Nightshade, Page 3

  Emily’s voice rose querulously. “How many times have I told you?” she demanded. “How many times have I told you not to leave the skillet on the stove?”

  Joan’s heart skipped a beat as she realized what must have happened. How close had her mother come to burning herself up entirely? And what had she been doing cooking at three-thirty in the afternoon in the first place? But she knew better than to try to argue. Better just to try to calm the old woman down. She glanced at the house, where the smoke had given way to steam and the fire appeared to be under control. “It’s all right, Mother,” she said. “Whatever happened, it’s almost over with. Everything’s going to be all right.”

  But Emily Moore wasn’t about to be appeased. “You did it on purpose!” she accused. “Don’t think I don’t know . . . don’t think you can fool me — ”

  Joan looked beseechingly at her husband, and Bill moved closer, laying a placating hand on his mother-in-law’s shoulder. “It’s going to be fine, Emily,” he assured her. “They almost have the fire out, and it doesn’t look like it got past the kitchen.”

  Emily brushed Bill’s hand away as if it were a mosquito buzzing around her. “You don’t care! None of you care!” Her gaze shifted back to Joan. “You’re protecting her! That’s all you’re doing! Just protecting her!” Her voice was rising again, and Joan was acutely aware that the crowd of Emily’s neighbors had fallen silent to listen.

  “Nobody’s trying to protect anybody,” Joan tried to assure her. “Whatever happened, it was just an accident.”

  Emily adamantly shook her head. “It wasn’t an accident! You did it on purpose!”

  Again Joan cast her husband a pleading look. “Help me get her into the car.” With Matt trailing behind, Bill and Joan led Emily Moore to Joan’s Range Rover. “I’m going to take you home, Mother. You’ll stay with us until we decide what to do.” They were at the car now, but suddenly Emily balked.

  “No! I have to stay here — I have to be here when Cynthia comes home!”

  As Emily made a move to turn away from the Range Rover, Joan’s hands closed gently but firmly on the old woman’s thin shoulders, and when she spoke, her voice showed none of the frustration she was feeling: even when the house was burning down, her mother was still obsessed with Cynthia. “Cynthia’s not coming home, Mother,” she said softly. “You know she’s not.”

  Joan’s words struck Emily like a physical blow. She staggered for a moment, seemed about to topple over, and both Matt and Bill reached out to support her. But then she rallied, and her eyes glowed with anger again.

  “Don’t ever say that!” she commanded. “Don’t you dare ever say that!” But finally, exhausted as much by the confrontation with her daughter as by the fire that had preceded it, Emily allowed herself to be helped into the backseat of the Range Rover. As they drove away, though, she turned to look back at her house once more. The kitchen window was broken, the white siding blackened with smoke. “What will she do?” she asked, her voice breaking. “What will Cynthia do when she comes and I’m not there?”

  Finally, Joan’s own self-control gave way, and she turned around to face Emily. “Cynthia won’t do anything at all, Mother,” she said. “She’s dead, remember? Cynthia’s been dead for years!” Regretting her words almost as soon as she spoke them, Joan turned back, and for several long moments silence hung in the car. As Bill Hapgood turned through a pair of wrought-iron gates and started up the winding driveway toward the house that sat in the midst of the three hundred acres that had been his family’s home for five generations, Emily seemed totally unaware of where she was. But as the house finally came into view, she suddenly spoke.

  “She’s not dead,” she said. “Not Cynthia. Not my perfect Cynthia.”

