Frowning, sulky, I gazed moodily at him. “And when I fall in love,” I began, “I will build a mountain to touch the sky. Then, my lover and I will have the best of both worlds, reality firmly under our feet, while we have our heads in the clouds with all our illusions still intact. And the purple grass will grow all around, high enough to reach our eyes.”
He laughed, he hugged me, he kissed me lightly, tenderly, and his eyes were so gentle and soft in the murky, cold gloom of the attic. “Oh, yes, my Cathy could do that. Keep all her fanciful illusions, dancing eye-high in purple grass, wearing clouds for gossamer clothes. She’d leap, she’d bound and pirouette until her clumsy-footed, awkward lover was dancing, too, just as gracefully.”
Put on quicksand, I quickly jumped to where I was surefooted. “It was a beautiful story though, in its own peculiar way. I feel so sorry that Lily and Raymond had to take their own lives, when it should have worked out differently. When Lily told Raymond the full truth, how she was virtually raped by that awful man, Raymond shouldn’t have accused her of seducing him! Nobody in their right mind would want to seduce a man with eight children.”
“Oh, Cathy, sometimes, really, you are just too much.”
His voice sounded deeper than usual when he said that. His soft look traveled slowly over my face, lingering on my lips, then down to my bosom, to my legs, sheathed in white leotards. Over the leotards I wore a short wool skirt and a wool cardigan sweater. Then his eyes moved upward again, coming to lock with my surprised look. He flushed as I kept on staring at him, and turned aside his face for the second time today. I was close enough to hear his heart drumming fast, faster, racing, and all of a sudden my own heart caught the rhythm of his, in the only tempo hearts can have—thumpity-bump, thumpity-bump. He shot me a quick glance. Our eyes melded and held. He laughed nervously, trying to hide and pretend none of this could possibly be serious.
“You were right the first time, Cathy. It was a stupid, silly story. Ridiculous! Only insane people would die for the sake of love. I’ll bet you a hundred to one a woman wrote that junky romantic trash!”
Just a minute ago I’d despised that author for bringing about such a miserable ending, then there I went, rushing to the defense. “T. M. Ellis could very well have been a man! Though I doubt any woman writer in the nineteenth century had much chance of being published, unless she used her initials, or a man’s name. And why is it all men think everything a woman writes is trivial or trashy—or just plain silly drivel? Don’t men have romantic notions? Don’t men dream of finding the perfect love? And it seems to me, that Raymond was far more mushy-minded than Lily!”
“Don’t ask me what men are like!” he stormed with such bitterness he didn’t seem himself at all. He raged on: “Up here, living as we do, how am I ever going to know how it feels to be a man? Up here, I’m not allowed to have any romantic notions. It’s don’t do this, and don’t do that, and keep your eyes averted, and don’t see what’s before your very eyes gliding about, showing off, pretending I’m just a brother, without feelings, without any emotions but childish ones. It seems some stupid girls think a gonna-be doctor is without sexuality!”
My eyes widened. Such a vehement outburst from one seldom upset took me completely by surprise. In all our lives he’d never spoken so fervently to me, and with such anger. No, I was the sour lemon, the bad apple in the barrel of good. I’d contaminated him. He was acting now like he had when Momma went away and stayed so long. Oh, it was wicked of me to make him the troublesome thing I was. He should stay always what he was, the happy-go-lucky cheerful optimist. Had I robbed him of his greatest asset, besides his good looks and charm?
I put out my hand to touch his forearm. “Chris,” I whispered, near tears. “I think I know exactly what you need to feel manly.”
“Yeah,” he bit out. “What can you do?”
Now he wouldn’t even look at me. Instead, he fixed his gaze on the ceiling above. I ached for him. I knew what had him down; he was letting go of his dream, for my benefit, so he could be like me, and not care whether or not we inherited a fortune. And to be like me, he had to be sour, bitter, hating everyone, and suspicious of their hidden motives.
Tentatively, I reached out to touch his hair. “A haircut, that’s what you need. Your hair is much too long and pretty. To feel a man, you must have shorter hair. Right now, your hair looks like mine.”
