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! (212 page)

“Besides, we must not believe that evil is stronger than good, Emmie. You’re my perfect daughter, my
fille parfaite, n’est ce pas?
”

“Oui, Mama,” I would say whenever she asked me that, but I didn’t believe I was as perfect as Mama or Papa thought I was. Who could be?

Yes, I kept my room neat, made my bed, helped Mama with any house chores, shopped for her, came home when my parents told me I must, never smoked or drank alcohol with my classmates, not even a beer, and refused to try any drug or pot any classmate offered. Mama believed in letting me drink wine at dinner, even when I was barely ten, but that was the way she had been brought up in France, and Papa thought it was just fine.

“The best training ground for most things is your home,” he would tell me. My friends at school, especially the ones who knew how strict my father could be, didn’t know what to make of that. He sounded so lenient, but I knew that his leniency didn’t go any farther than our front door. Sometimes, especially when I left our house, I felt like I was walking around with an invisible leash and collar around my neck.

Rules rained down around me everywhere I looked and not just in my home. Our school, which was a private school, didn’t tolerate sexy clothing or any body piercing, not that I wanted to do that. Our teachers even criticized some girls for wearing too much makeup. It was far more serious for any of my classmates to violate a rule at school than it was for students in a public school because unlike public school, he or she wouldn’t simply be suspended. They’d be thrown out and all their tuition money would be forfeited. What they did after school the moment they had left the property was another thing, however. Buttons were undone, rings put in noses, and cigarettes taken out of hidden places. Students puffed defiantly. Suddenly their mouths were full of profanity, words they would be afraid even to whisper in the school’s hallways. It was as if all the pent-up nasty behavior was bursting at the seams. They were far from goody-goodies, so why shouldn’t I wonder if I were as well?

I probably wouldn’t be attending a strict private school if it wasn’t for Roxy. She had been going to a public school, had been suspended for smoking, for cheating on a test, and worst of all, was nearly arrested and expelled for smoking a joint in the girls’ room. It was one of the better public schools in New York too, but according to what I gleaned from Mama, Roxy never had better than barely passing grades, if that.

The only thing she excelled at was speaking French, thanks to Mama. But even with that skill, she was in trouble. She would say nasty things in French to her teachers under her breath or even aloud, and when some of them went to the language teacher for translations, Roxy ended up in the principal’s office and Mama would have to come to school. She tried to keep as much of it as she could hidden from Papa, but often there was just too much to hide, and whatever he did learn was way more than enough to rile him and send him head over heels into a rage.

Mama could get away with hiding much of it because Papa was dedicated to his work at the investment firm. He was up early to deal with the stock market and then always working late into the afternoon with financial planning and other meetings. Mama said that for her to have to call him at work because of something Roxy had done was like the U.S. President having to use the famous red phone or something. I had no doubt that Mama trembled whenever she had to tell him about something very bad Roxy had done in school. She said he was so furious that he could barely speak whenever he had to leave work to attend a meeting because of something she had done.

She once told me, “It got so your sister wouldn’t even pretend to feel remorseful about something she had done. She would just look at him with that silent defiance, just as she would when he would practically rattle the whole house to get her out of bed in the morning.”

Even though Papa got up earlier than I would have to on weekday mornings, I was used to rising and having breakfast with him and Mama. She was always up to make his breakfast. I would spend the extra morning time studying for a test or reading. Whenever I did anything that probably was completely opposite of what Roxy would have done, such as eat with him, I could see the satisfaction in Papa’s face. I used to think and still do that he was letting out an anxious breath, always half-expecting I would somehow turn out to be like Roxy. No matter how well I did in school, how polite I was to his and Mama’s friends, or how much I helped Mama, he couldn’t help fearing that I would wake up one day and be my sister.

It was as if he had two different kinds of daughters. One was Dr. Jekyll and the other was Miss Hyde, only he wasn’t sure if Miss Hyde would emerge in me as well.

