She scowled and pivoted about and left us. It was another few days before she snapped at Chris, without looking his way, and keeping her back turned, “Repeat to me a quote from the Book of Job. And do not try to fool me into believing you read the Bible when you do not!”
Chris seemed well prepared and confidant “Job, 28:12.—But where shall wisdom be found? And where is the place of understanding? Job 28:28,—Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom; and to depart from evil is understanding. Job, 31:35—My desire is that the Almighty would answer me, and that mine adversity had written a book. Job, 32:9—Great men are not always wise.” And he would have gone on and on endlessly, but anger colored the grandmother’s face. Never again did she ask Chris to quote from the Bible. She eventually stopped asking me also, for I, too, could always come up with some stinging quote.
Around six o’clock each evening Momma would show up, breathless, always in a great hurry. She came loaded down with gifts, new things for us to do, new books to read, more games to play. Then she’d dash off to bathe and dress in her suite of rooms for a formal dinner downstairs, where a butler and a maid waited on the table, and it seemed, from what she breathlessly explained, that often guests dined with them. “A great deal of business is done over lunch and dinner tables,” we were informed.
The best times were when she sneaked up fancy little canapés, and tasty hors d’oeuvres, but she never brought us candy to rot our teeth.
Only on Saturdays and Sundays could she spend more than a few moments with us, and sit down at our small table to eat lunch. Once she patted her stomach. “Look how fat I’m becoming, eating lunch with my father, then saying I want to nap, so I can come up and eat again with my children.”
Meals with Momma were wonderful, because it reminded me of the old days when we were living with Daddy.
One Sunday Momma came in, smelling fresh from outside, bringing a quart of vanilla ice cream and a chocolate cake from a bakery. The ice cream had melted almost to soup, but still we ate it. We begged her to stay all night, to sleep between Carrie and me, so we could wake up in the morning and we could see her there. But she took a long look around the cluttered bedroom, and shook her head. “I’m sorry, I can’t, I really can’t. You see, the maids would wonder why my bed wasn’t used. And three in a bed would be too crowded.”
“Momma,” I asked, “how much longer? We’ve been here two weeks—it seems like two years. Hasn’t the grandfather forgiven you yet for marrying Daddy? Have you told him about us yet?”
“My father has given me one of his cars to drive,” she said with what I considered evasiveness. “And I believe he is going to forgive me, or else he wouldn’t be letting me use his car, or sleep under his roof, or eat his food. But no, I haven’t had the nerve to tell him yet that I have four children hidden away. I have to time this very carefully, and you have to have patience.”
“What would he do if he knew about us?” I asked, ignoring Chris, who kept frowning at me. Already he’d told me if I kept asking so many questions, Momma would stop coming to see us everyday. Then what would we do?
“God knows what he’d do,” she whispered fearfully. “Cathy, promise me you will not try to make the servants hear! He is a cruel, heartless man, and one who wields a great deal of power. Let me time carefully the moment I believe he’s ready to hear.”
She went away about seven, and soon after we retired. We went to bed early, because we got up early. And the longer you could stay asleep, the shorter were the days. We would drag our twins into the attic as soon as the hour of ten passed. Exploring the giant attic was one of the best ways to occupy our time. There were two pianos up there, uprights. Cory climbed on a round seat that twirled higher or lower, and round and round he spun. He banged on the yellow piano keys, cocked his head and listened attentively. It was out of tune, and the noise he made was so discordant it made your head ache. “Don’t sound right,” he said. “Why don’t it sound right?”
“It needs tuning,” said Chris, who tried to tune it, but when he did, the wires broke. That was the end of trying to make music on two old pianos. There were five Victrolas, each with a small, white dog that cocked its head charmingly, as if enchanted to hear the music—but only one of these machines worked well. We’d wind up this one, put on a warped old record, and listen to the weirdest music we’d ever heard!
