Carrie came running to put her small face into the mass of yellow petals. “Pretty,” she said. “Cathy, can I have them?” Of course she could have them. With reverence that pot of flowers was placed on the eastern windowsills in the attic to receive the morning sunshine. There was nothing to see but hills and far off mountains and the trees in between, and above everything hovered a blue mist. The real flowers spent the nights with us, so the twins could wake up in the morning and see something beautiful and alive growing near them.
* * *
Whenever I think of being young, I see again those blue-misted mountains and hills, and the trees that paraded stiffly up and down the slopes. And I smell again the dry and dusty air that was ours to breathe daily. I see again the shadows in the attic that blended so well with the shadows in my mind, and I hear again the unspoken, unanswered questions of Why? When? How much longer?
Love . . . I put so much faith in it.
Truth . . . I kept believing it falls always from the lips of the one you love and trust the most.
Faith . . . it’s all bound up to love and trust. Where does one end and the other start, and how do you tell when love is the blindest of all?
More than two months had passed, and still the grandfather lived on.
We stood, we sat, we lay on the wide ledges of the attic dormer windows. We wistfully watched as the treetops of summer’s old dark green turned overnight into the brilliant scarlets, golds, oranges, and browns of autumn. It moved me; I think it moved all of us, even the twins, to see the summer go away, and see the fall begin. And we could only watch, but never participate.
My thoughts took frantic flight, wanting to escape this prison, and seek out the wind so it could fan my hair and sting my skin, and make me feel alive again. I yearned for all those children out there who were running wild and free on the browning grass, and scuffling their feet in the dry, crackling leaves, just as I used to do.
Why was it I never realized when I was able to run wild and free that I was experiencing happiness? Why did I think back then, that happiness was always just ahead in the future, when I would be an adult, able to make my own decisions, go my own way, be my own person? Why had it seemed that being a child was never enough? Why had I thought that happiness reserved itself for those grown to full size?
“You’re looking sad,” said Chris, who was crowded close beside me, with Cory on the other side of him, and Carrie on the other side of me. Nowadays Carrie was my little shadow to follow where I led, and mimic what I did, and imitate the way she thought I felt—just as Chris had his small mimicking shadow too, in Cory. If there were ever four siblings closer than we were, they would have had to have been Siamese quadruplets.
“Aren’t you going to answer me?” asked Chris. “Why are you looking so sad? The trees look beautiful, don’t they? When it’s summer, I like summer best; yet when fall comes, I like fall best, and when winter comes, then that’s my favorite season, and then comes spring, and I think spring is best.”
Yes, that was my Christopher Doll. He could make do with the here and now, and always think it best, no matter what the circumstances.
“I was thinking back to old Mrs. Bertram and her boring talk of the Boston Tea Party. She made history seem so dull, and the people so unreal. Yet, I’d like to be bored like that again.”
“Yeah,” he agreed, “I know what you mean. I thought school a bore, too, and history a dull subject, particularly American history—all but the Indians, and the old West. But at least when we were in school, we were doing what other kids our ages did. Now we’re just wasting time, doing nothing. Cathy, let’s not waste one minute! Let’s prepare ourselves for the day we get out. If you don’t set your goals firmly in mind, and strive always to reach them, then you never do. I’ll convince myself if I can’t be a doctor, then I won’t want to be anything else, or want anything more that money can buy!”
He said that so intensely. I wanted to be a prima ballerina, though I would settle for something else. Chris scowled as if reading my mind. He turned his summer-blue eyes on me and scolded because I hadn’t practiced my ballet exercises once since I’d come upstairs to exist. “Cathy, tomorrow I’m attaching a barre in the portion of the attic we’ve finished decorating—and five or six hours each day, you are going to practice, just like in ballet class!”
“I am not! Nobody is going to tell me I have to do anything! Besides, you can’t do ballet positions unless you are properly dressed for it!”
“What a stupid thing to say!”
