Since he was so accustomed to me and my strange ways, why did Chris sit as still as a marble statue, as if this dream affected him more than any other? Had he been dreaming, too?
"Cathy, on my word of honor, we are going to escape this house! All four of us will run away! You've convinced me. Your dreams must mean something, or else you wouldn't keep having them. Women are more intuitive than men; it's been proven. The subconscious is at work at night. We won't wait any longer for Momma to inherit the fortune from a grandfather who lives on and on and never dies. Together, you and I, we'll find a way. From this second on, I vow on my life, we depend only on ourselves. . . and your dreams."
From the intense way he said this, I knew he wasn't joking, making fun--he meant what he said! I could have shouted, I felt so relieved. We were going to get away. This house wasn't going to do us in after all!
In the gloom and chill of that big shadowed and cluttered room, he stared down into my eyes. Maybe he was seeing me, as I saw him, looking larger than life, and softer than dreams. Slowly his head inclined toward mine, and he kissed me full on the lips as a way to seal his promise in a strong and meaningful way. Such a peculiar long kiss, to give me the sensation that I was falling down, down, down, when I was already lying down.
What we needed most was a key to our bedroom door. We knew it was the master key to every room in this house. We couldn't use the sheet-ladder because of the twins, and we didn't anticipate, either Chris or I, that our grandmother would be so thoughtlessly careless as to lay aside the key negligently. That just wasn't her way. Her way was to open the door, and immediately stash the key in her pocket. Always her hateful gray dresses had pockets.
Our mother's way was to be careless, forgetful, indifferent. And she didn't like pockets in her clothes to add extra bulk to her svelte figure. We counted on her.
And what did she have to fear from us--the passive, the meek, the quiet? Her private little captive "darlings," who were never going to grow up and be a threat. She was happy, in love; it lit up her eyes and made her laugh often. She was so damned
unobservant you wanted to scream and make her see--make her see the twins so quiet and sick looking! She never mentioned the mouse--why wasn't she seeing the mouse? He was on Cory's shoulder, nibbling on Cory's ear, and she never said a word, not even when tears streamed down Cory's face because she wouldn't congratulate him on winning the affections of a very stubborn mouse that would have gone his way, if allowed.
She came a generous two or three times a month, and each time she bore with her the gifts that gave her solace if they gave us none. She came in gracefully to sit a while, wearing her beautiful, expensive clothes trimmed with furs, and decorated with jewels.
On her throne she sat as a queen and doled out the painting sets to Chris, the ballet slippers to me, and to each of us she brought sensational-looking clothes, well suited for attic wearing, for up here it didn't matter if they seldom fit, being too large, or too small, and our sneakers were sometimes comfort- able, sometimes not, and I was still waiting for the bra she kept promising but always forgot.
"I'll bring you a dozen or so," she said with a benevolent cheerful smile, "all sizes, all colors, and you can try them on and see which you like best, and fit best, and I can give the ones you don't want to the maids." And on and on she chatted vivaciously, always true to her false facade, pretending we still mattered in her life.
I sat, I fixed my eyes on her, and I waited for her to ask me how the twins were. Had she forgotten that Cory had hay fever which kept his nose running all the time, and sometimes his nostrils stuffed up so he couldn't breathe except through his mouth? She knew he was supposed to be receiving allergy shots once a month, and years had passed since the last one. Didn't it hurt her to see Cory and Carrie clinging to me as if I were the one who had given them birth? Did one single thing reach out and tell her something was wrong?
If it did, in no way did she indicate that she saw us as less than perfectly normal, though I took pains to name our small illnesses: the way we threw up so often now, and how our heads ached from time to time, and we had stomach cramps, and sometimes very little energy.
"Keep your food in the attic, where it's cold," she said without flinching.
She had the nerve to speak to us of parties, of concerts, of the theater, of movies, and going to balls and on trips with her "Bart." "Bart and I are going on a shopping spree in New York," she said. "Tell me what you want me to bring you. Make out a list."
