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! (38 page)

Had we suffered? Had we only missed her? Who was she, anyway? Idiot thoughts while I stared at her and listened to how difficult four hidden children made the lives of others. And though I wanted to deny her, keep her from ever really being close again, I faltered, filling with hope, wanting so much to love her again, and trust her again.

Chris got up and spoke first, in a voice that had finally resolved from one that was high and squeaky at tunes into reliable, deep and masculine tones. “Momma, of course we’re glad you’re back! And yes, we missed you! But you were wrong to go away, and stay away for so long, no matter what complicated reasons you had.”

“Christopher,” she said, her eyes widening in surprise, “you don’t sound like yourself.” Her eyes flicked from him to me, then to the twins. Her vivaciousness simmered down. “Christopher, did anything go wrong?”

“Wrong?” he repeated. “Momma, what can be right about living in one room? You said I don’t sound like myself—look me over good. Am I a little boy now? Look at Cathy—is she still a child? Look longest at the twins; notice in particular how tall they’ve grown. Then turn your eyes back on me, and tell me that Cathy and I are still children to be treated with condescension, and are incapable of understanding adult subjects. We haven’t remained idle, twiddling our thumbs while you were off having
a good time. Through books Cathy and I have lived a zillion lives . . . our vicarious way to feel alive.”

Momma wanted to interrupt, but Chris overrode her small voice which faltered. He threw her many gifts a scornful glance. “So, you have come back bearing peace offerings, like you always do when you know you have done wrong. Why do you keep thinking your stupid gifts can make up for what we’ve lost, and what we are constantly losing? Sure, once we
were
delighted with the games and toys and clothes you brought up to our prison room, but we’re older now, and gifts are just not enough!”

“Christopher, please,” she begged, and looked uneasily at the twins again, and so quickly she averted her eyes. “Please don’t speak as if you’ve stopped loving me. I couldn’t bear that.”

“I love you,” was his reply. “I
make
myself keep on loving you, despite what you do. I’ve
got
to love you. We all have to love you, and believe in you, and think you are looking out for our best interests. But look at us, Momma, and really see us. Cathy feels, and I feel, that you close your eyes to what you are doing to us. You come to us smiling, and dangle before our eyes and our ears bright hopes for the future, but nothing ever materializes. Long ago, when you first told us about this house and your parents, you said we’d only be shut up in this room for
one
night, and then you changed it to a
few
days. And then it was another few weeks, and then another few months . . . and over two years have passed while we wait for an old man to die, who may never die from the skilled way his doctors keep pulling him back from the grave. This room is not improving
our
health. Can’t you see that?” he almost shouted, his boyish face suffused with red as his limit of self-control was reached at last. I thought I would never live to see the day when he would attack our mother—
his
beloved mother.

The sound of his loud voice must have startled him, for he lowered his tone and spoke more calmly, and yet his words had the impact of bullets: “Momma, whether or not you inherit your father’s immense fortune, we want out of this room! Not next
week, or tomorrow—but today! Now! This minute! You turn that key over to me, and we’ll go away, far away. And you can send us money, if you care to, or send nothing, if that’s what you want, and you need never see us again, if that is your choice, and that will solve all your problems, we’ll be gone from your life, and your father need never know we existed, and you can have what he leaves you, all to yourself.”

Momma went pale from shock.

I sat in my chair, with my lunch half-eaten. I felt sorry for her, and I felt betrayed by my own compassion. I closed the door, slammed it hard, just by thinking of those two weeks when we were starved . . . four days of eating nothing else but crackers and cheese, and three days without any food at all, and nothing but water to drink. And then the whippings, the tar in my hair, and, most of all, the way Chris had to slash his wrist to feed the twins his nourishing blood.

And Chris, what he was saying to her, and the hard determined way he said it, was mostly my doing.

I think she guessed this, for she shot me a stabbing glance, full of resentment.

“Say no more to me, Christopher—it’s clear to see you are not yourself.”

