Dollenganger 06 My Sweet Audrina (25 page)

"Did Billie tell you to say that to me?" I asked hoarsely.
His too eager lips burned the hollow of my throat before he murmured, "Yes. Before we left the cottage, she took me aside and told me to be very tender and slow with you tonight. She didn't have to tell me that. I would have been anyway. I want to do everything right. Give me a chance, Audrina. Maybe it won't be as terrible as you're thinking it will be."
"Why are you saying that? Why do you think I'm thinking it will be terrible?"
His half-laugh was tight and small. "It's pretty obvious. You're like a violin with wires tuned so tight I can almost pluck your nerve endings and hear them twang. But it was you who came running to me today, wasn't it? You did throw yourself into my arms and say, 'Let's get married,' didn't you? You wanted to elope today--not tomorrow or next week. So isn't it natural that I'd think that at last you were ready to accept me as your lover?"
I hadn't thought. I'd just acted. Escape from Papa had been all that mattered. "Arden, you didn't answer my question."
"What question?"
"Am I the first?"
"All right, if you have to know. There have been other girls, but none that I loved as I love you. Since I decided you were going to be the one I'd marry, I have not touched another girl."
"Who was the first girl?"
"Never mind," he said with his face pressed between my breasts and his hand exploring beneath my gown. I didn't stop him from doing what he wanted to. I clung to my pain. He didn't love me enough. He'd had others, perhaps a hundred. And he'd always acted like I was his one and only girl. How deceitful, like Papa.
"You're so beautiful, so soft and sweet. Your skin is so smooth," he murmured, his breath coming faster, as if all that he did to me was all he needed, and nothing I did or didn't do mattered at all. His hand was now beneath my bodice, cupping my breast, kneading it, molding it to the shape of his hand as his lips came down hard on mine. I'd been kissed by him many times before, but not like this.
Panic put me back in the rocking chair, made me a child again and terrified of that playroom where awful things came inside and filled me with shame. The lightning flashed and made my nerves jump so that I bucked upwards. Arden took that for beginning passion, for his lust sizzled more and the shoestring straps of my nightie broke as he pulled it down, baring my breasts for his lips and tongue to play with. I arched my neck and forced my head back into the pillow as I bit down on my lower lip to keep from screaming. I squeezed my eyes together and tried to endure the humiliation of everything he did. Inside I was sobbing, just like when they'd ripped off the First Audnina's pretty new dress and torn off her silk underclothes.
Crying, I was crying, and he didn't hear me or see my tears. My eyes popped open when next the thunder clapped. The lightning lit up the room enough for me to see his handsome face just above mine, rapt looking, out of himself with the euphoria he was experiencing.
All this touching, caressing, kissing was giving him pleasure while it gave me terror. I felt cheated, angry, ready to hurt him with my screams when he tugged off my nightgown and threw it away like a rag. They'd done that!
His hands were all over me, finding everything but what he seemed to be seeking. I hated where he had his hand and was glad when he swore to himself as his fingers worked madly. Then he sighed and rolled on top of me, and I felt his hardness.
Oh! The rocking chair, I was in it again, rocking to and fro. I saw the woods, heard the obscene words shouted, heard the laughter.
But it was too late. I felt him jabbing deep into me, thick and hot and slippery wet. I fought to free myself, bucking, kicking, scratching. I clawed deep into the skin of his back, raked at his naked buttocks, but he didn't stop. He kept on jabbing, causing the same kind of shame, the same kind of pain as they had caused her. His face. . . was that Arden's boyish face with his hair plastered to his forehead, his eyes bulging as he stared before he turned and ran? No, no, Arden hadn't been born then. He was just another like them, that was all. All men alike . . all alike, alike . . . like . .
Blurrily I was drifting, losing sense of reality. Aunt Ellsbeth had been right when she said I was too sensitive. I should never have led Arden on and allowed him to believe I could be the perfect wife.
I couldn't be any kind of wife at all.
His hot ejaculations came then. Scream, scream, but the thunder overhead muffled my cries. Nobody heard, not even him. I tasted my own blood on my lips from the bite of my teeth that tried to cut off my screams. Only Arden who loved me. This was the way physical love had to be . and one more last heaving thrust nearly ripped me apart. . then, spinning off, all terror and shame faded. Blackness mercifully took me, and I felt nothing, nothing at all.
Morning light wakened me. Sylvia was slouched in the corner of our bedroom playing with her prisms, her nightgown riding up to her hips. With her vacant eyes looking at nothing, her lips parted and drooling, she crouched there as limp as a rag.
My husband rolled over, came awake and reached for my breasts as if they belonged to him. He kissed them first, then my lips. "Darling, I love you so much." More kisses he rained on my face, my neck, all over my naked body, and Sylvia was there, though I'm sure he didn't see her. "At first you seemed so tight, so scared. Then, all of a sudden, you seized hold of me and eagerly surrendered. Oh, Audrina, I was hoping you'd be like that."
What was he saying? How could I believe his words when his eyes were pleading the way they were? Yet, I allowed him to fake his satisfaction, realizing that he'd had some, while I'd had nothing but pain, shame and humiliation. And far, far back in my perforated memory was the scent of blood, of damp earth and wet leaves . . . and Audrina was stumbling home, trying to hold the shreds of an expensive dress together to cover her nudity.

