Gates of Paradise (Casteel Series #4)

by V. C. Andrews

  Was it only my desperate need to remember, to envision my mother's soft smile as she gazed at me while she brushed my hair? Or was Rye Whiskey right? Was there a spirit that wandered through the house searching and searching?

  Maybe he was searching for me. Maybe I had always been expected.

  THIRTEEN

  Mystery Man

  .

  Mrs. Broadfield yanked open the curtains so abruptly the morning light burst upon me like a bomb blast. She looked as though she had been up for hours, but I thought she always looked that way.

  "You should want to get up early, Annie," she said without really looking at me. She talked as she moved about the room setting things up—unfolding my wheelchair, getting a robe from the closet, finding my slippers. "It takes you longer to do everything now, and you will need the extra time.

  "After a while you will be able to get yourself up and out of that bed and into the wheelchair to do your bathroom business and have your breakfast, but you're going to have to build up to it, just like an athlete builds up to a task. Understand?" she asked, finally pausing to look at me.

  I pulled myself up and sat back against my pillow and nodded.

  "All right, then, let's get you out of bed, washed, and into a clean nightgown."

  Still groggy from what had turned out to be a very deep night's sleep, I simply nodded. Quietly, almost as if the two of us were performing a mime show, she assisted me out of the bed and into the chair. She wheeled me into the bathroom and took off my nightgown. I washed my own face and she brought in the new nightgown. Then she brought me back into the room and left me by the window.

  "I'll get your breakfast now," she said, starting out.

  "Why isn't Millie bringing it up?" I was anxious to find out if she had given my letter to Tony to mail.

  Mrs. Broadfield paused at the doorway and turned back.

  "Millie was discharged last night," she said, and left before I could respond.

  Discharged? But why? I had liked her and even thought she would be good company. She was so pleasant and kind. What could she have done to get herself fired so soon? The moment Tony looked in on me, I demanded to know.

  "Tony, Mrs. Broadfield just told me you fired Millie. Why?"

  He shook his head and pressed his lower lip up and under his upper.

  "Incompetent. Made a mess of things from the day she arrived. I was hoping she would improve, but she just seemed to get worse and worse. Jillian wouldn't have countenanced her more than a day. You should have seen the fine help we used to have here, their professionalism, their—"

  "But Tony, she was so nice," I said.

  "Oh, she was nice enough, but nice isn't enough. I found out that her references weren't accurate, anyway. She couldn't get a position for some time and worked as a waitress, not as a maid. But don't fret, one of my people is already looking for someone new."

  Mrs. Broadfield arrived with my tray and set it down.

  "Well, I'm off," Tony said. "I'll let you have breakfast."

  "Tony, wait! I gave her a letter to give to you last night to mail to Luke."

  He smiled quizzically.

  "Letter? She gave me no letter."

  "But Tony—"

  "I called her in around seven-thirty and gave her two weeks' severance pay, but she mentioned no letter."

  "I don't understand."

  "Why not? It's just as I said: she was incompetent. She probably had it in her apron and forgot it. Honestly, I don't know what it is with young people today; they seem so distracted all the time. No wonder it's so hard to get decent help."

  "It was a letter to Luke!" I cried.

  "Your eggs are getting cold," Mrs. Broadfield pointed out.

  "I'm sorry," Tony replied. "Write another letter today, and I'll see to it myself this time, okay? I'll return this afternoon to take you on a short tour of this floor. That is, if Mrs. Broadfield approves," he added, looking her way. She didn't reply.

  He left before I could say another word on the subject of my letter, and when I looked at Mrs.

  Broadfield, she wore her mask of annoyance.

  "We have to get to your morning therapy, Annie, and then you have to rest or I can't see you taking any tour. Now, please eat your breakfast."

  "I'm not hungry."

  "You've got to eat to gain strength. Your therapy is just like a workout would be for an athlete, and just as he or she wouldn't be able to do well without food energy, neither will you. Only," she said, raising her shoulders and straightening her posture to emphasize her point, "instead of simply losing a tennis match or a football game, you will remain an invalid."

