Daddy smiled bitterly. “I suppose you are talking again about material things, but that’s not what a child needs. Cathy and I have done all we can to make Bart feel needed, loved, and wanted—but he can’t seem to understand his relationship to me. He isn’t secure in what he is, who he is, or where he’s going. He doesn’t have a dance career like Jory to guide him into the future. Now he’s grasping, trying to find himself, and you aren’t helping. He keeps his innermost self very private, locked up. He adores his mother, he distrusts his mother. He suspects she loves Jory more than she loves him. He knows that Jory is handsome, talented, and most of all, adroit. Bart is not adroit at anything but pretending. If he would confide in us, or his psychiatrist, he could be helped—but he doesn’t confide.”
I had to wipe a tear from my eye. So hard to hear about myself, and what I was, and worse, what I wasn’t—like they knew me inside out, and they didn’t. They couldn’t.
“Did you hear any of what I just said, Mrs. Winslow?” Daddy shouted. “Bart does not like his image that reflects only weakness—no skills, no grace, and no authority. So he borrows from all the books he’s read, from all the TV shows he’s watched, and sometimes he even borrows from animals, pretending he’s a wolf, a dog, a cat.”
“Why, why?” she moaned. He was telling all my secrets. And a secret told had no value, none at all.
“Can’t you guess why? Jory has thousands of photographs of his father, Bart has none. Not even one.”
That made her bolt straight up. She flared with anger. “And why should he have his father’s pictures? Is it my fault my second husband didn’t give his mistress his photograph?”
I felt stunned. What was this? Sure, John Amos had told me crazy stories, but I’d thought he made them up, just as I made up stories to chase away boredom. Was it all true that my own momma had been the bad woman who had seduced my own grandmother’s second husband? Was I really the son of that lawyer-man named Bartholomew Winslow? Oh, Momma, how can I ever stop hating you now?
Daddy was wearing that funny smile again. “Perhaps your beloved Bart thought he didn’t need to give her his photograph when she’d have the living man in her own home and in her bed as her lawful husband. She told him before he died that she was expecting his child, and he would have divorced you to be the father of his child, and have Cathy—I don’t doubt that in the least.”
I was in a tight ball, agonized by all I’d heard. My poor, poor daddy, who died in the fire at Foxworth Hall. John Amos was a true friend, the only one who treated me like an adult and told me the truth. And Daddy Paul, whose picture set in my bedroom on the night table, had been only another step-father, like Christopher. Was crying inside from losing yet another daddy. My eyes rolled from Daddy to her, trying so hard to know what to feel about him and her—and Momma. It wasn’t right for parents to mess up the lives of little babies who weren’t even born, mess it up so much I’d never really know who I was.
Hopefully I stared at my grandmother, who seemed to be very hurt by what her son had said. Her white hands fluttered up to her forehead, which was glistening with beads of sweat, touching it as if her head ached. Oh, how easily she could feel pain, why couldn’t I?
“All right, Christopher,” she said when I thought she might never find the words, “you’ve had your say, now let me have mine. When it came down to an ultimatum, Cathy and her unborn child, or me and my fortune—Bart would have stayed with me, his wife. He might have kept her on as his mistress until he tired of her, but then he would have figured out some legal way to take possession of his child—and then my husband would have bowed out of Cathy’s life, holding fast to his son. I know he would have stayed on with me, even as he looked around for the next pretty face and younger body.”
My own daddy. My own blood father wouldn’t have wanted my momma after all. Tears stuck to my lashes. My throat hurt, proving I was human after all, not the freak I’d believed. I could feel a different kind of pain. But still I couldn’t feel happy; why couln’t I feel happy and real? Then I remembered some of her words . . . my real daddy would have found some “legal way” to take possession of me. Did that mean he would have stolen me away from my own mother? That thought didn’t make me happy either.
Grandmother sat on, unmoving. I shriveled even smaller, scared, so scared of what I might hear next. Daddy, don’t let out any more bad secrets and make me take action. John Amos would force me to take action. I glanced behind me, suspecting he might be listening with a glass held to the wall so he could hear better.
