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!

by Andrews, V. C.

  I had evidence that some of those tales might be true. Often I saw him come home drunk and in mild, happy moods that made me wish, regretfully, that he’d stay drunk. Only then could he smile and laugh easily.

  One day I had to ask. “What are you doing all those nights you stay out so late?”

  He giggled easily when he drank too much; he giggled now. “Uncle Joel says the best evangelists have been the worst sinners; he says you have to roll in the gutter filth to know what it’s like to be clean, and saved.”

  “And that’s what you’re doing all those nights, rolling in the gutter filth?”

  “Yes, Mother darling—for damned if I know what it’s like to feel clean, or saved.”

  * * *

  Spring approached cautiously like a timid bluebird. Blustery cold winds softened to warm southern breezes. The sky turned that certain shade of blue that made me feel young and hopeful. I was often out in the gardens raking leaves and pulling up weeds that the gardeners overlooked.

  I couldn’t wait to see the crocus peek from the ground in the woods, couldn’t wait to see the tulips and daffodils and watch pink and white dogwood blossoms spring forth. Couldn’t wait for the azaleas everywhere to make my life a fairyland of many delights, for the twins, for all of us. I’d look up and admire the wonder of the trees that never seemed depressed or lonely. Nature—how much we could learn if only we would.

  I took Jory with me as far as he could easily guide his sturdy electric chair with the huge balloon wheels that climbed most gradual grades. “We’ve got to find a better way to get you deeper into the woods,” I said thoughtfully. “Now, if we laid flagstones everywhere, they’d be very lovely, but if they freeze in the winter they’d poke up and could possibly snag your chair and tip you over. As much as I hate cement, we’ll have to use that or blacktop. Somehow I like blacktop better, what about you?”

  He laughed at my silliness. “Red bricks, Mom. Brick walks are so colorful, and besides, this chair of mine is a real marvel.” He looked around, smiling with pleasure, then tilted his face so the sun could warm it. “I only wish Mel would accept what’s happened to me and show more interest in the twins.”

  What could I say to that, when already I’d had it out with Melodie more than a dozen times, and the more I said the more resentful she grew. “This is MY life, Cathy!” she’d shouted. “MY LIFE—not yours!” Screaming at me, her face a red mask of fury.

  Jory’s physical therapist showed Jory how to lower himself to the ground without so much effort, and then he taught Jory how to get back into his chair without assistance. And all so Jory could help me plant more rose bushes. His strong hands used the trowel much better than mine.

  The gardeners eagerly taught Jory how to prune our shrubbery, when to fertilize, how to mulch and with what. He and I made gardening not just a hobby but a lifestyle to save us both from going crazy. The greenhouse was enlarged so we could grow exotic flowers, and in there we had a world of our own to control, full of its own kind of quiet excitement. But it wasn’t enough for Jory, who decided he had to stay in the arts in one form or another.

  “Dad is not the only one in this family who can paint a hazy sky and make you feel the humidity, or put a dewdrop on a painted rose so real you can smell it,” he said to me with a broad smile. “I’m growing as an artist, Mom.”

  Even with Melodie in the same house, Jory was making a life without her. He fashioned slings to his chair that fitted over his shoulder so he could carry his twins with him. His delight to see them smile when they saw him coming touched my heart, just as it drove Melodie from the nursery. “They love me now, Mom! It’s in their eyes!”

  They knew Jory better than they knew their mother. They gave her void and somehow pitifully hopeful smiles, perhaps because her expression was so blank and thoughtful when she stared at them.

  Yes, the twins not only loved and knew who was their father, they also trusted him fully. When he reached to pick them up, they didn’t flinch or fear he’d drop them. They laughed as if they knew he’d never, never drop them.

