Whom could you trust?
It suddenly occurred to me, came to me like an electric shock—that quick, that stinging, that true.
There was only one person whose love Christopher could ever trust.
Cathy.
She was the only one left.
Momma had left us many gifts, gifts to buy us off, to make us forget how she had deserted us. What surprised me most about the gifts for Cathy and me were how they revealed what she saw in and thought of us. It was as if in her mind, we were exactly as young as we had been the day we were brought to Foxworth Hall. Maybe that was her way of forgetting all that had happened to us since. With a pile of gifts, she could swipe away the torture, the starvation, the punishments, and the lack of sun and exercise we had endured. She could make herself feel better about what she had done if we would indulge in these gifts of candy and games and new clothing. Oh, we would forgive her.
Cathy refused to accept it. She looked as defiant as ever. She didn’t understand that if I joined her and kept up our defiance and anger, the twins would suffer the worst. I bawled her out for her self-pity, and she ran up to the attic. I thought I would let her stew in her own juices for a while, and I didn’t go after her. I played with the twins. I could hear the music upstairs and her dancing. Good, I thought. At least she was getting it out of her system. I thought she would come down for dinner finally, but she didn’t. I put aside food for her. Still, she didn’t return. Finally, I went up to see what she was doing. I found her lying out on the roof. She was in her ballerina costume, so I knew she had to be cold. I brought her a woolen jacket, spread it over her, and lay down beside her. I knew she had to wind down from her fury herself. No words I could say now would matter.
“I almost jumped,” she said.
“What?”
“I was going to jump off this roof. I would have, too, but I realized Momma probably wouldn’t care, and they’d probably say some crazy girl came here, climbed up, and jumped.”
“Of course she’d care,” I said. “No matter what, you’re still her daughter.”
“Right, sure. Then I thought, what if I was just injured but so badly that I couldn’t dance?”
“Very likely,” I told her.
“Then I thought I would live to someday trap and torture our grandmother and mother just like they’ve done to us.”
“Oh, Cathy, it doesn’t do any good to think these terrible thoughts. You’ll end up with a sour-looking face forever, and the acid of hate will eat you up inside.”
She looked at me and snuggled closer. I put my arm around her, and we both gazed up at the stars. I told her I had saved her some dinner and some candy, which I knew she wanted, even though she pretended not to.
“Don’t ever wish yourself dead,” I told her. “No matter what, we must think about surviving.”
I told her we’d get out someday soon, and the twins would need her to be their mother. She laughed about our mother, but bitterly, and I told her the truth. I told her I knew our mother would always think of herself first and us second, but that was all right, because I would always look after her. She started to cry and told me she was sorry she had all those bad thoughts and she wouldn’t think about death anymore. She pleaded with me to do something.
“Remember what Daddy told us often,” she said. “God helps those who help themselves.”
“I’ll think about it,” I said. “But she might be telling us the truth this time. We might be close, and any day now, we could all come into that fortune.”
She turned away. I kissed her cheek. She closed her eyes.
She’s right, a voice inside me said, but another said, What if you ruined everything after all this time and suffering? How would you feel then?
Somehow, some way, I had to find enough strength to go on, strength for all of us.
“No one really knows what these kids suffered up there,” Kane said with disgust when he stopped reading. “I mean, all I’ve ever heard or read was that they were locked away for some time, but how they were treated by their own damn family, the crap they went through, these details . . . it makes me want to throw up.”
“Horrible,” I said. He looked lost in thought. I glanced at my watch. “We’d better go down. It’s getting late, and I have some things I have to do before my father gets home.”
He really looked upset enough not to argue about reading a little longer. He nodded, and we organized the attic again. It didn’t take long. We hadn’t moved much this time. We didn’t even open the windows for a little fresh air, because Kane had been so eager to start. He followed me down to my room, and I slipped the diary under my pillow.
“Don’t you have a better place to hide it?” he asked. “I mean, if we should lose it now, I think I’d go bonkers not having reached the end.”
“It’s as safe as anywhere there. We don’t have a maid,” I said. “I make my own bed, clean my own room.”
“I wasn’t thinking of that,” he said, lowering his gaze to avoid mine.
“Despite how he feels about it, my father would never take it away,” I told him. In the beginning, I wasn’t so confident, but I was now, now that my father had seen how important it was to me. I wasn’t surprised that Kane was skeptical about it, though. His parents would probably break promises as easily as bending straws. “Trust me, Kane.”
“Okay.”
We went downstairs. He paused at the door, and I could see something else was bothering him. Even though he was looking right at me, he wasn’t seeing me. He was too deep in thought. “What are you thinking?” I asked.
“I was wondering . . .”
“What?” I followed quickly when he looked like he was about to change his mind about telling me.
“I hope you don’t think less of me because of what I told you up there about my mother, the reason she became pregnant, all of that.”
“Why would I think less of you? You didn’t do anything wrong. If anything, you’re the victim. I think less of your mother and father. I’ll say that. I’d even tell them.”
