Maybe she did, but I wasn’t convinced.
At nearly seventeen, I was still far from the most experienced and worldly girl in my class, especially when it came to relationships. Some of the girls had been going out with older boys since they were fourteen, and as we all knew, those boys weren’t going to be satisfied holding hands and just kissing in the backseats of cars when they could really be alone. Some of them were from broken homes, but even those who weren’t seemed to be on a long leash, staying out later than the rest of us. I imagined that their mothers, like Cathy’s mother, were more absorbed with themselves.
Like any other girl, I guess, I wanted to see how many bells would ring and how much control I would still have when those famous female hormones began calling. Both Lana and Suzette were still virgins. We talked about it almost every time the three of us were together at one of our houses. Even though they had mothers to advise them all the time, I suspected they didn’t know much more about their own impulses and desires than I did. They thought that just because I was the best student in the class, maybe even in the whole school, I would know more than their mothers.
I smiled to myself recalling how I answered some of their questions, because I thought I sounded or replied the way Christopher would. I was almost as scientific. I also got the feeling that if I told them how little sexually I had done with Kane or how far I might go, they would find it a justification for doing the same. I didn’t want to take responsibility for their actions, but they would surely come back at me with “Well, you did it.”
Responsibility, I thought to myself—look at how it was thrust onto Christopher. Maybe it was just a game at first for him to play daddy, but it wasn’t difficult to see how he would really have to be like a daddy. I knew that kids our age who lived in war-torn countries or in poverty had to grow up so quickly that childhood was a fantasy. But for a boy who came from a middle-class family, who once had all the advantages, to be dropped into this situation had to be mind-shattering. I knew how difficult it had been for me to lose my mother, but the way this was turning out, he and his brother and sisters were more like instant orphans.
I picked up the diary reluctantly this time. It was making me angry and depressed. I was developing a love/hate relationship with it. It was intriguing, yes, but also enraging. Dad might be right, I thought. It could make me bitter and cynical. Right now, it made my stomach churn the way it did just before I had to do something unpleasant, like go to the dentist, but I turned the page anyway, feeling that it was almost as necessary as having my teeth checked.
Our first foray up to the attic was like exploring another country. It was vast, probably the entire length of the mansion, and filled with endless antiques, leather-bound trunks with travel labels, giant armoires containing both Union and Confederate uniforms, and rows and rows of men’s old fashions, women’s clothing, dress forms, not to mention dozens of birdcages, rakes and shovels, and piles of framed photographs.
“These might be our relatives,” I said. “Ancestors.”
Cathy grimaced until she saw a pretty girl who was maybe eighteen. It was hard to tell. Both women and men in the nineteenth century looked older at our ages. I thought she was quite sexy, with her bosom rising out of a ruffled bodice. I saw how fascinated Cathy was with her.
“I’m sure you’ll have a figure like that.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“From the way you’re developing already,” I said, and she looked at me so strangely. “It’s all right for me to notice, you know, despite what our monster grandmother says.”
Cory and Carrie started to complain about the heat and stuffiness. I managed to open a window, and then I made a new discovery, a room that was half decent, with school desks. Cory found a rocking horse, and Cathy put Carrie on it, too. For the time being, we had plenty to occupy ourselves. Cathy and I gazed out the window at the view.
“It’s like looking at a television with the picture stuck on something beautiful. You can’t get tired of something beautiful,” I told her.
She shook her head. “You’re impossible, Christopher. You see something good in everything, even this. Why does our grandmother look at us and see nothing but sin? What have we done? We’re just kids.”
“I don’t know how she’s thinking yet,” I told her. “Don’t worry about it, anyway. We won’t be here that long.”
Carrie and Cory began to complain again, demanding that we take them outside.
“Now what, oh great optimist?” Cathy asked, and I quickly came up with some new games to play.
“We’ll turn the attic into our own garden with a swing!” I declared, and spent hours building one for them. It kept them occupied for only a little while before they were screaming to go out again.
This wasn’t going to work, I thought. We couldn’t keep them locked up as long as Momma envisioned. Cathy looked at me and saw the momentary weakness and doubt in my eyes, but I quickly recuperated, chastised them like a father should for whining and screaming so much, and then gratefully accepted Cathy’s declaration that it was lunchtime.
These were early days, I told myself. Surely, it would be worth it. This was a mansion, and they were obviously very rich people to own so much land. If we were able to share just a small part of it, we’d be well-off, too, and coming from the disaster we were in, this had to be a great idea, an opportunity.
I could hear my father say, “Chin up, chest out, shoulders back. You’re in the Dollanganger army, boy.”
When I heard my father coming up the stairs, I shoved the diary under my pillow and grabbed my history text. The moment after I made the change, I felt terrible guilt. My father had such trust in me. Deceiving him again, even with something most people would call very minor, gave me a sick feeling.
How did people deceive the people they love or are supposed to love? I wondered. From what I had read so far and from what was common knowledge, I knew that Corrine Foxworth would keep her children locked in the attic for years, yet according to Christopher, she had told them they would be there a few days, maybe a week, all the while knowing it would have to be much longer. All parents tell their children little white lies to keep the peace or keep them from being afraid or impatient, but this was different. This was cold, hard deception. In a real sense, she was betraying them, betraying those she should have loved the most.
