God and heaven were down there on the ground, in the gardens, in the forests, in the parks, on the seashores, on the lakes, and riding the highways, going somewhere!
Hell was right here, where I was, shadowing me persistently, trying to do me in, and make me into what the grandmother thought I was—the Devil’s issue.
I lay on that hard, cold slate roof until darkness came on, and the moon came out, and the stars flashed angrily at me, as if knowing me for what I was. I wore only a ballet costume, leotards, and one of those silly frilly tutus.
Goosebumps came and chicken-skinned my arms, and still I stayed to plan all my revenge, my vengeance against those who had turned me from good to evil, and made of me what I was going to be from this day forward. I convinced myself there would come a day when both my mother and my grandmother would be under my thumb . . . and I’d snap the whip, and handle the tar, and control the food supply.
I tried to think of exactly what I would do to them. What was the right punishment? Should I lock them both up and throw away the key? Starve them, as we had been starved?
A soft noise interrupted the dark and twisted flow of my thoughts. In the gloom of early evening Chris spoke my name hesitatingly. No more, just my name. I didn’t answer, I didn’t need him—I didn’t need anybody. He had let me down by not understanding, and I didn’t need him, not now.
Nevertheless, he came and lay close by my side. He’d brought a warm woolen jacket with him that he spread over me without saying a word. He stared as I did up at the cold and forbidding sky. The longest, most fearful silence grew between us. There was nothing I really hated about Chris, or even disliked, and I wanted so much to turn on my side and say this to him, and thank him for bringing me the warm jacket, but I couldn’t say a word. I wanted to let him know I was sorry that I struck out at him, and the twins, when God knows none of us needed another enemy. My arms, shivering under the warmth of the jacket, longed to slide around him, and comfort him as he so often comforted me when I woke up from another nightmare. But all I could do was lie there, and hope he understood that I was all tied up in knots.
Always he could raise the white flag first, and for that I’m forever grateful. In a stranger’s husky, strained voice that seemed to span across a great distance, he told me he and the twins had already eaten dinner, but my share had been saved.
“And we only pretended to eat all of the candy, Cathy. There’s plenty left for you.”
Candy. He spoke of candy. Was he still in the child’s world where candy stood for something sweet enough to hold back tears? I had grown older, and had lost enthusiasm for childish delights. I wanted what every teen-ager wants—freedom to develop into a woman, freedom to have full control over my life! Though I tried to tell him this, my voice had dried up along with my tears.
“Cathy . . . what you said . . . don’t ever say ugly, hopeless things like that again.”
“Why not?” I choked out. “Every word I said is true. I only expressed what I feel inside—I let out what you keep hidden deep. Well, keep on hiding from yourself, and you’ll find all those truths turn into acid to eat up your insides!”
“Not once have I ever wished myself dead!” he cried out in the hoarse voice of one with an everlasting cold. “Don’t you ever say such a thing again—or think about death! Sure I’ve got doubts and suspicions hidden away in me, but I smile and I laugh, and make myself believe because I want to survive. If you died by your own hand, you would take me down with you, and soon the twins would follow, for who would be their mother then?”
It made me laugh. Hard, brittle ugly laughter—duplicating my mother’s way of laughing when she felt bitter. “Why, Christopher Doll, remember we have a dear, sweet, loving mother who thinks first of our needs, and she will be left to care for the twins.”
Chris turned toward me then, reaching out to seize my shoulders. “I hate it when you talk that way, like she talks sometimes. Do you think I don’t know that you are more a mother to Cory and Carrie than she is? Do you think I failed to see the twins only stared at their mother, like she was a stranger? Cathy, I’m not blind or stupid. I know Momma takes care of herself first, and us next.” That old moon was out to sparkle the tears frozen in his eyes. His voice in my ear had been gritty, hushed and deep.
All of this he said without bitterness, only regret—just the flat, emotionless way a doctor tells his patient he has a terminal illness.
