The Silhouette Girl

by V. C. Andrews

  “I’ve got to make some calls,” Chandler told me when we had stepped out of the interrogation room and he had pulled me aside. He was speaking quickly, his voice devoid of warmth. “We’ll have to wait until your arraignment before we can ask for bail. I’m not really a criminal attorney, but we have two good ones at the firm. I’ll get right on it.” He looked at his watch. “You could be spending forty-eight hours in jail before your arraignment, Pru. We can ask for bail then.”

  I just stared at him and turned my engagement ring around on my finger as I waited for some sign of affection. He realized it and hugged me, kissing me quickly on the cheek and squeezing my hand gently.

  “Stay strong,” he whispered. “And don’t answer any more questions or make any more statements about the situation. Okay?”

  “Okay. I really don’t have anything more to tell them anyway. I’m sorry, Chandler, sorry we’ll miss our early honeymoon.”

  He looked caught between a laugh and an expression of utter shock. Then he squeezed my hand gently again and started away.

  “Miss Dunning,” Detective Gabriel said as I continued to watch Chandler leaving. I thought it looked more like he was fleeing.

  I turned to her. “Left with the grunt work, Detective,” I said.

  Her eyes widened. “This way,” she said. “And if I were you, I would stop being a smart-ass now.”

  Of course, she was right, but I didn’t want her or anyone to know how loud and hard I was screaming inside myself, and for the moment, being a smart-ass, arrogant and confident, was the armor I had to wear.

  All the way down the hall, I could hear someone else, too. I could hear Scarletta’s laughter after she said, “And you thought you could get away from me.”

  Scarletta

  I REMEMBER RUNNING up and down the center of the street, my arms flailing about as if I was some large bird trying to lift off the ground. Drivers either had to stop and wait for me to pass or turn into the other lane quickly. I vaguely saw or heard them open their windows and lean out to shout something nasty at me. A cacophony of horns blared. Later I was told that most assumed I was high on some drug. One of the neighbors who lived farther down the street and really didn’t know us very well called the police. When I made a turn to start back, a patrol car with two policemen stopped ahead of me, and both got out to wait as I continued running toward them.

  Scalding tears were flowing, and although my legs felt like two saplings hard to bend, I kept going. I could hear my lungs going in and out like a fireplace bellow pushing the air up through my throat. My mouth was wide open, the sound of my desperate breathing like a dying animal gasping for breath. The weight on my chest was as heavy as it would be if an iron breastplate had been fastened on me. I had not yet regained my voice, although I was going through the motions of screaming. My face surely looked like the face of someone whose head had been stuffed in a plastic bag, my eyes popping wide, my mouth twisted and distorted, and my nostrils wider than they had ever been. I was scratching at the air the way someone would if she was trying to claw her way out to breathe.

  The taller and older-looking of the two patrolmen stepped in front of me, his arms out. Maybe I thought I could run through him. I kept going. From the look on his face, I could see he was surprised and quickly braced himself for a collision. With my momentum, I did almost bowl him over, and the second patrolman quickly came to assist him. He wrapped his arms around me firmly, locking mine to my sides, but my legs were still moving, my feet kicking against his legs.

  The two of them got me to the ground, and the younger one turned me so that he could fasten handcuffs around my wrists. When I felt them, my voice returned, and I could hear myself screaming.

  “Hey, hey, hey,” the older patrolman said when they turned me on my back. He was kneeling beside me and had his hands on my legs to try to stop me from kicking. In my mind, I was still running. He was strong, but my strength came from somewhere so deep inside me I couldn’t recognize or explain it. My legs continued until he leaned over me, putting the full weight of his body behind his effort to stop my kicking.

  I finally did. I was gasping harder, though, and fighting to stay conscious.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” the older patrolman asked.

  “Did you take something?” the younger one followed. “Are you high?”

  I looked from one to the other, and then, when the full realization of who they were occurred to me, my whole body started to melt. It was as if I really had taken some powerful drug, because I was under the spell of something far beyond my control. Now my crying was different, more of a dry sobbing and gasping.

  “My mother,” I said. “My mother.”

  Still kneeling beside me, the older officer asked, “What about your mother?”

  “She’s . . . looking up.”

  “Looking up where?” he asked.

  “Looking up, looking up. She was under the picture. When I took it off her, she was looking up.”

  The two policemen glanced at each other, and then the younger one assisted the older one in getting me to stand. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw people had come out of houses along the street. There were three of them standing on the sidewalk across from us, whispering to each other and watching.

  “Okay,” the older policeman said. “Just relax.” He nodded at the younger one, who opened the rear door of their patrol car. They led me to it and sat me, keeping the door open. “Now, tell us what you’re talking about,” the older cop said. The younger one stood beside him.

  “My mother can’t get out.”

  “Out of where?”

  “The basement,” I said.

  “Your mother fell down in the basement?” the younger patrolman asked.

  I shook my head. “I don’t know if she fell down. She was buried under her portrait, her beautiful portrait with her in her silk and taffeta gown, wearing her pearls.”

  “Buried?” the younger patrolman said.

