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.

  He threw the chair, kept where he could see it every day, a hard, scornful look. “That thing would turn over.”

  “We’ll buy you one of those electric chairs that’s so heavy and well balanced it can’t turn over.”

  “I don’t think so, Mom. I’ve always loved autumn, but this one makes me feel so sad. I feel I’ve lost everything that was truly important. I’m like a broken compass, spinning without direction. Nothing seems worthwhile. I’ve been cheated, and I resent it. I hate the days. But the nights are worse. I want to hold fast to summer and what I used to have, and the falling leaves are the tears I shed inside, and the wind whistling at night are my howls of anguish, and the birds flying south are all telling me that the summer of my life has come and gone and never, never again will I feel as happy, or as special. I’m nobody now, Mom, nobody.”

  He was breaking my heart.

  Only when he turned to look at me did he see this. Shame flushed his face. Guilt turned his head. “I’m sorry, Mom. You’re the only one I can talk to like this. With Dad, who is wonderful, I have to act manly. Once I spill out to you all I feel, it doesn’t eat at me inside so much. Forgive me for laying all my heavy feelings on you.”

  “It’s all right. Never stop telling me just how you feel. If you do, then I won’t know how to help. That’s what I’m here for, Jory. That’s why you have parents. Don’t feel that your father won’t understand, for he will. Talk to him like you talk to me. Say anything you need to say, don’t hold back. Ask for anything within reason, and Chris and I give all we can—but don’t ask for the impossible.”

  Silently he nodded, then forced a weak smile. “Okay. Maybe, after all, I can stand to sit in an electric wheelchair someday.”

  Before him, spread on the table with casters that fitted over his bed, were the many parts of the clipper ship he was tediously gluing together. He seldom turned on the stereo, as if beautiful music was an abomination to his ears now that he couldn’t dance. He ignored the television as a waste of time, reading when he wasn’t working on the model ship. A tiny part of the wood was held by tweezers as he applied a bit of glue; then, squinting his eye, he looked at the directions and completed the hull.

  Casually he asked without meeting my eyes, “Where’s my wife? She seldom comes to visit before five. What the hell does she do all day?”

  It seemed a casual enough question for Jory to ask as Jory’s nurse came in again to say he was off for classes. He waved a cheerful good-bye and left. During his absence either Melodie or I were supposed to do what we could to make Jory comfortable, as well as keep him entertained. Keeping him occupied was the most difficult part. His life had been a physical one, and now he had to be content with mental activities. The nearest thing he had that even approached a physical life was putting the ship together.

  At least I’d presumed Melodie came in to do what she could for him.

  I very seldom saw Melodie. The house was so large it was easy to avoid those whom you didn’t want to see. Lately she’d taken to eating not only breakfast but lunch as well in her bedroom across the hall from Jory’s suite.

  Chris brought home the custom-made electric wheelchair with its joystick for driving. Immediately the nurse began to teach Jory the methods he’d use to swing his body out of the bed and into a chair he’d have locked beside his bed, with the arm nearest the bed pulled out.

  Jory had been crippled for more than three and a half long, long miserable months. For him they were more like years. He’d been forced to change into another kind of person, the kind of person I could tell he really didn’t like.

  Another day came without a visit from Melodie, and Jory was asking again where she was, and what she did with her time. “Mom, did you hear my question? Please tell me what my wife does all day.” His usually pleasant voice held a sharp edge. “She doesn’t spend it with me, I know that.”

  Bitterness was in his eyes as he nailed me with his penetrating dark blue eyes. “Right this minute I want you to go to Melodie and tell her I want to see her—NOW! Not later, when she feels like it—for it seems she never feels like it!”

  “I’ll get her,” I said with determination. “She’s no doubt in her room listening to ballet music.”

  With trepidation I left Jory still working on the model ship. Even as I looked back at him, I saw the wind was picking up and beginning to hurl the falling leaves toward the house. Golden and scarlet and russet leaves that he refused to see—and once he’d heard the music of colors.

  Look, now, Jory, look now. This is beauty you won’t see again, perhaps. Don’t ignore it—take it and seize the day, as you used to do.

