“You stole him from me,” I cried like a baby. “He was the best friend I ever had; the only one who really loved me, and you stole him away so now he likes you better.”
“No he doesn’t. Bart, he likes me, but he loves you.”
Now she wasn’t smiling and pleased-looking. Just like John Amos had said, she knew I was on to her wiles. She was gonna tell me more lies. “Don’t speak to me so gruffly,” she begged. “It doesn’t become a boy of ten years. Darling, you’ve been gone so long, and I’ve missed you so much. Can’t you even show me a little affection?”
Suddenly, despite my promise, I was running into her arms and throwing my arms about her. “Grandmother! I really did hurt my knee bad! I was sweating so much my bed was wet. They wrapped me in a cold blanket and Momma and Daddy rubbed me down with ice. There was a man doctor who wanted to cut off my leg, but Daddy wouldn’t let him. That doctor said he was glad I wasn’t his son.” I paused to take a breath. I forgot all about Malcolm. “Grandmother, I found out my daddy loves me after all—or else he would have been glad for that doctor to cut off my leg.”
She seemed shocked. “Bart, for heaven’s sake! How can you have the slightest doubt that he loves you? Of course he does. He’d have to love you, and Christopher was always a kind, loving boy . . .”
How did she know my daddy’s name was Christopher? I narrowed my eyes. She was holding her hands over her mouth like she’d given away some secret. Then she was crying.
Tears. One of the ways women had to work men.
I turned away. Hated tears. Hated people who were weak. I put my hand on my shirtfront and felt the hard cover of Malcolm’s book against my bare chest. That book was giving me his strength, transferring it from the pages to my blood. What if I did wear a child’s weak, imperfect body? What difference did it make when soon she’d know just who was her master?
Home, had to get home before they missed me.
“Good night, Corrine.”
I left her crying, still wondering how she knew my daddy’s name.
In my garden I checked my peach pit again. No roots yet. I dug up my sweetpeas again. Still not sprouting. I didn’t have luck with flowers, with peach pits, with nothing. With nothing but playing Malcolm the powerful. At that I was getting better and better. Smiling and happy, I went to bed.
The Horns of Dilemma
Never was Bart in our yard where he should be. I climbed the tree and sat on the wall, and then I saw Bart over in that lady’s yard, down on his knees crawling. Sniffing the ground like a dog. “Bart!” I yelled, “Clover’ s gone, and you can’t take his place.”
I knew what he was doing—burying a bone and then sniffing around until he found it. He looked up, his eyes glazed and disoriented—and then he began to bark.
I yelled to set him straight, but he went on playing the frolicking puppy before he suddenly became an old man who dragged his leg. And it wasn’t even the leg he’d hurt. What a nut he was. “Bart, straighten up! You’re ten, not a hundred. If you keep walking crooked you’ll grow that way.”
“Crooked days make crooked ways.”
“You don’t make good sense.”
“And the Lord said: ‘do unto others as they have done unto you.’”
“Wrong. The correct quotation is: ‘Do unto others as you would have done unto you.’” I reached to assist what seemed to be an old man. Bart scowled, panted, grabbed at his chest, then cried out about his bad heart that shouldn’t have to endure tree-climbing.
“Bart, I’m fed up with you. All you do is make trouble. Have some sympathy for Mom and Dad—and me. It’s going to be embarrassing having you for my brother when we go back to school.”
He limped along behind me as I headed toward home, still panting, muttering between moans about how already he was a master of finances. “Never was born a brain more clever than mine,” he mumbled.
He has really gone bananas, was all I could think as I listened to him. When he’d scrubbed his filthy hands with a brush as if he really wanted to get them clean, I gasped. That wasn’t like Bart at all. He was still pretending to be someone else. Soon he had his teeth clean and was in bed. I ran fast to where I could eavesdrop on my parents, who were in the living room dancing to slow music.
As always, something sweet, soft, and romantic stole over me to see them like that. The tender way she looked at him; the gentle way he touched her. I cleared my throat before they did anything too intimate. Without changing their positions, both looked at me questioningly. “Yes, Jory,” said Mom, her blue eyes dreamy.
