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! (175 page)

Her head was on my shoulder. “Cathy . . . I am trying. Just give me time.”

The next morning Cindy came into our bedroom without knocking, causing Chris to frown. She should have known better. But I had to forgive her after seeing her pale face and frightened expression. “Momma . . . Daddy, I’ve just got to tell you something, and yet I don’t know if I should. Or if it really means anything.”

I was distracted from her words by the outfit she wore: a white bikini so brief it was barely there. The swimming pool Bart had ordered was now complete and this was the first day it was ready. Jory’s tragic accident was not going to inhibit Bart’s style of living.

“Cindy, I wish you would wear those beach coverups at the poolside. And that suit is much too skimpy.”

She appeared startled, crestfallen and hurt because I criticized her suit. Glancing down at herself briefly, she shrugged indifferently. “Holy Christ, Momma! Some friends of mine wear string bikinis—you should see those if you think this one is immodest. Some of my friends wear nothing at all . . .” Her large blue eyes studied mine seriously.

Chris tossed her a towel, which she wrapped around herself. “Momma, I’ve got to say I don’t like the way you make me feel, somehow dirty, like Bart makes me feel—when I came to tell you something I overheard Bart talking about.”

“Go on, Cindy,” urged Chris.

“Bart was on the telephone. He’d left his door ajar. I heard him talking to an insurance agency.” She paused, sat down on our unmade bed and lowered her head before she spoke again. Her soft, silky hair hid her expression. “Mom, Dad, it seems Bart took out some kind of special ‘party’ insurance in case any of his guests were injured.”

“Why, that’s not at all unusual,” said Chris. “The house is covered by homeowner’s insurance . . . but with two hundred guests, he needed plenty of extra insurance that night.”

Cindy’s head jerked upward. She stared at her father, then at me. A sigh escaped her lips. “I guess it’s okay then. I just thought maybe . . . maybe . . .”

“Maybe what?” I asked sharply.

“Momma, you picked up a handful of that sand that spilled from the columns when they broke. Wasn’t the sand supposed to be dry? It wasn’t dry. Someone made it wet—and that made it heavier. The sand didn’t come pouring out like it was supposed to. It made those columns stand upright—and the sand clumped down on Jory like cement. Otherwise Jory wouldn’t have been hurt so severely.”

“I knew about the insurance,” said Chris dully, refusing to meet my eyes. “I didn’t know about the wet sand.”

Neither Chris nor I could find words to defend Bart. Still, surely, surely he wouldn’t want to injure Jory—or kill him? At
some point in our lives, we had to believe in Bart, give him the benefit of doubt.

Chris paced our bedroom, his brow deeply wrinkled as he explained one of the stage crew could have put water on the sand, hoping to make the columns steadier. It didn’t have to be Bart’s order he was following.

All three of us descended the stairs solemnly, finding Bart outside on the morning terrace with Melodie. With the mountains in the distance, the woods before them, the gardens lush with blooming flowers, the setting was beautifully romantic. Sunlight filtered through the lacy leaves of the fruit trees, slipped under the brightly striped umbrella that was supposed to shield the occupants seated at the white wrought-iron table.

Melodie, to my surprise, was smiling as her eyes lingered on the strong lines of Bart’s face. “Bart, your parents don’t understand why I can’t bring myself to go and see Jory in the hospital. I see your mother looking at me resentfully. I’m disappointing her, disappointing myself. I’m a coward about illnesses. Always have been. But I know what’s going on. I know Jory lies on that bed, staring up at the ceiling, refusing to talk. I know what he’s thinking. He’s lost not only the use of his legs, but all the goals he’s set for himself. He’s thinking of his father and the way he died. He’s trying to withdraw from the world by making himself into a nothing thing that we won’t miss when one day he kills himself just like his father did.”

Bart quickly looked at her disapprovingly. “Melodie, you don’t know my brother. Jory would never kill himself. Maybe he does feel lost now, but he’ll come around.”

“How can he?” she wailed. “He’s lost the most important thing in his life. Our marriage was based not only on our love for each other, but on our mutual careers. Each day I tell myself that I can go to him, and smile, and give him what he needs. Then I pause, flounder, and wonder what can I say. I’m not good with words like your mother. I can’t smile and be optimistic like his father—”

“Chris is not Jory’s father,” stated Bart flatly.

