His Bright Light

by Danielle Steel

  Right after the wedding, John and I went to New York for a few days, where we both had business. I laughingly called it a “business-moon,” and faced it with a little trepidation. In all of Nick’s life I had never left him, and felt a real pull in my heart to do so. I worried a bit about being torn between John and my children. For all of their lives, they had been my first love and my primary responsibility and interest. I had never really shared my life with anyone who was a rival for my affections, and I wasn’t quite sure how it was going to work, or how my children were going to feel about it, particularly Nicky. I was so used to devoting myself to him, and to his sister, I knew it was going to be an adjustment for them, and for me, to have a husband to share my life with. And in deference to that, we had planned to take our honeymoon five weeks later, and take the three older children to Europe with us. We were going to leave Nicky at home, and I was worried about it.

  Interestingly, as it turned out, I never went on our honeymoon. I got sick just before we were to leave, and was suspected of having appendicitis. And convinced that I’d be all right and it was nothing, John left on our honeymoon with the three older children and suggested I catch up with them later, which never happened. Instead, I stayed home with Nicky, which was, in some ways, a relief, because I hated to leave him, though I was disappointed not to join the others on their travels. Not to mention the fact that they went on my honeymoon, and I didn’t. I was at home with Nicky.

  But just before they left, Nicky appeared in our bedroom one morning, with a very soggy diaper and nothing else. He was just three then. He stood barefoot in our room, hands on hips, looking up at John with a look of displeasure and said, “Mr. Twaina, what you don’t understand is that I want her to myself.” Nicky was, even then, and forever after, always honest about his feelings. There was no misunderstanding him. And as he glared at his new father, and turned on his heels to leave the room, he gave John a withering look and closed the door firmly behind him, while we tried very hard not to smile.

  4

  Siblings and Other Changes

  As closely as one can figure it, and I can usually figure it pretty closely, and have often had the opportunity to do so, we conceived Samantha within a week of our wedding. The malaise that kept me from our honeymoon turned out not to be appendicitis, but Samantha. Although we waited a while to tell the children, we were very pleased about it. It was not an accident, we wanted to have a baby, and John was hoping for a little girl.

  But within a very short time after we were married, much to my surprise, Nick’s father surfaced, and wanted to see Nicky. And I was worried about his continuing lifestyle and its effect on Nicky.

  At the same time, I had noticed that Nick was, for some mysterious reason, extremely hospitable to random infections. If someone in the house got a cold, he got a bigger cold, or worse, pneumonia. If he cut himself, it became infected. No one ever figured out why, but for his entire life, he was extremely prone to all kinds of infections. And we thought it was possible that his immune system was less than perfect. In light of that, I was frantic at the thought of his visiting with someone who I believed was a using drug addict. And beyond frantic at the thought of Bill taking him anywhere. In my opinion, he was in no condition to do so.

  Pregnant with Samantha, and extremely worried about Nick, we went to court, and the court was sympathetic to my concerns. They agreed to let Bill visit Nick, but in our home, and under my supervision. And to be honest, I wasn’t pleased about it. Bill came to the house to see Nick a number of times, and when he did, it was obvious to us that he had not yet resolved his problems. It was very upsetting. His reappearance didn’t seem to me like a happy addition to Nick’s life, and I worried that it would confuse him. By then, Nick was extremely attached to John.

  But at the same time, I had been noticing that Nick seemed wound up a lot of the time, somewhat hyper, and he was extremely unhappy about the baby. He had a kind of evil twinkle in his eye suddenly, and he became increasingly possessive of me, as though to prove that he was mine and I belonged to him, and nothing would ever interfere with us. I tried to reassure him, but I don’t think I convinced him.

  It was a hard time for Nick. There was a lot of change in his life in a short time. He had a new stepfather, two new brothers to adjust to, a new house, a new baby coming, which he viewed as a major threat, as most three-year-old children would have, and his biological father was back in his life, though he was a virtual stranger to him. If I had been in Nick’s shoes, I would have been saying to myself, “Who are all these people?”

  John was extremely cautious and gentle with Nick, and respectful of the relationship I had with him. Later, he said that he hadn’t wanted to interfere because he knew, and sensed easily, how much Nicky would resent it. In Nicky’s eyes, I belonged to him exclusively, and he did not want to share me, with John, the boys, or the impending baby. And I often felt torn between two factions: Nick, and The Others. I spent a lot of time with Nick, but he became insatiable, wanting more of me than I had to give, as though to make me prove to him how much I loved him. And I loved him as much as ever, but there were other people in my life now, and his.

  We made an important decision regarding our family, and decided that we would bring them up as one family: sisters and brothers. Very simple. Not half or step or real, or whatever. They were our children, with no distinction as to who had arrived with whom, or how they were related (and it remains so to this day, not only to us, but to them). And the children were young enough, and loved each other enough for us to do that. Beatrix, Trevor, and Todd had already been good friends for years. And the boys were wonderful with Nicky, and accepted him as their brother from the first.