“That’s because I am stupid! You, Christopher, have all the brains!” With that I burst into tears and fled from the attic, racing past all the paper flora and fauna. Run, run, run for the stairs. Fly, fly, fly down the steep and narrow wooden steps, daring fate to make you fall. Break a leg, a neck, put you in a coffin dead. Make everybody sorry then; make them cry for the dancer I should have been.
I threw myself down on my bed and sobbed into the pillow. There was nothing here but dreams, hopes—nothing real. I’d grow old, ugly, never see lots of people again. That old man downstairs could live to be a hundred and ten! All those doctors would keep him living forever—and I would miss out on Halloween—no tricking, no treating, no parties, no candy. Oh, I felt sorry for myself, and I vowed somebody was going to pay, pay, pay for all of this, somebody was, somebody was!
Wearing their dirty white sneakers, they came to me, my two brothers, my small sister, and each sought to give me comfort with small gifts of cherished possessions: Carrie’s red and purple crayons, Cory’s Peter Rabbit story book; but Chris, he just sat and looked at me. I never felt so small.
One evening quite late, Momma came in with a large box that she put in my hands to open. There amidst sheets of white tissue were ballet costumes, one a bright pink, the other azure-blue, with leotards and toe shoes to match the tulle tutus. “From Christopher,” was written on the enclosed small card. And there were records of ballet music. I started to cry as I flung my arms around my mother, then around my brother. This time they weren’t tears of frustration, or despair. Now I had something to work toward.
“I wanted most of all to buy you a white costume,” said Momma, still hugging me. “They had a beauty in a size too large to fit you, and with it comes a tight cap of white feathers that curl over your ears—for Swan Lake—and I ordered it for you, Cathy. Three costumes should be enough to give you inspiration, shouldn’t they?”
Oh, yes! When Chris had the barre nailed securely to an attic wall, I practiced for hours on end while the music played. There wasn’t a large mirror behind the barre, like there had been in the classes I had attended, but there was a huge mirror in my mind, and I saw myself as Pavlova, performing before ten thousand enraptured people, and encore after encore I took, bowing and accepting dozens of bouquets, every one red roses. In time, Momma brought me every one of Tchaikovsky’s ballets to play on the record player, which had been hooked up to a dozen extension cords, which went down the stairs and plugged into a socket in our bedroom.
Dancing to beautiful music took me out of myself, and made me forget momentarily that life was passing us by. What did it matter when I was dancing? Better to pirouette and pretend I had a partner to support me when I did the most difficult positions. I’d fall, get up, then dance on again until I was out of breath and ached in every muscle, and my leotards were glued to me with sweat, and my hair was wet. I’d fall down flat on the floor to rest, and pant, then up again at the barre to do pliés. Sometimes I would be the Princess Aurora in The Sleeping Beauty and sometimes I’d dance the part of the prince, as well, and leap high into the air and beat my feet together.
Once I looked up from my concluding dying swan spasms, and I saw Chris standing in the attic shadows, watching with the oddest expression on his face. Soon he’d be having a birthday, his fifteenth. How had it come about that already he seemed a man and not a boy? Was it only that vague look in his eyes that said he was moving quickly from childhood?
On full pointe I performed a sequence of those very small, even steps which are supposed to give the impression the dancer is gliding across the stage and creating what is poetically called “a string of pearls.” In such a way I flitter-glided over to Chris and held out my arms. “Come, Chris, be my danseur; let me teach you the way.”
He smiled, seeming bemused, but he shook his head and said that was impossible. “Ballet dancing is not for me. But I’d like to learn to waltz—if the music is Strauss.”
He made me laugh. At that time the only waltz music we had (except ballet) were old Strauss records. I hurried over to the record player to take off the Swan Lake records, and I put on The Blue Danube.
