“Exactly why I’d like to be more of a part of your work, Daddy.”
“Yes. Well,” he said, pressing down on his knees to get himself standing. “I think you have it under control, Cassie. Why don’t you get the ball rolling? I’ll sign whatever papers need to be signed.”
“I’ll get on it right away,” she said. “Don’t you give it any more thought, Daddy. You have enough to think about.”
“Thank you, honey. Call me if you need anything.”
“No, Daddy, thank you,” Cassie said, going to him. “Thank you for being so perfect.”
Then she did something I rarely saw her do. Cassie embraced him and pressed her face against his chest. He looked at me, a little surprised, and slowly brought his hand up to stroke her hair. When she pulled back, he kissed her forehead. I didn’t move a muscle.
He smiled at me and started out
“Have a good day, Teddy,” Cassie called.
He turned, a bit surprised.
“I know Mother always said that to you,” she told him. “I know how much you would miss it.”
Daddy looked as if he would burst into tears for a moment, then swallowed hard, nodded, and quickly left. Cassie stood looking after him. She stared so long at the doorway I thought something was wrong, but she finally turned to me.
“Well, now, I have a lot to do today. I’m going to the school to see the principal and inform him of Daddy’s decisions and mine. Then I’ll go see Mrs. Underwood and make the arrangements for you. In the meantime you should start on the house. With all of those hypocrites traipsing through it during our period of mourning, we have a lot of cleaning to do. Every room, every floor, every window needs to be cleaned. The vacuum cleaner will probably be filled up. Throw out all these flowers, too.”
“The flowers? But they’re still quite alive.”
“They’re flowers for the dead, Semantha. Get rid of them. It makes the place smell like a funeral home. Just do a good job cleaning up. Don’t touch Daddy’s bedroom, however. I’ll do that myself.”
She started away, paused, and turned back to me.
“You know, Semantha, it wouldn’t be so terrible if once in a while, you thanked me for doing so much for you. I don’t desperately need thank-yous, but it wouldn’t be so terrible.”
“I’m sorry, Cassie. Everything is happening so fast. Thank you.”
“Yes,” she said. “When something terrible happens, it’s always best to take strong, quick, decisive action. You should make mental notes. I’m going to arrange for your tutor, but your real education comes from what you will learn here in this house.”
I was surprised she hadn’t added from me, but she paused and thought again, and then she suddenly smiled.
“Daddy looked so pleased, didn’t he? He was so down, so defeated when he came to breakfast this morning, but he left with some bounce in his step, didn’t he?”
Bounce in his step? When she had said good-bye to him the way Mother used to, he looked terrible. What bounce?
“Didn’t he?” she repeated, her eyes wide.
“Yes, Cassie.”
She smiled.“I knew this would all work out. We’ll be fine. We’ll never stop being the Heavenstones.”
With that, she left to get dressed to do her tasks, and I, still quite stunned by the lightning-quick changes about to occur in our lives, moved like a snail to begin the chores Cassie had dictated. I didn’t resent it. Having something to do, so much to do, kept me from crying all day.
I lost track of time and even forgot to eat lunch. Hours later, I was in the dining room polishing the furniture when I heard Cassie call to me. I stepped out and saw her standing in the entryway with a very tall, thin woman. Her hair, the color of pewter, was sharply cut at a length just under her ears. She wore no makeup, not even a touch of lipstick, and the one-piece dark-blue dress she wore was ankle-length. It had a high collar with prominent pearl buttons down the middle. As I drew closer, I saw that she had a pretty face despite her thinness. I thought she had an interesting color of blue in her eyes, too. In the brighter light, they looked silvery.
“Mrs. Underwood,” Cassie said, “this is my sister, Semantha. Semantha, I wanted you to meet Mrs. Underwood today. She will begin with you tomorrow, but I wanted her to become familiar with our home and you. I thought it would be best if you worked in our den, Mrs. Underwood. Semantha will show you to it, and you two can get acquainted.”
Cassie turned back to me.“Mrs. Underwood will consult directly with me about your progress, Semantha. Please remember that your father and I are making these arrangements to give you an opportunity to improve your work and avoid all the unpleasantness at the public school. Don’t disappoint us.”
