We must have looked like visitors from another planet in our ill-fitting bulky clothes, our sneakers, our clumsily cut hair, and our pale faces. But no one really stared as I feared they would. We were accepted as just a part of the human race, and no odder than most. It felt good to be back in crowds of people, each face different.
“Wonder where everyone’s going in such a hurry?” asked Chris, just when I was speculating on the same thing.
We stopped on a corner, undecided. Cory was supposed to be buried not far from here. Oh, so much I wanted to go and find his grave and put flowers there. On another day we’d come back with yellow roses, and we’d kneel and say prayers, whether or not it did any good. For now, we had to get far, far away and not endanger Carrie more . . . out of Virginia before we took her to a doctor.
It was then that Chris took the paper sack with the dead mouse and the powdered-sugar doughnuts from his jacket pocket. His solemn eyes met mine. Loosely he held that bag in front of me, studying my expression, asking with his eyes: An eye for an eye?
That paper sack represented so much. All our lost years, the lost education, the playmates and friends, and the days we could have known laughter instead of tears. In that bag were all our frustrations, humiliations, tons of loneliness, plus the punishments and disappointments—and, most of all, that bag represented the loss of Cory.
“We can go to the police and tell our story,” said Christopher, while he kept his eyes averted, “and the city will provide for you and Carrie, and you won’t have to run. You two might be put in foster homes, or an orphanage. As for me, I don’t know . . . .”
Chris never talked to me while he kept his eyes elsewhere unless he was hiding something—that special something that had to wait until we were outside of Foxworth Hall. “Okay, Chris. We’ve escaped, so out with it. What is it you keep holding back?”
His head bowed down as Carrie moved closer and clung to my skirt, though her eyes were wide with fascination as she watched the heavy flow of traffic, and the many people hurrying by, some who smiled at her.
“It’s Momma,” Chris said in a low voice. “Recall when she said she’d do anything to win back her father’s approval so she could inherit? I don’t know what he made her promise, but I did overhear the servants talking. Cathy, a few days before our grandfather died, he had a codicil added to his will. It states that if our mother is ever proven to have given birth to children by her first husband, she will have to forfeit everything she inherits—and return everything she’s bought with the money, including her clothes, jewels, investments—everything. And that’s not all; he even had it written in, that if she has children by her second marriage, she will lose everything too. And Momma thought he had forgiven her. He didn’t forgive, or forget. He would keep on punishing her from his grave.”
My eyes widened with shock as I added up the pieces. “You mean Momma . . . ? It was Momma, and not the grandmother?”
He shrugged, as if indifferent, when I knew he couldn’t be. “I heard that old woman praying by her bed. She’s evil, but I doubt she would put poison on the doughnuts herself. She would carry them up to us, and know we ate the sweets, when all along she warned us not to eat them.”
“But, Chris, it couldn’t have been Momma. She was on her honeymoon when the doughnuts started coming daily.”
His smile came bitter, wry. “Yeah. But nine months ago the will was read; nine months ago Momma was back. Only Momma benefits from the grandfather’s will—not our grandmother—she has her own money. She only brought up the baskets each day.”
So many questions I had to ask—but there was Carrie, clinging to me, staring up at me. I didn’t want her to know Cory had died from any but natural reasons. It was then Chris put the bag with the evidence in my hands. “It’s up to you to decide. You and your intuition were right all along—if I’d have listened, Cory would be alive today.”
There is no hate such as that born out of love betrayed—and my brain screamed out for revenge. Yes, I wanted to see Momma and the grandmother locked up in jail, put behind bars, convicted of premeditated murder—four counts, if intentions were counted, too. They’d be only gray mice in cages, shut up like us, only they’d have the benefit of being in the company of drug addicts, prostitutes, and other killers like themselves. Their clothes would be of gray prison cotton. No trips twice a week to the beauty salon for Momma, no makeup, no professional manicures—and a shower once a week. She’d even lose the privacy of her most personal body places. Oh, she’d suffer without furs to wear, and jewelry, and warm cruises in southern waters when the winter rolled around. There wouldn’t be a handsome, adoring young husband to romp with in a grand swan bed.