  But had I, back then . . . ? Had I?

  As I stood and looked at him, trying to bring him back to himself, the sky suddenly darkened and all the bright falling leaves went limp in the cold, drenching rain that plastered them against the glass. “Daddy used to do all the chores when we lived in Gladstone. Momma used to complain the storm windows gave her twice as many to clean . . .”

  “I want my wife, Mom, NOW!”

  I was reluctant to go in search of Melodie for no reason I could name. In the dreary gloom Jory was forced to turn on a lamp at ten in the morning.

  “Would you like a cheerful wood fire burning?”

  “I only want my wife. Do I have to repeat this ten times? Once she’s here, she can start the fire.”

  I left him alone, realizing my presence irritated him when he wanted her—the only one who could bring him back to himself.

  Melodie was not in her room as I’d expected her to be.

  The halls I trod seemed the same halls I’d walked before when I was younger. The closed doors I passed seemed the same heavy, solid doors I’d stealthily opened when I’d been fourteen, fifteen. Behind me I sensed the omniscient presence of Malcolm, the malice of the hostile grandmother.

  I turned to the western wing. Bart’s wing.

  Almost automatically my feet took me there as my mind stayed blank. Intuition had ruled most of my life and, it seemed, would rule my future as well. Why was I going this way? Why didn’t I look elsewhere for Melodie? What instinct was guiding me to my second son’s rooms, where he never wanted me to go?

  Before Bart’s wide double doors that were heavily padded with luxurious black leather, gold-tooled with his monogram and the family crest, I called softly, “Bart, are you in there?”

  I heard nothing. However, all the doors were made of solid oak, heavily paneled beneath the ostentatious padding. Very soundproof doors and thick walls that knew how to hold secrets, so no wonder we four had been so easily hidden away. I turned the doorlatch, expecting to find it locked. It wasn’t.

  Almost stealthily I stepped inside Bart’s sitting room, which was kept immaculate, not one book or magazine out of place. On his walls hung his sporting equipment: tennis rackets and fishing rods, a golf bag in a corner, a rowing machine inside a closet with the door partially open. I stared at the photographs of his favorite sports stars. I often thought Bart made a pretense of admiring football and baseball athletes just so he’d have something in common with the rest of his sex. To my way of thinking he’d have been more honest to plaster his walls with pictures of those who’d earned fortunes in the stock market, or wheeling and dealing in industry, or politics.

  His rooms were all black and white with red accents; dramatic, but somehow cold. I sat down on his white leather sofa fully twelve feet long, my feet on his red carpet, with black velvet and satin pillows behind my back. In one corner was a marvelous bar sparkling with crystal decanters and various stemmed glasses, and every kind of liquor he kept there for his private use, along with snack foods. There was also a small fridge and a micro oven for melting cheese, or doing whatever light cooking he wanted.

  Every photograph was matted in black or red and framed in gold. Three walls were of white moire fabric. One wall was covered with padded and quilted black leather. A deceiving wall. One of those leather buttons concealed the large safe in which
he kept his stock and bond certificates, for he’d proudly shown me his suite just once, soon after it was completely decorated. He’d operated the secret buttons, happy to display the complexity of all he controlled. The safe in his office downstairs was used for less permanent and important papers.

  I turned my head to stare at the door to his bedroom, covered with black leather too. Beautiful doors to a magnificent bedroom with the same decor as this room. I thought I heard something. The soft rumble of male laughter—the softer giggle of a woman. Could I be wrong? Did Bart have the ability to make Melodie laugh when none of the rest of us could?

  My imagination worked overtime, picturing what they had to be doing, and I felt sick at heart, thinking of Jory in his room, hopefully waiting for a wife who never came to him. Sick because Bart would do this to him, his own brother, whom he’d loved and admired very much for a short while, such a pitifully short while . . .

  Just then the door opened and Bart came striding out, wearing not one stitch of clothing. He moved swiftly, his long legs a fast blur. Embarrassed to see him naked, I shrank back into the soft cushions, hoping he wouldn’t see me. He’d never forgive me. I shouldn’t be here.

