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!

by Andrews, V. C.

  “I’m sorry, darling,” she whispered, tears in her eyes and in her voice, “forgive me, please forgive me. Don’t look so frightened. How can you be afraid of me? I didn’t mean it about the whippings. I love you. You know that. I would never whip you or Cathy. Have I ever? I’m not myself, because I have everything going my way now—our way. You just can’t do anything to spoil it for all of us. And that’s the only reason I slapped you.”

  She cupped his face between her palms and kissed him full on lips that were puckered from the tight squeeze of her hands. And those diamonds, those emeralds kept flashing, flashing . . . signal lights, meaning something. And I sat and watched, and wondered, and felt . . . felt, oh, I didn’t know how I felt, except confused and bewildered, and very, very young. And the world all about us was wise, and old, so old.

  Of course he forgave her, just as I did. And of course we had to know what was going her way, and our way.

  “Please, Momma, tell us what it is—please.”

  “Another time,” she said, in a terrible hurry to get back to the party before she was missed. More kisses for the both of us. And it came to me then, I had never felt my cheek against the softness of her breast.

  “Another time, perhaps tomorrow, and I’ll tell you everything,” she said, hurriedly giving us more kisses, and saying more soothing words to take away our anxieties. She leaned over me to kiss Carrie, and then went over to Cory to kiss his cheek too.

  “You have forgiven me, Christopher?”

  “Yes, Momma. I understand, Momma. We should have stayed in this room. I should never have gone exploring.”

  She smiled and said “Merry Christmas, and I’ll be seeing you soon.” And then out the door she went, closing and locking it behind her.

  Our first Christmas Day upstairs was over. The clock down the hall had struck one. We had a room full of gifts, a TV set, the chess game we’d asked for, one red and one blue tricycle, new clothes that were heavy and warm, plus many sweet things to eat, and Chris and I had been to a magnificent party—in a way. Yet, something new had come into our lives, a facet of our mother’s character we had never experienced before. For just a brief moment or two, Momma seemed exactly like our grandmother!

  In the dark, on one bed, with Carrie on one side of me, and Chris on the other, he and I lay holding each other. He smelled different than I did. My head was on his boyish chest and he was losing weight. I could hear his heart throbbing along with the faint music still drifting to our ears. He had his hand in my hair, curling a tendril over and over around his fingers.

  “Chris, being grown up is awfully complicated, isn’t it?”

  “Guess so.”

  “I always thought when you were an adult you knew how to handle any situation. You were never in doubt as to what is wrong, and what is right. I never guessed adults floundered around, too, just like us.”

  “If you’re thinking of Momma, she didn’t mean what she said and did. I believe, though I’m not sure, once you are an adult, and come back to the home of your parents to live, for some odd reason, you’re reduced to being a child again, and dependent. Her parents tug her one way—and we pull her another way—and now she’s got that man with the moustache. He must be tugging her his way, too.”

  “I hope she never marries again! We need her more than that man does!”

  Chris didn’t say anything.

  “And that TV set she brought us—she waited for her father to give her one, when she could have bought us one herself months ago, instead of buying herself so many clothes. And the jewelry! She’s always wearing new rings, and new bracelets, earrings and necklaces.”

  Very slowly he expressed a careful explanation of our mother’s motives. “Look at it this way, Cathy. If she had given us a TV the first day we came, we would have sat down in front of it and stared all day long. Then we wouldn’t have created a garden in the attic where the twins can play happily. We wouldn’t have done anything but sit and watch. And look how much we’ve learned during our long, long days, like how to make flowers and animals. I paint better now than when I came, and look at the books we’ve read to improve our minds. And you, Cathy, you’ve changed too.”

  “How? How have I changed? Name it.”

  He rolled his head from side to side on the pillow, expressing a sort of embarrassed helplessness.

  “All right. You don’t have to say anything nice to me. But before you leave this bed and get into your own, tell me all you found out—everything. Don’t leave out a thing, not even your thoughts. I want you to make me feel I was there with you, at your side, seeing and feeling what you did.”