“I want to talk to you about Bart, “I said. “I think there are a few things you should know.”
Dad looked relieved. Mom seemed to shrink into herself as she quietly sat beside Dad on the sofa. “We’ve been hoping you would come to us with Bart’s secret.”
None of it was easy to say. “Well,” I began slowly, hoping to find the right words, “first, you should know Bart has lots of nightmares in which he wakes up crying. He pretends too much, such as hunting big game and normal kid stuff like that, but when I catch him crawling around sniffing the ground, then digging up a nasty old bone and carrying it between his teeth to bury it somewhere else, that’s going too far.” I paused and waited for them to say something. Mom had her head turned as if she were listening to hear the wind. Dad leaned forward, watching me intensely.
“Go on, Jory,” he urged. “Don’t stop now. We’re not blind. We see how Bart is changing.”
Dreading to tell more, I hung my head and spoke very low. “I’ve tried several times to tell you before. I was afraid then too. You’ve both been so worried about Bart that I couldn’t speak.”
“Please don’t hold anything back,” Dad said.
I looked only at my father, unable to meet my mother’s fearful gaze. “The lady next door gives Bart all sorts of expensive gifts. She’s given him a St. Bernard puppy he calls Apple, two miniature electric trains along with a small village and mountain settings—the complete works. She’s had one huge room of hers turned into a playroom just for him. She would give me gifts too, but Bart won’t let her.”
Stunned, they turned to one another. Finally Dad said, “What else?”
I swallowed and heard my odd, husky voice. This was the worst part, the part that really hurt. “Yesterday I was in the backyard near the wall . . . you know, where that hollow tree is. I had the hedge clippers and was pruning like you showed me, Dad, when I smelled something putrid. It seemed to come from that hole in the tree. When I checked . . . I found . . .” Again I had to swallow before I could say it. “I found Clover. He was dead and decaying. I dug a grave for him.” Hastily I turned my back to wipe away tears, then I told them the rest. “I found a wire twisted around his neck. Somebody deliberately murdered my dog!”
They just sat on the sofa looking shocked and scared. Mom blinked back her tears; she too had loved Clover. Her hands trembled when she reached for a handkerchief. Next she locked her nervous hands together and kept them on her lap. Neither she nor Dad asked who had killed Clover. I figured they thought the same as I did.
Before he went to bed, Dad came into my room and talked to me for an hour, asking all sorts of questions about Bart, what he did with his time, where he went, and about the woman next door, and that butler too. I felt better now that I’d warned them. Now they could plan what to do with Bart. And I cried that night for the last time over Clover, who had been my first and only pet. I was going on fifteen, almost a man’s age, and tears were only for little boys—not for someone almost six feet tall.
* * *
“You leave me alone!” yelled Bart when I asked him not to go next door. “You stop telling tales on me or you’ll be sorry.”
Each day took us closer to September and school days. As far as I could see, Bart wasn’t responding to the tender loving care my parents gave him. They were too understanding in my opinion. “You listen to me, Bart, and stop pretending you’re an old man named Malcolm Neal Foxworth, whoever h
e is!” But Bart couldn’t let go of his pretend limp, his fake bad heart that made him gasp and pant. “Nobody is waiting for you to die to inherit your fortune. Dear little brother, you don’t have any fortune!”
“Got twenty billion, ten million, fifty-five thousand, and six hundred and forty-two cents!” He used his fingers to tally up. “But I can’t remember how much I have in stocks and bonds, so I guess you could triple that figure. A man isn’t rich if he can name what he owns.”
I hadn’t known he could even name a figure like that. Just when I would say something sarcastic, Bart let out a yelp and doubled over. He fell to the floor and gasped. “Quick . . . my pills. I’m dying! My left arm is going numb! Save me, send for my doctors!”
That’s when I left the house and went outdoors. I sat on a lawn chair and pulled out a paperback novel to read. Bart was getting to me, really getting to me. It was like living with Jekyll and Hyde. If he had to act, why the heck didn’t he choose some role better than a lame old guy with a bad heart?