Part 3
.
Home Again
.
As we drove up our long curving drive, I saw

He towered there, a formidable giant, wearing a spanking new white suit, white shoes, with a bright blue shirt and a white tie with silver and blue diagonal stripes.

I quivered and looked at Arden, whose eyes met mine with a great deal of apprehension. What would Papa do?

With one hand I clung to Arden's arm, my other held Sylvia's, as all three of us slowly ascended the steps to the front porch. All the time Papa's fiery gaze clashed with mine, silently accusing me of betraying him, failing him. Then, done with me, he turned those dark, piercing eyes on Arden as if to weigh him and his strength as an opponent. Papa smiled warmly and thrust out his huge hand for my new husband to shake. "Well," he said genially, "how nice to see all of you again." He pumped Arden's hand up and down. Endlessly, it seemed.

I was proud to see Arden didn't wince. To squeeze too firmly in a friendly handshake was Papa's way of determining a man's physical strength and emotional character. He knew his powerful grip hurt, and a man who grimaced was crossed off his list and labeled "weak."

Turning to me then, he said, "You have disappointed me deeply." Casually he patted Sylvia on the top of her head, as if she were some pesty puppy. Three times he kissed my cheeks, one, then the other, but at the same time he managed to reach behind me to pinch my bottom so hard I wanted to cry out. This kind of pinch was meant to test a woman's endurance, and her reactions were noted, labeled, filed.

Let him label me as he would. "Don't you ever pinch me like that again," I said fiercely. "That hurts, and I don't like it. I have never liked it--and neither did my mother or my aunt."

"My, what a saucy bit of baggage you've become in four days," he said with a wide, mocking grin. Then he reached to playfully pat my cheek, and it felt like a slap. "You didn't need to elope, my sweetheart," he said in a soft, loving purr. "It would have been my pleasure, my joy, to walk you down the center aisle and see you wearing your mother's beautiful wedding gown."

Just when I thought nothing he did could ever surprise me, he caught me off guard. "Arden, I've been talking to your mother about you, and she tells me you've had some difficulty finding the kind of position you want with a good architectural firm. I admire you for not accepting a third-rate job in a second-rate firm. So until you find the kind of position you really want, why not accept a junior account executive position with my brokerage firm? Audrina can help teach you the ropes so you can pass the exam, and, of course, I'll do what I can to help. Though he knows almost as much as I do."

This wasn't what I wanted. Yet, as I glanced at Arden, I saw he was very relieved. This offer would solve a lot of problems. Now we'd have an income and could rent a small apartment in the city, far from Whitefern. Arden appeared very grateful and glanced at me as if I'd overexaggerated Papa's desire to keep me all for himself.

How like Papa to take a situation he disliked and turn it around to his advantage. Good-looking young account executives were much in demand, and Arden was smart and good with math.

"Yes, Arden," he expounded, putting a friendly, fatherly arm over my husband's shoulders, "my daughter can teach you the fundamentals, and the technical side, too." His voice was smooth, easy, relaxed. "She is almost as knowledgeable as I am, and perhaps even better since the market is not a science but an art. Audrina has a stranglehold on sensitivity and intuition--light, Audrina?" He gave me another smile of great charm. Then, while Arden wasn't looking, he quickly reached to pinch my bottom again, even harder. He smiled, and when Arden glanced our way again, Papa was hugging me lovingly.

"Now," he continued, "I have another wonderful surprise for you." He beamed at both of us. "I've taken the liberty of moving your mother out of that miserable little cottage. She is now established upstairs in the best rooms we have." His polished smile shone again. "That is, the best next to my own."

It hurt to see Arden so grateful when he should have known better. Perhaps all men
were
more or less alike and understood each other very well. I raged inside that Papa was still controlling my life, even though I was married.