"Momma, after you Christmas-shop in New York, where will you go then?" I asked, careful not to turn my eyes on that key she had so casually tossed on the dresser top. She laughed, liking my question, and clasped her slender white hands together, and began to list her plans for the long dull days after the holidays. "A trip south, perhaps a cruise, or a month or so in Florida. And your grandmother will be here to take good care of you."
While she chatted on and on, Chris stole stealthily near to slip the key into his pants pocket. On into the bathroom he sauntered, excusing himself. He needn't have bothered; she didn't notice he was gone. She was doing her duty, visiting her children--and thank God she had chosen the right chair to sit in. In the bathroom I knew Chris was pressing the key into a bar of soap we kept ready for just this way to make a clear impression. Just one of the many things watching endless hours of television had taught us.
Once our mother had gone, Chris pulled out the piece of wood he had and began immediately to carve a rough wooden key. Though we had metal from the old trunk locks, we had nothing strong enough to cut and shape it. For hours and hours Chris slaved meticulously, carving that key, fitting and refitting it into the hardened soap impression. Purposefully, he had chosen very hard wood, fearing soft wood might break in the lock and give away our escape plan. It took three days of work before he had a key that worked.
Jubilance was ours! We threw our arms about each other and danced around the room, laughing, kissing, almost crying. The twins watched us, amazed we were so happy with a little key.
We had a key. We could open our prison door. Yet, strangely, we hadn't planned our future beyond the opening of the door.
"Money. We must have money," reasoned Chris, stopping in the middle of our wild dance of triumph. "With lots of money, all doors are open, and all roads are ours to travel."
"But where can we get money?" I asked, frowning and unhappy now. He had found another reason for stalling.
"There is no way but to steal it from Momma, her husband, and the grandmother."
He said this so pronounced, exactly as if thieving were an old and honored profession. And in dire need, perhaps it was, and still is.
"If we're caught, it will mean the whip for all of us, even the twins," I said, casting my eyes on their fearful expressions. "And when Momma goes on a trip with her husband, she could starve us again, and God alone knows what else she would do to us."
Chris fell down on the small chair before the dressing table. He propped his chin in his hand, thoughtful and considering for minutes. "One thing for sure, I don't want to see you or the twins punished. So I will be the one to steal out of here, and I alone will stand guilty if caught. But I'm not going to be caught; it is too risky to take from that old woman-- she's too observant.
No doubt she knows to a penny exactly the amount of money in her purse. Momma never counts money. Remember how Daddy used to complain about that?" He grinned at me reassuringly. "I will be just like Robin Hood, stealing from the rich to give to the needy poor--us! And only on the nights Momma and her husband tell us they are going out."
"You mean when she tells us," I corrected. "And we can always watch from the window, on those days she doesn't come." When we dared, we had a fine view of the curved drive to watch the comings and goings.
Soon enough Momma told us she was going to a party. "Bart doesn't care much for the social life; he'd rather stay home. But I hate this house. He asks then why we don't move into our own home, and what can I say?"
&
nbsp; What could she say? Darling, I have a secret to tell you: upstairs, hidden away in the far northern wing, I have four children.
It was easy enough for Chris to find money in his mother's grand, splendid bedroom. She was careless about money. Even he was shocked at how casually she left tens and twenties scattered over the dresser. It made him frown and put suspicions in his head. Wasn't she supposed to be saving up for that day when she could take us all out of our prison . . . even if she did have a husband now? More bills were in her many pocketbooks. Chris found change in her husband's trousers pockets. No, he was not as careless with his money. However, when Chris searched under the chair cushions, a dozen or more coins were there. He felt like a thief, an unwanted intruder in his mother's room. He saw her beautiful clothes, her satin mules, her negligees trimmed with fur, or marabou feathers, making his trust shrink even smaller.
Time after time that winter, he visited that bedroom, growing ever more careless since it was all so easy to steal. He came back to me, looking jubilant, looking sad. Day by day our hidden cache was increasing--why did he look sad? "Come with me next time," he said in way of reply. "See for yourself."
