Echoes of Dollanganger (23 page)

I felt Kane's hand take mine, and I snapped out of my reverie.

“Where'd you go?” he asked. “I finally realized I was talking to myself.” I leaned forward to tell him my thoughts, but he interrupted me. “Here they are.”

I turned to see Darlena and Julio enter the restaurant and start in our direction. I hadn't seen his sister for a long time, but my memory of her was that she was very pretty. She looked taller and more elegantly beautiful and graceful now, her soft chestnut-brown hair floating over her shoulders, a stylish sweep of strands just inches from her right eye. The chandeliers captured the dazzle of her unique amber eyes. She had a svelte Nicole Kidman figure enhanced by her form-fitting half-sleeved black dress with a lace bodice.

Julio looked a little more than six feet tall. He had a dancer's physique and seemed less comfortable in his dark blue suit. His ebony hair had a silky sheen. His more caramel complexion made his black-marble eyes stand out. I thought he was quite handsome but a little more rugged-looking than a typical male model.

Kane stood to greet his sister. Her face seemed to explode into a bright smile of delight. They kissed each other's cheeks as if they had not just been together in their home but instead hadn't seen each other for years. Julio looked awkward for a moment in the shadow of Kane and Darlena's dramatic greeting, and then he rushed to introduce himself to me. I felt calluses on his palms and thought of my father's hands. Darlena slid in beside me, and Julio sat across from her.

“You look so grown-up, Kristin,” Darlena said. “I love your dress.”

“Thank you. You look more beautiful than ever, Darlena.”

“I don't think I've seen you since . . . since when?” she asked Kane.

“Who knows?” he replied. “Probably before you started college.”

“No kidding. That's true. How's your father?” she asked me. “I do remember seeing him a few times during the summer. He was always so nice to me. He always reminded me of a Southern gentleman out of some romance novel. I bet he makes every one of your friends feel special.”

“In his way,” I replied. “I can tell you he always makes me feel special.”

She held her smile, but her eyes were full of questions, surely about what it was like to live without a mother or to have a father whose wife had died so unexpectedly. I felt the urge to tell her we were fine.

“My dad's in construction, too,” Julio said, even though no one had mentioned what my father did. “He builds modular houses for a national company. It's dull factory work. He'd rather be doing what your father does,” he added quickly. “I work with him sometimes, and I know I'd rather be doing that.”

“I'd rather be in Philadelphia,” Kane said.

“Pardon?” Julio said.

“Nothing,” Darlena said. “He's just being a wise-ass.”

“
Moi?
” Kane said, pretending outrage.

“What's it mean?” Julio asked.

“It's something my father loves to say. It's on W. C. Fields's tombstone,” Darlena explained. Julio still
didn't understand. His quizzical smile looked frozen on his face. Darlena touched his hand, obviously a gesture meant to comfort him. “It's silly. Fields just wanted everyone to know he'd rather be anywhere than dead.”

“Oh.” He looked at Kane, who shrugged.

The waiter approached, and just as Kane had predicted, Darlena ordered a bottle of champagne. The waiter looked at Kane and me suspiciously, but he didn't say anything.

Darlena giggled. “We're on Daddy's account tonight,” she said, smiling like a child told she could have anything in the store. “He told us on our way out, so go for broke.”

Julio smirked, seeming embarrassed to have Darlena and Kane's father paying for him. “I told your father this was supposed to be my treat,” he said. He looked like he was saying it more for my benefit.

“Don't make it harder for my father to sound like a big shot,” Darlena joked, but he still didn't look happy about it.

I started to ask them both questions about college to get him more relaxed and talkative. Every once in a while, I glanced at Kane and saw a proud look on his face because I was carrying the conversation. The champagne came. The waiter brought only two glasses for it. We then ordered, and when he left, Darlena poured some champagne into Kane's water glass and some into mine.

“Let's toast to something different,” she said,
holding up her glass. We all raised ours. “To Kristin's father successfully building a beautiful new home to replace the Halloween house.”