  He turned his head so our eyes locked and he said in the weirdest voice, “You were there beside me. I felt you there, holding onto my hand, whispering in my ear, and I looked all the harder, just so you could see what I did.”

  This giant house, ruled by the sick ogre beneath, had intimidated him; I could tell that by his voice. “It’s an awfully big house, Cathy, like a hotel. There are rooms and rooms, all furnished with beautiful expensive things, but you can tell they are never used. I counted fourteen rooms on this floor alone, and I think I missed a few small ones.”

  “Chris!” I cried out, disappointed. “Don’t tell it to me that way! Make me feel I was there beside you. Start over, and tell me how it went from the second you were out of my sight.”

  “Well,” he said, sighing, like he’d rather not, “I stole along the dark corridor of this wing, and I ran to where this hall joins that large center rotunda where we hid in the chest near the balcony. I didn’t bother looking in any of the northern-wing rooms. As soon as I was where people might see me, I had to be careful. The party was nearing its peak. The revelry down there was even louder, everybody sounded drunk. In fact, one man was singing in a foolish way something about wanting his missing two front teeth. It was so funny sounding, I stole over to the balustrade and looked down on all the people. They looked odd, foreshortened, and I thought, I’ll have to remember that, so when I draw people from an above the eye-level viewpoint, they’ll look natural. Perspective makes all the difference in a painting.”

  It made all the difference in everything, if you asked me.

  “Of course it was Momma I searched for,” he continued after I urged him on, “and the only people I recognized down there were our grandparents. Our grandfather was beginning to look tired, and even as I watched, a nurse came and pushed him out of sight. And I watched, for it gave me the general direction to his room in back of the library.”

  “Was she wearing a white uniform?”

  “Of course. How else would I know she was a nurse?”

  “Okay, go on. Don’t leave out a thing.”

  “Well, no sooner did the grandfather leave than the grandmother left, too, and then I heard voices coming up one of the stairways! You never saw anyone move quicker than I did! I couldn’t hide in the chest without revealing myself, so I ducked into a corner where a suit of armor stood on a pedestal. You know that armor must have been worn by a fully grown man, and yet I’ll bet you a hundred it wouldn’t fit me, though I would have liked to try it on. And as for who was coming up the stairs, it was Momma, and with her she had the same dark-haired man with the moustache.”

  “What did they do? Why were they upstairs?”

  “They didn’t see me hiding in the shadows, I guess, because they were so preoccupied with each other. That man wanted to see some bed Momma has in her room.”

  “Her bed—he wanted to see her bed? Why?”

  “It’s a special kind of bed, Cathy. He said to her, ‘C’mon, you’ve held out long enough.’ His voice sounded teasing. Then he added, ‘It’s time you showed me that fabulous swan bed I’ve heard so much about.’ Apparently Momma was worried that we might still be hidden in the chest. She glanced that way, looking uneasy. But she agreed and said, ‘All right, Bart—however, we can linger but a moment, for you know what everyone will suspect if we stay away too long.’ And he chuckled and teased ba
ck, ‘No, I can’t guess what everyone would think. Tell me what they will suspect.’ To me, this sounded like a challenge to let everyone think what they would. It made me angry, him saying that.” And at this point Chris paused, and his breathing got heavier and faster.

  “You’re holding something back,” I said, knowing him like a book I’d read a hundred times over. “You’re protecting her! You saw something you don’t want to tell me! Now that’s not fair! You know we agreed the first day we came here to always be honest and fully truthful with each other—now you tell me what you saw!”

  “Good gosh,” he said, squirming and turning his head and refusing to look me straight in the eyes, “what difference does a few kisses make?”

  “A FEW kisses?” I stormed. “You saw him kiss Momma more than once? What kind of kisses? Hand kisses—or real mouth-to-mouth kisses?”

  A blush heated up his chest, on which my cheek was resting. It burned right through his pajamas. “They were passionate kisses, weren’t they?” I threw out, convinced even without his say-so. “He kissed her, and she let him, and maybe he even touched her breasts, and stroked her buttocks, like I once saw Daddy do when he didn’t know I was in the room and watching! Is that what you saw, Christopher?”