There were stacks and stacks of Enrico Caruso records, but, unfortunately, they were not well cared for, just stacked on the floor, not even put in cardboard cartons. We sat in a semicircle to listen to him sing. Christopher and I knew he was the greatest of all male singers, and now was our chance to hear him. His voice was so high-pitched it sounded false, and we wondered what had been so great about him. But for some crazy reason, Cory loved it.
Then, slowly, slowly, the machine would wind down, and would spin Caruso’s voice into only a whine, and that’s when one of us would race like mad to crank the handle so tight he’d sing fast and funny so he sounded like Donald Duck talking jibberty-junk—and the twins would break up in laughter. Naturally. It was their kind of talk, their secret language.
Cory would spend all of his days in the attic, playing the records. But Carrie was a restless prowler, ever discontented, an incessant seeker of something better to do.
“I don’t like this big bad place!” she wailed for the zillionth time. “Take me out of this baa-aad place! Take me out now! This minute! You take me out or I’m gonna kick down the walls! I will! I can! I can, too!”
She ran to the walls to attack with small feet and flailing little fists that she managed to bruise severely before she gave up.
I felt sorry for her, and for Cory. All of us would have liked to kick down the walls and escape. With Carrie, though, it was more likely the walls would tumble down just from the crescendo trumpet of her powerful voice, like the walls of Jericho tumbling down.
Indeed, it was a relief when Carrie braved the dangers of the attic and found her own way to the stairway, and to the bedroom below, where she could play with her dolls, and her tea-cups, and her tiny stove, and her little ironing board with the iron that didn’t heat up.
For the first time, Cory and Carrie could spend a few hours separated from each other, and Chris said that was a good thing. Up in the attic was the music which charmed Cory, while Carrie would chatter on to her “things.”
Taking many baths was another way to use up excess time, and shampooing hair made it last longer—oh, we were the cleanest children alive. We napped after lunch, which lasted as long as we could stretch it. Chris and I made a contest of peeling apples so the skin came off in one long, long spiraling cord. We peeled oranges and took off every bit of white string that the twins detested. We had little boxes of cheese crackers that we counted out to divide equally into four portions.
Our most dangerous and amusing game was to mimic the grandmother—ever fearful she’d walk in and catch us draped with some filthy gray sheet from the attic, to represent her gray taffeta uniforms. Chris and I were the best at this. The twins were too afraid of her to even lift their eyes when she was in the room.
“Children!” snapped Chris while he stood by the door, holding an invisible picnic basket. “Have you been decent, honorable, proper? This room looks a terrible mess! Girl—you over there—smooth out that rumpled pillow before I crush your head in with the mere glare of my eyes!”
“Mercy, Grandmother!” I cried, falling down on my knees and crawling to her with my hands folded under my chin. “I was dead tired from scrubbing down all the walls in the attic. I had to rest.”
“Rest!” snapped the grandmother at the door, her dress about to fall off. “There is no rest for the evil, the corrupt, the unholy and the unworthy—there is only work until you are dead, and hung forever over hell’s eternal roasting fires!” Then he lifted his arms beneath the sheet in some horrible gestures that made the twins shriek from fright, and in a witch’s way, the grandmother disappeared, and only Chris was left, grinning at us
.
The first weeks were like seconds turned into hours despite all we did to entertain ourselves, and we managed to do quite a lot. It was the doubts and the fears, the hopes and expectations that kept us so in suspense, waiting, waiting—and we were no closer to being let out and taken downstairs.
Now the twins ran to me with their small cuts and bruises, and the splinters garnered from the rotten wood in the attic. I carefully plucked them out with tweezers, Chris would apply the antiseptic, and the adhesive plaster they both loved. An injured small finger was enough reason to demand cuddly-baby things, and lullabies sung as I tucked them into bed, and kissed their faces, and tickled where laughter had to be freed. Their thin little arms wrapped tightly about my neck. I was loved, very loved . . . and needed.
