Garden of Shadows

“MAMA, I’VE BECOME A WOMAN!”

I was out in the garden, cutting the last of the late summer chrysanthemums. My garden had thrived that year, I felt, because all the children were home with me for the summer and often we’d all work on it together, weeding and watering and working in fertilizer. This year my prize mums stood tall and proud—some of them over five feet high, in glorious colors of lavender, blood-red, and sun-yellow. Mal teased me to enter the county fair, “You’ll be the queen of the mums, Mother, most certainly.” Corinne had also pressed me to enter my flowers, but I demurred. I wanted the flowers from our garden saved for us, for our home, to make our lives bright, to mirror the happiness my children brought to the gloom of Foxworth Hall. Too soon it was September, and in a week the children would be off again, Joel and Corinne back to their respective boarding schools, Mal back to Yale, where he was beginning to realize all the ambitions Malcolm had driven into him since the day he was born. I had just snipped off the crowning glory of my deep purple mum, when I saw the excited Corinne running toward me, her golden-blond hair fanning out behind her like a shawl spun of sunlight.

“Mama, I’ve become a woman!”

“Darling, what are you talking about?”

“Mama, I’m in a womanly way!”

My heart stopped and I reeled around, shocked and trembling.

“Mama, I’ve got my …”

Her face was flushed, her big blue eyes filled with wonder and excitement, and she was shyly giggling. “Mama, I’ve got my period. Now I’m really a woman.”

I reached down and took her hands in my own. I was flabbergasted. Corinne was only fourteen years old; she didn’t even know the difference between being a woman and being in a womanly way. But she was so proud and excited to be a woman. How poignantly happy I felt for her. How different it was for me. Why, I hadn’t gotten my period until I was sixteen years old, and by that time my mother was dead, and I had no one with whom to share the secret of my change.

“Mama, make me a garland for my hair to celebrate. In the olden days, didn’t you used to do that to celebrate big events?”

Corinne began gathering the flowers I had cut, weaving the stems together, entwining blossoms of all colors to make a festive wreath. I watched her with a bittersweet mixture of envy and love. For when I was a girl, the only crown my womanhood brought me was a barren crown of thorns. Indeed, I had been ashamed of the coming of my menses, wanting to hide it from my father and the servants, so embarrassed and ashamed that someone would find out that that night I had gone to bed praying to God to let me stay a little girl. I hadn’t wanted to be a woman, and for good reason, for even now what did it bring me in terms of love but my dearest children, all now about to embark on their own adult lives. And here was Corinne already the sort of woman I had never been and would never be.

Corinne went over and sat on the ship rock that decorated the center of our garden. “Aren’t you going to tell me all about love now, Mama? Aren’t I ready now? Oh, I have so many longings inside me, I feel like I could burst.”

“Love, Corinne? You’re only a child.”

“But Mama, I’m so filled with questions. I’m so …” She bent her head over and swept up the hair, fastening bright forget-me-nots to her golden locks. “I’m so curious to know everything.”

“Corinne—”

“When a man kisses you, Mama, do you just die inside?”

“Darling—”

“When he takes you in his arms”—she embraced herself, jumped up, and waltzed around the flowers— “do you feel like the ground is dancing with you? Mama, I must know! I’ll just die if I have to spend the rest of my life in Foxworth Hall. I want marriage. I want love. I want to go dancing every night. I want to be taken on cruises to exotic lands where the women don’t wear blouses and the men beat drums. Oh, I know Daddy would never approve, he wants me to be his little girl forever, but you know I can’t be. You must have once wanted these things too, Mama. You must have wanted a man who swept you off your feet, who promised to love you forever and ever, who made the world shake and tremble every time he touched your hand. Did Daddy make you feel that way?”

“Your father—”

“He’s so handsome, I bet, I just bet and”—Corinne threw her hands around my waist and began waltzing me around the garden—“I bet you were just wild about him.”

I stopped the dance and sat down on the ship rock to catch my breath. Could Corinne see the pain in my eyes? Wild about him? Yes, I was wild—wild with a desperate hope for love. But what did I get instead? The consummation of our marriage that should have been warm and wonderful was literally a rape. He attacked me with his mother’s name on his lips. That was my initiation to love. I never had Malcolm’s love.

Corinne was staring at me with the strangest expression in her sky blue eyes, expectant, almost afraid.