“And who has ever said your hair is pretty?” he asked in the tightest of voices. “Maybe once you had pretty hair, before the tarring.”
Really? It seemed I could recall many times his eyes had told me my hair was more than just pretty. And I could recall the way he looked when he picked up the shiny shears to cut off that front hair, so delicate and brittle. He snipped with such reluctance it seemed he was cutting off fingers and not just hair that didn’t feel pain. Then one day I caught him sitting in the attic sunshine, holding the long lengths of cut-off hair in his hands. He’d sniffed it, then put it to his cheek, and then to his lips, and then he hid it away in a box to keep under his pillow.
Not easily could I force laughter to deceive him and not let him know I’d seen. “Oh, Christopher Doll, you have the most expressive blue eyes. When we are free of this place, and out in the world, I pity all the girls who are going to fall for you. Most especially I’ll feel sorry for your wife, with such a handsome husband to charm all his beautiful patients into wanting affairs. And if I were your wife I’d kill you if you even had one extramarital affair! I’d love you so much, I’d be so jealous . . . I might even make you retire from medicine at age thirty-five.”
“I never told you even once your hair was pretty,” he said sharply, ignoring everything I’d said.
Ever so lightly I stroked his cheek, feeling the whiskers that needed shaving off.
“Sit right where you are. I’ll run for the scissors. You know, I haven’t given you a haircut for the longest time.” Why should I bother cutting his hair and Cory’s when the way our hair looked didn’t seem important to our life-style? Not since we came had Carrie and I had our hair trimmed. Only the top of mine had been snipped off to signify our submission to a mean old woman made of steel.
And while I raced for the scissors, I thought how odd it was that none of our green plants would grow, yet each of us grew lots of hair. It seemed in all the fairy tales I’d read, the damsels in distress always had long, long blond hair. Had any brunette ever been locked away in a turret—if an attic could be considered a turret?
Chris sat on the floor, I knelt behind him, and though his hair hung below his shoulders, he didn’t want much taken off. “Now go easy with those shears,” he ordered nervously. “Don’t cut off too much all at once. Feeling manly too suddenly, on a rainy afternoon in the attic, just might be dangerous,” he teased, and grinned, and then he was laughing with a brilliant show of even, white teeth. I had charmed him back to how he should be.
Oh, I did love him as I crawled around and earnestly snipped and trimmed. Constantly I had to move backward for perspective, to check and see if his hair hung evenly, for most certainly, I wouldn’t want to make his head lopsided.
I held his hair with a comb, as I’d seen barbers do, and I carefully snipped beneath that comb, not daring to take off more than a quarter of an inch a clip. I had a mental vision of how I wanted him to look—like someone I admired very much.
And when I’d finished, I brushed the bright hair snippings from his shoulders, and leaned back to see that I hadn’t done a bad job at all.
“There!” I said in triumph, pleased with my unexpected mastery of what seemed to be a difficult art. “Not only do you look exceptionally handsome, but extremely manly, as well! Though, of course, you have been manly all along, it’s a pity you didn’t know it.”
I thrust the silver-backed mirror with my initials into his hands. This mirror represented one-third of the sterling-silver set Momma had given me on my last birthday. Brush, comb, mirror: all three to be hidden away so the grandmother wouldn’t
know I had expensive items of vanity and pride.
Chris stared and stared into that mirror, and my heart faltered as he looked, for a moment, displeased and undecided. Then, slowly, a wide grin lit up his face.
“My God! You’ve made me look like a blond Prince Valiant! At first I didn’t like it, but now I see you changed his style just a bit, so it isn’t squared off. You’ve curved it, and layered it to flatter my face like a loving cup. Thank you, Catherine Doll. I had no idea you were so skilled at cutting hair.”
“I have many skills you don’t know about.”
“I am beginning to suspect that.”
“And Prince Valiant should be so lucky as to look like my handsome, manly, blond brother,” I teased, and couldn’t help but admire my own artistry. Oh, golly-gee, what a heartbreaker he’d be one day.