Cozily established in what had been my aunt's rooms, made grand in a useless effort to please her, was Billie, dressed like a stage star in a fancy lace dress that should have been seen only at a garden party.

Her bright eyes glowing, she gushed, "He stormed over to my place about an hour after you drove away and raged at me for encouraging the two of you to elope. I didn't say a word until he calmed down. Then I think he really looked at me for the first time. He told me I was beautiful. I was wearing my shorts, too, with those damned stumps sticking out, and he didn't seem to care. Darlin', you just don't know what that did for my ego."

Papa was clever, so clever. I should have expected he'd find a way to defeat me. Now he had my mother-in-law on his side.

"Then he said we should make the best of a situation that couldn't be changed, and that wonderful man invited me to come and live here, and share your lives and his. Wasn't that gracious of him?"

Of course it was. I glanced around at the room I thought should be a shrine to my aunt's memory and ached inside. . and yet, what good were shrines when Billie was so grateful? And Aunt Ellsbeth had never appreciated anything done to make her rooms pretty. Certainly if anyone deserved rooms like these, it was

Billie. "Audrina, you never told me your father is so
kind, understanding and charming. Somehow you
always made him seem insensitive, conniving and
abusive."
How could I tell her Papa's good looks and
contrived charms were his stocks-in-trade? He used
them all on women, young, middle-aged and old.
Ninety percent of his clients were wealthy older
women who totally depended on his advice, and the
other ten percent were wealthy men too old to have
good judgment of their own.
"Audrina, darlin'," Billie went on, holding me
against her full, firm breasts, "your father is such a
dear. So sweet and concerned about everyone's
welfare. A man like Damian Adare could never be
cruel. I'm sure you misunderstood if you think he
mistreated you."
Papa had followed us upstairs, and until she
said this, I hadn't seen him leaning gracefully against
the door frame, taking all of this in. He spoke to
Arden in the sudden silence. "My daughter has been
raving about you since she was seven years old. God
knows I never thought puppy love would last. Why, I
loved a dozen girls or more by the time I was ten, and
two hundred before I married Audrina's mother." Arden smiled, appearing embarrassed, and soon
he was thanking Papa for offering him a job when no
one else had--and a decent salary for someone with
absolutely no training as a broker.
And so again Papa had won. Aunt Ellsbeth was
dead. She had not saved me any more than she'd
saved herself.
Only Papa was free to time and time again hurt
those he claimed to love most.
Soon Papa was talking seriously to me and
Arden about giving him a grandson. "I've always
wanted a son," he said while looking directly into my
eyes. It hurt, really hurt to hear him say that, when
he'd always claimed I was enough to please him. He
must have seen my pain, for he smiled, as if I'd been
tested and he found me still faithful. "Second to a
daughter, I wanted a son, that is. A grandson will do
just fine, since I already have two daughters." I didn't want a baby yet, not when just being
Arden's wife was traumatic enough. Bit by painful bit
I was learning how to cope with those nightly acts of
love that seemed atrocious to me and wonderful to
him. I even learned to fake pleasure so he stopped
looking so anxious and allowed himself to believe that
I was now enjoying sex just as much as he did. Even before Arden and I returned from our
seashore honeymoon, Billie had taken over in the
kitchen Aunt Ellsbeth had so recently abandoned.
Billie had her high stool there, carried over with most
of her other belongings by my own father, who
detested doing physical labor. I watched him as he
watched her with admiration, adroitly putting meals
together without one grumble, and not much fuss,
either. She smiled, laughed in response to his many
jokes. She cared expertly for his clothes and ran the
huge house with so little effort that Papa couldn't stop
admiring her remarkable efficiency.
"How do you do it, Billie? Why do you even
want to? Why don't you tell me to hire servants to
wait on you?"
"Oh, no, Damian. It's the least I can do to repay
you for all that you're doing for us." Her voice was
soft and her eyes warm as she looked at him. "I'm so
grateful that you wanted me and have welcomed my
son as your own that I can never do enough. Anyway,
having servants in the house steals your privacy." I stared at Billie, wondering how a woman with
her experience could be so easily fooled. Papa used
people.
Didn't she realize that she was saving him tons
of money by being his housekeeper and cook?--and
that generous offer to hire servants was all fraud,
calculated to make her feel she wasn't being used. "Audrina," said Billie one day when I'd been
married about two months and Arden was still
studying for his broker's exam, "I've been watching
Sylvia. For some reason she dislikes me and would
