Garden of Shadows

MALCOLM HAD HIS WAY. OUR FIRST SON WAS BORN NINE months and two weeks from the date of the reception to introduce me to the fine Virginia society. We named him Malcolm, for his father, but we called him Mal so it would be easier to distinguish between them. By this time I knew without a doubt that Malcolm was a strong, forceful man who always got whatever he wanted. He was always a winner because he never entered a battle without first assuring himself that the odds were on his side. This was the way he conducted business; this was the way he conducted his life. I had no doubt that he would go a long way toward becoming one of the richest men in the world before he died.

After Mal was born, my hopes for love were born again for a short time. I thought that Mal’s birth would bring Malcolm closer to me. Since I had come here, I had been treated more like a maid than like a wife. Malcolm worked all day, every day, returned late at night, hardly ever even sharing dinner with me. We never went anywhere, and the “society” whom I’d been introduced to at the reception seemed to have quickly forgotten my existence. Now that the son Malcolm so wanted had arrived, I thought he might want to have a closer family life, and would perhaps become more of a loving husband. I looked upon the birth of the baby as the coming of something wonderful for our marriage. Mal would be a bridge between his father and myself, drawing us toward each other in ways neither of us expected.

Like any other mother, I was thrilled at each coo, at each smile, at each new accomplishment of my wonderful, adorable son. And I waited for Malcolm’s return each day with happy news of our son’s progress.

“There’s no question he recognizes you now, Malcolm!”

“Today he crawled for the first time!”

“Today he said his first word!”

“Mal began to walk today!”

Each announcement should have had us hugging and kissing, grateful that we had a healthy child. But Malcolm reacted to everything the baby did with a surprising indifference, as though he had expected no less. He took it all for granted and never showed a father’s delight and happiness.

If anything, he was impatient with the baby’s progress. He was intolerant of the growing process and didn’t want to be around to watch the baby make his small but continuous movements forward. He hated it when I brought the baby to the dinner table and ordered me to feed Mal before our own meals. Rarely did he go into the baby’s nursery.

Before little Mal was two years old, I was pregnant again, made so by another swift and loveless encounter. Malcolm was determined to have a big family; and now he wanted a daughter. This second pregnancy proved harder for me, I don’t know why. I was sick in the mornings. Late in my pregnancy my doctor told me he wasn’t happy about how it was going. His fears proved accurate, for during the seventh month I nearly had a miscarriage and then, just at the start of the eighth month, Joel Joseph was born prematurely.

From the start he was a small, fragile, sickly child, with pale thin hair and blue Foxworth eyes. Malcolm was upset that I hadn’t given him a daughter, and angry that Joel was not a healthy child. I knew he blamed it on me, even though I did nothing to endanger the baby and followed all of the doctor’s orders concerning nutrition.

He said, “The Foxworths are noted for being healthy and strong. Let it be your goal and responsibility to see that this baby of yours changes and becomes what I would expect my sons to be—strong, aggressive, assertive, manly in all ways.”

One day after the Foxworth family doctor, Dr. Braxten, had come to see me, Malcolm came up to my room. The doctor told him he didn’t believe I would be able to have any more children.

“That’s impossible,” Malcolm thundered. “I have not gotten a daughter yet!”

“Be reasonable now, Malcolm,” Dr. Braxten calmed him.

Didn’t Malcolm care at all about my health?

Neither the doctor nor I anticipated Malcolm’s vehement reaction. His face became bright red and he bit down on his lip as if to keep himself from speaking. Then he stepped back, looking from me to the doctor and then to me again.

“What is this, something you two have concocted?”

“Pardon me, sir,” Dr. Braxten said. He was a man in his late fifties, who was highly respected in his field. The doctor’s face paled almost to the shade of his thatch of gray hair. His large fishlike eyes, magnified beneath those thick-lensed glasses, widened.

“Are you standing there and telling me I will never have another child? Never have a daughter?”

“Why, yes … I …”

“How dare you, sir? How dare you presume?”

“It’s not a matter of presuming, Malcolm. This last pregnancy was quite difficult and—”

“I’ll hear no more of this,” he said, and turned to me with as hateful a face as I have ever seen him wear. “I won’t hear of it, you understand?” Then he spun around like a marionette on strings and stormed out of my bedroom. Dr. Braxten was embarrassed for me, so I didn’t prolong his stay any longer.

Of course, I was shocked by Malcolm’s attitude, but by this time I had hardened myself against his tirades and terrible remarks. He didn’t bring it up again, and I didn’t discuss it with him. I wasn’t sorry I couldn’t bear him any more children. He wasn’t a man who enjoyed the children he had.

