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.

  * * *

  Thank God she slapped him, and told him off. Now, now, he was getting to be like the Malcolm I knew him to be: mean, hard, ruthless, and rich.

  * * *

  “You’ll pay for this, Alicia. Both you and your son will pay, and dearly pay. Nobody rejects me after leading me on, and letting me believe—”

  * * *

  Closed the book and yawned.

  Madame M

  Another letter had come from my grandmother Marisha to announce that she was on her way to take over my mother’s ballet class. “And I’ll have the chance to see my grandson more often, and give him the benefit of my experience.”

  Mom was none too happy, since she and Madame M. did not have a close or warm relationship, and this had always bothered me. I loved them both, and wanted them to love each other.

  We were all waiting for Madame to show up, all starving because already she was an hour late. She’d telephoned to say she didn’t want anyone to meet her, as she was independent and not accustomed to being waited on. Nevertheless, Mom had helped Emma prepare a gourmet meal, and now it was growing cold.

  “Lord, but that woman can be inconsiderate,” complained Dad after looking at his watch for the tenth time. “If she had allowed me to meet her at the airport, she’d be here by now.”

  “Isn’t it strange,” asked Mom with a mocking smile, “when she always insisted that her students be punctual.”

  Finally, an hour after Dad ate alone and hurried off to do his hospital rounds, Mom retired to her bedroom to work on her book until my grandmother arrived.

  “Bart,” I called, “come on and play some game with me. Checkers?”

  “No!” he bellowed, keeping to his dark corner, his eyes black and mean as he crouched there, almost unblinking. “I’m wishing for that ole lady to fall from the sky.”

  “That’s mean, Bart. Why do you always say such hateful things?”

  He refused to answer, just sat on staring at me.

  The doorbell rang. I jumped up and ran to open the door.

  My grandmother stood there smiling and rather disheveled looking.

  She was at least seventy-four, I knew that, crinkled, old, and gray. Sometimes her hair was jet black, and sometimes it had two inches of white near the roots. Bart said it made her look like a skunk or an old black seal. He thought her hair was so slick she kept it oiled. But I thought she looked wonderful when she threw her arms about me and hugged me close, tears streaking her rouged cheeks. She didn’t even give Bart a glance.

  “Jory, Jory, how handsome you are,” she said. Her bun of hair was so huge I guessed it might be false.

  “Can I call you Grandmother when we’re not in class?”

  “Sure, yah,” she agreed, nodding like a bird. “But only when nobody else is around, you hear?”

  “There’s Bart,” I said to remind her to be polite—which she seldom was. She didn’t like Bart, and he didn’t like her. She gave Bart a brief nod, then casually dismissed him as if he didn’t exist.

  “I’m so glad to have a few moments alone with you,” Madame gushed, hugging me again. She pulled me to the family room sofa, and together we sat while Bart stayed in his dim corner. “I tell you, Jory, when you wrote and said you weren’t coming again this summer, I felt ill, really ill. I made up my mind then and there that I’d had enough of this once-a-year grandson, and I was selling my own dance studio and coming out here to help your mother. Of course I knew she wouldn’t want me, but so what? I cannot endure two long years of longing to see my only grandchild.

  “The flight here was ghastly,” she went on. “Turbulence all the way. They searched me too before I boarded, like some criminal. Then we had to circle round and round the airport, wait our turn to land. It made me sick enough to vomit. Finally, just before our plane ran out of fuel, we landed—bumpiest landing, I thought my neck would break. Great God in heaven, you should have heard what that man wanted for his rented car. He must have thought I was made of money. Since I’ve come to stay, I decided then and there I’d buy a car of my own. Not a new one, but a nice old one that Julian would have loved. Have I told you before your father loved to tinker around with old cars and fix them up so they’d run?”

  Boy had she told me that before.

  “So, I paid those crooks the exorbitant price of eight hundred dollars, and stepped into my new red car and took off for your place, reading a map as my car choked and chugged along. I felt so happy to be on my way to you, my beloved grandson, George’s only heir. Why, it was just like it used to be when your father was an adolescent, and he’d rush home so proud to take me for a spin in his new car made out of old junk he salvaged from the city dump.”

