I drew away, brushed back a fallen wisp of my hair. Feeling defeated and hopeless, for it was so impossible, what he asked. “Would you hurt me, Bart?”
He bit down on his lip, a childish habit that came back when he was disturbed. “I don’t know. Sometimes I want to. More than I want to hurt him. You smile at me with such sweetness, and my heart reaches out, wanting you never to change. Then I go to bed and hear whispers in my head that tell me you are evil and deserve to die. When I think of you dead and in the ground, tears fill my eyes and my heart feels empty and broken, heavier than lead—and I’m undone. I feel so cold, so alone and scared. Mother, am I crazy? Why is it I can’t fall in love with confidence that it will last? Why can’t I forget about what you do?
“I thought for a while that Melodie and I had it made. She seemed to me so perfect, and then she began to turn fat and ugly. She whined and nagged, and complained about my home. Even Cindy was more appreciative. I took her to the best restaurants, to plays and movies, and tried to take her mind off Jory, but she wouldn’t let it go. She kept talking of the ballet and how much it means to her, and that’s when I found out I was only a substitute for Jory and she never loved me, never loved me at all. She used me as a way to forget her loss for a while. Now she doesn’t even look like the girl I fell in love with. She wants pity and sympathy, not love. She took my love and turned it around, so now I can’t stand to look at her.”
Sighing, he lowered his eyes and said in such a low voice I could hardly hear him, “I see that kid, Cindy, and realize she must look the way you used to, and a little bit of me knows why Chris fell in love with you. That makes me hate her worse. She teases me, you know. Cindy would like to creep under my skin and make me do something as wicked as what Chris does with you. She strolls around in her bedroom wearing nothing but bikini bra and bottoms. And she knows I check her rooms before I retire. Tonight she had on a nightgown so transparent I could see right through it. She just stood there and let me stare. Joel tells me she’s nothing but a whore.”
“Then don’t go to her bedroom,” I said with control. “Lord knows we don’t have to see anyone who lives here if we don’t want to—and Joel is a bigoted, narrow-minded fool. All Cindy’s generation wears next-to-nothing undergarments. But you’re right, she shouldn’t parade around in them. I’ll speak to her about that in the morning. You’re sure she displayed herself deliberately?”
“You must have done the same thing,” he said, dully accusing. “All those years locked up with Chris—did you show him your body—deliberately?”
How could I tell him how it had been and make him understand? He’d never understand. “We all tried to be decent, Bart. It’s so long ago and I don’t like to remember. I try to forget. I want to think that Chris is my husband and not my brother. We can’t have children, never could. Doesn’t that make it better—a little better?”
Shaking his head, his eyes darkened. “Go away. You just give me excuses, and you bring it all back, the sickness I used to feel when I found out about you and him. I was just a kid wanting to feel clean and wholesome. I still want to feel that way. That’s why I keep showering, shaving, picking up, ordering the servants to scrub, vacuum, dust and dust, and do it every day. I’m trying to eliminate the dirt you and Chris put in my life—and I can’t do it!”
* * *
There was no comfort in Chris’s arms as I tried to sleep. I drifted into an uneasy dream. Then I bolted awake to hear distant screams. Leaving my bed for the second time in the same night, I raced toward the screams.
Disoriented, I stared down at Melodie on the floor of the long corridor. She seemed to be wearing a white nightgown with ragged red stripes. She crawled along, moaning, causing me to think I was still dreaming. Her long hair was in damp disarray, her brow dripped sweat—and behind her was a trail of blood!
Blindly she stared up at me, imploring. “Cathy, my baby is coming . . .” She screamed, then slowly, slowly, her pleading eyes went blank before she keeled over in a dead faint.
I ran for Chris, shaking him awake. “It’s Melodie!” I cried as he sat up and rubbed at his tired eyes. “She’s in labor. Right now she’s fainted, lying facedown in the hall with a trail of blood behind her . . .”