“So what’s on for today?” Papa asked. It was the same question he asked me every day at breakfast.

Anyone who thought that he asked it out of habit would be wrong, however. He really wanted to know what I had to do, and especially, what I wanted to do. My route to and from school was to follow Madison Avenue north for five blocks and then turn west for another block. I could do it blindfolded by now. If I had any plans to diverge from the route, especially during nice weather, as we were having this particular fall, and go somewhere after school, I would have to tell him. He even wanted to know when I would take my lunch and eat it in Central Park with some friends. The school let us do that. Many of our teachers even did it, but doing something spontaneously was very difficult.

Maybe because of how angry Papa would get about Roxy if and when Mama slipped and brought up her name, I tried extra hard to please him. To get him to smile at me, laugh at something I had said or done, and kiss me when he hugged me was so very important to me. Although I didn’t come out and say it, earning this reaction from him was like me telling him that I wasn’t and never would be like Roxy. Nothing made me feel warmer and happier than when he used Mama’s French to call me his
fille parfaite
. Maybe hearing him say I was a perfect daughter in French made it even more special.

Sometimes, I would imagine Roxy was standing there beside me in the house, scowling and sneering whenever Papa said that. I knew what sibling rivalry was, how friends of mine competed with their sisters or brothers for their parents’ affection and approval. As strange as it might sound, even though my sister was gone from our home and lives, I still felt sibling rivalry. Perhaps I was competing with a ghost. My visions of her were as vague as that, but I still felt I was always being measured against her. Was my French as good as hers? Was I as pretty?

Other girls and boys my age might have older brothers or sisters to look up to and try to emulate. I had a sister, a secret sister who always seemed to be better than me. It wasn’t difficult for me to outdo her in every way possible except misbehavior, but nothing I could do or say really stopped my parents from thinking about her. I knew that was true, regardless of what Papa pretended or how furious and red his face would become at the mere suggestion of her.

Roxy was here; she would always be here, haunting us all. Keeping her bedroom door shut, throwing out her things, removing her pictures from the shelves and mantle, ignoring her birthday and forbidding the sound of her name didn’t stop her voice from echoing somewhere in the house. Whenever I saw Papa stop what he was doing, or look up from what he was reading and stare blankly at a corner or at a chair, I had the feeling he was seeing Roxy. I know Mama did. It got so I recognized those moments when she would pause no matter what she was doing and just stare at something. I would say nothing. Afterward, she often went off to cry in secret.

“If it doesn’t rain, we’re going to the park for lunch, and then after school I’m going to Chastity Morgan’s house to study for our unit exam in social studies,” I told Papa at breakfast. His whole body was at attention waiting for my next response.

“Just you and Chastity?” he asked, his dark brown eyebrows lifted in anticipation of my answer.

Even though Papa had never been in the army, he kept his dark-brown hair as short as a soldier’s and had a soldier’s military posture, with his shoulders back and his back straight. He had a GI Joe shave every morning and wore spit-polished shoes. He was a little over six feet tall and tried to keep himself physically fit. He would walk as much as he could and avoid taxicabs whenever possible, but his job was sedentary. Despite his efforts, he had slowly gained weight over the years until his doctor warned him about his blood pressure and cholesterol. He tried to watch his diet, but Mama was French and cooked with sauces he loved. It did him no good to try to pass the blame onto her either, because she was ready to point out how the French were thinner and healthier because they didn’t ask for seconds as he would often do.

Except for that and the topic of my sister, my parents rarely argued. If anyone complained, it was Mama critiquing herself. I thought it was an odd complaint.

“I’m too devoted to that man,” she would mutter. “But I can’t help it.”

I wondered if that was true. Could you love someone too much? What was too much? From what I saw in the lives of my classmates, especially when I visited them at their homes, their parents could use love inoculations, affection booster shots. Chastity’s parents were like that. Eating dinner in their dining room was like eating at a restaurant. Their conversation was mostly directed to their maid. I was there when her father sent food back to be cooked longer or complained about being given food too cool. I half-expected him to leave a tip at his plate before he left the table.

