Dollenganger 01 Flowers In the Attic (26 page)

The night lamp was burning with a rosy glow over in the corner. Our eyes met in the dimness. "I'm not sorry we went. I'm glad. It's been so long since I felt real."
"Did you feel like that?" he asked. "So did I . . . just like we had left a bad dream that was lasting too long."
I dared again, had to. "Chris, where
do
you think Momma is? She's drifting away from us gradually, and she never really looks at the twins, like they scare her now. But she's never stayed away this long before. She's been gone over a month."
I heard his heavy, sad sigh. "Honestly, Cathy, I just don't know. She hasn't told me anymore than she's told you--but you can bet she's got a good reason."
"But what kind of reason could she have to leave without an explanation? Isn't that the least she could do?"
"I don't know what to say."
"If I had children, I would never leave them the way she does. I'd never stick my four children away in a locked room and then forget them."
"You're not going to have any children,
remember?"
"Chris, someday I'm going to dance in the arms of a husband who loves me, and if he really wants a baby, then I might agree to have one."
"Sure, I knew all along you'd change your mind once you grew up."
"You really think I'm pretty enough for a man to love?" "You're
more
than pretty enough." He sounded embarrassed. "Chris, remember when Momma told us that it was money that made the world go around and not love? Well, I think she's wrong."
"Yeah? Give that a bit more thought. Why can't you have both?"
I gave it thought. Plenty of thought. I lay and stared up at the ceiling that was my dancing floor, and I mulled life and love over and over. And from every book I'd ever read, I took one wise bead of philosophy and strung them all into a rosary to believe in for the rest of my life.
Love, when it came and knocked on my door, was going to be enough.
And that unknown author who'd written that if you had fame, it was not enough, and if you had wealth as well, it was still not enough, and if you had fame, wealth, and also love . . . still it was not enough--boy, did I feel sorry for him.

Chris was at the windows, both hands holding open the heavy tapestry draperies. The sky was leaden, the rain came down in a solid sheet. Every lamp in our room was lit, and the TV was on, as usual. Chris was waiting to see the train that would pass by around four. You could hear its mournful whistle before dawn, around four, and then later if you were awake. You could just barely catch a glimpse of the train that appeared to be a toy, it was so far away.

He was in his world, I was in mine Sitting crosslegged on the bed Carrie and I shared, I cut pictures from decorating magazines Momma had brought up for my entertainment before she went away to stay so long. I cut each photograph out carefully and pasted them into a large scrapbook. I was planning my dream house, where I would live happily ever after, with a tall, strong, dark-haired husband who loved only me and not a thousand others on the side.

I had my life mapped out: my career first, a husband and children when I was ready to retire and give someone else a chance. And when I had my dream home, I'd have an emerald-glass tub situated on a dais where I could soak in beauty oil all day long if I wanted to--and nobody would be outside the door, banging and telling me to hurry up! (I never had the chance to sit in the tub long enough.) From that emerald tub I'd step, smelling sweet of flowered perfume, and my skin soft as satin, and my pores would be forever cleansed of the rotten stench of dry old wood and attic dust permeated with all the miseries of antiquity. . . so that we, who were young, smelled as old as this house.

"Chris," I said, turning to stare at his back, "why should we stay on and on, and wait for Momma to come back, much less wait for that old man to die? Now that we are strong, why don't we find a way to escape?"

