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!

by Andrews, V. C.

  Long after Julian returned to bed I sat by the windows and contemplated myself, my eyes fixed on the long shiverlets of ice striking the glass. The weather was only telling me what lay ahead. Spring was back there in the garden with Paul . . . and I’d done it myself. I didn’t have to believe Amanda. God help me if I turned out to be like Momma inside, as well as out!

  Our weeks in London were busy, exciting and exhausting—but I dreaded the time when we returned to New York. How long could I keep putting off telling Paul? Not forever. Sooner or later he had to know.

  Shortly before the first day of spring, we flew back to Clairmont, and we taxied to Paul’s house. It was the place of our deliverance, and it seemed nothing there had changed. Only I had, for I was coming to devastate a man who didn’t need to be hurt again.

  I stared at the boxwoods neatly clipped into cones and spheres, and the wisteria trees that were blooming; azaleas rioted colorfully everywhere, and the big magnolias were ripe and soon to flower, and over everything emerald draped the dangling gray Spanish moss, misting and fogging, to create shreds of living lace. I sighed. If at twilight there was anything more beautiful and somehow romantically, sadly mystical than a live oak dripping with Spanish moss that would in the end kill its host, I’d yet to see it. Love that clung and killed.

  I thought I could take Julian inside, then tell Paul our news—but I couldn’t. “Would you mind waiting on the veranda until I tell Paul?” I asked. For some reason he only nodded. I’d expected an argument. Agreeably, for a change, he sat in a white wicker rocker, the same one Paul had been in when first we found him dozing on that Sunday afternoon, after the bus put us off. He’d been forty then. He was now forty-three.

  Quivering a little, I went on alone to open the front door with my own key. I could have telephoned or sent a cable. But I had to see his face and watch his eyes, and try to read his thoughts. I needed to know if I’d really injured his heart, or only wounded his pride and ego.

  No one heard me open the door. No one heard my footsteps on the hard parquet of the foyer. Paul was sprawled in his favorite chair before the color television and the fireplace, dozing. His long legs were stretched to rest on the matching ottoman, his ankles crossed and his shoes off. Carrie was sitting cross-legged on the floor near his chair, as needing as always to be near someone who loved her. She was deeply engrossed in her play with the small porcelain dolls. She wore a white sweater banded at the neck and wrists with purple, and over this her red corduroy jumper. She looked like a pretty little doll.

  My eyes went again to Paul. In his light dozing sleep he had the expression of someone anxiously waiting. Even his feet moved often to cross and uncross, while his fingers flexed into fists, then unflexed. His head was thrown back to rest on the high back of his chair, but that too kept moving from side to side . . . dreaming, I thought, maybe of me. Then his face turned in my direction. Did he sense my presence even in his sleep?

  Ever so slowly his eyelids fluttered open. He yawned and lifted a hand to cover his mouth . . . then stared at me fuzzily. As if I were merely an apparition. “Catherine,” he murmured, “is that you?”

  Carrie heard his question, jumped up and came flying to me, crying out my name as I caught her and swung her high. I lavished on her small face a dozen or so kisses, and hugged her so tight she cried out, “Ouch, that hurts!” She looked so pretty, so fresh and well fed. “Oh, Cathy, why did you stay away so long? We wait every day for you to come home, and you never do. We make plans for your wedding, but when you don’t write, Dr. Paul says we should wait. Why did you send only postcards? Didn’t you have time to write long letters? Chris said you must be awfully busy.” She had pulled out of my arms and was back on the floor near Paul’s chair, and staring at me reproachfully. “Cathy . . . you forgot all about us, didn’t you? All you care about is dancing. You don’t need no family when you dance.”

  “Yes, I do need a family, Carrie,” I said absently, with my eyes fixed on Paul, trying to read what he was thinking.

  Paul got up and came toward me, his eyes locked with mine. We embraced and Carrie sat quietly on the floor and watched, as if studying the way a woman should act with the man she loved. His lips only brushed over mine. Yet his touch shivered me as Julian’s never did. “You look different,” he said to me in his slow, soft way. “You’ve lost weight. You look tired too. Why didn’t you telephone or telegraph to let me know you were on the way? I would have met you at the airport.”

