Laughing, he laid his head back on the pillow, already exhausted. He closed his eyes. “Okay, you’ve convinced me. I’ll give it a go—but I’ve not had much experience with any craft since I was a kid gluing airplane parts together.”
Oh, yes, I remembered clearly. They’d dangled down from his ceiling, infuriating Bart, who couldn’t glue anything together properly at that time.
“Mom . . . I’m tired. Give me a chance to nap before the lawyers come to read that will. I don’t know if I’m up to all the excitement of Bart’s ‘coming into his own’—at last.”
It was at this moment that Bart stepped into the room. Jory sensed him there and opened his eyes. The dark brown and dark blue brotherly eyes met, locked, challenging the other for a dreadfully long time. The silence grew and grew until I became aware of my own heart throbs; the clock behind me ticked too loud, and Melodie was breathing heavily. I heard the birds outside twittering before Melodie began to rearrange another vase of flowers just for something to do.
On and on they clashed eyes, wills, when Bart should speak and welcome home the brother he’d visited only once. Still he just stood there, as if he’d keep his eyes locked on Jory until Jory broke the spell and lost the silent battle of wills.
I had my lips parted to stop this contest when Jory smiled and said warmly, without lowering his eyes or breaking the bind, “Hi, brother. I know how much you hate hospitals, so it was doubly nice for you to visit me. Since I’m here, in your home . . . isn’t it easier to say hello? I’m glad my accident didn’t spoil your birthday party. I heard from Cindy that my fall only momentarily lulled the hilarity, and the party went on as if nothing had happened.”
Still Bart stood there saying nothing. Melodie put the last rose in the vase and lifted her head. A few tendrils of her fair hair had escaped the tight confinement of her ballerina bun to make her look charmingly casual and antiquely fragile. There was an air of weariness about her as if she’d surrendered to life and all its vicissitudes. Was I imagining that she sent some silent warning to Bart—and he understood? Suddenly he was smiling, even if it was stiff.
“I’m glad you’re back. Welcome home, Jory.” He strode forward to clasp his brother’s hand. “If there’s anything I can do, just let me know.” Then he left the room, and I was staring after him, wondering . . .
* * *
At four exactly, that very afternoon, shortly after Jory woke up and Chris and Bart lifted him onto a stretcher, three attorneys came to take over Bart’s grand home office. We sat in fine milk-chocolate-colored leather chairs, all but Jory, who lay on a rolling stretcher very still and quiet. His tired eyes were half opened, showing his interest was small. Cindy had flown home to be here, as was required, for she, too, was mentioned in the will. She perched on the arm of my chair, swinging her shapely leg back and forth, treating all of this as a joke while Joel glared to see that blue high-heeled shoe moving constantly and calling attention to those remarkably lovely legs. We all sat as if at a funeral, as papers were shuffled, spectacles were put on and whisperings between the lawyers made us all uneasy.
Bart was particularly nervous, exalted-looking, but suspicious of the way the attorneys kept glancing at him. The eldest of the three acted as spokesman as word by careful word the main portion of my mother’s will was read once again. We’d heard it all before.
“. . . when my grandson, Bartholomew Winslow Scott Sheffield, who will eventually claim his rightful surname of Foxworth, reaches the age of twenty-five,” read the man in his late sixties with the glasses perched low on his nose, “he will be given the annual sum of five hundred thousand dollars, until he reaches the age of thirty-five. At this stated age, the remainder of my estate, hereafter called The Corrine Foxworth Winslow Trust, will be turned over in entirety to my grandson, Bartholomew Winslow Scott Sheffield Foxworth. My firstborn son, Christopher Garland Sheffield Foxworth, will remain in his position as trustee until the aforesaid time. If he, the trustee, should not survive until the time when my grandson Bartholomew Winslow Scott Sheffield Foxworth reaches the age of thirty-five, then my daughter, Catherine Sheffield Foxworth, shall be named as replacement trustee until my aforesaid grandson reaches his thirty-fifth birthday.”
There was more, much more, but I didn’t hear anything else. I filled with shock and glanced at Chris, who seemed dumbfounded. Then my eyes rested on Bart.
