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! (63 page)

He stared at me then, suddenly shocked to find his hand where it was, cupping my left breast, and he yanked his hand away as if my flesh burned him. He pulled the fabric of my frail peignoir together and hid what his hungry eyes had devoured before. He stared at my lips that were slightly parted and waiting to be kissed, and I think he planned to kiss me just before he gained control and shoved me away. At that moment thunder crashed overhead, and a lightning bolt sizzled jaggedly to crackle with fire as it struck a telephone wire outside. I jumped! Cried out!

As suddenly as he had withdrawn his hand, he snapped out of his fog and into what he was customarily—a detached, lonely man who was determined to keep himself aloof. How wise I was in my innocence to know this even before he snapped, “What the hell are you doing sitting on my lap half naked? Why did you let me do what I did?”

I didn’t say anything. He was ashamed; I could see that now in the glow of the dying fire, and in the intermittent flashes of lightning. He was thinking all sorts of self condemning thoughts, chastising, berating, whipping himself—I knew it was my fault; as always it was my fault.

“I’m sorry, Catherine. I don’t know what possessed me to do what I did.”

“I forgive you.”

“Why do you forgive me?”

“Because I love you.”

Again he jerked his head into profile, and I couldn’t see his eyes well enough to read them. “You don’t love me,” he said calmly, “you’re only grateful for what I’ve done.”

“I love you—and I’m yours, when, or if, you want me. And you can say you don’t love me, but you’ll be lying, for I see it in your eyes each time you look at me.” I pressed closer against him and turned his face to mine. “When I was put away by Momma, I swore that when I was free, if love came and demanded of me I’d open my door and let it in. The first day I came I found love in your eyes. You don’t have to marry me, just love me, when you need me.”

He held me and we watched the storm. Winter fought with spring and finally conquered. Now it only hailed, and the thunder and lightning were gone, and I felt so . . . so right. We were much alike, he and I. “Why aren’t you afraid of me?” he softly asked, as his big, gentle hands stroked my back, my hair. “You know you shouldn’t be here, letting me hold you, touch you.”

“Paul . . .” I began tentatively, “I’m not bad; neither is Chris. When we were locked away, we did do the best we could, honest. But we were locked in one room and growing up. The grandmother had a list of rules that forbade us to even look at each other and now I think I know why. Our eyes used to meet so often and without a word spoken he could comfort me, and he said my eyes did that for him too. That wasn’t bad, was it?”

“I shouldn’t have asked, and of course you had to look at each other. That’s why we have eyes.”

“Living like we did for so long, I don’t know a lot about other girls my age, but ever since I was only table high, any kind of beauty has made me light up. Just to see the sun falling on the petals of a rose, or the way light shines through tree leaves and shows the veins, and the way rain on the road turns the oil iridescent, all that makes me feel beautiful. More than anything, when music is playing, especially my kind, ballet music, I don’t need the sun or flowers or fresh air. I light up inside and wherever I am magically turns into marble palaces, or I am wild and free in the woods. I used to do that in the attic, and always just ahead a dark-haired man danced with me. We never touched, though we tried to.
I never saw his face, though I wanted to. I said his name once, but when I woke up I couldn’t remember what it was. So, I guess I’m really in love with him, whoever he is. Every time I see a man with dark hair who moves gracefully I suspect he’s the one.”

He chuckled and twined his long fingers into my unbound hair. “My, what a romantic you are.”

“You’re making fun of me. You think I’m only a child. You think if you kissed me it wouldn’t be exciting.”

He grinned, accepted the challenge and slowly, slowly his head inclined until his lips met mine. Oh! So this was what it was like, a kiss from a stranger. Electric tingles sizzled madly up and down my arms, and all those nerves that a “child” my age wasn’t supposed to have burned with fire! I drew away sharply, afraid. I was wicked, unholy, still the Devil’s spawn!

And Chris would be shocked!

“What the hell are we doing?” he barked, coming out of the spell I’d cast. “What kind of little devil are you to let me handle you intimately and kiss you? You are very beautiful, Catherine, but you are only a child.” Some realization darkened his eyes as he guessed at my motives. “Now get this straight in your pretty head—you don’t owe me, not anything! What I do for you, for your brother and sister, I do willingly, gladly, without expecting any repayment—of any kind—do you understand?”

