by Freda, Paula
Geraldine was the perfect keeper for the Carlsons’ "Museum of Antiques,” as Harriet had nicknamed the two-story mansion. During her childhood she’d rarely been allowed past the foyer for fear of breaking some priceless vase or scratching some piece of antique wood furniture. As she grew older, she was occasionally permitted to help with the chores in the house proper. It was then that she learned to appreciate the elegance of the rooms on the other side.
Sliding doors, multi-paneled and carved in English ivy bas-relief, introduced each of the two main rooms of the house — the Old English dining room with its large crystal chandelier and polished wood floors. Opposite it, across a spacious hall, the gracious living room with cypress-paneled walls and oak-beamed ceiling and damask sofa and chairs, carved tables, swag and jabot treatments on the windows, and plush red velvet carpeting.
A small but elegant staircase led up to the bedrooms, equally beautifully furnished with canopy poster beds, the wood thick and carved, and imported rugs from France and Syria.
Yet contrary to what the eye discerned, the late Carlsons, like their ancestors, were never a rich family, in respect to money. Their wealth had lain in their ancestral heritage. They were hard workers, good investors, respectable and quality-minded, ruled by their desire to preserve the past, and modeled their behavior accordingly. Mark, their descendent, heir and no less a Carlson, entered the kitchen and Harriet turned her head in his direction. He was tall, of medium weight and swathed in brown velour robe and leather slippers.
He greeted, "Welcome back. When did you arrive?”
"Just as you and Cybelle were getting in last night.”
His brow furrowed. "I didn’t see you.”
"I didn’t want you to see me,” Harriet said, sliding her palms lazily upward to rest on her kneecaps.
"Are you here to stay?
She didn’t answer immediately. "Depends. Could you and Cybelle use a maid’s services.”
Mark shook his head. "We don’t need a maid, Harriet. Your mother is efficient and Cybelle enjoys helping her. But Cybelle could use a friend. You two are close in age and similar in character, both liberated, both impulsive, and both stubborn as mules.” Harriet laughed. "Oh, but I like her.”
Mark smiled. "It’s good to have you back.” He walked over to her, pulled her to her feet and took both her hands into his warmly. "Come on, sit down at the table and have some breakfast. And then I’ve got some questions I’d like answered.” When they had finished eating, Mark inquired, "Have your parents filled you in on what’s occurred here since you left?”
Harriet gave a slight shrug. "A little, but mostly we just hung around enjoying each other’s company. We were too glad to be together again to ask questions as yet.” Mark updated her briefly, then asked, "Now, as to this fellow, Sands....” He let the statement hang a moment. "You spent six months alone with him on an island. Anything to declare?” Mark asked.
Harriet made a face. "I don’t remember you asking such point-blank questions.”
"Well, sometimes character traits have a way of rubbing off.”
Harriet wondered if was referring to her character, or Cybelle’s? Geraldine had paused cleaning up; worriedly she awaited her daughter’s answer.
"You can all rest easy. Val Sands was a perfect gentleman. It’s too long a story to repeat. Suffice to say, as soon as I can earn some money and repay him for the fare home, you won’t need to hear his name mentioned again.”
"Daughter, do you love him?” Harry inquired. He had entered the room quietly. The straightforward quality of his gaze always impelled her to reply honestly.
"Dad, I don’t want to answer that.”
"Does he love you?” Geraldine asked.
Harriet shrugged, and picked up her coffee cup to take a sip. "I don’t know. He swore he did, but that was nearly two weeks ago. He’s home with his parents. The whole adventure is now probably just a bad memory. Besides, I never trusted him.”
"Why?” Geraldine asked.
Harriet felt her throat constrict. She coughed, but she was not thinking of Val. The words "trust” and "why” repelled and terrified her. The recurring nightmare flashed through her mind. No more! something screamed in her mind. "No more!” she said, hysterical, then realized she was in the kitchen and Mark and her parents were watching her anxiously. Her hands were clutched about her cup and trembling. Her face was flushed and beads of sweat had formed on her brow.
