Dad got up and motioned to me. I stood and moved to his side as he looked at his mother with pity. “It’s a terrible shame you came too late to try to redeem your actions. Once I would have been touched by any sweet word you said. Now your very presence shows how little you care if we are deeply hurt again, as we will be if you stay.”
“Please, Christopher,” she begged. “I have no other family, and no others who care if I live or die. Don’t deny me your love when to do so will kill the very best part of you, the part that makes you what you are. You’ve never been like Cathy. Always you could hold on to some of your love—hold fast to it now, Christopher. Hold so fast and so true, you can eventually help Cathy to find a little love for me too!” She sobbed and weakened. “Or if not love, help her find forgiveness, for I admit that I could have served my children better.”
Now Dad was touched, but not for long. “I have to think of Bart’s welfare first. He’s never had much confidence in himself. Your tales have disturbed him so much he has nightmares. Leave him alone. Leave us alone! Go away, stay away, we don’t belong to you anymore. Years ago we gave you chance after chance to prove you loved us. Even when we ran you could have answered the judge’s summons and spared us the pain of knowing we weren’t loved enough for you to even appear and show some interest in our futures.
“So get out of our lives! Make another life for yourself with the riches you sacrificed us to get. Let Cathy and me live the lives we’ve worked so hard to achieve.”
I was baffled—what was he talking about? What had his mother done to her two sons, Christopher and Paul—and what did my mother have to do in their youthful lives?
She rose too, standing tall and straight. Then, slowly, slowly, she removed the veil that covered her head and face. I gasped. My dad gasped. Never before had I seen a woman who could look so ugly and so beautiful at the same time. Her scars looked as if a cat had scratched her face. Her jowls sagged with age; her pretty blonde hair was streaked with gray. I’d been terribly curious to see up close what she hid under her veil—now I wished I hadn’t.
Dad bowed his head. “Did you have to do that?”
“Yes,” she said. “I wanted you to see what I did so I would no longer look like Cathy.” She gestured to her wooden rocker. “See that chair? I have one in every room in this house.” She indicated all the comfortable chairs with fluffy soft cushions. “I sit in hard wooden chairs to punish myself. I wear the same black rags every day. I keep mirrors on the walls so I can see how ugly and old I am now. I want to suffer for the sins I committed against my children. I despise this veil, but I wear it. I can’t see well through the veil, but I deserve that too. I do what I can to make the same kind of hell for myself as I made for my own flesh and blood, and I keep on believing that there will come a time when you and Cathy will recognize how I am trying to atone for my sins so that you can forgive me and return to me, and we can be a whole family again. And when you and Cathy can do that, I can go peacefully into my grave. When I meet your father again, perhaps he won’t judge me too harshly.”
“Oh,” I cried out spontaneously, “I forgive you for whatever you did! I’m sorry you have to wear black all the time, with that veil over your face!” I turned to Dad and tugged on his arm. “Say you forgive her, Dad. Please don’t make her suffer more! She is your mother, and I could always forgive my mother, no matter what she did.”
He spoke to my grandmother as if he hadn’t even heard me. “You were always good at persuading us to do what you wanted.” I’d never heard him speak so coolly. “But I’m not a boy anymore,” he went on. “Now I know how to resist your appeal, for I have a woman who has never let me down in any important way. She has taught me not to be as gullible as I once was. You want Bart because you think he should have been yours. But you cannot have Bart. Bart belongs to us. I used to think Cathy did wrong when she sought revenge and stole Bart Winslow from you. But she didn’t do wrong—she did what she had to do. And so we have two sons instead of one.”
“Christopher,” she cried, looking desperate, “you don’t want the world to know of your indiscretion, surely you don’t.”
“Yours too,” he responded coldly. “If you expose us, you expose yourself as well. And remember, we were only children. Who do you think a judge and jury would favor—you or us?”
“For your own sakes!” she called as we stepped from her parlor and headed toward the double front doors (he had to push me ahead of him, for I was holding back, pitying her), “love me again, Christopher! Let me redeem myself, please!”