“But . . . but . . .” I sputtered. “I’ve always hated it when the rain beats hard and the wind blows at night. This is the first time I’ve felt warm and protected, here, with you, before the fire.”

“Safe?” he teased lightly. “You think you’re safe with me, as you sit on my lap, and kiss me like that? What do you think I’m made of?”

“The same as other men, only better.”

“Catherine,” Paul said, his voice softer and kinder now, “I’ve made so many mistakes in my life, and you three give me an opportunity to redeem myself. If I so much as lay a
hand on you again, I want you to scream for help. If no one is here, then run to your room, or pick up something and bash me over the head.”

“Ooh,” I whispered, “and I thought you loved me!” Tears trickled down my cheeks. I felt like a child again, chastised for presuming too much. How foolish to have believed love was already knocking on my door. I sulked as he lifted me away from him. Then he gently lifted me to my feet, but kept his hands on my waist as he looked up into my face.

“My God, but you are beautiful and desirable,” he said with a sigh. “Don’t tempt me too much, Catherine—for your own good.”

“You don’t have to love me.” My head bowed to hide my face and my hair was something to hide behind as I shamelessly said, “Just use me when you need me, and that will be enough.”

He leaned back in the chair and took his hands from my waist. “Catherine, don’t ever let me hear you offer such a thing again. You live in fairyland, not reality. Little girls get hurt when they play grown-up games. You save yourself for the man you marry—but for God’s sake, wait to grow up first. Don’t rush into having sex with the first man who desires you.”

I backed off, scared of him now, while he stood to come within arm’s reach. “Beautiful child, the eyes of Clairmont are fixed upon you and me, wondering, speculating. I don’t have a gilt-edged reputation. So, for the health of my medical practice and the good of my soul and conscience stay away from me. I’m only a man, not a saint.”

Again I backed off, scared. I flew up the stairs as if pursued. For he wasn’t, after all, the kind of man I wanted. Not him, a doctor, perhaps a womanizer—the last kind of man who could fulfill my dreams of faithful, devoted and forever-green-springtime-romantic love!

*  *  *

The school Paul sent me to was big and modern with an indoor swimming pool. My schoolmates thought I looked good and talked funny, like a Yankee. They laughed at the
way I said “water, father, farther” or any word that had an “a” in it. I didn’t like being laughed at. I didn’t like being different. I wanted to be like the others, and though I tried I found out I was different. How could it be otherwise? She had made me different. I knew Chris was feeling lonely in his school because he too was an alien in a world that had gone on without us. I was fearful for Carrie in her school, all alone, made different too. Damn Momma for doing so much to set us apart, so we couldn’t blend into the crowd and talk as they did and believe as they did. I was an outsider, and in every way they could all my schoolmates made me feel it.

Only one place made me feel I belonged. Straight from my high school classes I’d catch a bus and ride to ballet class, toting my bag with leotards,
pointes
, and a small handbag tucked inside. In the dressing room the girls shared all their secrets. They told ridiculous jokes, sexy stories, some of them even lewd. Sex was in the air, all around us, breathing hotly and demandingly down our necks. Girlishly, foolishly, they discussed whether they should save their bodies for their husbands. Should they pet with clothes on or off—or go “all the way”—and how did they stop a guy after they had “innocently” turned him on?

Because I felt so much wiser than the others I didn’t contribute anything. If I dared to speak of my past, of those years when I was living “nowhere” and the love that had sprung up from barren soil, I could imagine how their eyes would pop! I couldn’t blame them. No, I didn’t blame anyone but the one who’d made it all happen! Momma!

One day I ran home from the bus stop and dashed off a long, venomous letter to my mother—and then I didn’t know where to send it. I put it aside until I found out the address in Greenglenna. One thing for sure, I didn’t want her to know where we lived. Though she had received the petition, it didn’t have Paul’s name on it, or our address, only the address of the judge. Sooner or later though, she’d hear from me and be sorry she did.

