“C’mon,” urged Chris, dragging me along the corridors so dark and sinister. “Lingering in one place is dangerous. We’ll take a quick look in the trophy room, then rush on into Momma’s bedroom suite.”
All I needed was one glance in that trophy room. I hated—actually detested that oil portrait over the stone fireplace—so much like our father—and yet so very different. A man as cruel and heartless as Malcolm Foxworth had no right to be handsome, even when he was young. Those cold blue eyes should have corrupted the rest of him with sores, boils. I saw all those heads of dead animals, and the tiger and bear skins on the floor, and I thought, how like him to want a room like this.
If Chris would let me, I would look into every room. But he insisted we pass by the closed doors, allowing me to peek in only a few. “Nosy!” he whispered. “There’s nothing of interest in any of them.” He was right. Right in so many things. I learned that night what Chris meant when he said this house was only grand and beautiful, not pretty or cozy. Nevertheless, I couldn’t help being impressed. Our home in Gladstone shrank in the comparison.
When we had quietly traversed many a long and stingily lit dim hall, we came at last upon our mother’s grand suite of rooms. Sure, Chris had told me in detail of the swan bed, and the infant bed at the foot—but hearing wasn’t seeing! My breath pulled in. My dreams took off on wings of fancy! Oh, glory be to heaven! This wasn’t a room, but a chamber fit for a queen or a princess! I couldn’t believe the posh splendor, the opulence! Overwhelmed, I flitted from here to there, awed to touch the walls, covered with silk damask, colored a delicious strawberry pink, richer than the pale mauve of the two-inch-thick carpet I fingered the soft, furry coverlet and I threw myself upon it and rolled about. I touched the filmy bed curtains, and heavier drapes of purple velvet. I jumped up from the bed, to stand at the foot, and gazed in admiration at that marvelous swan that kept his observant, but sleepy red eye riveted on me.
Then I backed off, not liking a bed where Momma slept with a man not our father. I walked into her huge walk-in closet, drifting about in a dream of riches that could never be mine, except in dreams. She had more clothes than a department store. Plus shoes, hats, handbags. Four full-length fur coats, three fur stoles, a white mink cape, and a dark sable one, plus fur hats of a dozen different styles and made of different animal pelts, plus a leopard coat with green wool in between the fur trim. Then there were negligees, nightgowns, peignoir sets, flounced, beruffled, beribboned, feathered, furred, made of velvet, satin, chiffon, combinations—good glory be! She’d have to live a thousand years to wear all she owned just once!
What caught my eye most, I took from the closet and carried into the golden dressing room Chris showed me. I glanced in her bath, with the mirrors all around, live green plants, real flowers growing, two commodes—one didn’t have a lid. (I know now one was a bidet.) A separate shower stall, too. “All this is new,” explained Chris. “When I first came, you know, the night of the Christmas party, it wasn’t so . . . well, so opulent as it is now.”
I spun about to glare at him, guessing it had been all along, but he hadn’t told me. He had been deliberately shielding her, not wanting me to know about all those clothes, the furs, plus the fabulous amount of jewelry she kept hidden in a secret compartment of her long dressing table. No, he hadn’t lied—just omitted. It showed in his betraying, shifting eyes, his flushed face, and the quick way he hurried to escape more of my embarrassing questions—no wonder she didn’t want to sleep in our room!
I was in the dressing room trying on the clothes from Momma’s big closet. For the first time in my life I slipped on nylon hose, and, oh, did my legs look heavenly—divine! No wonder women liked these things! Next, I put on a bra for the first time, one that was much too large, to my dismay. I stuffed the cups full of tissues until they bulged way out. Next came the silver slippers, again, too large. And then I topped off the splendor of me with a black dress cut very low in front to show off what I didn’t have much of.
Now came the fun part—what I used to do when I was little whenever I had the chance. I sat down at Momma’s dressing table and began to apply her makeup with a lavish hand. She had ten carloads. On my face I slathered the whole works: foundation, rouge, powder, mascara, eyeshadow, lipstick. And then I swept my hair up in a way I considered sexy and stylish, stuck in hairpins and began to put on jewelry. And, last of all, perfume—lots of it.
