“I’ll unlock the door and go and find Momma,” said Chris, still wearing the clothes he put on yesterday, and hadn’t taken off to go to bed.
“Then they’ll know we have a key.”
“Then they’ll know.”
Just then the door opened and Momma came in, with the grandmother trailing behind her. Together they hovered over Cory, touching his clammy, cold face, their eyes meeting. In a corner they drifted to whisper and connive, glancing from time to time at Cory who lay quiet as one approaching death. Only his chest heaved in spasms. From his throat came gasping, choking noises. I went and wiped the beads of moisture from his brow. Funny how he could feel cool, and still sweat.
Cory rasped in, out, in, out.
And there was Momma—doing nothing. Unable to make a decision! Fearful still of letting someone know there was a child, when there shouldn’t be any!
“Why are you standing there whispering?” I shouted out. “What choice do you have but to take Cory to a hospital, and get him the best doctor available?”
They glared at me—both of them. Grim faced, pale, trembling, Momma fixed her blue eyes on me, then anxiously they sidled over to Cory. What she saw on the bed made her lips tremble, made her hands shake and the muscles near her lips twitch. She blinked repeatedly, as if holding back tears.
Narrowly I watched each betraying sign of her calculating thoughts. She was weighing the risks of Cory being discovered, and causing her to lose that inheritance . . . for that old man downstairs just had to die one day, didn’t he? He couldn’t hold on forever!
I screamed out, “What’s the matter with you, Momma? Are you just going to stand there and think about yourself, and that money while your youngest son lies there and dies? You have to help him! Don’t you care what happens to him? Have you forgotten you are his mother? If you haven’t, then, damn it, act like his mother! Stop hesitating! He needs attention now, not tomorrow!”
Sanguine color flooded her face. She snapped her eyes back to me. “You!” she spat. “Always it’s you!” And with that she raised her heavily ringed hand, and she slapped my face, hard! Then again she slapped me.
The very first time in my life I’d been slapped by her—and for such a reason! Outraged, without thinking, I slapped back—just as hard!
The grandmother stood back and watched. Smug satisfaction twisted her ugly, thin mouth into a crooked line.
Chris hurried to seize hold of my arms when I would strike Momma again. “Cathy, you’re not helping Cory by acting like this. Calm down. Momma will do the right thing.”
It was a good thing he held my arms, for I wanted to slap her again, and make her see what she was doing!
My father’s face flashed before my eyes. He was frowning, silently telling me I must always have respect for the woman who gave me birth. I knew that’s how he would feel. He wouldn’t want me to hit her.
“Damn you to hell, Corrine Foxworth,” I shouted at the top of my lungs, “if you don’t take your son to a hospital! You think you can do anything you want with us, and no one will find out! Well, you can throw away that security blanket, for I’ll find a way for revenge, if it takes me the rest of my life, I’ll see that you pay, and dearly pay, if you don’t do something right now to save Cory’s life. Go on, glare your eyes at me, and cry and plead, and talk to me about money and what it can buy. But it can’t buy back a child once he’s dead! And if that happens, don’t think I won’t find a way to get to your husband and tell him you have four children you have kept hidden in a locked room with their only playground an attic . . . and you’ve kept them there for years and years! See if he loves you then! Watch his face and wait to see how much respect and admiration he has for you then!” She winced, but her eyes shot deadly looks at me. “And what’s more, I’ll go to the grandfather and tell him, too!” I yelled even louder. “And you won’t inherit one damned red penny—and I’ll be glad, glad, glad!”
From the look on her face she could kill me, but oddly enough, it was that despicable old woman who spoke in a quiet way: “The girl is right, Corrine. The child must go to a hospital.”
* * *
They came back that night. The two of them. After the servants retired to their quarters over the huge garage. Both of them were bundled up in heavy coats, for it had turned suddenly frigid-cold. The evening sky had gone gray, chilled with early winter that threatened snow. The two of them pulled Cory from my arms and wrapped him in a green blanket, and it was Momma who lifted him up. Carrie let out a scream of anguish. “Don’t take Cory away!” she howled. “Don’t take him, don’t . . .” She threw herself into my arms wailing at me to stop them from taking away a twin from whom she’d never been separated.