Each day we began bundled up in heavy, woolen, knitted leg-warmers, and at the barre we exercised until our blood flowed fast and hot and we could discard the woolens as we began to sweat. Our hair, screwed up tight as old ladies’ who scrubbed floors, soon became wet too, so we showered two or three times a day—when we worked out eight or ten hours on Saturdays. The barre was not meant for holding onto tightly, but was meant only for balance, to help us develop control, grace. We did the
plié’s
, the
tendus
, and
glissés
, the
fondus
, the
ronds de jambe a terre
—and none of it was easy. Sometimes the pain of rotating the hips in the turnouts could make me scream. Then came the
frappes
on three-quarter
pointe
, the
ronds de jambe en l’air
, the
petite
and
grande battlements
, the
developpes
and all the warm-up exercises to make our muscles long, strong and supple. Then we left the barre and used the center arena to repeat all of that without the aid of the barre.

And that was the easy part—from there on the work became increasingly difficult, demanding technical skills awesomely painful to do.

To hear I was good, even excellent, lifted me sky-high . . . so there had been some benefits gained from dancing in the attic, dancing even when I was dying, so I thought as
pliéd un, deux,
and on and on as Georges pounded on the old upright piano. And then there was Julian.

Something kept drawing him back to Clairmont. I thought his visits were only ego trips so we could sit in a circle on the floor and watch him perform in the center, showing off his superior virtuosity, his spinning turns that were blurrily fast. His incredible, leaping elevations defied gravity, and from these
grand jetés
he’d land goose-down soft. He cornered me to tell me it was “his” kind of dancing that added so much excitement to the performance.

“Really, Cathy, you haven’t seen ballet until you see it done in New York.” He yawned as if bored and turned his
bold, jet eyes on Norma Belle in her skimpy see-through, white leotards. Quickly I asked why, if New York was the best place to be, he kept coming back to Clairmont so often.

“To visit with my mother and father,” he said with a certain indifference. “Madame is my mother, you know.”

“Oh, I didn’t know that.”

“Of course not. I don’t like to boast about it.” He smiled then, devastatingly wicked. “Are you still a virgin?” I told him it was none of his business and that made him laugh again. “You’re too good for this hick place, Cathy. You’re different. I can’t put my finger on it, but you make the other girls look clumsy, dull. What’s your secret?”

“What’s yours?”

He grinned and put his hand flat on my breast. “I’m great, that’s all. The best there is. Soon all the world will know it.” Angry, I slapped his hand away. I stomped down on his foot and backed away. “Stop it!”

Suddenly, as quickly as he’d cornered me, he lost all interest and walked away to leave me staring.

Most days I’d go straight home from class and spend the evening with Paul. He was so much fun to be with when he wasn’t tired. He told me about his patients without naming them, and told tales of his childhood, and how he’d always wanted to be a doctor, just like Chris. Soon after dinner he’d have to leave to make his rounds at three local hospitals, including one in Greenglenna. I’d try and help Henny after dinner while I waited for Paul to come back. Sometimes we watched TV, and sometimes he took me to a movie. “Before you came, I never went to movies.”

“Never?” I asked.

“Well, almost never,” he said. “I did have a few dates before you came, but since you’ve been here my time just seems to disappear. I don’t know what uses it all up.”

“Talking to me,” I told him, teasing with my finger that I trailed along his closely shaven cheek. “I think I know more
about you than I know about anyone else in the world, except Chris and Carrie.”

“No,” he said in a tight voice, “I don’t tell you everything.”

“Why not?”

“You don’t need to know all my dark secrets.”

“I’ve told you all my dark secrets, and you haven’t turned away from me.”

“Go to bed, Catherine!”

I jumped up and ran over to him and kissed his cheek, which was very red. Then I dashed for the stairs. When I was at the top, I turned to see him at the newel post, staring upward, as if the sight of my legs under the short, rose, baby-doll nightie fascinated him.

“And don’t run around the house in such things!” he called to me. “You should wear a robe.”

“Doctor, you brought this outfit to me. I didn’t think you’d want me to cover myself. I thought you wanted to see me with it on.”

“You think too much.”

In the mornings I was up early, before six, so I could eat breakfast with him. He liked me to be there, though he didn’t say so. Nevertheless, I could tell. I had him bewitched, charmed. I was learning more and more how to be like Momma.