“Did you see what he just did?”
“They’re eating and drinking, and laughing and talking, and dancing, just like everybody else. Cathy, just think, when Momma inherits all that money, we can have parties like this on Christmas, and on our birthdays. Why, in the future, we might even have some of the very same guests we see now. Let’s send invitations to our friends back in Gladstone. Boy, won’t they be surprised to see what we inherit!”
Just then, Momma and that man got up from the couch and left. So we fastened our charmed eyes on the second most attractive woman in the group below and watched her, and pitied her, for how could she compete with our mother?
Then into the ballroom strode our grandmother looking neither left nor right, nor smiling at anyone. Her dress wasn’t gray—and that alone was enough to astonish us. Her long formal gown was of ruby-red velvet, tight in the front and flowing in the back, and her hair was piled high on her head, and curled elaborately, and ruby and diamond jewelry sparkled on her neck, ears, arms and fingers. Who would ever think that impressive, regal-looking woman down there was the menacing grandmother who visited us each day?
Reluctantly, we had to admit in whispers back and forth: “She does look magnificent.”
“Yes, very impressive. Like an Amazon, too big.”
“A mean Amazon.”
“Yeah, a warrior Amazon, ready to do battle with the glare of her eyes alone. She doesn’t really need any other weapon.”
That’s when we saw him! Our unknown grandfather!
It stole my breath away to look down and see a man so very much like our father, if he had lived long enough to become old and feeble. He sat in a shiny wheelchair, dressed in a tuxedo, and his formal shirt was white with black trim. His thinning blond hair was almost white, and it shone silver under the lights. His skin was unlined, at least viewed from our far and high and hidden place. Appalled, as well as fascinated, neither Chris nor I could move our eyes anywhere else once we spied him.
He was fragile looking, but still unnaturally handsome for a man of his great age of sixty-seven, and a man who was near dead. Suddenly, frighteningly, he raised his head and he gazed upward, directly at our hiding place! For one awful, terrifying moment, it seemed he knew we were there, hidden behind the wire screen! A small smile played on his lips. Oh, dear God, what did that smile mean?
Still, he didn’t look nearly as heartless as the grandmother. Could he truly be the cruel and arbitrary tyrant we presumed him to be? From the gentle, kindly smiles he bestowed on all those who came up to greet him, and shake his hand, and pat his shoulder, he seemed benign enough. Just an old man in a wheel chair, who really didn’t look very sick. Yet, he was the one who had ordered our mother to be stripped and whipped from her neck down to her heels, and he had watched. So, how could we ever forgive him for that?
“I didn’t know he would look like Daddy,” I whispered to Chris.
“Why not? Daddy was his much younger half-brother. Grandfather was a grown man before our father was born, and married, too, with two sons of his own, before he had a half-brother.”
That was Malcolm Neal Foxworth down there, the one who had kicked out his younger step-mother and her little son.
Poor Momma. How could we blame her for falling in love with a half-uncle when he was as young, and as handsome and charming as our father had been? With such parents as she’d described, she did have to have someone to love, and she did need to be loved in return—she did . . . he did.
Love, it came unbidden.
You couldn’t help whom you fell in love with—cupid’s arrows were ill aimed. Such ran the whispered comments between Chris and me.
Then, we were suddenly hushed by the footfalls and voices of two people approaching our hiding place.
“Corrine hasn’t changed at all,” said a man unseen by us, “only to grow more beautiful, and even more mysterious. She’s a very intriguing woman.”
“Hah! That’s because you always did have a yen for her, Al,” responded his female companion. “Too bad she didn’t have eyes for you instead of Christopher Foxworth. Now there was a man who was really something else. But I marvel that those two narrow-minded bigots down there would allow themselves to forgive Corrine for marrying her half-uncle.”
“They have to forgive her. When you have only one child left out of three, you are forced to take that one back into the fold.”
“Isn’t it peculiar how things work out?” asked the woman, her voice thick and guttural from too much liquor. “Three children . . . and only the despised, regretted one is left to inherit all of this.”