  Instead of answering, I sobbed and said, “I knew she hadn’t gone away for good. I had to convince Daddy, so I hid the good-bye note. I was right to do that, wasn’t I? Daddy was very angry, but I had to do it. He wants to change everything. That’s why he took down my mother’s portrait and put his parents’ back up.”

  They both stared at me a moment, before the older policeman stepped away and spoke into a radio on his shoulder and then returned.

  “Which house is yours?” he asked.

  “The most important house,” I said. “The most historic house.”

  “Well, we don’t live on this street,” the younger cop said. “So you’ll have to give us your address.”

  “It’s right there,” I said, nodding at my house. “See the Duke and the Duchess?”

  “Huh?” He looked.

  “The two oak trees,” I said. “My father says one is feminine, and so it is the Duchess. My mother says that’s silly, but I think my father’s right.”

  They looked at each other, whispered something, and closed the rear door. Both got into the police car. I sat and watched as they backed up the street and pulled into our driveway.

  “Who’s home?” the younger patrolman asked me.

  “Just my mother,” I said. “My father is at work. I didn’t go to school because I overslept. He took down my mother’s portrait and put my grandparents’ back while I was still sleeping, so I went to look for her portrait.”

  “What’s your name?” the older policeman asked me.

  “I’m Scarletta Barnaby. My father owns Barnaby Furniture.”

  “I know it,” the younger patrolman told the older one.

  I could hear sirens and turned to see another patrol car and an ambulance pull in front of our house. The two policemen got out of the car we were in, and the younger one opened the rear door.

  “Show us where your mother is,” he said. He reached in to help me get out. “If you’re calm enough, I’ll take off those handcuffs. You think you’ll be all right?”
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  “Daddy says we’ll be all right,” I said.

  He looked to the older policeman, who nodded, and then he unlocked the handcuffs. Even though he did, my wrists still felt like they were around them. Two more policemen joined us, followed by two paramedics.

  “She says her mother is down in the basement, buried,” the older patrolman told the others.

  “C’mon,” the younger cop said, gently taking my right arm. “Show us where your mother is, okay?”

  “Will you help me bring up her portrait, too?” I asked.

  “Sure,” he said.

  I looked back up the street to the corner where the school bus would stop and imagined myself jumping out and running toward my house. I was taking big strides. I had won a race, and I couldn’t wait to get home to tell my mother, even though she never seemed that interested. I knew my father would be. Usually, I could smell the smoke of disagreement between them. “Running and leaping like that. It’s so unladylike,” she would say.

  “There are female cheetahs, Doreen,” he would reply.

  So much of what they said to each other seemed to have been written down and rehearsed and rehearsed until their words didn’t change and the way they said them was identical to the way they had said them previously. Sometimes I felt like the three of us were in a play, and one day, when I turned to the left or the right, I would see an audience and hear applause.

  “You okay?” the younger patrolman asked when I stopped in the open doorway.

  I looked at him and nodded.

  “We’re all going to be okay,” I said.

  He smiled, and I entered the house, aware that everyone was following me.

  That’s good, I thought. There’ll be plenty of help to get Mother’s picture back up from the basement. What we’ll do is put it where it was hanging before. We’ll take my grandparents’ picture down again. Daddy will be upset at first, but then I’ll explain. Mother is here; she didn’t go away after all. We had better get the picture back up. She’ll be so upset otherwise, and we both know you don’t want that.

  They followed me to the kitchen and the opened basement door.

  “Maybe you should sit with her, Jerry,” the older policeman told the younger one.

  He nodded and pulled out one of the chairs by the kitchenette. “Yes, sit here until we figure it all out,” Jerry the policeman said, smiling at me.

  I did.

  Everyone else went down into the basement.

  It wasn’t often that we had guests, but when we did, my mother was the perfect hostess, even if she didn’t particularly like the couple my father had invited to dinner, mainly because of business interests.

  “We must always be better than those we are better than,” she told me. “Put aside your feelings so that you never give them an excuse for their inferiority.”

  I really didn’t understand it fully, but I knew she meant to be polite always.

  “Can I get you something to drink?” I asked Jerry the policeman.

  “No, thank you,” he said, smiling. “How about you? I bet you’d like a glass of water?”

  I nodded, and he got up, found the glasses quickly, and poured me some cold water. I drank it all in one gulp. I heard footsteps on the basement stairs and turned toward the doorway. The older policeman came up first. He looked very upset, and I thought maybe he should have a glass of water, too, but I didn’t have time to ask.

  “Take her to the station. Elaine Small from social services will be there to greet you.”

  “Bad?” Jerry asked.

  “Worse,” the older policeman said.

  Jerry turned to me. “Hey,” he said. “We’re going to go for a short ride. Okay?”

  I looked at my watch. “Today’s Friday, right?” I asked.

  “Sure is.”

  “I’m supposed to go to a party tonight, but I still have to talk my father into letting me go.”

  “That’s fine. There’s time,” he said. He reached for my hand.

  I looked back at the basement door. “Can they bring my mother’s portrait up, please?”

  “We’re doing that first thing,” the older cop said. “Don’t worry about it.”