“Jory, don’t you care if I die?” Bart came out and asked me.
“Nope.”
“You’ve never liked me!”
“I liked you better when you acted your own age.”
“Would you believe Malcolm Neal Foxworth is the father of that lady next door, and she is my real grandmother, truly my own grandmother?”
“She told you that?”
“No. John Amos told me some, she told me more. John Amos tells me lots of stuff. He told me Daddy Paul and Daddy Chris were not brothers, that my momma only said that so we wouldn’t find out her sin. He says a man named Bartholomew Winslow was my real daddy and he died in a fire. Our mother seduced him.”
Seduced? I gave him a long searching look. “Do you know what that word means?”
“Nope—but I know it’s bad, real bad!”
“Do you love our mother?”
Worry tormented his dark eyes. He sat heavily on the ground and contemplated his sneakers. He should have answered quickly, spontaneously. “Bart, do me a big favor and yourself too—go into the house and tell Mom and Dad what’s bothering you. They’ll understand anything. I know you think Mom loves me best, but it’s not so. She has room in her heart for ten children.”
“Ten?” he screamed. “You mean Momma is gonna adopt more?” He jumped up and ran then, haltingly, as if pretending to be old had made him lose what little agility he had. That hospital stay had robbed him of a great many things, in my opinion.
It was sneaky of me and not quite honorable, but I had to hear what Bart told our mother when they were alone. She was on the back veranda. Cindy was on her lap, dozing as Mom read a book. When Bart ran up she quickly put the book down, then shifted Cindy onto a nearby chair as Bart stood staring at her, mutely pleading with his eyes.
Then, of all things, he asked, “What’s your name?”
“You know my name,” she said.
“Does it begin with a C?”
“Yes, of course it does.” Now she looked disturbed.
“But—but—” he stumbled, “I know someone who cries after you go away. Someone little like me who is locked in closets and other scary places by his father, who doesn’t like him anymore. Once the father put him in the attic for punishment. Big, dark, scary attic with mice and spooky shadows and spiders everywhere.”
She seemed to freeze. “Who told you all of that?”
“His stepmother had dark red hair until he found out she was only his father’s paramour.”
Even from where I hid I could hear Momma breathing hard and fast, as if that small boy she lifted on her lap had suddenly turned dangerous. “Darling, you don’t know what a paramour is, do you?”
He stared ahead into space. “There was a lady slender and fair who had red in her dark-dark hair. And she wasn’t even married to his father who didn’t care what he did, how he cried, or even if he died.”
Her lips trembled, but she forced a smile. “Bart, I believe you have some poet in you. All that has a cadence, and it rhymes, too.”
He scowled, turning dark burning eyes on her. “I despise poets, artists, musicians, dancers!”
She shivered, and I can’t say I blamed her. He scared me, too. “Bart, I have to ask you this, and you must give me a truthful answer. Remember, no matter what you say you won’t be punished. Did you hurt Clover?”
“Clover done gone away. Won’t come back to live in my doghouse now.”
She pushed him away then and quickly got up to leave the patio. Then she remembered Cindy and rushed back to pick her up. None of what she did made me feel better as I watched Bart’s eyes.
* * *
As always, soon after one of his mean “attacks,” Bart grew tired and sleepy and went to bed without his dinner. My mother smiled, laughed, and dressed to attend a formal celebration in honor of my father, who had been voted chief-of-staff of his hospital. I stood at the window and watched Dad lead her proudly to his car.
Late, way after two, I heard them come in. I had yet to fall asleep, and I could hear their conversation in the living room.
“Chris, I don’t understand Bart at all, the way he talks, the way he moves, or even how he looks. I feel afraid of my own son, and that’s sick.”
“Come now, darling,” he said with his arm about her shoulders, “I think you exaggerate. Bart will grow up to be a great actor if he keeps this up.”
“Chris, I know sometimes high fevers leave a child with brain damage. Did the fever destroy part of his brain?”