“Mama,” she said, “promise me someone will love me, some wonderful young man will win my heart. Promise.”

Suddenly a dark cloud passed over her eyes, and she bent over, pained by a cramp.

“Womanhood brings pain along with its joys, and every month you’ll be reminded of this. You know, Corinne, relations between a man and a woman are more complicated than you can ever imagine. It’s not just flowers and rainbows, though we might wish with all our hearts it were. As the poets have always told us, love more resembles a rose, with harsh, hurting thorns beneath its bright, beautiful blossom. For some of us, the thorns are hardly noticeable, so sweet is the scent of the rose, but for others the rose is small, and shriveled almost before it’s bloomed, and we are left with a bush of thorns, like tiny needles poking your heart—”

“But, Mama, the pain’s already gone. I know you know everything about life, Mama, and I know you’re trying to protect me. But I know something in my heart, and I just know it’s true. I know I’m going to be one of those special lucky girls—I mean women—who have a special special love, pure and bright, an all-lifelong true love. And I know that when it comes I’ll be ready, and I’ll do anything, anything, anything to claim it for my own. Oh, Mama, I can tell things aren’t always fine between you and Daddy. But that doesn’t mean it has to be that way for me, does it?”

I knew it would be different for her—as it had been for Alicia—and for the Corinne before her. How I envied her. How I dreamed for her.

“Does it, Mama? Won’t it be different for me?”

I looked at her face, her full rose-petal mouth opened slightly in question. “Of course, Corinne, of course it will be different for you. For you have the gifts all women long for—beauty, sweetness, innocence, a loving heart—”

I hugged her to my breast to hide the tears that sprang to my eyes. Oh, how I wished she were really mine. But she was mine. My love had made her mine. At last my love had created something beautiful, and had been rewarded with the brightest flower in all Virginia.

“Come, dear, let’s go inside. Have you taken care of your situation?”

“Oh, Mama, of course. Mrs. Tethering gave me the necessary, and of course you know, Mama, all the girls at school talk about nothing else. Oh, I’m so happy this happened just in time before I return to school. I may have left a girl, but I’ll be returning a woman!”

Corinne practically skipped back into the house, and just as we climbed the front steps, Mal roared up the drive on a shining black motorcycle. We both stopped and stared, mouths agape. Malcolm had repeatedly forbidden Mal to have a motorcycle. It had been the source of bitter disputes between the two of them, Malcolm trying to force Mal to be pointed only toward the business world, Mal insisting on “sowing his wild oats.” I tried to stay out of it, for truly, those machines frightened me and seemed so dangerous, but Mal wanted one so desperately, and, after all, he had come into the trust fund I’d forced Malcolm to set up for each of the boys when Corinne was born. And now Mal had gone and bought a motorcycle. Inwardly I smiled, satisfied in some way to know that Malcolm had not succeeded in breaking my son’s spirit the way he had broken mine. Oh, I was proud of my son Mal, so bright and handsome, wise beyond his years, and fun-loving too. I was glad he had followed his wishes. He looked dashing as he drove up, and Corinne was practically jumping up and down in excitement to see her big brother on his motorcycle.

“Hey, Corinne. Want a ride?” He revved the motor. His manly young body was straddling the huge bike. He wore leather boots with metal taps and a beautiful flowing white silk scarf, like a pilot from the Great War.

“Oh, Mama, Mama, can I?”

“Corinne, you are a young woman. It’s so dangerous. I forbid you—”

“Mother!” Mal said. “I’ll just take her for a spin around the driveway. Don’t be so old-fashioned.”

“Can I? Oh, please, Mama?”

“Do you really think this is how a lady behaves?”

“Lucy McCarthy’s brother has a motorcycle and he sometimes drives her to school and the McCarthys are really rich and prominent and Daddy even says so and—”

Mal revved his motor once again. A booming filled the driveway. I didn’t want Malcolm to come out to see what the commotion was.

“Mother,” Mal said, kicking the dust with his leather boot, “it’s only around the driveway. I’ll drop Corinne off at the gate and she can walk back. Besides, if you don’t let me take her for a ride, I’m going to make you get on.”

Both my children laughed and laughed, and I, frightened as I was, said, “Only around the driveway.”