“Well,” said my father, wound up now. “Bart’s psychiatrist shows an incredible interest in you, whom he believes to be my mother only. I wonder why time and again he keeps harping back to you. He seems to think you are the clue to Bart’s secret inner life. He thinks you lived a secret inner life too—did you, Mother? When your father made you feel less than human, did you sit alone and plot how to have your own kind of revenge, and make him suffer?”
What was this?
“Don’t,” she pleaded, “please don’t. Have mercy on me, Christopher. I did the best I could under the circumstances. I swear I did my best!”
“Your best?” He laughed and sounded like Momma when she poked mean fun. “When your father’s younger half brother walked into Foxworth Hall at age seventeen, did you immediately seize hold on an inspiration?—the supreme way to punish your father for making you dislike yourself? Did you set out to make our father fall in love with you? Did you? Did you hate him in a way too, because he looked like Malcolm? I think you did. I think you schemed and plotted to wound your father in the one way that would shatter his ego most, so it might never recover. And I think you succeeded! You eloped and married the younger half brother he despised, and you thought you’d won in two ways. You had stung him where it hurt most. Now you had power to gain his tremendous fortune through our father!—but it didn’t work, did it? I haven’t forgotten those days when we lived in Gladstone, when I overheard you pleading with my father to sue, to get what was rightfully his. But our father refused to cooperate. He loved you and married you for what he thought you were, and not for the money you couldn’t keep from dreaming about.”
Stunned again, I stared at my grandmother. She was crying, her frail body shaking; even her rocking chair seemed to quiver. I was quivering too, crying too—inside.
“You’re wrong, so wrong, Christopher!” she sobbed, her chest heaving. “I loved your father! You know I loved him! I gave him four children and the best years of my life—the best I had in me to give to anyone.”
“Your best is so poor, Mrs. Winslow, so very, very poor.”
“Christopher!” she cried out, getting to her feet painfully. She spread her hands in a helpless way, stepping closer to look up into his face. The black shroud she wore fluttered as she shook. She threw a fearful glance around the room, forcing me to shrink smaller into the dim shadowy corner. Her voice lowered.
“All right, we’ve said enough about the past. Live with Cathy, but accept me into your lives. Let me have Bart as my own son. You have Jory and that little girl you adopted. Let me take Bart and go away, so far away you’ll never see or hear from me again. I swear I’ll never let anyone know about you and Cathy. I’ll do what I can to protect your secret—but let me have Bart for my own, please, please!”
She fell to her knees and clutched at his hands, and when he quickly moved them out of reach, she pulled on his jacket.
“Don’t embarrass me further, Mother,” he said uneasily, but I could tell he was touched. “Cathy and I don’t give away our children. He is not our pride and joy at this moment, but we love him, we need him, and we will do what is necessary to see that he is mentally healthy again.”
“Tell me what to do, and I’ll do it,” she pleaded, tears streaking her cheeks as at last she caught hold of his evasive hands and she crushed them to her breasts. “Tell me what to do—anything but leave. I need to see him and watch and admire as he pretends. He’s wonderfully gifted.�
� She began to kiss his hands as he tried to pull them away, but he must not have tried too hard, for she was able to retain them both with her fragile strength.
“Mother, please . . . ,” he begged, looking away before he sat down and hid his face.
“He needs me, Christopher, more than any of my own children have ever needed me. He loves me too . . . I know he does. He sits on my lap and I rock him, and I see a look of contentment on his face. He’s so young, so vulnerable, so bewildered by things he can’t understand. And I can help. I know I can help him.
“Something inside of me says I won’t be here too much longer,” she whispered, and I had to strain my ears to hear. “Let me have him until then . . . please, as one last gift to the mother you used to love very much . . . the mother of your youth, Christopher . . . the mother who cared for you when you had the measles, the chicken pox, all those colds from staying out in the snow too long. Remember? I remember. Without my memories of the good times, I could never have lived through the bad . . .”
