Dollenganger 01 Flowers In the Attic (12 page)

She fell into a chair and crossed her lovely legs, picking up a magazine to fan herself. "I'm sorry to have kept you waiting," she said, with a loving smile in my direction. "I wanted to stop by and visit this morning, but my father demanded all of my attention, and I'd made plans for this afternoon, though I did cut them short so I could spend some time with my children before dinner." Though she didn't look sweaty, she raised a sleeveless arm and fanned her atinpit as though this room was more than she could bear. "I've been sailing, Cathy," she said. "My brothers taught me how to sail when I was nine, and then when your father came here to live, I taught him how. We used to spend a lot of time on the lake. Sailing is almost like flying . . . wonderful fun," she ended lamely, realizing her fun had stolen
our
fun.
"Sailing?" I just about screamed. "Why weren't you down- stairs telling the grandfather about us? How long do you intend to keep us locked up here? Forever?"
Her blue eyes skipped nervously about the room; she appeared on the verge of getting up from the chair we seldom used, for we saved it especially for her-- her throne. Maybe she would have gone then and there if Chris hadn't come down from the attic with his arms loaded down with encyclopedias so old they didn't include television or jet planes.
"Cathy, don't shout at our mother," he scolded. "Hi, Mom. Boy, do you look great! I love that sailing outfit you've got on." He put down his load of books on the dressing table he used for a desk, then strolled over to put his arms around her. I felt betrayed, not only by Momma, but by my brother. The summer was almost over, and we hadn't done anything, been on a picnic or had a swim, or walked in the woods, even seen a boat or put on a bathing suit to wade in a backyard pool.
"Momma!" I cried out, jumping to my feet, and ready to do battle for our freedom. "I think it's time you told your father about us! I'm sick of living in this one room, and playing in the attic! I want our twins out in the fresh air and sunshine, and I want out, too! I want to go sailing! If the grandfather has forgiven you for marrying Daddy, then why can't he accept us? Are we so ugly, so terrible, so stupid he'd be ashamed to claim us as his blood kin?"
She shoved Chris away from her, then sank weakly down into the chair she'd just abandoned, leaned forward, and bowed her face down into her hands. Intuitively, I guessed she was going to reveal some truth she'd previously held back. I called to Cory and Carrie and told them to sit close at my sides so I could put my arm about each. And Chris, though I thought he would stay close by Momma's side, came over to sit on the bed next to Cory. We were again, as we'd been before, small fledgling birds sitting on a clothesline waiting for a strong gust of wind to blow us asunder.
"Cathy, Christopher," she began, her head still bowed, though her hands were in her lap nervously working, "I haven't been completely honest with you."
As if I hadn't guessed that already.
"Will you be staying for dinner with us tonight?" I asked, for some reason wanting to put off the full truth.
"Thank you for asking me. I'd like to stay, but I've made other plans for this evening."
And this was our day, our time to be with her until dark. And yesterday she'd spent only half an hour with us.
"The letter," she murmured, and her head lifted and shadows darkened the blue of her eyes into green, "the letter my mother wrote when we were still in Gladstone. That letter invited us to live here. I didn't tell you that my father wrote a short note on the bottom."
"Yes, Momma, go on," I urged. "Whatever you have to tell us, we can take it."
Our mother was a poised woman, cool and selfpossessed. But there was one thing she could never control, and that was her hands. Always they betrayed her emotions. One willful, capricious hand rose to flutter near her throat, fingering there, seeking some string of pearls to twist and untwist, and since she wore no jewelry, her fingers just endlessly sought. The fingers on the hand she kept in her lap restlessly rasped together, as if to cleanse themselves.
"Your grandmother, she wrote the letter, signed it, but at the end, my father added his note." She hesitated, closing her eyes, waited a second or two, and then opened them to glance at us again. "Your grandfather wrote he was glad your father was dead. He wrote the evil and corrupt always get what they deserve. He wrote the only good thing about my marriage was it hadn't created any Devil's issue."
Once I would have asked: What was that? Now I knew. Devil's issue was the same as Devil's spawn-- something evil, rotten, born to be bad.