  “You look thinner too,” I said in a hoarse whisper. His weight loss was far more becoming than mine. His mustache seemed darker, thicker. I touched it tentatively, longingly, knowing it wasn’t mine to feel now—and he had grown it just to please me.

  “It hurt when you stopped writing to me every day. Did you stop when your schedule became too crowded?”

  “Something like that. It’s tiring to dance every day, and try to see as much as possible at the same time. . . . I got so busy, I never had enough time.”

  “I subscribe to Variety now.”

  “Oh . . .” was all I could say, praying they didn’t write about my marriage to Julian. “I’ve nominated myself as your clipping service, though Chris is keeping a scrapbook too. Whenever he’s home, we compare clippings; if one of us has something the other doesn’t, we have it photocopied.” He paused as if puzzled by my expression, my demeanor, something. “They are all rave reviews, Catherine, why do you look so . . . so . . . emotionless?”

  “Tired, like you said.” I hung my head not knowing what to say, or how to meet his eyes. “And how’ve you been?”

  “Catherine, is something the matter? You act strange.” Carrie was staring at me . . . as if Paul had expressed her thoughts too. I gazed around the big room filled with the beauty of all that Paul had collected. Sunlight through the ivory sheers shone on the miniatures in his tall étagère with the glass shelves, the black, gold-veined mirror behind them, and lit from the top and bottom. How easy to hide away in looking around, pretending everything was all right, when everything was all wrong.

  “Catherine, speak to me!” Paul cried. “There is something wrong!”

  I sat down, knees weak, my throat tight. Why couldn’t I ever do anything right? How could he have lied to me, deceived me, when he knew I’d had enough of lying and deceit? And how could he look so trustworthy still?

  “When will Chris be home?”

  “Friday, for Easter vacation.” His long look was reflective, as if he thought it strange when usually Chris and I kept in constant communication. Then there was Henny to greet and hug and kiss . . . and I could put it off no longer . . . though I found a way. “Paul, I brought Julian home with me. . . . He’s out on the veranda waiting. Is that all right?”

  He gave me the strangest look, and then nodded. “Of course. Ask him in.” Then he turned to Henny. “Set two more places, Henny.”

  Julian came in, and, as I’d cautioned him, he didn’t say a word to let anyone know we were married. Both of us had taken off our wedding rings and had them in our pockets. It was the strangest of quiet meals, and even when Julian and I handed out the gifts the stiffness grew, and Carrie only glanced at her bracelet of rubies and amethysts, though Henny beamed a broad smile when she put on her solid gold bracelet.

  “Thank you for the lovely figurine of yourself, Cathy,” said Paul, putting it carefully aside on the closest table. “Julian, would you please excuse Cathy and me for a while? I’d like to have a private talk with her.” He said this as a doctor requesting a private interview with the responsible family member of a critically ill patient. Julian nodded and smiled at Carrie. She glared back at him.

  “I’m going to bed,” stated Carrie defiantly. “Good night, Mr. Marquet. I don’t know why you had to help Cathy buy me that bracelet, but thank you anyway.”

  Julian was left in the living room to stare at the TV as Paul and I took off for a stroll in his magnificent gardens. Already his fruit trees were in bloom, and climbing red, pink and white roses
made a brilliant display on the white trellises.

  “What’s wrong, Catherine?” Paul asked. “You come home to me and bring along another man, so maybe you don’t have to explain at all. I can guess.”

  Quickly I put out my hand to seize hold of his. “Stop! Don’t say anything!” Falteringly and very slowly I began to tell him about his sister’s visit. I told him I knew now that Julia was still alive, and though I could understand his motivation, he should have told me the truth. “Why did you lead me to believe she was dead, Paul? Did you think me such a child I couldn’t bear to hear it? I could have understood if you had told me. I loved you, don’t you ever doubt that I did! I didn’t give to you because I thought I owed you anything. I gave because I wanted to give, because I desperately needed you. I knew better than to expect marriage, and I was happy enough in the relationship we had. I would have been your mistress forever—but you should have told me about Julia! You should have known me well enough to realize I’m impulsive, I act without thought when I’m hurt—and it hurt terribly that night Amanda came and told me your wife was still alive!

