First I had to smother his face with a dozen kisses and give him bear hugs to make up for the anxiety I’d put in his eyes. In the beautiful box was a silver music box made in England. The music played and a ballerina dressed in pink turned slowly around and around before a mirror. “It’s a jewel box, as well,” explained Daddy, slipping on my finger a tiny gold ring with a red stone he called a garnet. “The moment I saw that box, I knew you had to have it. And with this ring, I do vow to forever love my Cathy just a little bit more than any other daughter—as long as she never says that to anyone but herself.”
* * *
There came a sunny Tuesday in May, when Daddy was home. For two weeks Daddy had been hanging around home, waiting for those babies to show up. Momma seemed irritable, uncomfortable, and Mrs. Bertha Simpson was in our kitchen, preparing our meals, and looking at Christopher and me with a smirky face. She was our most dependable baby-sitter. She lived next door, and was always saying Momma and Daddy looked more like brother and sister than husband and wife. She was a grim, grouchy sort of person who seldom had anything nice to say about anybody. And she was cooking cabbage. I hated cabbage.
Around dinnertime, Daddy came rushing into the dining room to tell my brother and me that he was driving Momma to the hospital. “Now don’t be worried. Everything will work out fine. Mind Mrs. Simpson, and do your homework, and maybe in a few hours you’ll know if you have brothers or sisters . . . or one of each.”
He didn’t return until the next morning. He was unshaven, tired looking, his suit rumpled, but he grinned at us happily. “Take a guess! Boys or girls?”
“Boys!” chimed up Christopher, who wanted two brothers he could teach to play ball. I wanted boys, too . . . no little girl to steal Daddy’s affection from his first daughter.
“A boy and a girl,” Daddy said proudly. “The prettiest little things you ever saw. Come, put your clothes on, and I’ll drive you to see them yourselves.”
Sulkily, I went, still reluctant to look even when Daddy picked me up and held me high so I could peer through the nursery room glass at two little babies a nurse held in her arms. They were so tiny! Their heads were no bigger than small apples, and small red fists waved in the air. One was screaming like pins were sticking it.
“Ah,” sighed Daddy, kissing my cheek and hugging me close, “God has been good to me, sending me another son and daughter as perfect as my first pair.”
I thought I would hate them both, especially the loudmouthed one named Carrie, who wailed and bellowed ten times louder than the quiet one named Cory. It was nearly impossible to get a full night’s rest with the two of them across the hall from my room. And yet, as they began to grow and smile, and their eyes lit up when I came in and lifted them, something warm and motherly replaced the green in my eyes. The first thing you knew, I was racing home to see them; to play with them; to change diapers and hold nursing bottles, and burp them on my shoulder. They were more fun than dolls.
I soon learned that parents have room in their hearts for more than two children, and I had room in my heart to love them, too—even Carrie, who was just as pretty as me, and maybe more so. They grew so quickly, like weeds, said Daddy, though Momma would often look at them with anxiety, for she said they were not growing as rapidly as Christopher and I had grown. This was laid before her doctor, who quickly assured her that often twins were smaller than single births.
“See,” said Christopher, “doctors do know everything.”
Daddy looked up from the newspaper he was reading and smiled. “That’s my son the doctor talking—but nobody knows everything, Chris.”
Daddy was the only one who called my older brother Chris.
We had a funny surname, the very devil to learn to spell. Dollanganger. Just because we were all blond, flaxon haired, with fair complexions (except Daddy, with his perpetual tan), Jim Johnston, Daddy’s best friend, pinned on us a nickname, “The Dresden dolls.” He said we looked like those fancy porcelain people who grace whatnot shelves and fireplace mantels. Soon everyone in our neighborhood was calling us the Dresden dolls; certainly it was easier to say than Dollanganger.
