Nightshade

by John Saul

  “I don’t see what else we can do,” she said gently. “I know she’s difficult, and I know — ” She hesitated, but knew there was no need to cushion Matt from the truth. After all, they’d both lived with his grandmother through four of the first five years of his life, after Joan had finally faced the fact that she couldn’t raise him by herself in New York City. “Matt, I’m sorry. I know how she treats you, but what else can I do? She’s still my mother.”

  “Jeez, Mom, it’s not just me — look how she treats you. It’s like you can’t ever do anything right, no matter how hard you try!”

  “I know.” Joan sighed. “But it still doesn’t change the fact that she’s my mother, and I have to take care of her as long as I can. I can’t just — ” She cast around in her mind, searching for the right words, but could find none better than the ones her mother always used. “I just can’t bring myself to ‘throw her in the home.’ ”

  Matt took a deep breath, then slowly let it out in a sigh of resignation. “I guess,” he agreed, and Joan could see how much effort it took for him to give her even that. But then he brightened. “Hey, who knows? Maybe she’ll be better once she’s out of here. Let’s go up and get whatever she’s going to need, and get out of here.” He wrinkled his nose against the acrid smell of the fire that hung heavy in the house. “This place smells even worse than ever.” But as they started up the stairs, Matt’s step slowed, and when they came to the landing, he paused, gazing through the open door to the room that had belonged to the aunt he’d never known. “She’s not gonna make us move Aunt Cynthia’s stuff too, is she?”

  Joan hesitated at the door to her sister’s room, then stepped through it. And suddenly she heard her mother’s voice again. “Get out! That’s Cynthia’s room, and those are Cynthia’s things, and no one is to touch them! No one! And keep your bastard brat out of there, too!”

  As the echo of the words slowly faded away in her mind, Joan shook her head. “No,” she told Matt. “She can’t ask us to do that.” She smiled at her son, and offered him a conspiratorial wink. “After all, we can’t move what we can’t touch, can we?” But even as she spoke the words, her mother’s voice rang in her mind once more. This time she recalled a day when Matt was three, and she had suggested to her mother that he was old enough to have his own room.

  “Cynthia’s room? You want me to give your sister’s room to your little brat? Never! As long as I’m alive, I’ll keep your sister’s room ready. When she comes home to me, all her things will be waiting for her! All of them!”

  Joan, eyes glistening with tears, had said nothing, knowing it was useless to argue with her mother.

  Now, she reached out and pulled the door to Cynthia’s room closed, hoping that by blocking the view of her sister’s room, she could also block the pain of her mother’s words.

  She didn’t mean it, Joan told herself. She was already starting to get sick, and she didn’t know what she was saying.

  “Come on, let’s pack up whatever she’s going to need and get out of here,” she said to Matt, unconsciously repeating the same words he’d spoken a few moments before.

  * * *

  IT SEEMED NOTHING could thaw the icy chill that had settled over the Hapgoods’ dining room: not the fire that Matt had laid in the hearth, nor the dozens of candles Joan had lit to cast a warm glow over the family’s dinner. Though she’d cut the last of the fall flowers and set the table with the set of Limoges that had been given to Bill’s grandmother as a wedding present from the Vanderbilts, and though she’d carefully prepared only things she knew her mother liked, nothing had gone as Joan planned.

  She’d felt a faint flicker of hope when she first led her mother into the room. Emily stopped short when she stepped through the dining room doors, her eyes moving through the room, lingering on the gleaming silver and crystal that shimmered in the flickering candlelight. It’s going to be all right, Joan had told herself. But then Emily said, “How could you light all those candles? Don’t you even care about what happened?”

  “I was just trying to make it nice for you, Mother,” Joan ventured as she helped the old woman into the chair opposite Matt.

  “Why bother? You know you don’t want me here.” Emily peered balefully at her son-in-law and grandson. “And I don’t want to be here.”

  Joan did her best to keep a conversation going, but no matter what she said, her mother either ignored her, disagreed with her, or changed the subject.

