The Unwelcomed Child

by V. C. Andrews

  “No, no. It’s fine. I’m actually pretty hungry.”

  “Just sit, Grandpa. I’ll get everything,” I told him.

  When the coffee was ready, I poured his cup and cut his sandwich in half and then into quarters, which was the way Grandmother Myra always prepared it for him. After I served him, I sat watching him eat.

  “I pity those your grandmother’s and my age who have no one but themselves,” he told me, and started eating.

  My whole body was trembling. Should I have told Claudine it was all right for her to find my father? What if he wasn’t my father? What if my mother had made him up or didn’t know who my father was?

  “This is good, Elle.”

  “What do you think is going to happen with Grandmother Myra, Grandpa?”

  He shook his head. “We won’t know for a while. For now, we’ll do the best we can,” he said. He looked at the clock. “We’ll head back to the hospital in half an hour, and afterward, we’ll go out to dinner as I promised.”

  “Okay, Grandpa,” I said, and began to clean up. I could feel his eyes on me.

  “We had no reason to be afraid you’d turn out bad, Elle. I’m sorry,” he said. “Watching you, I don’t see any resemblances, bad resemblances, between you and your mother. By your age, she was more than a handful for us.”

  It seemed funny to thank someone for saying you were completely different from your own mother, but that was what I did.

  Before we left, I went into my room to change into one of my new dresses and brush my hair. Grandpa hadn’t said a word about how I was wearing it since I had come back from lunch with Mason and Claudine. Grandmother Myra was always after me to keep it pinned. When I stepped out, he smiled.

  “You are much prettier than your mother was at your age, Elle, and I don’t see that as a bad thing, not at all.”

  “Thank you, Grandpa.”

  “Well, we’d better go. As your grandmother would say, procrastination doesn’t change what’s waiting for you.”

  This time, when we arrived at the ICU, Grandmother Myra’s doctor was in the lobby, talking to the relatives of another patient. He signaled to us that we should wait. He was a young man with wavy golden-brown hair. When he started toward us, we both rose.

  “Mr. Edwards,” he began, and looked at me.

  “This is our granddaughter, Dr. Rosen,” Grandpa Prescott told him.

  He smiled. “Very pretty young lady,” Dr. Rosen said. He lost his smile immediately when he turned back to my grandfather. “As I told you earlier, Mr. Edwards, your wife has suffered an ischemic stroke.” He looked at me. “Blood was blocked from her brain by a blood clot. She suffered from a condition known as atrial fibrillation, an abnormal heartbeat, which was responsible for the clot. Brain cells in the left hemisphere of her brain were destroyed, and that area controls the right side of the body and speech ability. We’ll continue to evaluate her for a few days, and then, if she stabilizes some, we’ll move her to a room where she will still get intensive care and start therapy.”

  “Will she get better?” I asked.

  “It’s difficult to predict precisely how much of what she’s lost she’ll regain. The important thing is to make her comfortable, prevent any more damage, and get her spirits up. I know that’s going to be hard,” he added quickly. “Right now, she’s pretty angry.”

  “We know,” Grandpa Prescott said.

  “Well, visit, spend time with her, keep talking to her. I’ll let you know when we’re moving her.”

  He smiled at me again and walked away.

  “We’re in for the long haul,” Grandpa Prescott muttered.

  I followed him into the ICU. One of the nurses brought a chair for him. I stood beside him as he talked to Grandmother Myra, telling her how I had made him his lunch, cleaned up the kitchen, and been a great support. She looked at me with less anger this time, I thought. Her face seemed to tremble. Grandpa Prescott clung to her good hand and spoke softly, telling her that she was going to get stronger and better. She shook her head, but this time, she didn’t even attempt to speak. After another ten minutes, the nurse thought we should let her rest.

  I promised her I would look after Grandpa Prescott. When she looked at me this time, I thought I saw a keener look of suspicion in her eyes. It was almost as if she knew what Mason, Claudine, and I were planning to do. There were many times when I believed she had the power to read my thoughts, even when I wasn’t close by.