I stared up at the sky where God was supposed to be—could I let Him in His own ways, balance the scales and take the burden of justice from me?
I thought it cruel, unfair, that Chris should put all the burden of decision on my shoulders. Why?
Was it because he would forgive her for anything—even the death of Cory, and her efforts to kill all of us? Would he reason that such parents as hers could pressure her into doing anything—even murder? Was there enough money in the whole world to make me kill my four children?
Pictures flashed in my mind, taking me back to the days before my father died. I saw us all in the back garden, laughing and happy. I saw us at the beach, sailing, swimming, or in the mountains skiing. And I saw Momma in the kitchen doing her best to cook meals to please us all.
Yeah, surely her parents would know all the ways to kill her love for us—they’d know. Or was Chris thinking, as I was, that if we went to the police and told our story, our faces would be splashed on the front pages of every newspaper in the country? Would the glare of publicity make up for what we’d lose? Our privacy—our need to stay together? Could we lose each other just to get even?
I glanced up at the sky again.
God, He didn’t write the scripts for the puny little players down here. We wrote them ourselves—with each day we lived, each word we spoke, each thought we etched on our brains. And Momma had written her script, too. And a sorry one it was.
Once she’d had four children she considered perfect in every way. Now she had none. Once she had four children who loved her, and considered her perfect in every way—now she had none who saw her as perfect. Nor would she ever want to have others. Love for what money could buy would keep her forever faithful to that cruel codicil in her father’s will.
Momma would grow old; her husband was years younger. She’d have time to feel lonely and wish she’d done it all differently. If her arms never ached to hold me again, they’d ache for Chris, and maybe Carrie . . . and, most certainly, she’d want those babies that would be ours one day.
From this city we’d flee southward on a bus to make of ourselves somebodies. When we saw Momma again—and to be certain fate would arrange it that way—we’d look her straight in the eyes, and turn our backs.
Into the nearest green trashcan I dropped the bag, saying good-bye to Mickey, and asking him to please forgive us for what we did.
“C’mon, Cathy,” called Chris, stretching forth his hand. “What’s done is done. Say good-bye to the past, and hello to the future. And we’re wasting time, when already we’ve wasted enough. We’ve got everything ahead, waiting for us.”
Just the right words to make me feel real, alive, free! Free enough to forget thoughts of revenge. I laughed and spun about to run back to where I could put my hand in his, stretched ready and waiting. With his free arm, Chris swooped down to pick up Carrie, and he hugged her close and kissed her wan cheek. “Did you hear all of that, Carrie? We are on our way to where the flowers bloom all through the winter—in fact, flowers bloom all year long down there. Does that make you want to smile?”
A tiny smile came and went on pale lips that seemed to have forgotten how to smile. But that was enough—for now.
Epilogue
It is with relief that I end the telling of our foundation years, on
which we were to base the rest of our lives.
After we escaped Foxworth Hall, we made our way, and managed, somehow, to always keep striving toward our goals.
Our lives were always to be tempestuous, but it taught both Chris and me that we were survivors. For Carrie, it was far different. She had to be persuaded to want a life without Cory, even when she was surrounded by roses.
But how we managed to survive—that’s another story.
For Bill & Gene
Who remember when . . .
PART ONE
O’er the earth there comes a bloom;
Sunny light for sullen gloom;
Warm perfume for vapor cold—
I smell the rose above the mold!
—Thomas Hood
Free, at Last!
How young we were the day we escaped. How exuberantly alive we should have felt to be freed, at last, from such a grim, lonely and stifling place. How pitifully delighted we should have been to be riding on a bus that rumbled slowly southward. But if we felt joy, we didn’t show it. We sat, all three, pale, silent, staring out the windows, very frightened by all we saw.