  CHAPTER 2

  EMILY MOORE MADE no move to get out of the car as bill Hapgood pulled up in front of the sprawling house his thrice-great-grandfather had begun building as a farmhouse in the early part of the nineteenth century. Originally nothing more than a cabin built at the edge of the first small field that Luther Hapgood had carved out of the forest surrounding the hamlet of Granite Falls in the early part of the nineteenth century, the house had been remodeled and expanded, as had the farm, by the next three generations of Hapgoods. Its architecture was vaguely Federal, but with so many bastardizations that it was nearly impossible to assign it to any particular style. “Eclectic” was how either one of the agents in Bill Hapgood’s real estate business would have described it, though Bill himself refused to label his home. “It’s just what the family wanted,” was all he said if anyone happened to ask how the house had come to be. No one in Granite Falls, of course, would ever ask; everyone in town not only knew Hapgood Farm, but knew its history as well. Emily Moore, though, was now staring suspiciously at the rambling, ungainly brick edifice as if she’d never seen it before.

  “Is this a hospital?” she asked, her voice trembling with sudden fear. “I’m not sick — I don’t need a hospital.”

  “It’s not a hospital, Mother,” Joan replied. Her frustration with her mother, which had boiled over a few minutes ago, was back under control, and as she opened the rear door of the Range Rover to help Emily out, she explained what was happening once again. “It’s our house, Mother. You remember it — you’ve been here hundreds of times.”

  “I don’t want to go to your house,” Emily fretted. “Take me home.”

  “You can’t stay at your house, Gram,” Matt said, reaching in to take his grandmother’s hand. “There was a fire, remember?”

  Emily’s eyes clouded and she pulled her hand away from Matt. “Of course I remember,” she muttered. “Joan did it.”

  “Mom wasn’t even there — ” Matt began, but his mother didn’t let him finish.

  “It was an accident, Mother,” she said, knowing better than to argue with the old woman right now. “And I’m sure the damage isn’t too bad. I’ll get you settled in, then Matt and I will go get whatever you need.”

  Her eyes filled with suspicion, Emily reluctantly let herself be guided into the house and up the wide staircase to the second floor. Joan opened the door to a spacious guest room in the southeast corner and drew her mother inside. “Isn’t this lovely? You’ll have sun all morning, and most of the afternoon too.”

  Emily peered around the room. The walls were papered with a bright floral pattern on a pale yellow background, with curtains and a bedspread to match. Besides the bed, night table, and dresser, there were a pair of wing-back chairs flanking a small fireplace, and a door leading to a bathroom that was shared with another guest room. Emily ran a finger over the small occasional table that stood next to one of the wing chairs. She scowled disapprovingly at the dust she saw on her finger.

  “I’ll dust it in a little while, Mother. Would you like to take a nap?”

  Clearly not yet certain where she was, Emily eyed her daughter suspiciously. “Why do you want me to go to sleep?” she demanded. “What are you going to do to me?”

  It’s the sickness, Joan reminded herself. It’s just the sickness, and it doesn’t mean anything. She silently repeated once more what Dr. Henderson had explained to her when Emily’s Alzheimer’s had first been diagnosed: “There will be times when she’s angry about everything, and times when she gets paranoid. But for a while at least, there will also be times when she’s just like her old self, and you’ll think she’s actually getting better. But there’s no way of reversing her condition, and in the long run she’s only going to get worse. You just have to try to be patient with her, and remember that she doesn’t always even understand what she’s saying, let alone mean anything by it.” And as the illness progressed, Joan had managed to deal with it.

  She’d learned to ignore the criticism her mother heaped on her.

  She’d tried to keep her patience as she explained to her mother again and again that Cynthia would not be coming home. But Cynthia’s death was only one of the things she had to explain over and over again, for as the months of Em
ily’s illness turned into years, and the fog of the disease clouded more and more of her mind, Joan found herself having to repeat almost everything over and over again.

  Twice recently Emily had failed to recognize Bill when they stopped by to bring her groceries, and last week she hadn’t been sure who Matt was. But perhaps that would change, now that she was going to be living in the same house with her son-in-law and her grandson. Maybe if she saw them every day, she’d remember who they were. Except that Dr. Henderson had also explained to her that as the disease progressed, it would become nearly impossible for Emily to assimilate anything new.

  Joan pushed the thought away. Somehow, it would work — she would make it work! Because if her mother couldn’t adjust to living here, then there was only one alternative.