I could go with a clear conscience now, knowing the twins wouldn't awaken and find us gone. They slept so soundly, so deeply, that even in the mornings they woke up blurry-eyed, slow, reluctantly coming into reality. It scared me sometimes to look at them asleep. Two small dolls, never growing, so sunken into oblivion it seemed more a small death than normal night- time rest.
Go away, run away, spring was approaching, we had to leave soon, before it was too late. A voice inside, intuitive, kept drumming out this tune. Chris laughed when I told him "Cathy, you and your notions! We need money. At least five hundred. What is the terrible hurry? We have food now, and we aren't being whipped; even when she catches us halfundressed, she doesn't say a word."
Why didn't the grandmother punish us now? We had not told Momma of her other punishments, her sins against us, for to me, they were sins, and not justified in any way. Yet, that old woman stayed her hand. Daily she brought up the picnic basket, filled to the brim with sandwiches, with lukewarm soups in thermos bottles, with milk, and always four
powdered-sugar doughnuts. Why couldn't she vary our menus and bring brownies, cookies, slices of pie or cake?
"C'mon," urged Chris, dragging me along the corridors so dark and sinister. "Lingering in one place is dangerous. We'll take a quick look in the trophy room, then rush on into Momma's bedroom suite."
All I needed was one glance in that trophy room. I hated-- actually detested that oil portrait over the stone fireplace--so much like our father--and yet so very different. A man as cruel and heartless as Malcolm Foxworth had no right to be hand- some, even when he was young. Those cold blue eyes should have corrupted the rest of him with sores, boils. I saw all those heads of dead animals, and the tiger and bear skins on the floor, and I thought, how like him to want a room like this.
If Chris would let me, I would look into every room. But he insisted we pass by the closed doors, allowing me to peek in only a few. "Nosy!" he whispered. "There's nothing of interest in any of them." He was right. Right in so many things I learned that night what Chris meant when he said this house was only grand and beautiful, not pretty or cozy. Nevertheless, I couldn't help being impressed. Our home in Gladstone shrank in the comparison.
When we had quietly traversed many a long and stingily lit dim hall, we came at last upon our mother's grand suite of rooms. Sure, Chris had told me in detail of the swan bed, and the infant bed at the foot--but hearing wasn't seeing! My breath pulled in. My dreams took off on wings of fancy! Oh, glory be to heaven! This wasn't a room, but a chamber fit for a queen or a princess! I couldn't believe the posh splendor, the opulence! Overwhelmed, I flitted from here to there, awed to touch the walls, covered with silk damask, colored a delicious strawberry pink, richer than the pale mauve of the two-inch-thick carpet I fingered the soft, furry coverlet and I threw myself upon it and rolled about. I touched the filmy bed curtains, and heavier drapes of purple velvet. I jumped up from the bed, to stand at the foot, and gazed in admiration at that marvelous swan that kept his observant, but sleepy red eye riveted on me.
Then I backed off, not liking a bed where Momma slept with a man not our father. I walked into her huge walk-in closet, drifting about in a dream of riches that could never be mine, except in dreams. She had more clothes than a department store. Plus shoes, hats, handbags. Four full-length fur coats, three fur stoles, a white mink cape, and a dark sable one, plus fur hats of a dozen different styles and made of different animal pelts, plus a leopard coat with green wool in between the fur trim. Then there were negligees, nightgowns, peignoir sets, flounced, beruffled, beribboned, feathered, furred, made of velvet, satin, chiffon, combinations--good glory be! She'd have to live a thousand years to wear all she owned just once!
What caught my eye most, I took from the closet and carried into the golden dressing room Chris showed me. I glanced in her bath, with the mirrors all around, live green plants, real flowers growing, two commodes--one didn't have a lid. (I know now one was a bidet.) A separate shower stall, too. "All this is new," explained Chris. "When I first came, you know, the night of the Christmas party, it wasn't so. . . well, so opulent as it is now."