Free. Was ever a word more wonderful than that one? No, even though the cold and bony hands of death would reach out and drag us back, if God wasn’t up there somewhere, or maybe down here on the bus, riding with us and looking out for us. At some time in our life we had to believe in someone.
The hours passed with the miles. Our nerves grew frazzled because the bus stopped often to pick up and let off passengers. It stopped for rest breaks, for breakfast, then to pick up a single huge black lady who stood alone where a dirt road met the concrete interstate. It took her forever to pull herself onto the bus, then lug inside the many bundles she carried with her. Just as she was finally seated, we passed over the state line between Virginia and North Carolina.
Oh! The relief to be gone from that state of our imprisonment! For the first time in years, I began to relax—a little.
We three were the youngest on the bus. Chris was seventeen years old and strikingly handsome with long, waving blond hair that just touched his shoulders, then curled upward. His darkly fringed blue eyes rivaled the color of a summer sky, and he was in personality like a warm sunny day—he put on a brave face despite the bleakness of our situation. His straight and finely shaped nose had just taken on the strength and maturity that promised to make him all that our father had been—the type of man to make every woman’s heart flutter when he looked her way, or even when he didn’t. His expression was confident; he almost looked happy. If he hadn’t looked at Carrie he might have even been happy. But when he saw her sickly, pale face, he frowned and worry darkened his eyes. He began to pluck on the strings of the guitar strapped to his shoulder. Chris played “Oh Susannah,” singing softly in a sweet melancholy voice that touched my heart. We looked at each other and felt sad with the memories the tune brought back. Like one we were, he and I. I couldn’t bear to look at him for too long, for fear I would cry.
Curled up on my lap was my younger sister. She didn’t look older than three, but she was eight years old and small, so pitifully small, and weak. In her large, shadowed blue eyes lingered more dark secrets and sufferings than a child her age should know. Carrie’s eyes were old, very, very old. She expected nothing: no happiness, no love, nothing—for all that had been wonderful in her life had been taken from her. Weakened by apathy, she seemed willing to pass from life into death. It hurt to see her so alone, so terribly alone now that Cory was gone.
I was fifteen. The year was 1960, and it was November. I wanted everything, needed everything, and I was so terribly afraid I’d never in all my life find enough to make up for what I had already lost. I sat tense, ready to scream if one more bad thing happened. Like a coiled fuse attached to a time bomb, I knew that sooner or later I would explode and bring down all those who lived in Foxworth Hall!
Chris laid his hand on mine, as if he could read my mind and knew I was already thinking about how I would bring hell to those who had tried to destroy us.
He said in a low voice, “Don’t look like that, Cathy. It’s going to be all right. We’ll get by.”
He was still the eternal cockeyed optimist, believing, despite everything, that whatever happened was for the best! God, how could he think so when Cory was dead? How could that possibly be for the best?
“Cathy,” he whispered, “we have to make the most of what we have left, and that is each other. We have to accept what’s happened and go on from there. We have to believe in ourselves, our talents, and if we do, we will get what we want. It works that way, Cathy, really it does. It has to!”
He wanted to be a dull, staid doctor who spent his days in small examination rooms, surrounded by human miseries. I wanted something far more fanciful—and a mountain of it! I wanted all my star-filled dreams of love and romance to be fulfilled—on the stage, where I’d be the world’s most famous prima ballerina; nothing less would do! That would show Momma!
Damn you, Momma! I hope Foxworth Hall burns to the ground! I hope you never sleep a comfortable night in that grand swan bed, never again! I hope your young husband finds a mistress younger and more beautiful than you! I hope he gives you the hell you deserve!
Carrie turned to whisper: “Cathy, I don’t feel so good. My stomach, it feels funny. . . .” I was seized by fear. Her small face seemed unnaturally pale; her hair, once so bright and shining, hung in dull, lank strings. Her voice was merely a weak whisper.