  She would have to do what her mother had been accusing her of wanting to do for years: she would have to find a nursing home.

  Her mother would never forgive her for that.

  But worse, Joan would never forgive herself for it.

  No matter how bad Emily’s condition got, her mother was still her mother, and it was her duty to take care of her.

  Once again in firm control of her roiling emotions, Joan put a gentle arm around her mother’s stooped and rounded shoulders and tried to ease her toward the chair. “I’m not going to do anything to you,” she soothed. “I’m just going to take care of you, that’s all. You’ll see — everything is going to be fine. You’ll like it here.”

  Emily’s mouth worked as if she were about to say something, but finally she sank into the chair. Her eyes darted around the room as if searching for a hidden enemy, and then she rubbed her arms, shivering despite the warmth of the room.

  “Would you like me to light the fire?” Joan offered.

  For a moment Emily seemed not to have heard her at all, but then she looked up and her eyes fixed on her daughter. Joan could see the unreasoning anger of the disease start to burn in her mother’s eyes, and braced herself against whatever her mother was about to say. When Emily finally spoke, she confirmed Joan’s fears: “Isn’t it bad enough that you tried to burn me up in my own house?”

  Joan flinched not only at the words, but at the bitterness in her mother’s voice, but forced herself to turn away from the pain they caused, telling herself once again that it was the disease talking, not her mother. “I’ll put on a pot of tea,” she said. “You’ve always loved tea — it will make you feel better.”

  As Joan started from the room, she braced herself for whatever parting words her mother might have for her, but Emily said nothing more.

  The eye of the storm, Joan thought. I feel like I’m in the eye of the storm.

  And she knew that no matter which way she turned, the storm lay dead ahead.

  * * *

  THOUGH JOAN KNEW she was driving far more slowly than safety might demand, she made no effort at all to accelerate the Range Rover along the winding mile that separated Hapgood Farm from Granite Falls, ignoring Matt’s groans as half a dozen honking cars raced past them. The last traces of the pleasure she’d taken in the perfect autumn morning had gone up in the smoke of the fire, and the forest, which only a few hours ago had beckoned to her to spend the weekend basking in its splendor, now appeared to be closing around her, suffocating her. As she rounded the last curve and the town itself came into view, she slowed even more. Her eyes fixed for a moment on the sign announcing that the town had been founded in 1684, and she remembered her third grade teacher — Miss Rutherford, who had died just last year — explaining to her class that Granite Falls had begun as a fur-trapping outpost. It grew slowly over the centuries, retaining the tidy orderliness of so many small New England towns, sufficient unto itself and far enough from any major city that it never became inundated with weekenders and summer people.

  She crossed the bridge over Granite Creek, which wound along the western edge of the town before meandering south through a corner of Hapgood Farm on its way to drain into the Merrimack River, a dozen miles southeast. As Joan turned onto Prospect Street and drove by the high school — as unchanged in the last century as everything else in Granite Falls — she found herself wondering once again why her parents had come here in the first place. All she really knew was that it had happened before either she or Cynthia was born, and that after her father left — when she was still too young to remember him — her mother had stayed. Even before the disease had robbed her of her memory, Emily Moore had steadfastly refused to talk about why her husband had left. As for why she herself had stayed in a town where almost everyone else had roots that went back generations, Emily only shrugged her thin shoulders. “There was a job here,” she said. “What was I supposed to do? I had two children to raise. I couldn’t leave.”

  A trap, Joan thought now, her grip tightening on the steering wheel as she pulled around the corner onto Burlington Avenue. The whole town is a trap. Mother sounded just as trapped back then as I feel now. And today she looks like a trapped animal. Another thought came to mind: Had the animals for whose hides the town had been built felt the same fear when the traps closed on them? But even as the idea came to her, Joan rejected it. It’ll be all right, she told herself. Whatever happens with Mother, I’ll get through it, just like I’ve always gotten through things.

