“I would like you to stay on,” I began, “at Foxworth Hall and become something of an assistant to me. Officially, you will be considered our butler, but you and I will always know that you will be more to me,” I said. Grief, so deeply felt, had a way of weakening me. I felt as if I had been cast in a new form and I wore my body like a suit of armor hiding a heart and will gone slack and impotent. Truly, I couldn’t bear to live here any longer alone with Malcolm. I couldn’t bear having to fight him and his megalomanic plans day after day. I needed an ally, someone to give me strength, to help me, to take my side. I needed John Amos. And he was a man of God, a godly, godfearing man who would deflect and thwart Malcolm’s evil intentions. I would not let him drive another of my sons to death, nor would I let him take over Corinne’s life as he planned to do.
“Please, John Amos, won’t you stay? You are such a comfort to me. I feel you are truly my family—the only family I have left, and I need your strong Christian hand to guide me.”
John nodded thoughtfully.
“I have always admired you, Olivia,” he said, “admired you for your strength of purpose, your sense of determination; but most of all, for your faith in God and His ways. Even now, in your mourning, you do not blame God for being unmerciful. You are an inspiration. More women should want to be like you,” he said, nodding as though he had just arrived at a significant conclusion.
I understood why Malcolm didn’t like him. He had Malcolm’s way of making statements with an air of certainty, but whereas Malcolm arrived at his conclusions from an arrogant faith in himself, John Amos arrived at his from a strong faith in God and God’s will.
“Thank you, John. But contrary to what you think, I am a woman with weaknesses too. I will need someone beside me to help me with my children and to help me maintain this house in the proper manner and spirit,” I added.
“I understand, and I can think of no greater purpose. Long ago, I understood that my calling lay in directions others were afraid or unwilling to take. The Lord has His way of soliciting His soldiers,” he said, smiling.
“I think,” I said, looking at him intently, “you saw today some of what I have been describing to you in my letters. You should understand why I sometimes feel alone here,” I added.
“Yes. And you have more than my understanding. You have my sympathy and my dedication.” Those brown eyes of his, although not bright and warm, grew quite fixed. He stepped forward. “I pledge to you, Olivia,” he said, “that as long as I am here at your side, you shall never feel alone.”
I smiled slightly and lifted my hand. He took it and in that handshake made a covenant with me and with God Almighty. It was the most reassuring thing that had happened to me in years.
When I brought the news to Malcolm, he had his characteristic reaction. He had retreated to the library. The pall of silence that had fallen over Foxworth Hall lingered like the heavy humid air right before a summer rain. The lights were dim, the sky outside starless and cloudy. Unmerciful winds clawed at the windows. To me it was like the grinding teeth of some vicious, vengeful beast.
Malcolm was standing with his back to the doorway, his hands clasped behind his back, looking up at the books on a high shelf. He didn’t turn when I entered, even though I knew he had heard my footsteps. I waited a moment.
“I have made a decision,” I said finally, “to hire my cousin, John Amos, to be our butler.”
Malcolm spun around. The expression on his face was almost hideous, a mixture of grief and anger that distorted his features. Never had his mouth looked as twisted, his eyes as cold.
“What butler? We have a manservant.” He made ordinary words sound like profanity.
“A man who serves as driver as well. It’s not proper and it is a foolish economy, undignified for a family and a house as important as ours,” I replied sternly.
“At this time you think about servants?” He seemed both amazed and upset.
“You didn’t go to work today and receive business calls? You didn’t give your subordinates orders to carry out? Your mind was solely on Mal?” I asked in the tone of accusation. He shook his head, but not to deny what I said, only to dramatize his disgust.
“I don’t like this man. He’s too … too sly-looking for my taste.”
“Nevertheless, I have hired him. The running of the house has always been and will always be my responsibility. It’s necessary for us to have a servant solely to perform the responsibilities of a butler, and John Amos has the background for such responsibility. He is a decent, religious man, who understands the needs of people of our class. He has agreed to take on the position and he will begin immediately.”
