Читать книгу Breaking The Silence - Diane Chamberlain - Страница 11

THE PATH CIRCLING THE LAKE WAS SO HEAVILY FORESTED THAT walking on it was like walking through a tunnel, and Laura slowed her pace to enjoy the effect. Emma, though, did not seem to notice. She trotted ahead of Laura, carrying her blue plastic case filled with her Barbie dolls and their requisite paraphernalia, eager to get to the Beckers’ house.

Five-year-old Cory was in the Beckers’ front yard, and she ran to meet Emma, her wild red curls bouncing around her face.

“I got a Dentist Barbie!” Cory shrieked. She grabbed Emma’s arm, and Emma ran with her up the porch steps, past Cory’s mother, Alison, who held the screen door open for them.

“Sorry about that,” Alison said to Laura with a smile. Her own short red hair framed her face, and freckles dotted her nose. “Now you’ll have to get Emma Paleontologist Barbie or something so she can keep up with the neighbors.”

Laura laughed. She stood in the yard, shading her eyes against the rays of sun shooting through the trees. “Thanks for watching her,” she said. “I should be back by four.”

“Take your time.” Alison folded her arms across her chest. “If I can tear them away from the dolls, I’ll take them to the playground for a while.”

Laura walked back to her own house, feeling fortunate that the Beckers were at the lake again this summer. Cory amazed her. She’d accepted Laura’s explanation that Emma wasn’t talking this summer with a simple “oh,” and she did Emma’s talking for her when they played. Cory’s father worked in D.C. and came to the lake only on the weekends, so Laura and Alison had found a resource for child care in each other.

The drive to Meadow Wood Village took her a little over thirty minutes. Thirty anxious minutes, as Laura tried unsuccessfully to forget the toll her last visit to Sarah Tolley had taken on Ray, and on Emma.

Once in the retirement home, she found Sarah’s apartment by hunting for the door bearing the silhouette of the projector. Sarah answered the door and smiled at Laura. “Yes?” she asked. She was dressed in a pale blue plaid cotton jumper over a white blouse. Her silver hair looked newly styled.

“Hello, Mrs. Tolley.” She could see the lack of recognition in the older woman’s face. “I’m Laura Brandon. I came to visit you here last January.”

Although her smile remained, Sarah looked puzzled as she let Laura into the living room.

“My father had asked me to see you,” Laura said. “Do you remember?”

“Your father? He was deceased, is that right?”

“Yes!” Laura was excited that Sarah remembered that much. “And you couldn’t recall who he was. But I brought a picture with me today to help you remember. And I was also wondering if you might like to go for a walk.”

“A walk? Outside?” Sarah looked as though she didn’t quite trust the invitation.

“Yes.”

“Oh, I’d certainly love that.” Sarah clapped her hands together in a small show of joy. “They don’t let me outside anymore. Keep me locked up in jail here.” She chuckled.

“It’s quite warm out today,” Laura said. “Will that be okay for you?”

“Warm, cold or in between, just get me outside.” Sarah was already walking toward the door.

“Do you have some shoes that would be better for walking?” Laura asked.

Sarah looked down at her beige pumps. “Good idea,” she said. “Don’t go away.”

She disappeared into the bedroom. Laura’s eyes fell on the picture of Sarah’s husband. Joe. Was that his name? A nice-looking young man. She pulled the picture of her father from her purse.

After a few minutes, Sarah reappeared in sturdy-looking walking shoes, and Laura wondered if her father might have been responsible for Sarah’s wardrobe.

“You have such nice clothes,” she said. “How do you get out to buy them? Does someone take you shopping for them?”

“I love nice clothes,” Sarah said as she headed for the door again.

“And how do you go shopping for them?” Laura asked.

Sarah stopped walking, apparently confused, but only for a moment. “Oh, they take us,” she said. “Once a month, we can go on the bus to…the place with all the stores.”

“The mall.”

“Right.”

“Here’s a picture of my father.” Laura handed the photograph to Sarah before she could start for the door again. “Do you remember him?”

Sarah carried the picture over to the end table lamp and studied it carefully.

“His name was Carl Brandon,” Laura said.

“I don’t think I know him,” Sarah said with a shrug as she handed the picture back to Laura. “Can we go for a walk now?”