He still had the mirror, and casually he laid it aside, and before I knew what he was about, like a cat he pounced! He wrestled with me, bearing me back to the floor, and reached for the scissors at the same time! He yanked them from my hand, and then grabbed a handful of my hair!
“Now, my lovely, let’s see if I can’t do the same thing for you!”
Terrified, I yelped!
I thrust him away so he fell backward, and I jumped to my feet. No one was going to shear off one-eighth of an inch of my hair! Maybe it was too fine and too thin now, and maybe it wasn’t as sensational as it used to be, but it was all the hair I had, and prettier even now than what most girls had. I took off on the run from the schoolroom. I raced through the doorway and into the immense attic, dodging behind posts, circling old trunks, leaping over low tables, and bounding over sheet-shrouded sofas and chairs. The paper flowers fanned frantically as I ran, and he chased. The flames of the low fat candles that we kept burning during the day just to cheer up and warm up a dreary, vast and cold place, bent low in our wakes, and almost guttered.
And no matter how swiftly I ran, or how cleverly I dodged, I couldn’t shake off my pursuer! I threw a glance over my shoulder, and I couldn’t even recognize his face—and that scared me even more. Lunging forward, he made an effort to seize hold of my long hair which bannered out behind me, and seemed so very intent on cutting it off!
Did he hate me now? Why had he spent one entire day so devotedly trying to save my hair, only to cut off my crowning glory for the sheer fun of it?
I fled back toward the schoolroom, planning on reaching there first. Then I’d slam the door, and lock it, and he’d come to his senses and realize the absurdity of it all.
Perhaps he sensed my purpose, and put some extra speed into his longer legs—he bounded forward, and caught hold of my long, streaming locks, causing me to scream as I tripped and fell forward!
Not only did I fall, but he fell too—straight on top of me! A sharp pain pierced my side! I screamed again—not in terror this time, but in shock.
He was over me, supported by his hands on the floor, staring down into my face, his face deadly white and frightened. “Are you hurt? Oh, God, Cathy, are you all right?”
Was I all right, was I? Lifting my head, I stared down at the heavy flow of blood quickly staining my sweater. Chris saw it, too. His blue eyes went stark, bleak, wild, distraught. With trembling fingers he began to unbutton my sweater, so he could spread it open and take a look at my wound.
“Oh, Lord . . .” he breathed, then expelled a low whistle of relief. “Wow! Thank God. I was so scared it would be a puncture. A deep puncture would be serious, but it’s only a long cut, Cathy. Nasty, and you’re losing a lot of blood. Now don’t move a muscle! Stay right where you are, and I’ll dash down to the bath and fetch medicine and bandages.”
He kissed me first on the cheek, then was up and in a terrible hurry, racing madly toward the stairwell, whereas I thought I could have gone with him and saved time. Yet the twins were down there, and they’d see the blood. And all they had to do was see blood and they’d go to pieces and scream.
In a few minutes Chris came speeding back with our medical emergency kit. He fell down on his knees beside me, his hands still glistening with water from a fast scrub-up. He was in too much of a hurry to dry them well.
I was fascinated to see he knew so precisely what to do. First he folded a heavy towel, and used that to press down hard on the long cut. Looking very serious and intent, he bore down on the pad, checking every few seconds to see if the bleeding had stopped. When it did, he busied himself with antiseptic that stung like fire, and hurt worse than the injury itself.
“I know it stings, Cathy . . . can’t help that . . . have to put it on to avoid infection. Wish I had sutures, but maybe it won’t make a permanent scar; and I pray it doesn’t. It would be so nice if people could go through all of their life without ever cutting into the perfect envelope they’re born with. And here I am, the first one to really scar your skin. If you had died because of me—and you could have if the shears had been slanted differently—then I would want to die, too.”
He had finished playing doctor, and was now winding the remaining gauze up in a neat roll before replacing it in the blue wrapping paper, and into a box. He stashed away the adhesive, closed the kit.