I already had a bad feeling about Corrine willingly shutting up her children in rooms far away from the servants and the grandfather. I didn’t like the fact that the door was actually locked. What if there was a fire or something else terrible happened, like an appendix attack or an injury? How long would it take to get them help and assistance? How could a mother go to sleep at night knowing this?
I tried to think like Christopher and understand that Corrine was in a desperate place, practically penniless with four children, and in her way of thinking, this was a small enough sacrifice to make in order to gain the security and future for her children and herself that she envisioned. I told myself that I had to remember she had once enjoyed this opulent lifestyle, living in this large mansion with its beautiful grounds and the lake. Who could blame her for dreaming of being rescued?
It caused me to wonder about what sacrifices my father had made in his life after my mother’s death, sacrifices he made for my benefit. I was sure that many evenings, he lay awake in his and my mother’s bedroom, alone, looking into the darkness, unable to sleep, and probably dreaming of getting away from it all, fleeing the crisp memory of her movements beside him, her laughter resonating in the halls and rooms, the scent of her perfume still lingering around her vanity table and in her closet, perhaps the discovery of a strand of her hair. After her passing, every reminder was like a scratch on a scab, a wound. How much easier it would be to move to another city, into another house, and make new friends, friends in whose faces he wouldn’t see the sorrow and the pity or the reflection of my mother in their eyes and hear the fragility of their words. Everyone was alwa
ys afraid he or she might say something painful and vividly resurrect my mother’s dying breath. I knew. I saw the fear in his face and felt it in my own heart.
Despite what he would tell me about being tied to the house and his work, about being comfortable where he was, and about being too old to start anew, I was well aware that he was holding on to it all for me. He didn’t want my life disrupted. He didn’t want me to have to find new friends and get used to new teachers and new surroundings. “People my age and younger are moved about this country like checkers on a board,” he would say.
Being young is supposed to mean you’re strong enough to be shaken up, even periodically, yet students like that don’t do as well, and yes, they probably have many emotional and psychological issues, but they live. I would have lived through it, too.
And what about another woman, another wife?
Was it really impossible for him to take on another companion, or was he avoiding it just to please me? Yes, I hated the thought of another woman looking into my mother’s mirror, working in her kitchen, putting her clothes in my mother’s closet, and greeting my father with a kiss at the end of his workday. It was like losing my mother all over again, and yes, that was painful even to consider, but it was also selfish of me not to want it to happen.
My father, like any other man, had needs. I couldn’t share everything with him. How many times had he turned down an invitation because he didn’t think I would be comfortable accompanying him? How many times had he looked at another married couple laughing, holding hands, having dinner in a restaurant, or simply talking softly somewhere and felt the great emptiness and pain in his heart? Maybe he would never love anyone as much as he had loved my mother, but he would have someone on his arm, someone else to come home to. He was still a young man. It had to be difficult having no one to embrace in bed, no shoulder to kiss, no warmth to soothe him when he felt terribly alone. There was a wide hole in his heart, in his life, and I couldn’t fill it completely. We were still a family, yes, but he was a man alone at times and places when he shouldn’t be.
Who was making the sacrifices here?
Not me.
And certainly not Corrine Foxworth!
He knocked on my door.
“Come in, Dad.”
“Just want to give you a heads-up on something,” he began. “Herm Cromwell just told me that the Charlottesville Catch-all, that weekly paper, is doing a lead article on the Foxworth story because of the real estate sale. They’re going to rake up the legendary horror for sure. Herm knows the editor, and there’s going to be a mention of the fact that we’re, through your mother, the only living Charlottesville relatives of the Foxworths now. You’re not to talk to anyone from that newspaper about it,” he added, as sternly as he ever said anything to me.
“I don’t know very much about it, anyway.”
He stared at me in that way he could with those brown eyes turning almost a dark orange when he focused them so intensely. “You’re reading that diary,” he said.
“What diary?” I smiled, and he nodded.
“Better keep it that way, Kristin. I know how descendants of people who committed horrendous acts are stained with bad blood no matter what they do or who they become. It’s like walking about with ghosts clinging to your shoulders, understand?”
What he said made me cringe. Sometimes I did feel like I was carrying ghosts.
“I’ve already tasted that stale bread, Dad,” I said. It was one of his expressions.
He nodded. I could see just the suggestion of tears in his eyes. He understood. “Okay. I’m going to demolish that place the way your mother scrubbed the kitchen floor,” he vowed, and left, closing the door softly.
I put the history book down and thought. Maybe he was right. Maybe I should toss the diary into the garbage and forget Foxworth and the poor Dollanganger children. What good would come of my reading it, anyway? I couldn’t save them from whatever fate they had. It was too late. Dad wasn’t wrong about not wanting to seek out any more horror than we get daily on the news. Why go looking for it?
