Dollenganger 06 My Sweet Audrina (9 page)

"You took off your bathing suit?" roared Papa, his face so red he seemed ready to explode.
"Papa!" I screamed as my father made another menacing move. "Arden hasn't done anything wrong. He's the only friend I've ever had, and now you're punishing him for liking me!" I ran to where I could put myself
between
Arden and my father. He glared at me and tried to thrust me aside, but I clung to his arms, weighing him down. "I was changing clothes behind the bushes; Arden was still fishing. When Vera stole my clothes, and even my bathing suit, he offered to give me his shirt to wear, but she'd stolen his clothes, too. Just before you arrived he was going to run home and bring back something his mother would loan me to wear--and now you want to punish him for what Vera did."
Behind me, Arden jumped to his feet. "If you feel such a need to punish someone, punish Vera. Audrina has never done one thing to make you ashamed of her. It's Vera who plays the dirty tricks. And for all I know she may have been the one to tell you what we planned to do today, hoping you'd presume the worst."
"And what is the worst?" asked Papa sarcastically even as he held me close at his side. His jacket almost slid off my shoulders to the ground. I made a desperate grab to hold it in place. I was trying to hide a bosom that didn't exist.
Papa's anger began to simmer down, but only a little. His fingers uncurled, though he kept tight hold on my shoulder. "Young man, I admire you for trying to protect my daughter, but she's misbehaved just by being here. Vera told me nothing. I haven't seen that wretch since last night at the dinner table. All I had to do was watch my Audrina's eyes this morning. They were shining so much at the breakfast table I immediately became suspicious." His smile was charming and evil too, as he turned to me. "You see, my love, there are no secrets you can keep from me. I can guess what's going on even without a tattletale like Vera. And if anyone should know better than to meet secretly with a boy in the woods, it should be you."
Papa grinned, put his hand flat on Arden's chest and thrust him away. "As for you, young man, if you want to keep that nice straight nose of yours unbroken, leave my daughter alone!"
Arden staggered backward from the hard shove, but he didn't fall.
"Goodbye, Arden," I called, tugging on Papa's hand and trying to move him along before he pushed Arden again.
Papa chose the most overgrown and difficult paths home, where everything clawed at my face, my legs and feet. After a while, he let go of my hand in order to protect his own face from being whiplashed by the low branches.
I was having great trouble keeping his jacket in place. The neck was so large it kept slipping off my shoulders. When I reached to pull it up on one shoulder, it slipped off the other. The sleeves dragged on the ground, and several times I tripped and fell. Impatiently he waited for me to stand after the third fall, and then he took the sleeves and wrapped them about my neck like a heavy scarf.
Helplessly, I stared up at him, wondering how he could be so mean to me. "Are you feeling sorry for yourself now, darling? Do you regret your hasty actions--deciding to risk your papa's disfavor to see a boy who will only ruin you in the end? He's only a bit of trash, not worthy of you.
^,,
"He's not trashy, Papa," I wailed, already beginning to itch and burn. My feet were full of cuts, my legs scratched. "You don't know Arden."
"You don't know him either!" he bellowed. "Now I'm going to show you something." Again he seized my hand and pulled me along in a different direction. On and on he dragged me until I gave up trying to resist. Finally he came to an abrupt halt.
"You see that tree?" he said, pointing to a splendid one, lush with golden leaves that trembled in the gentle summer breeze. "That's a golden raintree." There was a small mound under the tree, covered with clover over which honey bees hovered, hummed and fingered for nectar. "That's where we found your older sister, sprawled there stone-cold dead. Only it was raining that day in September. Raining hard. The sky was dark with thunderclouds, and lightning flashed, so at first we thought she might have been struck by lightning. But there was evidence enough to prove it wasn't the work of God."
My heart was a wild frantic animal in my chest, thudding hard against my ribs, screaming and wanting to get out. "Now you listen to me, and listen carefully. Learn from the mistakes of others, Audrina. Learn before it's too late to save yourself I don't want to find you dead there too."
The woods were closing in on me, smothering me. The trees wanted me, wanted me dead because I was another Audrina they wanted to claim for their own.
His lesson still not complete, heartlessly Papa dragged me onward. I was crying now, completely defeated, knowing he was right. I should never disobey, not ever. I should never have forgotten the other Audrina.
He was leading me to our family plot. I hated this place. I tried to sit down and resist, but Papa picked me up by the waist. Holding me rigid before him like a wooden doll, he stopped in front of the high, slender tombstone that seemed symbolic of a young girl. He said it again, as he'd said it a hundred or more times in the past, and just as before, his words made my blood chill and my spine turn mushy.
"There she lies, my First Audrina. That wonderful, special Audrina who used to look up to me as if I were God. She trusted me, believed in me, had faith in me. In all my life I never had another who gave me that kind of unquestioning love. But God chose to take her from me and replace her with you. There must be some meaning in all of this. It's up to you to make her death meaningful. I cannot bear to live with the knowledge that she may have died in vain. Audrina. You have to take on all the gifts of your dead sister, or I'm sure God will be angered, just as I am angered. You don't love me enough to believe I am doing the very best I can to protect you from the very thing that happened to her. And certainly you must have learned from the rocking chair about the boys in the woods on the day she died."
Staring up into his handsome face, which soon streaked with tears, I twisted in his arms so my arms went around his neck, and my face tucked down on his shoulder. "I'll do anything you want, Papa, as long as you let me see Arden and Billie once in a while. sit in the rocking chair, and really try to fill with her gifts. I swear I'll cooperate as I never have before."
His strong arms embraced me. I felt his lips in my hair, and later he used his handkerchief to clean my dirty face before he kissed me. "It's a bargain. You can visit that boy and his mother once a week as long as you keep Vera with you, and make that boy escort you through the woods, and never go there after dark, or on a rainy day."
I didn't dare to ask for more.