  Beatrix, Trevor, and Todd, when we got married, were respectively thirteen, twelve, and eleven. We didn’t deny their other relationships, with Beatie’s father, or the boys’ mother. In fact, Beatie’s father stayed with us several times, and had known John when they were growing up, spent their summers in the same place, and John had dated one of Beatie’s father’s sisters. It was all very cozy. And as far as the children were concerned, they were a single unit. It was comforting for Beatrix, I think, because her father lived three thousand miles away, and in Europe the rest of the time, and wasn’t on hand on a daily basis, and the boys divided their time between us and their mother. In those days certainly, and for a long time after that, a very long time, everyone was very happy. Even Nicky. Although his lot was harder than the others, as he seemed to have more to adjust to.

  The visits with Bill stopped eventually. He disappeared from our lives again, but would leave Nick messages on our answering machine, pretending to be Dracula. And it would both frighten and fascinate Nicky. He became obsessed with Dracula, as he had once been with Spider-Man, talking about him constantly, not his father, but Dracula. And at the same time, he began drawing terrible black pictures of people killing each other, swords drawn, and dripping blood from severed limbs. It was a far cry from the drawings of any child I had ever known. I don’t think it had anything to do with his father’s visits, but the subjects of his drawings concerned me. I discussed it with a psychiatrist, only to be told that he just had a vivid imagination, and the doctor didn’t see it as any indication of a problem. But each time he produced one of those drawings, and he did so constantly, I was frightened. I put them in albums to show them to another psychiatrist and, once again, was told not to worry.

  Two weeks after Nick turned four, Samantha was born. And Nick was livid. He was irate, incensed, felt betrayed, and was furious with me and the baby, inordinately so, I thought. It went beyond sibling rivalry into something that reminded me of The Bad Seed. I was constantly worried about him, and was upset that he was so overtly jealous of Samantha.

  The drawings got worse, more plentiful, and blacker. He never ever did any drawings, and hadn’t for over a year, in happy colors. Only dark ones. I had hundreds of them. He was still wetting his bed every night, and more difficult than ever. He was bec
oming a real handful, prone to rages, angry much of the time, and then the sun would burst through the clouds, and he would be suddenly tender and loving, for a while, until another storm hit. He was an angry child a lot of the time, and increasingly hard to handle at home. Yet at nursery school they said he was polite, intelligent, and charming, surprisingly adult (no surprise to me, he always had been), and he still enchanted all who met him. Nicky was always incredibly charismatic and seductive.

  It was the people who lived with him who bore the brunt of his anger. I was extremely successful by then, writing by night, and spending time with my children by day. My life was a constant race of school drop-offs and pick-ups, after-school activities, and outings with the older children. I took pride and pleasure in being with my children. I loved being with them.

  Four months after Samantha was born, I got pregnant again, but hadn’t yet told the children, when I lost it two and a half months later. And got pregnant again, this time with Victoria, less than two weeks after I had lost the last one. My whole focus was still on my children, as it had been for years, there were just more of them. My work was something I did in the midnight hours, while John and the children slept, and never talked much about.

  And just around that time, Bill surfaced yet again, once again demanding visitation. We went back to court, citing how unsuccessful the last round of visits had been, how sporadic, and how hard on Nicky. And this time, the court ordered visitation, in a psychiatrist’s office, with an additional adult present to observe it.

  Nick would often cry and beg not to go. He seemed to be traumatized by the entire process. It was not an easy time for Nicky, and during that time, the court wanted Nick seen by a psychiatrist to evaluate him, and we had him seen by one of our own as well, for an independent evaluation of what the visits were doing to him. But the prevailing belief at the time was that biological fathers, no matter how damaged or damaging, are vital to a child’s well-being.

  And this seemed an appropriate opportunity to drag out the endless albums I had of Nicky’s terrifying black drawings, but no one seemed impressed by them. I was deeply concerned, and convinced that there was everything wrong with them, and possibly something wrong with Nicky. At four he was still wetting his bed, still very angry much of the time, rabidly jealous of Samantha, upset by the forced visits with Bill. And from time to time he defecated in the bathtub. Once on his pillow. And another time, he smeared it across the wall. All of it indicative, I felt sure, of some very deep-seated problem. I continued to believe that there was something wrong with Nick, not due to outside forces, but due to something deep within him. But I was given the same response by the psychiatrists about his brilliance, his genius, my spoiling him, and now the trauma of new siblings. I got nowhere. My albums went back into the cupboard. They had impressed no one. But I was constantly worried about him. I had a nagging gnawing in my gut, a sense that something was wrong, and no one would listen.

  The visits stopped with Bill again. It had been a no-win situation for Nick, who didn’t want to go in the first place, and seemed upset to have to go to see Bill. And when for some reason Bill failed to show up, as he sometimes did, Nicky would come home feeling that he had done something to upset him. I worried that Nick would feel rejected, anxious, and guilty in those instances. But when Bill disappeared this time, he did not return. He went off to the miseries of his own life, and did not enter Nick’s again. The visits were forever over. And however great a loss it may have been for either or both of them at some deep psychological level, I was relieved for Nick’s sake. I felt that the visits were just too traumatic for him.