I sat on the bed with my arms about the twins, and I looked at Chris, who must be much like Daddy had been at his age, and a vision flashed of my father in his white tennis clothes, standing tall, proud, goldenhaired, and bronze-skinned Evil was dark, crooked, crouched and small--it didn't stand straight and smile at you with clear sky-blue eyes that never lied.
"My mother made the plans for your concealment on a page of the letter my father didn't read," she concluded lamely, her face flushed.
"Was our father considered evil and corrupt only because he married his half-niece?" asked Chris, in the same controlled, cool voice our mother had used. "Is that the only thing he ever did wrong?"
"Yes!" she cried, happy that he, her beloved, understood. "Your father in all his life committed one single, unforgivable sin--and that was to fall in love with me. The law forbids marriage between an uncle and niece, even those who are only half- related. Please don't condemn us. I explained how it was with us. Of us all, your father was the best . . ." She faltered, on the verge of tears, and pleaded with her eyes, and I knew, I knew what was coming next.
"What is evil, and what is corrupt, is in the eyes of the beholder," she rushed on, eager to make us see it her way. "Your grandfather could find these faults in an angel. He is the kind of man who expects perfection from everyone in his family, and he is far from perfect. But just try and tell him that, and he would smack you down." She swallowed nervously then, appearing near sick with what she had to say. "Christopher, I thought once we were here, and I could tell him about you, how you were the most brilliant boy in your class, and always have been a straight-A student, and I thought when he saw Cathy, and knew of her great talent for dancing--I thought surely those two things alone would win him over without him even seeing the twins, how beautiful they are and how sweet--and who knows what talent they have waiting to be developed? I thought, foolishly, hopefully, that he would easily yield and say he'd made a mistake in believing our marriage was so wrong."
"Momma," I said weakly, almost crying myself, "you make it sound as if you're never going to tell him. He's never going to like us, no matter how pretty the twins are, or how smart Chris is, or how good I can dance. None of it's gonna make any difference to him He'll still hate us, and think of us as Devil's issue, won't he?"
She got up and came to us, and she fell down on her knees again and tried to wrap us all in her embrace. "Haven't I told you before he hasn't got long to live? He gasps for breath every time he exerts himself in the least way? And if he doesn't die soon, I'll find a way to tell him about you. I swear I will. Just have patience. Be understanding. What fun you lose now, I'll make up for later on, a thousandfold!"
Her teary eyes were beseeching. "Please, please, for me, because you love me, and I love you, keep on having patience. It won't be long, it can't be long, and I'll do what I can to make your lives as enjoyable as possible. And think of the riches we'll have one day soon!"
"It's all right, Momma," said Chris, drawing her into his embrace just as our father would. "What you ask isn't too much, not when we have so much to gain."
"Yes," Momma said eagerly, "just a short while more to sacrifice, and a little more patience, and all that is sweet and good in life will be yours."
What was there left for me to say? How could I protest? Already we'd sacrificed over three weeks-- what was a few more days, or weeks, or even another month?
At the end of the rainbow waited the pot of gold. But rain- bows were made of faint and fragile gossamer--and gold weighed a ton--and since the world began, gold was the reason to do most anything.

To Make a Garden Grow
.
Now we knew the full truth.
We would be in this room until the day our

grandfather died. And it came to me in the night, when I was low and dreary, that perhaps she had known from the very beginning that her father was not the kind to forgive anyone anything.

"But," said my cheerful optimist Christopher, "any day could see him gone. That is the way of heart disease. A clot could break free and find its way to his heart or lung and snuff him out like a candle."

Chris and I said cruel and irreverent things between ourselves, but in our hearts we ached, knowing it was wrong, and we were disrespectful as a way to salve the pain of our bleeding self-esteem.

"Now look," he said, "since we are going to be up here a while longer, we should set about with more determination to placate the twins, and ourselves, with more entertaining things to do. And when we really apply ourselves, gosh knows, we might just dream up some pretty wild and fantastic things"

When you have an attic full of junk, and great armoires full of rotting, stinking, but nevertheless very fancy costumes, you are inspired to put on plays, naturally. And since one day I was going to be on stage, I would be the producer, the director, the choreographer, as well as the female star. Chris, of course, would have to play all the male lead roles, and the twins could participate and play minor parts.

But they didn't want to participate! They wanted to be the audience, and sit and watch and applaud.