As she and Laura walked down the long hallway to the lobby, Sarah said hello to everyone, staff and residents alike. She had an “I’m gettin’ out, so there” attitude about her, and she walked fast, an expectant smile on her face. It hurt Laura to see that simply getting out of the building for a half hour could give Sarah such joy. She should have come sooner, she thought, grateful that Heather had encouraged her to make this visit.

Outside, Sarah took in an exaggerated deep breath of air. “Which way do we go?” she asked.

“Whichever way you’d like.”

That seemed to be the wrong answer, because Sarah’s smile faded and that look of confusion came into her face again. “I don’t know where anything is,” she said.

“Well, let’s just walk,” Laura said, turning left onto the sidewalk. “It doesn’t matter where we’re going, really.”

“That’s right,” Sarah said, the smile back, and she set out next to Laura at a strong, quick pace. Laura hustled to keep up with her. Whatever was wrong with Sarah Tolley was clearly confined to her mind and not her body.

A silence fell between them as they walked. It was not uncomfortable, and although Laura longed to break it with more sleuthing about Sarah’s relationship to her father, she hesitated to confuse the woman any more. Laura remembered what Carolyn, Sarah’s attendant, had said: Sarah loved to talk, but had no one to listen to her.

“What was it like working on cruise ships?” Laura asked. “Nice,” Sarah said.

“How long did you do it?”

“I don’t know. A year. Maybe three or four.”

“Carolyn said you like movies,” Laura said.

“Oh, yes!” Sarah clapped her hands together again, a gleam in her eyes.

“What have you seen lately?”

“I like the movies from the old days.”

“Do you have a favorite?”

“Oh, yes. It’s…” Lines creased Sarah’s brow, and she pouted like an annoyed child. “I can’t remember what it’s called,” she said.

This conversation wasn’t exactly taking off. “Well, I told you all about where my father grew up and where he lived,” Laura said. “Why don’t you tell me about yourself? You said you grew up in Bayonne?” Maybe getting Sarah to talk about herself would give Laura the clues she needed to link the elderly woman to her father.

So, Sarah began to talk, and it was as though Laura had tapped into a deep well, a well that was far richer than she could have imagined.

Sarah, 1931-1945

The third-grade class was planning a production of the play Cinderella for the entire school to watch. Sarah loved plays. She longed to act the part of Cinderella herself, but even though she gave it her all when she tried out, that coveted role went to the prettiest and most popular girl in the class.

So Sarah tried out for the part of one of the stepsisters, a malevolent expression on her face as she attempted to make her voice sound sinister and mean, but she didn’t get that role, either.

“Who’d like to try out for the part of the evil stepmother?” the teacher asked, once the other roles had been assigned.

“Sarah Wilding should get it,” one of the boys said.

Sarah smiled. Her perseverance had paid off. She hoped the teacher would simply hand her the role, since she’d already tried out more than anyone else in the class.

“And why should Sarah get it?” the teacher asked.

“Because she’s the only one ugly enough to play the stepmother,” the boy said.

The other children laughed. Even the teacher bowed her head in an attempt to hide her smile, but Sarah saw it, and her cheeks and neck grew blotchy with color.

The teacher raised her head again. “That’s a cruel thing to say,” she scolded the boy, her face very serious now. “How would you feel if someone said something like that about you? I think you need to apologize to Sarah.”

The boy sheepishly turned around in his seat to look at Sarah. “Sorry,” he said.

Sarah looked away from him, swallowing hard to keep her tears in check.

“Sarah, would you like the part of the stepmother?” the teacher asked. “That part requires a very good actress. I think you’d be good in it.”

She didn’t know what to say. Of course she wanted the part, but not that way. Not because she was ugly.

“No, thank you, ma’am,” she said, her cheeks still burning.

When the play had been fully cast, the class was released for recess. Escape, finally. Instead of joining the other children on the playground, Sarah ran home.

She knew the house would be empty except for her aunt, and that was fine. Both her parents were at work in the family’s clothing store, but Aunt Jane didn’t work. She never went anywhere. She was always there for Sarah, and that’s what Sarah was counting on.

