Men—what did they know? Obviously Carrie was outraged by the pretty little pastel dresses brought out for her approval. Baby clothes—that’s what. Even so, all were too large, and none were red or purple—absolutely not Carrie’s style at all! “Try the toddler department,” suggested the heartless, haughty blonde with the beehive hair. She smiled graciously at our doctor who appeared embarrassed.
Carrie was eight! To even mention “toddler clothes” was insulting! She screwed her face into a puckered prune. “I can’t wear toddler clothes to school!” she wailed. She pressed her face against my thigh and hugged my legs. “Cathy, don’t make me wear pink and blue baby dresses! Everybody will laugh! I know they will! I want purple, red—no baby colors!”
Dr. Paul soothed her. “Darling, I adore blond girls with blue eyes in pastels, so why not wait until you’re older to wear all those brilliant colors?”
Bittersweet milksop like this was something someone as stubborn as Carrie couldn’t swallow. She glared her eyes, balled her fists, prepared her foot for kicking and readied her vocal cords for screaming when a middle-aged, plump woman who must have had someone like Carrie for a granddaughter suggested calmly that she could have her clothes custom made. Carrie hesitated uncertainly, looking from me to the doctor, then to Chris and back to the saleslady.
“A perfect solution!” said Dr. Paul enthusiastically, looking relieved. “I’ll buy a sewing machine and Cathy can make you purple, red, and electric-blue clothes, and you’ll be a knock-out.”
“Don’t wanna be no knock-out—just want bright colors.” Carrie pouted while I was left with my mouth agape. I was a dancer, not a seamstress! (Something that didn’t escape Carrie’s knowledge.) “Cathy don’t know how to make good clothes,” she said. “Cathy don’t do nothing but dance.”
That was loyalty. Me, who’d taught her and Cory to read, with a little help from Chris. “What’s the matter with you, Carrie?” snapped Chris. “You’re acting like a baby. Cathy can do anything she sets her mind to—remember that!” The doctor readily agreed. I said nothing as we shopped for an electric sewing machine.
“But in the meantime, let’s buy a few pink, yellow and blue dresses, all right, Carrie?” Dr. Paul grinned mockingly. “And Cathy can save me tons of money by sewing her own clothes too.”
Despite the sewing I’d have to learn, heaven was ours that day. We went home loaded, all of us made beautiful in barber shops and beauty salons; each of us had on new shoes with hard soles. I had my very first pair of high-heeled pumps—and a dozen pairs of nylons! My first nylons, my first bra—and to top it all off, a shopping bag full of cosmetics. I’d taken forever to select makeup while the doctor stood back and watched me with the queerest expression. Chris had grumbled, saying I didn’t need rouge or lipstick, or eyeshadow, liner and mascara. “You don’t know anything at all about being a girl,” I answered with an air of superiority. This was my first shopping binge, and by heaven I was making the most of it! I had to have everything I’d seen on Momma’s fabulous dressing table. Even her kind of wrinkle cream, plus a mud pack for firming.
No sooner were we out of the car and unloaded than Chris, Carrie and I dashed upstairs to try on all our new clothes. Funny how once new clothes had come to us so easily and hadn’t made us happy like this. Not when no one would see us wear them. Yet, being what I was, when I slipped on the blue velvet dress with tiny buttons down the front, I thought of Momma. How ironic that I should want to cry for a mother we’d lost, who I was determined to hate forever. I sat on the edge of my twin bed and pondered this. Momma had given us new clothes, toys and games out of guilt for what she was doing, depriving us of a normal childhood. A childhood we’d never have the chance to recover. Lost years, some of the best years, and Cory was in a grave, no new suits for him.
His guitar was in the corner where Carrie could wake up and see it and the banjo. Why was it us who always had to suffer, why not her? Then, suddenly it hit me! Bart Winslow was from South Carolina! I ran down to our doctor’s study and purloined his big atlas, then back I raced to the bedroom, and there I found the map of South Carolina. I found Clairmont . . . but didn’t believe my eyes when I saw it was a twin city to Greenglenna! No, that was too much of a coincidence—or was it? I looked up and stared into space. God had meant for us to come here and live near Momma—if she ever visited her husband’s home town. God wanted me to have the chance to inflict a little pain of my own. As soon as I could, I was going to Greenglenna and look up all the information I could about him and his family. I had five dollars a week—to order a subscription of the community paper that told of all the social activities of the wealthy people who lived near Foxworth Hall.
