* * *
Oh, how fast the years go when you have a baby to fill all the hours. All of us took snapshots like crazy: Jory’s first smile; his first tooth; his first crawl from me to Chris, and then over to Paul, and to Carrie.
Paul began his courtship that was to last two years; the same two years Chris interned in the Clairmont Hospital. They couldn’t hurt each other when each loved and respected the other. They couldn’t even speak of the barrier between them, except through me.
“It’s this town,” said Chris. “I think Carrie would fare better in another city. All of us together.”
It was twilight in the gardens, our favorite time there. Paul was off making his rounds in three hospitals, and Carrie was entertaining Jory before she put him to bed. Henny rattled pots and pans to let us know she was still up—and still busy.
Chris had completed his two years of internship, and had started on his residency which would take another three years. When he told me he was considering another hospital, far more famous, to further his training, I felt a deep shock. He was leaving me!
“I’m sorry, Cathy, the Mayo Clinic has accepted me, and that’s an honor. I’ll only be there nine months, and then back here to complete my training. Why don’t you and Jory come with me?” His eyes were very bright and lambent. “Carrie can stay to keep Paul company.”
“Chris! You know I can’t do that!”
“You are going to stay on here after I’m gone?” he asked bitterly.
“If Julian’s insurance company would pay off, I could afford a house of my own, and start my own dance school. But they keep insisting his death was suicide. I know that policy has a two-year suicide clause, and we paid on it since the day we married—so it was not in effect when he died. Yet, they won’t pay.”
“What you need is a good attorney.”
My heart jumped. “Yes. Yes I do. Chris, go on to the Mayo Clinic without me. I’ll make out fine, and I swear not to marry anyone until you are back and give your approval. Worry about finding someone yourself. After all, I’m not the only woman who resembles our mother.”
He flared. “Why the hell do you put it like that? It’s you, not her! It’s everything about you that’s not like her that makes me need and want you so!
“Chris, I want a man I can sleep with, who will hold me when I feel afraid, and kiss me, and make me believe I am not evil or unworthy.” My voice broke as tears came. “I wanted to show Momma what I could do, and be the best prima ballerina, but now that Julian’s gone all I want to do is cry when I hear ballet music. I miss him so, Chris.” I put my head on his chest and sobbed. “I could have been nicer to him—then he wouldn’t have struck out in anger. He needed me and I failed him. You don’t need me. You’re stronger than he was. Paul doesn’t really need me either, or he would insist on marrying me right away. . . .”
“We could live together, and, and . . .” And here he faltered as his face turned red.
I finished for him, “No! Can’t you see it just wouldn’t work?”
“No, I guess it wouldn’t work for you,” he said stiffly. “But I’m a fool; I’ve always been a fool, wanting the impossible. I’m even fool enough to want us locked up again, the way we were—with me the only male available to you!”
“You don’t mean that!”
He seized me in his arms. “Don’t I? God help me but I do mean it! You belonged to me then, and in its own peculiar way our life together made me better than I would have been . . . and you made me want you, Cathy. You could have made me hate you, instead you made me love you.”
I shook my head, denying this; I’d only done what came naturally from watching my mother with men. I stared at him, trembling as he released me. I stumbled as I turned to run toward the house. Before me Paul loomed up! Startled I faltered guiltily and stared at him as he turned abruptly and strode in the opposite direction. Oh! He’d been watching and listening! I pivoted about, then raced back to where Chris had his head resting against the trunk of the oldest oak. “See what you’ve done!” I cried out. “Forget me, Chris! I’m not the one and only woman alive!”
He appeared blind as he turned his head and he said, “You are for me the only woman alive.”
* * *
October came, the time for Chris’s departure. To see him pack, to know he was going, to say good-bye as if I didn’t care when he came back made me deathly ill while I smiled.
