《玫瑰花园》Longley

1、1

　　1.
　　They rode through the lush farm country in the middle ofautumn,through quaint old towns whose streets showed thebrilliant colors of turning trees.They said little.Of the three,the father was most visibly strained.Now and then he wouldplace bits of talk into the long silences,random and inoppor-tune things with which he himself seemed to have no pa-tience.Once he demanded of the girl whose face he hadcaught in the rear-view mirror:"You know,don't you,thatI was a fool when I married—a damn young fool who didn'tknow about bringing up children—about being a father?”His defense was half attack,but the girl responded toneither.The mother suggested that they stop for coffee.Thiswas really like a pleasure trip,she said,in the fall of the yearwith their lovely young daughter and such beautiful countryto see.
　　They found a roadside diner and turned in.The girl gotout quickly and walked toward the rest rooms behind thebuilding.As she walked the heads of the two parents turnedquickly to look after her.Then the father said,"It's allright.”
　　“Should we wait here or go in?”the mother asked aloud,but to herself.She was the more analytical of the two,plan-ning effects in advance—how to act and what to say—andher husband let himself be guided by her because it was easyand she was usually right.Now,feeling confused and lonely,he let her talk on—planning and figuring—because it washer way of taking comfort.It was easier for him to be silent.
　　“If we stay in the car,"she was saying,"we can be withher if she needs us.Maybe if she comes out and doesn't seeus...But then it should look as if we trust her.She must feelthat we trust her....”
　　They decided to go into the diner,being very careful andobviously usual about their movements.When they hadseated themselves in a booth by the windows,they could seeher coming back around the corner of the building and mov-ing toward them;they tried to look at her as if she were astranger,someone else's daughter to whom they had onlynow been introduced,a Deborah not their own.They stud-ied the graceless adolescent body and found it good,the faceintelligent and alive,but the expression somehow too youngfor sixteen.
　　They were used to a certain bitter precocity in their child,but they could not see it now in the familiar face that theywere trying to convince themselves they could estrange.Thefather kept thinking:How could strangers be right?She'sours...all her life.They don't know her.It's a mistake—amistake!
　　The mother was watching herself watching her daughter.“On my surface ...there must be no sign showing,no seam—a perfect surface.”And she smiled.
　　In the evening they stopped at a small city and ate at itsbest restaurant,in a spirit of rebellion and adventure be-cause they were not dressed for it.After dinner,they wentto a movie.Deborah seemed delighted with the evening.They joked through dinner and the movie,and afterward,heading out farther into the country darkness,they talkedabout other trips,congratulating one another on their recol-lection of the little funny details of past vacations.When theystopped at a motel to sleep,Deborah was given a room toherself,another special privilege for which no one knew,noteven the parents who loved her,how great was the need.
　　When they were sitting together in their room,Jacob and Esther Blau looked at each other from behind their faces,and wondered why the poses did not fall away,now that theywere alone,so that they might breathe out,relax,and findsome peace with each other.In the next room,a thin wallaway,they could hear their daughter undressing for bed.They did not admit to each other,even with their eyes,thatall night they would be guarding against a sound other thanher breathing in sleep—a sound that might mean...danger.Only once,before they lay down for their dark watch,didJacob break from behind his face and whisper hard in hiswife's ear,"Why are we sending her away?"
　　“The doctors say she has to go,”Esther whispered back,lying rigid and looking toward the silent wall.
　　“The doctors.”Jacob had never wanted to put them allthrough the experience,even from the beginning.
　　"It's a good place,"she said,a little louder because shewanted to make it so.
　　"They call it a mental hospital,but it's a place,Es,a placewhere they put people away.How can it be a good place fora girl—almost a child!”
　　“Oh,God,Jacob,”she said,"how much did it take out ofus to make the decision?If we can't trust the doctors,whocan we ask or trust?Dr.Lister says that it's the only helpshe can get now.We have to try it!"Stubbornly she turnedher head again,toward the wall.
　　He was silent,conceding to her once more;she was somuch quicker with words than he.They said good night;each pretended to sleep,and lay,breathing deeply to deludethe other,eyes aching through the darkness,watching.
　　On the other side of the wall Deborah stretched to sleep.The Kingdom of Yr had a kind of neutral place which wascalled the Fourth Level.It was achieved only by accidentand could not be reached by formula or an act of will.Atthe Fourth Level there was no emotion to endure,no past orfuture to grind against.There was no memory or possessionof any self,nothing except dead facts which came unbiddenwhen she needed them and which had no feeling attached tothem.
