* * *
“Cathy, wake up!” said Chris, sitting on my bed and shaking me. “You’re talking in your sleep, and laughing and crying, and saying hello, and then good-bye. Why is it you dream so much?”
My dream spilled from me so fast my words were garbled. Chris just sat there and stared at me, as did Carrie, who had awakened to hear as well. It had been so long since I last saw my father, his face had faded in my memory, but as I looked at Chris, I grew very confused. He was so very much like Daddy, only younger.
That dream was to haunt me many a day, pleasantly. It gave me peace. It gave me knowledge I hadn’t had before. People never really died. They only went on to a better place, to wait a while for their loved ones to join them. And then once more they went back to the world, in the same way they had arrived the first time around.
Escape
November tenth. This was to be our last day in prison. God would not deliver us, we would deliver ourselves.
As soon as the hour passed ten, tonight, Chris would commit his final robbery. Our mother had visited to stay but a few minutes, ill at ease with us now, very obviously so. “Bart and I are going out tonight. I don’t want to, but he insists. You see, he doesn’t understand why I look so sad.”
I bet he didn’t understand. Chris slung over his shoulder the dual pillowcases in which to carry back heavy jewels. He stood in the open doorway and gave Carrie and me one long, long look before he closed the door and used his wooden key to lock us in, for he couldn’t leave the door open, and in this way alert the grandmother, if she came to check. We couldn’t hear Chris steal along the long dark northern corridor, for the walls were too thick, and the hall carpet too plush and sound-proofing.
Side by side Carrie and I lay, my arms protectively around her.
If that dream hadn’t come to tell me Cory was well taken care of, I would have cried not to feel him close still. I couldn’t help but ache for a little boy who had called me Momma whenever he was sure his older brother wouldn’t overhear. Always he’d been so afraid Chris might consider him a sissy if he knew how much he missed and needed his mother, so much so, he had to make do with me. And though I’d told him Chris would never laugh, or jeer, for he had been very needing of a mother too, once upon a time, still Cory would keep it a secret just between him and me—and Carrie. He had to pretend to be manly, and convince himself it didn’t matter if he had neither a mother, nor a father, when all along it did matter, a great deal.
I held Carrie tight, tight against me, vowing that if ever I had a child, or children, they’d never feel a need for me that I didn’t sense and respond to. I’d be the best mother alive.
Hours dragged by like years, and still Chris didn’t return from his last foray into our mother’s grand suite of rooms. Why was it taking so long this time? Wide awake and miserable, I was filled with fears, and envisioned all the calamities that could stay him.
Bart Winslow . . . the suspicious husband . . . he’d catch Chris! Call the police! Have Chris thrown in jail! Momma would stand calmly by and mildly express shock and faint surprise that someone would dare steal from her. Oh, no, of course she didn’t have a son. Everybody knew she was childless, for heaven’s sake. Had they ever seen her with a child? She didn’t know that blond boy with blue eyes so very much like her own. After all, she did have many cousins scattered about—and a thief was a thief, even if he were blood kin, some fifth or sixth distant relative.
And that grandmother! If she caught him—the worst possible punishment!
Dawn came up quickly, faint, shrilled by a cock’s crow.
The sun lingered reluctantly on the horizon. Soon it would be too late to go. The morning train would pass on by the depot, and we needed several hours’ head start before the grandmother opened the bedroom door and found us gone. Would she send out a search party? Notify the police? Or would she, more likely, just let us go, glad, at last, to be rid of us?
Despairing, I ascended the stairs to the attic to stare outside. Foggy, cold day. Last week’s snow lay in patches here and there. A dull, mysterious day that seemed incapable of bringing us joy or freedom. I heard that rooster cockle-doodle-doo again; it sounded muffled and far away as I silently prayed that, whatever Chris was doing, and wherever he was, he heard it too, and would put some speed in his feet.