I stared at her. Between the time she had left the house and when she had returned, Cassie seemed to have undergone a complete change. I didn’t notice that she had put on one of Mother’s dresses. Now she had her hair even more like Mother’s, and if I was not mistaken, she was carrying one of Mother’s purses. Was it because of all this that she tried to sound more like my mother than my sister?
“Okay,” I said. Mrs. Underwood smiled at me, and I smiled back. “I’ll show you around the house,” I told her.
“Yes, you two get acquainted,” Cassie said. “I’ll be down in a while, Semantha, and we’ll start preparing dinner for Daddy. I called him twice today, by the way. He’s doing all right.” She turned to Mrs. Underwood. “My father comes from a family in which all of the men had grit, strong backbones. We’re very proud of who and what we are. That’s why we’re hoping Semantha makes some significant improvements working with you. In fact, we expect it.”
“I’ll do my best for her,” Mrs. Underwood said, but I sensed a discordant note, a slight darkening in her eyes as, if she thought she had just been threatened.
“Sometimes,” Cassie said, now looking directly at me, “we have to do better than our best. See you both soon.” She went to the stairway.
“This is quite a house,” Mrs. Underwood said.
“My triple great-grandfather built it.”
“Triple great? How quaint. It is a bit much to say great-great-great-grandfather, I suppose.”
“Cassie made that up.”
Mrs. Underwood nodded and continued to look around. I gave her a tour, pointing out the ancestral portraits and identifying some of them for her. She was very good at identifying our style of furniture and really appreciated many of the artifacts, figurines, and such that Mother had collected over the years and those that had been collected by our grand-and great-grandmothers. I could see Mrs. Underwood was quite impressed, and without fully realizing it, I began to behave more like Cassie. I had to correct myself when I thought I sounded too arrogant.
“The den is perfect for us,” Mrs. Underwood said. “Well, I don’t need to take up any more time today. I’ll arrive at eight A.M. Monday through Friday and work with you until two. To begin, I will bring you these good tests I’ve been using with other students.”
“Tests? Already?”
“Not that kind of test,” she said, smiling. “These are analytical. They’ll give me a good idea of where you are in your educational progress. I don’t like to waste time teaching and reinforcing things my students have already mastered. I will expect that whatever homework you’re given, you do on time. I’ve had students who were lazy or procrastinators, and they were not only wasting their parents’ money having me but wasting time I could have spent elsewhere with other young people who needed me. Understood?”
“Yes.”
“I do appreciate how difficult it is for your sister and you to get back to a normal life after … after such a tragedy in your family. I just don’t want you to use that as an excuse for poor study habits.”
“Exactly,” we heard, and turned to see Cassie standing in the den doorway. “I’ll make sure that doesn’t occur as well, Mrs. Underwood.”
“Very good. Then you do want me to start tomorrow? You are sure it’s not too soon?
”
“It’s never too soon for any of us to improve, right, Semantha?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Now, if you’ll just step into my father’s office for a few more minutes, Mrs. Underwood, I’ll discuss our financial arrangements. Semantha, would you please start preparing the salad? Remember, your daddy and I hate seeing brown stains on the lettuce. Right this way, Mrs. Underwood.”
Mrs. Underwood nodded at me and followed her.
“Your daddy and I hate seeing brown stains on the lettuce?” I don’t like that, either. Whether she was doing it deliberately or not, she was making me feel not only a lot younger but almost like a stranger, some hired servant. Even her voice sounded different to me. It made me a little angry, until I thought that perhaps this was all just her way of coping with our great tragedy and new difficulties. It wouldn’t help things much if I started to complain, anyway, I decided, and went to the kitchen to begin preparations for dinner.
While I was working, I heard Cassie and Mrs. Underwood come out of Daddy’s office. I couldn’t believe Cassie wouldn’t know I could hear her, but maybe she was just not thinking clearly. I heard her tell Mrs. Underwood, “My sister is a little spoiled. Our mother spoiled her, but don’t put up with any back talk or any snide remarks about the work you prescribe. If she gives you even the slightest trouble, please come see me immediately.”