The half-drunken man chortled. “Corrine wasn’t always so despised. Remember how the old man adored her? She could do no wrong in his eyes until she eloped with Christopher. But that harridan mother of hers never had any patience with her daughter. Jealous, maybe. But what a luscious, rich plum to fall into the hands of Bartholomew Winslow. Wish it were mine!” said the unseen Al, wistfully.
“I’ll bet you do!” sarcastically scoffed the woman, who set something down on our table that sounded like a glass with ice inside. “A beautiful, young, and rich woman is indeed a plum for any man. Much too heady for a slob like you, Albert Donne. Corrine Foxworth would never look at you, not now, not even when you were young. Besides, you’re stuck with me.”
The bickering pair drifted out of earshot. Other voices came and went as the long hours passed. My brother and I were tired now of watching, and we were both very much needing the bathroom. Plus we were worried about the twins, left alone in the bedroom. What if one of the guests wandered into the forbidden room and saw the sleeping twins? Then all the world—and our grandfather—would know that our mother had four children.
A crowd gathered around our hiding place to laugh, talk, and drink. It took them forever to move away and give us the opportunity to open the cabinet door with extreme caution. Seeing no one, we scampered out, then dashed pell-mell in the direction from which we’d come. Breathless and panting, our bladders full enough to pop, we reached our quiet, cloistered place unseen, unheard.
And just as we’d left them, our twins lay deeply asleep in separate beds. They seemed identical, weak-looking pale dolls . . . like children used to look a long time ago in the pictures in history books. They weren’t today’s kind of children at all—but once they’d been. And they would be again, I vowed!
Next thing, Chris and I were arguing over who got to use the bathroom first—and this was easily settled. He just pushed me down on a bed and took took off, slamming the bathroom door behind him and locking it. I fumed that it seemed to take him forever to empty his bladder. Good golly, how could he hold so much?
Nature’s calls eased, bickering over, we huddled together to discuss what we’d just witnessed and overheard.
“Do you think Momma plans to marry Bartholomew Winslow?” I asked, twisting my ever-present anxieties into a knot
“How do I know?” answered Chris in an offhand manner. “Though it certainly seems everybody else thinks she will, and, of course, they know more about that side of her than we do.”
What an odd thing to say. Didn’t we, her children, know our mother better than anyone else?
“Chris, why did you say that?”
“What?”
“What you did—about others knowing her better than we do.”
“People are multi-faceted, Cathy. To us, our mother is only our mother. To others, she is a beautiful, sexy young widow who is likely to inherit a fortune. No wonder the moths all come swarming to encircle the kind of bright flame she is.”
Wow! And he was taking all of this so casually, just as if it didn’t matter to him one whit—when I knew it did. I thought I knew my brother very well. He must be suffering inside, just as I was, for I knew he didn’t want our mother to marry again. I turned my most intuitive eyes upon him . . . ah, he wasn’t nearly as detached as he seemed, and that pleased me.
I sighed, though, for I would so much like to be the eternal
optimist, like him. Deep down I thought life was sure to always put me between Scylla and Charibdis, and give to me always Hobson’s Choice. I had to make myself over, make myself better, and become like Chris—eternally cheerful. When I suffered, I had to learn to hide it, as he did. I had to learn to smile and never frown, and not be the genuine clairvoyant I was.
Already we had discussed between us the possibility that our mother might marry again, and neither one of us wanted that to happen. We thought of her as still belonging to our father; we wanted her to be faithful to his memory, ever constant to his first love. And if she remarried, just where would the four of us fit in? Would that Winslow man, with his handsome face and big moustache want four children who weren’t his?
“Cathy,” mused Chris aloud. “Do you realize this is the perfect time to explore this house? Our door is unlocked, the grandparents are downstairs. Momma is occupied—the perfect chance to find out all we can about this house.”
“No!” I cried, frightened. “Suppose the grandmother found out? She’d whip the skin off all of us!”