Jumping to my feet, I stepped over to his side. “Look at us, Momma! Observe our radiant, healthy complexions, just like yours. Look especially long on your two youngest. They don’t look frail, do they? Their full cheeks don’t look gaunt, do they? Their hair isn’t dull, is it? Their eyes—they’re not dark and hollowed out, are they? When you look, and register, do you see how much they’ve grown, how healthily they thrive? If you can’t have pity for Christopher and me, have pity for them.”

“Stop!” she yelled, jumping up from the bed where she’d sat to have us crowd cozily around, in our former way. She spun on her heel so she wouldn’t have to see us. Choking sobs were in her voice that cried, “You have no right to talk to your mother in this manner. But for me you would all be starving in the
streets.” Her voice broke. She turned sideways, throwing Chris an appealing, woebegone look. “Haven’t I done the best I could by you? Where did I go wrong? What do you lack? You knew how it would be until your grandfather died. You agreed to stay here until he did. And I’ve kept my word. You live in a warm, safe room. I bring to you the best of everything—books, toys, games, the best clothes that money can buy. You have good food to eat, a TV set.” Fully she faced us now, spreading wide her hands in a supplicating gesture, appearing ready to fall down on her knees, pleading with her eyes at me now. “Listen to this—your grandfather is so ill now he is confined to bed all day long. He isn’t even allowed to sit in the wheelchair. His doctors say he can’t last long, a few days or the maximum of a few weeks. The day he dies, I’ll come up and unlock your door and lead you down the stairs. I’ll have money enough then to send all four of you to college, and Chris to medical school, and you, Cathy, can continue on with your ballet lessons. I’ll find for Cory the best of musical teachers, and for Carrie, I’ll do anything she wants. Are you going to throw away all the years you’ve suffered and endured without waiting for rewards—just when you’re on the verge of reaching your goal! Remember how you used to laugh and talk of what you’d do when you were blessed with more money than you knew how to spend? Recall all the plans we made . . . our house where we could all live together again. Don’t throw everything away by becoming impatient just when we’re due to win! Tell me I’ve had pleasure while you’ve suffered, and I’ll agree that I have. But I’ll make up for that by tenfold!”

Oh, I admit I was touched, and wanted so much to step away from disbelief. I hovered near, trusting her again, and quivered with the suspicious fear that she was lying. Hadn’t she told us from the very beginning that our grandfather was taking his last breath . . . years and years of his breathing his last breath? Should I yell out,
Momma, we just don’t believe you anymore?
I wanted to wound her, make her bleed as we had bled with our tears, isolation, and loneliness—to say nothing of the punishments.

But Chris looked at me forbiddingly, making me ashamed. Could I be as chivalrous as he was? Would that I could open my mouth, ignore him, and shout all the grandmother had done to punish us for nothing. For some strange reason I stayed quiet. Maybe I was protecting the twins from knowing too much. Maybe I was waiting for Chris to tell her first.

He stood and gazed at her with soft compassion, forgetting the tar in my hair, and the weeks without food, and the dead mice he would make tasty with salt and pepper—and then the whippings. He was beside me, his arm brushing mine. He trembled with indecision, and in his eyes were tormented visions of hopes and despair as he watched our mother begin to cry.

The twins crept closer to cling to my skirt as Momma crumpled down on the nearest bed to sob and beat her fists into the pillow, just like a child.

“Oh, but you are heartless and ungrateful children,” she wailed pitifully, “that you should do this to me, your own mother, the only person in this world who loves you! The only one who cares about you! I came so joyfully to you, so happy to be with you again, wanting to tell you my good news so you could rejoice with me. And what do you do? You attack me viciously, unjustly! Making me feel so guilty, and so ashamed, when all along I have done the best I could, and yet you won’t believe!”

She was on our level now, crying, face down on the bed in the same way I would have done years ago, and Carrie would do this day.

Immediately, spontaneously, Chris and I were stricken contrite and sorry. Everything she said was only too true. She
was
the only person who loved us, who cared, and in her only lay our salvation, our lives, our futures, and our dreams. We ran to her, Chris and I, and threw our arms around her as best we could, pleading for forgiveness. The twins said nothing, only watched.

“Momma, please stop crying! We didn’t mean to hurt your
feelings. We’re sorry, we really are. We’ll stay. We believe you. The grandfather is almost dead—he has to die sometime, doesn’t he?”