  “Lies!” I cried. “Oh, how I hate liars! You of all people to lie to me! Besides Chris, there was no one I trusted more than you.”

  He’d stopped strolling, as I had. The nude marble statues were all around, mocking us. Laughing at love gone awry. For now we were like them, frozen and cold.

  “Amanda,” he said, rolling her name on his tongue as something bitter and fit to be spit out. “Amanda and her half-truths. You ask why—why didn’t you ask why before you flew to London? Why didn’t you give me the chance to defend myself?”

  “How can you defend lies!” I bit back meanly, wanting him to hurt as I’d hurt that night when Amanda slammed out of the theater.

  He walked away to lean against the oldest oak, and from his pocket he drew a pack of cigarettes.

  “Paul, I’m sorry. Tell me now what your defense would have been.”

  Slowly he puffed on the cigarette, and exhaled smoke. That smoke came my way and weaved around my head, neck, body—and chased off the scent of roses. “Remember when you came,” he began, taking his time, “you were so bitter from your loss of Cory, to say nothing of how you felt about your mother. How could I tell you my own sordid story when already you’d known too much pain? How was I to know you and I would become lovers? You seemed to me only a beautiful, haunted child—though you’ve touched me deeply—always you’ve touched me. You touch me now, standing there with your accusing eyes. Though you are right. I should have told you.” He sighed heavily.

  “I told you about the day Scotty was three, and how Julia took him down to the river and held him under the water until he was dead. But what I didn’t tell you was she lived on. . . . A whole team of doctors worked on her for hours on end trying to bring her out of the coma, but she never came out.”

  “Coma,” I whispered. “She’s alive now, and still in the same coma?”

  He smiled so bitterly, and then looked up at the moon that was smiling too, sarcastically, I thought. He turned his head and allowed his eyes to meet with mine. “Yes, Julia lived on, with her heart beating, and before you came along with your brother and sister I drove every day to visit her in a private institution. I’d sit beside her bed, hold her hand, and force myself to look at her gaunt face and skeleton body. . . . It was the best way I had to torment myself and try to wash away the guilt I felt. I watched her hair become thinner each day—the pillows, covers, everything covered by her hair as she withered away before my very eyes. She was connected to tubes that helped her to breathe, and a tube was in her arm through which she was fed. Her brain waves were flat, but her heart kept on beating. Mentally she was dead, physically she was alive. If she ever came out of the coma, she’d never speak, move, or even be able to think. She’d have been a living dead woman at the age of twenty-six. That’s how old she was when she took my son down to the river to hold him under the shallow water. It was hard for me to believe a woman who loved her child so much could drown him and feel his struggles to live . . . and yet she did it just to get back at me.” He paused, flicked the ash from his cigarette and turned his shadowed eyes to me. “Julia reminds me of your mother. . . . Both could do anything when they felt justified.”

  I sighed, he sighed, and the wind and flowers sighed too. I think those marble statues sighed along as well, in their lack of understanding the human condition. “Paul, when did you see Julia last? Doesn’t she have any chance at all for a full recovery?” I began to cry.

  He gathered me in his arms and kissed the top of my head. “Don’t cry for her, my beautiful Catherine. It’s all over for Julia now; she is finally at peace. The year we became lovers, she died less than a month after we started. Quietly she just slipped away. I remember at the time you looked at me as if you sensed something was wrong. It wasn’t that I felt less for you that made me stand back and look at myself. It was a blend of painful guilt and sorrow that someone as sweet and lovely as Julia, my childhood sweetheart, had to leave life without once experiencing all the wonderful, beautiful things it had to give.” He cupped my face between his palms, and tenderly kissed away my tears. “Now smile and say the words I see in your eyes, say you love me. When you brought Julian home with you, I thought it was over between us, but now I can tell it will never be over. You’ve given me the best you have within you, and I’ll know that even when you’re off thousands of miles, dancing with younger and handsomer men . . . you’ll be faithful to me, as I’ll be faithful to you. We’ll make it work, because two people who are sincerely in love can always overcome obstacles no matter what they are.”

