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! (59 page)

We had let down our shields and allowed ourselves to be vulnerable again. We allowed faith, hope and trust to come and dance like sugarplums in our heads.

Fairy tales could come true.

They were happening to us. The wicked queen was out of our lives, and Snow White would reign one day. She wouldn’t be the one to eat the poisoned red apple. But every fairy tale had a dragon to slay, a witch to overcome or some obstacle to make things difficult. I tried to look ahead and figure out who would be the dragon, and what would be the obstacles. All along I knew who was the witch. And that was the saddest part of being me.

I got up and went out on the upper veranda to stare up at the moon. I saw Chris standing near the railing, gazing up at the moon too. From the slump of his shoulders, usually held so proud, I knew he was bleeding inside, just as I was. I tiptoed over to surprise him. But he turned as I neared and held out his arms. Without thought I went straight into them and put my arms up around his neck. He wore the warm robe Momma had given him last Christmas, though it was much too small. He’d have another from me when he looked under the tree Christmas morning, with his monogram—CFS—for he wanted never to be called Foxworth, but Sheffield.

His blue eyes gazed down into mine. Eyes so much alike. I loved him as I loved the better side of myself, the brighter, happier side.

“Cathy,” he whispered, stroking my back, his eyes bright,
“if you feel like crying, go ahead, I’ll understand. Cry enough for me too. I was hoping, praying that Momma would come and somehow give us a reasonable explanation for doing what she did.”

“A reasonable excuse for murder?” I asked bitterly. “How could she dream up one clever enough? She’s not that smart.” He looked so miserable I tightened my arms about his neck. One hand stole into his hair and twined there. My other hand lowered to stroke his cheek. Love, it was such an encompassing word, different from sex and ten times more compelling. I felt full of love for him when he lowered his face into my hair and sobbed. He murmured my name over and over again, as if I were the only person in the world who would ever be real and solid, and dependable.

Somehow his lips found mine and we were kissing, kissing with so much passion he was aroused and tried to draw me into his room. “I just want to hold you, that’s all. Nothing else. When I go away to school, I need to have something more to hold onto—give me just a little more, Cathy, please.” Before I could answer he had me in his arms again, kissing me with such burning lips I became terrified—and excited too.

“Stop! Don’t!” I cried, but he went on, touching my breasts and pushing my gown aside so he could kiss them. “Chris!” I hissed, angry then. “Don’t love me, Chris. When you’re gone, what you feel for me will fade away like it never happened. We’ll force ourselves to love others so we can feel clean. We can’t be our parents in duplicate. We can’t make the same mistake.”

He held me tighter and didn’t say a word, yet I knew what he was thinking. There wouldn’t be any others. He wouldn’t let it come about. One woman had hurt him too deeply, betrayed him too monstrously when he was young and very, very vulnerable. There was only me he could trust.

He stepped back, two tears shining in the corners of his
eyes. It was up to me to slice the bond, now, here. And for his own good. Everybody always did everything for someone’s good.

*  *  *

I couldn’t go to sleep. I kept hearing him calling me, wanting me. I got up and drifted down the hall and again got in his bed, where he lay waiting. “You’ll never be free of me, Cathy, never. As long as you live, it will be me and you.”

“No!”

“Yes!”

“No!” But I kissed him, then jumped from his bed and raced back to my room, slamming and locking the door behind me. What was the matter with me? I should never have gone to his room and gotten into his bed. Was I as evil as the grandmother said?

No, I wasn’t.

I couldn’t be!

I
t was Christmas. The tree touched the twelve-foot ceiling, and spread under it were gifts enough for ten children! Not that Chris and I were children anymore. Carrie was thrilled by everything Santa had brought for her. Chris and I had used the last of our stolen hoard of money to buy Paul a luscious red lounging robe, and a brilliant gown of ruby red velvet for Henny—size fifty-eight! Dazzled and pleased, she held it before her. Then she wrote a thank-you note,
Make good church dress. Make all friends jealous.

Paul tried on his lavish new lounging robe. He looked divine in that color and it fitted him beautifully.

Next came the biggest surprise of all. Paul strode over to me and hunkered down on his heels. From his wallet he pulled five large yellow tickets. If he had sat down for a year and thought about nothing but a way to please me most, he couldn’t have been more successful. There, fanned in his large, finely shaped hand, were tickets to
The Nutcracker
, performed by the Rosencoff School of Ballet.

“It’s a very professional company, I hear,” explained
Paul. “I don’t know much about ballet myself, but I’ve asked around, and they say it is one of the best. They also teach beginner, intermediate and advanced lessons. Which level are you?”

“Advanced!” proclaimed Chris while I could only stare at Paul, too happy to speak. “Cathy was a beginner when she went upstairs to live. But something wonderful happened to her in the attic—the ghost of Anna Pavlova came and took over her body. And Cathy taught herself how to go on
pointe
.”

That night all of us, including Henny, sat enthralled in the third row, center section. Those dancers on stage weren’t just good—they were superb! Especially the handsome man named Julian Marquet who danced the lead. As in a dream I followed Paul backstage during intermission, for I was going to meet the dancers!

He led us toward a couple standing in the wings. “Madame, Georges,” he said to a tiny woman sleek as a seal and a not much larger man by her side, “this is my ward, Catherine Doll, who I was telling you about. This is her brother Christopher, and this younger beauty is Carrie, and you have met Henrietta Beech before. . . .”