It wasn't such a bad idea, for what was a play without an audience! It was a great pity they didn't have any money to buy tickets.
"We'll call this dress rehearsal," said Chris, "and since you seem to be everything else, and know everything about theatrical productions, you write the script."
Hah! As if I needed to write the script. This was my chance to play Scarlett O'Hara. We had the hoops to wear under the flouncy ruffled skirts, and the stays to squeeze you tight, and just the clothes for Chris to wear, and fancy parasols with a few holes. The trunks and the armoires offered a great deal to select from, and I had to have the best costume, hauled from one of the armoires, and the underwear and petticoats came from one of the trunks. I'd curled my hair in rags so it hung in long, spiraling curls, and on my head I wore a floppy old Leghorn hat of straw, bedecked with faded silk flowers and banded by green satin ribbon, that was browning about the edges. My ruffled gown worn over wire hoops was of some flimsy stuff that felt like voile. Once, I think, it might have been pink, now it was hard to say just what color it was.
Rhett Butler wore the fancy costume of creamcolored trousers, and a brown velvet jacket with pearl buttons, and a satin vest underneath with fault red roses scattered on it. "Come, Scarlett," he said to me, "We've got to escape Atlanta before Sherman reaches here and sets the town on fire."
Chris had strung ropes on which we draped blankets to act as stage curtains, and our audience of two were stomping their feet impatiently, eager to see Atlanta burn. I followed Rhett onto the "stage" and was ready to taunt and tease, flirt and bewitch, and put
him
on fire before I rushed off to some pale-haired Ashley Wilkes, when one of my bedraggled ruffles caught beneath my too large, funny-looking old shoe, and down I sprawled in an undignified heap that showed my dirty pantaloons with lace hanging in ragged strings. The audience gave me a standing ovation, thinking this was a pratfall and part of the act. "Play's over!" I announced, and began to rip off the smelly old clothes.
"Let's eat!" cried Carrie, who'd say anything to take us down from this despised attic.
Cory pouted his lower lip and looked around. "I wish we had the garden again," he said so wistfully it hurt. "I don't like to swing when the flowers don't sway in the wind." His flaxen hair had grown long enough to touch his shirt collar, and it curled in ringlets, while Carrie's hair hung halfway down her back and rippled like cascading waves. They were wearing blue today, for Monday. We had colors for each day. Yellow was our Sunday color. Red was for Saturday.
The wish spoken by Cory put thoughts into Chris's head, for he turned in a slow circle, giving the huge attic an appraising survey. "Admittedly this attic is a grim and dreary place," he mused, "but why can't we, as a constructive way to use our creative talents, bring about a metamorphosis and turn this ugly caterpillar into a brilliant soaring butterfly?" He smiled at me, at the twins, in such a charming, convincing way that I was immediately won over. It
would
be fun to attempt to pretty up this dismal place, and give the twins a colorful fake garden where they could swing and enjoy looking at beauty. Of course, we'd never finish decorating all of the attic, it was so tremendous--and any day the grandfather could die, and then we'd leave, never to return again.
We couldn't wait for Momma to come that evening, and when she did, Chris and I
enthusiastically told her our plans of decorating the attic, and turning it into a cheerful garden the twins wouldn't be afraid of. The strangest expression flickered momentarily in her eyes.
"Well, now," she said brightly, "if you're going to make the attic pretty, first you must make it clean. And I'll do what I can to help."
Momma sneaked up mops, pails, brooms, scrub brushes, and boxes of soap powder. She went down on her knees beside us to scrub in the attic corners, and around the edges, and under the large pieces of furniture. I marveled that our mother knew how to scrub and clean. When we lived in Gladstone, we had a twice weekly maid who came in to do all the hard, dreary things that would redden Momma's hands and break her fingernails. And here she was, on her hands and knees, wearing faded old blue jeans, an old shirt, her hair pinned up in a bun. I really admired her. It was hard, hot, demeaning work--and she never once complained, only laughed and chatted and acted as if this was great fun.
In a week of hard work, we had most of the attic as clean as possible. Then she brought us insect repellent to kill what bugs had hidden from us while we cleaned. We swept up dead spiders and other crawlers by the bucketfuls. We threw them out of a back window, where they rolled to a lower section of the roof. Later the rain came to wash them down into the gutters. Then the birds found them and had a grisly feast while we four sat on a window ledge and watched. We never saw a rat or a mouse-- but we saw droppings. We presumed they were waiting for all the hustle and bustle to calm down before they ventured out of their dark and secret places.