She knew she would find her aunt in her room on the top floor of the house, working on a quilt, as usual. Her quilts graced every bed in the house and many of the neighbors’ houses, as well. The colorful squares of material covered nearly every surface in Aunt Jane’s bedroom, and Sarah always found the sight of them comforting.

Aunt Jane looked up in surprise when Sarah walked into her room.

“You startled me,” she said, one hand on her enormous chest. “What on earth are you doing home so early? Are you ill? Are you crying?” Aunt Jane was up and walking toward her. “What’s wrong, precious?”

Sarah hugged her aunt, drinking in the familiar scent of the flowery soap she used. Aunt Jane was rooted like a tree, a solid, big-boned woman.

“Sit down on my bed and tell me all about it,” Aunt Jane said, moving some of her squares to make room for her niece.

Sarah sat down, but she was hesitant to relive the humiliation. Still, this was Aunt Jane, and she knew she was safe with her. If she’d told her mother, her mother would have said she deserved the taunting because she was sloppy about her appearance. It irked her parents no end that they owned Wilding’s, the most exclusive children’s clothing store in town, yet their own daughter looked like a tall, homely beanpole, no matter how carefully they dressed her. “She’s a poor advertisement for the store,” she’d once overheard her father saying. “Nearly as bad as your sister. Good thing Jane never goes out.”

She told Jane what had happened in her classroom and saw the sympathy in her aunt’s eyes.

“My poor darling,” Aunt Jane said, moving closer so she could put her arm around Sarah’s shoulders. “But you know what?” She waited for Sarah to look up at her. “Something good—something wonderful—will come out of this experience. Did you know that?”

Sarah was mystified. “What?” she asked.

“You are going to grow up to have a very thick skin,” she said, “and that is an important thing to have.”

Sarah looked down at her pale, bony wrist. “Thick skin?” she asked.

Aunt Jane smiled. “It’s an expression. It means that no one will ever be able to hurt you. You won’t be overly sensitive. What you’re going through now is hard, precious, but it’s good training for your future.”

Aunt Jane called the school then, and Sarah listened as she told the principal what had happened and that Sarah had left early and was staying home for the rest of the day. As she imagined what the principal was saying on the other end of the line, Sarah took comfort in her aunt’s theory that something good would come from this experience, and the image of her taunting classmates gradually grew hazy and indistinct in her mind.

When Jane got off the phone, she set aside her quilting and played canasta with her niece all afternoon. By dinnertime, Sarah was laughing again.

It wasn’t until Sarah was a teenager that she realized Aunt Jane was not like other women her age. Other women were married and had children. They went to the market. They shopped for clothes. They liked to go out to dinner or the theater. Not Aunt Jane, who would not even set foot in the backyard. She didn’t care about being married, she said, and what did she need her own children for when she had Sarah? But the truth was, ever since Aunt Jane had been a teenager herself, she had flown into a panic each time she ventured outside the house. It would certainly be hard to meet a man, and harder still to date, when you couldn’t go out your own front door.

Sarah liked that her aunt was always stuck at home, even though she knew she was selfish for feeling that way. Aunt Jane had been the one constant, loving person in her life. Always home, always ready with a hug and a loving word. But as Sarah grew older, she began to feel sorry for her aunt. People called her crazy, but Sarah knew that, like herself, Aunt Jane had a very thick skin.

Aunt Jane had wanted to be a nurse, but mental illness struck while she was in nursing school and she never got to complete the program. She took pleasure, though, in passing on all she’d learned to her niece. She taught Sarah to make beds with hospital corners, take a pulse and temperature, and give sponge baths. Sarah loved her lessons, and she grew to love the idea of being a nurse herself. She’d have to study hard in high school, Aunt Jane warned her, to be able to go to nursing school.

It was good that Sarah had her studies to attend to because she had little in the way of a social life. She had plenty of girlfriends, but the boys were studious in their avoidance of her. She’d be walking down the street, and a boy walking toward her would seem interested in her, but as he’d get nearer, he would quickly avert his eyes. And if there were two boys, she’d see them talking and snickering about her. It wasn’t that she was disfigured in any way. She was simply, unequivocally, homely, with a long, pointed nose and too little chin. New hairstyles, new makeup—nothing seemed to make much of a difference.