  I lifted my fork and began to eat. Thank God for Rye Whiskey, I thought as I chewed and swallowed. He had a way of making the simplest foods extra tasty.

  My morning therapy session began just like the one I had the day before, but there was something different this time. I was positive I felt Mrs.

  Broadfield's fingers on my thighs. There was a stinging sensation, like pins being poked through my skin, and I screamed.

  "What?" she demanded, looking up impatiently.

  "I felt something . . . it stung."

  "That's just your imagination," she said, and started again. Again I felt the sting.

  "I do feel something . . I do!" I protested. She paused and stood up.

  "It's what we call hysterical pain. You're in a worse mental state than I thought. Even this is happening to you now."

  "But the doctor said—"

  "I know what the doctor said. Don't you think I've worked with more than one or two doctors in my time?"

  "Yes, but—"

  "Just try to relax as I work your legs, and when you think you've felt something, control yourself."

  "But—"

  She started again. The pain was there, but I simply grimaced and stifled my groans. The effort exhausted me, so I had to nap before lunch. Mrs.

  Broadfield brought me my lunch and told me Tony had phoned and would be back shortly to take me through a short tour of the floor. Funny, I thought, how something so simple had become something to look forward to, the way I would have looked forward to a special date or a party or dance. Right now, being wheeled out of this room was as exciting as a trip across the country. How my life had changed! How much I had taken for granted!

  One of the grounds people arrived and set up a television set for me. It came with a remote control so I could work it from bed. He was a stocky man with a face that looked like old, dry leather. Hours and hours of working in the sun had cracked his skin and crisscrossed his forehead and even his chin with deep lines. He said his name was Parson.

  "Have you been working here a long time, Par son?"

  "Oh no, just a little more than a week."

  "How do you like it?" At first I thought he didn't hear my question; then I realized he was thinking of how he would answer. "I suppose there's a lot for you to do," I added to encourage him to respond. He paused in his work to attach wires to the television set and looked at me.

  "Yeah, there's a lot of work, but every time I start on something, Mr. Tatterton changes his mind and starts me on something else."

  "Changes his mind?"

  Parson shook his head. "I don't know. I was hired to repair the pool, so I started mixing the cement, but I only just got started when Mr. Tatterton come out and asked me what I was (loin'. I told him and he looked at the pool and then at me as if I was crazy. Then he says his father told him never to fix somethin' 'less it was broke. 'Huh?'! says. 'The hedges have to be trimmed all along the pathways in the maze,' he tells me, and sets me of to do that.

  Meanwhile, all the cement I mixed gets hard and is wasted.

  "But he pays good." Parson shrugged and went back to the television set.

  "But what about the pool?"

  "I ain't askin'. I do what I'm told. There, now this should work just fine." He turned on the set and fiddled with the channels and controls. "Want this on?"

  "Not right
now, thank you, Parson."

  "No problem."

  "Parson, what is it like in the maze?"

  "Like?" He shrugged. "I don't know. Peaceful, I guess. When you get deep in it, that is. You can't hear much on either side, and then . . I guess because it's so quiet, you imagine you hear things." He laughed to himself.

  "What do you mean?"

  "Couple a times I thought I heard someone walking about in one of the corridors nearby, so I shouted, but there was no one. Late yesterday, I was sure I heard footsteps, so I -got up and found my way over a path and then another and another, and what do you think happened, ma'am?"

  "What?"

  "I got lost, that's what." He laughed hard. "Took me nearly a half an hour to get back to where I was working."

  "What about the footsteps?"

  "Never heard 'em after that. Well, I gotta get goin'."

  "Thank you," I called.

  After he left I stared out the window. The sky was as blue as Mommy's eyes when she was radiant and happy. My eyes must be gray now, I thought, as dull as a faded, old blue blouse. But the world outside sparkled with life and light; the grass was deep green and looked cool and fresh, the trees were in full bloom, and the small, puffy clouds looked clean and soft like freshly plumped pillows.

