I got up to go to him. “Will you dance with me, Bart?”
“No!” he snapped, hurrying to a distant window where he could stand and stare again.
Cindy had a wonderful time with the musicians and the men and women who’d come to serve Bart’s guests. However, I was deeply downcast, feeling sorry for Bart, who had counted so much on this. Out of sympathy for him, all of us but Cindy and the hired help moved into the front parlor, and there we sat in our fabulous expensive clothes and waited for guests who obviously had accepted, only to trick Bart later on—and in this way tell us what they thought of the Fox-worths on the hill.
The grandfather clock began to toll the hour of twelve. Bart left the windows and fell upon the sofa before the guttering log fire. “I should have known it would turn out this way.” He glanced bitterly at Jory. “Perhaps they came to my birthday party only to see you dance, and now, when you can’t—to hell with me! They’ve snubbed me—and they’re going to pay for it,” he said in a hard, cold voice, louder and stronger than Joel’s but with the same kind of zealot’s fury. “Before I’m through, there won’t be a house in a twenty-mile radius that doesn’t belong to me. I’ll ruin them. All of them. With the power of the Foxworth trust behind me I can borrow millions, and then I’ll buy out the banks and demand they pay off their mortgages. I’ll buy out the village stores, close them down. I’ll hire other attorneys, fire the ones I have now and see that they’re disbarred. I’ll find new stockbrokers, hire new real estate agents, see that real estate property values are undermined, and when they sell cheap, I’ll buy. By the time I’m through, there won’t be one old aristocratic Virginia family left this side of Charlottesville! And not one of my business colleagues will be left with anything but debts to pay off!”
“Then will you feel satisfied?” asked Chris.
“NO!” flared Bart, his eyes hard, glaring. “I won’t be satisfied until justice has ruled! I have done nothing to deserve this night! Nothing but try to give them what our ancestors did—and they have rejected me! They’ll pay, and pay, and then pay some more.”
He sounded like me! To hear my very own words coming from the mouth of the child I’d carried when I’d said them made all my blood drain into my feet. Shivering, I tried to appear normal. “I’m sorry, Bart. But it wasn’t a total loss, was it? We’re all together under one roof, a united family for once. And Cindy’s music and singing made this a festive occasion after all.”
He wasn’t listening.
He was staring at all the food that had yet to be eaten. All the champagne with the bubbles gone flat. All the wine and liquor that could have loosened many a tongue and given him information he wanted to use. He glared at the maids in their pretty black and white uniforms, drunken and staggering around, some still dancing as the music played on and on. He glowered at the few waiters who still held trays of drinks gone warm. Some stood and looked at him and waited for his signal to say the night was over. The impressive centerpiece of an ice crystal manger, with the three shepherds, the wise men and all the animals, had melted into a puddle and spilled over to darken the red cloth.
“How lucky you were when you danced in The Nutcracker, Jory,” said Bart as he headed fast for the stairs. “You were the ugly nutcracker that turned into the handsome prince. You dominated every male role—and won the prettiest ballerina every time. In Cinderella, in Romeo and Juliet. In The Sleeping Beauty , Giselle, Swan Lake—every time but the last time. And it’s the last time that counts, isn’t it?”
How cruel! How very cruel! I watched Jory wince, and for once he allowed his pain to show, making my heart ache for him.
“Merry Christmas,” Bart called as he disappeared up the stairs. “We’ll never again celebrate this holiday, or any other in this house as long as I run it. Joel was right. He warned me not to try and conform and be like others. He said I shouldn’t try to make people like or respect me. From now on, I’ll be like Malcolm. I’ll gain respect by inflicting my will on others, with fists of iron, and with ruthless determination. All who have alienated me tonight will feel my might.”
I turned to Chris when he was out of sight. “He sounds crazy!”
“No, darling, he’s not crazy—he’s just Bart, young and vulnerable again and very, very hurt. He used to break his bones when he was a child to punish himself because he failed socially and in school. Now he’s going to break the lives of others. Isn’t it a pity, Cathy, that nothing works out for him?”