like to see me gone. I'm trying to think as she might
think. It could be she's jealous because she sees you
love me, too, and she's never had to share your love
with others. When I was in the cottage it was
different, but now I'm in her home and stealing your
attention and your time from her. Arden is her
competition, too, but for some reason, maybe because
he leaves her alone, she isn't jealous of him. It's me
she's jealous of. What's more, I don't believe she's
nearly as retarded as you think. She mimics you,
Audrina. Whenever you turn your back, she follows
you. And she can walk just as normally as you do--
when she knows you can't see her."
Whipping around, I caught Sylvia just behind
me. She appeared startled and quickly her closed lips
parted, and her focused eyes went vacant, blind
looking. "Billie, you shouldn't say things like that. She can hear. And if what you say is true--although I
don't believe it is--she might understand and be hurt." "Of course she understands," said Billie. "She
isn't brilliant, but she's not beyond the pale." "I don't understand why she'd pretend. . ." "Who told you she's hopelessly retarded?"
Sylvia had drifted out into the hall tugging Billie's
little red cart along with her. As I watched, she sat
upon it and began to shove herself along in Billie's
fashion.
"Papa didn't bring her home until she was more
than two and a half years old. He told me what her
doctors had told him."
"I admire Damian a great deal, although I don't
admire the way he's burdened your life with the care
of your younger sister, especially when he could
afford to pay for a nurse to care for her, or, better, a
therapist to train her. Do what you can to teach her
skills, and continue with your speech training. Don't
give up on Sylvia. Even if those doctors gave what
they thought was an honest evaluation, mistakes are
often made. There is always hope and a chance for
improvement."
In the months that followed, Billie convinced
me that perhaps I had misjudged my father after all. She obviously adored him, even worshipped him. He ignored her legless condition and treated her with such gallantry
he
surprised me and pleased Arden. Papa even had a special wheelchair custom-made for Billie. He hated her little red cart with a passion, though the fancy "our kind" of chair with concealed wheels didn't speed around fast enough for her. She
never used that chair unless Papa was around. Arden worked like an Egyptian slave in the
day, then studied half the night, trying to remember all
he needed to know for his broker exams. It was what
he said he wanted, but I knew his heart wasn't in it. "Arden, if you don't want to be a broker, give it
up and do something else."
"I do want it--go on, teach."
"Now," I began when he was seated across the
table in our bedroom, "they will give you several
kinds of tests to judge your reading ability and
comprehension of the written word. Then comes your
verbal agility, and you'll have to understand what
you're saying, which goes without saying." I smiled at
him and shoved his roving foot away from my leg.
"Answer, please, would you rather paint a picture,
look at a picture or sell a picture?"
"Paint a picture," Arden answered quickly. Frowning, I shook my head. "Second question.
Would you rather read a book, write a book or sell a
book?"
"Write a book. . . but I guess that's wrong. The
right answer is sell a book, sell a picture--right?" After three failures came the passing exam, and
my husband became a Wall Street Cowboy. One day when my work was through, I
wandered into the room where my mother's piano
was. I smiled ironically to myself as I pulled out Aunt
Mercy Marie's photograph and set it on the grand
piano. Who would have ever thought I'd do such a
crazy thing on my own? Perhaps it was because I was
thinking about my aunt and how I'd missed her
funeral. To make up for that, I went often to the
graveyard to put flowers on her grave, and on my
mother's grave, too. Never, never did I bring any
flowers for the First Audrina.
In memory of them, I began my own "teatime."
As I began the routine once performed by two other
sisters, Sylvia crept into the room and sat on the floor
near my feet, staring up into my face with a look of
bewilderment. A weird sensation of time repeating
itself stole over me. "Lucietta," said the fat-faced
woman I was speaking for, "what a lovely girl your third daughter is. Sylvia, such a beautiful name. Who is Sylvia? There used to be an old song about a girl named Sylvia. Lucietta, play that song again for me,
please."
"Of course, Mercy Marie," said I in a good
imitation of how I remembered my mother speaking.
"Isn't she beautiful, my sweet Sylvia? I think she is
the most beautiful of all my three girls."
I banged out some tune on the piano that was
pitifully amateurish. But, like a marionette controlled
by fate, I couldn't quit once I'd begun my act. Smiling,
I handed Sylvia a cookie. "And now
you
talk for the
lady in the photograph."
Jumping to her feet with surprising agility,
Sylvia ran to the piano, seized up the photograph of
