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! (73 page)

“It’s because . . . because you do look so handsome,” I stumbled, “that I can find only weak words. I fear that Thelma Murkel has already found all the strong words to flatter you.”

“How the hell do you know about her?” He fired this at me as he narrowed his beautiful eyes.

Gosh, he should know—gossip—and so I told him this:
“I went to that hospital where Thelma Murkel is the head nurse on the third floor. And I sat just beyond the nurse’s station and watched her for a couple of hours. In my opinion she’s not quite beautiful, but handsome, and she seemed to me terribly bossy. And she flirts with all the doctors, in case you don’t know that.”

I left him laughing with his eyes lit up. Thelma Murkel was a head nurse in the Clairmont Memorial Hospital and everyone there seemed to know she had her mind set on becoming the second Mrs. Paul Scott Sheffield. But she was only a nurse in a sterile white uniform, miles and miles away, and I was under his nose, with my intoxicating new perfume tickling his senses (as the advertisement had said, a bewitching, beguiling, seductive scent no man could resist). What chance did Thelma Murkel, age twenty-nine, have against the likes of me?

I was giddy from three glasses of Chris’s imported champagne and hardly alert at all when Paul began to open the gifts Carrie, Chris and I had saved up to buy for him. I’d embroidered for him a crewel painting of his gingerbread white house with trees showing above the roof and a part of the brick wall to the sides with a little of the flowers showing. Chris had sketched it for me and I’d slaved many hours to make it perfect.

“It’s a stunningly beautiful work of art!” he said with impressed awe. I couldn’t help but think of the grandmother, and how she’d cruelly rejected our tedious and hopeful gesture to win her friendship. “Thank you very much, Catherine, for thinking so much of me. I’m going to hang it in my office where all my patients can see it.”

Tears flooded my eyes, smeared my mascara as I furtively tried to blot them away before he realized it wasn’t just the candlelight making me this beautiful, but three hours of preparation. He didn’t notice the tears or my handkerchief that came from the cleavage of my low-cut gown. He was still admiring
the small stitches I’d so carefully made. He put the gift aside, caught my glance with his own shining eyes and stood to help me up. “It’s too beautiful a night to go to bed,” he said as he glanced at his watch. “I’ve got a yearning to walk in the garden by moonlight. Do you ever have yearnings like that?”

Yearnings? I was made of yearnings, half of them adolescent and too fanciful to ever come true. Yet as I strolled by his side through the magic of his Japanese garden and over the little red-lacquered footbridge, and as we ascended marble steps and walked on hand in hand, I felt we’d both entered a magical never-never land. It was the marble statues, of course, life-size marble statues standing in their cold and perfect nudity.

The breezes were blowing the Spanish moss, and Paul had to duck to escape it, while I could stand straight and smile because having height did cause a few problems I could escape. “You’re laughing at me, Cath-er-ine,” he said, just as Chris used to tease, and separate my name into slow and distinct syllables.
My lady, Cath-er-ine.

I ran on ahead and down the marble steps to the center where Rodin’s
The Kiss
dominated the garden. Everything seemed silvery bluish and unreal, and the moon was big and bright, full and smiling, with long dark clouds streaking its face and making it seem sinister one moment and gay the next. I sighed, for it was like that strange night that put Chris and me up on the roof of Foxworth Hall, both of us fearful we’d roast over the eternal fires of hell.

“It’s a pity you are here with me and not with that beautiful boy you dance with,” said Paul, yanking me back from thoughts of yesterday.

“Julian?” I asked in surprise. “He’s in New York this week—but I suspect he’ll be back again next week.”

“Oh,” he said. “Then next week will belong to him, and not me.”

“That all depends. . . .”

“On what?”

“Sometimes I want him and sometimes I don’t. Sometimes he seems just a boy and I want a man. Then again, sometimes he’s very sophisticated and that impresses me. And when I dance with him I fall madly in love with the prince he’s supposed to be. He looks so splendid in those costumes.”

“Yeah,” he said, “I’ve noticed that myself.”

“His hair is jet black, while yours is sort of brownish smoky black.”

“I suppose jet black is more romantic than brownish smoky black?” he teased.

“That all depends.”