  I found Melodie sulking in her room, really thin now, her once beautiful hair dull and stringy. “It take times, Melodie, to develop motherly instincts,” I said as I sat down unasked and, apparently, unwanted. “You allow me and the maids to wait upon them too much. They don’t recognize you as their mother when you stay away. The day you see their small faces light up when you come in, and they smile from the happiness they feel to see you, their mother, you’ll find the love you’re searching for. Your heart will melt. Their needs will give you something nothing else can, and never again will you feel anything but an all-encompassing love for your children, when they love you, and you love them.”

  Her faint smile flashed bittersweet and was quickly gone. “When do you give me the chance to mother my children, Cathy? When I get up in the night, you are already there. When I rise early, you’ve already bathed and dressed them. They don’t need a mother when they have a grandmother like you.”

  I was stunned by her unfair attack. Often I lay on my bed and heard the twins cry and cry before I got up to tend to their needs. In torment while I waited and waited for Melodie to go to them. What was I supposed to go, ignore their cries? I gave her time enough. Her room was across the hall from theirs, and mine was in another wing.

  She apparently saw my thoughts, for her voice came almost like the hiss of a venomous snake. “You always come out on top, don’t you, mother-in-law? You always manage to get what you want, but there’s one thing you will never get, and that’s Bart’s love and respect. When he loved me—and once he did love me—he told me he hated you, really despised you. I felt sorry for him then, and sorrier for you. Now I understand why he feels as he does. For with a mother like you, Jory doesn’t need a wife like me.”

  * * *

  The next day was Thursday. I felt heavy-hearted to think of all the ugly words Melodie had screamed and hissed at me yesterday. I sighed, sat up and swung my legs off the bed, slipping my feet into satin mules. A busy day ahead since this was the day all our servants but Trevor had off. On Thursdays I was like Momma had been, preparing myself for Friday, coming fully alive only when the man I loved strolled through the door.

  Jory was quietly sobbing when I entered his room with the freshly bathed and diapered twins held one in each of my arms. In his hands he loosely held a creamy long sheet of stationery.

  “Read this,” he choked, putting the paper on the table beside his chair before he reached for his children. When he had them both in his arms, he bowed his face into the soft hair of his son, then his daughter’s hair.

  I picked up the creamy sheets; always bad news on cream-colored paper came from Foxworth Hall.

  My dearest darling Jory,

  I’m a coward. I’ve always known that, and hoped you’d never find out. You were always the one with all the strength. I love you, and no doubt will always love you, but I can’t live with a man who can never make love to me again.

  I look at you in that horrible chair that you’ve grown to accept, when I cannot accept it, or your handicap. Your parents came to my room and confronted me and urged me to face up to you and say everything I feel. I’m unable to do that, for if I do, you might say or do something that would change my mind, and I’ve got to leave, or lose my mind.

  You see, my love, I already feel half insane from being in this house, this horrible, hateful house with all its deceiving beauty. I lie on my lonely bed and dream of the ballet. I hear the music playing even when it isn’t. I’ve got to go back to where I can hear it play, and if that is ugly and selfish, as I know it is, forgive me, if you can.

  Say kind things about me to our children when they are old enough to ask questions about their mother. Say those nice words even if they aren’t true, for I know I’ve failed you just as much as I’ve failed them. I’ve given you every reason to hate me, but please don’t remember me with hate. Remember me as I used to be when we were younger, and very much in contro
l of our lives.

  Don’t blame yourself for anything, or blame anyone else for what I have to do. Everything is my own fault. You see, I’m not real, I never was, and I never will be. I can’t face up to the kind of cruel reality that destroys lives and leaves behind broken dreams. Then, too, remember this: I’m the fantasy you helped create out of your desire and my own.

  So farewell, my love, my first and sweetest love, and sadly perhaps my only true love. Find someone rare like your mother who can take my place. She’s the one who gave you the ability to cope with reality, no matter how harsh.

  God would have been kind if he had given me your kind of mother.

  Yours regretfully,

  Mel

  The note fell from my hand, fluttering its pathetic certain way to the carpet. Both Jory and I stared at it lying there, so sad—and so final.