Chris was clumsy. He held me awkwardly, as if embarrassed. He stepped on my pink pointe shoes. But it was touching how hard he tried to get simple steps right, and I couldn’t tell him all his talents must reside in his brain, and in the skill of his artistic hands, for certainly none of it drifted down to his legs and feet. And yet, and yet, there was something sweet and endearing about a Strauss waltz, easy to do, and romantic, and so unlike those athletic ballet waltzes that put you in a sweat, and left you panting for breath.
When Momma finally came through the door with that smashing white outfit for dancing Swan Lake, a beautifully feathered brief bodice, tight cap, white slippers, and white leotards so sheer the pink of my skin showed through, I gasped!
Oh, it seemed that love, hope, and happiness could be brought upstairs in one single giant-sized slippery-satin white box with a violet ribbon and given to me by someone who really cared when another who really cared, put this idea in her head.
“Dance, Ballerina, dance, and do your pirouette
In rhythm with your aching heart,
Dance, Ballerina, dance, you mustn’t once forget
A dancer has to dance the part,
Once you said his love must wait its turn,
You wanted fame instead, I guess that’s your concern,
We live and learn . . . and love is gone, Ballerina, gone . . .”
Eventually, Chris could do the waltz and the foxtrot. When I tried to teach him the Charleston, he refused: “I don’t need to learn every kind of dance, like you do. I’m not going to be on stage; all I want to learn is how to get out on the dance floor with a girl in my arms, and not make a jackass of myself.”
I’d always been dancing. There wasn’t any kind of dance I couldn’t do, and didn’t want to do.
“Chris, there’s one thing you’ve got to know: you cannot waltz your whole life through, or do the foxtrot. Every year brings about changes, like in clothes. You’ve got to keep up with the times, and adapt. Come on, let’s jazz it up a bit, so you can limber up your creaky joints that must be going stiff from so much sitting and reading.”
I stopped waltzing and ran to put on another record: “You ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog.”
I raised my arms, and began to gyrate my hips.
“Rock ’n’ roll, Chris, you’ve got to learn how. Listen to the beat, let go, and learn to swivel your hips like Elvis. Come on, half-close your eyes, look sleepy, sexy, and pout your lips, for if you don’t, no girl is ever going to love you.”
“Then no girl is ever gonna love me.”
That’s the way he said it, dead flat, and dead serious. He would never let anyone force him to do anything that didn’t fit his image of himself, and in a way I liked him for being what he was, strong, resolute, determined to be his own person, even if his kind of person had long ago gone out of style. My Sir Christopher, the knight gallant.
* * *
God-like, we changed the seasons in the attic. We took down the flowers and hung up autumn leaves of brown, russet, scarlet and gold. If we were still here when winter’s snowflakes fell, we’d then substitute lacy white designs that we were all four cutting out in preparation, just in case. We made wild ducks and geese from white, gray, and black craft paper, and aimed our mobile birds in wide-arrowed skeins, heading them south. Birds were easy to make: just elongated ovals with spheres for heads, teardrops with wings.
When Chris wasn’t sitting with his head stuck in a book, he was painting watercolor scenes of snow-covered hills with lakes where ice skaters skimmed. He put small houses of yellow and pink deeply buried in snow, and smoke curled from the chimneys, and in the distance rose a misty church steeple. And when he was done, he painted all around this a dark window-frame. When this was hung on the wall, we had a room with a view!
Once Chris had been a tease I could never please. An older brother. . . . But, we changed up there, he and I, just as much as we altered our attic world. We lay side by side on an old mattress, stained and smelly, for hours on end, and talked and talked, making plans for the kind of lives we’d live once we were free and rich as Midas. We’d travel around the world. He would meet and fall in love with the most beautiful, sexy woman who was brilliant, understanding, charming, witty and enormous fun to be with; she’d be the perfect housekeeper, the most faithful of devoted wives, the best of mothers, and she’d never nag, or complain, or cry, or doubt his judgment, or be disappointed or discouraged if he made stupid mistakes on the stock market and lost all of their money. She’d understand he’d done his best, and soon he’d make a fortune again with his wits and clever brains.