“You don’t need a man in your life to be happy,” Aunt Jane told her once. “But you do need work, and it should be work that involves you with people. Why, I’d go mad without you and your parents to look after.”

That was the first time Sarah realized her aunt didn’t know that most people considered her quite mad already. But those people didn’t know her the way Sarah did. If Aunt Jane was crazy, then all the world should be crazy. Everyone would be much better off.

So, Sarah decided she would be a nurse. She felt half trained as one, anyway, by her senior year of high school. Just before graduation, she learned that she’d earned the highest grades of anyone in her class and would be making the speech at the commencement ceremony.

She begged Aunt Jane to come to her graduation. “You’ve helped me so much to get where I am,” she told her aunt one night when she was helping her iron the squares of fabric. “I want you to be there,” she said. “It would mean so much to me.”

Aunt Jane put the iron down and studied her niece. “You’re closer to me than anyone in the world,” she said softly, “and yet even you don’t understand. I can’t do it, Sarah. I simply can’t.”

“Please,” Sarah pleaded. “Please try, for me?”

In the end, Aunt Jane agreed to try, but her effort turned out to be a terrible mistake. She, Sarah and Sarah’s parents had to take the trolley to a street a few blocks from the school. From there, they would walk the rest of the way. But by the time the four of them stepped off the streetcar, Aunt Jane was crying. She sat down on a bench and said, “Take me home, take me home,” over and over again. Her body trembled. There was no way to comfort her and no way to cajole her into continuing. Her panic frightened Sarah. She had never seen it before, because as long as she’d known her, Aunt Jane had stayed within the safe confines of the house.

“I knew this was a mistake,” Sarah’s father muttered.

Sarah finally gave up trying to persuade her aunt to walk the rest of the way to the school. She felt cruel that she had begged her to come to the ceremony at all. As Aunt Jane herself had said, Sarah had not understood the depth of her fear. But she understood it now.

“We’ll take the next trolley home again,” Sarah said, sitting down on the bench, as close to her aunt as she could get.

“No,” her mother said. “You go on to school, Sarah, or you’ll be late. Your father and I will take Jane home.”

Sarah looked at her aunt’s pale face. She couldn’t leave her here, shivering and terrified, on the bench. “I’ll wait till you’re all safely on the trolley,” she said. “There should be another one in a few minutes.” She put her arm around her aunt’s shoulders. “You’ll have to go across the street to catch it, though.”

Aunt Jane looked across the street, and it was as if her eyes registered a vast, deep ocean instead of a few yards of asphalt. She shook her head. “I can’t do it,” she said.

“Jane,” Sarah’s father said, “act like a thirty-nine-year-old woman for once, will you?”

Sarah shot her father an angry look. On an impulse, she ran into the street and waved down a passing car. “My aunt isn’t feeling well,” she told the driver, a man in a business suit. “Could you possibly give her and my parents a ride home? It’s over on Garrison Street.”

The driver was agreeable, and somehow they managed to bodily lift Aunt Jane into the back seat. Sarah watched as the car containing her family disappeared around the corner before walking the few blocks to her school. By the time she took the stage for her commencement address, she was nearly too upset to speak. But she managed. Somehow, she managed.

No one knew much about phobias in those days. And they knew less about depression. Two weeks after Sarah left home to attend nursing school in Trenton, Aunt Jane swallowed one hundred of her prescription nerve pills and died in her sleep at the age of forty. Sarah knew why she had done it. With her away at school, there was little holding her aunt to that cold house, and yet she was trapped there by her own tortured mind. Aunt Jane had held on long enough to help Sarah survive a difficult childhood, but now Sarah was on her own, a successful adult. And Jane was no longer needed.

Sarah, deeply affected by her aunt’s death, decided to become a psychiatric nurse. She read all she could in psychology, trying to understand Aunt Jane, and in the process learning a great deal about other psychiatric illnesses as her interest in the subject grew.

After getting her degree, she took a job in a psychiatric hospital in Haddonfield, New Jersey. At first, she was afraid that she would become too attached to the patients, that each of them would seem like Aunt Jane to her, and she would not be objective enough to help them. But she found she was able to separate her aunt from the others. Each patient was an individual. Each required a different sort of help from her. And each of them needed the sort of respect and compassion Sarah had learned from the aunt who would forever be a part of her life.