“Oh, thank you, thank you, Mama,” Corinne squealed, and she climbed onto the huge bike, holding Mal tightly around his waist.

I had to admit that they looked dashing together. Corinne with her blond hair, blue eyes, delicate arms around her brother, and Mal, with his leather jacket, boots, and white scarf.

“Drive carefully,” I shouted, but the loud machine had already pulled away, kicking up gravel and sand in its wake.

As I watched them disappear beyond the rim of the hill, I felt a cold presence on the back of my neck. “What was that?” the cold, angry voice of Malcolm demanded. I spun around to confront him. His anger had already built up to a combustible force, but was contained, revealing itself only in his blood-red complexion, his bulging, angry eyes, and his clenched fists held firmly against his thighs. He looked like an overheated stove about to explode.

“Did I see what I thought I saw?” he demanded.

“Malcolm, I long ago ceased to even try to imagine what you see,” I retorted. Then I sat down on the rocker on the porch. He was so angry he looked like a parody of himself. I couldn’t help but tickle his torment.

“What is it you thought you saw?” I asked.

“I saw,” he thundered, “a moronic middle-aged woman let her precious young daughter climb onto a motorcycle with her idiot first son. A motorcycle I have forbidden time and time again! And, without a thought to her children’s well-being and good breeding, I saw them climb onto that dangerous machine and roar off like hooligans down the driveway. Then I saw that same moronic middle-aged woman smile.”

“I was smiling,” I replied, lifting myself up to my full height and putting all my pride for my children in my voice, “because I was contemplating taking a ride myself.”

“You are an even bigger fool than I thought you were, Olivia. You were fool enough when you blackmailed me into giving those boys trust funds that they would come into at the ridiculously young age of eighteen. See how much economic responsibility and wisdom they have? This is a young man I am supposed to turn over the leadership of a billion-dollar empire to? I warned you; I warned you. Let me handle the money; let me control the expenditures; but no, you had to … to blackmail me into giving them a small fortune to squander.

“And that’s just what he has started to do … squander it. I insist, no, I demand that you order him to sell this … this thing immediately and attempt to recover most of the expenditure.”

“I don’t see how I can do that,” I said, my voice calm. I knew the calmer and softer I spoke, the more enraged he became.

“What! Why not?”

“The money is his to do with what he likes. He cannot be checking with me every time he wants to spend some of it. It would take away from his independence, and his assuming independence is a very important thing at this stage in his life,” I said. “You had it at his age.”

“I had more sense at his age!” He glared at me. “You are enjoying this, aren’t you? You think this is a way to take some sort of sick revenge on me, don’t you?”

“Of course not,” I said, even though what he said was true in a sense.

“This will weigh heavily on your conscience,” he warned me, waving his right forefinger at me threateningly. “In the end you will regret not listening to me,” he added with that Foxworth confidence I had come to hate. He looked away and stood there silently for a moment. I said nothing. Then he turned back to me. I could sense that he had been calming himself down enough to go on.

“So now you expect me to send my eldest son back to Yale on a goddamn motorcycle. You are undermining me, Olivia. You know the plans I have for Mal. I can’t have him riding off like riffraff on some newfangled machine. And Joel—look what you’ve turned him into—a fairy musician, and I warned you! He’ll end up useless, useless, I say.”

“Alicia truly believed Joel was a prodigy,” I reminded him tartly. “She called him a musical genius, and he is, Malcolm, if you were only sensitive enough to know that genius comes in many forms, not just in the form of making money.”

His lips trembled with acrimony. His eyes positively glowed like hot coals, brightening as the fire behind them raged. The veins in his temples pressed out against his skin as he worked his jaw. He swallowed and stepped forward, his shoulders rising, his chest puffed out.

“You are using my sons to whip me. Don’t deny it. You are swinging them about the way you would swing a whip against my naked back, extracting some horrible satisfaction from each stroke. But beware,” he warned me. “Your vengeance will rebound upon you.”

“Don’t try to pass the guilt on to me,” I responded quickly. The days of his intimidating me were long over. “I never encouraged the boys to disobey you. They are who they are because of you, because you never spent enough time with them to provide them with an example. How many times have I asked you, no, begged you to take more interest in them, to be more of a father to them?

“But no, you had your own hardened views of what a father-son relationship should be, punishing them because of the way you felt about your own father.

