Cutler 03 - Twilight's Child

twins, Richard and Melanie, sat in the first row. They wore matching outfits and clapped vigorously, their little palms turning red. Afterward we served tea and cakes. Jimmy and I were so proud of Christie and the adorable way she accepted all the compliments, batted her eyelashes at the older gentlemen and permitted their wives to kiss her on the cheek.
    "She works a party better than Mrs. Cutler used to," Mr. Updike remarked. "She's a natural hotel owner."
    I laughed, but I thought I wanted better things for her. She was too special.
    In late spring Daddy Longchamp, Edwina and Gavin made their second visit. Gavin was very excited about their return and about being with Christie and Fern and the twins, all of whom he considered family now. Daddy told us how he bragged about his brother's and stepsister's big hotel back east.
    "He's been asking regularly to come back since the day after we returned from the first trip," Daddy said.
    Fern didn't behave any more warmly toward Daddy Longchamp. If anything, I thought she was ashamed of him. She sat and answered his questions politely because we were watching her, but the moment she could, she excused herself and went off to talk on the phone to her new boyfriend.
    "She's getting more and more beautiful," Daddy Longchamp said. "I know she's a handful for you, but you and Jimmy are doin' a great job with her, Dawn. I'm mighty proud how you all turned out," he added.
    So many good things were happening to us, one after the other, that I kept looking around corners and waiting for that brisk, cold wind to come or the dark clouds to return. Jimmy scolded me about it.
    "You've got to stop looking for trouble, Dawn," he lectured. "If there's trouble ahead, it doesn't need you to find it. It will find us, but until it does, let's be happy. Let's enjoy our lives.
    "You still don't let yourself relax," he chastised. "Being uptight and nervous makes it harder for the good things to happen," he added. I knew what he meant. The doctor, on more than one occasion, had placed the blame for my not getting pregnant again on my emotional and mental attitudes.
    "I'm trying, Jimmy," I said. "I am. I'm just . . . cautious," I said.
    "Well, throw caution to the wind for a while, will you? You're working too hard anyway," he complained.
    I couldn't deny that. Our expansion of the hotel had proven successful. We were serving an additional one hundred and twenty-five people, and that meant we had to increase the staff and everything that went along with it. Almost everyone's responsibilities grew, not just mine.
    In late spring, right around the time Daddy Longchamp came with his family, we booked our first convention. It wasn't a very big one, but it made Mr. Dorfman very nervous nevertheless. It was the most dramatic change I had made at the hotel, because it was something Grandmother Cutler had fought doing for years and years. As Mr. Dorfman inspected and watched everything occur I could see the tension in his eyes. Every once in a while he would look behind his back, as if he expected Grandmother Cutler to come flying down a corridor and furiously chew him out for permitting such a thing.
    But it proved successful, and Philip decided he would make conventions a major part of his responsibility. At our weekly meetings we were already talking about another expansion, this time building onto the ballroom so we could book larger and larger groups.
    The only truly dark and depressing note in our lives these days came from Beulla Woods. Shortly after Clara Sue's death a dramatic change came over Mother. She began to keep more to herself. Her extravagant formal dinners diminished until she rarely held any, and she was hardly seen going anywhere with Bronson. There were physical changes in her as well. She stopped dyeing her hair and permitted the gray strands to appear. She ceased the multitudes of beauty treatments, the mud baths and facials, and the once-endless stream of beauty experts at Beulla Woods came to an end.
    I was so busy these days that I didn't even notice how few times she phoned me and how long it had been since I had last seen her, but one day Bronson telephoned to beg me to visit and see if there was anything I could do to pull her out of the doldrums.
    "She's back to being the emotional and psychological invalid she was when she lived at the hotel," he complained. "Some days I can't get her out of the bed, much less the room. And you wouldn't believe the weight she's