by Sarah Bryant
And at the centre of this solar system, where once there was nothing, there is now a constant: there is you, with all your purity and beauty, with all your strength and frailty. How can you not see that to be this sun is your destiny, as to orbit you is mine? I know that in time you will see it. You must—just as, in you, I see the ancient circle of rock and water, fire and sky, of leaves that bud and then fall golden, all in the light of your smile, suspended within it, like the doorway to a moment that never began nor will end, but which we will always be free to pass into and out of—
Hurt me! Lash out, try for blood, you cannot refuse to love me . . .
Beyond this, the writing became illegible. I put the volume aside, chilled simultaneously by the sheer, mad passion of the final words and my mother’s cold refusal of them. I flipped again through her own journal, looking for any intimation that she had seen and understood her sister’s plight or in any way sensed the strength of Louis’s love for her. Yet her only reference to the two of them together was that Louis was the first person who had successfully tamed her sister, and that in this lay his only worth to her. There were scattered remarks about how little she liked him, and one that fairly clearly stated that she suspected him of toying with her sister’s affections, but she expressed no more powerful feeling for her lover, nor any understanding of his own.
How could the two sisters have such vastly different reactions to the same man? I wondered, and continued to wonder as I reread the journals over the days that followed. But there was nothing in either volume to give a clue to this variance of opinion, nor to the lesser question that Eve’s entry about her mother’s illness had sparked: whether it could have been the onset of the disease that killed her.
Like so much about my family’s past, I had never before known enough to wonder about my grandmother’s death. My grandfather had seldom talked to me about her, and certainly not about how she died. During my childhood the idea of her, like that of my parents, inhabited a completely different realm from the one in which I lived. The older I grew, the more they all seemed to be figures from a distant past that was no more real to me than a storybook. The little I knew about the nature of Claudine Fairfax’s illness, and the suggestion that there had been a mental aspect to it, had come from snatches of gossip I had overheard during the society evenings of my childhood, and had never been supported by anything more substantial.
Now I realized I had one potential foothold in Claudine’s portion of the mystery, if no other: the name of her doctor. And I knew who would know where to find him.
“Yes, I’ve heard of Dr. Beaufort,” Colette told me over the bread dough she was kneading. “But it won’t do you no good: he died ten years ago. If it’s a doctor you’re looking for, the best is Dr. Brown. He took over Dr. Beaufort’s practice, right in Eden village. Nice man—he treats colored and white folks alike.”
“Thanks, Colette,” I told her, and then, to avoid suspicion and also to cover my tracks from Mary until I had decided whether or not to include her in this investigation, I said, “My insomnia medication from Boston hasn’t been working. I thought a doctor down here might be able to suggest something else.”
“No doubt he can,” Colette answered, “but if you ask me, none of that new medicine works as good as the old. If you like, I’ll talk to Callista Martin next time I visit my mother.”
I knew from previous conversations with Colette that the said Callista was a self-proclaimed medicine woman, whose practices no doubt involved a sprinkling of voodoo. “I think I’ll talk to Dr. Brown first. I need to go to town this afternoon, anyway. If she comes back before me, let Mary know I’ve gone on some errands, would you?”
“Of course, mademoiselle,” Colette agreed, clearly free from any suspicion. For a moment I wondered why I cared what anyone thought; but I suppose I had enough pride not to want to broadcast the details of my grandmother’s illness to the servants or, for that matter, the fact that I was interested in it.
I gathered my things, called for the car, and then settled in for the ride to the village, turning over the mild anxiety about what I might discover. I told Jean-Pierre to leave me at a dress shop and come back in an hour; when he had driven out of sight, I hurried across the street to the address Colette had given me.
There were only two other people in the tiny waiting room: a receptionist, to whom I gave my name, and an elderly woman who stared at me brazenly until she was called into the examining room, no doubt wondering why I had come all the way into town instead of calling the doctor out to Eden. In fifteen minutes she reemerged and then let herself out, stealing glances at me all the while, which I had no choice but to pretend to ignore. Then Dr. Brown called me into his consulting room.
I was immediately disappointed by him, in that he could be no older than thirty-five: too young to have known any of the people I was interested in. Nevertheless, he had a kind, ruddy face and an affable manner that told me that even if he couldn’t provide any answers himself, he would help as best he could.
“Good afternoon, Miss Rose,” he said, shaking my hand energetically and showing me to a chair. “Very pleased to meet you.”
“Thank you,” I said, sitting down and self-consciously twisting the straps of my handbag.
“Now, what seems to be the problem?”
I looked into his solicitous, smiling face and realized I had no idea how to begin. I stared at him in silence for a few moments, and finally, still at a loss, I said, “Actually, I’m not ill.”
I could see that he was repressing humor, but his kindness prevailed and he said only, “You’re looking for advice, then?”
“Well, yes,” I answered. “I imagine you’ll think this is an unusual request, but, well ... I wondered if you were at all acquainted with my grandparents, William and Claudine Fairfax.”
