Love, Alice

by Barbara Davis

  “Please, honey, I know it was wrong, but I was so afraid. I thought if you knew the truth you’d take him away, that you’d go back to England and I’d never see him again. I couldn’t bear the thought of losing him. So I convinced myself that nothing had to change, that because we were all so happy together, I wasn’t really keeping him from you.”

  “You had no right to make that decision. I’m his mother.”

  “I’m his mother, too.”

  “Because you have papers that say so?”

  Her eyes welled with fresh tears. “Because I love him.”

  Her tears meant nothing to me. I let the papers fall to the floor, preparing to step past her, but she grabbed my arm.

  “Where are you going?”

  “To talk to my son.”

  Her grip tightened on my sleeve. “Please don’t do that, Alice. Not like this, when you’re angry. You’ll only frighten him. He won’t understand.”

  “I’ll make him understand.”

  She must have seen that I meant what I said, because she went very still. “What will you tell him?”

  “The truth. That I’m his mother. That you’ve known all the time. That while you were pretending to be my friend you were lying to me, and purposely keeping us apart.”

  “It wasn’t like that. You know it wasn’t. I’ve never kept you from Austin. And I wasn’t pretending to be your friend—I am your friend, Alice. And I’m so very sorry.”

  “Stop saying that!” I closed my eyes and felt myself sway, my breath tight in my chest. “You’re not . . . sorry. And why should you be? You’ve gotten exactly what you wanted. You have Austin, and you can finally stop being afraid. I’ll be . . . out of the way soon. What a nice bit of luck for you.”

  She let go of my arm then, stepping back as if I had struck her. I was glad. I wanted to hurt her, to rip her heart from her chest, as she had done mine. I managed to shove past her and staggered out into the hall. A moment later there were footsteps behind me, more pleas and muffled weeping. It took all the strength I had to keep her from pushing her way into my room. I managed to turn the key, then crumpled into a heap as the floor gave way beneath me.

  I woke some time later, still sprawled on the carpet, my clothes drenched and my body on fire. I have a hazy recollection of wandering barefoot down the hall, my throat parched and aching. And then, with no memory of how I had gotten there, I was standing in the doorway of your room, watching you as you slept.

  Your head was turned to one side, your face lit like an angel’s in the watery light spilling through the window, and I realized with a catch in my throat that I was trying to memorize your face, pressing your features, one at a time, between the pages of my memory—the angle of your cheek, the little mole just below your ear, the way your bangs fall across your forehead—in case it was the last time I saw you. The thought was almost more than I could bear. Where had the years gone? I still remember what it felt like to carry you beneath my ribs, so small and round—the child of my heart. How had I not seen that you were right here all the time?

  I used to fantasize about what it would be like when I first saw you. My heart would leap in my chest, and I would know you in an instant. I didn’t, though, and because I didn’t I felt I had failed you. I thought you would look like me, or like Johnny. But as I stood there, studying your features and committing them to memory, I saw what I hadn’t before. Your eyes were the color of mine, but your lashes were your father’s. You have my cheekbones, but your chin is his. You have my long limbs, but your father’s sturdiness. You were not me. You were not Johnny. You were both of us—and the best of us.

  You stirred then and turned away, your face slipping from view. I felt the loss like a physical pain, and the tears came, breaking me open as I stood there clinging to the doorframe. I didn’t know Gemma was behind me until I felt her hand on my arm, insistent and startlingly cool. I tried to pull away but couldn’t manage it. My head was fuzzy, as if my mind and body were floating apart from each other.

  What happened next is still a blur, a jumble of hot broth and cool hands, soothing words and fevered dreams, and through it all, a fire in my chest that seemed to be consuming me. I have a vague recollection of the doctor being there, a tall shadow leaning over my bed, his tone grave as he told someone—Gemma, I suppose—that beyond making me comfortable, there was nothing more to be done.

