Daughter of Darkness (7 page)

We were living just outside Rhinebeck, New York, at the time, in an old Queen Anne–style house with more than fifty acres. The house had been refurbished without losing its character. Daddy had moved in his furniture and paintings, and as all of it would in houses to come, it seemed as though all of it was made just for this house. Everything fit perfectly; every color coordinated. When I commented about that after we had moved into our Brentwood home, Daddy cryptically replied, “All our homes were built especially for us.”

It did seem as if nothing happened accidentally or by coincidence. Everything Daddy did was well planned,
and there was a network of support, not only in America but seemingly all over the world. All our needs were always anticipated and fulfilled, no matter where we were or when we were there.

The Queen Anne house was, of course, the only family home I had known. I had been brought there directly from the orphanage. Mrs. Fennel, who didn’t look much different to me then, had a large herbal garden just behind the house, and when I was old enough, I often had to work with her, weeding and nursing her plants. As far as I could tell, they were the only things toward which she showed any affection. I was actually jealous of the plants and sometimes wished I had been planted in a garden. She spoke to them as though they really were her children, encouraging them to grow and be healthy and complimenting them on their maturation. She’d stroke their leaves lovingly and even kiss some. Nothing was worse than my accidentally stepping on one of her newly placed plants. Her rage made me tremble and start to cry.

“Don’t drop your tears in my garden,” she would tell me, her whole body poised and slightly tilted, giving me the impression that she would turn sharply and slice me in half. She made me feel I could contaminate the earth and kill her plants with my tears, and that feeling more than anything, perhaps, had me suck back my sobs and stop crying quickly. Apologies didn’t satisfy her back then, either, even from a small child.

“I don’t want to hear it,” she would say, sweeping the air between us as if my words were as clearly visible as soot to her. “Just be more careful.”

I would look back at the house to be sure Daddy
hadn’t been watching from some window and seen my blunders. Of course, I hoped she wouldn’t tell him. He never said anything, but that didn’t mean he didn’t know. There wasn’t much about me, what I did or what I said, that he wasn’t aware of, just the way an omnipresent deity might be. Other children might hear their parents say, “God hears and sees everything.” Mrs. Fennel told me, “Your daddy hears and sees everything.”

Ava was in school and didn’t have these chores to do with Mrs. Fennel, and of course, neither did Brianna. Afterward, I would go into the house with Mrs. Fennel, wash up, and have my lunch. Then Brianna would take control of my day, and I would be at the piano or learning words and other important basic information. All the toys I had seemed to have some educational purpose, whether they were coloring books that taught me about animals and geography or little plastic dining sets to teach me how to sit at a table properly and eat properly. The dolls I had were mainly there to serve as props for my education in social graces. I was never permitted to develop any sort of relationship with or affection for one particular doll and take it to bed with me. When I tried that once, Mrs. Fennel smashed the doll’s head.

No, the security and comfort I would find had to be found inside myself. There was never any hesitation about closing my bedroom door at night. If something frightened me and I screamed or cried, Daddy was the only one who would come to comfort me.

“You’re one of my precious little girls,” he would tell me. “I won’t let anything bad happen to you. Why, it would be like letting something bad happen to myself.”

Little did I know how true that was to him.

But I got my first hint of it that particular night, when I woke suddenly and heard Brianna. After her laughter, she sounded as if she was pleading with someone. My room was at the corner of the house closest to the driveway that led to the unattached garage. I slipped out from under my comforter. It was the beginning of fall, and although we hadn’t yet had a night with temperatures below freezing, it was cool enough to justify sleeping with a heavy but soft comforter.

Because of the foliage and the trees surrounding our house, it was always in a blanket of shadows and dark inside. Those windows that faced the east in the morning and the west in the afternoon were shuttered. Neither Daddy nor Mrs. Fennel liked it to be too warm in the house anyway, and the heat was turned up only during the coldest winter months. Mrs. Fennel told me we would all sleep better that way. I liked the early fall, the colors of the leaves and the crisp air. I wasn’t permitted to wander far from the house, but because of the proximity of the woods and the foliage around us, I could see and watch the squirrels and often deer and rabbits that seemed as curious about me as I was about them.