He sat farther back in his chair and answered, “Unfortunately, no. I grew up in a suburb of New Orleans and only moved out here a few years ago. I’ve certainly heard of your grandparents, but they had long since stopped coming to Eden by the time I arrived.”
“I thought that would be the case. In fact, that has to do with what I meant to ask you.” I paused, still shy of revealing the unpleasant nature of my grandmother’s final years. However, the openness of Dr. Brown’s face and his frank blue eyes convinced me that he would be the last to treat a sick person with contempt or, for that matter, to gossip. So I told him, “I never knew my grandmother. She died when I was only a baby. I didn’t know my parents, either; my mother died when I was three, and my father . . . left. My grandfather, William Fairfax, raised me.”
I looked to see how Dr. Brown would react to this information, but he only nodded, his palms together and index fingers on his lips.
Drawing another long breath, I continued. “He was quite reticent about discussing my mother and my grandmother. I know that they both died of illness, and he alluded to me that it might have been the same one.” I couldn’t look the doctor in the eye. Instead I focused on my gloves, which had replaced the handbag straps as the subject of my anxious attention. “My mother was not much older than I am when she fell ill. I don’t know what she died of, and I have no records to refer to. But I thought that perhaps, since my grandmother was first treated here, at Eden . . .” I had never been good at lying, and now I lost my nerve; my face burned.
Thankfully, the doctor took this as embarrassment at requesting confidential information. He smiled sympathetically and said, “Generally we don’t disclose medical information about our patients. However, as she was your grandmother and she’s no longer living, I don’t see what harm it could cause. I assume that Dr. Beaufort was the practitioner? His records should still all be here, and I’ll show them to you, Miss Rose—I presume that was what you meant to ask.”
Grateful, and flushing still more deeply, I nodded.
“However, I’ll also insist that you have a full examination. If your mother and grandmother died of a congenital disease, there is always the chan
ce that you could have inherited it.” Again I nodded, feeling that to submit to an examination was a small price to pay for the information I sought.
Dr. Brown left the room. As I sat in the close, quiet heat of the little examining room, my anxiety grew. For the first time since I had read Eve’s account of her mother’s illness, I allowed myself to fully consider my impetus in pursuing this information. Of course, I was curious to know what had happened to this woman about whom I knew so little, particularly if, as my grandfather had suggested, her death might pertain to my mother’s. I even had an idea that there might be something in those old medical records that would shed some light on Eve’s fate. But deep down I knew that what was really driving me was a tiny, insidious idea that had worked itself into my mind sometime during my childhood, planted with my grandfather’s challenge to me to avoid my mother’s and grandmother’s fatal melancholy, and fed on the gossip about the sinister turn that melancholy had taken in my grandmother’s case. I had allowed the doctor to think that I feared an inherited physical defect, but this wasn’t the whole truth. If something sinister had infected my grandmother’s mind, I needed to know whether it threatened mine, too.
I had so succumbed to this thought that I didn’t hear the doctor return to the examining room, and I jumped when he said my name. I smiled broadly to hide my discomfiture.
“I was in a dream,” I apologized, but my smile died as I saw the serious expression his face had assumed. Slowly he sat back down at his desk, holding an old, discolored green file in front of him and reading intently. Finally he looked up at me, and his face was no less grave.
“Have you—have you found it?” I faltered.
“Yes,” he answered slowly, “these are your grandmother’s records. As you say, she did indeed fall ill here, in July of 1898, and it does appear that it was the beginning of the illness she died of. In the first instance, Dr. Beaufort diagnosed it as malaria. However, as Mrs. Fairfax didn’t respond to the traditional treatment, he revised this diagnosis.”
“What to?”
Dr. Brown shook his head. “At first it was unclear. Apparently, as is the case with malaria, she seemed to improve several weeks after the first attack of illness, and the family traveled back to Boston, where she remained well. But the records from the next summer show that her condition returned and worsened after they moved back to Eden, and by the time he was called in to see her next, she was extremely ill. The symptoms were no longer strictly malarial.”
“What were they?”
“Well, much what you’d expect from a tropical disease: episodes of high temperature, interspersed with longer periods without fever but with overwhelming general malaise. There were minor symptoms such as dryness of the mouth, flushing, and pupil dilation, but these could all be side effects of the fevers themselves and therefore not directly related to the illness. The disease had definitely not progressed to the liver, as it does in the case of malaria. At any rate, the traditional quinine treatment was ineffective.”
“And the fevers,” I said, choosing my words carefully, “there weren’t any other symptoms with them?”
Dr. Brown raised his eyebrows. “There’s no mention of anything else.”
Again I couldn’t look at him, but I had to know the answer to the question that was nagging me. “There wasn’t any delirium or . . . or anything of the sort?”
Dr. Brown’s look turned graver still. “Why do you ask?”
I sighed. “I’ve heard rumors that made me think there might be something to that effect.”