  “What difference does it make?” he answered, a choke in his voice. “Whatever he did, she didn’t seem to mind, though it made me feel sick.”

  It made me feel sick, too. Momma was only a widow of eight months then. But, sometimes eight months can feel more like eight years, and, after all, of what value was the past when the present was so thrilling, and pleasing . . . for, you bet, I could guess a lot went on that Chris wasn’t ever going to tell me.

  “Now, Cathy, I don’t know what you’re thinking, but Momma did command him to stop, and if he didn’t, she wouldn’t show him her bedroom.”

  “Oh boy, I bet he was doing something gross!”

  “Kisses,” said Chris, staring over at the Christmas tree, “only kisses, and a few caresses, but they did make her eyes glow, and then that Bart, he was asking her if the swan bed had once belonged to a French courtesan.”

  “For heaven’s sake, what is a French courtesan?”

  Chris cleared his throat. “It’s a noun I looked up in the dictionary, and it means a woman who saves her favors for men of the aristocracy, or royalty.”

  “Favors—what kind of favors?”

  “The kind rich men pay for,” he said quickly, and went on, putting his hand over my mouth to shut me up. “And, of course, Momma denied such a bed would be in this house. She said a bed with a sinful reputation, no matter how beautiful, would be burned at night, while prayers were said for its redemption, and the swan bed was her grandmother’s bed, and when she was a girl, she wanted her grandmother’s bedroom suite more than she wanted anything else. But her parents wouldn’t let her have those rooms, fearful she’d be contaminated by the ghost of her grandmother who wasn’t exactly a saint, and not exactly a courtesan either. And then Momma laughed, kind of hard and bitterly, and told Bart her parents believed she was now so corrupted that nothing could, or would make her worse than she already was. And you know, that made me feel so bad. Momma isn’t corrupted—Daddy loved her . . . they were married . . . and what married people do in private is no one else’s business.”

  My breath caught and held. Chris always knew everything—absolutely everything!

  “Well, Momma said, ‘One quick look, Bart, and then back to the party.’ They disappeared down a wing softly lit and inviting, and of course that gave me the general directions of her room. I cautiously peered in all directions first, before I came from out of hiding, and dashed away from the suit of armor, and into the first closed door that I saw. I rushed in, thinking that since it was dark, and the door was closed, it would be unoccupied. I closed the door behind me very softly, and then stood perfectly still, just to absorb the scent and feel of the place, the way you say you do. I had my flashlight, and I could have beamed that around right away, but I wanted to learn how you can be so intuitive, and so wary and suspicious, when everything seems perfectly normal to me. And darned if you aren’t right. If the lights had been on, and I’d used the flashlight, maybe I wouldn’t have noticed the strangest unnatural odor that filled the room. An odor that made me feel uneasy and kind of scared. Then, by golly, I nearly dropped my skin!”

  “What—what?” I said, pushing his hand that tried to hush me. “What did you see—a monster?”

  “Monster? Oh, you bet I saw monsters! Dozens of monsters! At least I saw their heads mounted and hung on the walls. All about me eyes were glistening—amber, green, topaz, and lemon eyes. Boy, was it scary! The light coming through the windows was colored bluish because of the snow, and it caught on the shiny teeth, and on the fangs of the lion which had its mouth wide open and was silently roaring. It had a tawny ruff of mane that made its head seem huge—it had a mute expression of anguish, or anger. And for some reason, I felt sorry for it, decapitated, mounted, stuffed—made just a thing to decorate when it should have lived out its life stalking free on the veld.”

  Oh, yes, I knew what he meant. My anguish was always like a mountain of rage.

  “It was a trophy room, Cathy, a huge room with many animal heads. There was a tiger, and an elephant with its trunk uplifted. All the animals from Asia and Africa were displayed on one side of the huge room, and the big game from America was on the opposite wall: a grizzly bear, a brown-and-black bear, an antelope, a mountain lion, and so on. Not a fish or bird was represented, as if they didn’t present enough of a challenge to the hunter who had killed to decorate that room. It was a creepy room, and yet I wanted so much for you to see it. You’ve just got to see it!”