  Emily glowered at the plate of food Joan set in front of her, and after objecting that she’d been served far too much, asked if the chicken was spoiled. “Nobody could eat this,” she declared.

  “It’s good, Gram,” Matt said.

  “It’s rotten,” Emily said, pushing her plate away. “Take me home.”

  Joan silently appealed to her husband.

  “You are home, Mother Moore,” Bill said. Seeing Emily’s eyes flash, he quickly added, “At least for a while, until we can decide what would be best for you.”

  It was as if Emily hadn’t heard him. “Where’s Cynthia?” she asked. “Why isn’t she here? I want Cynthia!” She stood up, pushing her chair back from the table so abruptly that it fell over. As Joan and Bill leaped up to help her, she brushed them aside. “Leave me alone. I’m going to find Cynthia.”

  Emily left the dining room and Joan started after her, but Bill caught her arm. “Let her go,” he said.

  “But she doesn’t know what she’s doing,” Joan protested. “She barely even knows her way around.”

  “Matt can keep an eye on her,” Bill replied. Then, to his son: “Don’t try to argue with her, Matt, and don’t try to make her do anything. Just keep an eye on her and don’t let her hurt herself. Okay?”

  Only when Matt was gone and he’d closed the dining room door did Bill speak to his wife again. “This isn’t going to work,” he said gently.

  “I can make it work,” Joan began. “All she needs is a few days, and she’ll know her way — ”

  Bill held up a hand to cut the flow of his wife’s words. “She won’t know anything. And she won’t get better.” His voice took on a slight edge. “You know she won’t, Joan. Every doctor we’ve talked to for the last two years has told you she’ll only get worse.” He hesitated, then pressed on. “We have to find a place for her. A place where they can take care of her.”

  Joan shook her head. “Bill, she’s my mother! And when all this started — when she first got sick — I promised that no matter what happened, I’d never put her into a nursing home. I promised I’d take care of her myself. I can’t just put her away!”

  “It wouldn’t be putting her away — it wouldn’t be anything like that. We’ll find the best place in the area, and we can hire around-the-clock care if you want. And you’ll be able to visit her every day.”

  Joan shook her head. “I can’t,” she repeated, her voice trembling. “I promised her! She’s my — ”

  Again Bill cut her off, and when he spoke this time, the edge in his voice had sharpened. “I know she’s your mother, but I also know how she treats you. Most of the time she has no idea who I am, and as for Matt — ”

  “I know,” Joan said, breaking in before he could finish his indictment. “But what am I supposed to do? Could you have broken a promise you made to your father?”

  As Joan’s tears overflowed, Bill put his arms around her. “I know,” he said. “I know how hard it is. But if she stays here, she’ll tear this family apart. I know it.” He looked deep into her eyes. “And you know it too.” Joan didn’t answer, but to Bill the conflicting emotions that struggled within her were written clearly on her face, and finally he held her close. “A week,” he conceded. “We’ll give it a week.”

  They stood together, their arms wrapped around each other, each of them reflecting upon the words Bill had just spoken.

  In a week, Bill thought, I can find the best nursing home in the Northeast, and do whatever it takes to get her admitted.

  In a week,
Joan thought, she’ll be used to the house, and recognize Bill, and everything will be all right.

  CHAPTER 3

  THE WEEK WENT by.

  Bill Hapgood steered his Audi through the gates of Hapgood Farm, slowing the powerful car to a crawl as he made his way up the familiar curves of the long, graveled drive leading to the house. Until this week, this had been the best part of any given day of his life; the time when he left all his problems outside the gates and slipped back into the safe and familiar comfort of the only home he had ever known. It had always been that way: from the time he was a child this house had always been the final refuge from everything.