“Look, Cathy, Bart tested out just fine. Don’t go getting notions just because we gave him that test. All high fever patients have to undergo such examinations.”
“But did you find anything unusual?” she persisted.
“No,” Dad said firmly, “he’s just an ordinary little boy with lots of emotional problems, and we, if anyone can, should understand what he’s going through.”
What did that mean?
“But Bart has everything! He isn’t growing up as we did. He should be happy. Don’t we do everything we can?”
“Yes, but sometimes even that isn’t enough. Each child is different, each has different needs. Obviously we are not giving Bart what he needs.”
Mom was given to hot quick answers. Yet she sat on, silent and still, as I waited for more information. Dad wanted her to go to bed immediately, which was easy enough to see from the way he kissed her neck. But she was deep in thought. Her eyes were fixed on her silver sandals as she spoke of how Clover had died.
“It couldn’t have been Bart,” she said slowly, as if to convince herself as well as Dad. “It had to be some sadist who tortures animals—you know how we read that the animals in the zoo were being crippled? One of them must have seen Clover,” and her voice died away, for so seldom did we ever see a stranger on our road.
“Chris,” she added, while that horrible look of fright was still on her face, “today Bart took me completely by surprise. He told me about a little boy who was locked in closets and in the attic. Later on he told me that little boy’s name was Malcolm. Could he know about him? Who could have told him that name? Chris, do you think somehow Bart has found out about us?”
I jerked. What was there to know about them that I didn’t already know? I knew they had some terrible secret. I crawled away, then raced to my room and threw myself on my bed. Something awful was wrong with our lives. I felt it in my bones—and Bart must have sensed it in his, too.
The Snake
Sun and fog were playing games, keeping each other company. I had to sit alone in our garden. For fun I stared down at the thick scabs on my knee. I’d been warned by Daddy not to pick them off or they’d leave scars—but who cared about scars? I began to carefully lift the edges of the crust just to see what was underneath. I didn’t see a darn thing but red, tender-looking flesh, ready to bleed again.
Sun won the game in the sky and shone hot on my head. Almost heard my brains frying. Didn’t want fried brains. I moved to the shade.
Now my head was aching. I bit down on my lower lip hard enough to draw blood. Didn’t hurt but later it would swell up so big Momma would have to feel worried. That would be good. She should be worried about what was happening to me.
Used to be Momma’s little boy who got lots of attention until that dratted little girl came to take my place. Soon Mamma and Jory would return from ballet class. That’s all they cared about—dancing and Cindy. I knew about the important things in life, what really counted most—money. Having lots of it, then you didn’t have to think about needing it or how to get it. John Amos and Malcolm’s book had taught me that.
“Bart,” said Emma, who’d stolen up behind me. “I’m so sorry you missed your birthday trip to Disneyland. To make up for that I’ve made you a little birthday cake of your very own.” She held in her hands a tiny cake with one candle in the middle of the chocolate. Was not just one year old! I struck that cake from her hands so it fell to the ground. She cried out, looking hurt enough to cry as she backed off. “That wasn’t very grateful, or very kind,” she said in a choked way. “Bart, why do you have to act so ugly? We all try to do our best.”
I stuck out my tongue. She sighed and left me alone.
Later Emma came out again with that bratty girl in her arms. Wasn’t my sister. Didn’t want any sister. I hid behind a tree and peeked around. Emma put Cindy in the plastic swimming pool. She began to kick and splash the shallow water. Dumb, dumb, dumb . . . couldn’t even swim. See how Emma laughed and enjoyed all her baby-doings when I could stand on my head. If I sat in that pool and splashed with my hands and feet she wouldn’t think it was cute.
I waited for Emma to go away, but she pulled up a chair, sat down and began to shell peas. Plop, plop, plop went the green peas into the blue bowl. “That’s it, dearie,” Emma encouraged Cindy. “Splash the water, kick your pretty legs, flap your sweet arms, and make your limbs strong so soon you’ll be swimming.”
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 99