That’s when it came over me in a cataclysmic flood—I loved Chris—and he was my brother. He made me whole, he gave me what I lacked, a stability when I would run off wild and frantic—and what a perfect way to strike back at Momma and the grandparents. God wouldn’t see. He’d closed his eyes to everything the day Jesus was put on the cross. But Daddy was up there, looking down, and I cringed in shame.
“Look at me, Cathy, please look at me.”
“I didn’t mean any of it, Chris, really I didn’t. You know how melodramatic I am—I want to live as much as anyone does, but I’m so afraid something terrible is going to happen to us, shut up all the time. So I say awful things just to shake you up, make you see. Oh, Chris, I just ache to be with lots of people. I want to see new faces, new rooms. I’m scared to death for the twins. I want to go shopping, and ride horses, and do all the things we can’t do in here.”
In the dark, on the roof, in the cold, we reached for each other intuitively. We clung as one, our hearts throbbing loud against each other. Not crying, not laughing. Hadn’t we already cried an ocean of tears? And they hadn’t helped. Hadn’t we already said a zillion prayers and waited for deliverance that never came? And if tears didn’t work, and prayers weren’t heard, how were we to reach God and make him do something?
“Chris, I’ve said it before, and I’m saying it again. We’ve got to take the initiative. Didn’t Daddy always say God helps those who help themselves?”
His cheek was tight against mine while he reflected for so darned long. “I’ll give it some thought, though, as Momma said, we could come any day into that fortune.”
Our Mother’s Surprise
Each day of the ten that passed before Momma visited us again, Chris and I speculated for hours on end just why she had gone away to Europe and stayed so long, and most of all—what was the big news she had to tell us?
We thought of those ten days as just another form of punishment. For punishment was what it was, and it hurt to know she was in this same house, and yet she could ignore us and shut us out, as if we were only mice in the attic.
So, when she showed up, at long last, we were thoroughly chastised, and most fearful she would never come back if Chris and I showed more hostility or repeated our demands to be let out. We were quiet, timid and accepting of our fate. For what would we do if she never returned? We couldn’t escape by using the ladder made of torn-up sheets—not when the twins went hysterical just to be on the roof.
So we smiled at Momma, and uttered not one word of complaint. We didn’t ask why she had punished us again by staying away ten days, when already she’d been gone for months. We accepted what she was willing to give us. We were, as she had told us she had learned to be with her father, her dutiful, obedient, and passive children. And, what’s more, she liked us this way. We were again, her sweet, her loving, her private “darlings.”
Since we were so good, so sweet, so approving of her now, and so very respectful, and apparently trusting, this was the time she chose to drop her bombshell.
“Darlings, rejoice for me! I am so happy!” She laughed and spun around in a circle, hugging her arms over her chest, loving her own body, or so it seemed to me. “Guess what happened—go on, guess!”
Chris and I glanced at each other. “Our grandfather has died,” he said cautiously, while my heart was doing pirouettes, preparing to really leap and bound if she gave us the glad tidings.
“No!” she said sharply, as if her happiness had dimmed some.
“He’s been taken to the hospital,” said I, guessing second best.<
br />
“No. I really don’t hate him now, so I wouldn’t come to you and say I was rejoicing over his death.”
“Why don’t you just tell us your good news, then,” I said dully. “We’ll never be able to guess; we don’t know much about your life anymore.”
She ignored what I implied and rhapsodized on: “The reason I was gone for so long, and what I found so difficult to explain—I’ve married a wonderful man, an attorney named Bart Winslow. You’re going to like him. He’s going to love all of you. He’s dark-haired and so handsome, and tall and athletic. And he loves to ski, like you do, Christopher, and he plays tennis, and he’s brilliant, like you are, darling,” and she was looking at Chris, of course. “He’s charming and everybody likes him, even my father. And we went to Europe on our honeymoon, and the gifts I brought to you all came from England, France, Spain or Italy.” And on and on she raved about her new husband, while Chris and I sat silent.