　　Now,in bed,achieving the Fourth Level,a future was ofno concern to her.The people in the next room were sup-posedly her parents.Very well.But that was part of ashadowy world that was dissolving and now she was being flung unencumbered into a new one in which she had not theslightest concern.In moving from the old world,she wasmoving also from the intricacies of Yr's Kingdom,from theCollect of Others,the Censor,and the Yri gods.She rolledover and slept a deep,dreamless,and restful sleep.
　　In the morning the family started on its trip again.Itoccurred to Deborah,as the car pulled away from the moteland out into the sunny day,that the trip might last foreverand that the calm and marvelous freedom she felt might bea new gift from the usually too demanding gods and officesof Yr.
　　After a few hours of riding through more brown andgolden country and sun-dappled town streets,the mothersaid,"Where is the turn-off,Jacob?"
　　In Yr a voice shrieked out of the deep Pit:Innocent!Innocent!
　　From freedom,Deborah Blau smashed headlong into thecollision of the two worlds.As always before it was a weirdlysilent shattering.In the world where she was most alive,thesun split in the sky,the earth erupted,her body was torn topieces,her teeth and bones crazed and broken to fragments.In the other place,where the ghosts and shadows lived,acar turned into a side drive and down a road to where an oldred-brick building stood.It was Victorian,a little run-down,and surrounded by trees.Very good fa?ade for a madhouse.When the car stopped in front of it,she was still stunned withthe collision,and it was hard to get out of the car and walkproperly up the steps and into the building where the doctorswould be.There were bars on all the windows.Deborahsmiled slightly.It was fitting.Good.
　　When Jacob Blau saw the bars,he paled.In the face ofthis,it was no longer possible to say to himself "rest home"or“convalescent care.”The truth was as bare and cold forhim as the iron.Esther tried to reach him with her mind:We should have expected them.Why should we be sosurprised?
　　They waited,Esther Blau trying still to be gay now andthen.Except for the barred windows the room was like anordinary waiting room and she joked about the age of themagazines there.From a distance down the hall they heardthe grate of a large key in a lock and again Jacob stiffened, moaning softly,"Not for her—our little Debby...."He didnot see the sudden,ruthless look in his daughter's face.
　　The doctor walked down the hall,and steeled himself alittle before entering the room.He was a squared-off,blunt-bodied man and now he dived into the room where theiranguish seemed to hang palpably.It was an old building,afrightening place to come to,he knew.He would try to getthe girl away soon and the parents comforted enough toleave her,feeling that they had done the right thing.
　　Sometimes in this room,at the last minute,the parents,husbands,wives,turned with loathing from the truth ofthe awful,frightening sickness.Sometimes they took theirstrange-eyed ones away again.It was fear,or bad judgmentwell meant enough,or—his eyes appraised the two parentsagain—that straying grain of jealousy and anger that wouldnot let the long line of misery be severed a generation beyondtheir own.He tried to be compassionate but not foolish,andsoon he was able to send for a nurse to take the girl to thewards.She looked like a shock victim.As she left,he feltthe wrench of her going in the two parents.
　　He promised them that they could say good-by to herbefore they left,and surrendered them to the secretary withher pad of information to be gotten.When he saw themagain,leaving after their good-by,they,too,looked likepeople in shock,and he thought briefly:wound-shock-thecutting-away of a daughter.
　　Jacob Blau was not a man who studied himself,or wholooked back over his life to weigh and measure its shape.Attimes,he suspected his wife of being voracious,picking overher passions again and again with endless words and words.But part of this feeling was envy.He,too,loved his daugh-ters,though he had never told them so;he,too,had wishedconfidences,but was never able to open his own heart;and,because of this,they had also been kept from venturing theirsecrets.His oldest daughter had just parted from him,al-most eagerly,in that grim place of locks and bars,turningaway from his kiss,stepping back.She had not seemed towant comfort from him,almost shrinking from touch.Hewas a man of tempers and now he needed a rage that wascleansing,simple,and direct.But the anger here was solaced with pity,fear,and love that he did not know how he could free himself of it.It lay writhing and stinking inside
　　him,and he began to feel the old,slow waking ache of hisulcer.