On and on she wept, inconsolable.

“Talk to us, Momma, please! Tell us your good news. We want to know, we want to be glad and rejoice with you. We said those things only because we were hurt when you left us and didn’t tell us why. Momma, please, please, Momma.”

Our pleas, our tears, our anguish finally reached her. She somehow managed to sit up, and she dabbed at her eyes with a white linen handkerchief with five inches of fine lace all around, and monogrammed with a big white C.

She shoved Chris and me aside, then brushed off our hands as if they burned, and she got to her feet. Now she refused to meet our eyes which begged, pleaded, cajoled.

“Open your gifts that I selected with such care,” she said in a cold voice filled with choked sobs, “and then tell me whether or not you are thought about and loved. Tell me then that I didn’t think of your needs, and think of your best interests, and try to cater to your every whim. Tell me then I am selfish and that I don’t care.”

Dark mascara streaked her cheeks. Her bright red lipstick was smeared. Her hair, customarily worn on her head like a perfect hat, was mussed and displaced. She had strolled into our room a vision of perfection and now she appeared a broken mannequin.

And why did I have to go and think she was like an actress, playing her part for all she was worth?

She looked at Chris, and ignored me. And the twins—they could have been in Timbuktu for all the concern she showed for their welfare, and their sensitivities.

“I have ordered a new set of encyclopedias for your upcoming birthday, Christopher,” she choked out, still dabbing at her face and trying to take off the mascara smudges. “The very set you always wanted—the best that is published, bound in genuine red leather, tooled in twenty-four-karat gold around all four
sides, and hubbed-spined a full half-inch outward. I went directly to the publishing house, to order them for you especially. They’ll bear your name, and the date, but they won’t be mailed directly here, lest someone should see them.” She swallowed heavily and put away her fancy handkerchief. “I thought and thought about a gift to please you the most, just like I have always given you the very best to educate yourself.”

Chris appeared dumbfounded. The play of mixed emotions upon his face made his eyes look confused, bewildered, dazed, and sort of helpless. God, how he must have loved her, even after all she’d done.

My emotions were straightforward, with no indecision. I smoldered with rage. Now she was bringing up genuine, leather-bound, hubbed-spined, twenty-four-karat gold-tooled encyclopedias! Books like that must cost more than a thousand dollars—maybe two or three thousand! Why wasn’t she putting that money into our escape fund? I wanted to yell out like Carrie and protest, but something broken in Chris’s blue eyes kept my mouth shut. He’d always wanted a set of genuine red-leather-bound encyclopedias, and she’d already ordered them, and money was nothing to her now, and maybe, just maybe, the grandfather really would die today or tomorrow, and she wouldn’t
need
to rent an apartment, or buy a house.

She sensed my doubts.

Momma raised her head regally high and turned toward the door. We had not opened our gifts, and she wasn’t staying to watch our reactions. Why was I crying inside when I hated her? I didn’t love her now . . . . I didn’t.

She said when she reached the door and had it open, “When you have thought about the pain you have given me today, and when you can treat me with love and respect again, then I will come back. Not before.”

So she came.

So she went.

So she had come and gone and left Carrie and Cory
untouched, unkissed, unspoken to, and hardly glanced at. And I knew why. She couldn’t bear to look and see what gaining a fortune was costing the twins.

They jumped up from the table and came running to me, to cling to my skirts, and stare up into my face. Their small faces were fraught with anxieties, with fears, studying my expression to see if I were happy, so they, too, could feel happy. I knelt to lavish them with all the kisses and caresses she had overlooked—or just couldn’t give to those she’d harmed so.

“Do we look funny?” asked Carrie worriedly, her small hands plucking at mine.

“No, of course not. You and Cory just look pale, because you stay inside too much.”

“Did we grow much?”

“Yes, yes, of course you have.” And I smiled, even as I lied. And with a pretense of joy, and keeping that false smile like a mask to wear, I sat down on the floor with the twins and Chris, and we all four began to open our gifts like it was Christmas Day. They were all beautifully wrapped in expensive paper, or gold or silver foil, and sporting huge satin bows of assorted colors.