Tottering awkwardly on the high heels, I teetered over to Chris. “How do I look?” I asked, flirtatiously smiling, and fluttering my sooty lashes. Truly, I was prepared for compliments. Hadn’t the mirrors already told me I looked sensational?
He was carefully going through a drawer, putting everything back exactly as he had found it, but he turned to take a glance. Astonishment widened his eyes, and then he heavily scowled, while I rocked back and forth and sideways, seeking my balance on four-inch heels, and kept on batting my eyelids—maybe I didn’t know how to put on false eyelashes right. I felt I was looking through spider legs.
“How do you look?” he began in a sarcastic way. “Let me tell you precisely. You look like a streetwalker—that’s how!” He turned away in disgust, as if unable to bear the sight of me. “An adolescent whore—that’s what! Now go wash your face, and put back all that stuff where you found it, and clean up the dressing table!”
I tottered over to the nearest full-length mirror. It had right and left wings so she could adjust them, and see herself from every angle, and in those three very revealing mirrors I took a fresh perspective—and what a fascinating mirror; it closed like a three-page book, and then there was a beautiful French pastoral scene to view.
Twisting and turning, I checked over my appearance. This wasn’t the way my mother looked in the same dress—what had I done wrong? True, she didn’t ladder so many bracelets up her arms. And she didn’t wear three necklaces at once, while long, dangling diamond earrings brushed her shoulders, plus a tiara; nor did she ever wear two or three rings on each finger—including her thumbs.
Oh, but I did dazzle the eyes all right. And my jutting bosom was absolutely magnificent! Truthfully, I had to admit I’d overdone it.
I took off seventeen bracelets, twenty-six rings, the necklaces, the tiara, and the black chiffon formal gown that didn’t look as elegant on me as when Momma wore it to a dinner party with only pearls at the throat. Oh, but the furs—nobody could help but feel beautiful in furs!
“Hurry up, Cathy. Leave that stuff alone and come help me search.”
“Chris, I’d love to take a bath in her black marble tub.”
“God Almighty! We don’t have time for you to do that!”
I took off her clothes, her black lace bra, the nylon hose, and the silver slippers, and put on my own things. But on second thought, I sneaked a plain white bra from her drawer of many, and tucked it down inside my blouse. Chris didn’t need my help. He’d been here so often, he could find money without my assistance. I wanted to see what was in every drawer, but I’d have to move fast. I pulled open a small drawer of her nightstand, expecting to find cold cream, tissues, but nothing of value for servants to steal. And there was night cream in the drawer, and tissues, plus two paperback books to read when sleep was evasive. (Were there nights when she tossed and turned and thought uneasily about us?) Underneath those paperbacks was a very large and thick book with a colorful dustjacket. How to Create Your Own Needlework Designs. Now, that was a title to really intrigue me. Momma had taught me to do some needlepoint stitches, and also crewelwork on my first birthday in that locked room. And how to create your own designs would indeed be inspiring.
Casually I lifted out the book and flipped through the pages at random. Behind me Chris was making soft noises as he opened and closed drawers, and moved on sneakered feet from here to there. I had expected to see flower designs—anything but what I actually saw. Silent, wide-eyed, full of stunned fascination, I stared down at the photographs in full color. Unbelievable pictures of naked men and wo
men doing . . . did people really do such things as that? Was this lovemaking?
Chris wasn’t the only one who’d heard whispered tales accompanied by much snickering from older children clustered in groups in the bathroom at school. Why, I had believed it was a sacred, reverent thing to do in complete privacy, behind locked doors. This book depicted many couples all in one room, all naked, and all into each other in one way or another. Against my will, or so I wanted to think, my hand stole out to slowly turn each page, growing ever more incredulous! So many ways to do it! So many positions! My God, was this what lovesick Raymond and Lily had in mind from page one of that Victorian novel? I lifted my head and stared blankly into space. From the beginning of life, were we all headed toward this?