I stood at the newel post looking upward to where an old man hid in the shadows, seeming to shake from his silent laughter.
“Chris, you go on up, and I’ll follow in a few seconds.” Chris wanted to know what I was planning, so I lied and said I was going to have a few words with our housekeeper about cleaning up the mess. But I had something far different in mind.
As soon as everyone was out of sight, I ducked into Bart’s huge office, closed the door and was soon rifling through his desk to find the R.S.V.P. cards that had dutifully arrived weeks ago.
They must have been fingered many a time from the ink smudges on the envelopes. Two hundred and fifty cards had accepted. My teeth bit down on my lower lip. Not one rejection, not even one. People didn’t do things like this, even to someone they disliked. If they hadn’t wanted to come, they would have tossed the invitations into the trash along with the return card, or sent back the card declining.
Carefully I replaced the cards and then headed up the back stairs to Joel’s room.
Without even a preliminary knock I opened his door to find him sitting on the edge of his narrow bed, doubled over in what appeared to be a terrible stomach cramp, or that hateful silent laughter. He was in quiet convulsion, quivering, jerking, hugging himself with skinny arms.
Quietly I waited until his hysteria was over, and only then did he see the long shadow I cast. Gasping, his mouth sunken because his teeth were in a cup by the bed, he stared up at me. “Why are you here, niece?” he asked in that whiny but raspy voice, his thin hair rumpled into devil horns that stood straight up.
“Downstairs, a while ago, I looked up and saw you in the rotunda shadows, laughing. Why were you laughing, Joel? You must have seen that Bart was suffering.”
“I don’t know,” he mumbled, half turning to replace the teeth in his mouth. When he had them in, he ran a hand over his spikey hair, smoothing it down. Only his cowlick refused to behave. Now he could meet my eyes. “Your daughter made so much racket down there I couldn’t sleep. I guess the sight of all of you in your fancy clothes waiting for guests that didn’t come tickled my sense of humor.”
“You have a very cruel sense of humor, Joel. I thought you cared for Bart.”
“I do love that boy.”
“Do you?” I asked sharply. “I don’t think so, or else you would have sympathized.” I glanced around his sparsely furnished room, thinking back. “Weren’t you the one who mailed off the party invitations?”
“I don’t remember,” he said calmly. “Time doesn’t mean much to an old man like me when it’s growing so short. What happened years ago seems clearer than what happened a month ago.”
“My memory is much better than yours, Joel.”
I sat down in the one chair he had in his room. “Bart had an important appointment, and, as I recall, he turned over that stack of invitations to you. Did you mail them, Joel?”
“Of course I mailed them!” he snapped angrily.
“But you just said you couldn’t remember.”
“I remember that day. It took so long, dropping them in the slot one by one.”
All the time I’d closely watched his eyes. “You’re lying, Joel,” I said, taking a wild shot in the dark. “You didn’t mail those invitations. You brought them up here, and in the privacy of this room, you opened each one, filled in the blank places for “Yes, we will be happy to attend,” and then mailed those in the provided envelope back to Bart. You see, I found them in Bart’s office. I never saw such a strange assortment of crooked ha
ndwriting, all in various shades of blue, violet, green, black, and brown ink. Joel, you changed pens to make it seem those cards were signed by different guests, when it was you who signed them all!”
Slowly Joel stood. He gathered about him the handwoven invisible brown habit of a saintly monk, thrusting his gnarled hands up those imaginary sleeves. “I think you have lost your mind, woman,” he said coldly. “If you wish, go to your son and tell him your barbaric suspicions, and see if he believes you.”
Jumping up, I headed for the door. “I intend to do just that!” I slammed the door hard behind me and hurried off.
In his study Bart was seated behind his desk, now wearing pajamas covered by a black woolen robe piped in red. Drunkenly he was tossing the R.S.V.P. cards one by one into the roaring fire. I saw to my dismay the last of the pile go up in flames as I watched Bart pour another drink.
“What do you want?” he asked in a slurred way, narrowing his eyes and seeming surprised to see me.