He smiled. “I bet you would.” He kissed me. It was a thank-you kiss, quick, but a little static electricity snapped, and we both laughed. “I’m a shocking guy,” he said.
Just as I opened the door, the house phone rang. “Maybe it’s my father,” I said.
Kane waited while I went to the phone. It wasn’t my father. It was my aunt Barbara.
“Everything’s changed. I feel very good,” she said. “I’m coming for Thanksgiving. I’ll stay until Saturday.”
“That’s wonderful, Aunt Barbara.”
I copied down her flight number and arrival time and told Kane.
He could see how excited and happy I was, but he didn’t smile or look happy for me. “She’s flying in tomorrow?”
“That’s the flight she could get.”
“We probably won’t get together on Sunday,” he said mournfully.
“Oh, you can come over when she’s here.”
“I don’t mean that,” he said.
I realized what he meant. I just didn’t want to acknowledge it, to confirm that reading the diary was more important than anything else to him now, even just seeing me. For a moment, I had the crazy idea that once we had finished it, he would break up with me.
As weird as it might seem, that idea reminded me of the Arabian Nights. A Persian king, shocked to discover that his new bride was unfaithful, had her executed and then began to marry virgins, only to execute each the following day. It went on until he married Scheherazade, who began telling him a story without giving him the end. It went on and on for a thousand and one nights, because as long as she kept from revealing the ending, he didn’t execute her. Would Kane and I go on and on for our thousand and one nights and then stop when we reached the ending?
Maybe there was no ending.
“We’re not going anywhere, Kane, and neither is that diary. There’s no rush. Stop worrying.”
“Right. I just hope it doesn’t t
ake us as long to finish it as it took them to get out,” he said. Then he realized he was being too intense and laughed. “Poor joke. Sorry. Do I pick you up in the morning?”
“No, leave it like it is for now,” I told him, which was another thing he didn’t want to hear. “Especially with my aunt arriving,” I added, to make him feel better about it. “I’m thinking I might need my car after school if I have to pick her up.”
“I’d be glad to do that with you.”
“I know. I just . . . just want some time alone with her. We don’t see each other that often.”
“Okay,” he said, and started for his car. He looked so tentative, so unsure of himself suddenly. At this moment, at least, he wasn’t the Kane Hill everyone was used to seeing. I knew he was still regretting telling me about his parents and him. It’s the magic of the diary, I thought. It makes us tell each other secrets we otherwise wouldn’t.
I smiled and waved, and he smiled back. He drove off slowly, looking like he was still in deep thought. I hoped it wasn’t so deep that he would drive carelessly.
I felt like my emotions were stuck on a yo-yo. Upstairs in the attic, we were awash in dark, sad, and troubling events, and then, as fast as a yo-yo could come up, my aunt Barbara’s phone call raised me to ecstatic happiness. This would be a real Thanksgiving for us after all, with her and my father telling family stories.
I should do something to dress up the house, I thought, make it more festive. We had some Thanksgiving decorations from years past buried in a laundry-room closet. My father wouldn’t think of it, but I would create a centerpiece for our table. Perhaps Aunt Barbara would want to help me do that. I knew just where we could get some rustic elements like beeswax candles and gourds and then do a flower arrangement of roses, hydrangeas, some dahlias, and a few sprigs of fall greenery. We hadn’t put a pumpkin out this Halloween, but I thought I’d get one now.
I hurried to call my father. I knew how pleased he would be and how, for a while, at least, the holidays would ring true for us again. Even though Todd and his family and Mrs. Osterhouse were here, there were still those moments when everyone else talked about their families and he and I listened with frozen smiles on our faces, afraid to remember too much. I was really excited about this Thanksgiving now.
I knew Kane didn’t like it, but the Dollanganger children would have to wait.
They had waited so long. Another pause for another holiday wouldn’t matter now.
My father’s voice reflected the same joy I felt. He had tried not to show it, but I saw how disappointed he was when Aunt Barbara had told him she wasn’t coming. Now I wished that somehow Uncle Tommy could be with us, too. The last time I remembered the four of us together was at my mother’s funeral. “Weddings and funerals,” my father told me, “famous for bringing in the strays.”
“We have enough food for five more guests, probably,” my father said, “but I know she loves that marshmallow sweet potato dish. I wasn’t planning on doing it, so we’ll have to get the marshmallows later.”
“I can pick her up,” I said. “She flies in about a half hour after school ends.”
“Yes, that might work,” he said. “I have a few tricky things to do here before we think about breaking for Thanksgiving. I’ll be home soon. I’ve got those pork chops calling for hungry mouths.”
“Yes, I hear them screaming in the refrigerator,” I told him, and he laughed.
It was so good to laugh, to feel hopeful and happy. We were getting the Dollanganger children’s tragedy almost blow-by-blow from Christopher in his diary, but I still couldn’t imagine being shut up without the love of family for so long.
Even a day was too long for me.