“Yah, of course,” said the lady who looked like a dancer, talked like a dancer, and wore her black hair just like a dancer would, drawn back from her face and pinned up in a huge chignon. Over black leotards she wore a floating chiffon dress of black, and over that a bolero of leopard skins. Her husband, Georges, was a quiet man, sinewy, pale-faced, with startlingly black hair, and lips so red they seemed made of congealed blood. They were a pair, all right, for her lips were scarlet slashed too, and her eyes were charcoaled smudges in pale pastry dough. Two pairs of black eyes scanned me and then Chris. “You too are a dancer?” they asked of my brother. My, did they always speak simultaneously?

“No! I don’t dance,” said Chris, appearing embarrassed.

“Ah, the pity of that,” sighed the madame regretfully.
“What a glorious pair the two of you would make on stage. People would flock to stare at beauty such as you and your sister possess.” She glanced down at small Carrie, clinging fearfully to my hand, and casually disregarded her.

“Chris plans to be a doctor,” explained Dr. Paul.

“Ha!” Madame Rosencoff scoffed, as if Chris must have taken leave of his senses. Both she and her husband turned their ebony eyes on me, concentrating with such intensity I began to feel hot, sweaty, self-conscious.

“You have studied the daunce?” (Always she said “daunce,” as if it had a “u.”)

“Yes,” I said in a small voice.

“Your age when you started?”

“I was four years old.”

“And you are now . . . ?”

“In April I will be sixteen.”

“Good. Very, very good.” She rubbed the palms of her long, bony hands together. “Eleven years and more of professional training. At what age did you go on
pointe
?”

“Twelve.”

“Wonderful!” she cried. “I never put girls on full
pointe
until they are thirteen, unless they are excellent. Then she frowned suspiciously. “Are you excellent, or only mediocre?”

“I don’t know.”

“You mean no one has ever told you?”

“No.”

“Then you must be only mediocre.” She half-sneered, turned toward her husband and waved her hand arrogantly to dismiss us.

“Now you wait a minute!” flared Chris, looking red and very angry. “There’s not a dancer on that stage tonight who is as good as Cathy! Not one! That girl out there, playing the lead role of Clara—sometimes she is out of time with the music—Cathy is
never
out of time.
Her
timing is perfect; her
ear
is perfect. Even when Cathy dances to the same melody,
each time she varies it just a little, so she never duplicates, always improvises to make it better, and more beautiful, and more touching. You’d be lucky to get a dancer like Cathy in your company!”

Those slanted, jet eyes turned to him, savoring the intensity of his report. “
You
are an authority on the subject of ballet?” she asked with some scorn. “
You
know how to separate the gifted dancers from the horde?”

Chris stood as if in a dream, and spoke as if his feet were firmly rooted there, and even his voice had a huskiness to betray his feelings. “I only know what I see, and what emotions Cathy makes me feel when she dances. I know when the music turns on, and she begins to move with it, my heart stands still, and when her dance is over, I know I am left aching because such beauty has gone. She doesn’t just dance a role, she is that character; she makes you believe—because
she
believes—and there’s not a girl in your company who reaches out and grabs my heart and squeezes it until it throbs. So go on and turn her away, and let some other dance company benefit from your stupidity.”

The Madame’s jet eyes fixed on Chris long and penetratingly, as did our doctor’s eyes. Then slowly Madame Rosencoff turned to me, and from head to toe I was assessed, weighed, measured. “Tomorrow, one o’clock sharp. At my studio you will audition for me.” It was not a request, but a command—not to be disobeyed—and for some reason when I should have been happy, I was angry.

“Tomorrow is too soon,” I said. “I have no costumes, no leotards, no
pointes
.” All of those things had been left behind in the attic of Foxworth Hall.

“Trifles,” she dismissed, with an arrogant wave of her shapely hand. “We will supply what you need—just be there—and don’t be late, for we demand that our dancers be disciplined in
all
things, including punctuality!” With a queenly gesture we were dismissed, and gracefully she drifted off with her husband
in tow, leaving me stunned. Mouth agape, speechless, I caught the strong study of the dancer, Julian Marquet, who must have overheard every word. His dark eyes shone with a glow of interest and admiration. “Feel flattered, Catherine,” he said to me. “Customarily she and Georges won’t take anyone unless they’ve waited months, or sometimes years, for an audition.”

*  *  *

I cried that night in Chris’s embrace. “I’m out of practice,” I sobbed. “I know I’m going to make a fool of myself tomorrow. It isn’t fair that she won’t let me have more time to prepare! I need to limber up. I’m going to be stiff, clumsy, and they won’t want me, I know they won’t!”

“Aw, come off it, Cathy,” he said, tightening his arms about me. “I’ve seen you in here holding to the bedpost, and doing your
pliés
and
tendus
. You are
not
out of practice, or stiff, or clumsy—you’re just scared. You’ve got a great big case of stage fright, that’s all. And you don’t need to worry, you’re terrific.
I
know it,
you
know it.”

He brushed a light good-night kiss on my lips, dropped his arms and backed toward the door. “Tonight I’ll go down on my knees and pray for you. I’ll ask God to let you wow them tomorrow. And I’ll be there to gloat when I see their stunned expressions—for no one is gonna believe the dancing wonder of you.”