He seemed to ignore Mal and to blame Joel for not being a daughter, the daughter I never realized he wanted so much. He was even more intolerant of the sound of Joel’s crying and often spent days without seeing or speaking to either child. If he had been intolerant of Mal’s growing process, he was an ogre about Joel’s. God forbid the baby messed his diaper in his presence or spit up food while Malcolm was in the room.

Sometimes, I thought he was ashamed of his little family, as if having only two children was a blight on his manhood. It wasn’t until Mal was nearly three years old that he took the four of us anywhere together.

We went to tour his fabric mills. All the while, whenever he pointed something out, he spoke to Mal as though his infant son would understand.

“This is all going to be yours someday, Mal,” he said, speaking as though Joel wouldn’t be alive after he died or as though Joel didn’t matter. “I expect you will expand it, make it into something of a Foxworth empire.”

• • •

We returned to Foxworth Hall on a bright spring day. The leaves were bursting out to say hello to the fresh April sunlight. My boys pointed at the robins eating fresh worms from the grass, and jumped and giggled like merry spring lambs. As I entered Foxworth Hall, Mrs. Steiner rushed out to meet me.

“Oh, Mrs. Foxworth, I’m so glad you’re back. A telegram arrived from Connecticut for you this morning, and I’m sure it’s something important.”

My heart skipped. What could this mean? I tore open the envelope as Mrs. Steiner leaned nosily over my shoulder.

OLIVIA FOXWORTH STOP

WITH MY DEEPEST SYMPATHIES AND GREATEST RESPECTS I REGRET TO INFORM YOU THAT YOUR FATHER HAS BEEN TAKEN BY THE LORD TO HIS BOSOM STOP

FUNERAL HAS BEEN SET FOR APRIL SEVENTH

I crumpled the telegram to my breast, hollow now from grief. April 7 was tomorrow! Little Mal was pulling on my skirt. “Mommy, Mommy, what’s wrong, why are you crying?”

Malcolm grabbed the crumpled telegram from my hand and read it. “Malcolm, I must go immediately, I must go on the next train!”

“What?” he said sternly. “What do you plan to do with the boys?”

“Malcolm, I’ll leave them with you. Mrs. Steiner is here to help, so is Mrs. Stuart.”

“But I would have to be in charge. Olivia, a woman’s place is with her children.”

“He’s my father, Malcolm, my only father. I must be there for his funeral.”

Malcolm and I argued the matter until it was too late. By the time Malcolm assented to let me go, the night train had already left, and the morning train I finally boarded arrived in New London five hours after my father’s funeral had ended. I went home to find John Amos and Father’s lawyer sitting in the parlor.

My eyes were red and swollen from the tears I shed on that long train ride—tears of sadness for my father, but I know they were also for me. Now I was alone in a different way than ever I had been before.

Both stood up as soon as they saw me, and John Amos came over and took my hand in his. He had become a man since I’d last seen him. A man now twenty-three years old, tall and stern and kind. My tears began again as he talked to me. “Olivia, I’m so glad to see you. I was surprised by your absence at the funeral, but I know you’d approve of it. I saw to it that your father was received by his maker in a most proper way. Now come sit down Olivia, you remember Mr. Teller, your father’s lawyer—it seems your father added some rather odd clauses to his will that we’ll need to straighten out.”

Mr. Teller, too, took my hand and looked at me with sympathy in his eyes and we all sat in the dark, gloomy room.

My mind was numb as all the details were explained. Father had left me his entire estate under the sole condition that only I manage the money. Oh—I know what he had done. He had made sure Malcolm Foxworth would never get his hands on my money. Oh, Father, how did you know the truth so long before I did! And why did you let me marry that man! My tears fell and I hid my head in my lap.

John Amos asked Mr. Teller to leave, telling him we’d make our decisions and let him know before I returned to Virginia.

What a comfort John Amos was to me! And during the two days I stayed in New London, I poured my heart out to him. By the time I left, John Amos knew more about me than anyone else in the world. And I knew, with his love of God and family, that I could trust him, always. It was a knowledge that grew in me as the years passed, and always, when things were hardest, I would turn to John Amos, writing him long letters and he would write me back with words of comfort from both himself and God—for he soon began studying theology at a New England seminary. He was my only family and he was wise and caring—so unlike Malcolm. But I returned to Virginia somehow strengthened—I had lost my father—but had gained a brother, an advisor, a spiritual counselor. “Now, Olivia,” John said as he saw me off at the station, “return to your husband and boys, and may the Lord go with you. I am here whenever you need me.”