“Catherine, you are female through and through—stop giving me enigmatic answers.”

“I’m not enigmatic, I’m just telling you love isn’t enough, nor romance. I want skills to see me through life so I’ll never have to lock away my children to inherit a fortune I didn’t earn. I want to know how to earn a buck and see us through, even if we don’t have a man to lean on and support us.”

“Catherine, Catherine,” he said softly, taking both my hands in his and holding them tight. “How hurt you’ve been by your mother. You sound so adult, so hard. Don’t let bitter memories deprive you of one of your greatest assets—your soft, loving ways. A man likes to take care of the woman he loves and his children. A man likes to be leaned on, looked up to, respected. An aggressive, domineering woman is one of God’s most fearsome creatures.”

I yanked free of him and ran on to the swing and threw myself down on the seat. I pushed myself high, higher, fast, faster, flying so high it took me back to the attic and the swings there when the nights were long and stuffy. Now here I was, free, on the outside and swinging crazily to put myself
back
into the attic! It was seeing Momma and her husband again that was making me desperate, making me want what should be put off until I was older.

I flew so high, so wild, so abandoned my skirts fanned up
into my face and made me blind. Dizzy, I suddenly fell to the ground! Paul came running to my side, falling down on his knees to lift me up in his arms. “Are you hurt?” he asked, and kissed me before I could answer. No, not hurt. I was a dancer who knew how to fall. He started murmuring the love words I needed to hear between his kisses that came slower and lasted longer, and the look in his eyes made me fill with a drunkenness far headier and far more sparkling than any imported French champagne.

My lips parted beneath his prolonged kiss. I gasped because his tongue touched mine. His kisses came hot, soft, moist on my eyelids, my cheeks, my chin, neck, shoulders, cleavage as his hands endlessly roamed and sought all my most intimate places.

“Catherine,” he gasped, pulling away and gazing down at me with his eyes on fire, “you’re only a child. We can’t let this happen. I swore I’d never let this happen, not with you.” Useless words that I snuffed out by encircling his neck with my arms. My fingers sank into the thickness of his dark hair as I murmured huskily, “I wanted to give you a shiny silver Cadillac for your birthday, but I didn’t have enough money. So I thought I’d give you second best—me.”

He moaned softly. “I can’t let you do this—
you don’t
owe
me.
” I laughed and kissed him, shamelessly kissed him long and deep.

“Paul, it’s
you
who owes me! You’ve given me too many long, desiring looks to tell me you don’t want me now. If you say that you’re lying. You think of me as a child. But I grew up a long time ago. Don’t love me, I don’t care. For I love you and that’s enough. I know you’ll love me the way I want to be loved, because even though you won’t admit it, you do love me and want me.”

The moon lit up his eyes and made them shine. Even as he said, “No, you’re a fool to think it will work,” his eyes were speaking differently.

To my way of thinking, his very restraint proved exactly how very much he
did
love me. If he had loved me less he would have eagerly taken long ago what I wouldn’t have denied. So when he made a move to rise, to leave me and have done with temptation, I took his hand and put it where it would pleasure me most. He groaned. And groaned even louder when I put
my
hand where it would pleasure
him
most. Shameless what I did, I knew it. I shut off my thoughts of what Chris would think, of how the grandmother would consider me a scarlet harlot. Oh, was it fortunate or just the opposite that that book in Momma’s nightstand drawer had shown me well what to do to pleasure a man and how to respond?

I thought he would take me there on the grass under the stars, but he picked me up and carried me back into the house. Up the back stairs he stole quietly. Neither of us spoke though my lips traveled over his neck and face. Far off, in the room to the rear of the kitchen, I could hear Henny’s TV as she listened to a late-night talkshow.

On his bed he laid me down and with his eyes alone he began his lovemaking, and in his eyes I drowned, and things grew blurry as my emotions swelled higher like a tidal wave engulfing both of us. Skin to skin we pressed, just holding close at first and thrilling in the exaltation of sharing what the other had to give. With each touch of his lips, of his hands I was shot through with electrifying sensations, until at last I was wild to have him enter me, no longer tender, but fervent with his own fierce, demanding need to reach the same heights I was seeking.

“Catherine! Hurry, hurry,
come!”