As Geraldine helped Harriet back to her room, Mark looked at Harry. "Don’t you think it’s time you told her,” he said. He was unaware that his voice carried, but Harriet was too distraught at the moment to turn back.
Shadows moved within the limbo. They took form becoming her father, tall and lean, and another man as tall, but heavier set with short dark hair, grimy beard stubble and enormous hands. The stranger noticed her. He grinned, showing yellowed teeth. Harriet cringed. He started toward her. Terror gripped her. She cried out to her father, but he had fallen asleep on the couch of their cozy living room. The man kept advancing. He smelled of liquor. The odor stung the inside of her nostrils. He reached for her with those enormous hands. Harriet ran to her father and shook him. But he refused to wake up. He smelled of liquor. She turned. The man was directly in front of her. Harriet screamed. A tall, young soldier came into the room. He saw the man and Harriet, and started yelling something. The man ignored him. The soldier pulled him away from her and a terrible struggle ensued. At last the man crumbled at the soldier’s feet. Again Harriet shook her father, but he continued to sleep. Then she noticed the soldier coming toward her. She backed away. The soldier reached for her. "No more!” she screamed.
She woke, drenched in sweat, heart pounding. A moment later her parents entered her bedroom. They’d heard her crying out. "Are you all right, child?” Geraldine asked, kneeling beside her.
"No, I’m not,” Harriet sobbed, flinging herself into her mother’s arms.
CHAPTER NINE
The next day as the Hendersons sat in the kitchen finishing lunch, Thorvald Sands entered. Startled, Harriet dropped her cup and it broke as it crashed into the saucer. Coffee splattered and spread over her placemat. She nervously grabbed some napkins from the holder and soaked up the coffee. She looked at Val again, reassuring herself he wasn’t a remnant of her nightmare.
"He asked us not to tell you that he was here until you’d had time to settle in, to feel comfortable in your home,” Geraldine explained. "So, how long has he been here?” Harriet asked, incredulously.
"He arrived a few hours after you, while you were asleep.”
Mark entered the kitchen. He did not appear surprised at all to see Val. Harriet’s expression hardened. "I don’t like being tricked.” She glanced at Mark, "What is it I’m supposed to know? Why is he here?” She looked at Val. "Why did you come here?” Why did have to torment her? He knew she loved him. Everyone in the room knew. Anyone seeing the tender exasperation in her eyes as she gazed at Val would know.
"You know why,” Val said. "I’m in love with you. I want you to be my wife, and I hope after I make my confession to you, you won’t hold it against me.”
What was he talking about? Confession?
"Harriet, it wasn’t a coincidence that we met on the ship. I knew all about you long before we met. Mark and I are friends. He hired a private investigator to locate you. It took a long time, but when the P.I. found you, Mark asked me to bring you home. He would have come to visit you himself, but he was preoccupied with Cybelle, plus he was worried that if he came to see you, you might think no more of him than you had of your parents and run away again.”
Harriet listened dumbstruck.
"None of this has any bearing on my feelings for you,” Val said. "I didn’t expect to fall in love with you. I didn’t know how lovely you were or how lonely, or how much I’d come to need you.
"At first I couldn’t understand why, when I read affection in your eyes for me, why you fought against those feelings. And on the Island, we were
so close, yet so far apart. You knew how much I respected you, and often I caught you looking at me with such love, it took all my restraint not to take advantage of that love. Then last night Mark told me something that made your reactions very clear.” Harriet glanced at Mark. "Told him what,” she demanded.
Mark turned to Harry. "It’s your place to tell her.”
Harry shook his head. "I can’t, I’ve never been able to. I was afraid she’d hate me.”
Harriet was beginning to understand. "It has something to do with the nightmares. What I dream, did something like that actually happen to me?”