“Well, now you are reaping that harvest. You planted the seeds, not I. And if the crop isn’t to your liking, it’s your doing, not mine.”

“My sons may be lost to me,” he stormed. “But I still have my daughter. And she is mine, Olivia, mine! Do you hear me? And I will not permit her to ride around on dangerous motorcycles like some teenaged harlot. I will not let you turn her against me. I will not have you threaten her young life riding around on that thing!”

“Here she comes now, Malcolm. Don’t ruin this day for her with your idiotic rage.”

Corinne was running up the long driveway, waving to Malcolm and me. She was still so far in the distance, I thought her wild gestures were the result of her excitement. A dark cloud passed over the sun, and I could see only her fluttering white hands, like tiny doves, beckoning to me, and those bright blue eyes, like glowing sapphires, in her now pale face. Oh, had I known! Had I known what those beautiful blue eyes had just seen!

“Mama! Daddy! Mama! Daddy!”

I ran toward her. I knew at once something was terribly wrong. “Malcolm,” I screamed. “Malcolm, come at once!”

Corinne suddenly froze, and fell to her knees, weeping.

“Corinne!” Malcolm screamed. “My darling, what’s wrong? Are you hurt? Oh, my God!”

“Oh, Daddy, Daddy, it’s Mal. It’s Mal, he … oh God … oh God …” she sobbed.

“Are you okay, my precious,” Malcolm moaned, holding her in his arms.

“What has happened to Mal! What has happened to my son!” I wailed.

“He … we … oh Lord, Mama, he told me to get off and then … and then he … he was going so fast… oh, Mama.”

“Where is my son!”

“The bike just went roaring, Mama. It all happened so fast. Mal was speeding down the road and then …”

“Yes?” I didn’t recognize my voice. It sounded like an animal’s.

“And then the bike just seemed to take off, like he was flying, and the next thing I knew he went over the cliff and … oh God, oh God … there was a horrible explosion and a huge cloud of smoke rose and I ran home to get Daddy.”

I began running, running down the driveway, running down the road. “Mal, oh my son, my Mal!”

I could see the smoke rising in a large black cloud. A fire, like a burning sun, roared at the bottom of the cliff. I tried to run toward it, into it, but Malcolm’s powerful arms stopped me.

“Stop, Olivia, you can’t help him now.” Malcolm’s voice was cold and clipped. I clawed at his arms like a wild woman. I had to get to Mal.

“It’s my son!” I screamed. “I must save him!” Malcolm was shaking me, shaking me as he stared at the black smoke that rose from the gulley. Then he looked up at the sky, the sky gone suddenly cold and distant. He dropped me to the ground as he reached for Corinne, who was weeping silently, watching the black smoke color the sky black. Color the day black, color all my days black from then on. Mal. My first son. My first love. Mal. I wanted to tear up the ground, tear at the earth until there was nothing left. Malcolm and Corinne stared at me, as if my grief were too much for them to bear. “I must go to him,” I said, rising to my feet, but Corinne threw her arms about my waist, and Malcolm looked at me, his cold blue eyes burning ice into my soul. “It’s too late, Olivia. You let your son go. Mal’s dead.”

• • •

“The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away.”

On the day we buried Mal it seemed the whole world was mourning with us. The sky was dark and angry, distant thunder rolling, as if God were punctuating his sentence to remind us his wrath was all-powerful, and he could crush us antlike mortals here below with one exhalation. There were hundreds of mourners at the funeral—friends of Mal and Joel and Corinne, Malcolm’s many business and social acquaintances. Only one mourner was there on my side—John Amos, my last living relative, who had taken a train down from Connecticut as soon as he got my telegram. We had kept up a letter correspondence over the years, and I had seen young John Amos progress into a full-fledged man of God, a one-horse preacher as we called them, a minister without a congregation. On this day he had a congregation, for he was delivering the funeral service for my beloved Mal.

The silent scream that had resounded in my head for three days was not calmed by John Amos’s words.