I stared down in her small pale face, streaked with tears. “It’s all right for Cory to go,” I said as I met my mother’s glare, “for I am going, too. I’ll stay with Cory while he’s in the hospital. Then he won’t be afraid. When the nurses are too busy to wait on him, I’ll be there. That will make him get well quicker, and Carrie will feel good knowing I’m with him.” I spoke the truth. I knew Cory would recover quicker if I was there with him. I was his mother now—not her. He didn’t love her now, it was me he needed and me he wanted. Children are very wise intuitively; they know who loves them most, and who only pretends.
“Cathy’s right, Momma,” Chris spoke up and he looked at her directly in the eye without warmth. “Cory depends on Cathy. Please let her go, for as she says, her presence there will help him get well sooner, and she can describe to his doctor all his symptoms better than you can.”
Momma’s glassy, blank stare turned his way, as if struggling to grasp his meaning. I admit she looked distraught, and her eyes jumped from me to Chris, and then to her mother, and then to Carrie, and back to Cory.
“Momma,” said Chris more firmly, “let Cathy go with you. I can do for Carrie, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
Of course they didn’t let me go.
Our mother carried Cory out into the hall. His head was thrown back, his cowlick bobbing up and down as she strode away with her child wrapped in a green blanket, the very color of spring grass.
The grandmother gave me a cruel smile of derisive victory, then closed and locked the door.
They left Carrie bereft, screaming, tears flowing. Her small weak fists beat against me, as if I were to blame. “Cathy, I wanna go, too! Make them let me go! Cory don’t wanna go nowhere I don’t go . . . and he forgot his guitar.”
Then all her anger dissipated, and she fell into my arms and sobbed, “Why, Cathy, why?”
Why?
That was the biggest question in our lives.
By far it was the worst and longest day of our lives. We had sinned, and how quickly God set about punishing us. He did keep his sharpest eye turned on us, as if He knew all along sooner or later we would prove ourselves unworthy, just as the grandmother had known.
It was like it had been in the beginning, before the TV set came to take over the better part of our days. All through the day we sat quietly without turning on the television, just waiting to hear how Cory was.
Chris sat in the rocker and held out his arms to Carrie and me. We both sat on his lap as he rocked slowly back and forth, back and forth, creaking the floorboards.
I don’t know why Chris’s legs didn’t grow numb; we sat on him for so long. Then I got up to take care of Mickey’s cage, and gave him food to eat and water to drink, and I held him, and petted him, and told him soon his master would be coming back. I believe that mouse knew something was wrong. He didn’t play cheerfully in his cage, and even though I left the door open, he didn’t come out to scamper all over the room, and head for Carrie’s dollhouse that enchanted him the most.
I prepared the pre-cooked meals, which we hardly touched. When the last meal of the day was over, and the dishes were put away, and we were bathed and ready for bed, we all three knelt in a row beside Cory’s bed, and said our prayers to God. “Please, please let Cory get
well, and come back to us.” If we prayed for anything else, I don’t recall what it was.
We slept, or tried to, all three in the same bed, with Carrie between Chris and me. Nothing gross was ever going to happen between us again . . . never, never again.
God, please don’t punish Cory as a way to strike back at Chris and me and make us hurt, for already we hurt, and we didn’t mean to do it, we didn’t. It just happened, and only once. And it wasn’t any pleasure, God, not really, not any.
* * *
A new day dawned, grim, gray, forbidding. Behind the drawn draperies life started up for those who lived on the outside, those unseen by us. We dragged ourselves into focus, and poked about, trying to fill our time, and trying to eat, and make Mickey happy when he seemed so sad without the little boy who laid down trails of bread crumbs for him to follow.
