"My mother was one of those young women, wasn't she?" I asked confidently.
He stared at me blankly for a moment or so, drumming his fingertips on the arm of his chair before he got up to stand before the wide wall of windows, staring out at the gardens and beyond toward the sea. Finally he turned back to me, his eyes revealing a deep inner agony I could understand, for I recognized it as the agony a man feels when he longs for a woman who seems forever beyond his reach. I had seen this l
ook in Jimmy's eyes occasionally when we were growing up together, believing we were brother and sister, and feeling emotions and longings we thought were indecent.
"Your mother," he began, "was and still is one of the most beautiful women in Cutler's Cove, and like all beautiful women, she has a certain amount of vanity."
"Mother," I said dryly, "has far more than her fair share of vanity."
He started to smile but stopped and shook his head.
"I won't deny that, but I understand why it is so." He paused for a moment and thought. "You don't know much about your mother's family, her childhood, do you?"
"No. She never talks about it, and whenever I did ask her questions she always answered quickly, impatiently, as if I were annoying her, so I stopped. All I really know," I said, "is that she was an only child, and that both her parents are dead."
"Yes, she was an only child, a young girl who adored—no, practically worshipped her father. But Simon Thomas was a rake if there ever was one and didn't give her the attention she needed so desperately. His reputation for womanizing was always a topic of conversation. Her poor mother suffered so and tried to pretend all was well. Laura Sue," he stressed, "comes from a world of illusion and deceit, distrust and betrayal.
"Consequently," he continued, his eyes serious, "she craved attention, craved love, and was far more demanding than any other woman I knew.
"But I was desperately in love with her from the first moment I set eyes on her. I remember," he said, a smile returning to those aqua eyes, "parking my car at the corner of her street and sitting in it for hours just to catch a glimpse of her coming and going."
He paused, as if the image of my mother as a young girl was projected on the wall across from him.
"Anyway," he said, snapping out of his reverie, "I began to court her, and for a while we were quite a striking couple. But after my mother contracted a rapidly destructive blood cancer and died, I felt even more of a need to spend time with Alexandria. She was so shattered by my mother's unexpected passing."
"And your precious Laura Sue, my mother," I said, jumping ahead, "was upset about all the attention you were giving your sister?"
"Laura Sue needed a man who would make her the very center of his existence," he explained. "I wanted to be that man, desperately wanted it, but I couldn't turn my back on Alexandria."
"So Mother turned her back on you," I said. "Why do you still care for her, knowing how self-centered she is and was?" I wondered aloud. "Is love so blind? Are men really such fools?"
He laughed.
"Perhaps," he said. "But for a young woman who has suffered something of a tragic romance herself, you don't show very much compassion and understanding."
I blushed. Was he right? Was I turning into the hard, cold person Jimmy was afraid I would become?
"I'm sorry," I said.
He returned to his chair and sipped some more of his sherry. Then he leaned back and templed his hands under his chin again.
"Laura Sue went off to finishing school, and I directed all my energies into my work. I tried to hide my emotional pain from Alexandria, but she was a very perceptive person, especially when it came to anything concerning me. I know she suffered terrible guilt, thinking she was destroying my life, and she tried to get me to spend less time with her. She even begged my father to put her into a facility for the handicapped, but he was embarrassed by her illness and refused to acknowledge it.
"Not long after, I heard that Laura Sue had become engaged to Randolph Cutler. It was strange," he said, shaking his head and smiling warmly, "but it was as if a cloud had been lifted. Now that there was no longer any chance of my having Laura Sue, the torment ended for a while."
"Did you have another romance?" I asked quickly.
"Nothing serious. Perhaps I had a distrust of love by then," he added, his eyes sparkling mischievously. "It was a particularly hard period of life for me anyway. My father suffered a heart attack. He lingered for weeks in the hospital until he finally died. After his death I assumed his position in the bank.
"Now there was only Alexandria and me. But her condition was growing worse. I hired a full-time nurse, took my meals with her in her room, wheeled her about in her wheelchair whenever I could; in short, spent even more time with her, knowing her days were limited. She never complained and did all that she could to make herself less of a burden.
"Finally, one night she died in her sleep. Even in death she had this gentle smile on her lips." Tears filled his eyes and began to descend down his cheeks. He didn't wipe them away; he stared ahead as if oblivious to his own crying.
I couldn't keep back my own tears, which had begun to burn behind my eyelids. When he saw me grinding them away with my small fists, he straightened up. His tears had stopped, but the anguish in his eyes remained.
"By now, of course, Laura Sue and Randolph had married, and Philip had been born. Because the bank had such a close financial relationship to the hotel, I was often invited to dine with Mrs. Cutler and would sit at the table with her, Randolph and Laura Sue."
"That must have been difficult for you," I said, "knowing how much you had loved her."