He paused, his pale eyes lit with religious zeal, waiting for Bart to respond.
“I’m hungry!” wailed Deirdre suddenly.
“Me too,” cried Darren.
“You’ll stay, and you will do what you have to do, or suffer the consequences!” shouted Joel from the pulpit.
Immediately the twins shrank into small, tight shells, staring at Joel with immense eyes of fear. What had Joel done to put that fear there? Oh, God, had I given Joel or Bart an opportunity to hurt them in some way?
Long minutes passed, as if Joel were deliberately testing them. I wanted to jump up and cry out to stop Joel from implanting foul ideas in the heads of innocent babes. But there sat Bart, as if not hearing Joel’s words at all. He had his dark eyes riveted on the magnificent stained-glass window directly behind the pulpit. Stained glass that showed Jesus with the little children at his feet, leaning against his knees, staring up into his face with adoration. That same adoration was on Bart’s face. He wasn’t listening to his great-uncle. He was filling himself with the presence even I could feel in this place.
God did exist, had always been there even when I wanted to deny him.
The words of Christ did have meaning in today’s world—and somehow his teachings had reached out and found a place in Bart’s maze of troubled brain waves.
“Bart, your niece and nephew are falling asleep!” roared Joel angrily. “You neglect your duty! Wake them up! Immediately!”
“Suffer the little children, Uncle Joel,” said Bart. “Your sermons last too long and they become bored and restless. They are not evil or contaminated. They were born within the holy vows of marriage. They are not the first twins, the blood-related twins, Uncle—not the evil twins . . .”
Even as I saw Bart lifting Darren and Deirdre up into his arms, holding them in a protective way, I felt fear confused with hope. Bart was proving himself to be just as fine and noble as his father. No sooner did I think that when I heard words that chilled my blood. I froze in the shadows.
Bart had risen with the twins in his arms. “Put them down,” ordered Joel, his sermon over and his strong voice diminished to his habitual thin whisper. Had he drained his supply of energy so that now he was ineffective? I prayed so.
“Now, children who have not learned how to control physical demands, repeat the lessons I have tried to teach you. Speak, and tell me, Darren, Deirdre! Speak the words you are supposed to keep forever in your minds and hearts. Speak, and let God hear.”
They had such babyishly small voices that seldom said more than a few words at a time. They sometimes used the wrong syntax . . . but this time they intoned as correctly and as seriously as adults.
Bart listened carefully, as if he’d helped coach them.
“We are children born of evil seed. We are the Devil’s issue, the Devil’s spawn. We have inherited all the evil genes that lead to inces—ncestuous relationships.”
Pleased with themselves, they grinned at each other for having said it right, not understanding in the least the meaning of the words. Then both the twins turned serious blue eyes on that forbidding old man behind the pulpit.
“Tomorrow we will continue with our lessons.” So said, Joel closed his huge black Bible.
Bart picked up the twins, kissed their cheeks, and told them that now they could put on clean, dry pants, eat lunch, take baths, and have nice naps before they attended chapel services again.
That’s when I stood up and stepped into full view. “Bart, what are you trying to do to Jory’s children?”
My son stared at me, his sun-bronzed skin going very pale. “Mother, you aren’t supposed to come here except on Sundays . . .”
“Why? Do you hope to keep me away so you can mold the twins into warped human beings you can punish later on? Is that your purpose?”
“Who warped you into what you are?” asked Joel coldly, his eyes small and hard.
In a wild fury of rage, I spun to confront him. “Your parents!” I screamed. “Your sister, Joel, locked us up and kept us there, living on promises year after year, while Chris and I were turning into adults with no one to love but each other. So place the blame on those who made Chris and I what we are. But before you say one more word, I’m having my say.
“I love Chris, and I am not ashamed. You think I have given nothing of importance to the world, yet there stands your great-nephew, holding my grandchildren, and on the terrace is another of my sons. And they are not contaminated! They are not Devil’s issue, or Devil’s spawn—and don’t you ever, as long as you live, dare to say those words again to anyone who belongs to me, or I will see that you are put away and declared senile!”
