A Love for All Seasons

by Bettye Griffin

  “Look at me, Alicia.”

  She turned her face to him.

  “Let me tell you something. Loving someone, and being loved, is the greatest thing that can happen to anyone. It doesn’t mean you’re weak. You don’t know how it pleases me to know that you’ve needed me these last few weeks.”

  She abruptly jumped out of his embrace and sat up, pulling the sheet up against her. “Need?” she repeated in obvious distaste. “We were talking about love, Jack. Now all of a sudden you say I need you.”

  He stared at her incredulously. “You say it like it’s a dirty word.”

  “It is a dirty word,” she shot back. “And it doesn’t apply to me. I’ve spent time with you because I’ve wanted to, Jack, because you were the only one I wanted to share my pain with. Get it? I wanted to. Not because I needed to be with you. I don’t need you, Jack. I don’t need anyone.”

  Caught off guard by her outburst, he now sat up in bed. “Alicia, that’s the most childish thing I’ve ever heard. You’ve got to grow up and climb out of this vacuum you’ve created for yourself and allow yourself to feel normal emotions. You might want to try imagining where you’ll be in twenty years. In your mid-fifties, still falling into bed with old boyfriends for old time’s sake? It’s—” he groped for a word that fit “—Freudian, for heaven’s sake.”

  “Freudian? Freudian?” She practically screamed the word. “I’ll show you Freudian.” She yanked the bathrobe that hung over the headboard and slid her arms through it, knotting the sash furiously around her waist. With agile ease, she climbed over him and out of bed, crossing to the Bombay chest on the opposite wall, where she kept the envelope Sam McDaniel had given her.

  “Here,” she said, thrusting the newspaper article in his face. “Take a look at my birth father if you want to see Freudian. Does he remind you of anyone?”

  Jack’s eyes grew wide as he stared at the photograph, then skimmed the accompanying article. “My God,” he whispered. Then he looked at her accusingly. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I was about to, before you made that crack about my behavior being straight out of Freud.”

  His shoulders slumped as he skimmed the article. The contents stunned him. Not only did Alicia’s late father bear a striking resemblance to him, but her parents had been murdered, with three-year-old Alicia found at home with her father’s body. All she told him was that her parents died at young ages. She said nothing about them having been killed. He’d thought he’d gotten through to her at last, that she felt she could trust him, but that invisible wall had come between them once again, keeping him shut out and in the dark.

  Jack stared at the picture again. If he hadn’t known from his family history that no one on either side of his family had made their way from Alabama to Connecticut, he would have sworn Alicia’s father was a relative of his. He knew that was impossible, that often complete strangers looked alike. Still, this photo, and the story, made several things clear to him.

  Like the way she sometimes seemed so nervous around him, the way he could feel her trembling in his arms when he went to kiss her, and how she tried to cover it up by drinking more than she could hold. And during their first conversation she asked if they’d met before. It all came together for him now.

  His heart wrenched at the confusion she must have felt. Subconsciously he reminded her of her father, not Fletcher Timberlake, but Benjamin Clements.

  He also understood why Caroline Timberlake looked at him the way she had. Surely she had seen this photo in the newspaper. He considered it a stroke of good fortune that she didn’t slump to the floor at the sight of him.

  “Alicia,” he began. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know about the details of your parents’ deaths. I wish you’d shared it with me.”

  “I wasn’t ready to,” she said defiantly. How could she, when she had just begun to understand the significance of the resemblance between two men with very different roles in her life herself?

  “I can understand that. But now that I do know, let me help you through this, help you work it out.”

  “Why?” she countered. “So you can pat yourself on the back and be a big man because you feel I need you? I’d rather do it myself.”

  “With what, a bottle?”

  “Why not?” Barefoot, she plodded toward the other end of the apartment, where the kitchen was located. Moments later he heard the sound of a cork being popped and liquid being poured. So she preferred a cold, impersonal bottle of wine to the encouragement, understanding, and love he could offer her, did she? Maybe he’d made a terrible mistake. Pete might have been right about Alicia all along. The wall she built around herself really was impenetrable.