  “Thank you.”

  I walked out with Jerry, who kept his hand on my arm but didn’t squeeze very hard.

  “Hey,” he said. “Tell you what. You ride with me up front, okay?”

  “Okay. I didn’t like the back of the police car.”

  “Naw. I’m not crazy about it, either.”

  He stepped forward to open the front door on the passenger’s side for me, and I got in. Then he hurried around to the driver’s side. When I looked back, I saw many more people on the sidewalk, on both sides of the street. They were all talking and looking at our house.

  “I don’t see people come out of their houses this much usually,” I told Jerry as he backed out of our driveway.

  “That’s people,” he said, as if that would cover all answers.

  I looked ahead as we drove away and didn’t turn to look at anyone looking at us.

  “Penny gossips,” I remembered my mother saying. “They love to hear ‘a penny for your thoughts.’ They feed on scandals, especially family scandals, so keep our problems to yourself.”

  That’s what I would do.

  Keep our problems to myself.

  There was a very nice woman waiting for me at the police station. She wasn’t any taller than most girls in my class. She had very kind, soft cerulean eyes and very neatly trimmed hair the color of hay after a rain. Whenever I was someplace where the air smelled fresh and cool and the patches of clouds looked whiter and fluffier, I would have that image of wet hay in my mind. I thought I had seen it on some trip we took when I was very young. In a field we were passing, the tied-up bales looked like sleeping animals. I might even have said that, because I remembered my father laughing. I thought my mother might have smiled. It was often hard to tell if she was amused or annoyed.

  “She certainly sees things we don’t,” my father remarked. My mother grunted, looked back at me, and then gazed out the window as if she wanted to see the things I saw, too.

  “Hi, Scarletta,” the nice lady said now, reaching for my hand. “My name is Elaine Small. Now, don’t you go telling me my name fits me,” she said, smiling.

  She did have petite facial features and was doll-like. Her hands were smaller than mine, too.

  “We’re going to go to a room here, just you and I, and talk a while, okay? Do you want to go to the bathroom? Can I get you something cold to drink or even something hot like tea?”

  “Something cold, please. I like lemon and lime, orange, or ginger ale.”

  “Oh, I’m sure we’ll find one of those,” she said.

  “I don’t have to go to the bathroom yet,” I said.

  “Okay.”

  She took my hand, stopped to get me my drink, and took me to a room where there was a small settee and two chairs with a light wood table between the chairs and the settee. There was just one window behind the settee, but it was high, almost to the ceiling. There was nothing on the walls, and the floor was a light brown tile. I sat on the settee and drank my ginger ale.

  “So,” she said, “why don’t we talk about today and what happened?”

  I sipped my drink and looked at her. She didn’t look like a penny gossip, but I couldn’t be absolutely sure.

  “I have to go home soon,” I said. I looked at my watch. “I have to explain everything to my father first, and we have to put my mother’s portrait back where it was above the fireplace. It’s important that I explain. I don’t want my father to be angry ever again.”

  “Sure. That makes sense,” she said, nodding. “I just want to understand everything so I can help you.”

  I nodded, put my glass of ginger ale on the table, and stood. “That’s exactly what a penny gossip would say to get me to talk about family problems. My mother wouldn’t like that. I have to go home.”

  I started toward the
door, and she grabbed my arm. She wasn’t smiling, and her face changed. It became bigger, and she grew a few inches in height, too. I tried to break free, but she held me tightly. She was talking, but I wasn’t listening. I started to scream. Another woman in a police uniform came in quickly. She took my other arm. I twisted and turned and screamed and screamed, until I felt myself sinking and everything darkening.

  When I woke up again, I was in an ambulance. The two paramedics beside me were talking, but it was difficult to hear them. There was something in my left arm, and my arms were strapped down so I couldn’t lift them. I could hear the beep of some sort of monitor. Moments later, I was asleep again, and when I woke up the next time, I was in a hospital room. My arms were still tied down, and there was still something in my left arm.

  Vaguely, I recalled the words “shock,” “murder,” “therapy,” but they seemed part of a dream. A nurse came in with a tall, stout man with grayish black hair and black-framed glasses. He pulled up a chair beside my bed and asked me how I was doing.

  I looked at the nurse and at him. “Where am I?” I asked.

  “You’re in a hospital. You’ve had quite a shock, and we’re going to help you get better. Can you tell me your name and where you live?” he asked.

  I thought for a moment and then shook my head.

  “Don’t worry about it right now,” he said, patting my hand softly. “You’ll be fine. You have a little journey to make, and then we’ll see.”

  “Where am I going?” I asked.

  “Back,” he said. He smiled. “In time.”

  Later I was in a place where time didn’t seem to matter. I was never uncomfortable until the day I left. I was given medications, spent many hours talking to very nice doctors, both male and female, began to read magazines and books, took walks, and listened to music until eventually I felt the thick fog begin to thin out.

  All that had happened to me and to my parents returned in the form of a jigsaw puzzle, a piece here, a piece there. My main doctor, a woman named Dr. Nettles, carefully worked it all together with me after I was able to recall most things myself without screaming and crying.