He didn't say a word. But I saw his hands clutch the fabric of the draperies harder.
"Chris . ."
"I don't want to talk about it!" he flared.
"Why are you standing there waiting for the train to pass, if you aren't thinking about getting away?"
"I'm not waiting for the train! I'm just looking out, that's all!"
His forehead was pressed against the glass, daring a close neighbor to look out and see him.
"Chris, come away from the window. Someone might see you."
"I don't give a damn who sees me!"
My first impulse was to run to him, to put my arms around him, and lavish a million kisses on his face to make up for those he was missing from Momma. I'd draw his head down against my breast and cuddle it there as she used to do, and he'd go back to being the cheerful, sunny optimist who never had a sullen angry day like I used to. Even if I did all that Momma did once, I was wise enough to know it wouldn't be the same. It was
her
he wanted. He had all his hopes, dreams, and faith wrapped up in one single woman--Momma.
She'd been gone more than two months! Didn't she realize one day up here was longer than a month of normal living? Didn't she worry about us, and wonder how we were faring? Did she believe that Chris would always be her staunchest supporter when she left us without an excuse, a reason, an explanation? Did she really believe that love, once gained, couldn't be torn asunder by doubts and fears, and could never, never be put back together again?
"Cathy," said Chris suddenly, "Where would you go if you had your choice of anywhere?"
"South," I said, "down to some warm, sunny beach, where the waves wash in gentle and low . . . don't want high surf with white caps . . . don't want the gray sea chafing against big rocks . . . I want to go where the wind never blows, I just want soft warm breezes to whisper in my hair and on my cheeks, while I lie on pure white sand, and drink up the sunlight."
"Yeah," he agreed, sounding wistful, "sounds nice the way you say it. Only I wouldn't mind a strong surf; I'd like to ride the crest of a wave on one of those surfboards. It would sort of be like skiing."
I put my scissors down, my magazines, my pot of rubber cement, and laid aside the magazines and scrapbook to fully concentrate on Chris. He was missing out on so many sports he loved, shut up here in one room, made old and sad beyond his years. Oh, how I wanted to comfort him, and I didn't know how.
"Come away from the windows, Chris, please."
"Leave me alone! I get so damned sick and tired of this place! Don't do this, don't do that! Don't speak until spoken to--eat those damned meals every day, none of it hot enough, or seasoned right--I think
she
does it deliberately, just so we'll never have anything to enjoy, even food. Then I think about all that money-- half of it should be Momma's, and ours. And I tell myself, no matter what, it is worth it! That old man can't live forever!"
"All the money in the world isn't worth the days of living we've lost!" I flared back.
He spun around, his face red. "The hell it isn't! Maybe you can get by with your talent, but I've got years and years of education ahead of me! You know Daddy expected me to be a doctor, so come hell or high water, I'm getting my M.D.! And if we run away, I'll never be a doctor--you know that! Name what I can do to earn a living for us--quick, list the jobs I can get other than a dishwasher, a fruit-picker, a shortorder cook--will any of those put me through college, and then through med school? And I'll have you and the twins to support, as well as myself--a ready-made family at age sixteen!"
Fiery anger filled me. He didn't give me credit for being able to contribute anything! "I can work, too!" I snapped back. "Between us we can manage. Chris, when we were starving, you brought me four dead mice, and you said God gives people extra strength and abilities in the time of great stress. Well, I believe He does. When we leave here and are on our own, some- how or other we will make our way, and you will be a doctor! I'll do anything to see that you get that damned M.D. behind your name!"
"What can
you
do?" he asked in a hateful, sneering way. Before I could reply, the door behind us opened and the grand- mother was there! She paused without stepping into the room and fixed her glare on Chris. And he, stubborn and unwilling to cooperate as before, refused to be intimidated. He didn't move from the window, but he turned to stare out at the rain again.
"Boy!" she lashed out.
"Move away from that window--this instant!"
"My name is not
'boy.'
My name is Christopher. You can address me by my given name, or don't address me at all--but never call me
'boy'
again!"
She spat at his back: "I hate that particular name! It was your father's; out of the kindness of my heart, I pleaded his cause when his mother died, and he didn't have a home. My husband didn't want him here, but I felt pity for a young boy without parents, or means, and robbed of so much. So I kept nagging my husband to let his younger half-brother live under our roof. So your father came . . . brilliant, handsome, and he took advantage of our generosity. Deceived us! We sent him to the best of schools, bought him the best of everything, and he stole our daughter, his own halfniece! She was all we had left then .. . the only one left . . . and they eloped in the night, and came back two weeks later, smiling, happy, asking us to forgive them for falling in love. That night, my husband had his first heart attack. Has your mother told you that-- that she and that man were the cause of her father's heart disease? He ordered her out--told her never to come back--and then he fell down on the floor."
She stopped, gasping for breath, putting a large, strong hand flashing with diamonds to her throat. Chris turned away from the window and stared at her, as did I. This was more than she had said to us since we came up the stairs to live, an eternity ago.
"We are not to blame for what our parents did," Chris said flatly.
"You are to blame for what you and your sister have done!"
"What have we done so sinful?" he asked. "Do you think we can live in one room, year after year, and not see each other? You helped put us here. You have locked this wing so the servants cannot enter. You
want
to catch us doing something you consider evil. You want Cathy and me to prove your judgment of our mother's marriage is right! Look at you, standing there in your iron-gray dress, feeling pious and self-righteous while you starve small children!"
"Stop!" I cried, terrified by what I saw on the grandmother's face. "Chris, don't say anything else!"
But he had already said too much. She slammed out of the room as my heart came up in my throat. "We'll go up in the attic," said Chris calmly "The coward is afraid of the stairwell. We'll be safe enough, and if she starves us, we'll use the sheet- ladder and reach the ground."