“Then you stay with the twins,” he said with surprising firmness. “If I’m caught, which I won’t be, I’ll suffer the whipping and take all the blame. Think of it this way, someday we may need to know how to escape this house.” An amused smile curved his lips before he went on. “I’m going to disguise myself, anyway, just in case I’m seen.”
Disguise? How?
But I’d forgotten the treasure trove of old clothes in the attic. He was up there only a few minutes before he came down, wearing an old-fashioned dark suit that wasn’t much too large. Chris was big for his age. Over his blond head he’d fitted a ratty, dark wig he’d found in a trunk. Just possibly he might be mistaken for a small man if the lights were dim enough—a ridiculously funny-looking man!
Jauntily, he paraded back and forth in front of me. Then he leaned forward and stalked around Groucho Marx–style, holding an invisible cigar. He stopped directly in front of me, grinning self-consciously as he bowed deeply and doffed an invisble top hat in a wide and gentlemanly gesture of respect. I had to laugh, and he laughed too, and not just with his eyes, then he straightened up to say, “Now, tell me truthfully, who could recognize this dark and sinister small man as belonging to the giant Foxworth clan?”
No one! For who had ever seen a Foxworth such as he? An awkward, lean and gangling one, with clear-cut features, and dark birdnest hair, plus a smudgy pencil moustache? Not a photograph in the attic resembled what swaggered about, showing off.
“Okay, Chris, cut the act. Go on, find out what you can, but don’t stay away too long, either. I don’t like it here without you.”
He came closer to whisper in a sly and conspiratorial stage whisper, “I’ll be back soon, my fair beauty, and when I’m back, I shall bring with me all the dark and mysterious secrets of this huge, huge, old, old house.” And suddenly, he caught me by surprise, and swooped to plant a kiss on my cheek.
Secrets? And he said I was given to exaggerations! What was the matter with him? Didn’t he know that we were the secrets?
I was already bathed and shampooed and dressed for bed, and, of course, on Christmas night, I couldn’t go to bed in a nightgown I’d worn before—not when I had several new ones “Santa” had brought. It was a lovely gown I wore, white, with full long sleeves that ruffled at the wrists, and was beaded through with blue satin ribbon, and everything was lace-edged, with smocking across the front and back of the bodice, and dainty pink roses with a tracery of delicately embroidered green leaves. It was one lovely nightgown, exquisitely made, and it made me feel beautiful and exquisite just to have it on.
Chris swept his eyes from my hair down to my bare toes that just barely peeked from beneath my long gown, and his eyes told me something they’d never said quite as eloquently before. He stared at my face, at my hair that cascaded down past my waist, and I knew it gleamed from all the brushing I gave it every day. He seemed impressed and dazzled, just as he had when he’d gazed so long at Momma’s swelling bosom above the green velvet bodice.
And no wonder he had kissed me voluntarily—I was so princess-like.
He stood in the doorway, hesitating, still looking at me in my new nightgown, and I guess he was very happy to be playing the knight gallant, protective of his lady fair, of small children, and everyone who relied upon his audacity.
“Take care until you see me again,” he whispered.
“Christopher,” I whispered back, “all you need is a white horse and a shield.”
“No,” he whispered again, “a unicorn, and a lance with a green dragon’s head upon its point, and back I’ll gallop in my shining white armor while the blizzard blows in the month of August and the sun is mid-sky, and when I dismount you’ll be looking up at someone who stands twelve feet high, so speak respectfully when you speak to me, my lady Cath-er-ine.”
“Yes, my lord. Go forth and slay yonder dragon—but take not overlong, for I could be undone by all that menaces me and mine in this stone-cold castle, where all the drawbridges are up, and the portcullises are down.”
“Farewell,” he whispered. “Have no fear. Soon I’ll be back to care for thee and thine.”