  “It’s over, Mom,” he said tonelessly, his voice deep and gruff. “What began when I was twelve and she was eleven, all over. I built my life around her, thinking she’d last until we were old. I gave her the best I had to offer, and still it wasn’t enough once the glamour was gone.”

  How could I tell him that Melodie wouldn’t have lasted even if he was still on stage dancing. Something in her resented his strength, his innate ability to cope with situations beyond her ability to comprehend.

  I shook my head. No, I was being unfair. “I’m sorry, Jory, so terribly sorry.” I didn’t say, perhaps you’ll be better off without her.

  “I’m sorry, too,” he whispered, refusing to meet my eyes. “What woman will want me now?”

  * * *

  Perhaps he would never perform sexually again in the normal way, and I knew he needed someone in the bed with him during all those long, lonely nights. I could tell from his morning face that the nights were the worst part of his life, leaving him feeling isolated, vulnerable emotionally, as well as physically helpless. He was like me, needing arms to hold me safe during the darkness, wanting kisses on my face to put me to sleep, to wake me up, to put over me a safe parasol of love.

  “Last night I heard the wind blowing,” he confided to me as the twins sat in their highchairs and smeared their faces with warm, mushy cereal. “I woke up. I thought I heard Mel breathing beside me, but there was nothing. I saw the birds happily building their nests, heard them chirping to greet the new day, and then I saw her note. I knew without reading what was inside, and I went on thinking about the birds, and all their love songs suddenly turned into only territorial rights.” His voice broke again as he lowered his head to hide his face. “I’ve heard that geese, once mated, never mate again, and I keep seeing Melodie as the swan, loyal forever, no matter what the circumstances.”

  “Darling, I know, I know,” I soothed, stroking his dark curls. “But love can come again, you hold on to that—and you’re not alone.”

  He nodded, saying, “Thanks for always being here when I need you. Thank Dad for me, too . . .”

  Brusquely, fearing I’d cry as well, I put my arms about him. “Jory, Melodie is gone, but she’s left you with a son and a daughter, be grateful for that. Because she did leave you, that makes them all yours now. She walked out not only on you, but also on her own children. You can divorce her and use your strength to help your children develop your own kind of courage and determination. You’ll manage without her, Jory, and as long as you need us, you have your parents’ willing help.”

  And all the time I was thinking that Melodie had deliberately withdrawn from her own children in order to make the break easier; she hadn’t allowed herself to love them, or them to love her. Her parting gift of love to her childhood sweetheart was his own children.

  Jory brushed the tears from his eyes and tried to grin. When he did it was full of irony.

  BOOK THREE

  The Summer of Cindy

  All of a sudden Bart was taking business trips, flying off to return in a few days, never staying away more than two or three days, as if afraid that during his absence as he wheeled and dealed we would run away with his fortune. As he put it, “I have to keep on top of things. Can’t trust anyone more than I trust myself.”

  He had just happened to be gone the day that Melodie slipped out of Foxworth Hall and left that pitiful note for Jory to find on his night table. Bart’s expression didn’t change when he came home and found Melodie’s chair at the dining table empty. “Upstairs moping again?” he asked indifferently, indicating her chair, which was a constant reminder of her absence.

  “No, Bart,” I answered when Jory refused to look his way or even answer. “Melodie decided she wanted to resume her career, and she left, leaving Jory a note.”

  His left eyebrow quirked upward cynically; then he flashed Jory a glance, but not one word to say he was sorry to find her gone, or one word of condolence to his brother.

  Later, when Jory was upstairs and I was changing diapers, Bart came in and stood at my side. “Too bad I was in New York at the time. I would have enjoyed seeing Jory’s expression when he read her note. By the way, where is it? I’d like to read what she had to say.”

  I turned to stare at him. For the first time it occurred to me that Melodie might have arranged to meet him in New York. “No, Bart, you will never read that note . . . and I hope to God you had nothing to do with her decision to go.”