Color came to Bart’s face as what color he had left departed from Joel’s pasty skin. His desperate, faded, blue eyes sought to meet Bart’s, but Bart was staring at me as if he’d never seen me before. “Mother,” he said weakly, and would have said more, but the twins tore from his arms and ran to me.
“Hungry, Gramma, hungry . . .”
My eyes locked with Bart’s. “You have the most beautiful singing voice I have ever heard,” I said, backing away and taking the twins with me. “Be your own man, Bart. You don’t need Joel. You have found your talent, now use it.”
He stood there frozen, as if he had volumes to say, but Joel was tugging on his arm, imploring, just as the twins were crying for lunch.
Heaven Can’t Wait
Jory fell very ill a few days later with a cold that just wouldn’t go away. The cold, wet rain and winds had done their work. He lay on his bed with his temperature soaring, his brow glistening with beads of perspiration, writhing and turning his head incessantly from side to side, as he moaned, groaned, and called repeatedly for Melodie. I saw Toni wince each time he did that, even as she did her best to nurse him.
As I watched her with him, I saw that she truly did care for Jory; it was clear in every caring thing she did, in her soft, compassionate eyes and her lips that brushed his face whenever she thought I wasn’t looking.
She turned to give me a brave smile. “Try not to worry so much, Cathy,” she pleaded, bathing Jory’s bare chest with cool water. “Most people don’t realize that a fever is usually very helpful in burning up viruses. As a doctor’s wife I’m sure you already know this and are just worried that he will go into pneumonia. He won’t. I’m sure he won’t.”
“Let’s pray he won’t . . .”
I still worried; she was only a nurse without the medical expertise of Chris. I called him every hour, trying to find him in that huge university lab. Why wasn’t Chris responding to my urgent calls? I began to feel not only worried but angry that Chris couldn’t be reached. Hadn’t he promised to always be here when he was needed?
Two days had passed since Joel preached his sermon, and Chris had not called home.
The sweltering, humid weather and intermittent rain and electrical storms did nothing but create more misery and havoc in my mind. Thunder crashed overhead. Lightning flashed, momentarily lighting up dark, forbidding skies. Near my feet the twins were playing and whispering about it being time for lessons in the chapel. “Please, Gramma. Uncle Joel says we must come.”
“Deirdre, Darren, I want you to listen to me and forget what your Uncle Joel and Uncle Bart tell you. Your father wants you to stay with me and Toni, near him. You know your daddy is sick, and the last thing he’d want is for his son and daughter to be visiting that chapel where . . . where . . .” and here I stumbled. For what could I say about Joel that wouldn’t somehow rebound later? He was teaching what he believed was right. If only he had not taught them those phrases . . . Devil’s issue. Devil’s spawn.
Instantly the two of them wailed, as if of one mind. “Will Daddy die?” they cried out simultaneously.
“No, of course he won’t die. What do you two know about death, anyway?” I went on to explain that their grandfather was a wonderful doctor and he’d be coming home any second.
They stared at me without comprehension before I reali
zed they often mouthed words they’d learned by rote and had no understanding of what they said. Death—what could they know about that?
Toni turned to give me a strange look. “You know something? As I help those two on and off with their clothes and give them baths, they keep up a constant chatter. They’re really very remarkable and bright children. I guess being around adults so much has taught them more swiftly than playing with other children would have. Most of what they say while playing alone is silly gibberish. Then out of this silly gibberty-junk come serious words, adult words. Their eyes widen. They speak in whispers. They look around and seem afraid. It’s as if they are expecting to see someone, or something, and in low tones they suddenly warn each other of God and his wrath. It alarms me.” She looked from me and the twins back to Jory.
