"He doesn't have anyone but us," I said. "He's not related to Miguel and you're very busy. He's always saying you don't visit him as much as you used to visit him."
She shook her head. "He doesn't remember when I do.'' "Yes, he does." I insisted.
"All right, honey, all right. Don't get yourself so upset about it. We won't leave Uncle Linden out of anything. I promise."
"I don't know why he's still in that place. He paints beautiful things. People buy them! He doesn't bother anyone. Why don't we just have him came home and live with us? Our house is certainly big enough, even with a new baby. We have rooms that have been shut up for as long as I can remember."
He does well where he is. Hannah. Everything is organized for him, and he doesn't have to be reminded of bad memories, memories that made him sick."
"You have said that often before. Mommy, but I still don't understand what that means. What bad memories? What's in our house that would remind him of them anyway?"
She closed her eyes and let her head sink back on the pillow. The nurse came in to check her blood pressure and see how she was doing. Mommy introduced me to her. and I could see by the expression an her face that she was surprised my mother had a child as old as I was. Anyone looking at the two of us could see that I was really her daughter, too. She hadn't married Miguel and inherited me. We had the same nose and mouth.
My eyes were my father's blue, but my hair was Mommy's light brunette shade. I had a slightly darker complexion. I was about an inch or so taller than she was, and I had a fuller figure. Some of my girlfriends were jealous of that. but I always wished I was more diminutive even though they thought I would be more attractive to most boys.
I've had boyfriends on and off since the ninth grade, but no one I would drool over or suffer heartbreak over when we went our separate ways, no one until this year. His name was Heyden Reynolds, and he was a new student in our school and very much a loner. Massy said he was weird and blamed it an his having a mother whose family came from Haiti and a father who was white and from New Orleans, His father was a musician with a jazz band and traveled a great deal. He had a fourteen-year-old sister. Elisha, who attended a regular public school, but being he was a talented songwriter and guitar player, Heyden came to our magnet school when he moved to West Palm Beach. He came every day on an old moped that other students teased him about, but he didn't seem to care.
I had spoken to him only a few times. but I sang with him once in vocal class, and the way he looked at me afterward made me tingle inside. I thought he was handsome with his caramel complexion and his dark, curly hair, strong mouth, and black pearl eyes. He was lean and tall like Miguel. I didn't find him weird because of his standoffish manner. I found him mysterious and a lot more interesting than the other boys in the school.
As soon as the nurse left Mommy's room. Mommy turned back to me. I didn't think she was going to say anything more about Uncle Linden. She never liked to talk about him all that much, especially with me, but she surprised me.
"Your uncle Linden has a hate-love relationship with Joya del Mar. Hannah. When you were little, we brought him around often, but he literally trembled as we drove through the gates each and every time."
"Why?" I asked. intrigued. She had never told me anything like this.
You know he and my mother used to live in the beach house after my mother's stepfather practically bankrupted my grandmother Jackie Lee. It was difficult and sad for Linden to be forced to move out of his home and live in an apartment under the help's quarters. It made him bitter and he resented the Eatons."
"But you brought them back to the main house and paid off the debts. You fixed everything," I said.
She started to smile and stopped.
"Fixed," she said as if it pained her tongue. "Hardly that. Hannah. It was true that thanks to my father. I had inherited enough money and property to bail out my mother and Linden from their debts and make it possible for all of us to return to the main house. but I was also a foolish, impressionable young girl who allowed your father to charm and beguile me with his elegance and his promises. Even with your uncle Linden's mental turmoil and difficulties, he was wiser about your father than I was. I should have listened to him."
"If he was so wise and you were becoming a psychologist, why did he end up in a mental clinic?"
She took a deep breath. Was I being selfish by making her talk when she was tired and weak from giving birth? I couldn't help it. It was as if she were finally opening a door to a secret room, a room I had wanted to peer inside all my life.
"You know that his father. Kirby Scott, seduced and performed what amounted to rape of mine and Linden's mother, Linden had a very difficult and confused upbringing. For a while he was given to believe my grandmother was actually his mother. It was an attempt to sweep the disgrace under a rug. When he learned the truth about himself, it triggered his manic-depressive condition. He lived on the darkest edges of the world he envisioned. Right from the beginning Mother and he were not treated nicely by the people here. They made him feel freakish, and because of that, he became even more introverted.
"It became very serious after our mother died. He wanted to shut us both up and shut out the world outside our gates. He had something of a nervous breakdown aver it, in fact. So you can see why our home is not the happiest of places for him to be. Hannah."
She smiled.
You can see it in his art. The work he is doing at the residency is brighter, happier than the work he did here. Right?"
I nodded. "I wish, then, that we could sell Soya del Mar and find another place, one where he would be happier."'
"I don't know if that would solve all his problems, honey." she said.
I sensed that there was more to see and know in this dark shut-up room, but she didn't look like she was going to tell it all to me.
"When I get married and move away, I'll make sure I have a home big enough for him. too," I vowed.
"Maybe you will" Mommy said smiling. She closed her eyes again, "Claude is beautiful." she muttered, "isn't he. Hannah? I hope and pray he'll be all right. You pray, too, sweetheart, pray for your little brother."
I watched her drift off right in front of my eyes. Her breathing became soft and regular. For a few moments I sat there, pouting, and then I rose and went back to the nursery to look through the window at my new brother, at the little being who could bring so much joy to my mother and Miguel simply by appearing.
Looking at Claude caused me to wonder about Uncle Linden, born secretly in that beach house, barely knowing his mother before she was sent to my grandfather's clinic. Do babies sense the separation, long for their mothers without even realizing what it is that makes them feel so lost? Was Uncle Linden terrified at night when he cried and was comforted not by his mother, but by his Grandmother?