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! (164 page)

As I continued to stand there, I heard him name several of his invited guests, and they were not all from this country. Many were notables from Europe that he’d met on his tours. Throughout his college days he’d been tireless in his efforts to see the world and to meet important people, people who ruled and dominated either with political power, brains, or financial wizardry. I thought his restlessness was due to his inability to be happy in one place, and he was always longing for the next greener, farther field.

“They’ll all come,” he said to the party on the other end of the line. “When they read my invitation, they won’t be able to decline.”

He hung up, then swung his chair about to face me. “Mother! Are you eavesdropping?”

“It’s a habit I caught from you, my darling.”

He scowled.

“Bart, why don’t you just make your party a family affair? Or invite just your best friends. The villagers around here won’t want to come. According to the tales my mother used to tell us, they have always disliked the Foxworths, who had too much when they had too little. The Fox-worths came and went while the villagers had to stay. And please don’t include the local society, even if Joel has told you they are his friends, and therefore yours and ours.”

“Afraid that your sins will be found out, Mother?” he asked without mercy. I was accustomed to this, but nevertheless I recoiled inwardly. Was it so terrible that Chris and I lived together as man and wife? Weren’t the newspapers full of much worse crimes than ours?

“Oh, come, Mother, don’t look like that. Let’s be happy for a change.” His bronzed face took on a cheerful, excited look, as if nothing I said would daunt his excitement. “Mother, be
excited for me, please. I’m ordering the best of everything. When the word spreads around, and it will because my caterer is the best in Virginia, and he loves to boast, no one will be able to resist coming to my party. They’ll hear I’m sending to New York and to Hollywood for entertainers, and what’s more, I’m sure everyone will want to see Jory and Melodie dance.”

Surprise and happiness filled me. “Have you asked them?”

“No, but how can my own brother and sister-in-law refuse? You see, Mother, I’m planning to hold my party outdoors in the garden, in the moonlight. The lawns will be all lit up with golden globes. I’m having fountains put everywhere, and colored lights will play upon the sprinkling water. There’ll be imported champagne by the crates, and every other liquor you can name. The food will be the best. I’m having a theater constructed in the midst of a wonderworld of fantasy where tables will be covered with beautiful cloths of every color. Color upon color. Flowers will be banked all over. I’ll show the world just what a Foxworth can do.”

On and on he enthused.

When I left his office and found Chris talking to one of the gardeners, I felt happy, reassured. Perhaps this was going to be the summer when Bart found himself, at last.

It would be as Chris had always predicted: Bart would not only inherit a fortune, he would inherit his sense of pride and worth and find himself . . . and pray God he found the right self.

Two days later I was in his office again, seated in one of his luxurious, deep, leather chairs, amazed to see how much he’d accomplished in his short time home. Apparently all this special extra office equipment had been ready and waiting to be installed the moment he was here to direct the placement. The small bedroom beyond the library he used for his office, where our detested grandfather had lived until he died, had been converted into a room of filing cabinets. The room where our grandfather’s nurses had stayed became an office
for Bart’s secretary when or if he ever found one who met his stiff requirements. A computer dominated one long, curving desk, with its two printers that typed out different letters even as Bart and I conversed. It had surprised me to see him typing faster than I could. The drumming of the printers was muffled by heavy Plexiglas covers.

Proudly he showed me how he could keep in touch with the world while staying at home, just by pushing buttons and joining up with a program called “The Source.” Only then did I learn that one summer he’d taken two months of computer programming. “And, Mother, I can execute my buy and sell orders and avail myself of expert technical and fundamental data just by using this computer. I’ll occupy my time that way until I open my own law firm.” For a moment he looked reflective, even doubtful. I still believed that he’d gone to Harvard just because his father had. Law held no real interest for him at all; he was only interested in making money, and then more money.

“Don’t you have sufficient money already, Bart? What is it you can’t buy?”