The doctor studied me intently. “There are almost six years’ worth of records here. It seems that after your grandmother fell ill, her family spent the majority of their time here. If anything like that had come up, it would be in these records.
“Of course, I don’t have the records from the doctors she saw in Boston, but from what Mrs. Fairfax told Dr. Beaufort, their opinions were no different from his. And at any rate, they were mainly speculative, as her symptoms always improved during the winter. That is, until the last couple of years, when she was ill most of the time. They were all at a loss.” He continued to look at me, and I could see that there was something else he wanted to say, but didn’t know how.
“If there’s more,” I said grimly, “you’d best tell me.”
Dr. Brown sighed. “It’s nothing definite. But it seems that, toward the end of her life, Mrs. Fairfax’s condition worsened dramatically. Dr. Beaufort maintained that there was nothing more to be done for her than what he was doing, but it seems your grandfather was concerned enough that he wanted a second opinion. He called in a Dr. Dunham, from New Orleans.”
“And what did he think?”
He shook his head. “It seems Dr. Dunham kept his own records, and he and Dr. Beaufort didn’t consult with each other.”
“That’s not so strange, is it?”
“It wouldn’t be unusual in the case of two physicians. But Dr. Dunham isn’t a physician. He’s a specialist in mental illness.”
I blinked at him in silence, unable to think of a response. What he had told me was no more than what I had prepared myself to hear, but at the same time, hearing it was a blow. Once again I thought of my grandfather’s long-ago request that I avoid the life of melancholy that had killed my mother and grandmother.
Dr. Brown finally brought me back to the present with a sympathetic smile. “I know that this must be disturbing information, Miss Rose,” he said, “but there is no proof here, or even in the fact that Dr. Dunham was consulted, that your grandmother’s illness was indeed psychological in nature. Do you recall anything of the sort being said about your mother?”
“No—but she had been separated from her family for years when she died.”
“Well, fatal diseases are common enough, and were more so at the turn of the century. If you have no reason to believe that your mother suffered from a psychological disorder or had an unnamed illness like your grandmother’s, then it is doubtful that you would be in danger of inheriting one, even if your grandmother did suffer from one. But if it would make you feel better, I can contact Dr. Dunham and ask him for his records.”
I thought about this and decided that whatever I might learn, it would be better than speculation. There was certainly no chance that I would forget the subject now, and I knew myself well enough to understand that the uncertainty would ultimately be as destructive as any truth could be.
“Yes, please, I’d appreciate that,” I told Dr. Brown, and he said that he would write to New Orleans that day.
He proceeded to examine me from head to toe and found nothing wrong with me, aside from being a bit underweight and overtired. He renewed my prescription for chloral hydrate drops, promised again to write to Dr. Dunham straightaway, and then saw me to the front door. I shook his hand, then ran across the street to the dress shop to meet Jean-Pierre.
SIX
I had exhausted the journals’ potential to enlighten me on my aunt’s story, and there was nothing I could do but wait for Dr. Brown to contact me in regard to my grandmother’s. This temporary dead end left me open to a different, if related, preoccupation.
Alexander’s comment about the house on the hill having a hold on me had shaken me more than I cared to admit. The house’s pull seemed to intensify with every day that passed, though this might well have been a result of my conscious efforts to ignore it. I held out for more than a week, not wanting to give in to superstition. However, on the morning the Trevozhovs were due to arrive, I awakened early, and after an hour at the piano, I realized that I wouldn’t accomplish anything there that day.
I stood at one of the music room’s open windows and looked at the lake spread out below me. I couldn’t see the house on the hill, but its fairy-tale turrets, Alexander’s veiled warning, and the newfound reality of Eve were all in my mind. Before better judgment could prevail, I made my way out of the room and down the corridor to the entry hall, opened the screen door, and stepped outside.
I took a roundabout path to the topiary garden, half hoping to see someone to distract me from my plan, but the garden was empty. I followed the path hugging the lakeshore until it ended a little past Alexander’s house, then began to thrash my way through the unbroken forest. The woods were thick with vines and mosquitoes, and the underbrush lashed out at my legs and hands. Before long I was covered with tiny scratches, stung by insects and nettles, and thoroughly convinced that the forest had a sadistic nature all its own. Still, I pushed onward, until I stumbled out onto what seemed to be an overgrown meadow. It took a minute for me to realize that it was the far left-hand corner of the lawn that preceded the house on the hill.
A hot wind rushed down the grassy expanse and pushed at my shoulders, as if trying to turn me away; but the house’s magnetism, like its size, had increased dramatically with proximity. I was convinced now that it had been built more recently than Eden’s plantation house. I wasn’t an expert on architecture, but the tur reted roofs and cluttered gingerbread ornamentation were clearly Gothic revival. A circular tower rose from the left wing; beside it, three old oaks stood in a triangle, their branches so entangled and matted with clusters of Spanish moss that they seemed to be one tree with three trunks.
