . ." She looked over at the dresser. "Like silk lingerie, delightful to touch and wear and then put away."
"I'm not like that. I'm not!" I cried.
She smiled again, this time as if she were speaking to a complete idiot.
"You're not? Then why can't you listen to my orders and do what I tell you when I tell you to do it, instead of fighting me every inch of the way?"
"I do listen. I'm just . . ." The words caught in my throat. I thought I would choke on them.
"Yes?"
"Lonely. I've lost my parents, I've lost my friends, and I'm . . . I'm . . ." She nodded, encouraging me to say it. I didn't want to say it. I wouldn't.
"Crippled?"
"NO!"
"Yes, you are! And you'll remain crippled unless you listen to what I tell you. Is that what you want?"
"You're not God!" I snapped. I couldn't help my frustration.
"No, I never said I was God." Her calm, professional tone only infuriated me more. "But I am a trained nurse, trained to treat people like yourself, and what good will all this training be if the patient is stubborn and spoiled and refuses to follow orders?
"You think I'm being cruel? Perhaps it seems that way, but if I am, I'm being cruel only to be kind. You didn't listen to what I told you . . rich, pampered young girls, such as yourself, are weak; they have no grit when it comes to hardship. You have to toughen up, deal with your loneliness, form a crust around yourself . . a scab over your wounds so you can fight, otherwise you'll remain soft and the ugly thing that has made you an invalid will maintain its grip on you. Is that what you want to happen?" she asked. My heart was pounding because she sounded so right. I wasn't trapped by my physical problems; I was trapped by her words.
"I told you," I said, lowering my head in defeat, "I was hungry and felt deserted. I heard no one and no one answered my calls . . . not Tony, not Drake, and not you."
"All right, go down and see if your meal is ready yet."
"If Drake is still here, send him up," I pleaded. "He's not; he had to return to Boston."
"Where is Tony, then?"
"I don't know. I have enough trouble looking after you," she muttered, and left the suite.
I sat there for a few moments staring into empty space, into the wake of her cold presence. She might be a good nurse, even a great nurse, I thought, but I didn't like her. Despite all that Tony had done for me--the doctors, the machinery and the private care, I wished I could leave here. Maybe my aunt Fanny was right; maybe I was better off recuperating among people I loved, people who loved me.
I had to admit that I jumped at the opportunity to come to Farthy not only because I had always had a secret desire to come here, but for the same reason Drake told me he wasn't anxious to return to Hasbrouck House and Winnerrow. I didn't have the courage to go back there and look at my parents' room, see their clothing and their possessions, awaken every morning expecting to hear Daddy's footsteps and warm "Good morning, princess." I knew I would continually look up in anticipation of Mommy coming in to talk to me about this or that.
No, coming to Farthy had postponed the inevitable reality I would have to face. But now I wondered if I had made the right decision. Perhaps with Aunt Fanny there, keeping me amused in her inimitable way--gossiping about the rich people of Winnerrow, laughing about the way they treated her--I might be better off, even without all the special equipment and private nursing care.
I wished Luke would have come to see me by now so he and I could have discussed it. It was no use talking to Drake about it. He was so infatuated with Tony and the business that he was blind to any of the failings and problems in Farthy. Now he was almost as blind as Tony was even when it came to the rundown sections of Farthinggale.
I had to contact Luke, I thought. I must see him. I must!
I wheeled myself to the desk and found some more stationery. Then I wrote Luke another letter, and this time allowed myself to sound desperate.
.
Dear Luke,
It seems one confusing thing after another has happened to keep you from paying me a visit here at Farthy. Messages are not delivered or perhaps left confusing.
I need to see you immediately. A great deal has happened since my arrival at Farthy. I think I am somewhat stronger, but I haven't made any dramatic progress with my legs yet, despite the therapy.