Aunt Mercy Marie and hurled it into the fireplace.
The silver frame broke, the glass shattered, and soon
the photo in Sylvia's hands was torn into shreds.
Finished, and a bit scared looking, Sylvia backed
away from me.
"How dare you do that?" I yelled. "That was the
only picture we had of our mother's best friend!
You've never done anything like that before." Falling down on her knees, she crawled to me,
whimpering like a small puppy--and she was ten years old now. Crouched at my feet, Sylvia clawed at
my
skirt, allowing her lips to part, and soon spittle wet her chin and dribbled down on her loose, shiftlike garment. A small child couldn't have looked into my eyes with more innocence. Billie had to be mistaken.
Sylvia couldn't focus her eyes but for a second or two. In my dreams that night while Arden slept
peacefully at my side, it seemed I heard drums
beating, natives chanting. Animals howled. Bolting
awake I started to wake up Arden, then decided the
animals' howling was only Sylvia screaming again. I
ran to her room to take her into my arms. "What's
wrong, darling?"
I swear I think she tried to say, "Bad. . bad, .
bad," but I wasn't truly sure. "Did you say bad?" Her aqua eyes were wide with fright--but she
nodded. I broke into laughter and hugged her closer.
"No, it's not bad that you can talk. Oh, Sylvia, I've
tried so hard, so hard to teach you and at last you're
trying. You had a bad dream, that's all. Go back to
sleep and think how wonderful your life is going to be
now that you can communicate."
Yes, I told myself as I snuggled up close to
Arden, liking his arms-about me when he wasn't
passionate, that's all it was, a bad dream Sylvia had. Thanksgiving Day was a week away. I was
more or less happy as I sat with Billie in the kitchen
and planned the menu. Yet I still treaded the long
halls like a child, still taking care not to step on any of
the colorful geometric patterns the stained-glass
windows cast on the floor. I'd stop and stare for long
moments at the rainbows on the walls, just as I had
when I was a child. My memories of childhood were
still so hazy.
As I left the kitchen and started for the stairs,
with the notion of visiting that playroom and evoking
the past, challenging it to reveal the truth, I turned to
find Sylvia trailing me like a shadow. Of course, I'd
grown accustomed to her being my constant
companion, but what surprised me was the way she
managed to catch a random sunbeam with that crystal
prism she clutched and flash the colors directly into
my eyes.
Almost blinded, I staggered backward, for some
reason terrified. In the shadows near the wall I
dropped the hand I'd used to shade my eyes and stared
toward the huge chandelier that caught all the colors
already on the marble floor. The mirrors on the walls
refracted them back to Sylvia, who directed them
again at me, as if to keep me from the playroom. Dizzy and unreal feeling, visions flashed in my head. I saw my aunt sprawled face down on the hard foyer floor. What if Sylvia had been downstairs in the foyer and had used that prism to blind my aunt's eyes with sunlight colors? Could that have made my aunt dizzy enough to fall? Was Sylvia trying to make me fall,
too?
"Put that thing down, Sylvia!" I yelled. "Put it
away. Never flash those lights in my eyes again! Do
you hear me?"
Like the wild thing Papa compared her to, she
ran. Stunned for a moment I could only stare after her.
Feeling frightened of my own violent reaction, I sat
on the bottom step and tried to pull myself together--
and that's when the front door opened.
A woman stood there, tall and slender, wearing
a smart hat of many shades of green feathers. A mink
cape was slung casually over one shoulder, and her
green shoes matched her very expensive-looking
green suit.
"Hi," she said in a sultry voice. "Here I am,
back again. Don't you recognize me, sweet Audrina?" A Second Life
.
What are you doing?" called Vera as, much in
the manner of a very young child, I began to back up
the stairs without standing up. "Aren't you a bit old for
such childish behavior? Really, Audrina, you don't
change at all, do you?"
Striding into the foyer, Vera hardly appeared to
limp. But when I checked I saw that the left sole of
her high-heeled shoes was an inch thicker than the
right sole. Gracefully she approached the stairs. "I
stopped off in the village and they told me you really
did marry Arden Lowe. I never thought you'd ever be
adult enough to marry anyone. Congratulations to
him, the fool, and my best wishes to you, the bride
who should have known better."
The trouble was, what she said could very well
be true. "Aren't you glad to see me?"
"Your mother is dead." How cruelly I said that,
as if I wanted to even the score and dish out pain for
pain.
"Really, Audrina, I know that." Her dark eyes
were cold as she looked me up and down, telling me
in her own silent, eloquent way that I was no
competition for her. "Unlike you, sweet Audrina, I have friends in the village who keep me posted as to what goes on here. I wish I could say I was sorry, but I can't. Ellsbeth Whitefern was never a real mother to