“Toni, listen carefully. Never allow the twins out of your sight. Keep them with you at all times during the day, unless you know positively they are with me or Jory, or my husband. When you’re caring for Jory and are too preoccupied to keep an eye on them, call me and I’ll take them over. Above all, don’t let them go off with Joel,” and as much as I hated to, I had to add Bart’s name.
She threw me another worried look. “Cathy, I think it was not only that thing that happened in New York with Cindy, and with me, but also what Joel had to say when we came back that made Bart start looking at me as if I were the worst kind of sinner. It hurts to have the man you think you love hurl such ugly accusations.”
Again she was bathing Jory’s arms and chest. “Jory would never say such ugly things, no matter what I did. Sometimes he looks fierce, but even then he’s thoughtful enough to say nothing to damage my ego. I never knew a man so thoughtful and compassionate.”
“Are you saying now that you love Jory?” I asked, wanting to believe she did but afraid her disappointment was rebounding and making Jory only a substitute love.
She blushed and bowed her head. “I’ve been in this house almost two years, and I’ve seen and heard a great many things. In this house I found sexual satisfaction with Bart, but it wasn’t romantic or sweet, just exciting. Only now am I beginning to feel the romance of a man who tries to understand me and give me what I need. His eyes never condemn. Never do his lips shout out terrible things, when I haven’t done anything I think is terrible. My love for Bart was a burning hot fire, kindled to a blaze the first day we met, while my feet stayed in quicksand, never knowing what he wanted, or what he needed, except he wanted someone like you . . .”
“I wish you’d stop saying that, Toni,” I objected with discomfort. Bart still disliked himself so much he feared a woman turning away from him first, and to keep that from happening, he discarded Melodie before she had the chance to turn against him. Later, he turned his self-loathing against Toni before she could hate him and leave him. Again I sighed.
Toni agreed never to discuss Bart with me again, and then she began with my help to slip a clean pajama jacket onto Jory. We worked together as a team while the twins played on the floor, shoving little cars and trucks along just like Cory and Carrie had done.
“Just be sure which brother it is you love before you hurt both of them. I’m going to talk to my husband and Jory again, and I’m doing my damnedest to see that we move out of this house just as soon as Jory recovers. You can go with us if that is your choice.”
Her pretty gray eyes widened. She looked from me back to Jory, who had rolled on his side and was murmuring incoherently in his delirium. “Mel . . . is that our cue?” I think he was saying.
“No, it’s Toni, your nurse,” she said softly, caressing his hair and brushing it back from his beaded brow. “You have a very bad cold . . . but soon you’ll feel just fine.”
Jory stared up at her in a disoriented way, as if trying to distinguish this woman from the one he dreamed about every night. During the day he had eyes only for Toni, but in the night, Melodie came back to haunt him. What was there about the human condition that made us hold on to tragedy with such tenacity and easily forgo the happiness we could reach readily?
He began to cough violently, choking and pulling up huge wads of phlegm. Tenderly Toni held his head, then threw away the soiled tissues.
Everything she did for him she did with tenderness, fluffing his pillows, massaging his back, moving his legs to keep them supple even if he couldn’t control them. I couldn’t help but be impressed with all that she did to make him comfortable.
I backed off toward the door, feeling I was an intruder during a very important private moment as Jory’s eyes came into focus enough for him to pick up her hand and meet her eyes. Even as sick as he was, something in his eyes spoke to her. Quietly I caught hold of Darren’s hand, and then Deirdre’s. “Got to go now,” I whispered even as I watched Toni tremble before her head bowed.
To my surprise, just before I closed the door, she put his hand to her lips and kissed each of his fingers. “I’m taking advantage of you,” she whispered, “at a time when you can’t fight back, but I need to tell you what a fool I’ve been. You were here all the time, and I never saw you. Never saw you at all when Bart stood in the way.”
Weakly Jory answered, his eyes warm as they drank in the sincerity of her words and most of all, her loving, warm expression. “I guess it’s easy to overlook a man in a wheelchair, and perhaps that alone was enough to make you blind. But I’ve been here, waiting, hoping . . .”
