It was another mystery, another secret to add to the dozens and dozens in this family. Only for now, it would be my own.
3
Best Daughter
Of course, I knew why I had that nightmare. Its origin went back years. It had been festering inside me like a bad boil, and its time to burst had come, perhaps because I was so close now, so close to being Daddy’s best daughter.
There was never a doubt that I was not supposed to learn the first and most important secret of all as early as I had learned it. From what I understood, none of Daddy’s daughters had ever learned it as early as I had. No one had time to prepare me for it as his other daughters had been prepared, and later, because this happened when it did, Daddy was furious at Brianna, blaming her. It was practically the only time I could remember him losing his temper and raging at any one of us until then. I think it was because of what happened that night that Brianna was really not as friendly or as loving as a sister should be toward me. She blamed me for Daddy’s reprimanding her so vehemently. I know it frightened her as much as it frightened me.
I was only four at the time. We were living in upstate New York. Brianna was assigned to tutor me, give me what was called preschooling. I remember she wasn’t happy about having to do that, but making progress with me pleased Daddy so much that she tried very hard. She didn’t have to try that hard, actually. I was always a good student, eager to learn new things even at that young age. But I saw how important it was for her to take credit, to collect Daddy’s compliments and approval. I saw the pleasure it gave her, and I knew that pleasure was awaiting me.
Back then, she would have me recite math problems and solutions, word meanings, and scientific information before we all sat to have dinner. She gave me piano lessons and taught me songs to sing and play. She wanted me to look at her when I recited something or sang, but I always looked at Daddy, for it was his approval I sought, not hers.
Ava would sit with a smirk on her face, obviously displeased with all the attention Daddy was giving to me. I could almost hear her thinking, What about me? What about my singing, my playing the violin? The problem was that she didn’t have as good a singing voice as I had even at four years old. She didn’t play the violin with as much passion and enthusiasm as I had playing the piano. I had the impression, even at that young age, that Brianna didn’t sing or play the piano as well as I did when she was my age, either. Even back then, I had the suspicion, the hope, that Daddy might love me better than any of his other daughters because he saw that I was truly the special one in our family.
I wasn’t all that surprised at what Daddy had said about sibling rivalry the night I wore the new dress. I always had the feeling that he encouraged it. He wanted us to be jealous of each other and especially covet the compliments he might give to one or the other of us. It was truly as if we were being taught to resent, to dislike, even to hate each other, just so we would be more competitive when it came to gaining his compliments, but then he would have his warm family moments during which he would remind Ava and me that we were sisters and had to look out for each other.
“You’re both very special,” he would say. “No one will appreciate you out there as much as you will appreciate each other. Never forget that. In the end, you must be willing to die for each other.”
I saw the way Ava looked at me. Fatal sacrifice? Not hardly, her eyes said.
“You will never die for each other,” he said. “It will never be necessary.”
Ava relaxed.
“But you must live as if it could be necessary,” he warned, losing his smile quickly. “We have no one but ourselves. Never forget that.”
Whenever he made pronouncements like that, it felt as if he had stamped the words on my brain and in my heart. I could feel the way they thundered inside me and quickly became part of who and what I was to be. I fed on his words the way most people fed on food. Nothing made me feel more special than Daddy talking directly to me and to me only.
When I attended a private elementary school, I listened closely to other students to see how different their family lives were from my own, especially girls with older sisters. I was interested in how much sibling rivalry went on in their houses and what their fathers or mothers did to encourage or discourage it. From what I had heard, no other parents wanted such resentment or competition between their children. They did their best to keep one or another of their children from feeling favored, but it seemed natural that sisters and brothers felt that their parents treated one or the other more favorably. It was inevitable, so maybe it was inevitable with us as well.
Eventually, I decided that Daddy was being more honest, perhaps, by admitting and even encouraging sibling rivalry. Why pretend that it doesn’t exist in all families? Some of us might not know all of the secrets another one knows, but lying to each other was a form of betrayal, and betrayal was as big a sin as any in our world. We had our own religion, our own holy trinity: obedience, loyalty, and sacrifice. So when it came to facing the truth about each other, Daddy was most encouraging and continued to stress why sibling rivalry was a good thing in our world.
“Not wanting it is like not wanting one or the other horse to win in a race,” he said. “How foolish is that? Someone, something, always has to be at least a little better, a little stronger, a little faster. It’s what nature teaches us and expects us not only to accept but to cherish and to embrace.”
Who among us, then, would be a little better, a little stronger, a little faster? Who would indeed be Daddy’s best daughter? Who would serve him best? Who would give him the assurance he needed that he would live on? For our whole purpose in life was to do just that.
I had no idea that was the reason for my being brought to live in Daddy’s home, even after I accidentally made that first discovery. I was too young yet to appreciate the full meaning of what I had seen and heard and how it all related to me. Even now, I didn’t think I understood it completely, but that would come. There was no doubt. That would come.
Something had awakened me that night. Usually, I fell asleep easily. Maybe, now that I knew about it, it was because of what Mrs. Fennel put in my dinner. Maybe it was her fault. Maybe she had forgotten to do it that particular night. However, even back then, I couldn’t imagine Daddy ever getting angry with or reprimanding Mrs. Fennel. Whatever the reason for it, my eyes just popped open, and I felt wide awake. I tried to go back to sleep, but suddenly, I heard Brianna’s laughter. It was obviously very late, but she was very loud. It sounded as if she was right outside my window. What was she doing right outside my window? And what was so funny so late at night?
We were living just outside Rhinebeck, New York, at the time, in an old Queen Anne–style house with more than fifty acres. The house had been refurbished without losing its character. Daddy had moved in his furniture and paintings, and as all of it would in houses to come, it seemed as though all of it was made just for this house. Everything fit perfectly; every color coordinated. When I commented about that after we had moved into our Brentwood home, Daddy cryptically replied, “All our homes were built especially for us.”