  Once — just once — he had doubted the house’s ability to offer him sanctuary from the world. That had been the day he was in school in Hanover and received the news that the boat his parents had chartered out of St. Lucia had been found abandoned and washed up on Macaroni Beach on the windward shore of Mustique. His parents had vanished. At first he’d simply refused to believe it — he and his parents had been sailing on Penobscot Bay every summer for as long as he could remember, and his father was an expert sailor. But he must have accepted the fact of their disappearance, for when he’d gone home that day, he hesitated before going through the gates, certain that the place would have changed, that it would feel hollow and empty with his parents forever gone.

  Instead, to his surprise, it seemed to welcome him even more warmly than ever, and far from finding the house filled with memories that intensified his grief, it gave him comfort instead. It was as if the house, having already known the loss of four generations of Hapgoods, now knew how to deal with death, and the moment he’d passed through the gates of the Farm, his healing had begun.

  But over the last week he’d actually dreaded coming home, and as he slid the Audi into the space in the carriage house next to Joan’s Range Rover and shut off the engine, he hesitated before reaching for the door handle, as he’d once hesitated so long ago. Had the car, rather than his home, become his refuge? That was ridiculous! All that had happened was that his mother-in-law had moved in, and even that was only temporary.

  Yet as he walked out of the carriage house — converted just over a century ago into a garage to hold the very first car in Granite Falls — he could feel the change. Not that there was anything tangible, anything visible. The house looked exactly as it always had. Lamps had already been turned on against the gathering dusk, but even the light that spilled through the mullioned windows seemed to have lost its warmth, and when Bill stepped through the French doors of what had once been the porte cochere, the change that had been creeping through the house all week was more pronounced than ever.

  He called out to Joan and Matt. There was no answer, and as he hung his coat in the hall closet, he knew why: from the second floor he heard Emily Moore’s petulant voice hectoring his wife.

  “Not there! It doesn’t belong there! How many times do I have to tell you?”

  Taking the stairs two at a time, Bill had started toward the open door to Emily’s room when he heard the old woman’s voice again, and realized the sound was coming from the room next to his mother-in-law’s. He continued down the wide hallway to the door and pushed it open.

  Except for the basics — the wallpaper, carpet, and upholstery — the room had completely changed. The four-poster bed, the Queen Anne chair by the window, the Chippendale chiffonier — all were gone, replaced by a cheap set of painted furniture that Bill didn’t quite recognize, though it looked vaguely familiar.

  Then it came to him.

  Cynthia’s room.

  Everything that had been in his wife’s sister’s room — the room that his mother-in-law had always kept in readiness for her long-dead daughter’s return — was now in this room.

  In this house.

  In his house.

  The pictures that had hung on the walls — three original Currier and Ives prints — were gone, replaced with the hodgepodge of posters and snapshots that had been plastered on the walls of the little house on Burlington Avenue.

  The Winslow Homer — minor, but original — that had hung over the mantel of the room’s small fireplace had been replaced with the large portrait of Cynthia that in Emily’s house had hung on the wall opposite her beloved daughter’s bed.

  And his entire family — his wife, his stepson, his mother-in-law — were all gathered in that room.

  “What’s going on?” he asked, keeping his voice carefully modulated so it betrayed nothing of his suddenly churning emotions.

  Joan, reacting as if she’d been stung, whirled to face him. The color drained from her face, and her eyes flicked back and forth between her husband and her mother, as if she were unable to decide where her safety lay.

  Matt, who was standing on a stool adjusting the portrait of his aunt, dropped to the floor. “We were just helping Gra — ” he began, but Bill cut him off before he could finish.

  “I thought we decided all of this would stay where it was,” he said to Joan, still managing to keep his voice from betraying his feelings.

  “I know, but Mother — ” Again Joan’s eyes darted toward her mother, who was now glowering at Bill. When his wife spoke again, her voice was trembling. “She said she wouldn’t stay here without Cynthia’s things. They mean so much to her, and I thought — ”

  “I see,” Bill said.

  Matt, sensing the storm that was suddenly brewing between his mother and his stepfather, slipped out of the room, retreating to his own at the far end of the hall.