  He climbed out of bed and threw on his clothes. His bags were still in his truck parked several blocks away after he retrieved it from a lot near the pier. He splashed some warm water on his face and had his coat on by the time he ventured around the corner of the L of the apartment layout.

  Alicia stood in the corner, her back to him, wine glass in hand. It was already three-quarters empty.

  He shook his head. “You know, I really thought I’d gotten through that wall you keep around yourself. I thought you had softened toward the idea of a love that lasts, not meaningless affairs that start in the fall and are over by the time winter ends, or run from spring to summer.” He wanted a love for all seasons, not a series of short-term relationships that petered out after a few sweet months together. “You’re thirty-five years old, Alicia. You’re a mature woman in every way but one, and I think it’s high time your feelings regarding love caught up with the rest of you. I’m not ashamed to say that I need you in my life. But not like this. Not with you equating what I feel for you with weakness or spinelessness.”

  She didn’t turn around to face him, nor did she take any sips from her glass. But she didn’t say anything in response, either. Suddenly he knew that continuing to pursue her would only break his heart. I’m through.

  Wordlessly he took his coat from the closet and left. She would know to lock the door behind him.

  He walked four blocks to where he parked his car and got in, driving off to a future without the woman he would somehow have to stop loving.

  Chapter 33

  In My Life

  Hartford, Connecticut

  Mid 1970s

  She opened her eyes at the sound of the raised voices, rubbing her eyes as she clumsily sat up. Mommy and Daddy were yelling at each other again. They woke her up.

  No, that wasn’t Mommy and Daddy, she realized; it was Daddy and somebody else, somebody she didn’t know.

  She sat up, rubbed her eyes some more and climbed down from the bed. She wanted to let them know they’d woken her up. Maybe then they’d stop. She hated all that yelling.

  Before she got to the doorway she heard the rumbling sound. Her mommy screamed, “Stop it!” over and over.

  Her breath caught in her throat. Daddy and another man, the man she knew as her mommy’s friend, rolled on the floor hitting each other. They both looked real mad. Maybe she should just go back to bed, or Daddy would really be mad. He never yelled at her, only Mommy.

  But she couldn’t move, and nobody saw her standing there, anyway. She wished Mommy’s friend would go away. She didn’t think he’d ever been here when Daddy was home. And she’d never seen Daddy so mad before. It looked like he was really hurting Mommy’s friend. He held him down, and his hands were around his neck. Daddy was yelling at him, but Mommy’s friend just made funny noises. Now Mommy was yelling at Daddy—only she never called him “Daddy,” but “Ben”—to stop it, but he didn’t even look at her.

  Mommy’s friend—that was what she always called him, her friend—had one hand on top of Daddy’s hands and the other in his pocket. She saw something shiny, and then all of a sudden Daddy made a funny noise and fell forward onto Mommy’s friend.

  Mommy ran to him, but instead of sounding mad she sounded like she was crying. “Cliff, what have you done?”

>   She decided that Mommy’s friend’s name must be Cliff, just like her name was ’ Licia.

  She watched as Mommy held Daddy, but Daddy didn’t say anything. It was like he’d gone to sleep, and Mommy couldn’t wake him up.

  “Daddy!” she cried out.

  Alicia’s eyes flew open, and she sat up with a start. When she realized she was shivering laid back down and pulled the covers over her head, leaving only her face exposed. She’d just seen it, the tiny apartment with its beat-up furniture, the fight her father had with Clifton Matthews before Clifton stabbed him to death. She could actually hear the rumbling noise as they rolled on the floor. While being choked, Clifton managed to pull a knife out of his pocket and stab her father in the abdomen. She’d read somewhere—probably while doing her scoping, or fine tuning, of one of the court stenographers’ transcripts during a murder trial—that those types of wounds bled very little, although they were deadly. But that was cold comfort to her now.