Yes, I was gone from Foxworth Hall, but I was going to know every move she made, and when she came this way I’d know that too! Sooner or later, Momma was going to hear from me, and know I would never, never forget or forgive. Somehow, in some way, she was going to hurt ten times more than we had!
With this decided, I could join Chris and Carrie in the living room to model all our new clothes for our doctor and Henny. Henny’s smile beamed like a dazzling sun. I watched the bejeweled eyes of our benefactor, only to see them shadow over as he frowned reflectively. I saw no admiration or approval. Suddenly, he got up and left the room, offering a weak excuse of needing to do some paperwork.
Soon Henny became my mentor in all things domestic. She taught me to bake biscuits from scratch, and tried to teach me how to make rolls light and fluffy.
Wham! went Henny’s hand into the dough. Henny wiped her hands clean of flour and dashed off a note. Henny got bad eyes for seeing small things like needle eyes. You have good eyes you sew on doctor son’s missing shirt buttons—yes?
“Sure,” I agreed without enthusiasm, “I can sew holes, and I can also knit, crochet, needlepoint and do crewel work. My mother taught me how to do all those things as a way to keep busy.” Suddenly I couldn’t speak. I wanted to cry. I saw my mother’s lovely face. I saw Daddy. I saw Chris and me as children hurrying home from school, rushing in with snow on our shoulders to find Momma knitting baby things for the twins. I couldn’t help but bow my head into Henny’s lap and begin to cry, really bawl. Henny couldn’t speak, but her soft hand on my shoulder showed she understood. When I glanced upward, she was crying too. Big, fat tears that slid down to wet her bright red dress. “Don’t cry, Henny. I’ll be happy to sew on Dr. Paul’s missing buttons. He’s saved our lives, and there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for him.” She gave me a strange look, then got up to fetch years of mending and perhaps a dozen shirts with missing buttons.
Chris spent every available moment with Dr. Paul who was coaching him so he could enter a special college-prep school in midterm. Carrie was our biggest problem. She could read and write but she was so very small. How would she manage in a public school where children were not always kind?
“It’s a private school I have in mind for Carrie,” explained our doctor. “A very good school for young girls, run by an excellent staff. Since I’m on the board of trustees, I think Carrie will be given special attention, and not subjected to any kind of stress.” He eyed me meaningfully.
That was my worst fear, that Carrie would be ridiculed and made to feel ashamed because of her overlarge head and undersized body. Once Carrie had been so beautifully proportioned, so very perfect. It was all those lost years when the sun was denied us that made her so small. It was, I knew it was!
* * *
I was scared to death Momma would show up on that day she was supposed to appear at the court hearing. But I was certain, almost, that she wouldn’t come. How could she? She had too much to lose and nothing to gain. What were we but burdens to bear? And there was jail too, a murder charge. . . .
We sat very quietly with Paul, dressed in our best to appear in the judge’s chamber, and waited, and waited, and waited. I was a tight wire inside, stretched so taut I thought I might break and cry. She didn’t want us. Again she told us by not showing up, how l
ittle she cared! The judge looked at us with too much pity, making me feel so sorry for all of us—and so angry with her! Oh, damn her to hell! She gave us birth, she claimed to have loved our father! How could she do this to his children—her own children? What kind of mother was she? I didn’t want that judge’s pity, or Paul’s. I held my head high and bit down on my tongue to keep from screaming. I dared to glance at Chris and saw him sitting blank-eyed, though I knew his heart was being shredded, as mine was. Carrie crouched in a tight ball on the doctor’s lap, as his hands soothed her, and he whispered something in her ear. I think he said, “Never mind, it’s all right. You have me for a father and Henny for a mother. You’ll never want for anything as long as I live.”