I turned off my light and curled up against my pillow. Of course, it was only my imagination, but I had forgotten that I had put the diary under my pillow, and it was like I could hear Christopher calling to me, begging me to read on. Someone had to listen. Someone had to know the truth. Otherwise, they would suffer in the darkness. I was the only hope to bring in the light.
In the morning, I realized just how determined my father was to get this job done, and as quickly as he could. He was up and dressed a good half hour before I rose and came down to have breakfast. I saw he was about to leave me a note and get started. It was barely light outside. He was in his jacket and hat.
“Talk about the crack of dawn,” I said.
“Oh. I got a new crew coming on this morning, backhoes and plows. They want some of the grounds cleared along with the rubble. The new owner’s already talking about a pool and a pool house, fixing up tennis courts.”
“Do you know who it is?”
“Nope. Never asked. Whoever it is, good luck to him,” he said. “I put out your favorite cereal and have the bread ready to be toasted. So you’re really coming over after school?”
“That’s the plan.”
“Okay. We’ll talk about dinner then. This looks like a Charley’s Diner night for us.”
“Okay, Dad.”
“Be careful,” he warned. He never said good-bye. It was always “Be careful.”
A quick kiss on his cheek sent him on his way. From the way his shoulders were hoisted and his arms were flexed, he looked like he was off to do battle. Maybe in his mind he was. I ate my breakfast and then went up to make my bed, taking the diary out from under my pillow. I glanced at the clock. I was a little ahead of schedule.
“Don’t do it,” I told myself aloud. “Don’t you dare.”
But I didn’t listen. I opened to where I had left off. Just a page or two, I thought, and I’d be off.
I was thinking more like an addict than a sensible young girl.
Until now, and mainly because of our grandmother’s warnings and her dark view of us, neither Cathy nor I thought anything about the other being present when either of us bathed. Neither our mother nor our father had ever forbidden it, and if they didn’t see anything wrong about it, we certainly didn’t.
Cathy thought we had to clean up before eating our lunch. We had gone through so much of the dusty attic, practically swimming through layers of old air, skimming through the history of the family, stirring up bookworms and moths, and sweeping away gobs of spiderwebs.
“I feel putrid,” she declared. “We’re all too dirty to put our hands on food.” She immediately directed me to help bathe Carrie and Cory. As soon as they were done and she had dressed them, she stripped and got into the tub.
Suddenly, as if just realizing where we were and what we were doing, she stopped washing her face, turned to me, and asked what would happen if the grandmother (she avoided saying “our grandmother,” as if calling her “the grandmother” made her sound more like the creature she thought she was) caught us like this.
I moved to the tub and embraced her. She put her head on my shoulder and choked back a sob.
How quickly it had all changed, I thought. I would do my best to hide it from her and the twins, but this did feel like being in a dungeon, no matter how lightly I treated it, and Grandmother Foxworth couldn’t resemble a sadistic and cruel prison matron more.
“Forget about what she says,” I told Cathy. “We’re going to be rich. Think about that, about all the things we’ll have and be able to do.”
I knew she dreamed of being a famous ballerina. I had checked on the best schools for dance when Momma and Daddy mentioned such a possibility for her, and although they were expensive, I described them again. As I ranted on and on about the things we’d all have, I began to wash her back the way I often did, the way I washed Momma’s back occasionally. If she could walk in our mother’s sh
oes, she would.
Despite how insignificant I made our grandmother’s warnings and innuendos sound, I couldn’t deny that she had put new thoughts in my male mind. I had looked at Cathy’s naked body so often while we were growing up, but I always thought of it the way a student of human anatomy might. She was my own private female specimen, maturing right under my eyes and confirming all that I had read and studied about the birth of sex. Her breasts were already little buds crowned with slightly orange nipples, and the beginnings of her pubic hair told me she was marching to the drumbeat of her stirring hormones.
The second I felt a stirring in myself, I dropped the washcloth and backed away from the tub. What shocked me was the power and speed with which my own sexual awareness sprang out of the dark pocket in which it normally slept. I restrained it but never treated it as I would an unwelcomed guest when girls I knew flirted with me or showed a little too much of their bodies, maybe deliberately brushing themselves against me to seize my attention, something Mindy Thompson used to do whenever we were in lunch line or leaving a classroom. This was different. This was my sister Cathy. Maybe, I thought, our grandmother was right.
Cathy glanced back at me, surprised.
“They’re getting restless again. I’d better move things along, distract them,” I told her, when I really meant distract myself.
She nodded and rose out of the tub. I thought she’d call for me to wipe her back, but she didn’t, and I put all my attention on the twins.
We had our lunch, but almost as soon as it ended, they were complaining again. I rushed back up to the attic and found books to read to them. We broke out a checkers set for Cathy and myself. We stuffed every minute, every second, with something to keep them from crying and whining about being shut up in this house. They finally fell asleep and had their afternoon naps. Cathy and I fell asleep ourselves. The day waned, and before we knew it, we were all at dinner. The twins grew exhausted from their own endless complaining. It was going to be easy to get them to bed. It was now Cathy who looked like she would get hysterical any moment. She kept looking at the locked door and the windows and me.