Our twins were more like three-year-olds than children of five. Not in the way they talked, but in the way they rubbed their eyes with small fists, and pouted when they were denied anything, and the way they had of holding their breath until they turned magenta and forced you to give them what they wanted. I was much more susceptible to this kind of ploy than Chris, who reasoned it was impossible for anyone to suffocate themselves in such a way. Still, to see them purple was a terrifying sight.
“Next time they behave like that,” he told me in private, “I want you to ignore them, even if you have to go into the bathroom and lock the door. And, believe me, they won’t die.”
That was exactly what they forced me to do—and they didn’t die. That was the last time they pulled that stunt as a way to keep from eating food they didn’t like—and they didn’t like anything, or hardly anything.
Carrie had the swayback posture of all little girls, protruding in front in a strong arc, and she adored skipping around the room, holding out her skirts so her ruffled panties showed. (Lace ruffled panties were the only kind she would wear.) And if they had little roses made of ribbons, or embroidered somewhere in front, you had to see them at least a dozen times a day, and comment on how charming she looked in her panties.
Of course, Cory wore briefs like Chris, and he was very proud of this. Somewhere, lurking in his memory, were the diapers not too long ago discarded. If he had a temperamental bladder. Carrie was the one who got diarrhea if she ate one teensy bit of any fruit but citrus. I actually hated the days when peaches and grapes were brought up to us—for dear Carrie adored green grapes without seeds, and peaches, and apples . . . and all three had the same effect. Believe me, when fruit came in the door, I blanched, knowing who would have to wash the ruffled, lacy panties unless I moved fast as lightening, running with Carrie under my arm, and plopping her down in the nick of time. Chris’s laughter would ring out when I didn’t make it—or Carrie did make it. He kept that blue vase handy, for when Cory had to go, he had to let loose immediately, and woe if a girl was in the bathroom with the door locked. More than once he had wet his short pants, and then he’d bury his face in my lap, so ashamed. (Carrie was never ashamed—my fault for being slow.)
“Cathy, when do we get to go outside?” he whispered after one accident.
“As soon as Momma says we can.”
“Why doesn’t Momma say we can?”
“There is an old man downstairs who doesn’t know we’re up here. And we have to wait until he likes Momma again, enough to accept us too.”
“Who is the old man?”
“Our grandfather.”
“Is he like the grandmother?”
“Yeah, I’m afraid he is.”
“Why don’t he like us?”
“He doesn’t like us because . . . because, well, because he hasn’t got good sense. I think he’s sick in the head, as well as in the heart.”
“Does Momma still like us?”
Now, that was a question to keep me awake at night.
* * *
More than weeks had passed when a Sunday came where Momma didn’t show up during the day. It hurt not having her with us, when we knew she had the day off from school, and we knew she was somewhere in this very house.
I lay flat on my stomach on the floor where it was cooler, reading Jude the Obscure. Chris was up in the attic searching for new reading material, and the twins were crawling around pushing tiny cars and trucks.
The day dragged on into evening before finally the door opened and Momma came gliding into our room, wearing tennis shoes, white shorts and a white top with a sailor collar trimmed in red and blue braid, and an anchor design. Her face was rosy tan from being outdoors. She looked so vibrantly healthy, so unbelievably happy, while we wilted and felt half-sick from the oppressive heat of this room.
Sailing clothes—oh I knew them—that’s what she’d been doing. I stared at her resentfully, longing for my skin to be tanned by the sun, with my legs as healthily colored as hers. Her hair was windblown, and it flattered her well, making her seem almost ten times more beautiful, earthy, sexy. And she was almost old, almost forty.
Very obviously, this afternoon had given her more pleasure than any day since our father died. And it was almost five o’clock. Dinner was served at seven downstairs. That meant she would have very little time to spend with us before she had to leave for her own rooms, where she could bathe, then change into something more suitable for the meal.
I laid aside my book and turned over to sit up. I was hurting, and I wanted to hurt her, too: “Where have you been?” I demanded in an ugly tone. What right did she have to be enjoying herself when we were locked away, and kept from doing the youthful things that were our right? I would never have a summer when I was twelve again, nor would Chris enjoy this fourteenth summer, or the twins their fifth.