When the twins were four, and Christopher was fourteen, and I had just turned twelve, there came a very special Friday. It was Daddy’s thirty-sixth birthday and we were having a surprise party for him. Momma looked like a fairy-tale princess with her freshly washed and set hair. Her nails gleamed with pearly polish, her long formal gown was of softest aqua color, and her knotted string of pearls swayed as she glided from here to there, setting the table in the dining room so it would look perfect for Daddy’s birthday party. His many gifts were piled high on the buffet. It was going to be a small, intimate party, just for our family and our closest friends.
“Cathy,” said Momma, throwing me a quick look, “would you mind bathing the twins again for me? I gave them both baths before their naps, but as soon as they were up, they took off for the sandbox, and now they need another bath.”
I didn’t mind. She looked far too fancy to give two dirty four-year-olds splashy baths that would ruin her hair, her nails, and her lovely dress.
“And when you finish with them, both you and Christopher jump in the tub and bathe, too, and put on that pretty new pink dress, Cathy, and curl your hair. And, Christopher, no blue jeans, please. I want you to put on a dress shirt and a tie, and wear that light blue sports jacket with your cream-colored trousers.”
“Aw, heck, Momma, I hate dressing up,” he complained, scuffing his sneakers and scowling.
“Do as I say, Christopher, for your father. You know he does a lot for you; the least you can do is make him proud of his family.”
He grouched off, leaving me to run out to the back garden and fetch the twins, who immediately began to wail. “One bath a day is enough!” screamed Carrie. “We’re already clean! Stop! We don’t like soap! We don’t like hair washings! Don’t you do that to us again, Cathy, or we’ll tell Momma!”
“Hah!” I said. “Who do you think sent me out here to clean up two filthy little monsters? Good golly, how can the two of you get so dirty so quickly?”
As soon as their naked skins hit the warm water, and the little yellow rubber ducks and rubber boats began to float, and they could splash all over me, they were content enough to be bathed, shampooed, and dressed in their very best clothes. For, after all, they were going to a party—and, after all, this was Friday, and Daddy was coming home.
First I dressed Cory in a pretty little white suit with short pants. Strangely enough, he was more apt to keep himself clean than his twin. Try as I would, I couldn’t tame down that stubborn cowlick of his. It curled over to the right, like a cute pig’s tail, and—would you believe it?—Carrie wanted her hair to do the same thing!
When I had them both dressed, and looking like dolls come alive, I turned the twins over to Christopher with stern warnings to keep an ever observant eye on them. Now it was my turn to dress up.
The twins wailed and complained while I hurriedly took a bath, washed my hair, and rolled it up on fat curlers. I peeked around the bathroom door to see Christopher trying his best to entertain them by reading to them from Mother Goose.
“Hey,” said Christopher when I came out wearing my pink dress with the fluted ruffles, “you don’t look half-bad.”
“Half-bad? Is that the best you can manage?”
“Best I can for a sister.” He glanced at his watch, slammed the picture book closed, seized the twins by their dimpled hands and cried out, “Daddy will be here any minute—hurry, Cathy!”
* * *
Five o’clock came and went, and though we waited and waited, we didn’t see our father’s green Cadillac turn into our curving drive. The invited guests sat around and tried to keep up a cheerful conversation, as Momma got up and began to pace around nervously. Usually Daddy flung open the door at four, and sometimes even sooner.
Seven o’clock, and still we were waiting.
The wonderful meal Momma had spent so much ti
me preparing was drying out from being too long in the warming oven. Seven was the time we usually put the twins to bed, and they were growing hungry, sleepy and cross, demanding every second, “When is Daddy coming?”
Their white clothes didn’t look so virgin now. Carrie’s smoothly waved hair began to curl up and look windblown. Cory’s nose began to run, and repeatedly he wiped it on the back of his hand until I hurried over with a Kleenex to clean off his upper lip.
“Well, Corinne,” joked Jim Johnston, “I guess Chris has found himself another super-broad.”
His wife threw him an angry look for saying something so tasteless.
My stomach was growling, and I was beginning to feel as worried as Momma looked. She kept pacing back and forth, going to the wide picture window and staring out.
