The Flowers in the Attic Series: The Dollangangers: Flowers in the Attic, Petals on the Wind, If There Be Thorns, Seeds of Yesterday, and a New Excerpt! (146 page)

Abruptly she stopped talking, for I had moved to leave. I tried to make my eyes blank and erase all the milling suspicions I didn’t want her to see. Never had I felt more afraid than I did at that moment, just watching her scheming eyes, the wheels churning, planning something I knew.

At that moment she jumped to her feet with great agility. “Put on your coat. I’m going home with you to have a long chat with your mother.”

J
ory,” began Madame when we were in her ratty old car and driving homeward. “Your parents don’t confide in you much about their past, do they?”

“They tell us enough,” I said stiffly, resenting the way she kept prying, when it didn’t matter, it didn’t. “They are very good listeners, and everyone says they make the best kind of conversationalists.”

She snorted. “Being a good listener is the perfect way to avoid answering questions you’d rather ignore.”

“Now you look here, Grandmother. My parents like their privacy. They have asked both Bart and me not to talk about our home life to our friends, and after all, it does make good sense for a family to stick together.”

“Really . . . ?”

“Yes!” I shouted, “I like my privacy too!”

“You are of an age to need privacy; they are not.”

“Madame, my mother was a celebrity of sorts, and Dad is a doctor, and Mom has been married three times. I don’t think she wants her former sister-in-law, Amanda, to know where we live.”

“Why not?”

“My aunt Amanda is not a very nice person, that’s all.”

“Jory, do you trust me?”

“Yes,” I said, but I didn’t.

“Then tell me all you know about Paul. Tell me if he’s as sick as she says, or if he is alive at all. Tell me why Christopher lives in your home, and is the one who acts like the father of you and Bart.”

Oh, I didn’t know what to say, and I was trying hard to be a good listener so she’d keep on talking and I’d be able to put the pieces of the puzzle together. Certainly I didn’t want her to get the picture before I did.

A long silence grew, and finally she spoke. “You know, after Julian died, your mother lived with you in Paul’s home, then she took you and her younger sister, Carrie, to the mountains of Virginia. Her mother lived there in a fine home. It seems Catherine was determined to ruin her mother’s second marriage. The husband of your mother’s mother was named Bartholomew Winslow.”

That cursed darn lump came back in my throat and ached there. I wasn’t going to tell her that Bart was the son of anyone but Daddy Paul, I wasn’t!

“Grandmother, if you want me to keep on loving you, please do not tell me ugly things about my mother.”

Her skinny hand reached to squeeze mine. “All right, I admire you for being so loyal. I just want you to know the facts.” About that time she almost careened off the road into another ditch.

“Grandmother, I know how to drive. If you are tired and can’t see the road signs very well, I can take over, and you could sit back and relax.”

“Let a fourteen-year-old kid drive me around? Are you crazy? Are you saying you don’t feel safe with me at the wheel? All my life I’ve been driven around, first in hay wagons, then carriages, then taxis or limousines, but three weeks before
I came here, soon after your letter came telling about your mother’s accident, I took driver’s lessons at the age of seventy-four . . . and you see now how well I learned.”

Finally, after four near misses, we made the turn into our circular drive. And there out front was Bart stalking some invisible animal with his pocketknife held like a dagger, ready to thrust and kill.

Madame ignored him as she pulled to a stop. Briskly I jumped out and raced to open her door, but she was out before I got there, and just behind her Bart was stabbing into the air with his knife. “Death to the enemy! Death to all old ladies who wear black raggedy clothes! Death, death, death!”

Calmly, as if she didn’t hear and didn’t see, Madame strode on. I shoved Bart aside and whispered, “If you want to be locked up today, keep on with what you’re doing.”

“Black . . . hate black . . . gotta wipe out all dark black evil.”

But he put the knife in his pocket after he carefully folded it and stroked the pearl handle he admired. He should. It had cost me seven bucks for that present.

Without waiting for a response to her impatient push on the doorchimes, Madame stalked into our house and tossed her purse on the love seat in the foyer. The clack of typewriter keys came to us faintly.