  Due to the sudden storm, the gloom in his sitting room was so dense there was some hope he wouldn’t notice me sitting on his white sofa. Straight to the fully equipped bar he stalked, and with quick, skilled hands mixed some drink using crystal decanters. He sliced lemon, filled two cocktail glasses, put those half-filled glasses on a silver tray and headed back for his bedroom. The door behind him was kicked closed.

  Cocktails in the morning, before twelve . . . ?

  What would Joel think of that?

  I sat on, hardly breathing.

  Thunder rolled and lightning cracked, the rain beat on the windowpanes. Lightning zagged and lit up the gloom every few seconds.

  Moving to a more secluded spot in his room, I made myself part of the shadows behind a huge plant, then waited.

  It seemed an eternity passed before that door opened again, and I knew Jory was waiting anxiously, perhaps even angrily, for Melodie to show up. Two glasses, two. She was here. She had to be here.

  In the dimness I finally saw Melodie step out of Bart’s bedroom wearing a filmy peignoir that clearly showed she wore nothing beneath. A flesh of lightning briefly illuminated her, showing the bulge of the baby that was due early in January.

  Oh, Melodie, how can you do this to Jory?

  “Come back,” called Bart in a slurred, satisfied voice. “It’s raining. The fire in here makes it cozier—and we have nothing better to do . . .”

  “I’ve got to bathe and dress and visit Jory,” she said, hesitating in the doorway, looking at him with apparent longing. “I want to stay, really I do, but Jory needs me once in a while.”

  “Can he give you what I’ve just given you?”

  “Please, Bart. He needs me. You don’t know what it’s like to be needed.”

  “No, I don’t know. Only the weak depend on others for sustenance.”

  “You’ve never been in love, Bart,” she answered hoarsely, “so you can’t understand. You take me, use me, tell me I’m wonderful, but you don’t love me, or truly need me. Someone else would serve your purpose just as well. It feels good to be needed, to know someone wants you more than he wants anyone else.”

  “Leave, then,” he said, his happy tone turning quickly icy as he stayed hidden from my sight. “Of course I don’t need you. I don’t need anyone. I don’t know if what I feel for you is love or just desire. Even pregnant, you’re very beautiful, and if your body does give me pleasure now, it might not tomorrow.”

  I could tell from her profile that she was hurt. She cried out pitifully, “Then why do you want me to come every day, every night? Why do your eyes follow wherever I go? You do need me, Bart! You do love me! You’re just ashamed to admit it. Please don’t talk so cruelly to me. It hurts. You seduced me when I was weak and afraid, and Jory was still in the hospital. You took me when I needed him, and told me my need was you! You knew I was terrified Jory might die . . . and I needed someone.”

  “And that’s all I am?” he roared. “A need? I thought you loved me, really loved me!”

  “I do, I do!”

  “No, you don’t! How can you love me and still talk of him? So go to him. See what he can give you now!”

  She left, her frail garment fluttering behind her, reminding me of a ghost frantically fleeing to try and find life.

  The door slammed behind her.

  Stiffly I rose from my chair, feeling my knee throbbing with pain, like it always ached when it rained. I limped a little as I neared the closed door of Bart’s bedroom. I didn’t even hesitate as I threw it open. Before he could protest I’d reached inside to throw the switch and bring his cozy, firelit room into electric brightness.

  Immediately he bolted up in the middle of his king-sized bed. “Mother! What the hell are you doing in my bedroom? Get out, out!”

  I strode forward, covering the large space between the door and the bed in a second.

  “What the hell are you doing sleeping with your brother’s wife? Your injured brother’s wife?”

  “Get out of here!” he bellowed, taking care to keep his privates well covered, while the mat of dark hair on his chest seemed to bristle with indignity. “How dare you spy on me?”

  “Don’t you yell at me, Bart Foxworth! I’m your mother, and you are not thirty-five years old yet, so you can’t order me out of this house. I’ll go when I’m ready, and that time hasn’t arrived. You owe me so much, Bart, so much.”