Leaning above me, his face hovered over mine, his serious eyes so delving, worried, and intense. His blue eyes were like the eyes we all had. Yet on this rainy day they were catching colors from the paper flowers, making them limpid dark pools of iridescence. A lump came in my throat as I wondered where the boy was I used to know. Where was that brother—and who was this young man with the blond whiskers, staring so long into my eyes? Just that look of his held me in thrall. And greater than any pain, or ache, or hurt I ever felt before, or since, was the pain caused me by the suffering I saw in the shifting kaleidescopic, rainbowed colors of his tortured eyes.
“Chris,” I murmured, feeling unreal, “don’t look like that. It wasn’t your fault.” I cupped his face in my palms first, then drew his head down to my breast as I’d seen Momma do in the past. “It’s only a scratch, doesn’t hurt a bit (though it hurt dreadfully), and I know you didn’t do it deliberately.”
Hoarsely he choked, “Why did you run? Because you ran, I had to chase. And I was only teasing. I wouldn’t cut one strand from your head; it was just something to do, to have fun. And you were wrong when you said I thought your hair was pretty. It’s more than just pretty. I think you may grow on your head the most glorious hair in the world.”
A little knife twisted in my heart as he lifted his head long enough to spread my hair fanlike and cover my bare breast. I could hear him breathing deeply my scent. We lay there quietly listening to the winter rain drumming on the slate roof not so far above. Deep silence all around. Always silence. Nature’s voices were the only ones to reach us in the attic, and so seldom did nature speak in friendly, soft tones.
The rain on the roof pitter-pattered down into only drops, and the sun came out and shone down on us to shimmer his hair and mine like long glimmering strands of silken diamonds. “Look,” I said to Chris, “one of the slats from a western window shutter has fallen out.”
“Nice,” he said, sounding sleepy and content, “Now we’ll have sun where once there was none. See, I’ve made a rhyme.” And then in a sleepy whisper, he said, “I’m thinking of Raymond and Lily and their quest for the purple grass where all dreams are fulfilled.”
“Were you? In a way, I was kinda thinking the same thing,” I answered, whispery, too. Over and over again I twirled a strand of his hair around my thumb, pretending not to notice one of his hands was ever so cautiously stroking my breast, the one his face didn’t cover. Because I didn’t object, he dared to kiss the nipple. I jumped, startled, wondering why that should feel so strange, and so extraordinarily thrilling. What was a nipple but a tannish-pink little peak? “I can picture Raymond kissing Lily, just where you kissed,” I went on breathlessly, wanting him to stop, and wanting him to go on, “but I can’t imagine them doing what comes next.”
Words to make his head pop up. Just the right
words to make him look at me intensely again, with strange lights flickering in his eyes which wouldn’t stay only one color. “Cathy, do you know what comes next?”
A blush heated my face. “Yes, I know, sort of. Do you know?”
He laughed, one of those dry chuckles you read about in novels. “Sure I know. My very first day in school, I was told in the boy’s restroom; that’s all the older boys could talk about. They had four-letter words on the walls that I didn’t understand. But they were soon explained, in detail. Girls, baseball, girls, football, girls, girls, girls were all they could talk about, and all the ways they were different from us. It’s a fascinating subject for most boys, and, I suppose, men.”
“But not fascinating for you?”
“Me? I don’t think about girls, or sex, though I wish to God you weren’t so damned pretty! And it would help if you weren’t always so near, and so available.”
“Then you do think about me? You do think I’m pretty?”
A smothered groan escaped his lips—more like a moan. He bolted up to sit straight, staring down at what my open sweater revealed, for the fan of my hair was displaced. If I hadn’t cut off the top of my leotards, he wouldn’t be seeing so much. But I had had to cut off the too-small bodice.
With trembling, clumsy fingers he fastened the buttons of my sweater, keeping his eyes averted from mine. “Get this straight in your head, Cathy. Of course you are pretty, but brothers don’t think about sisters as girls—nor do they feel any sort of emotion for them other than tolerance and brotherly affection—and sometimes, hate.”
“I hope God strikes me dead this second if you hate me, Christopher.”
His hands lifted to cover his face, hiding, and when he came out from behind the shield, he was smiling, cheerful, clearing his throat. “Come on, it’s time we went down to the twins before they burn their eyes into black holes from staring at the boob-tube for so long.”
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 31