  Angry, his face reddened. “I went on a business trip! I haven’t said two words to Melodie since Christmas. And as far as I’m concerned, it’s good riddance.”

  In some ways it was better without Melodie always sitting around moodily, shadowing the rooms with her dreary depression. I made it a practice to visit Jory just before bedtime, tucking him in, opening his window, dimming the lights, and seeing he had water where he could reach it. My kiss on his cheek tried to substitute for a wife’s kiss.

  Now that Melodie was gone, I soon found out that she had helped a little just by getting up early once in a while to change and feed the babies. She’d even bothered to diaper them several times a day.

  Often Bart drifted into the nursery, as if irresistibly drawn, and stared down at the tiny twins, who had learned how to smile and had found out to their delight that those waving shadowy things were their own feet and their own small hands. They reached for the mobiles of pretty colorful birds, struggled to pull them down and put them in their mouths.

  “They are kind of cute,” Bart commented in a musing way that pleased me, even doing a little to help by handing me the baby oil and talcum. Unfortunately, just when the twins almost had him won over, Joel strode into the nursery and scowled down at the beautiful babies, and all the kindness and sympathy growing in Bart vanished completely, leaving him standing beside me looking guilty.

  Joel gave the twins one hard, quick glance before he turned away his offended eyes. “Just like the first twins, the evil ones,” muttered Joel. “Same blond hair and blue eyes . . . no good will come of this pair either.”

  “What do you mean by that?” I raged. “Cory and Carrie never harmed anyone! They were the ones who were harmed. They suffered what was inflicted on them by your own sister, mother, and father, Joel. Don’t you ever dare to forget that.”

  With silence Joel answered before he left the room, taking Bart with him.

  * * *

  In mid-June, Cindy flew home to stay the summer. She made determined efforts to keep her rooms neater, hanging up her own clothes, which she used to drop on the floor. She helped me by changing the twins and holding their bottles as she rocked them to sleep. It was sweet to see her sitting in the rocker, a baby in the crook of each arm, struggling to hold two bottles at the same time while she wore baby doll pajamas, her lovely long legs bare and tucked under her. She seemed very much a child herself. She bathed and showered so often I thought she’d shrivel into a dried prune.

  One evening she came from her luxurious bath and dressing room looking radiantly fresh and alive, smelling like an exotic flower garden. “I love twilight,” she gushed, twirling around and around. “Just adore st
rolling the woods when the moon is on the rise.”

  By this time we were all seated on our favorite terrace, sipping drinks. Bart pricked up his ears and glared at her. “Who’s waiting for you in the woods?”

  “Not who, dear brother, but what.” She turned her head to smile at him in an innocent, charming way. “I’m going to be nice to you, Bart, no matter how nasty you are to me. I’ve decided I cannot win friends by tossing out rude and nasty remarks.”

  He glared suspiciously. “I still think you’re meeting some boy in the woods.”

  “Thank you, brother Bart, for only thinking of punishing me with nasty suspicions. I expected more—and worse. There’s a boy in South Carolina that I’ve fallen madly for, and he’s a nature lover. He’s taught me how to appreciate all that money can’t buy. I adore sunrises and sunsets. When rabbits run, I follow. Together we catch rare butterflies and he mounts them. We picnic in the woods, swim in the lakes. Since I’m not allowed to have a boyfriend here, I’m going to stand alone at the top of a hill and try just strolling down. It’s fun to challenge gravity and try not to run all breathless and out of control.”

  “By what name do you call gravity? Bill, John, Mark, or Lance?”

  “I’m not going to let you annoy me this time,” she said arrogantly. “I like to stare up at the sky, count the stars, find the constellations, watch the moon play hide-and-seek. Sometimes the man in the moon winks at me, and I wink back. Dennis has taught me how to stand perfectly still and absorb the feel of the night. Why, I’m seeing wonders I didn’t even know existed because I’m in love—madly, passionately, ridiculously, insanely in love!”