“Writing,” she said, “I guess she goes at that just as passionately as she did dancing . . .”

I didn’t say anything, but I did want to run ahead and warn Mom. She wouldn’t let me. Mom looked up very startled to suddenly encounter Madame Marisha again in her bedroom.

“Catherine! Why didn’t you tell me Dr. Paul Sheffield was dead.”

Momma’s face went red, then white. She bowed her head and put her hands up to cover her face. Regaining her composure almost immediately, she raised her head, flashed angry eyes at Madame, then began to shuffle her papers into a neat
pile. “How nice to see you, Madame Marisha. It would have been nicer if you had called in advance. However, I’m sure Emma can split the lamp chops unevenly and let you have two . . .”

“Don’t evade my question with silly talk of eating. Do you think for one moment I would pollute my body with your stupid lamp chops? I eat health foods, and health foods only.”

“Jory,” said Mom, “in case Emma saw Madame, run tell her not to set another place.”

“What is all this idiotic chatter about lamb chops? I drove here to ask an important question, and you talk about food. Catherine, answer my question—is Paul Sheffield dead?”

Mom looked at me and gestured I was to disappear, but I couldn’t. I stood my ground and defied her. She paled more and seemed appalled that I, her darling, would not obey. Then, as if resigned, she muttered in an indistinct way: “You never asked me about myself, about my husband, so I took it you weren’t interested in anyone but Jory.”

“Catherine!”

“Jory, please leave this room immediately. Or do I have to get up and shove you out?”

I backed out the door just before she reached to throw it shut.

Barely could I make out what she said on the other side of the door, but I pressed my ear against it and heard. “Madame, you don’t know how much I have needed someone to confide in. But you were always so cold, so remote, I didn’t think you could understand.”

Silence. A snort.

“Yes, Paul died, years ago. I try not to think of him as dead but as still alive, though invisible. We brought his marble statues and benches here and tried to make our garden grow like his. We failed. But still, when twilight comes and I’m not in the garden it seems I can sense him near, still loving me. We were married for such a short time. And he
was never really well . . . so when he died, I was left feeling unfulfilled, still yearning to give him the years of happy married life I owed him. I wanted somehow to make up for Julia, his first wife.”

“Catherine,” said Madame softly, “who is this man your children call Father?”

“Madame, what I do is none of your business.” I could hear the anger building in Mom’s voice. “This is not the same kind of world you grew up in. You have not lived my life, and been inside my mind. You have not known the kind of deprivations I suffered when I was young and needed love most. Don’t you sit there and condemn me with your dark mean eyes, for you can’t understand.”

“Oh, Catherine, how little credit you give my intelligence. Do you think me dumb, blind, and insensitive? I know now very well who the man is my grandson calls Dad. And it’s no wonder you could never love my Julian enough. I used to think it was Paul, but now I see it wasn’t Paul you truly loved; it wasn’t that Bartholomew Winslow either—it was Christopher, your brother. I don’t give a damn what you and your brother do. If you sleep in his bed and you find the happiness you feel was stolen from you long ago, I can rationalize and say that much worse goes on every day than brother and sister who pretend to be husband and wife. But I must protect my grandson. He comes first. You have no right to make your children pay the price for your unlawful relationship.”

Oh!—What was she saying?

Mom, do something, say something, make me feel good again! Make me feel safe and real again—make it all go away, this talk of your brother you’ve never mentioned.

I crouched down lower, bowing my head into my hands, not wanting to hear, not daring to leave.

Mom’s voice came strained and very hoarse, as if she were having trouble keeping tears away. “I don’t know how you found out. Please try to understand . . .”

“As I said before, I don’t give a damn—and I think I do understand. You couldn’t love my son, as you could never love any man more than you loved your brother. I’m bitter about that. I’m crying inside for Julian, who thought you an angel of perfection,
his
Catherine,
his
Clara,
his
sleeping beauty that he could never wake up. That’s what you were to him, Catherine, the personification of all the dancing dolls of the ballet, virgin and pure, sweet and chaste, and in the end you are no better than the rest of us.”