Competition
.
The cemetery and the rocking chair had taught

me their lessons. From now on I'd be the kind of girl Papa had to have in order to gain wealth and live happily. I knew he believed his way was the best way, and I couldn't judge for myself the
^-
fight and wrong of most situations. And I wanted Papa to love me more than that hateful First Audrina that I wished had never been born, just as I'm sure Vera wished that I'd never been born.

"You'll never be as wonderful as your dead sister," stated Vera so firmly that it seemed indeed she must have known her. She was trying to press Papa's shirt to show him she could, but she was only managing to ruin it. The iron kept sticking and left burned places shaped like the iron. Even the steam holes showed. "The First Audrina could iron shirts like an expert," she said, bearing down hard on the iron. "And she was so neat with her hair. Your hair is always a windblown mess."

Vera's hair wasn't exactly terrific looking, either, the way it fell down into her face in wispy strings. The sun through the windows shone through her apricot hair and turned it gold on the ends and red near her scalp. Sun hair. Fire hair.

"I can't understand why they'd name someone as stupid as you are after such a brilliant girl. You can't do anything right," she went on. "What fools parents can be. Just because you happened to have her coloring, they thought you'd have to have her brains and personality, too. And you aren't nearly as pretty. And you're moody and dreary to be around." She turned down the heat on the iron, but it was already too late. Worry puckered her brow as she studied the burn marks and tried to figure out what to do. "Mom," she called, "if I burn Papa's shirt, what should I do?"

"Run for the woods," called back my aunt, who was glued to her TV set, which was showing an old movie.

"Stupid," Vera said to me, "go ask your mother what can be done to take out the scorched place on Papa's shirt."

"I'm too stupid to know what you mean," I said, still stirring my cereal around, sure that Papa would put me in that rocking chair again tonight, as he'd been doing two or three times a week, hoping the gifts were coming my way.

"Poor second-best Audrina," Vera continued. "Too dumb to even go to school. Nobody here wants the world to know how idiotic you are with your senile memory." She took from the cabinet a huge bottle of bleach, poured a little onto a sponge and dabbed at Papa's new pink shirt. The shape of the iron made an unsightly burn right where his coat wouldn't hide it.