“He will be your butler, not mine,” Malcolm said defiantly.
“Suit yourself. In time I am sure you will grow to appreciate the man,” I added calmly.
He turned his back on me and stared up at the books again.
“Joel is leaving in the morning,” I said. He didn’t turn around.
“That is good. He is better off returning to school and occupying himself with his studies than moping about here. He will only add to the depression,” he said, and waved to the side as though he were dismissing me. I straightened my posture.
“He is not returning to school,” I said. That turned Malcolm around again.
“What? Not returning to school? What do you mean? Where is he going?”
“Before Mal’s death, he auditioned for an orchestra and they were impressed with his talents. They have offered him a position for their current tour of Europe. He will go directly to Switzerland.”
Malcolm fumed.
“Tour! Orchestra! Switzerland!” he said, waving his arms with every word. “A Foxworth, a professional musician, earning coolie wages and traveling with a bunch of spineless … effeminate … artsy types … I won’t hear of it! I won’t hear of it, do you understand?”
“Nevertheless, it is what he wants,” I said, again fanning his fury by speaking so calmly. “I will not force another of my sons to extremes to prove that he can live his own life rather than the one you dictate.”
Malcolm’s eyes narrowed, and he was silent for many moments. “Let him understand,” he said, pronouncing each word with a hateful, vicious tone, “that if he leaves this house to begin such a venture, he will never be welcomed back to it.”
“I understand that, Father.”
We both spun around to see Joel in the library doorway. He was standing there with a suitcase in each hand. I did not know he had intended to leave that very night.
“I was coming down here to tell you this myself,” he said.
“And I meant what I just said,” Malcolm said, pointing his finger at him. “If you throw away your formal education to go tooting a horn throughout Europe, I’ll write you out of my will.”
For a long moment Joel and Malcolm contemplated each other. It was as though father and son saw each other for the first time and really understood who the other was. If Joel had any fears, his gentle face and soft blue eyes did not reveal them. If anything, he looked like a martyr forgiving the violent and hateful tyrant who was sentencing him to death. I saw a smile around his lips.
“You never understood me, Father; nor did you ever understand Mal,” he said with no anger in his voice. “Neither of us were so driven by your pursuit of the almighty dollar.”
“That’s because you always had so many of them,” Malcolm retorted. “If you were poor, you wouldn’t be standing there so cocky and defiant.”
“Maybe not,” Joel said. “But I wasn’t poor and I am what I am.” He looked at me. “Good-bye, Mother. I shall miss you very much. Please walk with me to the door. There is a car waiting for me outside.”
“You are going to permit this?” Malcolm asked.
When I looked at Joel, I saw so much of myself in his face. It was as if I were leaving, as if I were escaping, escaping the sorrow and the torment, escaping the cold shadows that seemed to reside permanently in Foxworth Hall.
&
nbsp; “It is what he wants,” I said softly, staring at him. “He is old enough to be able to make his own decision. He has a right to his own decision.”
“This is madness and your doing,” Malcolm said, pointing the accusing finger at me. “It will add to your already heavy burden of guilt.”
“What?” I took a few steps toward him, feeling my face burn with rage. “You stand there and try to place the guilt on my head? You, who have brought sin into this house, invited it in as though it were a welcomed guest? You have eaten beside it, walked beside it, and slept with it,” I added. “You have brought the wrath of God down on the House of Foxworth, not I. If anyone stands bearing the guilt, it is you,” I responded, pointing my accusing finger at him.
He looked at Joel and then turned away.
I went to Joel and the two of us walked out to the front doorway arm in arm. John Amos, already assuming some responsibility, had brought Joel’s trunk to the car. He took the suitcases and carried them out as well.
Joel and I stood in the great doorway of Foxworth Hall and looked out at the car and the darkness that now surrounded us.
“I am sorry to leave you at this time of grief,” he said, “but I fear if I don’t go now, I will never go. Mal would have wanted me to go. I can almost see him standing there by the piano, smiling, cheering me on,” Joel added, smiling at the image.