I thought the moon was a deeper shade of yellow in the fall so it could match the color of leaves. This particular night, we had a full moon with a cloudless sky. The glow fell like a great spotlight over the house, the illumination threading itself through the leaves and branches, twisting and turning shadows into new shapes as if they were made of black clay. One of my bedroom
windows had been left open enough for me to be able to hear Brianna’s laughter and then the voice of a stranger, a young man.

When I peered out at them, I saw he had driven Brianna home and was dressed formally in a jacket and tie. Brianna had gotten out of the car and was on his side now, urging him to get out, too. She was actually pulling on the door handle and tugging at his arm through the opened window. For some reason, he was resisting.

I pushed my window up a bit higher so I could lean out and hear what they were saying more clearly.

“Stop being such a coward and a jerk,” Brianna told him, and let go of his arm.

“I’m not being either. I’m just being sensible. All the lights are out. We’ll wake them up.”

“I told you. My father’s away,” she said.

Why was she lying? I wondered. Daddy wasn’t away. He had just come back yesterday.

“The only ones in there are our housekeeper and my younger sisters, who are both asleep. We can easily slip into my room unnoticed, and I don’t plan on making a lot of noise anyway, do you? I mean, I should be the one moaning with pleasure. You can grunt.”

He laughed, but he didn’t get out of the car. Frustrated, she put her hands on her hips, glanced up toward Daddy’s bedroom, and then turned back to her date as if something new had occurred to her, something that would get him to do what she wanted him to do.

“I didn’t think you were this shy. You didn’t act shy earlier tonight. What was that back at the bar? All some macho act for your friends or something?”

“No. I’ve been accused of a lot of things but definitely never of being shy.”

“Right. You’re really hesitating because you’re worried about waking up my housekeeper.”

“Look,” he said after a momentary pause, “I do have a confession to make.”

Brianna took a step back. “Oh, no, don’t tell me you’re gay.”

He laughed. “No. But I am married.”

Brianna just stood there looking at him. “You’re kidding,” she finally said. She stepped back up to the window. “Married? You’re not wearing any ring.”

“I don’t usually when I go to the Underground looking for some action. I asked you to let me take you to a motel, didn’t I? I don’t understand why you want to go into your own house. Why would you want to do that?”

“I like making it in my own bed. Call me kinky. I’m better in my own bed,” she added. “You’ll see.”

“I don’t know. I mean, if someone does wake up, you have to explain, and then, I mean, one thing can lead to another, and I don’t need to get involved with a costly divorce right now.”

“You’re very deceptive. That’s very dishonest. What kind of a marriage do you have?”

“Obviously not the best, but…”

“But you’re disgusting,” she said, and turned away from him for a moment. I saw her look up again at Daddy’s bedroom, and then she turned back to him.

“Listen. There isn’t any problem and won’t be any. My room is away from everyone else’s rooms. The walls are thick. No one will hear us, and even if anyone did, she
would ignore us. My maid certainly wouldn’t care. You’re not exactly the first guy I’ve brought home, you know.”

He didn’t reply. I could see Brianna was getting very agitated. She turned away again, looked up at the house again and then back to him. “I don’t know,” he said.

“Please come in for a little while,” she pleaded.

“What is with you? How could someone who looks like you be so desperate for a lover?”

“I’m not desperate,” she snapped back at him. “I don’t like being teased, and I don’t like my time and energy wasted.”

“Hey,” he said. “I’m not teasing. We can still make use of your time and energy, too. Get back into the car, and we’ll go to this motel I know. I don’t see why you…”

He stopped talking. I could see that something had captured his attention.

“Who’s that?” he asked her. She turned toward the house.

“It’s my father. Thanks a lot. You woke him up.”

“But you said he wasn’t home.”

“I didn’t know he was home.”

“I’d better go.”

I didn’t blame him for being frightened. I was sure Daddy was unhappy about being awakened at that time of the night. I held my breath, anxious to see what would happen to Brianna.