  Robins and sparrows flitted from branch to branch, excited by the prospect of a warm, wonderful afternoon. I would gladly change places with one of them, I thought, and become a mere bird, but at least a creature who could move about at its own will and enjoy what life it had.

  Mommy and Daddy were gone, Luke was

  seemingly beyond reach, and I was shut up in this old house with only therapy and hot baths and medicine and doctors to look forward to. And for how long, I did not know, nor would anyone be able to say.

  I snapped out of my self-pity when I saw

  Tony's Rolls-Royce approaching. When the car came to a stop near the cemetery, I wheeled myself as close to the window as I could get. I saw him get out and go to my parents' monument. He knelt before it and lowered his head. He remained that way for a long time, and then, suddenly, the mysterious man appeared again, approaching from the wooded area. Tony didn't seem to hear or see him approaching.

  The figure stood beside him and then placed his hand on Tony's shoulder. I watched and waited, my heart suddenly thumping, but Tony didn't look up.

  After a few more moments the man left him and went back to the darkness of the woods. Then Tony got up and went back to his car.

  It was as if only I knew the man had been

  beside him. I couldn't wait for Tony's arrival. I wheeled myself to the front of my bedroom and faced the door.

  It was nearly two hours before Tony came to my room. I was dying to ask him about the man at the cemetery. I wanted to call for him, but I thought my curiosity was too trivial to justify making him come right up. He'll be here any moment, I kept telling myself, only the clock ticked and ticked and he didn't come. What was it Roland used to tell me whenever I was impatient—"A watched pot never boils"?

  I tried to fix my mind on other things and looked over the books Tony had had sent up to my room. They were all novels by authors I had never heard of. Nineteenth-century writers like William Dean Howells. Some were described as "period pieces." Others were "novels of manners." It was as if Tony wanted me to live in a bygone age.

  At last he appeared. Immediately, almost frantic with curiosity by this time, I asked him about the man in the cemetery.

  "What man?" Tony's smile remained frozen on his face, but the warmth that had been under it momentarily slipped away.

  "I saw him step up beside you when you were at my parents' monument."

  He stood there in my doorway blinking as

  though he had to refocus on the real world. Then he released a deep breath and came forward, his smile warming again.

  "Oh, I keep forgetting you can see the family cemetery from your window." He shrugged. "He was only one of the grounds people. To tell you the truth, I was so involved. with my sorrow at that moment, I can't remember which one he was or what he wanted."

  "Grounds people? But Rye Whiskey said---"

  "Anyway," Tony chirped, slapping his hands together, "it's time for your first tour of Farthy. Mrs.

  Broadfield says you have earned it. Are you ready?"

  I gazed out the window again, looking in the direction of the cemetery and the woods. Clouds, as long and thin as witches' fingers, blocked the sun, laying shadows over my parents' monument.

  "I should go to the cemetery, Tony."

  "As soon as the doctor okays it. Hopefully tomorrow. In the meantime I'll show you something special, something nearby."

  He came around my chair and grasped the

  handles. Why wasn't he telling me the truth about the man? Was he afraid it would disturb me? How could I get him to tell me the truth? Maybe Rye would know.

  I'd have to arrange it so Tony wouldn't know I had asked.

  I felt his warm breath on my forehead, and he planted a soft kiss on my hair. The gentleness of that caress took me a bit by surprise. He must have seen it in my eyes.

  "It's so good, so wonderful to have you here, and to be able to take you back through time with me."

  "But I'm an invalid, Tony, a sick, crippled person." I don't think he heard me.

  "To regain the beautiful memories, to seize happiness once again. Few men get such an

  opportunity once they have lost it."

  He began pushing me out of the room.

  "Where are we going?"

  "The first thing I want you to see is the suite of rooms I had prepared for your parents when they came to Farthy for their wedding reception. They were so lovey-dovey, just as newlyweds should be."