  I remember being relieved. How sweet it would be to close my eyes and not open them again, to no longer feel sick, and tired, and sad. But it wasn’t time. There was still something I needed to do.

  I can’t say how many days passed, but little by little I drifted up from that dark place. I was exhausted and still struggling to breathe, but cool and strangely lucid. Gemma was nearby, dozing in a chair she had pulled up next to the bed. She looked terrible, thin and ravaged, and so horribly pale. I must have moved, or made a sound, because she sat up and reached out to touch my brow.

  “Alice, honey, you’re awake.” Her voice was dry and rusty from disuse, and I could see that she’d been crying. “How do you feel? Never mind. Don’t try to speak yet.” Our eyes met and held. She swallowed hard. “You were asleep for so long. I thought . . .”

  I dragged my eyes away. I knew what she thought, that I might never wake up. I wondered if she was disappointed that I had.

  She patted my hand. “Would you like some broth? Some tea?”

  I ran my tongue over my lips, cracked and sore. “Austin.”

  “Oh, honey, he isn’t here. I thought it would be better if he stayed with friends until . . . until you were better.”

  I looked away, willing myself not to cry. We both knew I wasn’t going to get better, and that I would never see my son again. I lay there for a time, waiting for her to leave, wondering why she didn’t. Finally, she broke her silence.

  “What I did was unforgivable.”

  “Yes.” I looked at her with the full force of my hatred, watching as the word struck home, a blow so clean and unexpected that it rocked her back on her heels.

  “Please, Alice. Listen to what I have to say. I know you don’t want to hear that I’m sorry, but you have to know I would cut off my arm before hurting you intentionally. You can’t know what went through my mind when I read that letter. It was as if someone had torn out my heart. I still can’t imagine what it would be like to lose your child like that—but I can imagine what it would be like to lose mine—to lose everything. I was afraid, desperate. I still am.”

  It was true. She was still afraid. I could see it in her eyes. The realization startled me. What could Gemma Tate have to fear from me? I hadn’t a cent to my name, no friends, powerful or otherwise. I couldn’t even get out of bed.

  “What do you have to be afraid of?” I asked her bitterly. “You’ve already won.”

  She blinked at me with red-rimmed eyes, as if she, too, was startled. “What am I afraid of? Oh, honey, how can you not know? I’m afraid of losing you, of you leaving me, and never forgiving me. I don’t think I can bear it.”

  “The time to worry about that was three years ago.”

  “But I did worry. I’ve never stopped worrying. And if there was a way—any way—I could undo what I’ve done, I would gladly do it.” She paused to brush a tear from her cheek. “When I read the letter, and thought about what it might mean—for you, for me, for poor Austin—I just couldn’t bring myself to do the right thing—because it wouldn’t have been the right thing. All these years, he’s been as much yours as mine. You know he has. We were a family. We were happy. What good could come from tearing us apart?”

  I closed my eyes, wincing as I struggled to draw a breath. The room was very hot again, and seemed to have grown darker. “It wasn’t . . . your choice.”

  “No. It wasn’t.”

  I turned my face away. I wanted no more of her excuses, but her words had struck a chord in me. Somewhere dee
p down in a place I wasn’t ready to look at, a place of bitterness and confusion, I knew there was at least a thread of truth in what she said. All these years, I have been a mother to you. I held you, fed you, rocked you to sleep, taught you your letters and to tie your shoes. I tended your scrapes, dried your tears. What more could I have had of you than that? What more could you have had of me?

  There was something else, too, that I was loath to admit. As a Tate, you had enjoyed a life I would never have been able to give you, and would go on enjoying that life long after I was gone. How could I not be grateful for that, or for any bit of good that has befallen you? Fate hasn’t been especially kind to me, and my time is growing short. But knowing you will be cared for, my darling, cherished and given every advantage, makes the leaving easier somehow.

  I hated this sudden chink in my armor, the soft, exposed place where forgiveness might enter if I was not careful. But I was so tired, my rage burned to ash. What good was all my hating? Time was short and there were things left to say.