“Yes, I suppose he would,” I said. I envisioned Mal as well, and the vision filled my heart with a heavy aching. It gave birth to a little gray bird of anxiety that fluttered wildly in the cage of my ribs, but I hid these feelings from him. “How I will miss you, Joel,” I said, grasping his hands in mine and bringing them to my lips to kiss them. “You are my only son, my beloved Joel, it’s only you now. Please go with God, and be happy.”
“Thank you, Mother.” He leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek. I held him for a long moment and then he rushed down to the car. He waved once more and then got in.
John Amos and I stood watching the car go off into the cold autumn night, its taillights fading like two bright red stars dying away in the universe.
PART III
16
Shadows and Light
I GRIEVED. I GRIEVED FOR THE LOSS OF MY MAL; I GRIEVED for the bright happy summer when all my children had been around me, joyous and strong—a time that was to never come again. The only brightness in that long gloomy winter were occasional notes from Corinne, who barely seemed able to recover from Mal’s death, and an occasional letter from my Joel. Joel, once a weak and frightened boy, a boy who finally stood up to his father, had found himself in Europe. Signore Joel Foxworth, read the Italian paper he sent. The brilliant young pianist, Monsieur Foxworth, the French papers said, “a talent to watch in the future.” Pride bloomed again in my heart, pride that John Amos continued to warn me against: “Pride cometh always before the fall, Olivia, remember the words of God, let them be your guide.” My pride, however, was not self-pride, but pride in the only son God had left me.
I loved to brandish the glowing reviews of Joel’s musicianship in front of Malcolm’s face. “You thought your son was a failure, Malcolm,” I sneered. “But look how the world worships him!”
Then one day, the first day of spring, just as the world, and me with it, had begun to open its arms to life again, a telegram arrived. No good news had ever come my way in a telegram, and I sat and stared at the yellow envelope, trembling, afraid to open it. “Joel,” I whispered involuntarily, for somehow, even before I opened it, I knew what was inside.
HERR MALCOLM FOXWORTH STOP
WITH DEEPEST REGRETS I AM TO INFORM YOU YOUR SON JOEL WAS LOST IN AN AVALANCHE STOP WE HAVE BEEN UNABLE TO RECOVER HIS BODY AND THOSE OF HIS FIVE COMPANIONS STOP MAY I EXTEND MY HEART-FELT SYMPATHIES
I crumpled the telegram in my hand, and stared out the window. I didn’t cry or moan; for this son, my second son, I had no tears left to shed. They had flowed and flowed out of me for Mal, and now my heart was bone dry and barren. I grieved like a desert grieves; a desert that allows nothing to grow, a desert where the only passion is the blowing of sand, the shrouding of all that lives. Once again my world had turned utterly, irrevocably gray.
Malcolm, too, acted strangely. At first he refused to believe Joel was really dead. I showed him the crumpled telegram the moment he returned from a business trip. I said nothing. I just handed it to him to read as soon as he came through the front door.
“What kind of a thing is this?” he said. “Lost in an avalanche?” He handed the telegram back to me as though it were a business idea he was rejecting, and he walked away to busy himself with his paperwork in the library.
But when the official documentation arrived, a police report, neither he nor I could deny it to ourselves. Then I cried; then my heart tore; then I found the hidden well of my tears just under my parched soul. The memories rushed back over me, and all I could see throughout that big house were Joel and Mal sitting together or walking together, playing together and eating together. Sometimes a shadow would fall in such a way that I thought I saw their faces in the darkness. Sometimes I would secretly visit the nursery, and almost see the three of them, Christopher, Mal, and Joel, Mal acting as though he were their teacher and Joel and Christopher looking up at him with full attention. I would lift up their old toys and hold them to my breast, weeping uncontrollably.