“Oh, to Jory Chris is his father. At least the one who counts most. He loves Chris, Bart, respects and admires him, and forgives him for what you call his sins.” She went on while we three hung back, waiting to hear more of why she was acting as she was.

And all we heard was a concluding statement. “I’m ashamed to say it, but I can’t go and see him like he is.”

“Then what are you going to do?” asked Bart in a cynical way. He sipped his coffee while staring directly into her eyes. If he’d turn his head just a little, he’d see the three of us watching and listening, and learning so much.

Her answer was an anguished wail. “I don’t know! I’m coming apart inside! I hate waking up and knowing that Jory will never be a real husband to me again. If you don’t mind, I’m going to move into the room across the hall that doesn’t hold so many painful memories of what we used to share. Your mother doesn’t realize that I’m just as lost as he is, and I’m having his baby!”

Her sobs started then. Bowing her head, she put it down on the arms she folded on the table. “Someone has to think of me, help
me
. . . someone . . .”

“I’ll help,” said Bard softly, laying his tanned hand on her shoulder. His right hand set the coffee aside and lightly he brushed that hand over her spill of flowing hair. “Whenever you need me, if only for a shoulder to cry on, I’ll be there, anytime.”

If I’d heard Bart speak as compassionately before to anyone but Melodie, my heart would have jumped for joy. As it was, it plunged. Jory needed his wife—not Bart!

I stepped forward into the sunlight and took my place at the breakfast table. Bart snatched his hands away from Melodie, staring at me as if I’d interrupted something that was very important to him. Then Chris and Cindy joined us. Silence came that I had to break.

“Melodie, I want to have a long talk with you as soon as we finish breakfast. You’re not going to run away this time, or turn deaf ears, and shut out my voice with your blank stare.”

“Mother!” flared Bart. “Can’t you see her viewpoint? Maybe someday Jory will be able to drag himself around on crutches, if he wears a heavy back brace and a harness . . . can you imagine Jory like that? I can’t. Even I don’t want to see him like that.”

Melodie let out a shrieking cry, jumping to her feet. Bart followed suit, to hold her protectively in his arms.

“Don’t cry, Melodie,” he soothed in a tender, caring voice. Melodie uttered another small cry of distress, then fled the terrace. The three of us sat quietly staring after her. When she was out of sight, our eyes fixed on Bart, who sat down to finish his breakfast as if we weren’t there.

“Bart,” said Chris in this opportune moment before Joel joined us, “what do you know about the wet sand in the papiermâché columns?”

“I don’t understand,” said Bart smoothly, appearing very distracted as he stared at the door through which Melodie had disappeared.

“Then I’ll explain more carefully,” went on Chris. “It was understood the sand would be dry so it would spill out easily and not harm anyone. Who wet the sand?”

Narrowing his eyes first, Bart answered sharply, “So now I’m going to be accused of causing Jory’s accident—and deliberately ruining the best time I’ve had until he was hurt. Why, it’s just like it used to be when I was nine and ten. My fault, everything was always my fault. When Clover died, you both presumed I was the one to wrap the wire about his neck, never giving me the benefit of a doubt. When Apple was killed, again you thought it was me, when you knew I loved both Clover and Apple. I’ve never killed anything. Even when you found out later it was John Amos, you put me through hell before you said you were sorry. Well, say you’re sorry now, for
damned if I’ll take the blame for Jory’s broken back!”

I wanted to believe him so much tears came to my eyes. “But who wet the sand, Bart?” I asked, leaning forward and reaching for his hand. “Somebody did.”

His dark eyes went bleak. “Several of the workhands disliked me for being too bossy . . . but I don’t really think they would do anything to hurt Jory. After all, it wasn’t me up there.”

For some reason I believed him. He didn’t know anything about the wet sand, and when I met Chris’s eyes, I knew he was convinced as well. But in asking, we’d alienated Bart . . . again.

He sat silently now, not smiling as he finished his meal. In the garden I glimpsed Joel in the shadows of dense shrubbery as if he’d been eavesdropping on our conversation while pretending to admire the flowers in bloom.

“Forgive us if we hurt you, Bart. Please, do what you can to help us find out who did wet the sand. But for that, Jory would have the use of his legs.”

Wisely Cindy had kept very quiet during all of this.