  Oh, heck—what did I care about the trophy room? I wanted to know about people—their secrets—that’s what I wanted.

  “There was a stone fireplace at least twenty feet long on the wall with the windows on either side, and above it hung a life-size oil portrait of a young man who was so much like our father it made me want to cry out. But it wasn’t Daddy’s portrait. As I neared, I saw a man much like our father, except in the eyes. He wore a khaki hunting outfit, with a blue shirt. The hunter rested on his rifle and he had one leg up on a log that lay on the ground. I know a little about art, enough to know that painting is a masterpiece. The artist really captured the soul of the hunter. You never saw such hard, cold, cruel and pitiless blue eyes. That alone told me it couldn’t be our father even before I read the small metal plate fastened to the bottom of the goldleaf frame. It was a painting of Malcolm Neal Foxworth, our grandfather. The date showed Daddy had been five years old when that portrait was painted. And as you know, when Daddy was three, he and his mother, Alicia, had been driven away from Foxworth Hall, and he and his mother were living in Richmond then.”

  “Go on.”

  “Well, I was very fortunate nobody saw me stealing around, for I really did poke into every room. And finally I found Momma’s suite of rooms. It has double doors over two steps up, and, boy, when I took a look inside, I thought I was looking into a palace! The other rooms made me anticipate something splendid, but her rooms are just beyond belief! And they had to be our mother’s rooms, for Daddy’s photograph was on her nightstand, and the rooms smelled of her perfume. In the center of the room, on a dais, was the fabulous swan bed! Oh! What a bed! You’ve never seen anything like it! It has a sleek ivory head, turned in profile, and appears ready to plunge its head under the ruffled underside of a lifted wing. It has one sleepy red eye. The wings curve gently to cup the head of an almost oval bed—I don’t know how they fit sheets on it, unless they are custom-made. The designers arranged for the wingtip feathers to act as fingers, and they hold back the delicate, transparent draperies that are in all shades of pink and rose, and violet, and purple. It is really some bed . . . and those bed curtains . . . why, she must feel like a princess sleeping there. The pale mauve carpet is so thick you sink up to your ankles, and there’s a large rug of white fur n
ear the bed. There are lamps four feet high of cut-crystal, decorated with gold and silver, and two of them have black shades. There’s an ivory chaise lounge upholstered in rose-colored velvet—something like you’d see in a Roman orgy. And at the foot of that big swan bed—and hold your breath, for you’re not going to believe this—there was an infant swan bed! Imagine that! Placed at the foot, and crossways. I just had to stand and wonder why anyone would need a big wide bed, and then a little narrow bed across the bottom. There must be a good reason, beside that of taking a nap and not mussing the larger bed. Cathy, you’ve just got to see that bed to believe it!”

  I knew he’d seen a whole lot more that he didn’t mention. More that I was to see later for myself. So much I did see that I knew why he came back and made so much of the bed without telling me everything.

  “Is this house prettier than our house in Gladstone?” I asked, for, to me, our ranch house—eight rooms and two and a half baths—had been the best possible.

  He hesitated. It took him some time to find the right words to say, for he was not one to speak hastily. He weighed his words carefully that night, and that alone told much. “This is not a pretty house. It’s grand, it’s big, it’s beautiful, but I wouldn’t call it pretty.”

  I thought I knew what he meant. Prettiness was more akin to coziness than grand, rich, and beautiful, plus huge.

  And now there was nothing left to say but good night—and don’t let the bedbugs bite. I put a kiss on his cheek and pushed him off the bed. This time he didn’t complain that kisses were only for babies and sissies—and girls. Soon he was snuggled down beside Cory, only three feet away.

  In the dark, the little live Christmas tree, two feet tall, sparkled with tiny colored lights, like the tears I saw glistening in my brother’s eyes.

  The Long Winter, and Spring, and Summer

  Never had our mother spoken truer words when she said now we had a real window to look into the lives of others. That winter, the TV set took over our lives. Like others—invalids, sick people, old people—we ate, bathed, and dressed, so we could sit down to watch other people living fake lives.