"Maybe," I said softly. "you don't know the answer because it's the wrong question. Neither you nor I am bad luck to people. Unfortunate things happen to people. Sometimes it's their own faults; sometimes it is just bad luck, coincidence, whatever, but you can't blame it on yourself, your contact with them, Grace."
She just shook her head.
"You just don't want to come to the realization that bad things can happen to people at any time, for any reason. Life is fragile. None of us likes knowing that. Grace, but your finding fault in yourself doesn't change that."
She looked at me and I smiled.
"I'm just as afraid of life at times as you are, Grace, but we've got to put it aside if we're to go on and be of any value to anyone, least of all ourselves."
She almost smiled.
"I haven't had breakfast yet." I said. It wasn't entirely a lie. I had only some juice, coffee, and a piece of toast. I was in too much of a hurry to get here. "Get yourself up and dressed and we'll have it together."
"Don't you have other patients to attend to?" she asked with some suspicion. Was I spending so much time with her because she was so ill? she probably wondered,
"Oh, certainly, but I can't work on an empty stomach, now can I? I asked her and she gave in to a small smile. "I'm going to my office to check on my messages and such. I'll meet you in the dining room. okay?"
I reached out and touched her arm. "Okay?"
She nodded,
"Good." I said. rising. "Sorry the weather is so poor today. I was going to suggest we go for a walk. Maybe it will clear up later. My driver Miles thinks it might."
"A walk?"
"Sure. 'Wait until you see our gardens." I told her.
She shook her head, a look of confusion sitting on her face. "What's wrong?" I asked.
"This doesn't feel like...-.
"Like what?"
"A place for crazy people." she said.
"It isn't," I told her. "It's a place for people who want to be happy only. That's why I spend so much time here," I told her, and she widened her smile.
What a beautiful smile, I thought. I felt like an artist repairing a great painting.
You see, Willow, I think I was already too far gone as a man to forget it and be only her doctor.
4
The Sound of Her Laughter
.
Willow, I'm sure you are probably asking
yourself how do I remember these conversations with your mother in such great detail. My conversations with patients comprise the spine of my efforts to help them. Their words are the main source of revelations about their inner selves. Their actions or lack of actions are the reasons why they are brought here, of course, but the cause of those actions and inactions, what gives birth to them, that takes deep digging. Willow, and my principal tool is my questioning and their responses. I'm trained to remember what they say as it is, but with my added emotional involvement, I found Grace's words carving themselves not only in my mind, but in my heart as well. I don't know if you will have fallen in love by the time you read this, but if you have, you will understand.
We took our walk after breakfast. Before that. I conferred with Dr. Price and asked him to pick up two of my other patients who had sessions scheduled with me that day so I could shift my efforts and give Grace Montgomery more time. One of them was Sandy.
Ralston Price and I have been together ever since medical school. I have had and have at this moment no closer associate. When two people have gone through as much as Ralston Price and I have together, we can read each other almost as well as we can read ourselves. Up until this occasion, there were few secrets between us. For example. Ralston knew how my relationship with Alberta had changed, or should I say, drifted into something much less than it ever was. The truth was he was never fond of her and she was definitely never fond of him. She once told me his eyes were too close together, and her grandmother had drilled it into her head that a man with close eyes was sneaky and never to be trusted. I actually pulled out pictures of great men in history to illustrate how foolish that superstition was, but when Alberta formed an idea, it was formed in stone and rolled around in her mind forever.
After I made my request. Ralston raised his somewhat bushy light brown eyebrows and relaxed his lips into that somewhat impish smile of his.
"What is the reason for this intense approach. Claude?" he asked. "And with a patient you have hardly met?"