Echoes of Dollanganger (19 page)

“Looks bigger than Foxworth Hall.”

“No, it's about twelve thousand square feet smaller, but of course, there's more patio. There's no ballroom as such, but there is a rather big living room. Six bedrooms, all with en suite bathrooms, and a den about the size of the one that was in Foxworth.”

“All the bedrooms are upstairs?”

“Maids' are downstairs,” he said. “There's a kitchen Charley would love to have in his diner.”

“How long is all this going to take?”

“I've put on more crew, but it'll still be the best of a year and a half, with all the detail in the woodwork and landscaping.”

I realized I had done all I could to avoid talking about Kane and myself. “Kane's sister and her boyfriend have invited us to dinner tomorrow night.”

“That so?”

“He's her boyfriend from college. I haven't met him yet, and I haven't seen her for years, it seems.”

“I remember her vaguely. Nice girl, I think.”

“I'll give you a full report.”

“Okay.”

He rose. “I'd better get to bed. I want to get as much done as we can before we break for Thanksgiving.”

We looked at each other. When two people knew each other as well as we did, they said a great deal in their silences.

“You ever wish you had a boy instead?” I asked. I
could see the question came out of nowhere as far as he was concerned, but my implication was clear. Parents generally worry less about their sons' romances.

“A boy?”

“So he could be there to help you with the actual work? You know how I am with a hammer or a screwdriver.”

“I can't even imagine how bad my life would be without you standing there, Kristin.”

I ran to him. He embraced me, kissed my hair, petted it, and held me as long as I held on to him. I didn't say anything else, and neither did he. I turned away and ran up the stairs.

I overslept the next morning, but it was a Saturday, so there was no need for an alarm. When I did get up, dressed, and went down for breakfast, however, I was disappointed that my father had already left for work. My breakfast setting was on the table, with a note telling me he had worked up an egg batter for my scrambled eggs. He said he would call later just in case I had to leave for dinner before he got home.

I prepared my scrambled eggs. He seasoned them so well and uniquely that it was difficult eating them without thinking of him sitting across from me. It wasn't until I was nearly finished that I noticed he had left the morning newspaper on the table where he'd sat. It was still open to an inside page. I looked at the stories. The biggest one was about the construction of a new home on the Foxworth property, “the site of one of the most horrendous child abuse stories in our city.” Almost always, whenever any reference to
Foxworth was made, it was followed with that phrase: “most horrendous child abuse stories in our city.”

The new owner was listed as Arthur Johnson, so the facts my father had uncovered were still not general knowledge. There was a short biography of Johnson, mentioning his successful hedge fund and his wife and children. He came from Norfolk, Virginia, attended William and Mary College, majoring in business, and then went to work in his father's company before starting his own hedge fund. They had managed to get one quote from him: “I don't know anything about the history of the property, which frankly doesn't interest me. Every place and every thing has a history. You judge it by what it is, not by who owned it. That's just good business.”

My father's company was mentioned, but he had made no comment other than that the work was going well. There was that now-famous picture of Foxworth Hall, depicting it more like a Gothic old house in which ghosts dwelled, the picture that was usually run on Halloween. Some people swore the cloudy spots in an upstairs window were Malcolm and Olivia Foxworth's ghosts, their souls sentenced to be imprisoned for what they had done to their grandchildren.

The article whetted my fascination and my need to get back to Christopher's diary. I called Kane.

“I've been sitting around with my phone on my lap hoping you would call early.”

“Did you see the article in today's paper?”

“I didn't, but my father did and mentioned it. I
acted like I had little or no interest. My sister was interested. She'll probably bring it up at dinner.”

“Then let's get started,” I said.

“I'm already out the door,” he replied.

I cleared the table, washed the dishes, and went up to my room to finish dressing. At one point, I paused and looked at some of my silk scarves. It came over me. I couldn't help it. I wrapped it around my head, and when Kane saw me, he smiled with glee. We were like two children rushing ahead to unwrap Christmas gifts, only both of us knew that what was wrapped in this leather-bound book was not anything either of us would wish for.

We set up the attic, and he began, quickly drifting into Christopher Dollanganger, wearing his wig, changing his voice and posture, and filling his voice with that constant stream of pain and disappointment, wonder, and mystery that was dragging Christopher into adulthood far too soon.

At the beginning of the last week in August, I was mumbling to myself about how hot it was for us in the small bedroom and especially up in the attic, when an exciting idea suddenly occurred to me. I was staring at the sheet ladder I had created when I thought we had to escape from starvation. When I proposed my new idea to Cathy, she thought I had finally gone nuts, but I convinced her we could do it. We would climb down from the attic on the sheet ladder and go for a swim in the lake at night. Of course, it occurred to us both that we would be
standing on the ground for the first time in more than two years.

Despite her timidity, she climbed down that sheet ladder as if she had been doing it all her life.

Once we were down and moving hand in hand through the darkness, the thrilling sense of freedom overtook me. Everything looked fresh and new and exciting. I had never appreciated the stars more and realized how important were all the little things I had once taken for granted. I was so entranced I didn't notice how frightened Cathy was, but when I did, I put my arm around her, and her trembling subsided.

Finally, the lake loomed before us, with all its promise of pleasure. For a little while, at least, we could be young again; I could be like a boy of nearly seventeen and she could be a fourteen-year-old girl.

We decided to swim in our underwear instead of completely nude, although Cathy had no bra. She embraced herself and touched the water with her toe. I saw that she was hesitant about getting in, so I pushed her into the water, and suddenly we were young children again, splashing each other, dunking each other. I clung to her and she to me, laughing and spinning each other about. We swam until we were both exhausted, and then we walked out and fell on the grass to lie on our backs, catch our breath, and gaze up at the stars.