The ugly, accusing tone of my voice paled her radiance. She blanched and her lips quivered, and perhaps she regretted bringing us a big wall calendar so we could know when it was Saturday or Sunday. The calendar was filled with our big red X’s to mark off our imprisoned days, our hot, lonely, suspenseful, hurting days.
She fell into a chair and crossed her lovely legs, picking up a magazine to fan herself. “I’m sorry to have kept you waiting,” she said, with a loving smile in my direction. “I wanted to stop by and visit this morning, but my father demanded all of my attention, and I’d made plans for this afternoon, though I did cut them short so I could spend some time with my children before dinner.” Though she didn’t look sweaty, she raised a sleeveless arm and fanned her armpit as though this room was more than she could bear. “I’ve been sailing, Cathy,” she said. “My brothers taught me how to sail when I was nine, and then when your father came here to live, I taught him how. We used to spend a lot of time on the lake. Sailing is almost like flying . . . wonderful fun,” she ended lamely, realizing her fun had stolen our fun.
“Sailing?” I just about screamed. “Why weren’t you downstairs telling the grandfather about us? How long do you intend to keep us locked up here? Forever?”
Her blue eyes skipped nervously about the room; she appeared on the verge of getting up from the chair we seldom used, for we saved it especially for her—her throne. Maybe she would have gone then and there if Chris hadn’t come down from the attic with his arms loaded down with encyclopedias so old they didn’t include television or jet planes.
“Cathy, don’t shout at our mother,” he scolded. “Hi, Mom. Boy, do you look great! I love that sailing outfit you’ve got on.” He put down his load of books on the dressing table he used for a desk, then strolled over to put his arms around her. I felt betrayed, not only by Momma, but by my brother. The summer was almost over, and we hadn’t done anything, been on a picnic or had a swim, or walked in the woods, even seen a boat or put on a bathing suit to wade in a backyard pool.
“Momma!” I cried out, jumping to my feet, and ready to do battle for our freedom. “I think it’s time you told your father about us! I’m sick of living in this one room, and playing in the attic! I want our twins out in the fresh air and sunshine, and I want out, too! I want to go sailing! If the grandfather has forgiven you for marrying Daddy, then why can�
�t he accept us? Are we so ugly, so terrible, so stupid he’d be ashamed to claim us as his blood kin?”
She shoved Chris away from her, then sank weakly down into the chair she’d just abandoned, leaned forward, and bowed her face down into her hands. Intuitively, I guessed she was going to reveal some truth she’d previously held back. I called to Cory and Carrie and told them to sit close at my sides so I could put my arm about each. And Chris, though I thought he would stay close by Momma’s side, came over to sit on the bed next to Cory. We were again, as we’d been before, small fledgling birds sitting on a clothesline waiting for a strong gust of wind to blow us asunder.
“Cathy, Christopher,” she began, her head still bowed, though her hands were in her lap nervously working, “I haven’t been completely honest with you.”
As if I hadn’t guessed that already.
“Will you be staying for dinner with us tonight?” I asked, for some reason wanting to put off the full truth.
“Thank you for asking me. I’d like to stay, but I’ve made other plans for this evening.”
And this was our day, our time to be with her until dark. And yesterday she’d spent only half an hour with us.
“The letter,” she murmured, and her head lifted and shadows darkened the blue of her eyes into green, “the letter my mother wrote when we were still in Gladstone. That letter invited us to live here. I didn’t tell you that my father wrote a short note on the bottom.”
“Yes, Momma, go on,” I urged. “Whatever you have to tell us, we can take it.”
Our mother was a poised woman, cool and self-possessed. But there was one thing she could never control, and that was her hands. Always they betrayed her emotions. One willful, capricious hand rose to flutter near her throat, fingering there, seeking some string of pearls to twist and untwist, and since she wore no jewelry, her fingers just endlessly sought. The fingers on the hand she kept in her lap restlessly rasped together, as if to cleanse themselves.
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 12