I spun about to glare at him, guessing it had been all along, but he hadn't told me. He had been deliberately shielding her, not wanting me to know about all those clothes, the furs, plus the fabulous amount of jewelry she kept hidden in a secret compartment of her long dressing table. No, he hadn't lied--just omitted. It showed in his betraying, shifting eyes, his flushed face, and the quick way he hurried to escape more of my embarrassing questions--no wonder she didn't want to sleep in our room!
I was in the dressing room trying on the clothes from Momma's big closet. For the first time in my life I slipped on nylon hose, and, oh, did my legs look heavenly--divine! No wonder women liked these things! Next, I put on a bra for the first time, one that was much too large, to my dismay. I stuffed the cups full of tissues until they bulged way out. Next came the silver slippers, again, too large. And then I topped off the splendor of me with a black dress cut very low in front to show off what I didn't have much of.
Now came the fun part --what I used to do when I was little whenever I had the chance. I sat down at Momma's dressing table and began to apply her makeup with a lavish hand. She had ten carloads. On my face I slathered the whole works: foundation, rouge, powder, mascara, eyeshadow, lipstick. And then I swept my hair up in a way I considered sexy and stylish, stuck in hairpins and began to put on jewelry. And, last of all, perfume--lots of it.
Tottering awkwardly on the high heels, I teetered over to Chris. "How do I look?" I asked, flirtatiously smiling, and fluttering my sooty lashes. Truly, I was prepared for compliments. Hadn't the mirrors already told me I looked sensational?
He was carefully going through a drawer, putting everything back exactly as he had found it, but he turned to take a glance. Astonishment widened his eyes, and then he heavily scowled, while I rocked back and forth and sideways, seeking my balance on four-inch heels, and kept on batting my eyelids-- maybe I didn't know how to put on false eyelashes right. I felt I was looking through spider legs.
"How do you look?" he began in a sarcastic way. "Let me tell you precisely. You look like a
streetwalker--that's how!" He turned away in disgust, as if unable to bear the sight of me. "An adolescent whore--that's what! Now go wash your face, and put back all that stuff where you found it, and clean up the dressing table!"
I tottered over to the nearest full-length mirror. It had right and left wings so she could adjust them, and see herself from every angle, and in those three very revealing mirrors I took a fresh perspective--and what a fascinating mirror; it closed like a three- page book, and then there was a beautiful French pastoral scene to view.
Twisting and turning, I checked over my appearance. This wasn't the way my mother looked in the
same dress--what had I done wrong? True, she didn't ladder so many bracelets up her arms. And she didn't wear three necklaces at once, while long, dangling diamond earrings brushed her shoulders, plus a tiara; nor did she ever wear two or three rings on each finger--including her thumbs.
Oh, but I did dazzle the eyes all right. And my jutting bosom was absolutely magnificent! Truthfully, I had to admit I'd overdone it.
I took off seventeen bracelets, twenty-six rings, the necklaces, the tiara, and the black chiffon formal gown that didn't look as elegant on me as when Momma wore it to a dinner party with only pearls at the throat. Oh, but the furs--nobody could help but feel beautiful in furs!
"Hurry up, Cathy. Leave that stuff alone and come help me search."
"Chris, I'd love to take a bath in her black marble tub."
"God Almighty! We don't have time for you to do that!"
I took off her clothes, her black lace bra, the nylon hose, and the silver slippers, and put on my own things. But on second thought, I sneaked a plain white bra from her drawer of many, and tucked it down inside my blouse. Chris didn't need my help. He'd been here so often, he could find money without my assistance. I wanted to see what was in every drawer, but I'd have to move fast. I pulled open a small drawer of her nightstand, expecting to find cold cream, tissues, but nothing of value for servants to steal. And there was night cream in the drawer, and tissues, plus two paper- back books to read when sleep was evasive. (Were there nights when she tossed and turned and thought uneasily about us?) Underneath those paperbacks was a very large and thick book with a colorful dustjacket. How to Create Your Own Needlework Designs. Now, that was a title to really intrigue me. Momma had taught me to do some needlepoint stitches, and also crewelwork on my first birthday in that locked room. And how to create your own designs would indeed be inspiring.
Flowers in the Attic Page 32