I went over to see what she was doing. The bleach seemed to be working.
Papa stalked into the kitchen, bare-chested, cleanly shaven, his hair styled and ready to go. He paused near the ironing board to stare at Vera, who looked extremely pretty now that she was shaping up and slimming down in her waist. Then
he
was looking from me to her, then back again. Was he comparing me to her? What did he see that made him look undecided?
"What the devil are you doing to my shirt, Audrina?" he asked, catching his first glimpse of the ironing board.
"She was pressing it for you, Papa," spoke up Vera, moving in closer, as if to side with him. "And the silly girl was so busy picking on me she left the iron flat on your new shirt---"
"Oh, my God," he cried, grabbing up the shirt and inspecting it closely. He groaned again as he saw something I hadn't noticed until the light shone through it. Holes were appearing in the fading scorch mark. "Look what you've done!" he roared at me. "This shirt is one hundred percent silk. You've just cost me a hundred dollars." He saw the huge bottle of bleach then and groaned again. "You burn my shirt, then pour on bleach? Where was your common sense, girl, where?"
"Don't get excited," said Vera, running forward and snatching the shirt from his hands. "I'll repair this shirt for you, and you won't know it from new. After all, Audrina doesn't know how to do anything."
He glared at me, then turned doubtfully to her. "How can you repair a shirt that's been eaten by bleach? It's gone, and I had planned to wear that to an important meeting." He hurled down his wine-colored tie, looked down at his light gray trousers, then started to leave the kitchen.
"Papa," I began, "I didn't burn your shirt."
"Don't lie to me," he said with disgust. "I saw you at the ironing board, and the bleach bottle wasn't a foot away. Besides, I don't think Vera would give a damn if my shirt was wrinkled. I naturally presumed you would be the one who knows how much I like to be turned out to perfection."
"I don't know how to press shirts, Papa. As Vera says all the time, I'm too stupid to do anything right."
"Papa, she's lying, and what's more, I told her to turn on the steam and use a press cloth, but she wouldn't listen. But you know how Audrina is."
He seemed ready to flare back when he noticed my look of despair. "All right, Vera. That's enough. If you can salvage this shirt I'll give you ten dollars." He smiled at her crookedly.
True to her word, that evening when Papa came home, Vera showed him his pink shirt. It looked brand new. He took it from her hands, turned it over and over to look for patch stitches and could find none. "I don't believe my eyes," he said, and then laughed as he pulled out his wallet. He handed Vera ten dollars. "Honey, perhaps I've been misjudging you after all."
"I took it to a silk-mender, Papa," she said demurely, bowing down her head. "It cost me fifteen dollars, so that means I lost five of my savings."
He was listening attentively. If there was one kind of person my papa admired, it was one who knew how to save. "Where did you earn the money to save, Vera?"
"I run errands for old people. Help by shopping for their groceries," she said in a small, shy voice. "On Saturdays, I walk all the way to the village and do what I said. Sometimes I babysit, too."
My mouth gaped. Sure, once in a while Vera disappeared on Saturdays, but it was hard to picture her walking fifteen miles to and another fifteen fro. Papa was triply impressed, and pulled out another ten and gave that to her. "Now this shirt cost me a hundred and twenty, but it's better than throwing it away."
He didn't even look at me as he impulsively planted a resounding kiss on her cheek. "You surprise me, girl. I haven't always been nice to you. I thought you wouldn't care about my ruined shirt. I even thought you didn't love me."
"Oh, Papa," she said with her eyes gleaming, "I love you from the top of your hair to the tip of your toenails."
I hated her, really hated her for calling t n Papa, when he was my father, not hers.
For some strange reason, he backed away from Vera, glancing down at his shoes as if to check the horny toenails that embarrassed him. He cleared his throat and looked disconcerted. "Well, it's an overdone compliment, but if it's genuine, I'm pleased and touched."
Stunned, I watched him leave the room without once glancing my way. He didn't come in that night to tuck me into bed, or kiss my cheek, or hear my prayers, and if I dreamed of boys in the woods, I was pretty sure on this night he wouldn't come running to save me.
In the morning it was Vera who poured Papa's coffee, spelling Momma, who seemed wilted and looked very pale. She jumped up to put on three slices of toast and stood close to see that it didn't toast too long. He liked it golden on the outside, tender on the inside. Vera fried his bacon to perfection, and I didn't hear one complaint from him. When he finished eating, he thanked her for waiting on him, then got up to leave for work. Limping after him, Vera caught hold of his hand. "Papa, even though I know you're not my real father, can't we pretend you are. . . can't we, Papa?"