“Take it easy,” he soothed, leaping out of bed and pulling on his bathrobe. “First babies are notoriously slow in arriving.” Nevertheless there was a look of anxiety in his eyes, as if he were mentally calculating just how long Melodie had been in labor. “I’ve got everything I’ll need in my bag,” he said as he rushed about gathering up blankets, clean sheets, towels. He still had the same black doctor’s bag they’d given him when he graduated from medical school, as if that bag were sacred to him. “No time to get her to the hospital if she’s hemorrhaging like you say. Now all you have to do is rush down to the kitchen and put on all that hot water all doctors in the movies seem to need.”
I yelled impatiently, thinking he just wanted me out of his way. “We’re not in the movies, Chris!”
We were in the hall now, and he was bending over Melodie. “I know that—it would help if you did something except run beside me and act hysterical. Now move aside, Catherine,” he barked as he leaned to pick Melodie up. In his arms she seemed to weigh no more than a feather, while her middle seemed a mountain high.
In her room he stuffed pillows under her hips, asked for more white towels, sheets, newspapers, even as he glared at me. “Move, Catherine, move! From the position of the baby, its head is down and is already well on its way. RUN! I do have to sterilize a few instruments. Damn her for not speaking up and telling me she’d started her contractions early. While we were opening our gifts, she just sat there and said nothing. What the hell is wrong with everybody in this house? All she had to do was speak up and say something!”
Even before he finished muttering all this, as if to himself more than to me, I fled down the long dim halls, dashed recklessly down the back stairs closest to the kitchen. I drew hot water from the tap, put the kettle on to boil. Anxiously I waited, thinking Melodie enjoyed pity and wanted to punish us, and perhaps even wanted her baby to die so she could go back to New York unencumbered by a crippled husband and a fatherless child.
A watched pot takes so long to boil. A thousand thoughts went through my mind, ugly thoughts as I peered into the water to see the slightest roll. What was Chris doing? Should I waken Jory and tell him what was going on? Why had Melodie done this? Was she in some ways like Bart—inflicting punishment on herself for her sins? Finally, after what seemed an hour, the water began to bubble, then roll furiously. With steam pouring from the spout, I sprinted up the stairs and down more endless halls until I came to Melodie’s bedroom.
Chris had arranged Melodie so she was sitting up, backed with many pillows. Her knees were shoved upward and held spread wide apart by pillows he used to support them. She was naked from the waist down, and I could see blood still trickling from her body. Feeling peculiar to see something like this, I fixed my eyes on the pads of towels and sheets he’d spread over newspapers to catch the blood. “I can’t stop the bleeding,” he said in a worried way. “Scares me to think the baby might swallow some.” He threw me a glance. “Cathy, put on that extra pair of rubber gloves and use the calipers you see in my bag to dip each instrument I’ve laid out into that boiling water. I expect you to hand me what I need when I ask for it.”
I nodded, terribly afraid I wouldn’t remember the instrument names, when it had been so long ago, before he’d even graduated from medical school.
“Wake up, Melodie,” he said over and over. “I need your help.” Lightly he slapped her face. “Cathy, wet a washcloth in cold water. Wipe her face with that to bring her around so she can bear down and help push the baby out.”
The cold cloth on her head brought Melodie back to reality filled with pain. Right away she began to scream, to try and shove Chris away, to pull the covers over herself. “Don’t fight me,” said Chris in a fatherly way. “Your baby is almost here, Me
lodie, but you have to bear down and take deep breaths, and I can’t see what I’m doing if you cover yourself.”
Still screaming in a jerky, spasmodic way, she tried to obey Chris’s orders as the sweat streamed off her face and wet her hair and chest. Her gown, which was shoved up to her waist, was soon sopping. “Help her, Cathy,” ordered Chris, fiddling with what I thought were forceps. I put my hands where he told me and bore down.
“Please, darling,” I whispered when she stopped yelling long enough to hear me, “you have to help. Right now your baby is struggling to survive and get out.”
Her wild eyes fraught with pain and fear struggled to focus on reality. “I’m dying!” she yelled before she squinched her eyes shut, pulled in a deep breath and then, with my hands assisting the shove, bore down with more determination.