  Grandpa Prescott was very subdued after we left the hospital. I tried to buoy his spirits by reminding him that when the doctor said it was impossible to predict how much recovery she would experience, he was also saying that she could recover a great deal.

  “I know now what it is about you that’s so different from your mother, Elle,” Grandpa Prescott said as we drove to the restaurant he wanted us to try. “She was always dark and pessimistic, always predicting the worst for all of us, especially herself. Despite everything, you never lost the sunshine in your face.”

  It was then that I felt like crying. I sucked back my tears, because I didn’t want him to be any more despondent than he already was. On the way to the restaurant, we passed Burger City, and I smiled to myself. My life was going to change now, I thought. It would be better, and not just because Grandmother Myra wasn’t ruling over us anymore. I was really going to enter the world. So much of what other girls and boys my age were experiencing and doing would be brand-new and exciting for me. They wouldn’t understand, I’m sure, but that was what it would be, and I had no intention of hiding my joy so that I could cover up what sort of life I had led. If I had gotten anything from Claudine, it was a stronger sense of self-confidence, even defiance.

  Grandpa Prescott took us to a small Italian restaurant called Dante’s Inferno. He told me he had wanted to go there for a long time, but Grandmother Myra told him the food would be too spicy for him. She said that was why it was called “Inferno.”

  “She meant well,” he added. “She was only looking out for my welfare. You can’t hate people whose intention is to help you.”

  The restaurant had small booths and was a lot darker than Chipper’s, but I thought it had more atmosphere. The aromas of garlic, tomatoes, and cheese permeated the air. Grandmother Myra would have liked this place, actually, I thought. Now she’d probably never see it.

  “I don’t hate her, Grandpa,” I said.

  “Good. You’re my strength now, Elle. I have faith in you,” he said.

  We ordered and enjoyed our dinner. He was far more forthcoming about his younger years and told me stories about him and his brother, Brett, that I had never heard. It was always difficult for me to imagine either of my grandparents younger, but his anecdotes about school pranks and the things he and his brother had done brought laughter and smiles to both of us.

  It was terrible to think that as a result of my grandmother suffering a stroke, my grandfather and I would become closer and more loving. I didn’t want to be happy that she was sick, but it wasn’t easy not to when I considered how things were a short time ago, how they were now, and how they were surely to be. It felt sinful, and I knew I would pray and ask God to forgive me for having these thoughts. I hoped he could see what was in my heart instead. It wasn’t easy ignoring all the fire and brimstone I had heard. The God Grandmother Myra worshipped was just as capable of anger as he was of love. He could lay down punishments on your head as easily as he could lay down blessings.

  That night and the following morning, I worked harder than ever in the house. I told Grandpa Prescott to go to the hospital without me, because I wanted to keep up the schedule Grandmother Myra had created. I was going to work over the living room, polish furniture, vacuum, and air things out the way she liked. I would also do the windows. And then I would plan our dinner.

  “She’ll be happy to hear about all this,” he told me. “It’s the best way to show her how much you care.”

  I smiled, but deep inside, I knew that I was working harder not t
o please my grandmother but to perform penance for the bad thoughts I had and the pleasure I was taking in how her illness opened up my life.

  Later that morning, the phone rang three times. The first time, it was Grandpa Prescott telling me he was having his lunch in the hospital. The second call was Claudine.

  “My parents just left,” she told me. “What time do you think you can get away tomorrow?”

  “I don’t know if I should do this, Claudine.”

  “Of course you should. You have a right to do this. Mason is really for it now, too.”

  “Maybe I should ask my grandfather first,” I said.

  “Are you crazy? I thought you were afraid to tell him about us.”

  “I am, but maybe not as much now. I think he’d understand my having friends.”

