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about her someday in magazines and books.
"She acted as if the clinic were a palace, her palace. She showed me about the place and introduced me to everyone, telling them I was her first high school crush. The way some of the staff members reacted to her made me think that they thought she was telling the truth. She was there because she had volunteered to be there. She did appear to have the run of the place without any restrictions.
"Toward the end of my visit, she asked me if I didn't think she had been so lucky to get out of our sleepy village and do something interesting with her life. Of course, I said yes and she told me not to worry. I'd surely find my way out as well and do something worthwhile.
"I asked her if there was anything she needed, anything she wanted. She smiled and countered with, 'But Jesse, what could I possibly want that I don't have?'
"I kissed her on the cheek and started out. Before I reached the door, she was talking and laughing with some of the staff as if my visit were nothing more than a slight interruption, as if what she had said was true, I was a young girl's infatuation, some memory pasted in an old album and basically forgotten.
"It did me a lot of good to make that visit, however. As I said, it relieved me of guilt. Maybe she knew what she was doing. Maybe that was her gift to me. I never went back, never wrote to her or called. That's why I don't know anything about her condition now. I'm sorry," he added, seeing how silent I was, "sorry that I don't have anything to tell you that would help you understand more."
"Jesse!" we heard Rachel calling
He looked at me.
I had to get it out quickly, get out what gnawed at my heart, my very soul.
"If the only explanation for what she did is madness," I said, "then I'm afraid whatever that madness was will someday awaken in me, too."
I didn't think he had ever thought I had that fear. He looked a bit shocked for a moment.
"Jesse!" Rachel called again.
"Coming!"
He stood up. "The wonder of the genetic pool is that we're all different, Alice," he said gently. "You look like her, but you're not her, and besides, you're growing up under different circumstances, different conditions. That plays a role in things as well."
He looked at the door.
"We'll talk about it some more when we can, but what you're feeling and thinking is what's worrying Grandma and Grandpa, Alice. You've got to break out of this. Get into the stream of things so you can develop all your potential."
"I know," I said. "Join clubs, make friends." "There's nothing wrong with being happy," he said, starting away.
"Unless it's all pretend," I tossed at him. He paused at the doorway.
"It won't be for you," he said. "Give yourself a chance." He nodded toward the painting I had done of the tree. "That is a remarkable piece of work for someone as young and as untrained as you are. Grandpa is right: you're going to do something with your art."
He left the door open and descended. I looked at the window again. Using my memory from the pictures, I imagined my mother standing there and listening to my father and my aunt reveal that they had determined she had fabricated the whole story and therefore had done a terrible, terrible thing The two people she had trusted and depended upon were casting her out to sea in a small boat. She would soon be at the mercy of whatever winds occurred, tossed and thrown every which way, and no one would be there to rescue her, not even her own mother. No wonder she had wandered off in a daze.
I had never met my mother, but I could cry for her, because in my mind and heart, I was crying for myself.
I rose and walked out of the attic, closing the door softly behind me. I could hear the twins below. They had wakened and were running through the house, playing some sort of hide-and-seek game with my grandfather. I quickly realized my father and Rachel were in their bedroom with the door closed. Was he already paying the price for being my father for fifteen