I looked at Kane. His eyes darkened as if anger had risen into his face from some dark place inside him. Had he told his sister not to mention Foxworth Hall at all? Or had he fallen into his Christopher Dollanganger state of mind and begun to resent anyone wishing the story about him and his siblings could be erased as easily as replacing a building and changing the details of a property?

I saw the way Julio was looking at me, waiting for my reaction.

“If anyone can do it,” I said, without any sign of emotion, “my father can.”

Kane seemed to relax. One crisis passed, I thought. What would come next?

Nothing more about the original Foxworth Hall or the story of the children was mentioned for the remainder of the dinner, but that didn't mean it was out of my mind. Despite being intrigued by Julio and Darlena, I found myself drawn continually to Kane, to the way he talked and held himself. Something had changed in him with Darlena's toast. It wasn't simply being in a formal setting and being dressed up. He really didn't sound like himself. He was so careful about his choice of words, so thoughtful about everything he said, and at times, he appeared older than Julio or Darlena. He corrected Darlena about the history of the city, but not in his usual offhanded or casual way that suggested indifference. He was more
condescending, which really surprised me. I glanced at Darlena. She seemed to be getting upset with him and the way he was going on about the degeneration of some of the city neighborhoods and criticizing their father's regular car customers and the salespeople who worked for him.

“My brother didn't always sound like my mother,” Darlena said. “It wasn't that long ago that I was the one changing his diapers,” she told Julio, after Kane had challenged Julio on his view of the economy. “And when he had a bad nightmare, he didn't run to our mother. He ran to me.”

Kane's face reddened a little. He shot a look my way and started to protest that she was exaggerating, but she was on a roll, I thought, out to get revenge or knock him down a peg or two.

“Mother would ask me to bathe him, because he whined and argued about it so much unless I did it. I even had to put out his clothes, because he wouldn't wear what Mother wanted him to wear. I was still telling him how to dress when he was in the sixth grade.”

Kane had shrunk a bit but then suddenly recovered his superior tone. “Why don't you mention how I had to lie for you when you snuck Ken Taylor into your room for the night after the senior prom?” He turned to Julio. “My parents heard a male voice, and she told them I had been in her room at two in the morning. To protect her, I had to pretend I had gotten into my father's liquor and gotten sick because her boyfriend threw up in her bathroom.”

Julio's eyes widened.

“That's not the worst of it,” Kane continued.

“Okay, okay,” Darlena said, holding up her hands. “Truce.”

Kane smiled at me in victory, but I didn't smile back. He had told me very little about his relationship with Darlena. The way he talked about his home life most of the time made it sound as if he were an only child, too. Now I wondered how close he really had been to Darlena during those earlier years. How close were they to each other now, despite this banter between them?

For the first time, I wondered if he could appreciate Christopher's diary more than I could because he had a sibling and I was an only child. The way they were both talking about their mother also raised a new red flag in my mind. Kane always made fun of his mother. He was almost indifferent to her, but from the way they were talking about her now, it was as if they were as separated from their parents as the Dollangangers had been. His mother seemed to delegate her role as Kane's mother to Darlena and then to whoever would take on one responsibility or another while she pursued her own social objectives.

That's what made what happened in the original Foxworth Hall attic so fascinating to so many young people like us, I suddenly thought. In various degrees, parents ignored their children and looked for ways to avoid their problems and needs. From the sound of it, Mrs. Hill was more of a cousin to Corrine Foxworth than I or my mother was.

Maybe to bring some relief to the table, Julio began asking me more questions. Kane had told them I was in the running for class valedictorian. Julio revealed that he had been his high school class valedictorian. Darlena apparently hadn't known that.

“Class valedictorian, and you didn't know W. C. Fields's famous tombstone?” Kane asked.

“Becoming valedictorian doesn't mean you know trivia, Kane,” Darlena said, coming quickly to Julio's defense.

Kane pursed his lips with annoyance and sat back.

Julio and I talked about our favorite subjects, and he described his interest in an international law career.

I saw that Kane was losing interest. Suddenly, he burst out, “Kristin and I have a party to go to. We'll skip dessert, but you two enjoy.”