Dad whirled about, furious and red-faced. “I cannot forgive you! You think only of yourself. As you have always thought only of yourself. I don’t know you, Mrs. Winslow. I wish to God I had never known you!”
Oh, Dad, I thought, you’re going to be sorry. Forgive her, please.
“Christopher,” she called once more, her voice so weak and thin it sounded old and brittle, “when you and Cathy can love me again, you’ll find better lives for yourselves and for your children. There is so much I could do to help if only you would let me.”
“Money?” he asked with scorn. “Are going to use blackmail? We have enough money. We have enough happiness. We have managed to survive, and managed to love, and we have not killed anyone to achieve what we have.”
Killed? Had she killed?
Dad pulled me by my hand as he stalked to the door. I said to him on the way home from her mansion, “Dad, it seemed I could smell Bart in that room. He might have been hiding and listening. He was there, I’m sure of it.”
“All right,” he answered in a tired way. “You go back and look for him.”
“Dad, why don’t you forgive her? I believe she’s truly sorry for whatever she did to make you hate her—and she is your mother.” I smiled and tugged on his arm, wanting him to go back with me and say he loved her. “Wouldn’t it be nice to have both my grandmothers here for Christmas?”
He shook his head and strode away leaving me to race back to the big house. He’d taken only a few steps before he turned. “Jory, promise not to tell your mother anything about tonight.”
I promised, but I was unhappy about it, unhappy about everything I’d heard. I didn’t know if I had heard the full truth about my dad and his mother, or only part of a long, secret story never told to me. I wanted to run after Dad and ask why he hated his mother so much, but I knew from his expression what he wouldn’t tell me. In some odd way, I was glad not to know more.
“If Bart is over there, you bring him home and sneak him into his room, Jory. Please, for God’s sake, don’t mention anything to your mother about the woman next door again. I’ll take care of her. She’ll go away, and it will be just as it was before she came.”
Being what I was, I believed, though I felt sorry for his mother, I didn’t owe her the loyalty I owed him, but I couldn’t keep the most important question from my tongue. “Dad, what did your mother do that makes you hate her so much? And if you hate her, why did you always insist upon going to visit her, when Mom wouldn’t?”
He stared off into space, and, as if from a far distance, his voice came to me, “Jory, I fear you will know all of the truth soon enough. Give me time to find the right words, the true explanation that will satisfy your need to know. But believe this: your mother and I always intended to tell you. We were only waiting for you and Bart to grow up enough, and when you hear our story, I think you will understand how I can both love and hate my mother. It’s sad to say, but there are many children who feel ambiguous about their mothers or fathers.”
I hugged him, even if it was unmanly. I loved him, and if that was unmanly too, then darn if being manly was so great. “Don’t you worry about Bart, Dad,” I said. “I’ll bring him home safely.”
I managed to squeeze between the gates just in the nick of time. Softly they clanked behind me. Then . . . silence. If there was a more silent place in the world than those spacious grounds, I’ve never been there.
I jumped and qui
ckly dodged behind a tree. John Amos Jackson had Bart by the hand, and he was leading him away from the house.
“Now you know what you have to do, don’t you?”
“Yes, sir,” intoned Bart, as if in a stupor.
“You know what will happen if you don’t do as I say, don’t you?”
“Yes sir. Bad things will happen to everyone, even me.”
“Yessss, bad thingsss, thingssss you will regret.”
“Bad things I will regret,” he repeated flatly.
“From woman man is born into sin . . .”
“From woman man is born into sin . . .”
“And those who originate the sin . . .”
“Must suffer.”
“And how must they suffer?”
“In all ways, by any ways, by death they will be redeemed.”
I froze where I crouched, not believing my ears. What was that man doing to Bart?
They drifted beyond my hearing, and I peeked just in time to see Bart disappearing over the wall, going home. I waited until John Amos Jackson shuffled into the house and turned out all the lights.