“I think we’ll be fine,” Mrs. Underwood said. “She seems like a very nice young girl.”
“We don’t put blinders on our eyes in this house,” Cassie said. “It’s a Heavenstone trait to be objective and, if necessary, brutally honest. It’s part of what has made us successful.”
“I’m sure,” Mrs. Underwood said.
They walked on to the front door, and Cassie let her out and said good-bye.
My heart was thumping, and I could feel the heat in my face. I had to say something when she entered.
“I’m not spoiled, Cassie. Why did you tell her that?”
“Psychology. Of course, she believes you’re spoiled, that we’re both spoiled. She lives in a two-by-four low-income apartment and walks into this mansion where she sees all we have. It’s only natural, expected, that she would think we would be spoiled, rich young women. When will you learn that people beneath you, with so much less than you, instantly harbor a resentment?”
“But why make her feel that she’s right?”
Cassie smiled. “Simple. When she sees how we really are, she’ll hate herself for having had such thoughts, and we’ll get along much more easily.” She paused and stared at me so long I didn’t know what to do. “I would think that by now, Semantha,” she continued, her eyes now those Cassie narrow, angry eyes, “you would have confidence and faith in what I say and do, especially for you and for our family, and you wouldn’t challenge me or be critical.”
“I wasn’t being critical. I was just wondering why you would tell her such a thing.”
“Well, now you know, so forget it. We have too many other things far more important to do. I’m going to do the meat loaf Daddy loves. Why don’t you go upstairs and put on something nicer for dinner tonight? I laid out something for you on your bed.”
“You did?”
She smirked at me as if I had asked something very stupid, but putting out something special for me to wear was often something Mother would do.
“Go on. Don’t dilly-dally. I want tonight’s dinner to be a little more special. We’ll use the better dishware. Go on!” she snapped when I didn’t move quickly enough for her.
I turned and hurried up the stairs. Everything had suddenly become even more complicated to me. I felt as if bees were buzzing in both my ears. No more going to school, a tutor, Cassie behaving as if she had suddenly aged twenty years, while treating me as if I had become younger. How much of this was the result of our family tragedy? It seemed I couldn’t even ask a question now. Maybe when Daddy came home, things would be different and not as tense and even frightening.
As I turned to enter my room, I gazed through Cassie’s open bedroom door and stopped so fast anyone would have thought I had walked into a wall. The furniture looked rearranged. What was going on? Slowly, I stepped through her bedroom doorway and looked around. It was shocking. Cassie had moved Mother’s vanity table into her room, and it was covered not with Cassie’s things but with Mother’s. Even the gilded oval vanity mirror that had hung above Mother’s table was now hanging on Cassie’s wall. I could see Mother’s bathrobe hanging on the door of Cassie’s bathroom. By the bed were Mother’s pearl-colored fur slippers, the ones with the light pink ribbons. Cassie’s own vanity table was gone, as were many of her other things, including the pictures she had had hanging on her walls. I even recognized that the bedding had been changed, replaced with a set of Mother and Daddy’s. How strange.
I turned and hurried to Mother and Daddy’s bedroom. Without Mother’s things—her vanity table, mirror, pictures—and with her closet stripped, the room looked half-naked. I couldn’t help it. I started to cry. I didn’t even realize I was crying until I felt the tears on my cheeks. Now my own temper started to pound. I turned and hurried down the corridor and the stairs. Cassie was absorbed in her meat loaf when I stepped back into the kitchen. She didn’t hear me at all. I was taken aback by the happy tune she was humming. A week hadn’t even passed since our mother died, and she was humming a happy tune?
“Cassie!” I cried.
She turned, a look of confusion on her face. “What’s wrong? Someone idiotic call you, one of those stupid girls from school? I didn’t hear any phones ringing.”
“No, no one called me. How could you … how could you take all of Mother’s things like that and put them in your room, even her wall mirror?”