* * *
I remember, oh, how I remember that chilly early morning when Chris stole back into our room. Lying beside Carrie, I was tentatively on the edge of fretful sleep, so it was easy for me to bolt widely awake when the locked door to our room opened. I’d lain there, fully dressed, ready to go, waiting, even in the fitful dreams that came and went, for Chris to come back and save us all.
Just inside the door, Chris hesitated, his glazed eyes staring over at me. Then he drifted in my direction, in no great hurry, as he should be. All the while I could only stare at the pillowcases one inside the other—so flat! So empty looking! “Where are the jewels?” I cried. “Why did you stay so long? Look out the windows, the sun is rising! We’ll never make it to the train depot on time!” My voice turned hard, accusing, angry. “You turned chivalrous again, didn’t you? That’s why you’ve come back without Momma’s precious jewelry!”
He had reached the bed by this time, and he just stood there with the flat, empty pillowcases hanging from his hand.
“Gone,” he said dully. “All the jewelry was gone.”
“Gone?” I asked sharply, sure he was lying, covering up, still unwilling to take what his mother so cherished. Then I looked at his eyes. “Gone? Chris, the jewelry is always there. And what’s the matter with you, anyway—why do you look so queer?”
He sagged down on his knees beside the bed, gone boneless and limp as his head drooped forward, and his face nestled down on my breast. Then he began to sob! Dear God! What had gone wrong? Why was he crying? It’s terrible to hear a man cry, and I thought of him as a man now, not a boy.
My arms held him, my hands caressed and stroked his hair, his cheek, his arms, his back, and then I kissed him, all in an effort to soothe whatever awful thing had happened. I did what I had seen our mother do for him in times of distress, and intuitively I had no fears that his passions would be aroused into wanting more than just what I was willing to give.
Actually, I had to force him to talk, to explain.
He choked off his sobs, and swallowed them. He wiped away the tears and dried his face with the edge of the sheet. Then he turned his head so he could stare at those horrible paintings depicting hell and all its torment. His phrases came broken, disjointed, stopped often by sobs he had to hold back.
This was the way he told it, while on his knees beside my bed, while I held his shaky hands, and his body trembled, and his blue eyes were dark and bleak, warning me I was about to be shocked. Forewarned as I was, I still wasn’t prepared for what I heard.
“Well,” he began, breathing hard, “I realized that something was different the second I stepped into her suite of rooms. I beamed my flashlight around without turning on a lamp, and I just couldn’t believe it! The irony of it . . . the hateful, despicable bitterness of making our move too late! Gone, Cathy—Momma and her husband have gone! Not just to some neighbor’s party, but really gone! They had taken with them all those little mementos that made their rooms personal: the trinkets gone from the dresser, the geegaws from that dressing table, the creams, lotions, powders, and perfumes—everything that once was there, gone. Nothing was on her dressing table.
“It made me so mad, I ran about like someone demented, dashing from here to there, pulling open drawers and ransacking them, hoping to find something of value that we could pawn . . . and I didn’t find anything! Oh, they did a very good job—not even a little porcelain pillbox was left, or one of those heavy Venetian-glass paperweights that cost a fortune. I ran into the dressing room and yanked open all the drawers. Sure, she had left some things—junk of no value to us, or anyone: lipsticks, cold creams, and stuff like that. Then I pulled open that spe
cial bottom drawer—you know the one she told us about a long time ago, never thinking we’d be the ones to steal from her. I pulled that drawer all the way out, like you have to, and set it aside on the floor. Then I felt in back for the tiny little button you have to push in a certain combination of numbers—her birthday numbers, or else she would herself forget the combination. Remember how she laughed when she told us that? The secret compartment sprang open, and there were the velvet trays where dozens of rings should have been fitted into small slots, and there wasn’t a ring there—not one! And the bracelets, necklaces, and earrings gone, every last thing was gone, Cathy, even that tiara you tried on. Oh, golly, you don’t know how I felt! So many times you pleaded with me to take just one little ring, and I wouldn’t, because I believed in her.”
“Don’t cry again, Chris,” I begged when he choked up, and he put his face down on my chest again. “You didn’t know she’d go, not so soon after Cory’s death.”