Something boyishly wistful and sweet visited his dark eyes. “Respect, Mother. I don’t have any talent, like you, like Jory. I can’t dance. I can’t draw a decent representation of a flower, much less draw the human form.” He was referring indirectly to Chris and his painting hobby. “When I visit an art museum, I’m baffled by everyone’s awe. I don’t see anything wonderful about the ‘Mona Lisa.’ I see only a bland-faced, rather plain-looking woman who couldn’t have been exciting. I don’t appreciate classical music, any kind of music . . . and I’ve been told I have a rather good singing voice. I used to try and sing when I was a kid. Goofy kind of kid, wasn’t I? Must have given you a million laughs.” He grinned appealingly, then spread his arms supplicatingly. “I have no artistic talents, and so I fall back upon the kind of figures I can readily understand, those representing dollars and cents.
I look around in museums, and the only things I see to admire are jewels.”

Sparkle came to his dark eyes. “The glitter and gleam of diamonds, rubies, emeralds, pearls . . . all that I can appreciate. Gold, mountains of gold—that I can understand. I see the beauty in gold, silver, copper, and oil. Do you know I visited Washington just to watch gold minted into coins? I felt a certain kind of elation, as if one day all that gold would be mine.”

Admiration faded and pity for him flooded me. “What about women, Bart? What about love? A family? Good friends? Children? Don’t you hope to fall in love and marry?”

He stared at me blankly for a moment or so, drumming his strong, square-nailed fingertips on his desktop before he got up to stand before a wide wall of windows, staring out at the gardens and beyond them the blue-misted mountains. “I’ve experienced sex, Mother. I didn’t expect to enjoy it, but I did. I felt my body betrayed my will. But I’ve never been in love. I can’t imagine how it would be to devote myself to one woman when so many are beautiful and only too willing. I see a beautiful girl walk by, I turn and stare, only to find her turning and staring back at me. It’s so easy to get them into my bed. No challenge at all.” He paused and turned his head to look at me. “I use women, Mother, and sometimes I’m ashamed of myself. I take them, discard them, and even pretend I don’t know them when I meet them again. They all end up hating me.”

He met my wide eyes with watchful challenge. “Aren’t you shocked?” he asked pleasantly. “Or am I just the churlish type you always expected?”

I swallowed, hoping this time I could say the right thing. In the past it seemed I’d never said anything right. I doubted anyone could say words that would change Bart from what he was, and what he wanted to be . . . if he even knew. “I suspect you are a product of your times,” I began in a soft voice, without
recriminations. “I almost pity your generation for missing out on the most beautiful aspect of falling in love. Where is the romance in your kind of taking, Bart? What do you give to the women you go to bed with? Don’t you know it takes time to build a loving, lasting relationship? It doesn’t happen overnight. One-night stands don’t form commitments. You can look at a beautiful body and desire that body, but that’s not love.”

His burning eyes showed such intensity and interest I was encouraged to go on, especially when he asked, “How do you explain love?”

It was a trap he baited, knowing the loves of my life had all been ill-fated. Still I answered, hoping to save him from all the mistakes he was sure to make. “I don’t explain love, Bart. I don’t think anyone can. It grows from day to day from having contact with that other person who understands your needs, and you understand theirs. It starts with a faltering flutter that touches your heart and makes you vulnerable to everything beautiful. You see beauty where before you’d seen ugliness. You feel glowing inside, so happy without knowing why. You appreciate what before you’d ignored. Your eyes meet with the eyes of the one you love, and you see reflected in them your own feelings, your own hopes and desires, and you’re happy just to be with that person. Even when you don’t touch, you still feel the warmth of being with that one person who fills all your thoughts. Then one day you do touch. Perhaps his hand, or her hand, and it feels good. It doesn’t even have to be an intimate touch. An excitement begins to grow, so you want to be with that person, not to have sex . . . just to be with them and gradually grow toward one another. You share your life in words before you share your body. Only then do you start seriously thinking about having sex with that person. You begin to dream about it. Still you put it off, waiting, waiting for the right moment. You want this love to stay, to never end. So you go slowly, slowly toward the ultimate experience of your life.
Day by day, minute by minute, second by second, and from moment to moment you anticipate that one person, knowing you won’t be disappointed, knowing that person will be faithful, dependable . . . even when she’s out of sight, or you’re out of sight. There’s trust, contentment, peace, happiness when you have genuine love. To be in love is like turning on a light in a dark room. All of a sudden everything becomes bright and visible. You’re never alone because she loves you, and you love her.”