Boy, did he leave me feeling low. How in the world was I ever going to fill the needs of a man like Chris? Somehow or other, I knew he was setting the standard from which I’d judge all my future suitors.
“Chris, this intelligent, charming, witty, gorgeous woman, can’t she have even one little flaw?”
“Why should she have flaws?”
“Take our mother, for instance, you think she is all of those things, except, perhaps, brilliant.”
“Momma’s not stupid!” he defended vehemently. “She’s just grown up in the wrong kind of environment! She was put down as a child, and made to feel inferior because she was a girl.”
As for me, after I’d been a prima ballerina for a number of years and was ready to marry and settle down, I didn’t know what kind of man I wanted if he didn’t measure up to Chris, or my father. I wanted him handsome, I knew that, for I wanted beautiful children. And I wanted him brilliant, or I might not respect him. Before I accepted his diamond engagement ring, I’d sit him down to play games, and if I won time and again, I’d smile, shake my head, and tell him to take his ring back to the store.
And as we made our plans for the future, our pots of philodendron drooped limp; our ivy leaves turned yellow before they died. We bustled about, giving our plants tender loving care, talking to them, pleading with them, asking them to please stop looking sick, and perk up and straighten up their necks. After all, they were getting the healthiest of all sunlight—that eastern morning light.
* * *
In a few more weeks Cory and Carrie stopped pleading to go outside. No longer did Carrie beat her small fists against the oak door, and Cory stopped trying to kick it down with his ineffectual small feet, wearing only soft sneakers that didn’t keep his small toes from bruising.
They now docilely accepted what before they’d denied—the attic “garden” was the only “outside” available to them. And in time, pitiful as it was, they soon forgot there was a world other than the one we were locked up in.
Chris and I had dragged several old mattresses close to the eastern windows, so we could open the windows wide and sunbathe in the beneficial rays that didn’t have to pass through dirty window glass first. Children needed sunlight in order to grow. All we had to do was look at our dying plants, and register what the attic air was doing to our greenery.
Unabashedly, we stripped off all our clothes and sun-bathed in the short time the sun visited our windows. We saw each other’s differences, and thought little about them, and frankly told Momma what we did, so we, too, wouldn’t die from lack of sunlight. She glanced from Chris to me and weakly smiled. “It’s all right, but don’t let your grandmother know. She wouldn’t approve, as you wel
l know.”
I know now that she looked at Chris, and then at me for signs to indicate our innocence, or our awakening sexuality. And what she saw must have given her some assurance we were still only children, though she should have known better.
The twins loved to be naked and play as babies. They laughed and giggled when they used terms such as “do-do” and “twiddle-dee” and, enjoyed looking at the places where do-do came from, and wondered why Cory’s twiddle-dee maker was so different from Carrie’s.
“Why, Chris?” asked Carrie, pointing at what he had, and Cory had, and she and I didn’t have.
I went right on reading Wuthering Heights and tried to ignore such silly talk.
But Chris tried to give an answer that was correct as well as truthful: “All male creatures have their sexual organs on the outside, and females have theirs tucked away inside.”
“Neatly inside,” I said.
“Yes, Cathy, I know you approve of your neat body and I approve of my un-neat body, so let all of us rejoice that we have what we do. Our parents accepted our bare skins just as they did our eyes and hair, and so shall we. And I forgot, male birds have their organs ‘neatly’ tucked away inside, too, like females.”
Intrigued, I asked, “How do you know?”
“I just know.”
“You read it in a book?”
“What else—do you think I caught a bird and examined it?”
“I wouldn’t put it past you.”
“At least I read to improve my brain, not just to entertain it.”
“You are going to make a very dull man, I’m warning—and if a male bird has tucked away sexual organs, doesn’t that make him a her?”
The Flowers in the Attic Series: The Dollangangers: Flowers in the Attic, Petals on the Wind, If There Be Thorns, Seeds of Yesterday, and a New Excerpt! Page 15