She stared for a moment and then wiped her hands with a dish towel. “Ordinarily, I would be very angry at you for constantly questioning everything I say and do, Semantha, but I understand what you’re going through,” she said calmly. “You see all this only from your own pain. It’s typical of an adolescent to think, feel, and act as if the whole world revolves around her, but it doesn’t.”
She sat at the kitchenette. I thought she wasn’t going to say anything more, but she nodded and continued.
“Can you stop thinking about yourself for one moment and think about Daddy? Can you shove your personal worries and thoughts out of your mind and imagine, try to imagine, what it must be like for him to go into that bedroom and look at Mother’s things and know she is gone forever? Can you even feel a little of that pain for him?
“Do you know what he told me last night? He told me he turned and for a moment thought he saw Mother at her vanity table brushing her hair, and it filled him with a rush of hope that everything had been a bad dream. Of course, that image popped, and there was no one sitting at the table, but the table haunted him. Why, her perfumes, colognes, everything that has a scent was still in the air of that bedroom. He smelled it every night when he went to bed. He told me he still smelled the scent of her hair spray on her pillow beside him, and he told me he took her hairbrush and took some hairs from it and put them in his wallet, the wallet he carries in the inside pocket of his sports coat, the pocket closest to his heart. You mention the mirror. Do you know he told me he thought he saw her face in the mirror?”
“But … we’re not getting rid of those things. You put them in your room,” I said in defense of myself, even though her words had taken the air out of my anger.
She smiled. “Exactly. Soon, he’ll see them as my things and not Mother’s, and besides, Semantha, we’re not out to rid this house of every reminder of Mother, are we? Should we?”
“No. Of course not. I didn’t mean—”
“In time, Daddy will see that I’m … we’re … more grown-up, and he won’t be so worried about us. My wearing some of Mother’s things, having some of those things, lets him see me as older, more mature. I know most of this is quite beyond you, but—”
“No, it’s not.”
<
br /> “You understand, then?”
“Yes,” I said weakly. I didn’t understand it completely, but I knew I couldn’t stand her making me feel like some vapid adolescent.
“Okay.” Her face hardened. “I’ll let this outburst pass, but the next time you come at me for something, you had better think a few times first and not be so judgmental. It’s unbecoming for a Heavenstone to act solely on impulse and not based on reasonable thought. You have a ways to go, Semantha, but don’t worry. I’m going to make sure you get there.”
“Where?”
“To Heavenstone perfection, of course, where else?” She rose. “Now, please go up and put on the clothes I chose for you, and let’s have a nice dinner with Daddy tonight. He’ll want to know all about Mrs. Underwood. Even if you have some reservations about her, keep them to yourself for now. We want Daddy not to worry about us, okay?”
“Yes, Cassie.”
“Good. Pin your hair back a little so the strands don’t fall over your eyes so much,” she added, and returned to her meat loaf.
I went up to my room. I had no complaint about the dress she had chosen and the matching shoes. Mother would have chosen it as well, but if I had ever thought Cassie was bossy before, she was an ogre now. For a while, I just pouted in front of my vanity mirror. As soon as I heard Daddy come home, I hurried to dress and go down. By the time I descended the stairs, he had gone up to his room. The silence was curious. I was surprised not to find Cassie in the kitchen and went looking for her in the living room. She was standing by the window, gazing out.
“Cassie?”
She didn’t answer, but I could tell from the way she was embracing herself that she was very unhappy. When she turned, I thought she wasn’t as angry as she was sad. She shook her head, and then, for the first time I could remember in a long time, Cassie’s lips trembled and she started to cry. The tears moved uncertainly down her cheeks, as if they were in unknown territory and unsure of themselves. They didn’t streak straight down and off her chin as mine did when I cried, but instead went to the sides of her cheeks and toward her nose. With her right thumb and index finger, she snapped them off, sending them flying. It didn’t occur to me until this moment that Cassie had not shed any tears at our mother’s funeral, not even at the gravesite. She had looked as devastated as I had, but as she often told me, “A Heavenstone doesn’t cry in public. We’re like the Kennedys.” Cassie, however, rarely cried in private, either. This sent shivers of fear up and down my spine.
The Heavenstone Secrets Page 23