“You’re doing fine, Melodie,” encouraged Chris. “Now another hard shove and I should be able to see the top of your baby’s head.” Sweating, holding on to my hands and squinting her eyes even tighter, Melodie gave one last mighty effort.
“Fine . . . you’re doing fine! I can see the top of the baby’s head,” said Chris in a happier tone, throwing me a look of pride. At that moment Melodie’s head fell to the side and her eyes closed.
She’d fainted again. “It’s all right,” said Chris, glancing at her face. “She’s done a good job, and I can do my part now. She’s through the worst part and can rest. I was thinking I’d have to use forceps, but it won’t be necessary.”
With confident, kind hands, he carefully slid his hand inside the birth canal and somehow drew out a very small baby and handed it to me. I held the tiny, slimy, red baby and stared down in awe at Jory’s son. Oh, how perfect this miniature little boy who flailed the air with his tiny fists and kicked with incredibly small feet, and screwed his apple-sized face into a knot as he prepared to let go with a howl as Chris tied off and severed the umbilical cord. Thrills that felt cold made my spine shiver. Out of the joining of my son with his wife came this perfect little grandson who had already seized my heart even before he cried. With tears in my eyes, my heart beating joyously for Jory, who would be so happy, I glanced up to see Chris working over Melodie and drawing from her what must be the afterbirth.
Again, I stared down at the crying, doll-sized, slimy infant that seemed to weigh less than four pounds. A child born from the passion and beauty of the ballet world . . . born on the music that must have played when he was conceived. I hugged the child to my heart, thinking this was God’s finest miracle, more beautiful than a tree, more lasting than a rose, a human born in His likeness. Tears flowed down my cheeks, for, like God’s son, this child was born almost on Christmas day. My grandson! “Chris, he’s so little. Will he live?”
“Absolutely,” he said in an absorbed, abstracted tone as he continued to work over Melodie, frowning with some perplexity. “How about using the mail scales and weighing him in. Then, if you would, give him a nice bath in tepid water. He’ll begin to feel much better. Use the solution I mixed and put in a blue bowl to wash out his eyes, and use the solution in the pink bowl to clean his mouth and ears. There should be diapers and receiving blankets around here somewhere. He needs to be kept very warm.”
“In her suitcase,” I called out as I hurried into the adjacent bath and held the little boy in the cradle of my arm and began filling a pink plastic basin. “For weeks she’s had baby things packed and ready.”
I was excited, feeling exalted, wishing now I’d gone to Jory and given him the chance to see his child born. I sighed then, thinking this would be his one and only child. The chances were very slim that he could father another. How lucky he was to be blessed with this little boy.
The baby I held was so frail, with just a fuzz of blond making the top of his small head softly hazy. Miniature hands and incredibly small feet flailed the chilly air. His rosebud mouth worked in sucking motions even as he tried to open eyes that seemed glued together. Despite all the slime of childbirth smeared on his red skin, my heart went out to him.
Beautiful little baby. Dear, sweet little boy to make my Jory happy. I wanted to see the color of his eyes, but he kept them tightly closed.
I was nervous, as if I’d never had a newborn of my own, and in a way, I hadn’t. This baby was so small, so delicate-looking. My two had been full term and had been cared for by experienced nurses immediately after their birth.
“Wrap him up tight,” reminded Chris from the other room. “But sure to run your finger around in his mouth to take out any blood clots or mucous you’ll find. Newborns can choke on what’s in their mouths.”
The baby’s cries were distraught over the loss of the warm, familiar fluid of the womb, but as soon as I gently eased him into the warm water, he stopped crying and seemed to fall asleep. This little babe was so new, so raw-looking that he seemed pitiful as I did what I had to. Even asleep his tiny, doll-like hands reached to find his mother and her breasts. His tiny penis stood straight up as I poured warm water over his genitals. Then, to my astonishment, I heard another baby cry!
Quickly wrapping my clean little grandson in a thick white towel, I hurried into the bedroom to see Chris staring down at a second child.