“Bart, I’ve got to say this, and you have to listen. I don’t think Joel mailed your invitations, and that is why your guests didn’t show up.”
He tried to focus his eyes and his intellect, which must have reeled under the influences of all he’d drunk. “Of course he did. Joel always does as I order.” He leaned back in his swivel chair with its back that lowered automatically from the pressure he applied and closed his eyes. “Tired now. Go away. Don’t stand and stare at me with eyes of pity. And they did accept . . . didn’t I just burn their replies?”
“Bart, listen to me. Don’t fall asleep before I finish. Didn’t you notice now strangely they were signed? All the different colored ink? The crooked, awkward handwriting? Joel did not mail your invitations, but instead took them to his room, opened them, extracted the R.S.V.P. cards and envelopes, and since you had put stamps on all of them, all he had to do was drive to the post office and mail them back to you a few each day.”
His closed eyes slotted. “Mother, I think you should go to bed. My great-uncle is the best friend I’ve ever had. He’d never do anything to hurt me.”
“Bart, please. Don’t put too much faith in Joel.”
“GET OUT!” he roared. “It’s your fault they didn’t come! Yours and that man you sleep with!”
I stumbled as I turned away, feeling defeated and so afraid this could very well be true—and Joel was just what Bart and Chris believed him to be, a harmless old man who wanted to live out his days in this house, near the one person who respected and loved him.
Unto Us Is Born . . .
Christmas Day was over. I was in bed curled up beside Chris, who could always fall easily into deep sleep, leaving me to fret and stew and flip and turn. Behind me the great one-eyed swan kept its ruby eye alert, causing me to look around often at what it could be seeing. I heard the deep, mellow tones of the grandfather clock at the end of our hall strike three o’clock. A few minutes ago I’d gotten up to watch Bart’s red car speed down the drive, heading toward the local tavern where no doubt he’d drown his sorrows in additional liquor and end up in some whore’s bed. More than once he’d come home reeking of liquor and cheap perfume.
Hour after hour passed as I waited for Bart to come home. I pictured all sorts of calamities. On a night like this the drunks were out, deadlier than arsenic.
Why lie here doing nothing? I slipped out of the bed, arranged the covers neatly over Chris’s sleeping bulk, kissed his cheek, then arranged his heavy arms around a pillow that I presumed he’d think was me, and he did from the way he snuggled it close. It was my intention to wait for Bart in his room.
It was almost five on a cold, blustery, winter morning before I heard his car approaching. I was huddled in a deep pile robe of red-rose, curled up on one of his white sofas with his black and red pillows behind my back.
I dozed, then heard him climbing the stairs, heard him moving drunkenly from room to room, bumping into furniture as he had when he was a child. He was dedicated to checking each room to see if it had been neatly tidied before the servants retired. And to my dismay, from the length of time it was taking him to appear in his own rooms, he was doing that now. No newspapers could be left in sight. No magazines not neatly stacked in their respective piles. No articles of clothing left on the floor, or coats on doorknobs or draped on chair backs.
Minutes later Bart was in his room, flicking the switch to light the lamps. He swayed to and fro before he stared at me sitting in the dimness of his room, where I’d started a fire that crackled cheerfully in the darkness. Shadows danced on the white walls, turning them orange and rosy, the black leather of another wall catching red highlights, creating a kind of fake inferno.
“Mother, what the hell is going on? Didn’t I tell you to stay out of my wing?” Yet, in his drunken state, he looked glad to see me.
He wove his way uncertainly to a chair, took careful aim and fell down, closing his darkly shadowed eyes. I got up to massage the back of his neck while he drooped his head forward and held it as if it pained him dreadfully. His hands cupped his face as my hands took away the pain. Then he sighed, leaned back, and stared fuzzily up into my eyes.” I should know better than to drink,” he murmured in a slurred way, sighing as I stepped back and sat before him. “It always makes me do crazy things, and then I feel sick. Stupid to keep it up when liquor has never done anything for me but add to my problems. Mother, what’s wrong with me? I can’t even drink myself into a forgetful stupor. I’m always too sensitive. I overheard Jory tell you one day he was building that wonderful clipper ship to give to me, and I was secretly thrilled. No one has ever spent months and months making me a gift—and then it’s broken. He did such a great job, taking so many pains to see that everything was exactly right. Now all that work is in the trash pile.”