What was he talking about? I was there beneath him, doing what I could. Come where? He was slippery and wet with sweat. My legs were raised and clutched about his waist and I could feel the terrible effort of his restraint as he kept telling me to come, come, come! Then he groaned and gave up.

Hot juices spurted forth to warm up my insides pleasantly five or six times, and then it was over, all over, and he was pulling out. And I hadn’t reached any mountain high, or heard bells ringing, or felt myself exploding—not as he had. It was all over his face, relaxed and at peace now, vaguely smeared with joy. How easy for men, I thought, while I still wanted more. There I was on the verge of Fourth-of-July fireworks and it was all over. All over but for his sleepy hands that roamed over my body, exploring all hills and crevices before he fell asleep. Now his heavy leg was thrown over mine. I was left staring up at the ceiling with tears in my eyes.
Good-bye, Christopher Doll—now you are set free.

*  *  *

Sunlight through the window wakened me early. Paul was propped up on an elbow gazing dreamily down at me. “You are so beautiful, so young, so desirable. You aren’t sorry, are you? I hope you don’t wish now you had done it differently?”

I snuggled closer against his bare skin. “Explain one thing, please. Why did you keep asking me to come?” He roared with laughter.

“Catherine, my love,” he finally managed. “I nearly killed myself trying to hold back until you could climax. And now you lie there with those big innocent blue eyes and ask what I meant! I thought those dancing playmates of yours had explained everything to you. Don’t tell me there is one subject you haven’t read about in a book!”

“Well, there was a book I found in Momma’s night table drawer. . . . But I just looked at the photographs. I never read the text, though Chris did, but then he stole more often to her bedroom suite than I did.”

He cleared his throat. “I could tell you what I meant by what I said, but demonstrating would be more fun. Really, you don’t have the least idea?”

“Yes,” I said defensively, “of course I do. I’m supposed to feel stunned by lightning bolts so I stiffen out and go
unconscious and then I’m split wide apart into atoms that float around in space and then gather together and sizzle me with tingles so I can float back to reality with dream-stars in my eyes—like you had.”

“Catherine, don’t make me love you too much.” He sounded serious, as if I’d hurt him if he did.

“I’ll try to love you the way you want.”

“I’ll shave first,” he said, throwing back the covers and making ready to get up.

I reached to pull him back. “I like the way you look now, so dark and dangerous.”

Eagerly I surrendered to all Paul’s desires. We developed delicate ways of keeping our trysts secret from Henny. On Henny’s day off I washed the bed linens that were duplicates of the ones soiled that I hid away until they could be washed. Carrie could have been in another world she was so unobservant. But when Chris was home we had to be more discreet and not even look at each other, lest we betray ourselves. I felt strange with Chris now, like I’d betrayed him.

I didn’t know how long the rapture between Paul and me would last. I longed for passion undying, for ecstasy everlasting. Yet my suspicious self guessed nothing as glorious as what Paul and I had could go on indefinitely. He would soon tire of me, a child whose mental capacities couldn’t compete with his, and he’d go back to his old ways—maybe with Thelma Murkel. Maybe Thelma Murkel had gone with him to that medical convention, though I was wise enough not to question him ever about what he did when I wasn’t with him. I wanted to give him everything Julia had denied, and give gladly with no recriminations when we parted.

But in the moment of our flaming obsession with each other I felt so large, so generous, and I gloated in our selfless abandonment. And I think the grandmother with her talk of evil and sin had made it ten times more exciting because it was so very, very wicked.

And then again I’d flounder, not wanting Chris to think I was wicked. Oh, it mattered so much to me what Chris would think.
Please, God, let Chris know why I’m doing this. And I do love Paul, I do!

After Thanksgiving Chris still had a few days of vacation, and while we were at the dinner table with Henny hovering nearby, Paul asked all of us what we wanted for Christmas. This would be our third Christmas with Paul. In late January I’d be graduating from high school. I didn’t have much time to go, for my next step, I hoped, would be New York.

I spoke up and told Paul what I wanted for Christmas. I wanted to go to Foxworth Hall. Chris’s eyes widened and Carrie began to cry. “No!” said Chris firmly. “We will not open healed wounds!”