Now that the attic was clean, Momma brought us green plants, plus a spiky amaryllis that was supposed to bloom at Christmastime. I frowned when she said this--for we wouldn't be here then. "We'll take it with us," said Momma, reaching out to stroke my cheek. "We'll take all of our plants when we go, so don't frown and look unhappy. We wouldn't want to leave anything living, and loving of sunshine, in this attic."
We put our plants in the attic schoolroom for that room had windows facing east. Happy and gay, we all tripped down the narrow stairs, and Momma washed up in our bathroom, then fell exhausted into her special chair. The twins climbed up on her lap as I set the table for lunch. That was a good day, for she stayed until dinnertime, then sighed and said she'd have to go. Her father made such demands on her, wanting to know where she went every Saturday, and why she stayed so long.
"Can you sneak back to see us before bedtime?" Chris asked.
"I'm going to the movies tonight," she said evenly, "but before I leave, I'll slip in to see you again. I've got some of those little boxes of raisins that you can snack on between meals. I forgot to bring them with me."
The twins were crazy about raisins, and I was happy for them. "Are you going to the movies alone?" I asked.
"No. There's a girl I grew up with--she used to be my best friend, and she's married now. I'm going to the movies with them. She lives only a few houses from here." She got up and went to the windows, and when Chris had the lights turned out, she parted the draperies and pointed in the direction of the house where her best friend lived. "Elena has two unmarried brothers, one is studying to be a lawyer. He goes to Harvard Law School, and the other is a tennis pro."
"Momma!" I cried. "Are you dating one of those brothers?"
She laughed and let the draperies fall. "Turn on the lights, Chris. No, Cathy, I am not dating anyone. To tell you the truth, I'd rather go right to bed, I'm that tired. I really don't care for musicals, anyway. I'd rather stay with my children, but Elena keeps insisting I get out, and when I keep refusing, she keeps asking why. I don't want people to wonder why I stay home every weekend; that's why occasionally I do have to go sailing, or to the movies."
To make the attic even pretty seemed highly improbable--to make it a beautiful garden soared over the rainbow! It was going to take an enormous amount of hard work and creative ability, but that darned brother of mine was convinced we could do it
in no time at all.
He soon had our mother so sold on the idea that every day she went to secretarial school, she came back to us bearing coloring books from which we could cut out pre-drawn flowers. She brought us watercolor sets, many brushes, boxes of crayons, huge amounts of colored craft paper, fat pots of white paste, and four pairs of blunt-nosed scissors.
"Teach the twins to color and cut out flowers," she instructed, "and let them participate in all you undertake. I nominate you their kindergarten teachers."
She came from that city an hour's train ride away, glowing with radiant good health, her skin fresh and rosy from outside air, her clothes so beautiful they took my breath away. She had shoes of every color, and bit by bit she was accumulating new pieces of jewelry which she called "junk" jewelry, but somehow those rhinestones looked more like diamonds to me from the way they sparkled. She fell into "her" chair, exhausted, but happy, and told her of her day. "Oh, how I wish those typewriters had letters on the keys. I can't seem to remember but one row. I have to look up at the wall chart everytime and that slows me down, and I'm not very good at
remembering the bottom row, either. But I do know where all the vowels are. You use those keys more than any oth ers, you know. So far my typing speed is twenty words per minute, and that's not too good. Plus I make about four mistakes in those twenty words. And those shorthand squiggles . . ." She sighed, as if they, too, had her baffled. "Well, I guess I'll learn eventually; after all, other women do, and if they can, then I can."
"Do you like your teachers, Momma?" asked Chris.
She giggled girlishly before she answered. "First, let me tell you about my typing teacher. Her name is Mrs. Helena Brady. She's shaped very much like your grandmother--huge. Only her bosom is much larger! Really, hers is the most remarkable bosom I've ever seen! And her bra straps keep slipping off her shoulders, and if it isn't her bra straps, then it's her slip straps, and she's always reaching into the neckline of her dress to haul them back into place, and the men in the class always snicker."
"Do men take typing classes?" asked I, very surprised.