  “Yeah, whatever, but he’d surely tell you not to do it, that it was only going to cause more trouble. Look, this is something you owe to yourself, Elle. Stop worrying about everyone else for a change. Get a little selfish. It’s how you survive out there. You’ll see. Better you start thinking this way now. If we leave at ten, we can be there just after twelve, you can be back before dinner, and no one has to know anything. How’s that?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “It scares me.”

  “There’s no reason to be afraid. Mason and I will be right beside you the whole time. Don’t think about it any more. We’ll be at your house at ten.”

  Before I could say anything more, she hung up. Five minutes later, the phone rang again. This time, it was Mason.

  “I heard the way she was talking to you, Elle. I want this to be something you really want to do.”

  “I don’t know what to do.”

  “Do you want to see him? Do you want to learn about him? Do you want to talk to him? Did you ever want to do this?”

  “I’ve thought about it, even dreamed about it, yes.”

  “So?”

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ll go.”

  “I can come over to see you,” he said. “We can talk about it some more.”

  “I don’t know when my grandfather is coming back, Mason. He’s having a hard time. If something happened, I wouldn’t be able to go tomorrow.”

  “All right. Call me whenever you want,” he said. “Regardless, we’ll be there at ten.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  After the call, I had to sit for a while. My legs felt weak. I thought I was being courageous and adventurous meeting them at the lake, but now, going to Albany and confronting my father? Did I have the courage for that? Grandpa Prescott really seemed to like me, even love me, so much more now. Wasn’t I risking all that?

  Claudine had told me to be a little selfish. Was she right? Was that what I needed to survive? Was I too soft, too innocent and trusting, to succeed?

  I began a debate with myself.

  Why do you want to see the man who raped your mother? Will this help you answer the question, “Who am I?”

  Yes, it might. Didn’t all children look at their parents and search for resemblances, not just physical ones but mental and emotional ones? Didn’t that help them understand their own identities, guide them when they made their choices, and strengthen them when they had to face challenges? Didn’t I feel like half a person?

  Until now, I had accepted my grandparents’, especially my grandmother’s, view of me. Whenever I looked in the mirror, I believed I saw the same face hiding potential evil that she saw. She had molded and shaped me as if I was a chunk of clay, but suddenly, now there was a heartbeat in that clay and a mind that had other thoughts, other questions.

  Maybe it was like what Dr. Rosen said had happened to Grandmother Myra, only it had happened to me. Blood had been blocked from my brain, and in that blood was my true self, my true nature, and my true soul.

  Going with Mason and Claudine to see my father was my therapy. It was my road back, not to who I was in the past but to who I was now.

  I would have to be a little deceitful about tomorrow, I thought, but I had to do it. Strengthened with this new resolve, I went back to my work, and when Grandpa Prescott returned, I listened to his description of how Grandmother Myra was and what the doctor had decided.

  “She’s going to be moved tomorrow,” he said. “I want to be there early. I’ll probably be there most of the day. It’s better if you come after she’s been set up. Besides, the weather looks good. You should be outside. Don’t spend the day working on the house anymore. It’s fine, Elle. Go back to your art, and finish that picture.”

  “Okay, Grandpa, but I will get something prepared for dinner before I do.”

  “That’s fine. We’re going to get through this together,” he said. “I’m sure of it.”

  He did look more cheerful and hopeful. I watched television with him after dinner and then went to bed when he did. I said my prayers to the picture of the baby Jesus, and I asked him to forgive me for any sins I had committed and sins I might commit.

  As Grandpa Prescott once told me after my grandmother had ordered me to say my prayers that way, “A little insurance doesn’t hurt.”

  Nevertheless, I took trepidation and great concern to bed with me. It wasn’t an easy sleep when it came, either. I had all sorts of terrible dreams. In one of them, Grandmother Myra rose from her hospital bed and made her way back to the house to face me after I had returned with Mason and Claudine from Albany. She was as twisted as she looked in the hospital, and she lifted her bad arm along with her good one, but both of her hands were on fire, all of her fingers like candlewicks. I thought I must have screamed in my sleep and woke in the darkness, trembling.