  Her sparkling jet eyes seemed young, and she won me again with her affection, her praise. “. . . and like old ladies everywhere, you have to understand once I get started thinking backward all sorts of memories are triggered. Your grandfather felt so happy the day Julian was born. I held your father in my arms and stared up at my husband who was so handsome, like Julian, like you, and I could have burst with the pride I felt to give birth at my age for the first time with so little difficulty. And such a perfect baby your father was, so wonderful from his very beginning.”

  I wanted to dare and ask how old she was when my father was born—but I didn’t have the nerve. Somehow the question must have shown in my eyes. “None of your damn business how old I am,” she snapped, then leaned to kiss me again. “My, but you are even better-looking than your father was at your age, and I didn’t think that possible. I always told Julian he would have looked better with a healthy suntan, but he’d do anything to defy me, anything—even keep himself unnaturally pale.” Sadness clouded her eyes. To my surprise she glanced then at Bart, who was listening too—and another surprise, he seemed interested.

  She still wore the same black dress that seemed stiff with age, and over that she wore a ratty old leopard-skin bolero that had seen better days. “No one really knew your father, Jory, just as no one really possessed him. That is, no one but your mother.”

  She sighed, then went on as if she had to say it all before my mother appeared. “So, I’ve determined I have to know my Julian’s son better than I knew him. I’ve decided too you have to love me, because I was never sure Julian ever did. I keep telling myself that the son born of the union between my son and your mother would have to make the most wonderful dancer, with none of Julian’s hang-ups. Your mother is very dear to me, Jory, very dear, though she refuses to believe that. I admit I used to be nasty to her sometimes. She took that as my true feeling, but I was only angry because she never seemed to appreciate my son.”

  Uncomfortable with this sort of talk, I shifted away from her; my first loyalty was to my mother, not to her. She noticed my attitude but went on regardless:

  “I’m lonely, Jory, I need to be near you, near her too.” Remorse like evening shadows came to darken her eyes, putting additional years on her face. “The worst thing about growing old is being lonely, feeling so alone, so purposeless, so used up.”

  “Oh, Grandmother!” I cried, throwing my arms about her. “You don’t need to ever feel lonely or purposeless again. You have us.” I hugged her tighter, kissed her again. “Isn’t this the most beautiful house? You can live here with us. Have I told you before my mother designed it herself?”

  Madame looked with great curiosity around the family room. “Yes, this is a lovely home, so like Catherine. Where is she?”

  “She’s in her room writing.”

  “Writing letters?” She looked hurt, as if Mom should be a better hostess and not attending to trivialities.

  “Grandmother, Mom is writing a book.”

  “A book? Dancers can’t write books!”

  Grinning, I jumped up and did a few practice steps out of habit. “Madame Grandmother, dancers can do anything they set their minds to. After all, if we can endure the kind of pain we do, what else is there to fear?”

  “Rejections,” snapped M
adame. “Dancers have sky-high egos. One rejection slip too many and Mommy will come crashing down.”

  I smiled, thinking that was a good one. She’d never come crashing down even if the mailman brought her a thousand rejection slips.

  “Where’s your father?” she asked next.

  “Making his evening rounds at his hospitals. He said to give you his apologies. He wanted to be here and welcome you to our home, but you didn’t show up on schedule.”

  She snorted, as if that were his fault somehow. “Well,” she said, getting up and looking around the room somewhat more critically, “I guess it’s time I went in and said hello to Catherine—though certainly she must have heard my voice.”

  Certainly she should have, it was shrill enough. “Mom gets very engrossed, Grandmother. Sometimes she doesn’t even hear her name spoken from a foot away.”

  “Har-rumph!” she snorted again. Then she followed me down the hall. I rapped softly on Mom’s closed door, and cautiously opened it when she mumbled something like . . . “Yes? . . .”

  “You’ve got company, Mom.”

  For a second it seemed I saw dismay in my mother’s eyes before Madame stalked arrogantly into her bedroom. Grandmother flung herself down, without an invitation to sit, on the velvet chaise longue.