I cried in the rose arbor. It would be easier now. I wouldn’t have to keep putting Paul off so Chris wouldn’t be hurt. No longer would I have to weigh each smile and balance it off against what I’d given the other. Now I had a clear, straight path to Paul—but something got in my eyes. The vision of my mother as she stepped off the plane with her husband on the step behind her. She was coming back to Greenglenna! I clipped out the newsphoto and the caption and put that in my scrapbook. Perhaps if she’d stayed away, I would have married Paul then and there. As it was, I did something entirely unplanned.
* * *
Madame Marisha was “getting along” and needed an assistant, so I went to convince her I should be the one to keep her school running—if ever, well, you could never tell. . . .
“I don’t intend to die,” she snapped. Then begrudgingly she nodded, her ebony eyes suspicious. “Yes, I suppose you would think of me as old, though I never do. But don’t you try and take over, and try to run me. I am still the boss here, and will be until I am in my grave!”
By the time November rolled around I realized working with Madame M. was impossible. She had fixed ideas about everything, while I had a few ideas of my own. But I needed money, I needed a place of my own. I wasn’t ready to marry Paul, and if I stayed there, that’s just what would happen. I had spent enough years plotting and planning. It was time to make my move. The first pawn to play would be Mr. Attorney at Law. It wouldn’t work if I stayed with Paul, and though he objected, saying it was an unnecessary expense, I explained I had to have a chance to be my own person, and in my own home to find out what I really wanted. He gave me a puzzled look, then a more shrewd one. “All right, Catherine, do what you must. You will anyway.”
“It’s only because Chris insisted that I not marry again until Carrie had her chance, and Chris objects to my staying here with you . . . when he isn’t here. . . .” My ending was lame, and oh, such a lie!
“I understand,” he said with a wry smile. “Since the day Julian died, it has been very clear that I am in competition with your brother for your affection. I’ve tried to talk to him about it, but he won’t let me. I try to talk to you about it, and you won’t let me. So go live in your own home, and be your own person, and find your own self, and when you feel grown up enough to act adult, come back to me.”
Opening Gambit
As soon as I was installed in a small, rented cottage, halfway between Clairmont and Greenglenna, I sat down to draft a blackmail letter to my mother. I was deeply in debt, with one child, but I had Carrie too. The enormous bills Julian had run up in New York stores were still unpaid; there was also his hospital bill, his funeral bill, plus my own hospital bills made when Jory was born. Credit cards just didn’t solve everything. Not for one moment was I going to accept more from Paul. He’d done enough. I needed to prove I was better than Momma, more able, smarter . . . and what did I do but write her a letter, as she’d written to her mother after Daddy died. Why not ask for just one paltry million? Why not? She owed us! It was ours too! With that money I could pay off all the debts I owed, pay back Paul and do something to make Carrie happier. And if I felt some shame to do the same thing she’d done—in a way—I rationalized it away by thinking it was her own fault! She’d asked for it! Jory was not going to live his life in need, when she had so much!
Finally, after many futile attempts, I came up with what I believed the perfect letter of extortion:
Dear Mrs. Winslow:
Once upon a Gladstone, Pennsylvania time, there lived a man and wife who had four children everyone referred to as
the Dresden dolls. Now one of those dolls lies in a lonely grave and another of those dolls fails to grow to the height that should have been hers if she’d have been given sunlight and fresh air, and the love that a mother owed her when she needed it most.
Now the ballerina doll has a small son of her own, and not much money. I know, Mrs. Winslow, you don’t have much compassion for children who might cast a shadow over your sunny days, so I will come directly to the point. The ballerina doll demands payment of one million dollars—if you are to keep any of your millions—or billions. You may send that amount to the post office box I name, and be assured, Mrs. Winslow, that if you fail to do so, the ears of Mr. Bartholomew Winslow, Attorney at Law, will be filled with horror tales I’m sure you’d rather he not hear.
Cordially yours, the ballerina doll,
Catherine Dollanganger Marquet
Each day I waited for a check to come in the mail. Each day I was disappointed. I wrote another letter, then another, and another. Each day for seven days I mailed off a letter to her, with a fierce anger growing in my heart. What was one measly million to her who had so many? I wasn’t asking for too much. Part of that money belonged to us anyway.