* * *
Just as it was before most holidays, the excitement was explosive at school. Voices were louder, everyone walked faster, teachers could feel their students chafing at the bit, every bell that rang was drawing us all closer and closer to the one that would open the doors and let us all out, teachers, students, administrators, and janitors, all rushing toward good food and good company. I felt sorry for the building left so deserted and dark behind us. It looked like an orphan.
Just as they were yesterday, my friends and Kane’s were still curious about the way he was behaving. He was so much quieter. His smiles were rarer than his laughter, and even when he was with just me, he seemed somewhere else, his eyes vacant. He didn’t want to walk with anyone else or sit at a particular table with his buddies. When I was in the girls’ bathroom, Missy Meyer, who was in Kane’s English class, made a point of telling me how annoyed Mr. Feldman became when Kane’s response to a question was a sharp “I don’t know.”
“ ‘You should know,’ Mr. Feldman told him. He acts like he’s angry at everyone for something. What happened to him? Did he have some big fight with his parents or something? Are you two going to break up?”
“No,” I said with surgical finality, and washed my hands quickly.
She hovered, persistent. “So what’s the matter with him? You must notice it, too.”
“Whatever it is, it’s personal,” I said. “Get on with your life.”
I wasn’t usually as curt or nasty with the girls in my class, even Tina Kennedy, but I didn’t know what else to say or how else to get them off the topic. I was certainly not going to tell them he was disturbed about things he had read in Christopher Dollanganger’s diary. However, that thought gave me an idea.
The next time Kane and I were alone and far enough away for anyone else to hear me speak, I told him his behavior was attracting unwanted attention to us both. He seemed genuinely surprised, like someone who was told he was sleepwalking.
“What behavior?”
“I see how you are, Kane, and I know why. Try to do what I do. Now, especially because of the details we’ve learned, I basically put the diary out of my mind until we go up to my attic. You can’t keep thinking about it, ignoring your classwork, ignoring your friends, even ignoring me most of the time.”
“I didn’t realize . . .”
“You’re making me regret reading the diary with you,” I said tersely. “Everyone thinks you’re sulking about something, and that perks up their curiosity about us.”
He nodded. “You’re right.”
“Pretend if you have to, but don’t attract any attention we don’t want. It could get back to your parents and then maybe my father.”
“Understood.” He looked around and then straightened his posture and smiled. “Back to Kane Hill.”
“Good.”
He did make an effort during the day, and between the last two classes of the day, he spent some time joking with his buddies. At the end of the day, we made plans for when we would see each other over the long holiday weekend. We decided to plan on something for Sunday. Our teachers were merciful this time and didn’t assign a great deal to be done before we returned.
I went off to the airport to greet my aunt Barbara. I spotted her instantly as she came through the entrance to the gate. She was an inch or so shorter than my father and had hair just a shade darker than mine. She kept it cropped short around the edges of her ears but held on to her bangs. At forty-one, she still had what my father called “her girlish figure,” because she was “Lauren Bacall slim.” She had dainty, diminutive features, highlighted by exquisite hazel eyes. Maybe she knew that because most people don’t look so directly at you when they speak to you or when you speak to them. My father said she always had that New York arrogance, that look that said, “I can survive well in the city that never sleeps. I can hold my own on subways and on crowded streets. I can deal with the traffic and the noise, so just don’t mess with me.”
When my father told her all that to her face, she simply replied, “So? Don’t mess with me.”
There was a part of me that envied her and wanted to be more like her, but there was a stronger part that demanded that I be softer, more demure, closer to how I remember my mother. Aunt Barbara always looked like she had something t
o prove. I knew about her failed love affairs and thought that a woman like her had to find a man who was so self-confident that he was never threatened by her or one who was so weak he’d permit himself to be broken and trained like some wild horse. Somehow, I thought, Aunt Barbara would not want either kind, and therein lay her doom when it came to romance.
“Look at you!” she screamed, rushing toward me to kiss and embrace me. “You look like you’ve grown years since I last saw you, Kristin.” She held me out at arm’s length and loaded her face with suspicion. “Have we—what did you once tell me you called it?—crossed the Rio Grande?”
My face grew so flushed that I thought even the most anxious-to-be-home passengers would pause and look. It was just like my New York aunt to get right to the bottom line. It was why my father had thought of her immediately when he concluded that I had to learn the facts of life quickly. My father said everyone in New York City lived at twice the normal speed. They didn’t stroll in New York, he said. “They walk those sidewalks as if they believe the city might roll them up at any moment.”
“I’m sorry,” Aunt Barbara said immediately. “It’s none of my business. You’re entitled to your secrets, as entitled as I am to mine.” She scrunched up her nose. “When your father’s not looking, we’ll get drunk, and you’ll tell me anyway,” she said.
I laughed, but I wondered if I would.
“Speaking of him, how is my Captain Queeg of a brother?” she asked. I picked up her carryon, and we started out of the terminal. I had seen The Caine Mutiny and knew that Queeg was the no-nonsense captain who went off the deep end, chasing down missing strawberries and clicking steel balls in his hand.
“He’s a pussycat, Aunt Barbara.”
Christopher's Diary: Echoes of Dollanganger Page 21