His face was pale, registering a kaleidoscope of changing expressions. His color waxed and waned. He raked his long, strong fingers through his perfect hairstyle and left it rumpled. Helplessly he looked at Joel as if for guidance, but Joel only shrugged and crooked his lips as if to say, “I told you so.”
Next Bart was glaring at Cindy as if her presence had magically changed his grandmother’s will. His eyes flitted to Jory, who was lying sleepily on the stretcher, appearing disinterested in everything going on but Melodie, who stared at Bart with her pale, woebegone face flickering like a weak candle flame in the strong wind of Bart’s disappointment.
Quickly Bart jerked his sizzling gaze away when her head lowered to Jory’s chest. Almost silently she was crying.
An eternity seemed to pass before that elderly lawyer folded the long will, replaced it in a blue folder, then put that on Bart’s desk. He stood with folded arms to wait for Bart’s questions.
“What the hell is going on?” shouted Bart.
He jumped to his feet, stalked to his desk, and seized up the will, which he thumbed through quickly with the eye of an expert. Finished, he hurled down the will. “Damn her to hell! She promised me everything, everything! Now I have to wait ten more years . . . why wasn’t that part read before? I was there. I was ten years old, but I remember her will stating I’d come into my own when I was twenty-five. I’m twenty-five and one month old—where is my reward?”
Chris stood. “Bart,” he said calmly, “you have five hundred thousand dollars a year—that kind of money isn’t to be shrugged off. And didn’t you hear that all your living expenses, and the cost of running this house and maintaining it, will be taken care of by the bulk of monies still in trust? All your taxes will be prepaid. And five hundred thousand a year for ten years is more money than ninety-nine point nine percent of the world will ever know in an entire lifetime. How much can you spend on supporting your own lifestyle after all other expenses are taken care of? Besides, those ten years will fly by, and then everything will be yours to do with as you want.”
“How much more is there in toto?” Bart fired, his dark eyes rapacious and so intense they seemed to burn. His face was magenta-colored from his rage.
“Five million paid to me over a period of ten years, but what will be left? Ten million more? Twenty, fifty, a billion—how much?”
“I really don’t know,” replied Chris coolly as the lawyers stared at Bart. “But I’d say, with honesty, that day when you finally do come into your own, all of it, you will be, beyond a doubt, one of the richest men in the world.”
“But until then—you are!” screamed Bart. “YOU! Of all people, you! The very one who’s sinned the most! It isn’t fair, not fair at all! I’ve been misled, tricked!” His eyes glared at all of us first as he slammed out of his office, only to stick his head in a second later.
“You’ll be sorry, Chris,” he blazed fiercely. “You must have talked her into having that codicil added—and instructed the attorneys not to read it aloud the day I heard it first, when I was ten. It’s your fault I haven’t come into everything due me!”
As always it had been Chris’s fault—or mine.
Brotherly Love
Most of the miserably hot month of August had come and gone while Jory stayed in the hospital, and September arrived with its cooler nights, only too soon starting the colorful process of autumn. Chris and I raked leaves after the gardeners had come and gone, thinking they carelessly overlooked so many. The leaves never stopped falling, and it was something we both liked to do.
We heaped them in deep ravines, dropped down a matc
h and crouched close together on the grass to watch the fire blaze high and warm enough to heat our cold hands and faces. The fire down below was so safe we could enjoy just watching and turning often to gaze at one another and the way the glow lit up our eyes and turned our skins a lovely shade of scarlet. Chris had a lover’s way of looking at me, of reaching to caress my cheek with the back of his hand, brushing my hair with his fingertips, kissing my neck, and in all ways touching me deeply with his abiding love. In the firelight of those leaves burning at night, we found each other in new ways, in mature ways that were even better than what we’d had before, and that had always been overwhelmingly sweet.
And behind us, staying forever locked within her room in that horrible house, Melodie’s baby swelled her out more and more.