She was getting to him. He was staring down at her, his eyes soft.
“You said a while ago I seduced your father and deliberately schemed to hurt my father by marrying him. You are wrong. I loved your father from the first moment I laid eyes on him. I could no more have held back from loving him than you held back from loving Cathy. Chris, I have nothing left of my past. I’ve lost everything. John’s the only one from my past,” she murmured low, like she was scared. “He’s the only one I have left from the days at Foxworth Hall.”
“He must know who I am then! And who Bart is!”
Leaning forward, she stretched to put her pale hand with all the rings on his trousered knee—I saw him shudder at her touch. “I don’t know what John knows. He thinks all my children ran off and were lost somewhere in the world. As far as I know, he doesn’t know Bart’s middle name is Winslow . . . but then again, he’s so sly, he may know everything.” She trembled and withdrew her hand as if she knew it offended him. “All this land around here belonged to my father. So he thinks it’s only natural I would come out here and settle down on an estate that’s been in our family for years and years.”
He shook his head. “And you did arrange for me to buy my land cheaper?”
“Christopher, my father owned land everywhere. Now I own all of it. But I would give it all away just to have you and Cathy back as my family. No one knows about you and Cathy but me, and I’ll never tell anyone who you are. I promise not to shame and hurt you—just let me stay! Let me be your mother again!”
“Get rid of John!”
First she sighed, then bowed her head. “I wish to God I could.”
“What do you mean?”
“Can’t you guess?” she asked, her graying head lifted so her eyes could search his.
“Blackmail?”
“Yes. He doesn’t have any family either. He pretends not to know about you and Cathy, but I can’t be sure. He’s sworn to help me keep my whereabouts a mystery, for there are news reporters who would be hot on my heels if they knew where I was. So I give him a good home and plenty of money to keep me safe.”
“Bart is not safe. Jory has seen John Amos whispering to him. I think he knows who we are.”
“But he won’t do anything,” she cried. “I’ll talk to him, make him understand. He won’t tell . . . I’ll pay him off.”
Daddy stood up to leave. For a moment his hand rested lightly on her head. Then, looking guilty, he quickly withdrew it. “All right. You speak to John, order him to leave Bart alone. Don’t let Bart know you are his natural grandmother—let him keep on believing you are only a kind-hearted woman who needs him for a friend. Can you do this one small thing for me?”
“Yes, of course,” she agreed weakly.
“And please start wearing that veil over your head again. Jory knows you are my mother . . . but, well, you know. And who knows when Cathy might decide to be friendly and visit her new neighbor? She was busy with her dance classes before. Now that she’s not so occupied, she’ll need to see people. That was one of the hardest things for her to bear when she was young . . . to be kept locked up for what seemed to her centuries, and only her mother and grandmother . . . That made her need even greater.”
Again her head drooped. “I know. I’ve sinned and I regret it. I pray to turn back the clock, but I wake up to another lonely day—and I have only Bart to give me hope.”
Oh, gosh, they’d known so much before I came along.
“I have to ask something,” she said in a faint whisper. “Do you love her as a man loves . . . a wife?”
He turned so she could see only his back. “That is none of your business.”
“But I’d understand. I question Bart but he doesn’t know what I mean. But he’s told me you share one bedroom.”
Angry, he flared, glaring at her: “And one bed. Now, are you satisfied?” Once more he spun on his heel, and this time he left.
Puzzling, gosh darn puzzling. Why did Momma hate his momma? And why did my grandmother ask about bedrooms and bed?
Ran home next. Didn’t stop to report to John Amos. Momma was at that dratted barre, trying to pull herself out of that ugly wheelchair. I hid and watched. Strange to see her awkward—like me. Clumsy like me, but she managed to pull herself to her feet and then she stood shaking all over. Her face in the mirror was pale, her hair a frame of gold. Molten gold, hot as hell, burning as running lava.