“Yeah, she grieves a lot, doesn’t she?” he asked bitterly, and my fingers twined in his hair.
“Really, Cathy,” he went on, “I lost all control. I ran from closet to closet, and threw out the winter clothes, and soon found all the summer clothes were gone, along with two sets of their fine luggage. I emptied shoe boxes, and rifled the closet drawers, and looked for the tin of coins he keeps, but he’d taken that, too, or hidden it away in a better place. I searched everything, and everywhere, feeling frantic. I even considered taking one of the huge lamps, but I hefted one and it weighed a ton. She’d left her mink coats, and I thought about stealing one of those, but you’d tried them on, and all were too large—and someone on the outside would be suspicious if an adolescent girl was wearing a too-large coat of mink. The fur stoles were gone. And if I took one of the full-length fur coats, it would fill all of one suitcase, and then we wouldn’t have room for our own things, and the paintings I might be able to sell—and we need what clothes we have. Really, I almost tore out my hair, I was that desperate to find something of value, for how would we ever manage without enough money? You know, at that minute, when I stood in the middle of her room and thought about our situation, and Carrie’s poor health, it didn’t matter a damn to me then whether or not I became a doctor. All I wanted was to get us out of here!
“Then, just when it seemed I wasn’t going to find anything to steal, I looked in the lower drawer of the nightstand. I’d never checked that drawer before. And in it, Cathy, was a silver-framed photograph of Daddy, and their marriage license, and a small velvet box of green. Cathy, inside that little green velvet box, inside was Momma’s wedding band, and her engagement diamond—the ones our father gave her. It hurt to think she would take everything, and leave his photograph as valueless, and the two rings he’d given her. And then the strangest thought fleeted through my mind. Maybe she knew who was stealing the money from her room, and she left those things there deliberately.”
“No!” I scoffed, tossing that gracious consideration away. “She just doesn’t care about him anymore—she has her Bart.”
“Regardless, I was grateful to find something. So the sack isn’t as empty as it may appear. We’ve got Daddy’s photograph, and her rings—but it’s gonna take an awful, unbearable crisis to make me pawn either of those rings.”
I heard the warning in his voice, and it didn’t sound the least sincere, like it should have. It was as if he was putting on an act of being the same old trusting Christopher Doll, who saw good in everyone. “Go on. What happened next?” For he’d stayed away so long, what he’d just told me wouldn’t have taken all the night.
“I figured if I couldn’t rob our mother, then I would go on to the grandmother’s room and rob her.”
Oh, my God, I thought. He didn’t . . . he couldn’t have. And yet, what perfect revenge!
“You know she has jewels, lots of rings on her fingers, and that damned diamond brooch she wears every day of her life as part of her uniform, plus she has those diamonds and rubies we saw her wear at the Christmas party. And, of course, I figured she had more loot to be taken, as well. So, I stole down all the long dark halls, and I tiptoed right up to the grandmother’s closed door.”
Oh, the nerve to do that. I would never . . .
“A thin line of yellow light showed underneath, to warn me she was still awake. That made me bitter, for she should have been asleep. And under less driven circumstances, that light would have made me stay my hand, and act less foolhardy than I did—or maybe you could call it ‘audacious’ now that you’re planning on being a woman of words one day, after you’ve been a woman of action.”
“Chris! Don’t meander from the subject! Go on! Tell me what crazy thing you did! If I had been you, I would have turned around and come straight back here!”
“Well, I am not you, Catherine Doll, I am me . . . . I used some caution, and very carefully eased open her door just a slot, though I feared every second it would creak or squeak and give me away. But someone keeps the hinges well-oiled, and I put an eye to the crack without fear of her being alerted, and I peered inside.”
“You saw her naked!” I interrupted.
“No!” he answered impatiently, annoyed, “I didn’t see her naked, and I’m glad I didn’t. She was in the bed, under the covers, sitting up and wearing a long-sleeved nightgown of some heavy material, and it had a collar and was buttoned down the front to her waist. But I did catch her naked in a small way. You know that steel-blue hair we hate so much. It wasn’t on her head! It was perched crookedly on a dummy head on her night-stand, as if she wanted the reassurance of having it near in case of an emergency during the night.”