Lying there beside her, her blossoming breasts
captured in the starlight, her face gleaming wet, I couldn't help but reach for her hand. What if she weren't my sister? I thought. What if I was here with some girl I liked? What would I do next? Cathy looked at me and saw how I was staring at her.

“What?” she asked.

“Nothing,” I said, shaking my head and turning away. Whatever she saw in my face, it made her think of being with someone you loved. I shouldn't have been surprised. Girls mature faster than boys. She would have all these feelings, too, and maybe even stronger ones than mine.

It occurred to Cathy first that we were now the ages our parents were when they first met. I suspected she was thinking that they were related, but it didn't stop them from falling in love.

“Do you think it was true, Christopher?” she asked me. “Do you think they really fell in love at first sight? Is that possible?”

I wanted to believe it. I wanted to believe that there was something more between a male and a female than mere physical attraction. I told her that whenever I was physically attracted to a girl in school and thought that maybe, maybe, it could be love, I was disappointed once I talked to the girl, who nearly always was too silly or stupid for me.

“Am I too stupid for someone to love?” she asked.

“Absolutely not,” I replied, and told her how talented I thought she was. Her problem was that
she had too many talents and would have trouble settling on one. She drew closer to me. I put my arm around her, and she rested her head against my shoulder.

The night, the stars, and our sense of freedom relaxed us both like we hadn't been for more than two years. Before we had been brought here, I wouldn't have dreamed of being as open and honest with her as I was now. It was nearly impossible for me to think of her as a little girl anymore, and I felt sure she could never think of me as just her older brother. It was too late for us to go back to that sort of innocence. I'd be the first to admit how confused I now was about my feelings. I didn't like that. I didn't like the insecurity. It made me angry.

Cathy sensed it. “Where do you think our mother is?” she asked. It had been so long since she had visited us.

I looked for as many reasons as I could to explain her neglecting us. Maybe she was sick. Maybe she had gone on a business trip. Cathy shot down every rationalization I presented. That only fired up my own frustration and anger.

When she asked me if I loved and trusted our mother as much as I used to, I snapped back at her, not because she was wrong to wonder but because I didn't want to admit that I didn't. She quickly changed the subject to what it was like to date, and her questions suggested that neither of
us would know what to do because we had been out of socializing so long.

God, she was so right, I thought, and I exploded, revealing how angry I was at Momma. I raged about being shut away from life and feeling more like a first-grader when it came to my emotions now. I know my outburst frightened Cathy. Maybe because we were out in the open, I didn't contain myself. I didn't care who heard me. She hadn't seen me this way for a long time, maybe never. She wanted to leave immediately.

“We have to get back to the twins,” she said.

On the way back, she suggested that we climb down with the twins, maybe make a sling to hold them so we could bring them down and escape. We had found a way. I knew she was saying all this because of how I had behaved. She was probably worried that I was losing it fast now and that if we stayed much longer, who knew what would happen? I couldn't blame her for thinking that.

My mind reeled with the possibility of making an escape, but I didn't want to give Cathy any false hope. After all, where would we go? How would we go anywhere? We would need money. How far could we get, considering we would be two teenagers traveling with small children? Everyone would look at us and wonder. Eventually, we were bound to attract some policeman, and then what?
If we told him who we were, we might be returned to Foxworth Hall, but this time, we would be returned only to be thrown out with Momma. We would be children with a single parent who had nothing. What then? All Momma would do would be complain how we had destroyed our chances, our opportunities. She'd hate us, at least Cathy and me.

No, I thought, better to ignore her for now, even though the pleasure of being free was so great I couldn't calm myself down enough to not think about it.

I let Cathy start up first. About three-quarters of the way, she lost her footing on the bottom knot and screamed in panic. I quietly, calmly told her how to regain her control, and she was able to continue up. By the time I joined her, we were both exhausted, but all Cathy could think of was what would have happened to the twins if she had fallen from that sheet ladder.

“I can't believe I'm happy to be back here,” she said.

I didn't say anything.

Instead, I thought, look what had happened to us if we could even for a moment be happy we were here.

Kane paused and stared at me for a moment before he swept off his wig, as if he had to do that before he could talk to me now as Kane Hill.

“You ever go skinny-dipping?”

“No.”

“My sister did at our house. She had a party for a half dozen of her friends in early June of her senior year. Our parents were away for the weekend. I had gone to an early movie, got bored, and came home early. I heard the laughter out at the pool and made my way there, sort of sneaking up on them. I remained in the darkness and watched.”

“So your sister didn't know you were there?”

“No. I remember being more angry than amused.”

“Angry? Why?”

“I resented my sister being nude in front of those boys. Finally, I turned around, disgusted, and went back into the house.”

“Did you tell her how you felt about it later?”

“No.”

“So she never knew you were there?”

“No. The thing is, I've been at skinny-dipping parties but didn't react like I did spying on hers.”

“Probably just . . . natural. You were embarrassed for her.”

“No, for myself,” he said. “What just happened between Christopher and Cathy has made me think of something.”

I smiled to myself. It hadn't just happened to them, as he had put it, but also to us. Reading the diary this way, it was as if we were doing what he had done at his sister's pool party, staying in the shadows and observing something happening right before us. “What?”

“Say you never met your sister your whole life. Say you didn't even know you had a sister, and you
met this girl and dated her and went skinny-dipping and did it all. Would it be sinful?”

“I don't know. It might be sinful but not your fault, if that makes any sense,” I said.

“But the point is that every desire the brother had as a boy and every desire the sister had as a girl would still be there. No wall would go up between them miraculously. Nothing would click in their heads and stop their sexual activity.”