  She braked the Range Rover to a stop in front of the house in which she’d grown up. The crowd, its enthusiasm for the fire quenched along with the flames themselves, had all but disappeared, though Ralph Gunderson was still chatting in his front yard with Phyllis Adams, who had come over from her house across the street. As soon as Joan saw the disapproving look on Phyllis’s face, she knew what her mother’s neighbors had been talking about. Phyllis confirmed it: “It’s such a shame, isn’t it? Of course, we’ve all known Emily shouldn’t have been living alone, haven’t we?”

  Joan tried to ignore the sting of Phyllis’s words. As late as yesterday afternoon her mother had refused even to discuss the possibility of leaving her little house on Burlington Avenue, let alone allow someone to come in and care for her; but Joan knew that all Phyllis and her friends would remember was that she’d left her mother alone, and the house had caught fire.

  She offered Phyllis a smile that feigned more warmth than she felt. “You know my mother,” she replied. “She’s always been independent, and obviously she was able to get help before the fire got out of control.”

  Phyllis smiled thinly. “I suppose God looks out for those who have no one else.” Her eyes bored into Joan’s. “Will you be putting her somewhere?”

  “She’ll be with us,” Joan replied. “At least for a while.”

  The other woman’s expression hardened. “Well, at least you and Bill are in a position to be able to do what you want.”

  So there it is, Joan thought. Leave it to Phyllis to assume that enough money can solve everything. But instead of rising to the bait, she reminded herself that Phyllis had undoubtedly been drinking most of the afternoon, and was now probably feeling even more sorry for herself than she did when she was sober. Joan made herself smile again. “I’m just glad we can take her in,” she replied evenly.

  Before Phyllis could say anything else, Joan mounted the steps leading to her mother’s front door and went into the house, with Matt right behind her.

  “What’s with Mrs. Adams?” her son asked. “Why’s she mad at you? Or is she already drunk?”

  “I think she’s just mad at the world,” Joan replied, answering Matt’s first question but ignoring his second. “She resents anyone who she thinks is a little better off than she is.” Her nostrils filled with the acrid smell of smoke as she quickly scanned the living room and dining room of the little house. Though everything looked exactly as it always had, the house somehow felt different.

  The fire, she thought. It’s just the smell of the fire.

  But it was more than that, for as she closed the front door behind her and moved farther into the house, the strange sensation grew stronger.

  B
ehind her, Matt echoed the feelings she hadn’t yet voiced: “This is weird. It’s like the house knows Gram’s not coming back.”

  As Joan’s eyes took in the living room — its tables covered with the cheap china figurines her mother had been collecting since she and Cynthia had been children — Matt once again gave voice to what she was thinking.

  “What are we going to do with all her stuff? Move it into our house?”

  Joan heard a note of anxiety in his voice, and her mind went back ten years to the time when she and Matt had been living here in this house, before she married Bill Hapgood.

  She could still remember her mother chiding Matt as his small fingers reached out to the china collie dog that lay on the floor under the end table. “Don’t touch that!” she’d said. “That’s very valuable, and not for children.” Matt jerked his hand away as quickly as if he’d touched a hot stove, and her mother had turned on Joan herself. “Can’t you control your brat? If you didn’t know how to raise him, you shouldn’t have had him in the first place!”

  Even years later the words still stung her, and though she hoped that Matt had blocked them from his own memory, the way he was staring at the porcelain dog told her that he had not.

  “I suppose we’ll have to take some of it,” Joan said, already dreading the task of sorting through the scores of figurines her mother had crammed into the house over the years. Nor would it matter how careful she was, or how hard she tried to choose her mother’s favorites. Whatever she did, it would be wrong. “But we won’t take any of them right now,” she decided. “We’ll just get a few of her clothes, and I’ll bring her over tomorrow to start going through everything.”

  Matt’s gaze shifted from the collie to his mother. “Gram’s going to live with us from now on, isn’t she?” Despite the inflection at the end of the sentence, Joan knew it wasn’t a question; he was asking for confirmation of what he already knew.