I giggled as I climbed into bed to lie down beside Carrie. Sleep was an elusive stranger that night as I thought about my mother and that man, about Chris, about all boys, about men, about romance—and love. As I slipped softly into dreams, with music playing down below, my hand lifted to touch the small ring with the garnet heart-stone that my father had put on my finger when I was only seven years old. A ring I’d outgrown so long ago. My touchstone. My talisman, worn now on a very fine gold chain.
Merry Christmas, Daddy.
Christopher’s Exploration and Its Repercussions
Suddenly rough hands seized me by the shoulders and shook me awake! Jolted, startled, I stared with frightened eyes at a woman I hardly recognized as my mother. She glared at me and demanded in an angry voice, “Where is your brother?”
Taken aback that she could speak and look as she did, so out of control, I cringed from her attack, then rolled my head to look at the bed three feet from the one I was in. Empty. Oh, he had stayed too long.
Should I lie? Protect him, and say he was in the attic? No, this was our mother who loved us; she’d understand. “Chris went to look over the rooms on this floor.”
Honesty was the best policy, wasn’t it? And we never lied to our mother, or to each other. Only to the grandmother, and then only when necessary.
“Damn, damn, damn!” she swore, reddened by a new flood of temper that was now directed at me. Most certainly her precious older son, whom she favored above all, would never betray her without my devilish influence. She shook me until I felt like a rag doll, and my eyes were loose and rolling.
“Just for this, I will never, for any reason, or any special occasion, allow you and Christopher out of this room again! You both gave me your word—and you broke it! How can I trust either one of you now? And I thought I could. I thought you loved me, that you would never betray me!”
My eyes widened more. Had we betrayed her? I was shocked too that she could act the way she was—it seemed to me she was betraying us.
“Momma, we haven’t done anything bad. We were very quiet in the chest. People came and went all around us, but nobody knew we were there. We were quiet. No one knows we’re here. And you can’t say you won’t let us out again. You’ve got to let us out of here! You can’t keep us locked up and hidden away forever.”
She stared at me in an odd, harassed way, without answering. I thought she might slap me, but no, she released her hold on my shoulders and spun around to leave. The flaring chiffon panels of her couturier gown seemed like wild fluttering wings, wafting sweet, flowery perfume that went ill with her fierce demeanor.
Just as she was about to leave the room, apparently going to hunt up Chris herself, the door opened, and my brother stole quietly inside. He eased to the door, then turned and looked in my
direction. His lips parted to speak. That’s when he saw our mother and the strangest expression came over his face.
For some reason, his eyes didn’t light up as they customarily did when he saw our mother.
Moving swiftly and with strong purpose, Momma reached his side. Her hand lifted and she delivered a hard, stinging slap against his cheek! Then, before he could recover from the shock of that, her left hand lifted, and the opposite cheek felt the strength of her anger!
Now Chris’s pale and stunned face wore two large red splotches.
“If you ever do anything like this again, Christopher Foxworth, I will myself whip not only you, but Cathy, as well.”
What color Chris had left in his unnaturally pale face drained away, leaving those red slap marks on his wan cheeks like smeary handprints of blood.
I felt my own blood drain down into my feet; a stinging sensation began behind my ears as my strength grew small, and I stared at that woman who seemed a stranger now, like some woman we didn’t know, and one I didn’t care to know. Was that our mother who usually spoke to us only with kindness and love? Was that the mother who was so understanding of our misery from such a long, long confinement? Was the house already doing “things” to her—making her different? It came then in a rush . . . yes, all the little things totaled up . . . she was changing. She didn’t come as often as she used to, not every day, most certainly not twice a day as she had in the beginning. And, oh, I was scared, like everything trusted and dependable was torn from beneath our feet—and only toys, games, and other gifts were left.
She must have seen something in Chris’s stunned expression, something that made her hot anger disappear. She drew him into her open arms and covered his wan, splotched, moustached face with quick little kisses that sought to take away the harm she’d done. Kiss, kiss, kiss, finger his hair, stroke his cheek, draw his head against her soft, swelling breasts, and let him drown in the sensuality of being cuddled close to that creamy flesh that must excite even a youth of his tender years.
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 20