He seemed uncomfortable, as if not knowing what to say, and at the same time, touched. Papa belonged to me and Momma, not to Vera. I glanced at my aunt, who sat tight-lipped and grim, and I wished that both she and Vera would leave and go anywhere away from
here.
Soon Papa left. I watched as his car turned off the dirt road that would take him onto the expressway and into town, where he'd have lunch with
businessmen and call it work. To my surprise,
he
stopped momentarily at the mailbox on the corner where our private road forked off to meet the main road. I wondered why he hadn't picked up the mail last night. Had he been so eager to reach Momma and see how she fared that he'd forgotten again to check the mailbox?
When I reached our mailbox, I found the mail was still there. In fact, magazines and newspapers were bulging from the door, which wouldn't close.
It took some doing to stack my arms with all that was addressed to Papa. This was just what I needed. I would win Papa back. I knew what he wanted from me. I knew what Papa cared about most--money. I had to use my "gift" to make Papa money. Then he'd love me best forever. I was trying to read the front page of
The Wall Street Journal
even before I reached the kitchen to toss the mail on the table. I raced off to find the items I needed: a pencil and notepad, and a length of string and a straight pin.
In the closet under the back stairs was all the junk we wanted to keep and later throw out. It was there I found old copies of
The Journal. I laid
out the quote sheets and began to list the most active stocks, thinking two weeks should give me time span enough. Even as I worked I could hear Vera upstairs arguing with my aunt, who wanted her to help with the laundry. Vera wanted to go to the movies. She was meeting a friend.
"No!" yelled my aunt. "You're too young to start dating." Vera said something else I couldn't make out. "No, no, no!" I could hear very well. "Stop pleading. Once I say no I mean no--I'm not like some others around here who say no and later change their minds."
"You let me do as I want or I'll spill out all our family secrets in the middle of Main Street," shrilled Vera. "I'll stand there until everybody knows who my father is, and what you did--and the Whitefern name will go even farther down on the list of scoundrels!"
"Open your mouth about family secrets and you won't get one dime from me or from anyone else. If you behave yourself, there's a chance for us to profit sooner or later. You antagonize Damian and Lucietta. You're a thorn in both their sides, but it can pay off for both of us if you just try to behave yourself. I used to rue the day I conceived you. Many a time I wished I'd have had an abortion, but when you had Damian's shirt repaired and I saw how impressed he was, I regained some hope." Pleading came into her voice. "Audrina doesn't have to be the darling in this family, Vera. Remember all that's happened to her has given you a certain edge. Take advantage of it. You know how he is, and what he needs. Admire him. Respect him. Flatter him, and you'll become his favorite."
There was a long silence up there and some whispering I couldn't hear. That all too familiar lead ball came to reside in my chest again. They were plotting against me --and they knew what had happened to me when I didn't.
I had almost believed that my aunt liked me. Now I was hearing that she, too, was my enemy. I went back to the table to work with more
determination to find just the right stock that would go up, up, up, and make Papa very, very, very rich.
I tied my little birthstone ring to the string, figuring I could do the same as Mrs. Allismore and predict which stock would be a winner. Papa was always saying trading stocks was not a science but an art, and what I was doing seemed very creative. I'd fastened a pin to the ring with a bit of thread to use it for a pointer. Twice it touched down on the same stock. I tried to force it to touch a third time. Three of anything was a magic number. But it refused to choose the same stock three
times, even
when I
opened
my eyes and tried to control the ring. It seemed to have some power of its own, faltering, indecisive, the same as Momma's wedding ring had been confused over her abdomen.
Just then I heard a loud howl. "Where are my diamond-stud earrings?" shouted Aunt Ellsbeth. "They're the only things my father left me of value, and my mother's own engagement ring. They're gone! Vera, did you steal my jewelry?"
"No," bellowed Vera. "Perhaps you misplaced them like you do everything else,"
"It's been years since I wore that ring. You know I keep all my best jewelry locked in a box. Vera, don't lie. You're the only one who ever enters my bedroom. Now, where are those things?"