  “Madame M.!” cried Mom. “How wonderful to see you again. At last you’ve decided to come and see us instead of the other way around.”

  Why was she so nervous? Why did she keep glancing at the portraits on her nightstand? Same old portraits of Dad and Daddy Paul. Even my father was there, but in a small oval frame, not wide silver ones.

  Madame glanced at the nightstand too—and frowned.

  “I have many wonderfully framed portraits of Julian,” Mom hastily explained, “but Jory likes to keep them in his room.”

  Again Madame snorted. “You’re looking well, Catherine.”

  “I’m feeling well, thank you. You look well too.” In her lap her hands worked nervously, just as her feet kept the swivel deskchair in constant motion.

  “Your husband, how is he?”

  “Fine, fine. He’s making hospital rounds. He waited for you, but when you didn’t show up . . .”

  “I understand. I’m sorry I’m late, but people in this state are robbers. I had to pay eight hundred for a piece of junk, and it dripped oil all the way here.”

  Mom ducked her head. I know she was hiding a laugh. “What else can you expect for eight hundred?” Mom finally managed.

  “Really, Catherine. Julian never paid much for any car he owned, you know that.” Her strident voice grew reflective. “But then he knew what to do with the junk and I don’t. I guess I let sentiment run away with my common sense. I should have bought the better one for a thousand, but I’m also thrifty.” Next came her question about my mother’s knee. Was it healed? How soon would she be dancing again?

  “It’s fine,” said Mom testily. (She hated for people to question her about her knee.) “I only notice a little pain when it rains.”

  “And how is Paul? It’s been so long since I saw him last. I remember after you married him I felt so angry I never wanted to see you again, and I gave up teaching for a few years.” Again she glance at the portrait of Dad. “And does your brother still live with you?”

  Silence came and burdened the air as Mom studied the smiling portrait of my stepfather Chris. What brother was she talking about? Mom didn’t have a brother anymore. Why did Madame look at Dad when she asked about Cory?

  “Yes, yes, of course,” said Mom, making me puzzled as to what she meant. “Now tell me all about Greenglenna and Clairmont. I want to hear about everybody. How is Lorraine DuVal? Whom did she marry? Or did she go on to New York?”

  “He never married, did he?” pursued Grandmother with her eyes narrowed.

  “Who?”

  “Your brother.”

  “No, he hasn’t married yet,” answered Mom, again testy. Then she was smiling. “Now, Madame, I have a big surprise for you. We have a daughter now and her name is Cindy.”

  “Hah!” snorted Madame, “I already know about Cindy.” There was a strange gleam in her eyes. “But still I would like to see and hear more about this paragon of all little girls. Jory writes she may have some dancing abilities.”

  “Oh, she does, she does! I wish you could see her in her little pink leotards trying to imitate Jory or me—I mean when I could dance.”

  “Your husband must be getting along in years by now,” Madame said, disregarding photographs Mom tried to show her of Cindy, who was already in bed for the night.

  “Did Jory tell you I’m writing a book? It’s really fascinating. I didn’t think it would be when I first started but after I mastered transitions I really surprised myself, and now writing is more fun than work. Just as satisfying as dancing.” She smiled and fluttered her hands about, plucking at lint on her blue pants, tugging down her white sweater, fiddling with her hair, shuffling papers to tidy her desk. “My room is a mess. I apologize for that. I need a study, but in this house we don’t have the room . . .”

  “Is your brother making hospital rounds too?”

  I sat there, not understanding who this brother was. Cory was dead. He’d been dead for years. Though nobody laid in his grave, nobody at all. Little headstone beside Aunt Carrie and nobody there. . . .

  “You must be hungry. Let’s go into the dining room and Emma can heat up the spaghetti. The second time around it’s always better . . .”

  “Spaghetti?” snapped Madame. “You mean you eat that kind of junk? You allow my grandson to eat starches? Years and years ago I warned you to stay away from pasta! Really, Catherine, don’t you ever learn?”