* * *
I cried that night. I wet my pillow with tears shed for a mother I’d loved so much it hurt to think back to the days when Daddy was alive and our home life was perfect. I cried for all the good things she had done for us back then, and, most of all, for all the love she’d so generously given us—then. I cried more for Cory who was like my own child. And that’s when I stopped crying and turned to bitter, hard thoughts of revenge. When you set out to defeat someone, the best way was to think as they did. What would hurt her most? She wouldn’t want to think of us. She’d try to forget we ever existed. Well, she wouldn’t forget. I’d see to it that she didn’t. This very Christmas I would send her a card, and sign it with this, “From the four Dresden dolls you didn’t want,” and I had to change that to “The three alive Dresden dolls you didn’t want, plus the dead one you carried away and never brought back.” I could see her staring at that card, thinking to herself, I only did what I had to.
We had let down our shields and allowed ourselves to be vulnerable again. We allowed faith, hope and trust to come and dance like sugarplums in our heads.
Fairy tales could come true.
They were happening to us. The wicked queen was out of our lives, and Snow White would reign one day. She wouldn’t be the one to eat the poisoned red apple. But every fairy tale had a dragon to slay, a witch to overcome or some obstacle to make things difficult. I tried to look ahead and figure out who would be the dragon, and what would be the obstacles. All along I knew who was the witch. And that was the saddest part of being me.
I got up and went out on the upper veranda to stare up at the moon. I saw Chris standing near the railing, gazing up at the moon too. From the slump of his shoulders, usually held so proud, I knew he was bleeding inside, just as I was. I tiptoed over to surprise him. But he turned as I neared and held out his arms. Without thought I went straight into them and put my arms up around his neck. He wore the warm robe Momma had given him last Christmas, though it was much too small. He’d have another from me when he looked under the tree Christmas morning, with his monogram—CFS—for he wanted never to be called Foxworth, but Sheffield.
His blue eyes gazed down into mine. Eyes so much alike. I loved him as I loved the better side of myself, the brighter, happier side.
“Cathy,” he whispered, stroking my back, his eyes bright, “if you feel like crying, go ahead, I’ll understand. Cry enough for me too. I was hoping, praying that Momma would come and somehow give us a reasonable explanation for doing what she did.”
“A reasonable excuse for murder?” I asked bitterly. “How could she dream up one clever enough? She’s not that smart.” He looked so miserable I tightened my arms about his neck. One hand stole into his hair and twined there. My other hand lowered to stroke his cheek. Love, it was such an encompassing word, different from sex and ten times more compelling. I felt full of love for him when he lowered his face into my hair and sobbed. He murmured my name over and over again, as if I were the only person in the world who would ever be real and solid, and dependable.
Somehow his lips found mine and we were kissing, kissing with so much passion he was aroused and tried to draw me into his room. “I just want to hold you, that’s all. Nothing else. When I go away to school, I need to have something more to hold onto—give me just a little more, Cathy, please.” Before I could answer he had me in his arms again, kissing me with such burning lips I became terrified—and excited too.
“Stop! Don’t!” I cried, but he went on, touching my breasts and pushing my gown aside so he could kiss them. “Chris!” I hissed, angry then. “Don’t love me, Chris. When you’re gone, what you feel for me will fade away like it never happened. We’ll force ourselves to love others so we can feel clean. We can’t be our parents in duplicate. We can’t make the same mistake.”
He held me tighter and didn’t say a word, yet I knew what he was thinking. There wouldn’t be any others. He wouldn’t let it come about. One woman had hurt him too deeply, betrayed him too monstrously when he was young and very, very vulnerable. There was only me he could trust.
He stepped back, two tears shining in the corners of his eyes. It was up to me to slice the bond, now, here. And for his own good. Everybody always did everything for someone’s good.
* * *
I couldn’t go to sleep. I kept hearing him calling me, wanting me. I got up and drifted down the hall and again got in his bed, where he lay waiting. “You’ll never be free of me, Cathy, never. As long as you live, it will be me and you.”
“No!”
“Yes!”