Malcolm showed no regret at all at my father’s death. The very day I returned he started in again about my fortune.

“Well, Olivia, you are now a rich woman, in your right. How do you intend to control your fortune now?”

I told him I had no plans, I was still mourning my father and was hardly interested in thinking about money right now.

Weeks passed with our barely speaking, except for Malcolm’s almost daily inquiries about my plans for my father’s estate. Then one day Malcolm appeared in the nursery to make an announcement that would change our lives completely. It was so rare to see him in the nursery that I greeted him warmly, hoping he had come because he had a father’s sincere interest in his children. I was teaching Mal the alphabet, using blocks, and Joel was in his crib sucking on his bottle. The room was somewhat messy because children, especially three-year-old children, drop things everywhere. I usually had it cleaned and straightened by the end of the day.

“Is this a playpen or a pigpen?” Malcolm asked.

“If you were here more often, you would understand,” I responded. He grunted. I sensed that he wasn’t here to discuss the children.

“I have something to tell you,” he said, “if you can tear yourself away from those blocks for a moment.”

I rose from the floor, straightened my dress, and went to him.

“Well?”

“My father … Garland is returning. He will be here in a week.”

“Oh.”

I didn’t really know what to say. All that I knew about Garland I knew from studying his portrait and listening to the odds and ends Malcolm offered from time to time. I knew he had been fifty-five when he left and I knew from his latest pictures that he was a handsome man who didn’t look his age. The gray in his hair, what little there was of it, was nearly indistinguishable from the gold. He stood nearly as tall as Malcolm and in his heyday had been quite an athlete, sportsman, and, despite Malcolm’s criticisms of his most recent decisions, businessman.

“However, he won’t be returning to his room in the north wing. Instead, he will take the room next to yours in the south wing. You’ll have to see that the suite is made livable, not that my father really knows the difference.”

“I see.”

“No, you don’t see. The reason he wants a warmer room with an adjoining bath is because he is bringing his bride with him.”

“Bride? You mean, your father has remarried after all these years?”

“Yes, bride.” Malcolm turned away for a moment, then turned back. “I never told you, but he married before he left for Europe.”

“What? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Oh, you’ll see, Olivia. You’ll understand soon enough,” he said, raising his voice.

Joel started to cry. By now both our sons were sensitive to Malcolm’s outbursts, and Joel, especially, had an inordinate fear of his own father. Mal was getting to be the same way.

“You’re scaring the children,” I said.

“I’ll do worse than that if he isn’t quiet when I speak. Quiet!” he demanded. Mal’s face froze and he choked on his tears. Joel turned over and sobbed quietly in his crib.

“Just prepare yourself,” Malcolm said, spitting out his words between his teeth and storming out of the nursery.

Prepare myself? I thought. What could he mean? Did he hate his father so much? Did he not want to share Foxworth Hall?

I didn’t care about being the sole mistress of this house. There was to be another woman here, the wife of a fifty-five-year-old man. Surely, she would be an ally. I would look upon her, perhaps, as the mother who had died too soon for me. I could go to her for advice about Malcolm and myself. Surely, someone that much older would be wiser in the ways of men and women. I was happy at the prospect of Garland—his wife returning.

“Malcolm,” I asked later at dinner, “will we have to leave Foxworth Hall? Do you want a home of your own?”

“Move out?”

“Well, I thought …”

“Are you insane? Where would we go? Buy or build a new home and leave all this? I’ll take care of my father; his bride is your problem and your responsibility. You maintain control of this house and keep it a respectable, properly run home. Don’t tell me you’re afraid of her,” he added with a sneer.

“Of course not. I just thought since your father is the older man that …”

“My father is older, but not wiser,” Malcolm said. “He is more than ever dependent upon me. While he was off gallivanting through Europe with his new wife, I was expanding our business empire and seizing hold of all the controls. Our board of directors have practically forgotten what he looks like, and I’ve added some new blood since he went away. It would take him a year to understand all of the new developments.

“No,” he added more thoughtfully, “don’t feel you have to be subordinate to his wife. Remember the kind of woman who impresses my father.”

His face drawn and sad, Malcolm walked off, the shadow of his mother’s memory over him.

I said nothing more about it. I directed the maids to straighten and clean the suite next to mine and then put off thinking about the arrival of Malcolm’s father and his bride.

Perhaps I shouldn’t have, but nothing I could have done, nothing Malcolm could have done, would have prepared me for the first shock of their arrival, or prepared Malcolm for an even greater one.