  Even with all the covers, she still shivered. Why couldn’t she get warm? And would she ever be able to get back to sleep, or would fear of what she might see in her dreams keep her awake until dawn?

  “There you are,” Shannon said brightly as she stood in the doorway to Alicia’s office. “I’m glad you’re here. I’ve got a nine o’clock with Doretha McCann. I had a call from the secretary of a judge. Doretha transcribed a deposition in his office the other day, and he didn’t like the way she was dressed. I think the girl’s been watching too many TV dramas, wearing all those low-cut blouses to work. I’m going to tell her she dresses inappropriately for court, and if she doesn’t comply we won’t use her services anymore. Did you want to sit in?”

  “No, not this morning. I’ve got a headache. Didn’t sleep too well last night.”

  Alicia felt Shannon’s eyes studying her. “Are you all right? You had a headache when you came in yesterday.”

  From the wine, Alicia knew. Yesterday she’d come in late and left early. “It went away, but now it’s back.”

  “I’ve got to tell you, Alicia, you don’t exactly look like you just spent five days on a Caribbean cruise. Truth be told, you look like hell. What’s wrong? I’m really starting to worry about you.”

  “There’s a lot going on in my life right now, Shannon. I don’t mean to be evasive, but I don’t want to say any more than that.”

  “Why don’t you go home and try to sleep?”

  “No. I’ve been out of the office way too much. I’ll work through it.”

  But even as Alicia said the words, she acknowledged that after last night’s flashback dream it had just become a heck of a lot more difficult.

  Alicia fell asleep as soon as she got home. Her slumber was deep and dreamless. When she awoke before dawn the next morning she felt grateful, seeing it as a sign that the disturbing dream of the previous night had been no more than a reaction to the breakup with Jack.

  She would make it after all.

  Three days later she had another dream, this time seeing images of herself as a toddler being carried way up high on her father’s shoulders. It was springtime, and she wore a pink windbreaker and white socks under brown sandals. They took a walk in the park, and he bought her a vanilla cone of soft serve custard.

  The scene faded, soon replaced by another. This time he was taking her out of the tub and drying her off, making a game out of it. As he helped her dress he told her, “You’re Daddy’s girl, Alicia, and Daddy loves you very much.”

  Once again she woke up shaken and shivering in the middle of the night, and she knew she had to get help.

  Chapter 34

  Help!

  Dr. Allison Tucker took a few moments to go over the paperwork Alicia filled out. “No history of depression, no history of mental disorders. Tell me why you’re here, Ms. Timberlake.”

  The question irked Alicia. “Didn’t they tell you that I was seen here over thirty years ago, as a child? My attorney suggested I come here because my old records are here.”

  “Yes, and I’ve studied the records.” Dr. Tucker, an attractive if too thin woman with ash blond hair in her fifties, appeared unruffled by Alicia’s agitation. “But I’d like to hear it directly from you. What motivated you to pick up the phone and make this appointment?”

  “I didn’t want to,” she admitted. “But my mother passed away Christmas night, and shortly afterward I found out I was adopted, and that my birth parents were both murdered. The last week-and-a-half I’ve been having these dreams every couple of nights, bits and pieces mostly, from when I was little and living with my birth parents. I even dreamed about the night my father was killed.” She explained the circumstances under which her parents died. “I haven’t been able to sleep on the nights it happens, and I don’t know how to stop them.”

  Over the next hour she told Dr. Tucker more about herself than she’d ever shared with anyone; her loving relationship with Caroline Timberlake, her lifelong bickering with Daphne, and the partiality Fletcher Timberlake demonstrated for Daphne. “My mother told me they were on the verge of despair when I came along, fearing they would never have children,” she recalled. “Obviously my father forgot all about that when my sister was born.” She gasped when she recognized the anger Caroline always said she should have. At last it had flared up. Her mother had been right to say it wasn’t normal to have no feelings at all about her father’s treatment of her. He’d been good to her, of course, left her an equal share of his estate with Daphne, but he’d clearly loved Daphne more.