I paused for breath, saw his continued interest that gave me the courage to go on. “I want that for you, Bart. More than all the billions of tons of gold in the world, more than all the jewels in vaults, I want you to find a wonderful girl to love. Forget money. You have enough. Look around, open your eyes and discover the joys of living, and forget your pursuit of money.”

Musingly, he said, “So that’s the way women feel about love and sex. I always wondered. It’s not a man’s kind of feeling, I do know that . . . still, what you said is interesting.”

He turned away before he went on. “Truthfully, I don’t know just what I want out of life but more money. They tell me I’ll make an excellent attorney because I know how to debate. Yet I can’t decide what branch of law I want. I don’t want to be a criminal lawyer like my father was, for I’d often have to defend those I know were guilty. I couldn’t do that. I think corporate law would be a bore. I’ve thought about politics, and this is the area I find most exciting, but I’ve got my damned psychological background to mar my record . . . so how can I go into politics?”

Rising from behind his desk, he stepped close enough to catch my hand in his. “I like what you’re telling me. Tell me more about your loves, about which man you loved best. Was it Julian, your first husband? Or was it that wonderful doctor named Paul? I think I would have loved him if I could remember him. He married you to give me his name. I wish
I could see him in my memory, like Jory can, but I can’t. Jory remembers him well. He even remembers seeing my father.” His manner turned very intense as he leaned to lock his eyes with mine. “Tell me that you loved my father best. Say
he
was the one and only man who really seized your heart. Don’t tell me you only used him for your revenge against your mother! Don’t tell me that you used his love to escape from the love of your own brother.”

I couldn’t speak.

His brooding, morose, dark eyes studied me. “Don’t you realize yet that you and your brother have always managed with your incestuous relationship to ruin and contaminate my life? I used to hope and pray someday you’d leave him, but it never happens. I’ve adjusted to the fact that the two of you are obsessed with one another and perhaps enjoy your relationship more because it is against the will of God.”

Snared again! I rose to my feet, knowing he’d used his sweet voice to beguile me into his trap.

“Yes, I loved your father, Bart, don’t you ever doubt that. I admit I wanted revenge for all that our mother had done to us, so I went after my stepfather. Then, when I had him, and I knew I loved him, and he loved me, I felt I’d trapped myself as well as him. He couldn’t marry me. He loved me in one way—and my mother in another way. He was torn between us. I decided to end his indecision by becoming pregnant. Even then he was undecided. Only on the night when he believed my story of being imprisoned by his own wife did he turn against her and say he’d marry me. I thought her money would bind him to her forever, but he would have married me.”

I rose to leave. Not a word did Bart say to give me a hint as to his thoughts. At the door I turned to look back at him. He was seated again in his desk chair, his elbows on the blotter, his hands cradling his bowed head. “Do you think anyone will ever love me for myself and not for my money, Mother?”

My heart skipped a beat.

“Yes, Bart. But you won’t find a girl around here who doesn’t know you’re very wealthy. Why don’t you go away? Settle in the Northeast or in the West. Then when you find a girl she won’t know you are rich, especially if you work as an ordinary lawyer . . .”

He looked up then. “I’ve already had my surname changed legally, Mother.”

Dread filled me, and I didn’t really need to ask, “What is your last name now?”

“Foxworth,” he said, confirming my suspicion. “After all, I can’t be a Winslow when my father was not your husband. And to keep Sheffield is deceitful. Paul wasn’t my father, nor was your brother, thank God.”

I shivered and turned icy with apprehension. This was the first step . . . turning himself into another Malcolm, what I’d feared most. “I wish you’d chosen Winslow for your surname, Bart. That would have pleased your dead father.”

“Yes, I’m sure,” he said dryly. “And I did consider that seriously. But in choosing Winslow, I would forfeit my legitimate right to the Foxworth name. It’s a good name, Mother, a name respected by everyone except those villagers, who don’t count anyway. I feel Foxworth Hall truly belongs to me without contamination, without guilt.” His eyes took on a brilliant, happy glow. “You see, and Uncle Joel agrees, not everyone hates me and thinks I am less than Jory.” He paused to watch my reaction. I tried to show nothing. He seemed disappointed. “Leave, Mother. I’ve got a long day of work ahead of me.”