Then suddenly I realized I hadn’t heard Apple bark. Wasn’t a dog as old and big as Apple supposed to bark and warn those in the house that a prowler was on the grounds? I sneaked into the barn and called Apple by name. He didn’t come running to lick my face and wag his tail. “Apple,” I called again, louder. I hit a kerosene lamp that hung near the door and I shone it into the horse stall where Apple had his home.
I sucked in my breath! Oh, no! NO!
Who would be so cruel as to starve a dog like that? Who could then drive a pitchfork into that poor bag of bones covered by beautiful fur . . . and now he was all bloody. Dark with old blood that had dried to the color of black rust. I ran outside and threw up. An hour later Dad and I were digging a grave and burying a huge dog that never had a chance to reach maturity. Both of us knew “they” would lock Bart up forever if ever this got out.
“He may not have done it,” said Dad when we were home. “I can’t believe he did it.” By now I could believe anything.
There was an old woman who lived next door.
Who wore black rags and black covered her hair.
She was twice Mom’s mother-in-law, twice hated, and much more.
And all I could do was wonder, wonder what she had done to my mom and my dad. Dad hadn’t yet explained it all to me as he’d promised. Though I had found a glimmer of a fuzzy solution—I’d let my emotions run away with me, and for a moment I’d thought she was my grandmother too, for Chris was so much my real father in my heart.
But in reality, it was Bart who was Paul’s son, and I knew why his grandmother wanted him so badly and not me. I belonged to Madame Marisha as Bart belonged to her. It was the blood relationship that made them love each other. And I sighed to be only a stepgrandson to such a mysterious and touching woman who felt she had to suffer to redeem her mistakes. I thought I should take better care of Bart—protect him, guide him, keep him straight.
Right away I had to get up and look at Bart, who was curled on his side in his bed with his thumb in his mouth. He looked like a baby—just a little boy who’d always stood in my shadow, always trying to live up to what I’d done at his age, and never achieving the goals I’d already set. He hadn’t walked sooner, talked at a younger age, or smiled until he was almost a year old. It was as if he’d known from birth that he’d always be number two, never number one. Now he’d found that one person in the world who would let him come first. I was happy Bart had his very own grandmother. Even if she did wear nothing but black, I could tell she’d once been very beautiful. More beautiful than my Grandmother Marisha could ever have hoped to be when she was young.
Yet . . . yet . . . some pieces in the puzzle were missing,
John Amos Jackson—just where did he fit into the picture? Why would a loving grandmother and mother who wanted to be reunited with her son and his wife and her grandson . . . why would she bring that hateful old man along with her?
Honor Thy Mother
He never bothered to look around. He thought I was safely asleep, in that little bed where they liked to keep me. But I saw Daddy leave the house. Was he going to see my grandmother? Wish everybody’d leave her alone, so I could have her back like she used to be, all mine.
Apple was gone. Gone to where puppies and ponies went. “That great big pasture in the sky,” said John Amos with his glittery pale eyes watching me carefully, like he thought I was the one who stabbed the pitchfork in. “You saw Apple dead? You really saw him dead?”
“Deader than a doornail.”
I sneaked along the winding jungle paths that were taking me straight into hell. Down, down, down. Caves and canyons and deep pits, and sooner or later we’d find the door. Red. The door to hell would be red—maybe black.
Black gates. Magic gates swung wide to let Daddy through. She wanted him. Fine son he was, putting his mother into the loony bin, and next he’d put me in one of those funny farms where they laced you up in straitjackets (wonder what they were?). Terrible anyway, whatever it was.
The gates clanked together. Knew Mom was back in her room typing away those pages like she really thought it was just as important as dancing. She didn’t seem to mind sitting in that wheelchair, didn’t seem to mind at all unless she heard Jory playing that dance music. Then her head would lift; she’d stare into space; her feet would begin to keep time.
“What’s intricate mean, Momma?” I’d asked when she said Jory had the concentration to learn intricate dances quickly.
“Complicated,” she’d answered, just like a dictionary. She had dictionaries all over the place, little ones, middlesized ones, a huge fat one that had its own stand that swiveled around.