“Our beloved Mal has gone to a better place. His true Father has called him in the bloom of youth, to his breast, and there this innocent soul shall rest in peace eternally. His Father has truly claimed him.” Malcolm looked over at me, his cold blue eyes trying to pierce my black veil. We stood at the side of the grave, Corinne and Joel between us. Joel clung to my hand, Corinne to her father’s. In the two long days since the horrible accident, Malcolm had not spoken a word to me, but I could see in his glare he was trying to blame me for Mal’s death, silently telling me that if I hadn’t disobeyed his orders and allowed the motorcycle, my dear son would be with me still. Oh, it was so unfair that Mal had been taken from me. I wanted to cut off my hair, my hands, my legs, I begged God to take me and give Mal back. The world was out of joint, and truly I did blame myself. Was Malcolm so all-powerful that he could enlist God’s aid to punish those who defied him? I had stayed sequestered in my room, Corinne and Joel would come in to try to comfort me, but they were suffering, too, really suffering. But how could I comfort them? Mal was dead. Mal dead? My favorite, dead? In my mind’s eye I saw him standing in the nursery looking up at me with those inquisitive eyes, his face serious, his posture erect.

“Will Father be taking us for a motor trip?” he asked. “He promised he would.”

“I don’t know, Mal. He makes promises and then forgets them.”

“Why doesn’t he write them down then?” he asked. Such a logical mind he had, even then. And now he was dead.

As the raindrops began to fall, and the thunder, growing closer, began to boom, my darling Mal was lowered into his grave, and one by one, Malcolm, myself, Joel, and Corinne picked up a handful of earth and threw it on his coffin. My veil hid my tears, but I was so weak I could barely walk. How I wanted to jump into that grave with him, to be covered with dirt, to have the world blocked out from me. But I had to go on, I had to stay strong, as John Amos had told me, for Corinne, for Joel. Malcolm had remained distant even from Corinne, and she was baffled, confused. Both of them wondered if his love had died along with Mal.

Joel was the most heartbroken. He said almost nothing, but remained constantly at my side tuned in to my every word, my every gesture, as if he thought that somehow I could change events and bring his brother back. They had been so close to each other despite the difference in ages and temperament. I knew that Joel depended upon and looked up to Mal. Mal was the buffer between him and his father, a father he was still quite terrified of. It was easy to see it; he said nothing to him during the entire period, gave him no comforting words or gestures.

Corinne was beside herself with grief, blaming herself as I blamed myself, wishing she could turn back the clock and bring Mal back again. It was John Amos, not Malcolm, who tried to comfort her, calm her guilt, soothe her grief. Of all the Foxworths, only Malcolm stood tall, dignified, and alone in his grief.

The next day, Malcolm returned to his business. John Amos stayed on, reading with us from the Bible, holding Corinne’s hands as she cried, stroking her, acting like the loving father Malcolm had always been to her. John Amos had grown into a tall, lanky man with dark brown hair so thin he was actually balding prematurely. It added dignity and maturity to him. He had a minister’s stern, pale face with pecan-brown eyes and a hard mouth, his lips so straight they looked drawn on by an artist. He seemed much older than his thirty-one years, and much much wiser.

From my letters, he knew how important my boys were to me, and he had some idea about my relationship, and Malcolm’s, with Corinne. He knew exactly how I felt about Malcolm.

It seemed he understood me in some deep blood way; he understood that I was blaming myself, as Malcolm blamed me, and he would not let me shoulder the blame alone. “Olivia,” he said, his warm, calm voice a balm to my spirit, “it is the Lord who calls us, the Lord who metes out His justice. He has taken away the son Malcolm could not appreciate; perhaps His message was for Malcolm, to learn to love what is his rather than trying to control it. For you see where control ends. Do not blame yourself, Olivia. God’s plans are often mysterious, but they are always just.”

Malcolm did not like John Amos, but that was of little consequence to me. In fact, Malcolm’s not liking him confirmed his value and importance to me. It was why, after the funeral when John Amos took such a firm hold of things—helping me with the servants, preparing for the visiting mourners, comforting members of the family—I decided I wanted him to stay with us at Foxworth Hall. Already Corinne was due to go back to school. And I could tell she was ready to leave this dark, gloomy house of mourning. She loved Mal as much as any young girl loves her brother, but for one so full of life and love and hope, death’s shadow does not linger as it does for those of us with fewer hopes and dreams before us. The day we saw Corinne off, I proposed to John Amos that he stay on. John seemed genuinely flattered by the idea. He wasn’t happy with the work he was presently doing. I called him into the salon.