“She wears a wig?” I asked in total astonishment, though I should have known. Anybody who persistently took their hair and skinned it back from their face so tightly would sooner or later go bald.
“Yeah, you bet, she wears a wig, and that hair she had on during the Christmas party, that must have been a wig, too. What hair she’s got left on her head is sparse and yellow-white, and there are wide pink places on her scalp with no hair at all, but short baby fuzz. She had rimless glasses perched on the end of that long nose, and you know we’ve never seen her with glasses on. Her thin lips were pursed up in a disapproving line as she moved her eyes slowly from line to line of the large black book she was holding—the Bible, of course. There she sat, reading of harlots and other wicked deeds, enough to put a terrible frown on her face. And as I watched, knowing I couldn’t steal from her now, she laid aside the Bible and marked the place with a postcard, then put the Bible on the nightstand, then left the bed and knelt beside it. She bowed her head, templed her fingers under her chin, just the way we do, and she said silent prayers that lasted and lasted. Then she spoke aloud: ‘Forgive me, Lord, for all my sins. I have always done what I thought best, and if I made mistakes, please believe I thought I was doing right. May I forever find grace in thine eyes. Amen.’ She crawled back into bed, and then she reached to turn out the lamp. I stood in the hall and wondered what to do. I just couldn’t come back to you empty-handed, for I hope we never have to pawn the rings our father gave our mother.”
He continued, and now his hands were in my hair, cupping my head. “I went to that main rotunda, where the chest is near the staircase, and found our grandfather’s room. I didn’t know if I would have the nerve to open his door, and face up to that man who lies perpetually dying, year after year.
“But, this was my only chance, and I would make the most of it. Come what may, I raced down the stairs noiselessly like a real thief, carrying my pillowcase sack. I saw the big rich rooms, so grand and fine, and I wondered, just as you have wondered how it would be to grow up in a house like this one. I wondered how it felt to be waited on by many servants, and catered to hand and foot. Oh, Cathy, it is one beautiful house, and the furniture must have been imported from palaces. It looks too fragile to sit on, and too lovely to feel comfortable with, and there are original oil paintings, I know them when I see them, and sculptures and busts,
mostly on top of pedestals, and rich Persian rugs and Oriental rugs. And, of course, I knew the way to the library, since you had asked so darned many questions of Momma. And you know what, Cathy? I was darned glad you had asked so many questions or else I may well have gotten lost; there’s so many halls that shoot off right and left from the center stem.
“But it was easy enough to get to the library: a long, dark, really immense room, and it was quiet as a graveyard. The ceiling must have been twenty feet high. The shelves went all the way up, and there was a little stairway of iron that curved to a second level, and a balcony where you could reach books on that level. And on the lower level were two wooden ladders that slid along railings put there for that very purpose. Never have I seen so many books in a private home. No wonder the books Momma brought us had never been missed—though when I looked carefully, I could see the gaping spaces, like teeth, missing in the long rows of leather-bound, gold-tooled, hubbedspined expensive books. A desk was there, dark and massive, must have weighed a ton, and a tall leather swivel chair was behind it, and I could just picture our grandfather sitting there, issuing orders right and left, and using the phones on his desk—there were six telephones, Cathy—six! Though when I checked, thinking I might have use for them, they were all disconnected. To the left of the desk was a row of tall narrow windows that looked out on a private garden—a really spectacular view, even at night. There was a dark mahogany filing system made to look like fine furniture. Two very long, soft, tan-colored sofas were set out from the walls about three feet, giving you plenty of room to move behind them. Chairs were placed near the fireplace, and, of course, there was a batch of tables and chairs and things to stumble against, and an awful lot of bric-a-brac.”
I sighed, for he was telling me so much of what I’d longed to hear, and yet, I kept waiting for that terrible thing that kept me on edge, waiting for the knife to plunge.
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 37