Had to make my feet do intricate things. I tried as I slipped along behind Daddy, who never glanced backward. I was always looking over my shoulder, staring to the left or to the right, wondering, always wondering. Dratted shoelace—ouch! Down I was—again. If he heard me cry out, he didn’t look back. Good . . . had to do all this secret stuff like a good spy. Or a thief, a jewel thief. Rich ladies had lots and lots of jewels. Ought to get in some practice while she was gabbing with her doctor son, crying and constantly asking him to forgive her, have mercy, take her back and love her again. Boring. Didn’t like Daddy so much now, was back to how I used to feel before he saved my leg from being “amputated.” Dratted man was trying to drive away the one grandmother I had. What other kid had a grandmother so rich she could give him everything?
“Where you going, Bart?”
John Amos appeared out of nowhere, his eyes glowing in the dark. “None of your damn business!” I snapped like Malcolm would have done. Had Malcolm’s journal flat against my chest, under my shirt. The red leather was sticking to my skin. I was learning how to make money out of rage.
“Your father is in that house, talking with your grandmother. Now you get in there and do your job, and report back to me every word they say. You hear?”
Hear? Was him who needed a hearing aid, not me. Else he would do his own spying through the keyhole. But all he could do was peek, couldn’t hear very good. Couldn’t bend over much better, and couldn’t pick up anything he dropped.
“Bart . . . did you hear me? What the devil are you doing heading for the back stairs?”
Turned to stare at him. On the fifth step I was taller. “How old are you, John Amos?”
He shrugged and scowled. “Why do you want to know?”
“Never saw anybody older, that’s all.”
“The Lord has ways of punishing those who show disrespect to their elders.” He gritted his teeth. They made the sound of dishes clinking in the sink.
“I’m taller than you are now.”
“I’m six feet tall—or I used to be. Boy, that’s a height you will never reach unless you always stand on stairs.”
I narrowed my eyes and made them mean like Malcolm would. “There will come a day, John Amos, when I�
��ll stand head and shoulders taller than you. And on your knees you will come begging to me, pleading, pleading; sir, sir, you’ll say, please let me get rid of those attic mice. And I will say to you, How do I know you are worthy of my trust, and you will say to me, In your footsteps I will follow, even when you lie in your grave.”
What I said made him slyly smile.
“Bart, you are learning to be as clever as your great-grandfather, Malcolm. Now, put off whatever you plan to do. Go back to your father, who is with your grandmother this very second. Remember every word you hear, and report back to me.”
Like a spy, I crawled through the dumbwaiter, which was hidden behind a pretty Oriental screen. From there I could sneak my way to a hidden place behind the potted palms.
There they were, the two of them, doing the same old thing. Grandmother pleading, Daddy rejecting. Sat down and made myself comfortable before I pulled out my pack of roll-my-owns. Cigarettes helped when life got boring, like now. Nothing to do but listen. Spies never got to say anything, and it was action I needed.
Daddy looked nice in his pale gray suit, like I wanted to look when I grew up—but I wouldn’t—I didn’t have his kind of good looks. I sighed, wishing I was his real son.
“Mrs. Winslow, you promised to move, but I look around and see you haven’t even packed one box. For the sake of Bart’s mental health, for the sake of Jory whom you say you love well too, and most of all for Cathy, go away. Move to San Francisco. That’s not too far away. I swear I’ll visit you when I can. I’ll be able to find opportunities to see you and Cathy will never suspect.”
Boring. Why couldn’t he say something different? Why did he care so much what my momma said about his mother? If ever I was so unlucky as to have a wife, I’d tell her she’d better accept my mother or get out. Get the hell out, as Malcolm would put it.
“Oh, Christopher,” she sobbed, pulling out another of those lacy handkerchiefs to wipe at her tears. “I want Cathy to forgive me so I can have a small place in your lives. I stay on because I’m hoping eventually she’ll realize I’m not here to harm any of you . . . I’m here only to give what I can.”
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 104