“Darling, darling.” I comforted and then kissed her. “Hang on. We’re taking you to a doctor soon. It won’t be so long before we reach Florida and there we’ll never be locked up.”
Carrie slumped in my arms as I miserably stared out at the dangling Spanish moss that indicated we were now in South Carolina. We still had to pass through Georgia. It would be a long time before we arrived in Sarasota. Violently Carrie jerked upright and began to choke and retch.
I’d judiciously stuffed my pockets with paper napkins during our last rest break, so I was able to clean up Carrie. I handed her over to Chris so I could kneel on the floor to clean up the rest. Chris slid over to the window and tried to force it open to throw out the sodden paper napkins. The window refused to budge no matter how hard he pushed and shoved. Carrie began to cry.
“Put the napkins in the crevice between the seat and the side of the bus,” whispered Chris, but that keen-eyed bus driver must have been watching through his rear-view mirror, for he bellowed out, “You kids back there—get rid of that stinking mess some other way!” What other way but to take everything from the outside pocket of Chris’s Polaroid camera case, which I was using as a purse, and stuff the smelly napkins in there.
“I’m sorry,” sobbed Carrie as she clung desperately to Chris. “I didn’t mean to do it. Will they put us in jail now?”
“No, of course not,” said Chris in his fatherly way. “In less than two hours we’ll be in Florida. Just try to hang on until then. If we get off now we’ll lose the money we’ve paid for our tickets, and we don’t have much money to waste.”
Carrie began to whimper and tremble. I felt her forehead and it was clammy, and now her face wasn’t just pale, but white! Like Cory’s before he had died.
I prayed that just once God would have some mercy on us. Hadn’t we endured enough? Did it have to go on and on? While I hesitated with the squeamish desire to vomit myself, Carrie let go again. I couldn’t believe she had anything left. I sagged against Chris while Carrie went limp in his arms and looked heartbreakingly near unconsciousness. “I think she’s going into shock,” whispered Chris, his face almost as pale as Carrie’s.
This was when a mean, heartless passenger really began to complain, and loudly, so the compassionate ones looked embarrassed and undecided as to what to do to help us. Chris’s eyes met mine. He asked a mute question—what were we to do next?
I was beginning to panic. Then, down the aisle, swaying from side to side as she advanced toward us, came that hug
e black woman smiling at us reassuringly. She had paper bags with her which she held for me to drop the smelly napkins in. With gestures but no words she patted my shoulder, chucked Carrie under the chin and then handed me a handful of rags taken from one of her bundles. “Thank you,” I whispered, and smiled weakly as I did a better job of cleaning myself, Carrie and Chris. She took the rags and stuffed them in the bag, then stood back as if to protect us.
Full of gratitude, I smiled at the very, very fat woman who filled the aisle with her brilliantly gowned body. She winked, then smiled back.
“Cathy,” said Chris, his expression more worried than before, “we’ve got to get Carrie to a doctor, and soon!”
“But we’ve paid our way to Sarasota!”
“I know, but this is an emergency.”
Our benefactor smiled reassuringly, then she leaned over to peer into Carrie’s face. She put her large black hand to Carrie’s clammy brow, then put her fingers to her pulse. She made some gestures with her hands which puzzled me, but Chris said, “She must not be able to talk, Cathy. Those are the signs deaf people make.” I shrugged to tell her we didn’t understand her signs. She frowned, then whipped from a dress pocket beneath a heavy red sweater she wore a pad of multicolored sheets of notepaper and very swiftly she wrote a note which she handed to me.
My name Henrietta Beech, she’d written, Can hear, but no talk. Little girl is very, very sick and need good doctor. I read this, then looked at her hoping she’d have more information. “Do you know of a good doctor?” I asked. She nodded vigorously, then quickly dashed off another green note. Your good fortune I be on your bus, and can take you to my own doctor-son, who is very best doctor.
“Good golly,” murmured Chris when I handed him the note, “we sure must be under a lucky star to have someone to direct us to such a doctor.”
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 40