  Slowly, I looked down the hallway to see if she was there the way she often was, spying on me, watching me, waiting to see if Satan would visit my bedside.

  Maybe, I thought, he had, and that was why I had those dreams.

  I didn’t fall back to sleep easily. In fact, I think I did just before it was time to get up, but I didn’t want to be lying in bed when Grandpa Prescott came down. Everything had to seem as normal as ever, especially today, I thought, and rose quickly.

  He seemed to be in good spirits and ate a bigger breakfast than usual. He began talking about Grandmother Myra in a more positive light.

  “When she comes home,” he said, “we’ll need to make some changes. I met someone at the hospital whose husband had a stroke, and she told me about this mechanical chair that takes someone in your grandmother’s condition up and down the stairway. I’m going to look into that.

  “Soon you’ll be busy with your schooling. Obviously, she couldn’t continue homeschooling you, even if she had changed her mind and thought that better. So I’m getting information about some private-duty nursing at home, at least for the first few months.

  “Even after she’s home, I’ll have to take her to therapy back at the hospital almost daily. I was thinking about finally trading in the old jalopy for one of those vehicles that has more comfortable seats and a place for a wheelchair. So I might be home later than I ordinarily would today,” he continued. “If you get hungry and want to eat earlier . . .”

  “Oh, no, that’s fine, Grandpa.”

  He nodded. “Lots to do. Lots to think about. But don’t worry yourself about any of this. I have it under control. Just go about your day.”

  “I will,” I said. I was glad he wasn’t asking me anything about how I intended to spend it. I could see his mind was elsewhere.

  When he rose, he paused to hug me and tell me again how proud he was of me.

  “She’s calmed down a lot,” he said as I walked him to the door. “She doesn’t have to speak for me to know what she’s thinking or what she wants to know. I told her all you’ve been doing, and I can see that it pleases her.”

  He hugged me again and left. Everything he had said and done made me think again about taking the ride with Mason and Claudine. If, for some reason, I didn’t get back in time, he’d be very upset, heartbroken. Once again, I questioned whether I should do it. A
s I cleaned up the kitchen, I was tempted to call them and tell them not to come. I even lifted the receiver once, but I put it back.

  “I’ve got to do this,” I told myself. “I’ve got to.”

  Just before ten, I went outside and waited. My heart was pounding. When I saw their car approaching, this time with the top up, I started down the short stairway, but it was as if I had thick glue on the bottoms of my shoes. They pulled up and waited.

  “Who had the stroke, you or your grandmother?” Claudine joked.

  “I have to get home early enough to set out his dinner,” I said.

  “No problem,” Mason told me. “This car can move when it has to.”

  “Stop worrying. Let’s make a fun day of it,” Claudine said when I still didn’t move toward the passenger’s side.

  Fun? I thought. This didn’t feel like fun. Was that how she saw it?

  Mason read my thoughts. “What Claudine means is that this won’t all be full of tension for you. We’ll find a nice place for lunch, and you’ll see a little of a city you’ve never seen. We’ve not been up there in years. Luckily, I have a GPS, so we’ll have no trouble finding our way around. C’mon, Elle. Let’s get moving so we can get it all done and be back when you want.”

  I hurried around the car and got in. Claudine had left the front seat for me again.

  “We’re off,” Mason said, and sped away from my house.

  I glanced back only once, took a deep breath, and sat back. I was either crossing a great divide or creating an even bigger one between myself and the only family I had.

  19

  Needless to say, this was the longest ride I had ever taken and the farthest I had ever been from home. I knew both of them were trying to calm me down by talking about everything under the sun except my seeing and maybe talking to my father.

  Did you really call men who raped women fathers? I wondered. Shouldn’t father mean more than just procreating?

  “Tell me about your father,” I said. “I mean, he seems very nice and lots of fun, but what’s he really like?”