  Spaghetti was one of my favorite dishes—but we’d had leg of lamb tonight in Madame’s honor, fixed the way Momma thought she liked it best. Why had she said spaghetti? I gave my mother a hard look and saw her flustered and breathless, looking as young as Melodie, as if she were terribly afraid something might go wrong—and what could?

  Madame M. wouldn’t eat at our house, wouldn’t sleep there either, for she didn’t want to “inconvenience” us. Already she’d found a room in town, close to Mom’s dance school. “And though you haven’t asked me, Catherine, I’ll be delighted to stay on and replace you. I sold out my school the moment Jory wrote and told me of your accident.”

  Mom could only nod, looking queerly blank.

  * * *

  A few days later Madame looked around the office that had been Mom’s. “She keeps everything so neat, not like me at all. Soon I’ll have it looking like my own.”

  I loved her in an odd kind of way, the way you love winter when you’re hot in summer. And then when winter was shivering your bones, I wished it would go away. She moved so young and looked so old. When she danced she could almost make you think she was eighteen. Her black hair came and went according to which day of the week it was. I’d learned by now she used some color rinsed that was shampooed in and soon came out to darken the teeth of her white comb. I liked it best when it was white, silvery under the lights.

  “You are everything my own Julian was!” she cried, smothering me with too much gushing affection. Already she’d dismissed the young teacher Mom had hired. “But what makes you so arrogant, huh? Your momma tell you that you are sensational? Always your momma thinks the music is what counts most in the dance, and is not, is not. It is the display of the beautiful body that is the essence of ballet. I come to save you. I come to teach you how to do everything perfect. When I am done with you, you will have flawless technique.” Her shrill voice lowered an octave or two. “I come too because I am old and may soon die and I do not know my grandson at all. I come to do my duty by being not only your grandmother, but also your grandfather and your father too. Catherine was a big fool to dance when she knew her knee could fold any second—but your mother was always a big fool, so what’s new?”

  She made me furious. “Don’t you talk like that about my mother. She’s not a fool. She
’s never been a fool. She does what she feels she must—so I’ll tell you the truth and you let her be. She danced that last time because I pleaded and pleaded for her to dance at least one time with me professionally. She did it for me, Grandmother, for me, not herself!”

  Her small dark eyes turned shrewd. “Jory, take lesson number one in my philosophy course: Nobody ever does anything for anyone else unless it gives them even more.”

  Madame swept all the little mementos Mom cherished into the trashcan, like they were so much junk. Next she hauled up a huge beat-up satchel, and in minutes had the desk more cluttered with her junk than it had been before.

  Immediately I knelt to take from the trashcan all the things I knew my mother loved.

  “You don’t love me like you love her,” complained Madame in a gritty voice of self-pity that sounded weak and old. Startled at the pain in her voice, I looked up and saw her as I’d never seen her before—an old woman, lonely and pitiful, clinging desperately to the only meaningful link to life she had—me.

  Pity flooded me. “I’m glad you’re here, Grandmother, and of course I love you. Don’t ask if I love you more than anyone else, only be happy that I love you at all, as I’m happy you love me for whatever reason.” I kissed her wrinkled cheek. “We’ll get to know each other better. And I’ll be the kind of son you wanted my father to be—in some ways—so don’t cry and feel alone. My family is your family.”

  Nevertheless, tears were in her eyes, streaking her face, making her lips quiver as she clutched at me desperately. Her voice came cracked and old: “Never did Julian run to me like you just did. He didn’t like to touch or be touched. Thank you, Jory, for loving me a little.”

  Until now she’d been just a summer event in my life, flattering me with too much praise, making me feel special. Now I was uncomfortable to know she’d be here always, shadowing all our lives—perhaps.

  Everything was going wrong in our lives. Maybe I could put all the blame on that old woman next door. Yet there was another old woman in black, ten times more trying than Bart’s grandmother, more dominating, too. Bart was a kid who needed some control, but I was almost a man and didn’t need more mothering. With some resentment I pulled away from her clutching, clawlike hands and asked, “Grandmother, why is it all grandmothers like to wear black?”