"Why didn't they?"
"He was killed before they could, but she came to me one day and told me that now that he was stationed for a long period of time in one place, and now that he had been given a higher rank with a better salary, they felt more relaxed and confident and decided to try. She had tried before but had not become pregnant, and she blamed it on her stress and nervousness. At least, her doctors told her that. I remember her telling me how she and my father had gone to doctors to be sure that she could become pregnant."
"So you think that because of that..."
"Linden was the child she never could have, the child she wanted." she asserted. "I was almost the surrogate mother, not her."
"How do you mean?"
"You know, like those women who carry another woman's fertilized egg in their wombs."
I thought this analysis of her mother and herself was quite perceptive of her, and my appreciation of her rose even higher, as well as my expectations for a complete recovery.
"How do you think you should deal with this. Grace?" I asked her.
She thought a long moment.
"I've got to get stronger," she concluded. "I've got to go home and take my baby back."
"That's right," I said "That's exactly what you have to do. Grace."
She looked up at me and we just stared at each other for the longest moment. It took all my
professionalism, all my psychiatric skill to keep me seated in that chair, Willow. The man inside me was practically screaming for me to get up and go to her and put my hands on her arms and stand her up so I could kiss her and hold her and tell her the secrets of my own heart, but I managed to shut him down. I pretended to make notes, think, and then told her we had done enough. We had made some wonderful progress.
"You are getting stronger. Grace," I added. "We can adjust your medications accordingly."
She liked that.
"Thanks to you." she said. "And your sneaky ways."
I'm sure I had my best Christmas smile on my lips, the most joyful, giving smile I could manage. How delightful she could be. Willow. I never had a patient with so much personality My reactions to her weren't programmed, weren't designed just to make her more comfortable. They were sincere reactions, and she knew it just as much as I did.
This secret you were holding inside you, Claude De Beers, I told myself, it can't be hidden forever.
And it would not be.
5
A Pure and Wonderful Love
.
Like anyone with guilt in his heart. I couldn't
help wondering just how much Alberta sensed when she looked at me and spoke to me during those early months when I was treating your mother. Willow. Ironically, I became grateful for all Alberta's distractions. Perhaps it was solely because of them that she was unable to take one look at me and see how lovesick I had became. I could not imagine how she missed it. Whenever I stopped for a moment in my home and gazed at myself in the mirror. I saw a different Claude De Beers, one who barely resembled the man everyone knew as Dr. De Beers, the renowned psychiatrist, lecturer, author, the mature, confident man of logic and reason. unflappable.
How could even Alberta be so oblivious to my long pauses during our conversations, my
daydreaming, my drifting through our home, walking like a ghost an air, being forgetful, even to the point of having to be reminded about dinner. One morning I was in such haste to get to the clinic. I even forgot my tie and Miles had to remind me, Fortunately, I had one in the car at all times.
And at our dinners whenever we did eat together and Alberta went on and on about her activities or things she wanted us to buy or change in the house, how could she not notice my blank stare, my failure to comment, to question, to respond to anything, to give her my usual nod or simple yes and no? Why didn't she see how I nibbled at my food?
Was all this in my imagination? Was I merely lost in some fantasy? Would it all come to an abrupt end? Shouldn't I want it to come to an abrupt end? I asked myself.
I was caught in a great conflict, you see. On the one hand, I was doing all in my power to help Grace regain enough self-confidence to throw off the demons that had brought her here, and on the other, I was secretly hoping she would never leave, that we would go on forever, walking, talking, catching each other's longing in each other's eyes, and eventually....
Eventually what?