“Oh!” I cried, having caught sight of a car turning into our tree lined driveway, “maybe that’s Daddy coming now!”
But the car that drew to a stop before our front door was white, not green. And on the top was one of those spinning red lights. An emblem on the side of that white car read STATE POLICE.
Momma smothered a cry when two policemen dressed in blue uniforms approached our front door and rang our doorbell.
Momma seemed frozen. Her hand hovered near her throat; her heart came up and darkened her eyes. Something wild and frightening burgeoned in my heart just from watching her reactions.
It was Jim Johnston who answered the door, and allowed the two state troopers to enter, glancing about uneasily, seeing, I’m sure, that this was an assembly gathered together for a birthday party. All they had to do was glance into the dining room and see the festive table, the balloons suspended from the chandelier, and the gifts on the buffet.
“Mrs. Christopher Garland Dollanganger?” inquired the older of the two officers as he looked from woman to woman.
Our mother nodded slightly, stiffly. I drew nearer, as did Christopher. The twins were on the floor, playing with tiny cars, and they showed little interest in the unexpected arrival of police officers.
The kindly looking uniformed man with the deep red face stepped closer to Momma. “Mrs. Dollanganger,” he began in a flat voice that sent immediate panic into my heart, “we’re terribly sorry, but there’s been an accident on Greenfield Highway.”
“Oh . . .” breathed Momma, reaching to draw both Christopher and me against her sides. I could feel her quivering all over, just as I was. My eyes were magnetized by those brass buttons; I couldn’t see anything else.
“Your husband was involved, Mrs. Dollanganger.”
A long sigh escaped from Momma’s choked throat. She swayed and would have fallen if Chris and I hadn’t been there to support her.
“We’ve already questioned motorists who witnessed the accident, and it wasn’t your husband’s fault, Mrs. Dollanganger,” that voice continued on, without emotion. “According to the accounts, which we’ve recorded, there was a motorist driving a blue Ford weaving in and out of the lefthand lane, apparently drunk, and he crashed head-on into your husband’s car. But it seems your husband must have seen the accident coming, for he swerved to avoid a head-on collision, but a piece of machinery had fallen from another car, or truck, and this kept him from completing his correct defensive driving maneuver, which would have saved his life. But as it was, your husband’s much heavier car turned over several times, and still he might have survived, but an oncoming truck, unable to stop, crashed into his car, and again the Cadillac spun over . . . and then . . . it caught on fire.”
Never had a room full of people stilled so quickly. Even the young twins looked up from their innocent play, and stared at the two troopers.
“My husband?” whispered Momma, her voice so weak it was hardly audible. “He isn’t . . . he isn’t . . . dead . . . ?”
“Ma’am,” said the red-faced officer very solemnly, “it pains me dreadfully to bring you bad news on what seems a special occasion.” He faltered and glanced around with embarrassment. “I’m terribly sorry, ma’am—everybody did what they could to get him out . . . but, well ma’am . . . he was, well, killed instantly, from what the doc says.”
Someone sitting on the sofa screamed.
Momma didn’t scream. Her eyes went bleak, dark, haunted. Despair washed the radiant color from her beautiful face; it resembled a death mask. I stared up at her, trying to tell her with my eyes that none of this could be true. Not Daddy! Not my daddy! He couldn’t be dead . . . he couldn’t be! Death was for old people, sick people . . . not for somebody as loved and needed, and young.
Yet there was my mother with her gray face, her stark eyes, her hands wringing out the invisible wet cloths, and each second I watched, her eyes sank deeper into her skull.
I began to cry.
“Ma’am, we’ve got a few things of his that were thrown out on the first impact. We saved what we could.”
“Go away!” I screamed at the officer. “Get out of here! It’s not my daddy! I know it’s not! He’s stopped by a store to buy ice cream. He’ll be coming in the door any minute! Get out of here!” I ran forward and beat on the officer’s chest. He tried to hold me off, and Christopher came up and pulled me away.
“Please,” said the trooper, “won’t someone please help this child?”