“I would like you to stay on,” I began, “at Foxworth Hall and become something of an assistant to me. Officially, you will be considered our butler, but you and I will always know that you will be more to me,” I said. Grief, so deeply felt, had a way of weakening me. I felt as if I had been cast in a new form and I wore my body like a suit of armor hiding a heart and will gone slack and impotent. Truly, I couldn’t bear to live here any longer alone with Malcolm. I couldn’t bear having to fight him and his megalomanic plans day after day. I needed an ally, someone to give me strength, to help me, to take my side. I needed John Amos. And he was a man of God, a godly, godfearing man who would deflect and thwart Malcolm’s evil intentions. I would not let him drive another of my sons to death, nor would I let him take over Corinne’s life as he planned to do.

“Please, John Amos, won’t you stay? You are such a comfort to me. I feel you are truly my family—the only family I have left, and I need your strong Christian hand to guide me.”

John nodded thoughtfully.

“I have always admired you, Olivia,” he said, “admired you for your strength of purpose, your sense of determination; but most of all, for your faith in God and His ways. Even now, in your mourning, you do not blame God for being unmerciful. You are an inspiration. More women should want to be like you,” he said, nodding as though he had just arrived at a significant conclusion.

I understood why Malcolm didn’t like him. He had Malcolm’s way of making statements with an air of certainty, but whereas Malcolm arrived at his conclusions from an arrogant faith in himself, John Amos arrived at his from a strong faith in God and God’s will.

“Thank you, John. But contrary to what you think, I am a woman with weaknesses too. I will need someone beside me to help me with my children and to help me maintain this house in the proper manner and spirit,” I added.

“I understand, and I can think of no greater purpose. Long ago, I understood that my calling lay in directions others were afraid or unwilling to take. The Lord has His way of soliciting His soldiers,” he said, smiling.

“I think,” I said, looking at him intently, “you saw today some of what I have been describing to you in my letters. You should understand why I sometimes feel alone here,” I added.

“Yes. And you have more than my understanding. You have my sympathy and my dedication.” Those brown eyes of his, although not bright and warm, grew quite fixed. He stepped forward. “I pledge to you, Olivia,” he said, “that as long as I am here at your side, you shall never feel alone.”

I smiled slightly and lifted my hand. He took it and in that handshake made a covenant with me and with God Almighty. It was the most reassuring thing that had happened to me in years.

When I brought the news to Malcolm, he had his characteristic reaction. He had retreated to the library. The pall of silence that had fallen over Foxworth Hall lingered like the heavy humid air right before a summer rain. The lights were dim, the sky outside starless and cloudy. Unmerciful winds clawed at the windows. To me it was like the grinding teeth of some vicious, vengeful beast.

Malcolm was standing with his back to the doorway, his hands clasped behind his back, looking up at the books on a high shelf. He didn’t turn when I entered, even though I knew he had heard my footsteps. I waited a moment.

“I have made a decision,” I said finally, “to hire my cousin, John Amos, to be our butler.”

Malcolm spun around. The expression on his face was almost hideous, a mixture of grief and anger that distorted his features. Never had his mouth looked as twisted, his eyes as cold.

“What butler? We have a manservant.” He made ordinary words sound like profanity.

“A man who serves as driver as well. It’s not proper and it is a foolish economy, undignified for a family and a house as important as ours,” I replied sternly.

“At this time you think about servants?” He seemed both amazed and upset.

“You didn’t go to work today and receive business calls? You didn’t give your subordinates orders to carry out? Your mind was solely on Mal?” I asked in the tone of accusation. He shook his head, but not to deny what I said, only to dramatize his disgust.

“I don’t like this man. He’s too … too sly-looking for my taste.”

“Nevertheless, I have hired him. The running of the house has always been and will always be my responsibility. It’s necessary for us to have a servant solely to perform the responsibilities of a butler, and John Amos has the background for such responsibility. He is a decent, religious man, who understands the needs of people of our class. He has agreed to take on the position and he will begin immediately.”

“He will be your butler, not mine,” Malcolm said defiantly.

“Suit yourself. In time I am sure you will grow to appreciate the man,” I added calmly.

He turned his back on me and stared up at the books again.

“Joel is leaving in the morning,” I said. He didn’t turn around.

“That is good. He is better off returning to school and occupying himself with his studies than moping about here. He will only add to the depression,” he said, and waved to the side as though he were dismissing me. I straightened my posture.