“Bart, is that you?” she called. “Why do you stare at me so strangely? I won’t fall, if you’re thinking that. Each day I feel better, stronger. Come sit with me and talk to me. Tell me what you do all the time when I can’t see you. Where do you go? Teach me to play your pretend games. When I was your age I liked to pretend too. Why, I used to dream about being the world’s most famous prima ballerina, and I made that the most important thing in my whole life. Now I know it was never that important. Now I know it’s making the ones you love happy that matters most. Bart, I want to make you happy . . .”
I hated her for “seducing” my real father and taking him from my poor lonely grandmother, who was her own mother-in-law. And she must have been married then to Dr. Paul Sheffield, who was Chris’s brother but not my real father at all. Look at her, trying to make up to me for her neglect! Too late! I wanted to run and shove her down. Hear her bones break, all of them. She was unfaithful to all husbands! But I couldn’t say any of this. My legs went rubbery and weak and made me sink to the floor as all the silent screams bounced in my head. Wicked sinful evil woman! Sooner or later she’d run away with some lover—like Malcolm’s mother did. Like all mothers did.
And why hadn’t my grandmother come right out and told me who she was? Why was she keeping it a secret? Didn’t she know I needed a real grandmother? She even lied to me about who my daddy was! Only John Amos told me the truth.
“Bart—what’s wrong?”
Alarm on her face. Should be alarmed. Never, never did she tell me anything but lies. There was no one I could trust but John Amos. All the while he shuffled along, looking weird and old, he was honest, doing his best to set the world straight.
“Bart, what’s the matter? Can’t you tell me, your own mother?”
Stared at her. Saw all that mass of hair as golden snares to ruin men. Took all men and made them suffer. Her fault. All her fault. Took my real daddy from my grandmother and “seduced” him.
“Bart, don’t crawl on the floor. Stand up and use your legs. You’re not an animal.”
I threw back my head and howled. Howled all the rage and hate I felt. It wasn’t fair for God to give me her for a mother. Wasn’t fair when he burned my real daddy to death. Gotta do something. Make it all right.
“Bart, please tell me what’s wrong!”
I could barely see her. She tried to take a few steps away from the barre and her hands reached for me, as if she wanted me in her arms.
I’d never let her touch me again. Never, never, never!
“I hate you!” I scream
ed, jumping to my feet and backing away. “I hope you never walk again. I hope you fall down and die. I hope your house burns up and you and Cindy too!”
Ran—ran and ran until my sides hurt and my mind was empty.
In Apple’s stall I fell down to rest. I kept Malcolm’s journal there, hidden under the old hay and I fished it out to read more. Boy, he sure did hate women, especially when they were pretty. Didn’t seem to notice the ugly ones. I lifted my head and stared into space. Alicia. Nice name—wonder what made him love Alicia more than Olivia? Just because she was only sixteen when she married his old, old father of fifty-five?
Alicia slapped his face when he tried to kiss her. Maybe Malcolm wasn’t as good at kissing as his father.
The more I read the more I learned how Malcolm succeeded in everything he did, except in making women love him. Proving to me I’d better leave all women alone since I was so much like Malcolm. Over and over I was reading his words so I could turn into him, all powerful.
C names. Wonder why women like C names so much? Catherine, Corrine, Carrie, and Cindy—whole wide world full of C names. Wish I liked my grandmother like I used to. Now that I knew she was my real grandmother it wasn’t as good. She should have told me. She was just another lying, sneaking, cunning female. Just as John Amos had warned me.
I could smell Apple faintly. My ears heard him munching his food; I felt his cold nose nuzzling my hand—and I was crying. Crying so hard I wanted to die and join him. But Apple should have missed me more. He made me do it. He was supposed to suffer when I did—and he didn’t. He was mine and he let Grandmother feed him, give him water—so it was his own fault. And there was Clover, dead too. Strangled and stuffed in the hollow oak.
Boy, I was bad.
Thinking about my badness made me sleepy. Dreamed of Apple, who loved me. I woke up and it was almost dark. John Amos was grinning down at me, smirking too. “Hello, Bart. Do you feel lonely in Apple’s stall?”
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 105