Mark nodded. "When you were eight years old.”
Geraldine said, "It was a dark time in our marriage. Your father had taken up with the wrong crowd. He’d go out after his chores were done and come home drunk. I did all I could to shield you from the truth. He never hurt anyone. He was always a gentle and quiet man. He would just come home, fall on the couch and sleep until morning. Until one night when one of his friends came home with him. I was frightened. I thought you were asleep in your room. I went to call the Carlsons for help. But his friend had a loud voice and you woke and came into our living room.”
"I know the rest, mother. I’ve relived it a thousand times over in my nightmares.”
Oddly, the truth she was learning was not evoking as much fear as the nightmares had.
"The other man, there’s always a young soldier in the dream.” Mark said, "That was me, Harriet. I was a soldier in the Army, on leave at the time. I heard you scream.
"You saved me.”
"Yes, but I didn’t realize the shocked state you were in. I wanted to tell you everything would be all right. Instead I frightened you even more. You fainted. When you came to, you had no memory of the night before. The doctor said this was common when a child is faced with a traumatic event. But when you continued to act like your old self, as if nothing were bothering you, we let it go. None of us realized what was happening inside you, the fear and mistrust that had rooted within you and was growing with each passing year.”
Geraldine added, "From that day on your father never touched a drop of liquor again. He never went near that crowd again. He was so ashamed of what his behavior had almost caused. But he’s never been able to face you and tell you.”
It was all clear now, the nightmares, the feelings of insecurity, of loneliness and the feeling of suffocating in her parents’ cozy home. Somehow she knew the nightmares were finished.
Harriet came around the table to where her father stood silently, his head bowed. "Daddy, I don’t hate you. I never could do that. Up to that moment in time, you were always there when I needed you. And after that moment, you were doubly there for me. I love you Daddy, and I forgive you, if you’ll forgive me for my ungratefulness and running away.” She threw her arms around her father and felt his tears wet her neck as he embraced her.
Later when she and Val were alone, she looked at him as if for the first time. A blond bearded Adonis she’d compared him to on the island. And on board the ship, strikingly handsome in his pastel colored jackets and white pants. At present he wore a grey jacket and darker grey trousers. She chuckled and Val glanced at her inquisitively. "I just realized something else. You like to dress according to your moods.”
Val shrugged boyishly. "Well, we all have our quirks.”
"Tell me, do you still maintain you love me,” Harriet asked, at ease with Val for the first time.
His face lit with hope. "Forever, Harriet, and if you can forgive my deception all those months —”
It began slowly, miraculously, the healing, the accepting, the trusting; an hour at a time, a touch, a kiss, a smile, the sharing, the walks, the just being together. Val proposed for the hundredth time and Harriet finally accepted. He kissed her and Harriet curled into his arms. Their feelings enfolded them, their love a vibrant fire warmed them. At last she felt secure and content.
CHAPTER TEN
Almost two years had passed and the hills of the Hudson River Valley were bursting with greenery, the sun large and hot, when Val brought Harriet and their newborn child home from the hospital. They had named him Michael, after Val’s father, and a very proud grandfather he was. Maria Sands literally sprouted wings, and fluttered about with joy at the sight of her chunky grandson and the contentment on the faces of her son and his wife.
Harriet’s figure changing, her body and the child inside it needing more and more attention and understanding, a little of the fear and reticence had returned. But Val had not failed her. At times Harriet’s cravings associated with the oncoming birth were startling and unfathomable, and Val had occasionally grown impatient, but never so impatient that he could not bring himself to laugh at the situation. They had survived the pregnancy as surely as they had survived Henderson Sands and the Riviera. Their child, a husky, strong dusty-blond with pudgy little fists and squat little feet, and the darkest brown eyes, cried lustily as Harriet placed him in his crib in the nursery they had prepared for him.
Val regarded his son, grinning. "If that’s any indication of his temperament, we’re going to have our hands full.”