The month of October came to us in a stunning blaze of colors that stole my breath away, filling me with awe as only the works of nature could. These were the same trees whose tops we’d only glimpsed in our hideaway attic schoolroom. I could almost see the four of us staring out when I glanced up at the attic dormer windows, the twins only five, pining away to large-eyed gnomes, all our small, pale faces pasted wistfully to the smudgy glass, staring out, yearning to be free to do what now I took as only natural and our due.
Ghosts up there, our ghosts up there.
Color all our days gray, was the way I’d used to think. Color all Jory’s day gray now, for he wouldn’t let himself see the beauty of autumn in the mountains when he couldn’t stroll the woodsy paths, or dance over the browning grass, or lean to sniff the fall flowers, or jog alongside Melodie.
The tennis courts stayed empty as Bart abandoned them for lack of a partner. Chris would have loved a Saturday or Sunday tennis game with Bart, but Bart still ignored Chris.
The large swimming pool that had been Cindy’s special delight was drained, cleaned, covered over. The screens came down, the glass was cleaned before the storm windows went up. The cords of wood stacked out of sight behind the garage grew by the dozens, and trucks delivered coal to use when or if our oil furnaces failed, or our electricity went off. We had an auxiliary unit to light our rooms and keep our electric appliances working, and yet somehow I feared this winter as I’d never feared any winter but those in the attic.
Freezing cold it had been in the attic, like the Arctic zone. Now we were going to have the chance to experience what it had been like downstairs, while Momma enjoyed life with her parents and friends, and the lover she found, while four unwanted children froze and starved and suffered upstairs.
Sunday mornings were the best. Chris and I gloried in our time together. We ate breakfast in Jory’s room so he wouldn’t feel so separate from his family, and only a few times could I persuade Bart and Melodie to join us.
“Go on,” urged Jory, when he saw me glance often at the window, “go walking. Don’t think I’m going to begrudge you and Dad your legs because mine don’t work anymore. I’m not a baby, or that selfish.”
We had to go or he’d think he was inhibiting our style of living. And so we went, hoping Melodie would join him.
One day we woke up so early the frost was still thick upon the ground and pumpkins were ripening under the stacked corn stalks where farmers eked out a poor living. The frost looked sweet, liked powdered sugar that would soon melt when the sun came out fully.
On our walk we stopped to stare up at the sky as Canadian geese flew south, telling us that winter would come earlier than usual this year. We heard the distant melancholy honking of those untiring birds fade as they disappeared in the morning clouds. Flying toward South Carolina—where once we had fled just before winter’s sharp bite.
In mid-October the orthopedist came to use huge electric shears to split Jory’s cast halfway through; then he used handheld shears to gently cut through what remained. Jory said he felt now like a turtle without its shell. His strong body had wasted inside that cast. “A few weeks of exercising your arms and shoulder muscles will see your chest as developed as ever,” encouraged Chris. “You’re going to need strong arms, so keep on using that trapeze, and we’ll have parallel bars put in your sitting room so you can eventually pull yourself up into a standing position. Don’t think life is over for you, that all challenges are behind you and nothing matters now, for you have miles and miles to go before you’re done with life, don’t you ever forget that.”
“Yeah,” murmured Jory bleakly, staring empty-eyed toward the door, which Melodie seldom passed through. “Miles and miles to travel before I can find another body that works like it should. I guess I’ll start believing in reincarnation.”
* * *
The quickly chilling days turned bitterly cold, with autumn nights that took us quickly toward freezing. The migrating birds stopped flying overhead now that the wind was whistling through the treetops, howling around the house, stealing inside our rooms. The moon was again a raiding Viking longboat sailing high, flooding our bed with moonlight, giving us kindling for a new kind of romance. Clean, cool, bright love that lit up our spirits, and told us we weren’t really sinners of the worst kind. Not when our love could last as it had, while other marriages broke up after a few months or years. We couldn’t be sinning and feel as we did toward one another. Who were we hurting? No one, not really. Bart was hurting himself, we reasoned.
Still, why was I haunted by nightmares that said differently? I’d become an expert at turning off disturbing thoughts by thinking of all the trivial details in my life. There was nothing as diverting as the startling beauty of nature. I wanted nature to heal my wounds, and Jory’s—and perhaps even Bart’s.