  Oh . . . how could I tell him now? “Julia’s dead?” I asked, quivering, deep in shock, hating myself and Amanda! “Amanda lied to me. . . . She knew Julia was dead, and yet she flew to New York to tell me a lie? Paul, what kind of woman is she?”

  He held me so tight I felt my ribs ache, but I clung just as fast to him, knowing this was the last time I could. I kissed him wild and passionately, knowing I’d never feel his lips again on mine. He laughed jubilantly, sensing all the love and passion I had for him, and in a happy, lighter voice he said, “Yes, my sister knew when Julia died; she was at her funeral. Though she didn’t speak to me. Now please stop crying. Let me dry your tears.” He used his handkerchief to touch to my cheeks and the corners of my eyes, then held it so I could blow my nose.

  I’d acted the child, the impulsive, impatient child Chris had warned me not to be—and I had betrayed Paul who trusted me. “I still don’t understand Amanda,” I said in a mournful wail, still putting off that moment of truth I didn’t know if I could face. He held me and stroked my back, my hair, as I clung with my arms about his waist, staring up into his face.

  “Sweetheart, Catherine, why do you look and act so strange?” he said in his voice that had gone back to normal. “Nothing my sister said should rob us of taking what joy we can from life. Amanda wants to drive me out of Clairmont. She wants to take over this house so she can leave it to her son, so she does her best to ruin my reputation. She’s very active socially and fills the ears of her friends with lies about me. And if there were women before Julia drowned my son, that was lesson enough for me to change my ways. There was no other woman until you! I’ve even heard it rumored that Amanda has spread it about that I made you pregnant and your D & C was actually an abortion. You see what a spiteful woman can do—anything!”

  Now it was too late, too late. He asked me again to stop crying. “Amanda,” I said stiffly, my control about to break. “She said that D & C was the same as an abortion. She said you kept the embryo, one with two heads. I’ve seen that thing in your office in a bottle. Paul, how could you keep it? Why didn’t you have it buried? A monster baby! It isn’t fair—it isn’t—why, why?”

  He groaned and wiped his hand over his eyes, to quickly deny everything. “I could kill her for telling you that! A lie, Catherine, all a lie!”

  “Was it a lie? It could have been min
e, you know that. For God’s sake, Chris doesn’t know—he didn’t lie to me too, did he?”

  He sounded frantic as he denied everything, and sought once more to embrace me, but I jumped backward, and thrust forth both arms to ward him off. “There is a bottle in your office with a baby like that inside! I saw it! Paul, how could you? You, of all people, to save something like that!”

  “No!” he flared immediately. “That thing was given to me years ago when I was in med school—a joke, really—med students play all sorts of jokes you’d find gruesome, and I’m telling you the truth, Catherine, you didn’t abort.” Then he stopped abruptly, just as I did, with my thoughts reeling. I’d betrayed myself!

  I began to cry. Chris, Chris, there was a baby, there was a monster just like we feared.

  “No,” said Paul again and again, “it’s not yours, and even if it were, it wouldn’t make any difference to me. I know you and Chris love each other in a special way. I’ve always known it, and I do understand.”

  “Once,” I whispered through my sobs, “only once on one terrible night.”

  “I’m sorry it was terrible.”

  I stared up at him then, marveling that he could look at me with so much softness and so much respect, even knowing the full truth. “Paul,” I asked tremulously, timidly, “was it an unforgivable sin?”

  “No . . . an understandable act of love, I’d call it.”

  He held me, he kissed me, he stroked my back and began telling me his plans for our wedding. “. . . and Chris will give you away, and Carrie will be your bridesmaid. Chris was very hesitant and wouldn’t meet my eyes when I discussed this with him. He said he thought you weren’t mature enough to handle a complicated marriage like ours will be. I know it’s not going to be easy for you, or for me. You’ll be touring the world, dancing with young, handsome men. However, I’m looking forward to accompanying you on a few of those tours. To be the husband of a prima ballerina will be inspiring, exciting. Why, I could even be your company doctor. Surely dancers need doctors on occasion?”