Chris spoke my name, informing me he had found enough money. Couldn’t steal too much all at once, or it might be noticed. He was taking only a few fives, and many ones, and all the change under chair cushions. “Cathy, what’s the matter, are you deaf? Come on.”
I couldn’t move, couldn’t leave, couldn’t close that book without pursuing it from cover to cover. Because I stood so enthralled, unable to respond, he came up behind me to look over my shoulder at what held me so mesmerized. I heard his breath pull in sharply. After an eternal time, he exhaled a low whistle. He didn’t say a single word until I reached the end and closed the book. Then he took over and began at the beginning, looking at each page he had missed as I stood beside him and looked again, too. There was small printed text opposite the full-page pictures. But the photographs didn’t need explanations—not to my mind.
Chris closed the book. I glanced at his face quickly. He appeared stunned. I returned the book to the drawer, placing the paperbacks on top, just as I had found it. He took my hand and pulled me toward the door. Down all the long and dark halls we went silently back to the northern wing. Now I knew only too well why the witch-grandmother had wanted Chris and me put in separate beds, when that compelling call to human flesh was so strong, so demanding, and so thrilling it could make people act more like demons than saints. I leaned above Carrie, staring down in her sleeping face, which, in her sleep, regained the innocence and childishness that evaded her during her waking hours. She seemed a small cherub lying there on her side, curled up tight, her face rosy and flushed, her hair damp and curling on the nape of her neck and on her rounded forehead. I kissed her, and her cheek felt hot, and then I went over to Cory to touch his soft curls and kiss his flushed cheek. Children like the twins were made from a little of what I had just viewed in that erotic picture book, so it couldn’t all be totally wicked, or else God wouldn’t have made men and women the way He did. And yet I was so troubled, and so uncertain, and deep down really stunned and shocked, and still . . .
I closed my eyes and silently prayed: God, keep the twins safe and healthy until we’re out of here . . . let them live until we reach a bright and sunny place where doors are never locked . . . please.
“You can use the bath first,” said Chris, sitting on his side of the bed with his back toward me. His head was bowed down, and this was his night to take his bath first.
Under a kind of spell I drifted into the bath and did what I had to, then came out wearing my thickest, warmest, and most concealing granny-gown. My face was scrubbed clean of all makeup. My hair was shampooed and still a little damp as I sat down on the side of my bed to brush it into shining waves.
Chris rose silently and entered the bath without looking my way, and when he came out much later, and I was still sitting and brushing my hair, he didn’t meet my eyes. Nor did I want him to look at me.
It was one of the grandmother’s rules that we were to kneel down by our beds each night and say prayers. Yet, that night, neither of us knelt to say prayers. Often, I was on my knees by the bed, with my palms together under my chin, and I didn’t know what to pray, since already I’d prayed so much, and none of it helped. I’d just kneel there, empty-minded, bleak-hearted, but my body and its nerve endings felt everything and screamed out what I couldn’t bring myself to think, much less say.
I stretched out beside Carrie on my back, feeling soiled and changed by that big book that I wished to see again and would if I could, read every word of the text. Maybe it would have been the ladylike thing to just put the book back when I’d found out its subject—and most certainly I should have slammed it shut when Chris came to look over my shoulder. Already I knew I wasn’t a saint, or an angel, or a puritan prude, and I felt in my bones that someday in the near future I was going to need to know all there was to know about how bodies were used in ways of love.
Slowly, slowly, I turned my head to peer through the rosy dimness and see what Chris was doing.
He was on his side, under the covers, gazing over at me. His eyes glimmered in some faint meandering light that filtered through the heavy draperies, for what light was in his eyes wasn’t rosy-colored.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“Yes, I’m surviving.” And then I said good night in a voice that didn’t even sound like me.
“Good night, Cathy,” he said, using someone else’s voice, too.
My Stepfather
That spring, Chris got sick. He looked greenish around his mouth and threw up every few minutes, staggering back from the bathroom to fall weakly on the bed. He wanted to study Gray’s Anatomy, but threw it aside, irritated with himself. “Must have been something I ate,” he grouched.
