Read Mother Nature: The Journals of Eleanor O'Kell for Free Online Page B

about getting back to work, that she can’t imagine how Imagine can get along without her. “There is just no time,” Diana says. Time is all you have, I tell her.
     
February 1, 1964
    I can’t get little Luigi out of my head. I go to bed wondering what my life would have been like with children of my own, with the love of a good man. But I think of Nancy and the Order and all the recruits who have come through my door, all the young girls who might as well be my children for all the responsibility I feel. There are so many ways to have a family in this world, and maybe my way here at the Convent is as good as any. Being an aunt is not all bad, with all the fun and none of the responsibility.
     
    March 17, 1964
    St. Patrick’s Day. Will (who else?) appears at my door very late. I open it a crack and he pushes inside. “They’re after me,” he says. Sit down, I say. “I can’t,” Will says. “There’s no time. Tom is going to kill me.” He drops a shopping bag plop on my floor. “Everything’s in there,” he says. “My manuscript and everything. All my notes.” His mind is going a mile a minute. “That’s the whole story,” Will says. “I love you. Goodbye.” He pushes forward to brush my cheek with his lips and then he’s gone.
     
March 19, 1964
    I can’t bear to read what Will left behind so I bury it at the bottom of my closet. I’m afraid that if I even chance a look I will be swept up in Will’s crazy world.
     
March 27, 1964
    A call today from one of Tom’s assistants wondering if I have been contacted by Will. “That’s none of your business,” I say. “Nor is it my brother’s business.” Tom’s assistant apologizes too unctuously, even for an underling. He says Will could be dangerous, that Tom is only trying to help. He leaves his number and I tell him I won’t be writing it down or contacting Tom again. Tom’s assistant bows so low I can hear the scraping against the floor.
     
May 19, 1964
    I have not heard from Will. I am sick with worry.
     
May 20, 1964
    “He’s nowhere to be seen,” Tom says. I don’t believe him. I don’t believe anything Tom tells me. I think Tom knows exactly where to find Will.
     
June 7, 1964
    Will calls. Finally . “I don’t remember anything,” he tells me over the phone. He’s back at the psychiatric hospital in Westchester, but he has no idea how he got there. This time they are keeping him in the part of the building with bars. There’s no more talk of saving the world. He sounds dead, drugged. No escaping this time, I tell my little brother. “Where would I escape to?” Will says.
     
June 8, 1964
    I go to Westchester to see Will. We sit in a small room with plastic chairs and he’s worse than I imagined. He stares at me, but it’s not the stare of someone who is still alive. “They shocked me,” Will says. “They hooked me up and— zzzZZZzzz .” He falls like a ball into my lap. He sobs so hard his body bounces against my legs. “Save me,” Will says. From what? I say. “I don’t remember,” he says.
     
June 10, 1964
    Becca’s been to see Will and she’s even more worried than I am. “What happened to him?” she asks me. Shock treatments, I tell her. “Like in ‘Frankenstein?’” Becca says. They hook you up, I say, and they send an electric jolt through your head. It works sometimes even though they don’t know why. “They don’t know why it works?” Becca says. I tell her God works in strange ways.
     
June 11, 1964
    It’s Eleanor, I tell Will. Eleanor . “Hello,” he says. He is slumped down into a bathrobe the color of hospital walls. He has on throwaway slippers made of crinkly paper. He is white as a ghost in the dark room. It’s me , I say. “Hello, hello,” Will says. “Whoever you are.”
     
    June 12, 1964
    What are you doing to Will? I ask Tom over the phone. “He is receiving the very best medical attention money can buy,” Tom says. What does that mean? I ask. “The latest in