I changed the mattress covers, with the assistance of Chris, for that was a very hard thing to do, to slip a full-size mattress in and out of one of those heavy quilted things, and yet we had to do it often because of Cory’s lack of control. Chris and I made the beds up with clean linens, and smoothed on the spreads, and tidied up the room, while Carrie sat alone in the rocker and stared off into space.
Around ten, there was nothing left to do but sit on the bed nearest the door to the hall, with our eyes riveted upon the knob, willing it to turn and admit Momma, who would bring us news.
Shortly thereafter, Momma came in with her eyes rimmed red from crying. Behind her was the steel-eyed grandmother, tall, stern, no tears.
Our mother faltered near the door as if her legs would give way and spill her to the floor. Chris and I jumped to our feet, but Carrie only stared at Momma’s empty eyes.
“I drove Cory to a hospital miles away, the nearest one, really,” explained our mother in a tight and hoarse voice that choked from time to time, “and I registered him under a false name, saying he was my nephew, my ward.”
Lies! Always lies! “Momma—how is he?” I asked impatiently.
Her glazed blue eyes turned our way; void eyes, staring vacantly; lost eyes, seeking something gone forever—I guessed it was her humanity. “Cory had pneumonia,” she intoned. “The doctors did all they could . . . but it was . . . too . . . too late.”
Had pneumonia?
All they could?
Too late?
All past tenses!
Cory was dead! We were never going to see him again!
Chris said later the news hit him hard in the groin, like a kick, and I did see him stumble backward and spin around to hide his face as his shoulders sagged and he sobbed.
At first I didn’t believe her. I stood and I stared, and I doubted. But the look on her face convinced me, and something big and hollow swelled up inside my chest. I sank down on the bed, numb, almost paralyzed, and didn’t even know I was crying until my clothes were wet.
And even as I sat and cried, I still didn’t want to believe Cory was gone from our lives. And Carrie, poor Carrie, she lifted up her head, threw it back, and opened up her mouth and screamed!
She screamed and screamed until her voice went, and she could scream no more. She drifted to the corner where Cory kept his guitar and his banjo, and neatly she lined up all his pairs of small worn tennis shoes. And that’s where she chose to sit, with the shoes, with the musical instruments, and Mickey’s cage nearby, and from that moment on, not a word escaped her lips.
“Will we go to his funeral?” Chris asked in a choked way with his back still turned.
“He’s already been buried,” said Momma. “I had a false name put on the tombstone.” And then, very quickly, she escaped the room and our questions, and the grandmother followed, her lips set in a grim, thin line.
* * *
Right before our horrified eyes, Carrie shriveled more each day. I felt God might as well have taken Carrie, too, and buried her alongside Cory in that faraway grave with the wrong name that didn’t even have the comfort of a father buried nearby.
None of us could eat much. We became listless and tired, always tired. Nothing held our interest. Tears—Chris and I cried five oceans of tears. We assumed all the blame. A long time ago we should have escaped. We should have used that wooden key and gone for help. We had let Cory die! He’d been our responsibility, our dear quiet little boy of many talents, and we had let him die. Now we had a small sister huddled in a corner, growing weaker each passing day.
Chris said in a low voice so Carrie wouldn’t overhear, just in case she was listening, though I doubted she was (she was blind, deaf, mute . . . our babbling brook, damned), “We’ve got to run, Cathy, and quick. Or we are all going to die like Cory. Something is wrong with all of us. We’ve been locked up too long. We’ve lived abnormal lives, like being in a vacuum without germs, without the infections children usually come in contact with. We are without resistance to infections.”
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“What I mean is,” he whispered as we huddled in the same chair, “like the creatures from Mars in that book The War of the Worlds we could all die from a single cold germ.”
Horrified, I could only stare at him. He knew so much more than I did. I turned my gaze on Carrie in the corner. Her sweet baby face, with eyes too large and shadowed underneath, stared blankly forward at nothing. I knew she had her vision fixed on eternity, where Cory was. All the love I’d given Cory, I put into Carrie now . . . so afraid for her. Such a tiny skeleton body, and her neck was so weak, too small for her head. Was this the way all the Dresden dolls were going to end?