Bart started to reply, but at that moment Trevor stepped from the house and began serving us. Quickly I swallowed a light breakfast, then rose to go. I had to do something to bring back Melodie’s sense of responsibility. “Excuse me, Chris, Cindy. Take your time and finish your breakfast. I’ll join you later.”

Joel slipped out of the shadows of the dense shrubbery and seated himself beside Bart. As I turned to glance back over my shoulder, I saw Joel lean toward Bart, whispering something I couldn’t make out.

Feeling heavy of heart, I headed for the room that Melodie now used.

Face down on the bed she and Jory had shared, Melodie was crying. I perched on the side of her bed, thinking about all the right words to say—but where were the right words?
“He’s alive, Melodie, and that counts, doesn’t it? He’s still with us. With you. You can reach out and touch him, talk to him, say all the things I wish I’d said to his father. Go to the hospital. Every day you stay away, he dies a bit more. If you don’t go, if you just stay here and feel sorry for yourself, you’ll live to regret it. Jory can still hear you, Melodie. Don’t leave him now. He needs you now more than he’s ever needed you before.”

Wild and hysterical, she turned to beat at me with small fists. I caught her wrists to keep from being injured.

“But I can’t face him, Cathy! I’ve known he lies there, silent and alone where I can’t reach him. He doesn’t answer when
you
speak, so why would he respond to me? If I kissed him and he said or did nothing, I’d die inside. Besides, you don’t really know him, not like I do. You’re his mother, not his wife. You don’t realize just how important his sexual life is to him. Now he won’t have any. Do you have any idea of what that one thing is doing to him? To say nothing of losing the use of his legs, and giving up his career. He so wanted to prove himself for his father’s sake—his real father’s sake. And you kid yourself to think he’s alive. He isn’t. He’s already left you, Cathy. Left me, too. He doesn’t have to die. He’s already dead while he’s still alive.”

How her impassioned words stung me. Maybe because they were all too true.

I panicked inside, realizing that Jory could very well do as Julian had done—find a way to end his life. I tried to console myself. Jory was not like his father, he was like Chris. Eventually Jory would come around and make the best of what he had left.

I sat on that bed, staring at my daughter-in-law, and realized I didn’t know her. Didn’t know the girl I’d seen off and on since she was eleven. I’d seen the facade of a pretty, graceful girl who’d always seemed to adore Jory. “What kind of woman are you, Melodie? Just what kind?”

She flipped over on her back and glared angrily at me.

“Not your kind, Cathy!” she almost screamed. “You’re made of special rugged stuff. I’m not. I was spoiled like you spoil your dear little Cindy. I was an only child and was given everything I wanted. I found out when I was small that life isn’t all pretty picture book fables. And I didn’t want it that way. When I was old enough, I ran to hide in the ballet. I told myself only in the world of fantasy could I find happiness. When I met Jory he seemed the prince I needed. Princes don’t fall and injure their spinal cords, Cathy. They are never crippled. How can I live with Jory when I don’t see him as a prince anymore? How, Cathy? Tell me how I can blind my eyes, and numb my senses, so I won’t feel revulsion when he touches me.”

I stood up.

I stared down at her reddened eyes, her face made puffy from so much crying and felt all my admiration for her fade away. Weak, that’s what she was. What a fool to believe that Jory wasn’t made of the same flesh and blood as any other man. “Suppose the injury had been yours, Melodie. Would you want Jory to desert you?”

She met my eyes squarely. “Yes, I would.”

I left Melodie still crying on her bed.

Chris was waiting for me downstairs. “I thought if you went this morning, I’d visit him this afternoon, and Melodie can go to him tonight with Cindy. I’m sure you convinced her to go.”

“Yes, she’ll go, but not today,” I said without meeting his eyes. “She wants to wait until he opens his eyes and speaks—so that’s my plan, to somehow reach him and make him respond.”

“If anyone can do that, it will be you,” Chris murmured in my hair.

*  *  *

Jory lay supine on his hospital bed. The fracture was so low on his back that one fine day in the far future he might even gain back his potency. There were certain exercises he could do later on.

I’d bought two huge long boxes of mixed bouquets that I’d put into tall vases.

“Good morning, darling,” I said brightly as I entered his small, sterile room.

Jory didn’t turn his head to look my way. He lay as I’d seen him last, staring straight up at the ceiling. Kissing his faintly chilled face, I began to arrange the flowers.