Read Online Cutler 03 - Twilight's Child by authors_sort - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: authors_sort
Tags: english eBooks
Ads: Link
rarely came home. He was doing exceedingly well at college, making the dean's list, becoming president of his fraternity and captain of his rowing team. Occasionally, when Mother decided to act like a mother, she would show me and Mrs. Boston some of the clippings about him in the college newspaper.
Neither Philip nor Clara Sue seemed concerned or interested in their father's increasingly bizarre behavior and physical degeneration. I could tell that they both viewed him as an embarrassment. I tried bringing him out of his depression by asking him to do real work from time to time and bringing-him real problems, but he rarely completed any task, and eventually someone else had to do it.
The only time he seemed to snap out of the doldrums was when Sissy or I brought Christie around to see him. He would permit her to crawl around his cluttered office and touch everything. By the time she was fourteen months old she was picking things up and holding them out, saying, "Waa?" We all knew that meant she was asking, "What is this?" Randolph had great patience for her. I realized she was providing him the only respite in his otherwise dark and dreary day. He would answer every time. She could spend hours in his office questioning him about every single item, from a desk weight to a small baseball trophy he had won in high school. He would sit there and talk to her as if she were twenty years old, explaining the history behind everything, and Christie would stare at him, wide-eyed, her body still, listening as if she understood.
Mr. Dorfman had been right about the hotel running itself. It was as if Grandmother Cutler had tossed a ball into space and it continued to fly under that initial momentum. Of course, guest after guest pulled me aside to tell me how much he or she missed her. I would have to pretend I did, too. What did interest and fascinate me were some of the stories the old-timers told about her. Some of these guests went back thirty years or more at the hotel.
The woman they described was clearly a different person. Their descriptions were filled with adjectives like "warm" and "loving." Everyone talked about how she made that extra effort to make him or her feel at home. One elderly lady told me that coming to Cutler's Cove was like "visiting with my own family." How could she have put on one face with these people and another, drastically different face with me and with Mother? I wondered.
Despite my distaste for her, I couldn't help being intrigued, and I would often spend hours thumbing through papers in the file cabinets, reading letters from guests and copies of letters she had sent to guests, searching for clues, for an understanding of the woman who loomed so hatefully in my mind even now, nearly two years after her passing.
No one except Randolph—not even Mrs. Boston—had gone into Grandmother Cutler's room upstairs in the family section of the hotel after her death. Her things remained just as they had been the day she had died—her clothes still hung in the closets, her jewelry was still in the jewelry cases, her perfumes and powders were still on her vanity table. I never passed her closed doorway without getting a chilling feeling, and I couldn't help but want to go in and look at her possessions. It was like being fascinated with the devil. I resisted the temptation for as long as I could, and then one day I tried the door impulsively and was surprised to discover it was locked. When I asked Mrs. Boston about it, she told me it was what Randolph wanted.
"Only he has the key," she said, "which is fine with me. I don't fancy going in there," she added, and she shook her body as if just talking about Grandmother Cutler's old room filled her with bad feelings.
I left it at that. I had too many other concerns now that I was forced to take on more and more responsibility in the running of the hotel. The staff heads grew more confident in me, too, and came to me more often with their problems and
Neither Philip nor Clara Sue seemed concerned or interested in their father's increasingly bizarre behavior and physical degeneration. I could tell that they both viewed him as an embarrassment. I tried bringing him out of his depression by asking him to do real work from time to time and bringing-him real problems, but he rarely completed any task, and eventually someone else had to do it.
The only time he seemed to snap out of the doldrums was when Sissy or I brought Christie around to see him. He would permit her to crawl around his cluttered office and touch everything. By the time she was fourteen months old she was picking things up and holding them out, saying, "Waa?" We all knew that meant she was asking, "What is this?" Randolph had great patience for her. I realized she was providing him the only respite in his otherwise dark and dreary day. He would answer every time. She could spend hours in his office questioning him about every single item, from a desk weight to a small baseball trophy he had won in high school. He would sit there and talk to her as if she were twenty years old, explaining the history behind everything, and Christie would stare at him, wide-eyed, her body still, listening as if she understood.
Mr. Dorfman had been right about the hotel running itself. It was as if Grandmother Cutler had tossed a ball into space and it continued to fly under that initial momentum. Of course, guest after guest pulled me aside to tell me how much he or she missed her. I would have to pretend I did, too. What did interest and fascinate me were some of the stories the old-timers told about her. Some of these guests went back thirty years or more at the hotel.
The woman they described was clearly a different person. Their descriptions were filled with adjectives like "warm" and "loving." Everyone talked about how she made that extra effort to make him or her feel at home. One elderly lady told me that coming to Cutler's Cove was like "visiting with my own family." How could she have put on one face with these people and another, drastically different face with me and with Mother? I wondered.
Despite my distaste for her, I couldn't help being intrigued, and I would often spend hours thumbing through papers in the file cabinets, reading letters from guests and copies of letters she had sent to guests, searching for clues, for an understanding of the woman who loomed so hatefully in my mind even now, nearly two years after her passing.
No one except Randolph—not even Mrs. Boston—had gone into Grandmother Cutler's room upstairs in the family section of the hotel after her death. Her things remained just as they had been the day she had died—her clothes still hung in the closets, her jewelry was still in the jewelry cases, her perfumes and powders were still on her vanity table. I never passed her closed doorway without getting a chilling feeling, and I couldn't help but want to go in and look at her possessions. It was like being fascinated with the devil. I resisted the temptation for as long as I could, and then one day I tried the door impulsively and was surprised to discover it was locked. When I asked Mrs. Boston about it, she told me it was what Randolph wanted.
"Only he has the key," she said, "which is fine with me. I don't fancy going in there," she added, and she shook her body as if just talking about Grandmother Cutler's old room filled her with bad feelings.
I left it at that. I had too many other concerns now that I was forced to take on more and more responsibility in the running of the hotel. The staff heads grew more confident in me, too, and came to me more often with their problems and
Similar Books