  Gemma watched me, slowly leaning forward, as if she could sense my caving in. Her chin quivered, she reached for my hand, a sob rolling up from deep in her chest, and suddenly we were both weeping.

  “Please, Alice, we have so little time left. What can I do? Whatever it is, tell me, and I’ll do it.”

  My head lolled against the pillow. I felt like I was floating, as if my soul were trying to slip its skin, tethered to the world by a single tenuous thread—the promise I would not leave without. I forced my eyes to focus and met her gaze squarely.

  “Tell my son the truth.” I watched her face crumple but felt no remorse. Perhaps I meant it to be her penance, a way to finally even the score between us, and if I did, no one can blame me. “Give him my letters. Not now, but when he’s ready. So he’ll know I never stopped looking for him, never stopped loving him. Say you’ll do it. Swear it.”

  “But, Alice, those letters . . .”

  “Swear it.”

  She nodded, and at that moment I could almost have forgiven her. Not because I accepted her excuses, but because I knew what that nod had cost her. One day, she’ll hand you this, and the rest of my letters, and you’ll know what she did. Perhaps none of this will matter to you. Perhaps by then you’ll have forgotten all about me. But I will never forget you, the cherished son of my heart, and that is all I ever wanted you to know.

  All my love,

  Mam

  FORTY-NINE

  “My God.” Dovie sat staring at the pages in her lap.

  Across from her, Gemma wept quietly, her face in ruins. “There’s nothing else to say, is there, but my God? All that time. All those letters. And I never said a word. I wasn’t lying when I said I didn’t know. I truly didn’t. I knew she had given up a child. It happened all the time, back then. It just never occurred to me that that child might be asleep upstairs in my nursery. I was so happy to finally have a child of my own. I never stopped to wonder who his mother might have been. I don’t think I really wanted to know. The less I knew, the less there was to lie about.”

  “Lie about?”

  Gemma cleared her throat, looking down at the fragments of tissue in her lap. “My husband never wanted to adopt. When the doctors told me I couldn’t have a baby, they suggested adoption, but Harley wouldn’t hear of it. He could be rather high-minded about certain things. He said he wasn’t giving his name to the brat of some addict or streetwalker. So I found a private agency, one known for discretion, where we could be assured of getting a child worthy of the Tate name. Poor girls from good families who’d gotten themselves in a fix. It took almost a year of pleading, but Harley finally gave in. I was so happy. And then I found out we were twenty-third on the waiting list, and that it could be years before we got a baby . . .” She paused then, blotting her eyes, her pain as fresh and raw as it must have been all those years ago. “I was crushed, and terrified that Harley would change his mind.”

  “So you went to Sacred Heart,” Dovie said quietly.

  “I’d heard whispers about babies coming over from England and Ireland, being smuggled in with forged birth certificates. I had an attorney make inquiries, and was told that for the right amount of money I could have one of those babies, and that it would all be handled very quickly and quietly. Six months later, Austin came home. Harley was gone so much back then; he left the details to me. It never occurred to him that I’d lie about where Austin really came from.”

  “Until he found the adoption papers.”

  “Yes.” Her eyes fluttered closed. “I could have killed him that day, for ambushing her like that. Two weeks later, she was dead. I never forgave him for that—or myself. I had a sort of breakdown that summer. The doctors sent me to the mountains, to a place that was supposed to help me get my legs back under me. I think that’s how they put it. I came home to find Harley had sent Austin away to school—my punishment.”

  “Austin doesn’t know, does he? You never gave him the letters.”

  “No, though I really did mean to. But after Alice died, everything just . . . fell apart. Harley never forgave me for lying about the adoption. He wasn’t used to being crossed. I told Sacred Heart I wanted a boy. I thought he’d bond more easily with a son, but I was wrong. He resented Austin from the first day he came home.” She was weeping again, tears rolling unchecked down her cheeks. “I’ve hurt so many people—Alice, Austin, my husband, even poor Dora—because I was selfish and . . .” Her words trailed as her gaze slid to the doorway. “Austin.”

