As you know from our photographs and news clippings. Alberta was a beautiful young woman when we married. Whenever there was any sort of charity event that involved modeling clothing, she was asked to be part of it. She might even have gone on to do that professionally, but her mother and especially her paternal grandparents believed modeling to be a profession just a step away from prostitution. Quite a ridiculous and old-fashioned way of thinking, but nevertheless, a way of thinking that heavily influenced Alberta.
I won't tell you that I was ever deeply in love with your stepmother. but I will say that she fascinated me. She always maintained a true Southern elegance about her. In my way of thinking, she was one of those people who were truly born in the wrong century, who belonged at a far different historical period, like someone who had literally stepped out of Gone With the Wind or some such novel. I used to think she laughed like Scarlett O'Hara. Her beauty easily made her the catch of the season at her debutante ball.
I can't recall exactly who said it, but someone told me. "A man like you should have a wife like that. Claude," and that stuck in my mind. We were truly a famous couple during those early years, invited to everything, our pictures always on the social pages. A doctor is like anyone else: dependent upon image, reputation. recommendations. Of course, he has to have ability and knowledge, but many, many do and yet do not find the level of success I have found, and some of that might be attributed to my high social profile, what some people call networking. It certainly helped me get the financing I needed and opened many a door quickly.
If I was to analyze myself, Willow. I would have to admit to being a little insecure and perhaps too dependent on and grateful for the public image. It's very easy to fall in love with your own public self. You're complimented and lauded so much, you begin to believe your own publicity. Thankfully, I believe I caught hold of myself before it was too late and stepped back and away from all the empty glitter, something for which. I'm afraid, your stepmother never forgave me. I became less and less her husband and more and more the doctor. Maybe that was the real reason why she came to hate my work and the clinic so much.
It wasn't long before your mother had come to my clinic that Alberta and I began to lead quite separate lives. She didn't want to be part of what I was, and I didn't want to be part of her social world. To me it seemed a great waste of valuable time, frivolous and fall of self-important people.
I can't tell you how many times she said. "Why can't you be like the other doctors in this community. Claude, and have office hours and answering services that keep people away?"
You heard her say things like that, I'm sure. Sometimes. I wondered if she wasn't right. Had I became obsessed with my work to the detriment of everything else in my life? I suppose if I feel guilty about anything. Willow, it's not spending enough time with you. I depended too much on your Amou, your beloved nanny.
Getting back to that wonderful first day I met your mother, however, I must describe what happened at dinner. At the clinic we encouraged as much interaction among the patients as was not only possible, but beneficial. As you know from some of the things I've told you. I've had patients who were so outgoing we practically had to keep them in chains, and patients who were so introverted, so closed up, they practically had to be hand-fed. Your mother was never that bad, but it was easy to see she wanted to keep to herself.
She tried to sit alone at a table that first night. but Nurse Gordon would not permit it. To be fair to her, it was our policy to try to get the patients not to withdraw, and she was doing only what we considered goad therapy. Occasionally, one or more of my associates had dinner with the patients. and I had on occasion as well, so it wasn't so unusual for me to do the same. Even so. Nurse Gordon looked very surprised when I appeared in the dining room. There were no other physicians there this particular evening. Dr. Ralston Price and I were the head physicians and he was off to speak at a convention.
We had nearly twenty patients in the clinic at the time, their ages ranging from fourteen to sixtyeight. One was a young woman about your mother's age. I'll cal
l her Sandy because she had flaxen bland hair that she kept long and stringy and pulled an with such force sometimes, it made her forehead crimson. Sometimes she actually pulled out some strands and held them in her small, tight fist like threads of real gold. At night Nurse Gordan would practically have to pry her fingers open with a crowbar, and Sandy would scream and threaten to bite her. That was a
confrontation to behold. Nadine Gordon was no one easily intimidated, however. She usually got her way.
Sandy was an obsessive-compulsive, and she could, if she targeted someone, talk incessantly at him or her, regardless of whether or not the recipient of her conversation actually paid her any attention. She was at your mother that first night and on about her favorite new topic: the dark figures she saw lurking about the clinic, looking, she believed, for an opportunity to crawl into people.
She sat beside your mother and began to polish her silverware clean. If someone didn't remind her to eat, she would sit there all night polishing her fork and her spoon.
"I saw them bring you here," she told Grace. "They knew you were coming. They were whispering about you in the corridor all day, you know. They're just waiting outside your room now. You don't look at them. You don't let them look into your eyes. That's very important. When you see them, you turn away," she warned, "You give them your back and don't ever, ever walk into a dark room. They have you where they want you if you do that. You can't see them in the dark. That makes sense, doesn't it?
They followed me here, you know. They followed me. But don't blame me for them. They followed other people. too. They followed you, I bet. Didn't they?"
Your mother looked a bit terrified.
"Sandy," I said, sitting dawn across from her, "I want you to start eating. You want time to do other things tonight, and besides, we can't keep the kitchen staff waiting for you all night, can we?"
She looked at me, looked at Grace, and then she started to polish her fork.
"Sandy, start eating," I said a little more firmly.
All the while your mother was watching, fascinated, but still obviously frightened. too.
Nurse Gordon came up behind Sandy and threatened to take her fork and have her eat with her hands. She wouldn't eat if we did that anyway, of course. She would go out to wash them and spend an hour in the bathroom doing so.
"C'mon, Sandy," I coached. "See. Grace is eating. She wants to finish and do other things."
She looked at Grace and then she took a small fork full of mashed potatoes, inspecting it closely before putting it into her mouth.
"I'm tired," she said almost immediately after one fork full.
"So eat and then go to sleep." Nurse Gordon told her. She oversaw the patients at the tables with an eagle eve and with catlike movements.
"If there's something in particular you like to eat, just let the nurse know." I told Grace. "We have an excellent chef."
I saw Nurse Gordon's eyebrows rise. It wasn't something I told every patient, of course. I had to evaluate each one and what he or she would want to know and of course was capable of knowing.
"Sometimes you make this place sound like a country club. Dr. De Beers," Nurse Gordon told me later.
'I just want them to feel comfortable here." Ms, Gordon," I replied.