“Chris, if we have to die, it’s not going to be like mice in a trap. If germs can kill us, then let it be germs—so when you steal tonight, take everything of value you can find and we can carry! I’ll pack a lunch to take along. With Cory’s clothes taken from the suitcases, we’ll have more room. Before the morning comes, we’ll be gone.”
“No,” he said quietly. “Only if we know Momma and her husband have gone out—only then can I take all the money and leave, and all the jewelry in one fell swoop. Take only what we absolutely need—no toys, no games. And Cathy, Momma may not go out tonight. Certainly she can’t attend parties in her time of mourning.”
How could she mourn when she had to keep her husband always in the dark? And no one came but the grandmother to tell us what was going on. She refused to speak to us, or look at us. In my mind we were already on our way, and I looked at her as if she were already part of the past. Now that our time to depart was so near, I felt frightened. It was big out there. We’d be on our own. What would the world think of us now?
We weren’t beautiful like we used to be, only pale and sickly attic mice with long flaxen hair, wearing expensive but ill-fitting clothes, and sneakers on our feet.
Chris and I had educated ourselves from reading so many books, and television had taught us much about violence, about greed, about imagination, but it had taught us hardly anything that was practical and useful in preparing us to face reality.
Survival. That’s what TV should teach innocent children. How to live in a world that really doesn’t give a damn about anyone but their own—and sometimes, not even their own.
Money. If there was one thing we’d learned during the years of our imprisonment, it was that money came first, and everything else came after. How well Momma had said it long ago: “It’s not love that makes the world go ’round—it’s money.”
I took Cory’s small clothes from the suitcase, his second-best sneakers, two pair of pajamas, and all the time tears fell and my nose ran. In one of the side pockets of the suitcase, I found sheet music he must have packed himself. Oh, it did hurt to pick up those sheets, and see the lines he had drawn by using a ruler, and his little black notes, and half-notes so crookedly done. And beneath the musical score (he had taught himself to write down the music from an encyclopedia Chris had found for him) Cory had written words to a half-completed song:
I wish the night would end,
I wish the day’d begin,
I wish it would rain or snow,
Or the wind would blow,
Or the grass would grow,
I wish I had yesterday,
I wish there were games to play . . . .
Oh, God! Was there ever such a sad, melancholy song? So these were the lyrics to a tune I’d heard him play over and over. Wishing, always wishing for something he couldn’t have. Something all other little boys accepted as a normal, unremarkable part of their lives.
I could have screamed the anguish I felt.
* * *
I went to sleep with Cory on my mind. And, like always, when I was most troubled, I fell into dreams. But this time I was only me. I found myself on a winding, dirt path with wide, flat pastures that grew wildflowers of crimson and pink on the left, and on the right, yellow and white blossoms swayed gently in the soft, warm kind breezes of eternal spring. A small child clung to my hand. I looked down, expecting to see Carrie—but it was Cory!
He was laughing and happy, and he skipped along beside me, his short legs trying to keep pace with mine, and in his hand he held a bouquet of the wildflowers. He smiled up at me and was about to speak when we heard the twitterings of many brightly colored birds in the parasol trees ahead.
A tall, slim man with golden hair, his skin deeply tanned, wearing white tennis clothes, came striding forward from a glorious garden of abundant trees and radiant flowers, including roses of all colors. He paused a dozen yards away and held his arms out to Cory.
My heart, even in my dream, pounded in excitement and joy! It was Daddy! Daddy had come to meet Cory so he wouldn’t have to travel alone the rest of the way. And though I knew I should release Cory’s small hot hand, I would hold him forever with me.
Daddy looked at me, not with pity, not with reprimand, but only with pride and admiration. And I let go of Cory’s hand and stood to watch him joyfully run into Daddy’s arms. He was swept up by powerful arms that once used to hold me and make me feel all the world was a wonderful thing. And I would step down the path, too, and feel those arms about me once again, and allow Daddy to take me where he would.
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 36