“Please!” cried Mom. “I tried to escape Chris. I tried to love Julian more. I did, I really did.”

“No, you didn’t try. If you had, you would have succeeded.”

“You can’t know!” came Mom’s distressed cry.

“Catherine, you and I have traveled the same road for many a year, and you’ve let little bits and pieces of information drop along the way. And then there is Jory, who tries his best to shield you . . .”

“He doesn’t know? Please say he doesn’t know!”

“He doesn’t know,” Madame soothed in what was a soft voice—for her. “But he talks, and spills more than he knows. The young are like that; they think the old are so senile they can’t put two and two together. They think the old can live to be seventy and still not know more than they do at fourteen. They think they have a monopoly on experience, because they see us not doing very much, while every moment of their lives are full, forgetting we too were young once. And we have turned all our mirrors into windows . . . and they are still behind the mirrors looking only at themselves.”

“Madame, please don’t speak so loud. Bart has a way of hiding and eavesdropping.”

Her strident voice toned down, making it more difficult for me to hear. “All right, I’ll have my say and go. I don’t think your home is the proper place for a boy of Jory’s sensitivities to grow up in. The atmosphere here is tense, as if a bomb might explode any moment. Your younger son is obviously
in need of psychological help—why, he tried to stab me as I approached your home.”

“Bart is always playing games . . . ,” said Mom weakly.

“Hah! Some games he plays! His knife almost slit my coat. And this coat is almost new. It will be my last coat, the one I’ll wear until I’m dead.”

“Please, Madame, I’m not in the mood for talk of death.”

“Did I ask for your pity? If you took it that way, then I reverse positions. I’ll wear this coat as long as I live. And before I die I have to see Jory achieve the fame that should have been Julian’s.”

“I’m doing what I can,” said Mom wearily, sounding so terribly tired.

“What you can? Hell and damnation! You live here with your brother, risking public humiliation, and sooner or later you fragile bubble will pop. Jory will suffer. His schoolmates will taunt him. The reporters will hound you, him, everyone in this house. The law will take your children from you.”

“Please sit down, stop pacing.”

“Damn you, Catherine, for not listening. I guessed a long time ago that in time you would succumb to your brother’s adoration. I thought even when you married your Dr. Paul that you and your brother . . . well, never mind what I thought, but you married a man almost dead. Was it a guilty conscience?”

“I don’t know. I used to think it was because I loved him and I owned him. I had a thousand reasons for marrying him, the most important being he wanted me, and that was enough.”

“All right, you had reasons enough. But you hurt my son. You didn’t give him what he needed, and I never understood how you could resist. He used to cry, saying you didn’t love him enough. Always he said there was some mysterious man you loved more—and I didn’t believe him then. Fool, wasn’t I? Fool, wasn’t he? But we were all fools when it came to you, Catherine. You were so beautiful, so young and innocent
seeming. Were you born old and clever? How did you know so well, so early, all the ways of making a man love you beyond reason?”

“Love is sometimes not enough,” she said dully, while I felt almost paralyzed with the dreadful information I was overhearing. Moment by moment, heartbeat by heartbeat, I was losing the mother I loved, I was also losing the only father I’d ever had long enough to love. “How did you find out about Chris and me?” Mom asked, making me quiver more.

“Does it matter?” shrieked Madame. I was pinning my hopes to her, hoping she too wouldn’t betray me. “I’m not dumb, Catherine, as I said before. I asked a few questions. I listened to Jory’s answers, and I added up the facts. It’s been years since I saw Paul—but Chris was always there. Bart is on the brink of insanity from what Jory innocently lets out—never intentionally, only carelessly, for he loves you. Do you think I can stand quietly by and let you and your brother wreck my grandson’s life too? I refuse to let you ruin his career, his mental health. You give me Jory to take back East with me, where he’ll be safe and far removed from the bomb that will explode and splatter your lives onto the front pages of every newspaper in this country!”