  Joan tilted her head almost imperceptibly toward her mother. “Can’t we talk about this later?”

  Bill hesitated. Fragments of conversations flicked through his head:

  His wife’s voice: Nothing I do is ever good enough.

  His own: She’s always been that way. That’s one of the reasons she can’t live with us — she’ll destroy this family.

  His stepson’s voice: How come she’s so mean to you, Mom?

  And once again, his wife’s voice: She doesn’t mean it. She’s just old. And she’s my mother.

  Every night that week they’d waited until Emily — and Matt too — had gone to bed, and then tried to talk about it. Or, to be honest, they talked about it the first two nights.

  Then they started fighting about it, and no matter how hard each of them tried, the fight had grown steadily more bitter.

  This morning at breakfast the atmosphere had been so tense that none of them talked at all. Matt, pleading unfinished homework, had escaped from the house half an hour earlier than he ever left, and Joan, on the pretext of feeding her mother, had disappeared upstairs. But the simple fact was that what he feared had come true.

  His home was no longer what it had been all his life, no longer offered shelter and comfort.

  Not for him.

  Not for his family.

  Instead it had become a battle zone under the control of a woman whose disease had robbed her of any regard for anything but the preservation of her own delusions.

  Hapgood Farm was no longer his home.

  “Maybe we can talk about it a lot later,” Bill finally said, his voice reflecting the sadness and pain in his soul as he answered his wife’s question. “Maybe we can talk about it next week, or the week after. But not tonight. Not if it means going through what we’ve been going through every night this week.”

  He left the guest room and went through the master bedroom to his closet. Taking out his suitcase, he began to pack. Twice, he almost changed his mind, almost took the clothes out of the suitcase and hung them back in the closet. But what good would it do? If he stayed, he wouldn’t be able to keep silent, wouldn’t be able to prevent himself from trying to protect his family from the wounds Emily Moore inflicted nearly every time she spoke.

  At least if he left — even for just a few days — the two people who meant the most to him would no longer be caught in the jaws of a trap with the teeth sinking in from both directions. Then, in a few days — certainly no
more than a week — he and Joan could talk again.

  Reluctantly, he finished packing. He paused at the closed door to Matt’s room, wondering if he should try to explain why he was leaving. But even as he stood in the hall outside, he could see the hurt that would come into the boy’s eyes, the hurt that would melt his resolve in an instant. Better just to go, and try to explain it all to Matt tomorrow, or perhaps the next day.

  He paused at the door to the guest room too, wanting to see Joan one more time, to put his arms around her and protect her from her mother’s wrath. But as he reached for the doorknob he heard Emily’s strident voice once again. As he felt his fury rise again — a fury he was as helpless to control as Emily Moore was helpless to control either her illness or her tongue — he made himself turn away from the door.

  Let them be, he told himself. At least for tonight, don’t put any more pressure on them. Clutching the suitcase tightly, he hurried down the stairs and out of the house that was the only home he’d ever known. As he backed the Audi out of the carriage house a few minutes later, he glanced up to the window of the guest room that had been given over to the memory of the woman who lived only in the diseased mind of Emily Moore. He saw his wife standing in the window, looking down at him. As their gazes held, she shrugged her shoulders helplessly and mouthed three words:

  She’s my mother!

  Then, without waiting to see what he would do, she turned away.

  * * *

  MATT TOSSED RESTLESSLY in bed, rolling first one way, then the other, pushing the blankets down, then pulling them up again. Finally he gave up trying to sleep.

  Maybe he’d feel better if he went downstairs and got something to eat.

  Clad only in his bathrobe — the thick velour one his stepfather had given him for Christmas last year — he slipped out into the hall and headed toward the stairs.

  Everything about the house felt different tonight. Part of it was having his grandmother there. At first — the day after the fire — he’d thought it felt different because there was someone besides the three of them in the house. In a few days, he’d told himself, they’d all be used to having Gram in the house, and things would be just like they always were.