“Chris, I don’t want to leave you alone,” I said at the door, preparing to fit the wooden key into the lock.
“Look here, Cathy!” he yelled. “It’s time you learned to stand on your own two feet! You don’t need me at your side every livelong minute of the day! That was Momma’s trouble. She thought she’d always have a man to lean on. Lean on yourself, Cathy, always.”
Terror jumped into my heart, flooded up in my eyes. He saw, and he spoke more gently. “I’m all right, really. I can take care of myself. We need the money, Cathy, so go on alone. We might not have another chance.”
I ran back to his bed, falling down on my knees, and pressing my face down on his pajamaed chest. Tenderly he caressed my hair. “Really, Cathy, I’ll survive. It’s not so bad you have to cry about it. But you’ve got to understand, no matter what happens to either one of us, the one left has to get the twins out.”
“Don’t say things like that!” I cried out. Just to think of him dying made me sick inside. And as I knelt there, staring at him, it fleetingly crossed my mind, how often one or the other of us was sick.
“Cathy, I want you to leave now. Stand up. Force yourself. And when you get there, take only ones and fives. Nothing larger. But take all the coins our stepfather lets fall from his pockets. And in the back of his closet, he keeps a big tin box full of change. Take a handful of the quarters.”
He looked pale and weak, thinner, too. Quickly I kissed his cheek, loath to leave when he felt so unwell. Glancing at the sleeping twins, I backed off toward the door, clutching the wooden key in my hand. “I love you, Christopher Doll,” I said in a joking way before opening the door.
“I love you too, Catherine Doll,” he said. “Good hunting.”
I threw him a kiss, then closed and locked the door behind me. It was safe enough to go stealing in Momma’s room. Only this afternoon she had told us she and her husband were attending another party, at a friend’s who lived down the road. And I thought to myself, as I stole quietly along the corridors clinging to the walls, keeping to the shadows, I was going to take at least one twenty, and one ten. I was going to risk somebody noticing. Maybe I’d even steal a few pieces of Momma’s jewelry. Jewelry could be pawned, just as good as money, maybe better.
All business, all determination, I didn’t waste time looking in the trophy room. Straight on to Momma’s bedroom I crept, not expecting to see the grandmother, who retired very early, at nine. And the hour was ten.
With all brave determined confidence, I stole through the double doors to her rooms, and silently clos
ed them behind me. One dim light was burning. Often she left lights burning in her rooms—sometimes every last one, according to Chris. For what was money to our mother now?
Hesitating uncertainly, I stood just inside the doors and looked around. Then I froze in terror.
There, in a chair, with his long legs stretched before him and crossed at the ankles, sprawled Momma’s new husband! I was directly in front of him, wearing a transparent blue nightie that was very short, though little matching panties were underneath. My heart beat out a mad tune of panic as I waited for him to bellow out and demand to know who I was, and what the hell was I doing coming uninvited into his bedroom?
But he didn’t speak.
He wore a black tuxedo, and his formal shirt was pink with black-edged ruffles down the front. He didn’t bellow, he didn’t question, because he was dozing. I almost turned about and left, I was so terrified he’d awaken and see me.
However, curiosity overcame my trepidations. On my toes I stole closer to peer down at him. I dared to go so close, up to his very chair, that I could reach out and touch him, if I chose. Close enough to put my hand in his pocket and rob him if I chose, which I didn’t.
Robbery was the last thing I had in mind as I gazed down into his handsome sleeping face. I was amazed to see what was revealed now that I was so very close to my mother’s dearly beloved Bart. I had viewed him from a distance a number of times: first, the night of the Christmas party, and another time when he was down there near the stairs, holding a coat for Momma to slip her arms in. He’d kissed the back of her neck, and behind her ear, and whispered something that made her smile, and so tenderly he’d drawn her against his chest before they both went out the door.
Yes, yes, I had seen him, and heard much about him, and knew where his sisters lived, and where he was born, and where he’d gone to school, but nothing had prepared me for what was so clearly revealed now.
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 33