Then, after fruitless months of waiting while Christmas and the New Year came and went, I decided I’d waited long enough. She was going to ignore me. I looked up a number in the Greenglenna telephone book, and in no time at all I had an appointment to see Bartholomew Winslow, Attorney at Law.
It was February and Jory was three. He was to spend the afternoon with Henny and Carrie as I, dressed in my very best with my hair becomingly styled, sauntered into the posh office to gaze upon my mother’s husband. At last I was looking at him up close—and this time he had his eyes open. Slowly he rose to his feet, wearing a bemused expression—as if he’d seen me before and couldn’t quite remember where. I thought back to the night I had stolen to Momma’s grand suite of rooms in Foxworth Hall and found Bart Winslow asleep in the chair. He’d had a big dark mustache then, and I had dared to kiss him while he dozed. Believing as I did that he was fully asleep . . . and he hadn’t been! He’d seen me and thought me part of his dream. Because of one stolen kiss that Chris was to hear about later, the repercussions had led Chris and I down a path we’d determined never to follow. Now we were paying the price—and it was her fault that Chris was now living apart from me, trying to deny what she’d started. I could not accept Paul as my husband until I had made her pay—and not just in money.
He smiled at me then, my mother’s ruggedly handsome husband, and I saw for the first time the dazzling charisma of him. A light of recognition came into his dark brown eyes. “As I live and breathe, if it isn’t Miss Catherine Dahl, the lovely ballerina who takes my breath away even before she dances. I’m enchanted you have need of a lawyer and you chose me, though I cannot possibly imagine why you are here.”
“You’ve seen me dance?” I asked, stunned to hear he had. If he had seen me, then Momma must have too! Oh, and I never knew! Never knew! I glowed, I dimmed, saddened, became confused. Somewhere deep within me, despite all the hate on top, I still felt some of the love I’d had for her when I was young and trusting.
“My wife is a ballet buff,” he went on. “Actually, I didn’t care much for it when she first started dragging me to every one of your performances. But soon I learned to enjoy it, especially when you and your husband were featured in the lead roles. In fact, my wife seemed to have no interest in ballet at all unless you and your husband were featured. I used to fear she had a crush on your husband—he looks a little like me.” He took my hand and lifted it to his lips, flashing his eyes upward and smiling with the easy charm of a man who knew what he was, a ladies’ man used to putting notches on his belt. “You are even more beautiful off stage than on. But what are you doing in this part of the country?”
“I live here.”
He pulled out a chair for me, sat me down so close he could watch my legs when I crossed them. He perched on the edge of his desk to offer me a cigarette, which I refused. He lit one for himself, then asked, “You’re on vacation? Visiting your husband’s mother?”
I realized he didn’t know about Julian. “Mr. Winslow, my husband died from injuries sustained in an auto accident more than three years ago—didn’t you hear about it?”
He appeared shocked and a bit embarrassed. “No, I didn’t hear. I’m very sorry. Please accept my belated condolences.” He sighed and ground out his half-smoked cigarette. “The two of you were sensational on stage—it’s a terrible pity. I’ve seen my wife cry she was so impressed.”
Yeah! I’ll bet she was impressed. I shrugged off more questions and came directly to the object of my visit by handing him Julian’s insurance policy. “He took out this policy shortly after we were married and now they won’t pay because they think he cut the intravenous tube that was feeding him. But, as you can see, after two years the suicide clause is no longer in effect.”
He sat down to read it carefully, and then looked up at me again. “I’ll see what I can do. Are you in immediate need of this money?”
“Who isn’t in need of money, Mr. Winslow, unless they are millionaires?” I smiled and tilted my head in the manner of my mother. “I have hundreds of bills and I have a small son to support.”