“He is not returning to school,” I said. That turned Malcolm around again.

“What? Not returning to school? What do you mean? Where is he going?”

“Before Mal’s death, he auditioned for an orchestra and they were impressed with his talents. They have offered him a position for their current tour of Europe. He will go directly to Switzerland.”

Malcolm fumed.

“Tour! Orchestra! Switzerland!” he said, waving his arms with every word. “A Foxworth, a professional musician, earning coolie wages and traveling with a bunch of spineless … effeminate … artsy types … I won’t hear of it! I won’t hear of it, do you understand?”

“Nevertheless, it is what he wants,” I said, again fanning his fury by speaking so calmly. “I will not force another of my sons to extremes to prove that he can live his own life rather than the one you dictate.”

Malcolm’s eyes narrowed, and he was silent for many moments. “Let him understand,” he said, pronouncing each word with a hateful, vicious tone, “that if he leaves this house to begin such a venture, he will never be welcomed back to it.”

“I understand that, Father.”

We both spun around to see Joel in the library doorway. He was standing there with a suitcase in each hand. I did not know he had intended to leave that very night.

“I was coming down here to tell you this myself,” he said.

“And I meant what I just said,” Malcolm said, pointing his finger at him. “If you throw away your formal education to go tooting a horn throughout Europe, I’ll write you out of my will.”

For a long moment Joel and Malcolm contemplated each other. It was as though father and son saw each other for the first time and really understood who the other was. If Joel had any fears, his gentle face and soft blue eyes did not reveal them. If anything, he looked like a martyr forgiving the violent and hateful tyrant who was sentencing him to death. I saw a smile around his lips.

“You never understood me, Father; nor did you ever understand Mal,” he said with no anger in his voice. “Neither of us were so driven by your pursuit of the almighty dollar.”

“That’s because you always had so many of them,” Malcolm retorted. “If you were poor, you wouldn’t be standing there so cocky and defiant.”

“Maybe not,” Joel said. “But I wasn’t poor and I am what I am.” He looked at me. “Good-bye, Mother. I shall miss you very much. Please walk with me to the door. There is a car waiting for me outside.”

“You are going to permit this?” Malcolm asked.

When I looked at Joel, I saw so much of myself in his face. It was as if I were leaving, as if I were escaping, escaping the sorrow and the torment, escaping the cold shadows that seemed to reside permanently in Foxworth Hall.

“It is what he wants,” I said softly, staring at him. “He is old enough to be able to make his own decision. He has a right to his own decision.”

“This is madness and your doing,” Malcolm said, pointing the accusing finger at me. “It will add to your already heavy burden of guilt.”

“What?” I took a few steps toward him, feeling my face burn with rage. “You stand there and try to place the guilt on my head? You, who have brought sin into this house, invited it in as though it were a welcomed guest? You have eaten beside it, walked beside it, and slept with it,” I added. “You have brought the wrath of God down on the House of Foxworth, not I. If anyone stands bearing the guilt, it is you,” I responded, pointing my accusing finger at him.

He looked at Joel and then turned away.

I went to Joel and the two of us walked out to the front doorway arm in arm. John Amos, already assuming some responsibility, had brought Joel’s trunk to the car. He took the suitcases and carried them out as well.

Joel and I stood in the great doorway of Foxworth Hall and looked out at the car and the darkness that now surrounded us.

“I am sorry to leave you at this time of grief,” he said, “but I fear if I don’t go now, I will never go. Mal would have wanted me to go. I can almost see him standing there by the piano, smiling, cheering me on,” Joel added, smiling at the image.

“Yes, I suppose he would,” I said. I envisioned Mal as well, and the vision filled my heart with a heavy aching. It gave birth to a little gray bird of anxiety that fluttered wildly in the cage of my ribs, but I hid these feelings from him. “How I will miss you, Joel,” I said, grasping his hands in mine and bringing them to my lips to kiss them. “You are my only son, my beloved Joel, it’s only you now. Please go with God, and be happy.”

“Thank you, Mother.” He leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek. I held him for a long moment and then he rushed down to the car. He waved once more and then got in.

John Amos and I stood watching the car go off into the cold autumn night, its taillights fading like two bright red stars dying away in the universe.