"Why don't you ask Audrina?"
"Her? Don't be ridiculous. That girl would never steal anything; she's got too much conscience. It's you who doesn't have any." She paused as I began to fold up the newspapers, my stock list put safely away. "Now I know what you did to restore Damian's one-hundred-dollar pink silk shirt," said my aunt scornfully. "You stole my earrings and ring, hocked them and bought him a new shirt. Damn you for doing that, Vera! No, you are not going to the movies. Not today, or any Saturday! Until the day you earn enough money to reclaim my jewelry, you stay home!"
I'd drifted to the bottom of the stairs to hear better; then I heard a thump, like someone falling. Then Vera came rushing down the stairs, with my aunt limping after her. "When I catch you, you're going to be locked in your room the remainder of this summer!"
Vera came flying in her best dress and new white shoes. I stood in her way. Brutally she shoved me aside and reached the front door before my aunt was down the back stairs. "Audrina, you can tell that beast of a woman that I hate her as much as I hate you, your mother, your father and this house! I'm going to the village, and when I get there I'm going to sell my body on the streets. I'm going to stand out before Papa's barbershop and yell 'Get your Whitefern daughter!' I'll yell it out so loud that the men in the city will hear, and they'll all come running! And I'll be the richest one yet!"
"You tramp!" yelled my aunt, running through the kitchen and heading for Vera. "You come back here! Don't you dare open that door and leave!"
But the door was opened and slammed shut before my aunt ran out to the porch. I stood looking out a window, watching Vera disappear around the bend. The village was fifteen miles away. The city was thirty. Was she going to hitchhike?
My aunt came and stood next to me. "Please don't tell your father what you overheard here. There are some things better left unsaid."
I nodded, feeling sorry for her. "Can I help?"
Stiffly, she shook her head. "Don't waken your mother.
She needs to rest. I'm going upstairs. You'll have to fix your own breakfast."
On Saturdays Momma liked to sleep late, and that gave my aunt her chance to stay in the little room off the dining room where she kept her television set. She loved to watch old movies and soap operas. They were the only entertainment she had.
My appetite had fled with Vera. I didn't doubt in the least that she would do just as she'd threatened. She'd destroy us all. I sat down and tried not to think of what Arden and his mother would think.
My mind was a workshop of miserable thoughts, wondering what made Papa the way he was, lovable and detestable, selfish yet giving. He needed someone nearby at all times, especially to watch him shave, and since Momma had to fix breakfast it was usually me who perched on the rim of the bathtub and listened to all the interesting things that went on in his brokerage office.
I asked many questions about the stock market, and what made stocks go up or down. "Demand," was his answer for high fliers. "Disappointment," was his explanation for those that went down. "Rumors of mergers and takeovers are great for sending stocks soaring but by the time the general public knows about those things, it's too late to get in. All the banks and big investors have bought and are ready to sell off to the poor unknowing investor who buys in at the top. When you've got the right connections, you know what's going on--if you don't have those connections, keep your money in the bank."
Bit by bit, I'd gained a great deal of knowledge about the market. It was Papa's way of teaching me, too, about arithmetic. I didn't think of money in cents but in eighths of points. I knew about triple tops that were sure to slide, and double bottoms that should take off. He'd showed me charts and how to read them, despite Momma ridiculing him about my being too young to understand. "Nonsense. A young brain is a quick brain; she understands much more than you do." Oh, yes, in some ways I loved my father very much, for if he couldn't restore my memory, he did give me hopes for my future. Someday he was going to own his own brokerage firm, and I'd be his manager. "With your gifts, we can't miss," was the way he put it. "Can't you just see it now, Audrina: D. J. Adare and Company."
Once again I went back to the most active lists and performed my string and ring trick, and again my pin pointer touched down twice on that same stock. Happiness swelled in my heart. I hadn't left it to Providence. Papa was going to make money when I gave him
this
dream.
And if this stock I'd chosen did go up, as by now I was fully expecting it would, then never again would I have to sit in that First and Best Audrina's rocking chair. I'd have her gift--or one even better. I knew Papa. It was money Papa wanted, and money he needed, and money was truly the one thing he didn't have enough of.