Since the night of the Christmas party, Chris and I had voiced our suspicions many times. For as young as we had been back then, we were wise enough to know that a beautiful young woman who was as needing of a man as our mother, was not likely to remain a widow for long. But still, almost two years passed without a wedding, and that had given us reason enough to believe that the handsome, dark-haired man with the big moustache was of no real importance to Momma—just a passing fancy—one suitor amongst many. And deep down in our foolish hearts, we had convinced ourselves that she was going to be ever-faithful, ever-devoted to our dead father—our blond and blue-eyed Grecian god father whom she had to love beyond reason to have done what she did—marry a man so closely related.
I closed my eyes to try and shut out her hateful voice, telling us of another man who was taking our father’s place. Now she was another man’s wife, a totally different kind of man, and he’d been in her bed and sleeping with her now, and we’d see even less of her than we had. Oh, dear God, how long, how long?
Her news and her voice gave birth to a little gray bird of panic that fluttered wild in the cage of my ribs . . . wanting out, out, out!
“Please,” Momma begged, her smiles and laughter, joy and happiness all struggling to survive in the bleak, sterile air of our reception to her news. “Try and understand, and be happy for me. I loved your father, you know that, but he’s gone, and been gone for so long, and I need someone else to love, and someone to love me.”
I saw Chris open his mouth to say he loved her, that we all loved her, but then he tightened his lips, realizing, as I did, that love from her children wasn’t the kind of love she was speaking about. And I didn’t love her anymore. I wasn’t even sure I liked her now, but I could smile and pretend, and say the words just so the twins would not be frightened by my expression. “Yes, Momma, I’m glad for you. It’s nice you found someone to love you again.”
“He’s been in love with me for a long time, Cathy,” she rushed on, encouraged and smiling with confidence again, “though he did have his mind set on being a bachelor. It wasn’t easy to convince him he needed a wife. And your grandfather never wanted me to marry a second time, just as another punishment for the evil I did when I married your father. But he likes Bart, and when I kept on begging and begging, he finally relented, and said yes, that I could marry Bart and still inherit.” She paused to chew on her lower lip. Then she swallowed nervously. Her beringed fingers fluttered to her throat, to nervously work the string of genuine pearls she wore, and thus betrayed all the ways of a woman in distress, who could smile, even so. “Of course, I don’t love Bart as much as I did your father.”
Hah! How weakly she said this. Her glowing eyes and radiant complexion betrayed a love that loomed larger than any she’d known before. And I sighed. Poor Daddy.
“The gifts you brought us, Momma . . . they weren’t all from Europe, or the British Isles. That box of maple sugar candy came from Vermont—did you go to Vermont, too? Is that where he’s from?”
Her laughter came with lilting joy, uninhibited and even a little sensual, as if Vermont had given her much. “No, he isn’t from Vermont, Cathy. But he has a sister living there and we visited her for a weekend after we came from Europe, and that’s where I bought the box of candy, for I know how much you love maple sugar candy. He has two other sisters living down South. He’s from some little town in South Carolina—Greenglena, Grenglenna, or something like that. But he stayed so long in New England, where he graduated from Harvard Law School, that he sounds more like a Yankee than a Southerner. And oh, it is so beautiful in Vermont in the autumn; it absolutely took my breath away. Of course, when you’re on your honeymoon, you don’t want to be with other people, so we visited his sister and her family only a short while, and then spent some time on the seashore.” She flicked her eyes uneasily at the twins, and again her pearls were twisted so likely they’d break any second. Apparently, genuine pearls are more strongly strung than the simulated kind.
“Did you like the little boats I brought you, Cory?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he answered, very politely, staring at her with his large, shadowed eyes, just as if she were a stranger.
“Carrie, sweetheart . . . the little dolls, I picked those up for you in England, to add to your collection. I hoped to find you another cradle, but they don’t seem even to make dollhouse cradles anymore.”
“It’s all right, Momma,” answered Carrie, her eyes on the floor. “Chris and Cathy made me a cradle out of cardboard, and I like it fine.”