"Yes, there are a few young men there. Some are journalists, writers, or have some good reason for wanting to know how to type. And Mrs. Brady is divorced, and has a keen eye for one of those young men. She flirts with him, while he tries to ignore her. She's about ten years older than he is, at least, and he keeps looking at me. Now don't get any ideas, Cathy. He's much too short for me. I couldn't marry a man who couldn't pick me up and carry me over the threshold. I could pick
him
up--he's only five feet two."
We all had a good laugh, for Daddy had been a full foot taller, and he had easily picked our mother up. We'd seen him do that many times--especially on those Friday nights when he came home, and they'd look at each other so funny.
"Momma, you're not thinking of getting married again, are you?" Chris asked in the tightest of voices. Swiftly her arms went around him. "No darling, of course not. I loved your father dearly. It would take a very special man to fill his shoes, and so far I haven't met one who measures up to even his outgrown socks."
To play kindergarten teachers was great fun, or could have been, if our student body had been the least bit willing But as soon as we had breakfast finished, our dishes washed and put away, our food stashed in the coldest place, and the hour of ten had come and gone with servants from the second floor, Chris and I each dragged a wailing twin up into the attic schoolroom. There we could sit at the student desks and make a grand mess cutting flower forms from the colored craft paper, using the crayons to glorify the colors with stripes and polka-dots. Chris and I made the best flowers--what the twins made looked like colored blobs.
"Modern art," Chris named the flowers they made.
On the dull and gray slat walls we pasted up our goliath flowers. Chris ascended the old ladder with the missing rungs again so he could dangle down long strings tied to the attic rafters, and to these strings we fastened colorful blossoms that constantly moved in the attic drafts.
Our mother came up to view our efforts, and she gave us all a pleased smile. "Yes, you're doing marvelously well. You
are
making it pretty up here." And thoughtfully she moved closer to the daisies, as if considering something else she could bring us. The next day she came with a huge flat box containing colored glass beads and sequins, so we could add sparkle and glamor to our garden. Oh, we did slave over making those flowers, for whatever occupation we pursued, we pursued it with diligent, fervid zeal. The twins caught some of our enthusiasm, and they stopped howling and fighting and biting when we mentioned the word attic. For after all, the attic was slowly, but surely, turning into a cheerful garden. And the more it changed, the more deter- mined we became to cover over every last wall in that endless attic!
Each day, of course, when Momma was home from that secretarial school, she had to view the day's accomplishments. "Momma," gushed Carrie in her breathless bird twitter, "that's all we do all day, make flowers, and sometimes Cathy, she don't want us to go downstairs and eat lunch!"
"Cathy, you mustn't become so preoccupied with decorating the attic that you forget to eat your meals."
"But, Momma, we're doing it for them, so they won't be so scared up there."
She laughed and hugged me. "My, you are the persistent one, you and your older brother both. You must have inherited that from your father, certainly not from me. I give up so easily."
"Momma!" I cried, made uneasy. "Are you still going to school? You are getting better at typing, aren't you?"
"Yes, of course I am." She smiled again, and then settled back in her chair, holding up her hand and seeming to admire the bracelet she wore. I started to ask why she needed so much jewelry to attend secretarial school, but she spoke instead. "What you need to make now is animals for your garden."
"But, Momma, if roses are impossible to make, how can we even
draw
animals?"
She gave me a wry little smile as she traced a cool finger over my nose "Oh, Cathy, what a doubting Thomas you are. You question everything, doubt everything, when you should know by now, you can do anything you want to, if you want to badly enough. And I'm going to tell you a secret I've known about for some time--in this world, where everything is complicated, there is also a book to teach you how simple everything can be."
That
I was to find out.
Momma brought us art instruction books by the dozens. The first of these books taught us to reduce all complicated designs into basic spheres, cylinders, cones, rectangles and cubes. A chair was just a cube-- I hadn't known that before. A Christmas tree was just an inverted ice-cream cone--I hadn't known that before, either. People were just combinations of all those basic forms: spheres for heads; arms, necks, legs, torso, upper and lower, were only rectangular cubes or cylinders, and triangles made for feet. And believe it or not, using this basic method, with just a few simple additions, we soon had rabbits, squirrels, birds, and other small friendly creatures--all made by our very own hands.