  “I owe you, Mother?” he asked sarcastically, bitterly. “Pray tell me why I owe you anything. Should I thank you for my father, whom you helped to kill? Should I say thank you for all those miserable days when I was young and neglected, and unsure of myself? Should I thank you now for putting me on such unstable ground that I don’t feel I’m a normal man, capable of inspiring love?”

  His voice broke as his head bowed. “Don’t stand there and accuse me with those cursed Foxworth blue eyes. You don’t have to do one damned thing to make me feel guilty. I was born feeling that way. I took Melodie when she was crying and needing someone to hold her and give her confidence and love. And I found for the first time the kind of love I’ve been hearing and reading about all my life, from the noble type of woman who’s only had one man. Do you realize how rare they are? Melodie is the first woman who has made me feel truly human. With her I can relax, put down my guard, and she doesn’t try to wound me. She loves me, Mother. I don’t think I’ve ever been happier.”

  “How can you say that when I just overheard the words the two of you exchanged?”

  He sobbed and fell back to roll on his side away from me, the sheet just barely covering enough. “I’m on the defensive, and so is she. She feels she’s betraying Jory by loving me. I feel much the same way. Sometimes we can let go of guilt and shame, and it’s wonderful then. When Jory was in the hospital, and you and Chris were gone all the time, she didn’t need a great deal of seducing. She fell with only a little reluctance into my arms, glad to have someone who cared enough to understand her feelings. Our fights all grow from the mire of guilt. Without Jory in the way, eagerly she’d run to me, be my wife.”

  “BART! You can’t take Jory’s wife from him. He needs her as he has never needed her before! You were wrong to take her when she was weak from desperation and loneliness. Give her up. Stop making love to her. Be loyal to Jory, as he’s been loyal to you. Through everything, Jory has stood behind you—remember that.”

  He flipped over, clutching the black sheet modestly. Something fragile broke behind his eyes and made him seem vulnerable, a pathetic child again. A wounded, small child who didn’t like himself. His voice was hoarse when he said, “Yes, I love Melodie. I love her enough to marry her. I love her with every bone, muscle, ounce of my flesh. She’s awakened me from a deep sleep. You see, she’s the first woman I’ve loved. I have never been touched or moved by a
woman as I’ve been touched and moved by Melodie. She slipped into my heart and now I can’t push her out. She steals into my room wearing her delicate clothes, with her beautiful long and shining hair down, fresh from her bath and smelling sweet, and she just stands there, pleading with her eyes, and I feel my heart begin to beat faster, and when I dream, I dream of her. She’s become the most wonderful thing in my life.

  “Don’t you see why I can’t give her up? She’s the one who has really awakened this burning desire for love and sex that I didn’t even know I had. I thought that sex was a sin, and never did I pull away from a woman without feeling dirty, even dirtier than I thought I left her. When I made love to other women, I was always left feeling guilty, as if two naked bodies meeting in passion was evil—now I know differently. She’s made me realize how beautiful loving can be, and now I don’t know how to carry on without her. Jory can’t be a real lover anymore. Let me be the husband she needs and wants. Help me to build a normal life for her and for myself . . . or else . . . I don’t know . . . I just don’t know what will happen . . .” His dark eyes turned my way, pleading for my understanding.

  Oh, to hear him say all of that, when all his life I’d longed to have his confidence, and now that I had it, what could I do? I loved Bart, as I loved Jory. I stood there wringing my hands, twisting my conscience, and tormenting myself with guilt, for somehow I must have brought this about. I had neglected Bart, favored Jory, Cindy . . .

  Now I, and Jory, had to pay the price . . . again.

  He spoke, his voice lower and cracked, making him seem even younger and more vulnerable as he lay there, trying to lock his happiness away in a safe place I couldn’t reach, and in this way forever shield it from killing exposure.

  “Mother, for once in your life, see something from my side. I’m not bad, not wicked, or the beast you sometimes make me feel I am. I’m only a man who has never felt good about himself. Help me, Mother. Help Melodie have the kind of husband she needs now that Jory can’t be a real man anymore.”