Oh, God, didn’t she see?
They didn’t know her now. They felt uncomfortable with her now.
“Does your new husband know about us?” I asked, dead serious. Chris glowered at me for asking, telling me mutely that of course our mother wouldn’t be deceitful and not tell the man she’d married that she had four hidden children—that some considered the Devil’s issue.
Shadows came to darken and pain Momma’s happiness. Again I had asked a wrong question. “Not yet, Cathy, but just as soon as Daddy dies, I’ll tell him about you four. I’ll explain in minute detail. He’ll understand; he’s kind and gentle. You’re going to like him.”
She had already said that more than once. And here was another thing that had to wait until an old man died.
“Cathy, stop looking at me like that! I couldn’t tell Bart before our marriage! He’s your grandfather’s attorney. I couldn’t let him know about my children, not yet, not until the will is read, and I have the money in my name.”
Words were on the tip of my tongue to say a man should know when his wife had four children by her first husband. Oh, how I wanted to say this! But Chris was glaring meanly at me, and the twins were huddled over, crouching small, with their large eyes fixed on the TV set. And I didn’t know if I should speak, or stay silent. At least when you were silent, you didn’t make any new enemies. Maybe she was right, too. God, let her be right. Let my faith be renewed. Let me believe in her again. Let me believe that she is not just beautiful on the surface, but all the way through.
God didn’t reach down and lay a warm, reassuring hand on my shoulder. I sat there, realizing my suspicions were stretching the cord between her and me, very, very fine.
* * *
Love. How often that word came up in books. Over and over again. If you had wealth and health, and beauty and talent . . . you had nothing if you didn’t have love. Love changed all that was ordinary into something giddy, powerful, drunken, enchanted.
Thus ran the course of my thoughts on a day early in winter, when rain pelted on the roof, and the twins sat on the floor in the bedroom, before the TV. Chris and I were in the attic, lying side by side on the old mattress, near the window in the schoolroom, reading together one of the antique books Momma had brought up from the big library downstairs. Soon the attic would again turn arctic winter, so we spent as much time up there as possible now, while we still could. Chris liked to scan a page, and then quickly leap to another. I liked to dawdle over the beautiful lines, going back to read through them t
wice, sometimes three times. We argued incessantly about this. “Read faster, Cathy! You try to absorb the words.”
Today he was patient. He turned his back and stared up at the ceiling while I took my time, pursuing each beautifully written line, and soaking up the feel of Victorian times, when people wore such fancy clothes, and spoke in such elegant ways, and felt so deeply about love. From paragraph one, the story had captivated both of us with its mystical, romantic charm. Each slow page spinning out an involved tale of star-crossed lovers named Lily and Raymond, who had to overcome monumental obstacles to find and stand upon the magic place of purple grass, where all dreams are fulfilled. God, how I wanted them to find that place! Then I discovered the tragedy of their lives. All along they had stood on the purple grass . . . can you imagine? On that special grass all the time, and they never looked down even once to see it. I hated unhappy endings! I slammed that hateful book shut and hurled it against the nearest wall. “If that isn’t the most stupid, silly, ridiculous story!” I raged at Chris, as if he had written the book. “No matter whom I love, I’ll learn to forgive and forget!” I continued to rail along with the storm outside, the weather and me beating out the same crescendo. “Now why couldn’t it have been written differently? How is it possible for two intelligent people to float along with their heads in the clouds, not realizing happenstance can always bring about bad luck? Never, never am I going to be like Lily, or Raymond, either! Idealistic fools who don’t know enough to look down at the ground on occasion!”
My brother seemed amused that I took a story so seriously, but then he reconsidered, and stared thoughtfully at the driving rain. “Perhaps lovers aren’t supposed to look down at the ground. That kind of story is told in symbols—and earth represents reality, and reality represents frustrations, chance illnesses, death, murder, and all kinds of other tragedies. Lovers are meant to look up at the sky, for up there no beautiful illusions can be trampled upon.”
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 30