Malcolm went into seclusion in the library. I was incapable of preparing for Joel’s memorial myself, and if it weren’t for John Amos, my beloved second son, my sensitive Joel, might not have had the proper service to welcome him into God’s home. John Amos was such a help to me, he even traveled to Corinne’s boarding school to deliver the tragic news to her in person and to bring her back to Foxworth Hall. On the morning of the memorial service, Corinne and I donned the same black dresses we’d worn for Mal’s funeral, and drifted like two ghosts down the winding stairs to the rotunda. A black-veiled carriage, hired by John Amos, awaited us before the front door. John waited stoically by the door of the carriage.
“I’m afraid Malcolm will not be attending the service,” he announced. “He asked me to escort you there.”
I lifted my veil and looked around. The servants were waiting, all dressed in black, ready to attend the services and mourn the beautiful little boy they had watched grow into a man. But the boy’s father was nowhere to be seen. I stormed into Malcolm’s library. He was seated at his desk, but he had his back to it. He had turned the chair around and was facing the window behind him.
The sky was a pale gray and the air had turned rather cool for a March day. It was a day without promise of sun, a mirror of my life.
“How dare you not attend your son’s service,” I shouted. He didn’t move or acknowledge my presence in any way. I suddenly became frightened for him. Was it pity I felt? Pity for a man who tried to destroy his sons’ spirits? Pity for Malcolm Foxworth? He looked so small and lost surrounded by all his possessions, his hunting trophies, his business ledgers, his precious objets d’art, the ghosts of all the women he had seduced in his study. I leaned over him and gently touched his back. “Malcolm,” I said quietly, “this is a service for our son, your son.” He lifted his hand slowly and then dropped it back to the arm of the chair. “How can you not attend?”
“It’s wrong,” he finally said. His voice sounded strange to me, like an echo distant and hollow. “A funeral without a body. What are we burying?” he stammered.
“It is a service in honor of his memory, in honor of his soul, Malcolm,” I said, coming farther around until I almost faced him. Still, he did not turn my way. He shook his head.
“What if they found him alive after we had such a ceremony? I won’t go through the mockery of it. I won’t be part of it,” he said, his voice still drained of energy, his face unchanged.
“But you saw the police report. You read the details. It was an official document,” I said. What point did it serve to ignore reality now? Why, of all people, was Malcolm attempting to do it?
/> I believe he thought he could postpone reality, postpone the aching guilt. I believe he believed that if he attended the memorial service, there would no longer be any way of avoiding the truth.
“Go,” he said. “Leave me be.”
“Malcolm,” I began, “if you—”
He spun around in his seat, his eyes bloodshot, his face so contorted with anger and pain, I hardly recognized him. I actually stepped back. It was as though he had been possessed by some dark creature, perhaps the devil himself.
“Go!” he ordered me. “Leave me be.” Then he turned away.
I stood there looking at him for a long moment and then left him alone in the shadows, staring into his own thoughts.
Most of those who had attended Mal’s funeral attended the service for Joel. No one came to me directly to ask where Malcolm was, but I heard the whispering around me and saw people questioning John Amos. Corinne stood by me, but she looked lost and forlorn without Malcolm to hold on to.
Malcolm kept himself shut up in the library for days afterward and, oddly enough, permitted only John Amos to bring him any food and drink. Whenever I went in to speak with him, I found him still sitting in shadows, staring out the window. He barely responded. Only later did John Amos tell me that Malcolm was going through a religious transformation.
One night toward the end of the week, I sat alone with John at the dinner table. Corinne had no appetite. She had gone to speak with Malcolm, hoping to cheer him up and blow away the clouds of gloom that hung above us in Foxworth Hall. She loved her brother so; but she was young, and the world was before her, and she wanted to begin living again.
Suddenly, she stormed out of Malcolm’s study. “It’s hopeless,” she announced, “Daddy won’t stop mourning! No one will! I love Joel and Mal, too, but I want to live, I want to be able to smile and laugh again. I must!”
John was reading a passage from the Psalms. We often sat together like this and read from the Bible. We would talk about the scriptures and John would find ways of relating it to our lives.
Garden of Shadows (Dollanganger) Page 25