With a keen eye I studied all the signs as a farmer might and reported them back to Jory. The rabbits grew suddenly fatter. The squirrels seemed to be storing more nuts. Woolly caterpillars looked like tiny train cars of fur inching toward safety—wherever that was.
Soon I was pulling out winter coats that I’d intended to give to charities; heavy sweaters and wool skirts I’d never expected to wear in Hawaii. In September Cindy had flown back to her high school in South Carolina. This was her last year in a very expensive private school that she “absolutely adored.” Her letters poured in like unseasonable warm rain, wanting more money for this or that.
On and on flowed Cindy’s sprawling girlish script, needing everything, despite all the gifts I was constantly bombarding her with. She had dozens of boyfriends, a new one each time she wrote. She needed casual clothes for the boy who liked to hunt and fish. She needed dressy clothes for the boy who liked operas and concerts. She needed jeans and warm tops for herself, and luxury underwear and nightclothes, for she just couldn’t sleep in anything inexpensive.
Her letters emphasized all that I’d missed when I was sixteen. I remembered Clairmont and my days in Dr. Paul’s house, with Henny in the kitchen teaching me how to cook by example, not with words. I’d bought a cookbook on how to win your man and hold him by cooking all the right dishes. What a child I’d been. I sighed. Perhaps I’d had it just as good as Cindy, after all—in a different way—after we escaped Foxworth Hall. I sniffed Cindy’s pink, perfumed stationery before I put down her letter, then turned my attention to the present and all the problems in this Foxworth Hall, without the paper flowers in the attic.
Day after day of closely observing Bart when he was with Melodie was convincing me that they saw a great deal of one another, while Jory saw very little of his wife. I tried to believe that Melodie was trying to console Bart for not inheriting as much as he’d believed . . . but despite myself, I presumed there was more to it than pity.
Like a faithful puppy with only one friend, Joel followed Bart everywhere, except into his office or bedroom. He prayed in that tiny room before breakfast, lunch and dinner. He prayed before he went to bed, and prayed as he walked about, muttering to himself the appropriate quotes from the Bible to suit whatever occasion provoked him into pious mumbles.
In his own way, Chris was in Heaven, enjoying the best years of his life, or so he said. “I love
my new job. The men I work with are bright, humorous, and have unending tales to tell and take away the monotony of doing a lot of drudgery. We go into the lab each day, don our white coats, check our petri dishes, expecting miracles, and grin and bear it when miracles just don’t happen.”
Bart was neither friend nor foe to Jory, just someone who stuck his head in the door and said a few words before he hurried on to something he considered more important than wasting time with a crippled brother. I often wondered what he did with his time besides study the financial markets and buy and sell stocks and bonds. I suspected he was risking much of his five hundred thousand in order to prove to all of us he was smarter than Chris and craftier than the foxiest of all Foxworths, Malcolm.
Soon after Chris drove off on a Tuesday morning in late October, I hurried back up the stairs to check on Jory and see that he was properly taken care of. Chris had hired a male nurse to tend to Jory, but he was only here every other day.
Jory seldom complained about being housebound, although his head was often turned toward the windows to stare out at the brilliance of autumn.
“The summer’s gone,” he said flatly, lifelessly, as the wind tossed colorful leaves playfully about, “and it’s taken my legs with it.”
“Autumn will bring you reasons for being happy, Jory. Winter will make you a father. Life still has many happy surprises in store for you, whether or not you want to believe that. I believe like Chris, that the best is still to come. Now . . . let’s see what we can do to give you substitute legs. Now that you’re strong enough to sit up, there’s no reason why you can’t move into that wheelchair your father brought home. Jory, please. I hate seeing you in bed all the time. Try the chair, maybe it won’t be as obnoxious as you think.”
Stubbornly he shook his head.
I ignored that and went on with my persuasions. “Easily we can take you outside. We can stroll through the woods as soon as Bart has workmen clear the paths that might hinder your progress, and right now you could sit on a terrace in the sunshine and gain back some of your color. Soon it will be too cold to go outside. And when the time comes, I can push you through the gardens and the woods.”
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 135