Sally looked from her grandfather Franklin to her grandmother Olivia. She’d seen them two or three times a year every year of her life, except this past year.
Their downstairs maid, Cecilia, had let her in, not blinked an eye at her huge man’s coat over the too tight blouse and jeans, and calmly led her to the informal study at the back of the house. Her grandparents were watching Seinfeld on TV.
Cecilia didn’t announce her, just left her there and quietly closed the door. Sally didn’t say anything for a long time. She just stood there, listening to her grandfather give an occasional chuckle. Her grandmother had a book on her lap, but she wasn’t reading, she was watching TV as well. They were both seventy-six, in excellent health, and enjoyed the Jumby Bay private resort island off Antigua twice a year.
Sally waited for a commercial, then said, “Hello, Grandfather, Grandmother.”
Her grandmother’s head jerked around, and she cried out, “Susan!”
Her grandfather said, “Is that really you, Susan? By all that’s holy, my poor child, whatever are you doing here?”
Neither of them moved from the sofa. They seemed nailed to their seats. Her grandmother’s book slid from her lap to the beautiful Tabriz carpet.
Sally took a step toward them. “I hoped you could give me some money. There are a lot of people looking for me, and I need to hide someplace. I only have about seventeen dollars.”
Franklin Harrison rose slowly. He was wearing a smoking jacket and an ascot—she hadn’t known those things were still even made. She suddenly had an image of him wearing the same thing when she’d been a very young girl. She remembered how he’d held her and let her stroke the soft silk of the ascot. His white hair was thick and wavy, his eyes a dark blue, his cheekbones high, but his mouth was small and tight. It seemed smaller and tighter now.
Olivia Harrison rose as well, straightening the silk dress she was wearing. She held out her hand. “Susan, dear, why aren’t you with that lovely Doctor Beadermeyer? You didn’t escape again, did you? That’s not a good thing for you, dear, not good for you at all, particularly with all the scandal that your father’s death has produced.”
“He didn’t just die, Grandmother, he was murdered.”
“Yes, we know. All of us have suffered. But now we’re concerned about you, Susan. Your mother has told us how much Doctor Beadermeyer has done for you, how much better you’ve gotten. We met him once and were very impressed with him. Wasn’t that nice of him to come to Philadelphia to meet us? You are better, aren’t you, Susan? You aren’t still seeing things that aren’t there, are you? You’re not still blaming people for things they didn’t do?”
“No, Grandmother. I never did any of those things.” Strange how neither of them wanted to come close to her.
“You know, dear,” her grandmother continued in that gentle voice of hers that masked pure iron, “your grandfather and I have discussed this, and we hate to say it, but it’s possible that you’re like your uncle Geoffrey. Your illness is probably hereditary, and so it isn’t really your fault. Let me call Doctor Beadermeyer, dear.”
Sally could only stare at her grandmother. “Uncle Geoffrey was born with Down’s syndrome. It has nothing to do with mental illness.”
“Yes, but it perhaps shows that instability can be somewhat genetic, passed down from a mother or a father to the daughter. But that’s not important. What’s important is getting you back to that nice sanitarium so Doctor Beadermeyer can treat you. Before your father died, he called us every week to tell us how much better you were getting. Well, there were weeks with setbacks, but he said that in the main, you were improving with the new drug therapies.”
What could she say to that? Tell them all the truth as she remembered it and watch their faces go from disbelief to fury on her account? Not likely.
She saw the years upon years of inflexibility, the utter rigidity, in her grandmother. She remembered what Aunt Amabel had told her about when Noelle had come home, beaten by her husband, when Sally was just a baby. How they hadn’t believed Noelle.
It had always been there, of course, this rigidity, but since Sally had seen her grandmother so infrequently, she’d never had it turned on her. More clearly than ever, Sally could see now how her grandmother had treated her daughter Noelle when she’d come here begging for help. She shuddered.
“Well,” her grandfather said, all hale and hearty, so good-natured, so weak, “it’s good to see you, dear. I know you don’t have time to stay, do you? Why not let us send you back to Washington? Like your grandmother said, this Beadermeyer fellow seemed to be doing you a great deal of good.”