  She concluded with Daphne’s efforts to prevent her from spending any time alone with Caroline in the last weeks of her life, and Daphne’s revelation to her that she’d been adopted.

  Dr. Tucker studied her carefully, typing notes into a laptop computer. She looked at Alicia expectantly, as if she waited for her to say more.

  When Alicia shrugged the doctor said, “Alicia…may I call you that?” At her nod she continued. “I get the feeling there’s something else you’re not telling me. I can’t help you unless you’re completely honest with me.”

  “Wow, you’re good,” she said with a laugh. “All right. I did leave something out. There’s this man—” She told the doctor all about Jack Devlin, how she’d gotten a sense of déjà vu the first time she laid eyes on him that lasted for months, especially when she was close to him, and how she discovered his resemblance to her birth father. Feeling more comfortable in Dr. Tucker’s almost homey office, in which she sat upright on a loveseat rather than stretched out on a couch, she left out nothing. She included her out-of-character drinking to help quell her uneasiness at being around him…and most recently, to try to chase away her haunting dreams in which bits and pieces of her past came to life; and she provided the doctor with an accurate account of their breakup. Before she knew it she had spoken for nearly an hour.

  “Alicia, do you have any idea why your adoptive parents didn’t tell you the truth about your background? It’s rather unusual for adoptees in the last sixty years or so to not be told they were chosen by rather than born to their parents.”

  “I always thought it was because they didn’t want to have to tell me about what happened to my real parents. It wasn’t really a big news story, but it did receive media attention locally. But I’m sure you already knew that.”

  “Yes, I’ve read the newspaper articles. You’re very perceptive, Alicia. Of course, I wasn’t on the staff when your parents brought you here thirty-two years ago, and after a thorough series of interviews, it was determined that you had no recollection of your father’s murder, and that you seemed well adjusted in your new life. According to the chart notes, they were advised to tell you that you’d been adopted around the time you entered kindergarten, with a gradual revealing of the details much later, when you were old enough to understand. Obviously, they never did.”

  “I wish I knew why.”

  “I’m afraid we’ll never know the reason. But I know it was difficult for you to come here today. I’m going
to advise a return visit, but since I’m not sure you’ll comply, I’m going to give you my impressions and recommendations now.”

  Alicia leaned forward. “And what are they?”

  “I think you’re suffering from a posttraumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. In my opinion you should stop running away from your past. You’ve repressed your earliest memories since the night your father was killed, and now they’re fighting to come to the surface. There’s no way for me to know how much of that night you really remember and how much might have been your imagination at work. We’ve had some success with hypnosis—”

  “Forget it,” she said flatly. “I refuse to give anyone that much control over me. I’m sure your ethics are in the right place, Dr. Tucker, but I still won’t consider it.”

  The doctor smiled. “Many people feel that way. I’ll just tell you this, then. Don’t fight your memories, Alicia. Stop trying to drown your pain in alcohol. Nothing good can ever come out of that. Embrace them. By all means pursue people who knew your parents. It sounds like you were quite happy with your father and perhaps resented your mother for bringing her boyfriend into your lives, an action that in the end destroyed your family.

  “My feeling is that after your father’s death you felt lost and alone. All the love you reserved for him you transferred to Caroline Timberlake, the new mother figure in your life. From virtually everyone else in your life you remained detached, even from your closest friends. You’re a caring person, Alicia, always thoughtful and considerate of others, but there’s no real bond with anyone other than your mother.

  “You might have sailed through your entire life with no emotional attachments, but then Jack Devlin showed up on your doorstep and began to stir memories that had been dormant for years, because he reminded you of your birth father. You felt flustered just being around him, and you had conflicting emotions about physical intimacy with him because subconsciously he reminded you of your father. But you weren’t ready to accept his love. You rebelled when he spoke of loving you and needing you, and of your needing him.