  I had often tried to imagine Daddy and Mommy as young people, newly discovering one another. I knew they had first met when Daddy moved to Winnerrow. Mommy told me they fell in love the moment their eyes met.

  But she had never described her good memories at Farthy. I was sure there had to be some. So I listened keenly as Tony rattled on, describing how they laughed and clung to one another, how excited my father was to see Farthinggale, and how much Tony had enjoyed showing him around.

  "When I first set eyes on your mother, I couldn't get over how much she resembled her own mother," he added as we turned out of the suite and headed down the long corridor. "Just as you do, my dear. Sometimes, when I close my eyes and hear you speak, I think I'm back in time and listening to Heaven, and when I open my eyes, there is a moment when I'm not sure. Have all the years since she left me been simply a nightmare? Can I return to the happier times? If you want something enough, pray for it enough, can't it happen?

  "All of you run together in my mind sometimes.

  as if you are not three, but one woman, Leigh, Heaven, and now you, so similar in voice, in de-meanor, in looks. You're like sisters, triplets, instead of mothers and daughters," he said softly, hopefully.

  I didn't like the way he clumped us together. It was as if I weren't Ala individual, my own person with my own thoughts and feelings. Of course I wanted to be like Mommy, even look like her, but I wanted to be myself, to be Annie, not Leigh; Annie, Heaven's daughter, not a clone. Why was Tony so intent on ignoring that? Didn't he know how important it was for everyone to feel like her own person? How would he like it if people called him "just another Tatterton, like all the rest"? I made up my mind that later on I would bring up the topic. I wasn't the only one who could be taught new things.

  I turned my attention back to the tour of the house. I hadn't noticed much about the upstairs portion of the house when they first brought me in and up to my room, but now I saw how heavily worn and frayed the hallway rug was. Many of the chandeliers that hung from the ceiling had blown bulbs, and there were cobwebs clinging to the fixtures. The drapes over the few windows were closed, so that the corridor was dark, especially the section into which Tony was wheeling me.

  "This entire section of the house had be
en left untouched for years. The rooms were originally my great-grandparents', but in honor of your parents, I had them redecorated and refurbished. I knew what pleased your mother and had it all ready when she arrived. You should have seen the surprise on her face when I opened those double doors."

  He laughed, but it was a strange, thin laugh, the laugh of someone who was laughing at things no one else could share, the laugh of someone locked in his own, very private world. When I leaned back and turned my head to look up at him, I saw that he was looking far off into his own memories.

  Couldn't he see how worn and frayed the

  corridor was? Didn't he smell the musty odor?

  "No one travels these hallways anymore. I don't permit anyone to go into these rooms," he added, as if he had read my mind and knew I wondered why he hadn't sent the maids in to clean and dust and polish.

  When we crossed into the area he said had been reserved, we seemed to move into even darker quarters. Large cobwebs caked with dust draped between the corridor's ceiling and walls. I wondered if even he, himself, had been back. He stopped before two great double doors made of pickled hickory wood. Each had long, thin waterstains down its front. Some of the stains looked fresh.

  Tony dug a ring of keys out of his jacket

  pocket. When he unlocked the doors and turned to me, his face took on a strange brightness, his eyes awash with excitement. He must have looked like this the day he surprised my parents with the suite, I thought.

  Were his recollections so vivid that he could cast himself back through time and behave as though it were happening for the first time today?

  "The suite of Mr. and Mrs. Logan Stonewall,"

  he announced, as if they were alive and standing beside me.

  He threw open the doors, which groaned on

  their hinges, moaning warnings. Unable to wait for him to come back around to push me, I took hold of the wheels myself and moved the chair forward, and to my utter astonishment, my complete surprise, before me was an impeccably maintained suite of rooms: clean and polished and dusted, sparkling behind these deceiving old doors in this apparently deserted section of the great house. It was as if we really had stepped over some invisible border of time and reentered the past.