My mother’s arms encircled my shoulders and drew me close to her side. People were murmuring in shocked voices, and whispering, and the food in the warming oven was beginning to smell burned.
I waited for someone to come up and take my hand and say that God didn’t ever take the life of a man like my father, yet no one came near me. Only Christopher came to put his arm about my waist, so we three were in a huddle,—Momma, Christopher, and me.
It was Christopher who finally found a voice to speak and such a strange, husky voice: “Are you positive it was our father? If the green Cadillac caught on fire, then the man inside must have been badly burned, so it could have been someone else, not Daddy.”
Deep, rasping sobs tore from Momma’s throat, though not a tear fell from her eyes. She believed! She believed those two men were speaking the truth!
The guests who had come so prettily dressed to attend a birthday party swarmed about us now and said those consoling things people say when there just aren’t any right words.
“We’re so sorry, Corinne, really shocked . . . it’s terrible . . . .”
“What an awful thing to happen to Chris.”
“Our days are numbered . . . that’s the way it is, from the day we’re born, our days are numbered.”
It went on and on, and slowly, like water into concrete, it sank in. Daddy was really dead. We were never going to see him alive again. We’d only see him in a coffin, laid out in a box that would end up in the ground, with a marble headstone that bore his name and his day of birth and his day of death. Numbered the same, but for the year.
I looked around, to see what was happening to the twins, who shouldn’t have been feeling what I was. Someone kind had taken them into the kitchen and was preparing them a light meal before they were tucked into bed. My eyes met Christopher’s. He seemed as caught in this nightmare as I was, his young face pale and shocked; a hollow look of grief shadowed his eyes and made them dark.
One of the state troopers had gone out to his car, and now he came back with a bundle of things which he carefully spread out on the coffee table. I stood frozen, watching the display of all the things Daddy kept in his pockets: a lizard-skinned wallet Momma had given him as a Christmas gift; his leather notepad and date book; his wristwatch; his wedding band. Everything was blackened and charred by smoke and fire.
Last came the soft pastel animals meant for Cory and Carrie, all found, so the red-faced trooper said, scattered on the highway. A plushy blue elephant with pink velvet ears, and a purple pony with a red saddle and golden reins—oh, that just had to be for Carrie. Then the saddest articles of all—Daddy’s clothes, which had burst the confines of his suitcases when the trunk lock sprang.
I knew thos
e suits, those shirts, ties, socks. There was the same tie I had given him on his last birthday.
“Someone will have to identify the body,” said the trooper.
Now I knew positively. It was real, our father would never come home without presents for all of us—even on his own birthday.
I ran from that room! Ran from all the things spread out that tore my heart and made me ache worse than any pain I had yet experienced. I ran out of the house and into the back garden, and there I beat my fists upon an old maple tree. I beat my fists until they ached and blood began to come from the many small cuts; then I flung myself down on the grass and cried—cried ten oceans of tears, for Daddy who should be alive. I cried for us, who would have to go on living without him. And the twins, they hadn’t even had the chance to know how wonderful he was—or had been. And when my tears were over, and my eyes swollen and red, and hurt from the rubbing, I heard soft footsteps coming to me—my mother.
She sat down on the grass beside me and took my hand in hers. A quarter-horned moon was out, and millions of stars, and the breezes were sweet with the newborn fragrances of spring. “Cathy,” she said eventually when the silence between us stretched so long it might never come to an end, “your father is up in heaven looking down on you, and you know he would want you to be brave.”
“He’s not dead, Momma!” I denied vehemently.
“You’ve been out in this yard a long time; perhaps you don’t realize it’s ten o’clock. Someone had to identify your father’s body, and though Jim Johnston offered to do this, and spare me the pain, I had to see for myself. For, you see, I found it hard to believe too. Your father is dead, Cathy. Christopher is on his bed crying, and the twins are asleep; they don’t fully realize what ‘dead’ means.”
She put her arms around me, and cradled my head down on her shoulder.
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 2