He sounded childlike, vulnerable, easy to reach and I was going to try, try to give him every ounce of love I had. Not mean when he was drunk, not silly but loveable, touching in his humanity. “Darling, Jory will gladly make you another,” I volunteered, not sure he would be glad to do all that tedious work a second time.
“No, Mother, I don’t want it now. Something would happen to that one, too. That’s the way my life goes. Life has a cruel way of taking from me what I want most. There’s no happiness or love waiting for me around the bend of tomorrow. No gaining what I want—my heart’s desire, as I used to call the impossible dreams of my youth. Wasn’t that childish and silly? No wonder you pitied me—I wanted so much. Too much. I was never satisfied. You and that man you love gave me everything I ever said I wanted, and many things I didn’t even mention, and still you never gave me happiness. So I’ve decided not to care about anything anymore. The Christmas ball wouldn’t have given me pleasure even if the guests had showed up. I still would have failed to impress them. Inside, all along, I knew my party would prove just another failure, like all the other parties you used to give me. Still I went ahead and hypnotized myself into believing that if tonight was successful it would set a precedent, so to speak, and all my life would then change for the better.”
My second son was talking to me as he’d never done before. Liquor was loosening his tongue.
“Stupid, aren’t I?” he went on. “Cindy’s right when she calls me a jerk and a creep. I look in my mirrors and see a handsome man, very much like my father, whom you say you loved more than any other man. But I don’t feel I am handsome inside. I’m uglier than sin inside. Then I wake up, feel the fresh morning mountain air, see the dew sparkling on the roses, see the winter sun shining on the snow, and that tells me maybe life is going to offer me my chance after all. I have hopes of one day finding the real me—the one I can like, and that’s why, months ago, I decided to make this the happiest Christmas of all our lives, not only for Jory, who deserves it, but for you and for myself. You think I don’t love Jory, but I do.”
He bowed his head into his waiting hands and sighed heavily. “Confession time, Mother. I hate Jory too, I don’t deny that. But I hold no love at all
for Cindy. She’s done nothing but steal from me—and she isn’t even one of us. Jory’s always had the largest portion of your love, the part you’ve got left over after giving your brother the best. I’ve never had the major portion of anyone’s love. I thought that Melodie had given me that. Now I know she’d have taken any man just to replace Jory. Any man at all who was available and willing, and that’s why I hate her now, just as much as I hate Cindy.”
His hands came down to show how bitterly his dark eyes glowed; the reflection from the fire made them like red-hot coals. Those drinks had made his breath reek. My heart almost stopped beating. What would he want? I stood up, moved behind his chair and slid my arms around his neck before my head lowered to rest on top of his disheveled hair. “Bart, you drove away tonight and left me sleepless and waiting for you to come home. Tell me what can I do to help. Nobody here hates you like you think. Not even Cindy. Often you make us angry because you disappoint us, not because we want to reject you.”
“Send Chris away,” he said tonelessly as if he said this without hope of ever seeing Chris gone from my life. “That will tell me you love me. Only when you break with him can I feel good about myself, and you.”
Pain stabbed me. “He’d die without me, Bart,” I whispered. “I know you can’t understand the way it is between us, and I myself can’t explain why he needs me, and why I need him, except we were young and alone and in a terrifying situation, and we had only each other. We created a fantasy dreamlike world when we were locked away and trapped ourselves in so doing, and now that we’re both middle-aged we still live in that fantasy. We can’t survive without it. To lose him now would destroy not only him, but me as well.”
“But Mother!” he cried out passionately, turning to hold me, to press his face between my breasts, “you’d still have me!” He gazed up into my face, his arms around my waist. “I want you to purify your soul before it’s too late. What you do with Chris is against the rules of God and society. Let him go, Mother. Please let him go—before someone does something terrible, let go of your brother’s love.”
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 145