“Oh, Jory, don’t hold it against me because I let Bart dazzle me with his charm. I was overwhelmed and sort of flabbergasted that he found me so desirable. He swept me off my feet. I think every woman secretly wants a man who refuses to take no for an answer, and pursues her relentlessly until she has to give in. Forgive me for being a fool, and an easy conquest.”
“It’s all right, all right,” he whispered, then closed his eyes. “Just don’t let what you feel for me be pity—or I’ll know.”
“You’re what I wanted Bart to be!” she cried out as her lips neared his.
This time I did close the door.
Back in my own rooms, I sat down near the telephone waiting for Chris to call in response to my many urgent messages. On the verge of sleep, with the twins tucked neatly in my bed for their naps, the phone rang. I snatched up the receiver, said hello. A deep, gruff voice asked for Mrs. Sheffield, and I identified myself.
“We don’t want you and your kind here,” said that frightening, deep voice. “We know what’s going on up there. That little chapel you built don’t fool us none. It’s a sham to hide behind while you flaunt God’s rules of decency. Get out—before we take God’s will into our own hands and drive every last one of you away from our mountains.”
Unable to find a clever reply, I sat stunned and very shaky before he hung up. For long moments I just sat there with the receiver in my hand. The sun broke through the clouds and warmed my face . . . only then did I hang up. I looked around me at the rooms I myself had decorated to please my own taste, and found, much to my surprise, that these rooms no longer reminded me of my mother and her second husband. In here were only remnants of the past that I wanted to remember.
Cory and Carrie’s baby pictures in silver frames on my dresser, placed next to those of Darren and Deirdre. They were look-alike twins, but when you knew them well, you could see they weren’t the same. My eyes moved to the next silver frame, and there was Paul smiling at me, and Henny was in another. Julian sulked, in a way he used to think sexy, from a gold frame, and I also had a few snapshots of his mother, Madame Marisha, framed to keep near her son. But nowhere did I have a photograph of Bartholomew Winslow. I stared at the picture of my own father, who’d died when I was twelve. So much like Chris, only now Chris looked older. Turn around, and the boy you knew so well was a man. The years flew by so swiftly; once a day had seemed longer than a year did now.
Again I looked at the two sets of twins. It would take only someone very familiar with both sets to recognize the slight differences. There was a hint of Melodie in Jory’s children, a vague re
semblance. I stared at another picture, with Chris and myself, taken when we still lived in Gladstone, Pennsylvania. I’d been ten, he’d just turned thirteen. We stood in three feet of snow beside the snowman we’d just finished, smiling at Daddy as he took yet another picture. A photograph turning brown, one that our mother had put in her blue album. Our blue album now.
Little snippets of our lives were caught in all those little squares and oblongs of slick paper. Frozen forever in time, that Catherine Doll who sat on an attic windowsill, wearing a flimsy nightgown as Chris in the shadows took a time-lapse photo. How had I managed to sit so still, and hold that expression—how? Through the nightgown I could see the tender form of young breasts—and in that girlish profile all the wistful sadness I’d felt back then.
How lovely she was—I’d been. I stared at her hard and long. That frail, slender girl had long ago disappeared in the middle-aged woman I was now. I sighed for the loss of her, that special girl with her head full of dreams. I tried to tear my gaze away; instead, I got up to pick up the picture that Chris had carried with him to college, to medical school. When he was an intern, still he had this photograph with him. Was it this paper in my hand that had kept his love for me so strong? This attic face of a girl of fifteen, sitting in the moonlight? Longing, always longing for love that would last forever? I no longer looked like this girl I held in my hand. I looked like my mother the night she burned down the original Foxworth Hall.
Shrill telephone rings startled me back to the here and now. “I’ve had a flat tire,” said Chris on hearing my small voice. “I had driven to another lab and spent a few hours there, so when I came back I saw all those messages from you about Jory. Jory can’t be worse, can he?”
“No, darling, he’s no worse.”
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 155