He asked the age of my son; I told him. He appeared puzzled and confounded in more ways than one as I looked at him with sleepy, half-closed eyes, my head tilted backward and slightly to one side, in a mannerism that was my mother’s way of looking at a man. I was only fifteen when I’d kissed him. He was far more handsome now. His mature face was long and lean, his bones too prominent, but in a very virile, masculine way he was strikingly good looking. Something about him suggested an exaggerated sensuality. And no wonder my mother hadn’t sent a check. Probably all my blackmail letters were still following her from place to place.
Bart Winslow asked a dozen or more questions, then he said he’d see what he could do. “I’m a pretty good lawyer once my wife allows me to stay home and get my hand into a practice.”
“Your wife is very rich, isn’t she?”
This appeared to annoy him. “I suppose you could say she is,” he answered stiffly, letting me know he didn’t like discussing the subject.
I stood to leave. “I’ll bet your rich wife leads you around like a pet poodle on a jeweled leash, Mr. Winslow. That’s the way rich women are. They don’t know the least thing about working for a living, and I wonder if you do.”
“Well, by God,” he said, jumping off the desk and standing with feet wide apart, “why did you come if you feel that way? Go to another attorney, Miss Dahl. I don’t want a client who insults me and has no regard for my abilities.”
“No, Mr. Winslow, I want you. I want you to prove you know your business as you claim to. Maybe, in a way, you can then prove something to yourself as well—that you aren’t after all, just a rich woman’s bought little plaything.”
“You have the face of an angel, Miss Dahl, but a bitch’s tongue! I’ll see your husband’s insurance firm pays off. I’ll petition them to appear in court, and threaten to sue. Ten to one they’ll settle within ten days.”
“Good,” I said. “Let me know, for as soon as I have the money, I’m moving.”
“Where?” he asked, striding forward to take hold of my arm.
I laughed, looking up into his face and using the ways a woman had to make a man interested, “I’ll let you know where I go, in case you want to keep in touch.”
* * *
In ten days, true to his word, Bartholomew Winslow came by the dance school to hand me the check for one hundred thousand dollars, “Your fee?” I asked, waving off the girls and boys who came running to surround me. I was wearing a tight practice outfit, and he was all eyes.
“Dinner at eight, next Tuesday night. Wear blue to match your eyes, and we’ll discuss the fee then,” he said, then turned to leave, not even waiting for my answer.
When he was gone, I turned around
and looked at the children doing their warm-up positions, and somewhere above I hovered, looking down, and feeling scorn for the pitiful thing I was that innocence should admire me so much. I felt sad for them, for me.
“Who was that man who came to give you check?” Madame Marisha asked me when class was over.
“An attorney I hired to force Julian’s insurance company to pay off—and they did.”
“Ah,” she said, falling into her old swivel desk chair, “now you have money and can pay off bills—I suppose you will quit working for me and go off somewhere, yah?”
“I’m not sure just what I plan to do yet. But you must admit, Madame, you and I don’t get along very well, do we?”
“You have too many ideas I don’t like. You think you know more than me! You think now that you work here few months, you can go away and start new school of your own!” She smiled evilly to see my start of surprise, revealing the truth she only guessed at. “So . . . you think me stupid too! You’ll look all your life before you find another as smart as me. I read your mind, Catherine. You don’t like me, never have, never will . . . yet you come to work for me to learn the business, right again? I don’t care. Dancing schools come and dancing schools go, but the Rosencoff School of Ballet go on forever! Once I thought I’d leave it to Julian, but he’s dead, then I thought when I die, I’d leave it to you—but I won’t if you take your son away so I can’t teach him!”
“Madame, that is your choice, but I am taking Jory away.”
“Why? You think you can teach him as well as I can?”
“I don’t know for certain, but I think I can. My son may not choose to be a dancer,” I continued, ignoring her hard stony eyes. “If he does decide one day, I think I will make an able teacher—as good as any.”
“If he choose to dance!” Words like cannonshot. “What other choice does Julian’s son have but to dance? It is in his bones, in his brain—and most of all in his blood and in his heart! He dances—or he dies!”
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 70