Chris looked up with the strangest expression. “A girl,” he said softly. “Blond hair, blue eyes. I talked to her obstetrician myself, and he didn’t mention anything about hearing two heartbeats. Sometimes that happens because one child is behind the other . . . but how odd that not once—” He broke off before he changed the subject and continued. “Twins are usually smaller than other babies, and their small size, plus the weight of the second bearing down, helps the first come quicker than a single birth—usually. Melodie was lucky this time . . .”
“Ohhh,” I breathed, taking the small girl into my free arm and gazing down at her. I knew immediately who they were. Carrie and Cory born all over again!
“Chris, how fantastically marvelous!” I laughed, then saddened as I thought of my beloved twin brother and sister, now dead for so long. Still I could see them behind my eyes, racing through the backyard garden in Gladstone; running through the pitiful attic garden of paper flora and fauna. “The same twins. Doppelgangers.”
Chris looked up, his rubber-gloved hands quite bloody. “No, Cathy,” he stated firmly, “not doppelgangers. These are not the same twins born again. Remember that. Carrie came first then; this time the boy was first. This is not an unlucky, doomed set of children. These two will have only the best. Now, would you please stop staring and get busy? She needs a bath, too. And diaper that boy before he sprays everything.”
Handling such slippery tiny babies wasn’t at all easy. Still, I managed, feeling overwhelmingly happy. Despite what Chris had said, I knew who these twins were—Cory and Carrie, reborn to live the kind of wonderful lives that were their due, the happy lives stolen from them by greed and selfishness.
“Don’t you worry,” I whispered as I kissed each small red cheek and then their sweet tiny hands and feet. “Your grandmother will see that you’re happy. No matter what I have to do, you two are going to have everything that Carrie and Cory didn’t.”
I glanced toward the bedroom where Melodie lay spent, just pulling out of her faint.
Chris called in to say he thought Melodie could use a nice sponge bath now, before he strode into the bathroom to take both babies from me. He sent me out to tend to the new mother while he gave the newborn twins a more complete inspection.
As I bathed Melodie and then slipped a fresh pink gown over her head, she awakened to stare at me with blank, disinterested eyes. “Is it over?” she asked in a weak, weary way. I picked up her hairbrush and went to work to unsnarl her damp, stringy hair.
“Yes, darling, it’s over. You have delivered.”
“What is it? A boy?” There was hope in her eyes, the first I’d seen in many a day.
“Yes, darling, a boy . . . and a girl. You have just given birth to beautiful, perfect twins.”
Her eyes grew huge, dark,
full of anxieties so numerous she seemed about to faint again.
“They are perfect, with everything where it’s supposed to be.”
She stared at me until I hurried to show her the twins. She stared with the look of utmost amazement before she smiled faintly. “Oh, they’re cute . . . but I thought they’d be dark like Jory.”
I placed the two babies in her arms. She gazed down at them as if all this was totally unreal. “Two,” she whispered weakly again and again, “two!” Her eyes fixed somewhere in space. “Two. I used to tell Jory we’d stop having children when we had two. I wanted a boy and a girl . . . but not twins. Now I have to be both mother and father to two! Twins! It’s not fair, not fair!”
Gently I smoothed back her hair. “Darling, this is God’s way of blessing both you and Jory. He has delivered to you the complete family you wanted, and you won’t have to go through this again. And you’re not alone in this; we’ll do all we can to help you. We’ll hire nurses, maids, the best. Neither you nor they will lack for anything.”
Hope came to her eyes before she closed them. “I’m tired, Cathy, so tired. I guess it is nice to have both a boy and a girl, now that Jory can’t make more. I just hope this will make up for a little that he’s lost . . . and he’ll be pleased.”
With those words she fell into deep sleep, even as I finished brushing her hair. Once her hair had been so lovely; now it was dull, lifeless. I’d have to shampoo it before Jory saw her. When next Jory saw his wife, he’d see again the lovely girl he’d married.
For I was going to reunite this pair if it was the last thing I did.
Chris stepped up beside me and took the twins from her arms. “Leave now, Cathy. She’s exhausted and needs a long rest. Time to shampoo tomorrow.”
“Did I say that aloud? I was only thinking about it.”
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 146