  He nodded coolly. “Mother.”

  “How long have you been standing there?”

  “Long enough to hear that my father never loved me, and why. Does that answer your question?” He didn’t wait for a response before rounding on Dovie. “But I think the real question is, why are you here? I thought we had an understanding.”

  Gemma reached for her son’s hand before Dovie could answer. “She’s here because she’s a friend of Alice’s mother, and I have something that belongs to her, something that might help the poor woman feel better. If you’ll just sit down we can talk about it.”

  “There’s been enough talk. Too much, in fact.” His eyes were steely as he brought them back to Dovie. “I’d like you to leave now. And not come back.”

  “Honey, please,” Gemma pleaded. “None of this is her fault.”

  Austin seemed not to hear, his eyes still locked with Dovie’s. “You got what you came for—and then some. I hope you’re happy.”

  Dovie stood and stepped past him, finding her way to the front door as quickly as her legs would carry her. She was shaking by the time she reached her car and slid behind the wheel. She had known there would be hell to pay if Austin ever found out she’d come to see his mother, but she never once considered that her visit might trigger such an astonishing and gut-wrenching revelation. If he hadn’t been finished with her before, he certainly was now.

  She was still gripping the steering wheel, too flustered to start the car let alone steer the thing home, when Austin’s voice boomed through the open car door. “Why did you come here? What were you trying to prove?”

  Dovie glanced up at him, flustered by the question. “Please, I know you’re angry about what just happened in there, and you have a right to be. But I had a reason for coming. One I’m happy to explain to you. We just need to talk.”

  “We most definitely do not need to talk. And there’s nothing to explain. I was there, remember? I heard the whole thing.”

  “You didn’t hear all of it, Austin. There’s more. A lot more.”

  “Maybe, but I’m not ready to hear it—from you or her. So I guess we’re all done here.”

  Dovie studied him, baffled by his cool indifference. He was angry; that couldn’t be denied. But something wasn’t right. He was far too calm for a man who’d just gotten the shock of his life. “I don’t understand,” she said, finally. “Yo
u find out the woman you’ve been calling Mother all your life isn’t your mother at all, and it’s like you’re made of stone. I have no idea what’s going on in your head right now. You must have feelings about all this. Anger, shock . . . something.”

  He smiled, or maybe it was a grimace. “Trust me when I tell you you’re better off not knowing what’s going on in my head right now. What do you want me to say, that my world’s been shattered and I’m going to spend the next ten years on a therapist’s couch working through mommy issues? Sorry to disappoint you, sweetheart. Gemma Tate is my mother. The rest is just . . . biology.”

  “So you’re not angry?”

  “Oh, I’m angry. But not for the reasons you think. I’m angry that people can’t leave things alone when they’re asked to. I’m angry that I had to walk in and find my mother in tears in her own parlor. But mostly, I’m angry that I have to stand here and talk about why I’m angry. Which is why I’m walking away now.”

  Dovie watched as Austin climbed into the BMW and pulled down the drive without so much as a backward glance. Resigned, she reached for her own keys, only to realize that in her haste to escape Austin’s wrath she had left them, and her tote, in Gemma Tate’s parlor.

  Gemma’s face fell as she pulled back the door, the visible sagging of her shoulders making it clear she’d been hoping to find her son instead of Dovie.

  “I’m sorry to bother you again,” Dovie said tentatively. “I left my tote in your parlor.”

  Gemma motioned for her to follow before turning away. Dovie picked up the tote and slid it onto her shoulder. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am about all this. I never meant to create a rift between you and your son.”

  “Of course you didn’t.”

  “Are you going to be all right?” she asked quietly, concerned about the almost eerie calm that seemed to have settled over Gemma.