“No!” But I kissed him, then jumped from his bed and raced back to my room, slamming and locking the door behind me. What was the matter with me? I should never have gone to his room and gotten into his bed. Was I as evil as the grandmother said?
No, I wasn’t.
I couldn’t be!
PART TWO
Visions of Sugarplums
It was Christmas. The tree touched the twelve-foot ceiling, and spread under it were gifts enough for ten children! Not that Chris and I were children anymore. Carrie was thrilled by everything Santa had brought for her. Chris and I had used the last of our stolen hoard of money to buy Paul a luscious red lounging robe, and a brilliant gown of ruby red velvet for Henny—size fifty-eight! Dazzled and pleased, she held it before her. Then she wrote a thank-you note, Make good church dress. Make all friends jealous.
Paul tried on his lavish new lounging robe. He looked divine in that color and it fitted him beautifully.
Next came the biggest surprise of all. Paul strode over to me and hunkered down on his heels. From his wallet he pulled five large yellow tickets. If he had sat down for a year and thought about nothing but a way to please me most, he couldn’t have been more successful. There, fanned in his large, finely shaped hand, were tickets to The Nutcracker, performed by the Rosencoff School of Ballet.
“It’s a very professional company, I hear,” explained Paul. “I don’t know much about ballet myself, but I’ve asked around, and they say it is one of the best. They also teach beginner, intermediate and advanced lessons. Which level are you?”
“Advanced!” proclaimed Chris while I could only stare at Paul, too happy to speak. “Cathy was a beginner when she went upstairs to live. But something wonderful happened to her in the attic—the ghost of Anna Pavlova came and took over her body. And Cathy taught herself how to go on pointe.”
That night all of us, including Henny, sat enthralled in the third row, center section. Those dancers on stage weren’t just good—they were superb! Especially the handsome man named Julian Marquet who danced the lead. As in a dream I followed Paul backstage during intermission, for I was going to meet the dancers!
He led us toward a couple standing in the wings. “Madame, Georges,” he said to a tiny woman sleek as a seal and a not much larger man by her side, “this is my ward, Catherine Doll, who I was telling you about. This is her brother Christopher, and this younger beauty is Carrie, and you have met Henrietta Beech before. . . .”
“Yah, of course,” said the lady who looked like a dancer, talked like a dancer, and wore her black hair just like a dancer would, drawn back from her face and pinned up in a huge chignon. Over black leotards she wore a floating chiffon dress o
f black, and over that a bolero of leopard skins. Her husband, Georges, was a quiet man, sinewy, pale-faced, with startlingly black hair, and lips so red they seemed made of congealed blood. They were a pair, all right, for her lips were scarlet slashed too, and her eyes were charcoaled smudges in pale pastry dough. Two pairs of black eyes scanned me and then Chris. “You too are a dancer?” they asked of my brother. My, did they always speak simultaneously?
“No! I don’t dance,” said Chris, appearing embarrassed.
“Ah, the pity of that,” sighed the madame regretfully. “What a glorious pair the two of you would make on stage. People would flock to stare at beauty such as you and your sister possess.” She glanced down at small Carrie, clinging fearfully to my hand, and casually disregarded her.
“Chris plans to be a doctor,” explained Dr. Paul.
“Ha!” Madame Rosencoff scoffed, as if Chris must have taken leave of his senses. Both she and her husband turned their ebony eyes on me, concentrating with such intensity I began to feel hot, sweaty, self-conscious.
“You have studied the daunce?” (Always she said “daunce,” as if it had a “u.”)
“Yes,” I said in a small voice.
“Your age when you started?”
“I was four years old.”
“And you are now . . . ?”
“In April I will be sixteen.”
“Good. Very, very good.” She rubbed the palms of her long, bony hands together. “Eleven years and more of professional training. At what age did you go on pointe?”
“Twelve.”
“Wonderful!” she cried. “I never put girls on full pointe until they are thirteen, unless they are excellent. Then she frowned suspiciously. “Are you excellent, or only mediocre?”
“I don’t know.”
“You mean no one has ever told you?”
“No.”
“Then you must be only mediocre.” She half-sneered, turned toward her husband and waved her hand arrogantly to dismiss us.
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 44