Most of the time at these dinners, her mother would talk to Chastity and me without saying more than two words to Chastity’s father. Her father often read a paper at the dinner table, too. My father would bring him up on charges and have him face a military tribunal and then a firing squad for doing something like that.

When Chastity came to my house for dinner, the contrast was so great, it almost brought tears to her eyes. Both my parents made her feel like part of our family. Papa directed a great deal of conversation her way. In this case, however I wished he wouldn’t because his conversation was mostly interrogation. Maybe Chastity wasn’t aware of it as much as I was, but he was looking to see if she would be a bad influence on me, even though we had been best friends for two years now, and she was the only one at school who knew I had an older sister. I had even told her where Roxy lived and what Roxy did.

I didn’t do that because I was proud of her. I did it because I wanted company when I eventually went to spy on her, and I knew this would excite Chastity. She and I really had been talking about doing this for weeks now, and I decided that I was finally ready to do it. She understood that it required lots of planning. I just couldn’t go hanging around the hotel for hours and hours. My parents, especially my father, would want to know where I had been and what I had been doing. I needed a solid alibi and telling my father I was going to her house to study would suffice.

I was sure I could get away with it, but lying to my father wasn’t something I liked to do or did often. My reason for that wasn’t simply fear of being caught. I couldn’t help feeling that my father would see even the smallest, most insignificant untruth as a serious betrayal and, more important, evidence that I was heading toward becoming another Roxy. With such disappointment, his love for me would suffer a nearly fatal wound.

If and when that happened, I was sure I would be able to see it in his face immediately. It would certainly be there if he found out my secret plan to spy on Roxy. Why, he would want to know, would I want to know anything about such a sister? What did this say about me? Would he now definitely believe I was more like her than he had feared or expected? And how would my mother react? Would she blame me for bringing such unhappiness back into our small family? I surely would no longer be their
fille parfaite
. Why would I risk all this just to spy on Roxy? What was the attraction, the fascination? Why didn’t I despise her for doing what she had done to both of them?

However, no matter what they pretended, deep in my heart I knew that even they, even my father, wanted to know more about her. No matter what you said or did, you really couldn’t wash your hands completely of your child. Blood was too strong. I was convinced she lived in Papa’s dreams and even his nightmares. In his heart of hearts, he didn’t want to see bad things happen to her and wished that there was some way to bring her back.

“Maybe Kelli Fisher will study with us,” I told Papa, hoping to make my alibi more credible. “She’s a good student, too. Her twin brother, Carson, might come along,” I added nonchalantly, just to make it all seem more truthful.

He nodded, but kept his eyes so fixed on me that even if I weren’t lying, I’d inevitably act as if I were. However, he was thinking about something else.

“You like this boy?”

“He’s all right,” I said, which were a girl’s code words for “Ugh!” Papa didn’t know that, of course.

“What’s ‘all right’ mean?”

“No second look,” I said. “And barely a first.”

Mama laughed, but Papa kept his military serious expression.

“I hope you’re mother has done a good job of explaining the minefields out there when it comes to sex, Emmie.”

“Oh, Norton,” Mama said.

“You know, I don’t go for this false modesty when it comes to training your children, Vivian. We just have to look to your sister Manon for a good example of what result that can have,” he said sharply. Like his father and his father’s father, he could swing words like a machete.

Because Papa avoided mentioning Roxy and therefore using her as the example of what not to be, he relied heavily on the story of Mama’s sister Manon, who got pregnant at sixteen and married a much older man, a friend of her young uncle’s. Mama would counter with the fact that they were still married and had a nice family.

“Only you French can pretend not to see what’s on your right and left flanks,” Papa told her. “Yves or Leaves or whatever he calls himself is surely out there pollinating other
jeunes filles.