“No. You can’t just go,” she moaned, and actually opened his car door. “You’d better get out and at least let me introduce you. If you just drive away, he’ll think I’m trying to hide something, and I’ll be in big trouble.”

“Speaking of big, he looks… pretty big.”

“Will you just say hello? Please? Don’t worry, I won’t tell him you’re married. It will just take a minute or so, and you can go.”

With obvious reluctance, the young man got out of the car. Brianna took his hand, and they walked toward the front entrance. I couldn’t see around that far, but I waited by the window, expecting that he would come back to his car. I wondered if Brianna would walk back with him and maybe go to the motel he had suggested. But instead of that, I heard the young man shout and then scream like someone in great pain or danger.

My curiosity got the better of me, and I leaned too far out my window to try to see around the corner. I lost my grip on the windowsill and fell to the ground. Luckily, I wasn’t that high up. I brushed myself off, but the shock of falling and the pain in my shoulder caused me to call out for Daddy and then cry.

I started for the front entrance and saw Daddy backing up into the house with the young man in his arms. The young man was unconscious, his arms dangling, his legs dragging. He looked like a big doll. Daddy paused when he saw me.

“Brianna!” my father shouted, his voice deeper and louder than I had ever heard it, and he did look bigger than I had ever seen him. His shoulders were wider, his neck much thicker, and his arms and hands longer. His eyes glowed.

He closed the door. Brianna spun on me, a look of panic and shock on her face, her eyes almost as luminous as Daddy’s were in the moonlight. It was as grotesque an expression as I had ever seen on her.

“Lorelei! What are you doing out here?”

“I fell out of my window,” I said, moaning and rubbing my shoulder.

She hurried down to me and seized me at the back of my neck. “Why would you fall out of a window?”

“You woke me up, and I wanted to see what was going on. Who was that man? Why did he scream? Why was Daddy carrying him into the house? What happened to him?”

“Quiet,” she ordered.

She marched me forward, waited a moment at the front door, and then opened it. She pushed me in, but as we turned toward our bedrooms, I looked up toward the top of the stairway. Daddy was leaning over the young man. He looked as if he was kissing him on the neck and shaking his body the way I might shake a rag doll.

“What’s Daddy doing?” I asked Brianna.

Daddy heard me and started to turn our way.

“I told you to be quiet,” Brianna said. She lifted me at the waist and hurriedly carried me down the hallway and back to my room, where Mrs. Fennel was waiting at the door. The sight of her standing there looking even more furious than Daddy had looked frightened me even more.

“You fool,” she told Brianna. “How could you let this happen?”

“I didn’t let it happen. She leaned too far out of her window and fell.”

She ripped me out of Brianna’s arms roughly. “Go to your room.”

“But what about the car?”

“I’ll do what has to be done,” Mrs. Fennel said. “As always. I’m the one left to look after the messes you and your sisters cause.”

“I didn’t do anything. I…”

“Go,” Mrs. Fennel said. Then she took me into my room and slammed the door shut on Brianna. I was able to glance back at her before it closed. She looked even more terrified than I felt.

I started to cry. Mrs. Fennel ignored that, as usual, and slammed me onto my bed. It was always hard for me to believe that anyone who was as slim as she was had such strength in her arms, but I often caught her lifting heavy things, things I imagined most men would have trouble lifting.

“Stop that crying instantly.”

“I didn’t mean to fall out the window. It just happened. What… who is that man? Why is Daddy carrying him on the stairway? Daddy looked so big and angry.”

She stared down at me for a long moment. There was something about her look, her posture, the way her anger subsided, that told me she wasn’t just going to leave me wondering about it. I quickly caught my breath, flicked the tears off my cheeks, and sat up a bit, folding my hands in my lap.

“You must never tell anyone about that young man or any young man who is brought here,” she began.

I was afraid to ask why not, afraid she would simply turn and walk out, but how could I tell anyone anything anyway? I had no friends.

“I can’t tell anyone. I don’t know anyone,” I said.

Very rarely did I see her smile, especially at something
I had done or said, but she smiled that time. “You’re very intelligent for your age, Lorelei,” she continued. “Obviously more intelligent than your older sister, maybe both older sisters.”