A mother only a few days, Harriet replied knowingly, "Very few babies don’t cry in new surroundings. And besides, he likes being held.”
"Which you intend doing a lot of and less of me while spoiling him rotten. Val shook his head woefully.
"Jealous?”
"Yes.”
"Too bad. Parenthood demands certain sacrifices.” She scanned his expression to reassure herself that he was not offended.
"Well, we’re most certainly not going to spoil him,” Val said. "And the best method for that is to hopefully provide him with brothers and sisters so he can learn to share. Agreed?”
"Yes, I’d like that,” Harriet conceded shyly for a married woman with a child.
Val noticed the pink blush suffusing her cheeks and loved her even more. Michael thought this moment propitious to let out his loudest squeal, startling both his parents into remembering his presence.
"Now who’s jealous?” Val asked, chuckling, as Harriet gazed at her child adoringly. He leaned over the crib to cuddle his son’s small fist. Michael opened his hand and clamped his little fingers about his father’s thumb. Desperately he tried to maneuver it to his mouth. When Val pulled his thumb free, Michael let out another lusty squeal. "Egads, it must be past his feeding time,” Val remarked, examining his thumb. Harriet laughed and informed him it was. She lifted their son from the crib and went to sit with him in her rocking chair near the window. Unfastening her blouse and the cup of her nursing bra, she let little Michael suckle hungrily as her husband watched, a proud, tender look in his eyes.
He joined mother and child near the window and knelt beside them, glorying in the warmth of their love, this magical, exquisite, awesome wonder described as "Belonging.” He would work hard for them and for the other children that might be born to them. He loved his wife beyond all description. She was so dear to him; unpredictable, proud, at times a haughty scamp, but always Harriet.
"Thank you again,” he whispered, pushing behind her ear a blonde strand of hair that had fallen forward and was interfering with Michael’s feeding. "You are most welcome,” Harriet replied.
She might never be completely free of the past. Occasionally a nightmare would recur, a twinge of fear, a flare of unexpected resentment, but she could control them because now she knew their origin, and Val had taught her how to trust again. "I love you, Thorvald Sands,” she said, and meant it.
♥♥
*****************************
Beautiful Dreamer
by Paula Freda
© August 2015 by Dorothy P. Freda
(Pseudonym — Paula Freda)
Smashwords Edition
Exterior and Interior Bookcover photos Licensed
by Dorothy Paula Freda from iStockphoto
Museum Photo inserts: Wikipedia Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license (Ingfbru
no)
Beautiful Dreamer Original Music Sheet "StephenFoster". Licensed under Public Domain via Commons
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof. This is a work of fiction; names, characters, places and incidents are a product of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
Story set to the melody of Beautiful Dreamer
CHAPTER ONE
Julie lifted the music box from the top drawer of her mirrored dresser. She recalled how sweetly it had played the gentle pings to the tune of her favorite lullaby. Her mom had played the music box for her at bedtime until the night of her ninth birthday, when she had proudly announced to her disillusioned mother, that, honestly, she was almost grown up, and too old for bedtime lullabies.
On the evening of her twelfth birthday, it was her turn to be disillusioned, when she truly studied her reflection in the mirror and realized with horror, that she was plain. Not ugly. No one screamed when they saw her. Though she might have preferred that to the indifferent stare. She wasn't invisible. People did notice her, though it was mostly to hide their chuckle out of proper decorum and human kindness.
Of course, her mother begged to differ. But that was a mother's prerogative. Julie's straight dark brown hair, parted at the crown, pulled into pigtails, and tied neatly with pink or blue bows, eventually replaced by braids trussed tightly with black elastic bands, above plume-like ends, was — Evelyn liked to boast — her daughter's crowning glory. Not so, to Julie. Or to the boys who tried to pull her braids, and laughed themselves silly as they ridiculed her, calling her Miss Twisty Piggy Tails.