  Nick was five and a half when Victoria arrived. I had an easy delivery this time (my only one), spent only one night in the hospital, and came home with her the next morning. Nick had a massive asthma attack that night, and had to be taken to the hospital. It was not the first one he had had (I have asthma, as do five of my seven children), though never to that proportion. He wasn’t pleased about Victoria, but as time went on, he ignored her. The full measure of his hatred and resentment was focused on Samantha most of the time.

  He was angry, vengeful, and resentful. And it was understandable that he would be jealous of Samantha and Victoria, and upset by the renewed disappearance of Bill, but in spite of those possible causes for his apparent belligerence, his reactions always seemed well beyond measure. I was constantly soothing him and apologizing for him, and trying to make things better for him. I loved him so much, I hated to see him so unhappy. Nick resisted everyone’s efforts to draw him out and take him places. I was often the only one who could get behind his walls, and much of the time, he was angry at me too. After all, I was the traitor who had brought home the new babies. But however angry he was, he was still deeply attached to me.

  I was fiercely protective of Nicky, always offering excuses for him, and defending him, and he knew it. Nick trusted me, even when he was angry at me. Looking back, it was as though there was a pain raging inside him, a pain he did not know how to soothe or handle. He was not an easy child to love or manage. Just when you thought you had won him over, and won his trust, he would lash out against you. He did it to me too, but somehow I never took it personally, and was always able to see beyond it. Even then, I suspected that there was something eating away at him, more than the obvious provocations for his anger. I knew then, at four, and even more so at five, that there was something wrong with him, but I didn’t know how to put words to it, and whenever I tried to, I felt no one was listening to me.

  I spoke to one of the psychiatrists he had seen, and he told me that he was fine, all he needed was discipline. But I knew that it was more than that. Like Nicky, I felt trapped behind the walls of silence, imprisoned by what I believed was a case of everyone choosing to remain ignorant. Perhaps knowing that, and seeing it, and feeling it, bound me closer to Nicky. Only we knew of the flame deep within that had already begun to wound him.

  Nick as a rock star on Halloween at five or six (photo credit 1.8)

  Nick at four at Sammie’s christening, 1982 (photo credit 1.9)

  Yet another sister, Vanessa, was born when Nick was six and a half. But he seemed unmoved by this one. He was still devoted to torturing Samantha. It was a hatred that burned for several years, like an eternal flame, until suddenly it turned to a love of equal measure several years later, when he was twelve or thirteen, and she became the sibling he was closest to. Once the tides turned, they adored each other. And for every remaining moment of his life, Sam idolized him and adored him and he loved her every bit as much as she did him. I would have felt greatly comforted in those early years, if I had known what would blossom later between them. Theirs was a bond of trust and loyalty and passion that transcended all others.

  Six months later, when Nick was seven, we went back to court, to terminate Bill’s parental rights this time, so John could adopt him. It was something that Nick wanted, as we all did. The trial started on the day of Nick’s seventh birthday. Bill hadn’t seen Nick in several years by then, and Nicky was never asked to appear in court, fortunately. And the court ruled that Bill had abandoned him years before, they terminated his parental rights, and John adopted Nicky. It must have been a sad time for Bill. We didn’t speak. I hated what he had done with his life, and in those days still felt betrayed by him. He seemed light-years from my life then.

  We had an adoption party for Nick at the house, with a vast number of our friends, and Nicky seemed happy to be adopted. The older children were well aware of what was happening, but Nick said that he never wanted the younger ones to know that John wasn’t his real father. He had in effect been the father Nick had grown up with, and Nick didn’t want to be different from the others. And for several years after that, Nick’s adoption by John remained a secret from his younger siblings. It was important to him, and we respected his wishes on the subject.

  School pictures at six or seven (photo credit 1.10)

  Nick at about six

  Nick at his adop
tion party, with John, at seven years (photo credit 1.11)

  But despite Nick’s obvious happiness over the adoption, he continued to do some very odd things, and to be difficult to manage. The bed-wetting had finally stopped when he was six, and he was doing well in school, but he was an angry, difficult child, who destroyed his toys constantly, and always seemed to be swimming upstream. He was never in harmony with what was going on around him, or what other people were doing. If we were going out, he wanted to stay in. If we were staying home, he wanted to go out. He had no interest in ordinary games, but only in playing war, playing with toys that allowed him to use his imagination, and the fiercely black and bloody drawings continued.

  And I can’t even tell you why, or the incident that led to it, but when we were in Hawaii on vacation with the family when Nick was seven, I remember watching him, and thinking the situation was hopeless. I had an absolutely clear sense that he was deeply disturbed, no matter how normal he often seemed even to me occasionally and especially to others. But I knew to my very soul that he was all wrong somehow, and feared that it would never be any different. I had absolutely no idea how to help him, or how to change it, or make it better. And I was still, at that point, the only one who could see it. My efforts to expose it to his pediatrician or even his school, and to elicit help from them, had been fruitless. They apparently saw no problem. Only I did. Although John has since told me that he had the same fears I did, but was afraid to voice them to me.