Again the door opened. The grandmother came in, striding forward with a green willow switch in her hand, and grim determination in her eyes. She must have stashed the switch some- where nearby, to have fetched it so quickly. "Run into the attic and hide," she lashed out, reaching to seize Chris by his upper arm, "and none of you will eat for another week! And not only will I whip you, but your sister, as well, if you resist, and the twins."
It was October. In November, Chris would be seventeen. He was still only a boy compared to her huge size. He was considering resistance, but glanced at me, then at the twins, who whimpered and clung to each other, and he allowed that old woman to drag him into the bathroom. She closed and locked the door. She ordered him to strip, and to lean over the bathtub.
The twins came running to me, burying their faces in my lap. "Make her stop!" pleaded Carrie. "Don't let her whip Chris!"
He didn't make a sound as that whip slashed down on his bare skin. I heard the sickening thuds of green willow biting into flesh. And I felt every painful blow! Chris and I had become as one in the past year; he was like the other side of me, the way I'd like to be, strong and forceful, and able to stand that whip without crying out. I hated her. I sat on that bed, and gathered the twins in my arms, and felt hate so large looming up inside of me that I didn't know how to release it except by screaming. He felt the whip, and I let loose his cries of pain. I hoped God heard! I hoped the servants heard! I hoped that dying grandfather heard!
Out of the bathroom she came, with her whip in her hand. Behind her, Chris trailed, a towel swathed around his hips. He was dead-white. I couldn't stop screaming.
"Shut up!" she ordered, snapping the whip before my eyes. "Silence this second, unless you want more of the same!"
I couldn't stop screaming, not even when she dragged me off to the bed and threw the twins aside when they tried to protect me. Cory went for her leg with his teeth. She sent him reeling with one blow. I went then, my hysteria quelled, into the bath- room, where I, too, was ordered to strip. I stood there looking at her diamond brooch, the one she always wore, counting the stones, seventeen tiny ones. Her gray taffeta was patterned with fine red lines, and the white collar was hand-crocheted. She fixed her eyes on the short stubble of hair the scarf about my head revealed with an expression of gloating satisfaction.
"Undress, or I will rip off your clothes."
I began to undress, slowly working on the buttons of my blouse. I didn't wear a bra then, though I needed one. I saw her eyeing my breasts, my flat stomach, before she turned her eyes away, apparently offended. "I'm going to get even one day, old woman," I said. "There's going to come a day when you are going to be the helpless one, and I'm going to hold the whip in my hands. And there's going to be food in the kitchen that you are never going to eat, for, as you incessantly say, God sees everything, and he has his way of working justice, an eye for an eye is his way, Grandmother!"
"Never speak to me again!" she snapped. She smiled then, confident there would never come that day when I was in control of her fate. Foolishly, I had spoken, using the worst possible timing, and she let me have it. While the whip bit down on my tender flesh, in the bedroom the twins screamed, "Chris, make her stop! Don't let Cathy be hurt!"
I fell down on my knees near the tub, crouching in a tight ball to protect my face, my breasts, my most vulnerable areas. Like a wild woman out of control, she lashed at me until the willow switch broke. The pain was like fire. When the switch broke, I thought it was over, but she picked up a long-handled brush and with that she beat me about the head and shoulders. Try as I would to keep from screaming, like the brave silence Chris had kept, I had to let it out. I yelled, "You're not a woman! You're a monster! Something unhuman and inhumane!" My reward for this was a belting whack against the right side of my skull. Everything went black.
I drifted into reality, hurting all over, my head splitting with pain. Up in the attic a record was playing the "Rose Adiago" from the ballet
The Sleeping Beauty.
If I live to be a hundred I will never forget that music, and the way I felt when I opened my eyes to see Chris bending over me, applying antiseptic, taping on adhesive plasters, tears in his eyes dropping down on me. He'd ordered the twins up into the attic to play, to study, to color, to do anything to keep their minds off of what was going on down here. When he had done for me all that he could with his inadequate medical supplies, I took care of his welted, bloody back. Neither of us wore clothes. Clothes would adhere to our oozing cuts. I had the most bruises from the brush she'd wielded so cruelly. On my head was a dark lump that Chris feared might be a concussion.
Doctoring over, we turned on our sides, facing one another under the sheet. Our eyes locked and melded as one set. He touched my cheek, the softest, most loving caress. "Don't we have fun, my brother . . . don't we have fun?" I sang in a parody of that song about Bill Bailey. "We'll hurt the livelong da-ay . . . you'll do the doctoring and I'll pay the rent . . ."
"Stop!" he cried out, looking hurt and defenseless. "I know it was my fault! I stood at the window. She didn't have to hurt you, too!"
"It doesn't matter, sooner or later she would do it. From the very first day, she planned to punish us for some trifling reason. I just marvel that she held back for so long in using that whip."
"When she was lashing me, I heard you
screaming--and I didn't have to. You did it for me, Cathy, and it helped; I didn't feel any pain but yours."
We held each other carefully. Our bare bodies pressed together; my breasts flattened out against his chest. Then he was murmuring my name, and tugging off the wrapping from my head, letting loose my spill of long hair before he cupped my head in his hands to gently ease it closer to his lips. It felt odd to be kissed while lying naked in his arms . . . and not right. "Stop," I whispered fearfully, feeling that male part of him grow hard against me. "This is just what she thought we did."
Bitterly, he laughed before he drew away, telling me I didn't know anything. There was more to making love than just kissing, and we hadn't done more than kiss, ever.
"And never will," I said, but weakly.
That night I went to sleep after thinking of his kiss, and not the whipping or the blows from the brush. Swelling up in both of us was a turmoil of whirling emotions. Something sleeping deep inside of me had awakened, quickened, just as Aurora slept until the Prince came to put on her quiet lips a long lover's kiss.
That was the way of all fairy tales--ending with the kiss, and the happy ever after. There had to be some other prince for me to bring about a happy ending.