He saw the surprise on my face.

“Right?” he asked, more or less demanded.

“Yes, not that I'm so crazy about the person giving the party.”

“Yeah, but we'll ignore her like we always do,” he said.

“
I
always do,” I corrected.

“Whatever you want,” Darlena said. “We enjoyed seeing you, Kristin. I'm sure we'll see more of you.”

“You will,” Kane said, punching his words at her.

“Good,” she said, with just as much defiance in her voice. How quickly they had bounced from being loving brother and sister to competitive siblings.

Kane rose and Darlena and Julio stood to hug and kiss us good-bye. Kane took my hand, hardly giving
me a chance to thank them for including me in their dinner. I felt like he was rushing us out of the restaurant.

“Sorry,” he said when we had stepped out and were waiting for the valet to bring the car. “I didn't expect it to be so boring.”

“It wasn't.”

He looked at me like I was joking. “I haven't had much time with Julio except for that stuffy, dreadful dinner my mother arranged at gunpoint,” he said. “Thank God we have more people at our Thanksgiving dinner. He's not what I imagined my sister would bring home, and not because he's half Latino or anything. He's just too . . .”

“Too what?”

“Full of himself,” he said. “Compensating for an inferiority complex. It gets tired.”

“Are you serious?”

“Absolutely. I can see it clearly,” he replied, with uncharacteristic arrogance.

The car arrived, and we got in.

“Are we really going to Tina's party?”

“I can't take you to my house, and we can't go up to your attic, because your father's probably home or on his way,” he said. “It's still early.”

I sat back like someone resigned to a fate.

“We'll have a few laughs and leave,” he decided. “Okay?”

“Whatever,” I said.

We were both quiet during the drive to Tina Kennedy's home. How complicated the world had
suddenly become. When you're very young, everything seems so simple, even what is good and what is bad. Too much candy is bad for you. Being clean and neat is good for you. Policemen are good. Criminals are bad. Not looking both ways when crossing is bad. Waiting for the green light is good. Most important, parents love their children; children love their parents. Grandparents are loving and kind, as are uncles and aunts. It's all so simple. On your birthday, people who love you make you feel special. You get and give presents on Christmas. You wish one another love and happiness on New Year's Eve.

You are told that someday you will be old enough to drive and stay out later, and someday you'll fall in love, and you'll marry and have children. Everything ahead of you looks good and wonderful. Yes, people get angry at each other, but those who love each other apologize and are even nicer to each other afterward. Everything in the world seems organized; everything works the way it is supposed to work.

And then suddenly, one day, yes becomes maybe, and maybe becomes no. Black is also gray at times, and white might really be black beneath. Smiles are not always true. Sometimes they are empty, false. The lights are on in the houses you pass, but the people inside are cloaked in darkness. Nothing you hear, nothing you see, is necessarily true.

Getting older means learning how to leave with doubt and how to get home again.

In those years when they were shut up together in the attic, the Dollanganger children were rushed out of
their childhood. Gradually, they had lost their chance to dream. What a horrible thing to do to your own children, I thought. Reading about it, reliving it, was making both Kane and me lose what little childhood faith we had left. I suspected now that this was truer for Kane.

What worried me the most was that by the time we finished the diary, we might not know who we were.

When we arrived at Tina's, we could see the party was in full swing and quite unlike the party Kane had had at his home recently. Beer and other alcoholic drinks were in plain sight. The music was so loud you had to shout to be heard by someone standing beside you. A small group was already smoking weed in a room off the living room. How was Tina going to get away with all this once her parents returned?

The way we were dressed drew everyone's attention. Kane's friends began to tease him. Kyra and Suzette had nice things to say about my dress, but most of the other girls were smirking at me with the expression that says, “Who does she think she is?” They didn't know we had gone to dinner before we had come to the party. Tina's comment was that she would gladly give me something of hers to wear so I wouldn't look so stiff and out of place. She looked well into a buzz of some sort, slurring some of her words. I was anticipating her pursuit of Kane.