It did seem as if nothing happened accidentally or by coincidence. Everything Daddy did was well planned, and there was a network of support, not only in America but seemingly all over the world. All our needs were always anticipated and fulfilled, no matter where we were or when we were there.
The Queen Anne house was, of course, the only family home I had known. I had been brought there directly from the orphanage. Mrs. Fennel, who didn’t look much different to me then, had a large herbal garden just behind the house, and when I was old enough, I often had to work with her, weeding and nursing her plants. As far as I could tell, they were the only things toward which she showed any affection. I was actually jealous of the plants and sometimes wished I had been planted in a garden. She spoke to them as though they really were her children, encouraging them to grow and be healthy and complimenting them on their maturation. She’d stroke t
heir leaves lovingly and even kiss some. Nothing was worse than my accidentally stepping on one of her newly placed plants. Her rage made me tremble and start to cry.
“Don’t drop your tears in my garden,” she would tell me, her whole body poised and slightly tilted, giving me the impression that she would turn sharply and slice me in half. She made me feel I could contaminate the earth and kill her plants with my tears, and that feeling more than anything, perhaps, had me suck back my sobs and stop crying quickly. Apologies didn’t satisfy her back then, either, even from a small child.
“I don’t want to hear it,” she would say, sweeping the air between us as if my words were as clearly visible as soot to her. “Just be more careful.”
I would look back at the house to be sure Daddy hadn’t been watching from some window and seen my blunders. Of course, I hoped she wouldn’t tell him. He never said anything, but that didn’t mean he didn’t know. There wasn’t much about me, what I did or what I said, that he wasn’t aware of, just the way an omnipresent deity might be. Other children might hear their parents say, “God hears and sees everything.” Mrs. Fennel told me, “Your daddy hears and sees everything.”
Ava was in school and didn’t have these chores to do with Mrs. Fennel, and of course, neither did Brianna. Afterward, I would go into the house with Mrs. Fennel, wash up, and have my lunch. Then Brianna would take control of my day, and I would be at the piano or learning words and other important basic information. All the toys I had seemed to have some educational purpose, whether they were coloring books that taught me about animals and geography or little plastic dining sets to teach me how to sit at a table properly and eat properly. The dolls I had were mainly there to serve as props for my education in social graces. I was never permitted to develop any sort of relationship with or affection for one particular doll and take it to bed with me. When I tried that once, Mrs. Fennel smashed the doll’s head.
No, the security and comfort I would find had to be found inside myself. There was never any hesitation about closing my bedroom door at night. If something frightened me and I screamed or cried, Daddy was the only one who would come to comfort me.
“You’re one of my precious little girls,” he would tell me. “I won’t let anything bad happen to you. Why, it would be like letting something bad happen to myself.”
Little did I know how true that was to him.
But I got my first hint of it that particular night, when I woke suddenly and heard Brianna. After her laughter, she sounded as if she was pleading with someone. My room was at the corner of the house closest to the driveway that led to the unattached garage. I slipped out from under my comforter. It was the beginning of fall, and although we hadn’t yet had a night with temperatures below freezing, it was cool enough to justify sleeping with a heavy but soft comforter.
Because of the foliage and the trees surrounding our house, it was always in a blanket of shadows and dark inside. Those windows that faced the east in the morning and the west in the afternoon were shuttered. Neither Daddy nor Mrs. Fennel liked it to be too warm in the house anyway, and the heat was turned up only during the coldest winter months. Mrs. Fennel told me we would all sleep better that way. I liked the early fall, the colors of the leaves and the crisp air. I wasn’t permitted to wander far from the house, but because of the proximity of the woods and the foliage around us, I could see and watch the squirrels and often deer and rabbits that seemed as curious about me as I was about them.
I thought the moon was a deeper shade of yellow in the fall so it could match the color of leaves. This particular night, we had a full moon with a cloudless sky. The glow fell like a great spotlight over the house, the illumination threading itself through the leaves and branches, twisting and turning shadows into new shapes as if they were made of black clay. One of my bedroom windows had been left open enough for me to be able to hear Brianna’s laughter and then the voice of a stranger, a young man.
When I peered out at them, I saw he had driven Brianna home and was dressed formally in a jacket and tie. Brianna had gotten out of the car and was on his side now, urging him to get out, too. She was actually pulling on the door handle and tugging at his arm through the opened window. For some reason, he was resisting.
I pushed my window up a bit higher so I could lean out and hear what they were saying more clearly.
“Stop being such a coward and a jerk,” Brianna told him, and let go of his arm.
“I’m not being either. I’m just being sensible. All the lights are out. We’ll wake them up.”
“I told you. My father’s away,” she said.
Why was she lying? I wondered. Daddy wasn’t away. He had just come back yesterday.
“The only ones in there are our housekeeper and my younger sisters, who are both asleep. We can easily slip into my room unnoticed, and I don’t plan on making a lot of noise anyway, do you? I mean, I should be the one moaning with pleasure. You can grunt.”
He laughed, but he didn’t get out of the car. Frustrated, she put her hands on her hips, glanced up toward Daddy’s bedroom, and then turned back to her date as if something new had occurred to her, something that would get him to do what she wanted him to do.
“I didn’t think you were this shy. You didn’t act shy earlier tonight. What was that back at the bar? All some macho act for your friends or something?”
“No. I’ve been accused of a lot of things but definitely never of being shy.”
“Right. You’re really hesitating because you’re worried about waking up my housekeeper.”
“Look,” he said after a momentary pause, “I do have a confession to make.”
Brianna took a step back. “Oh, no, don’t tell me you’re gay.”
He laughed. “No. But I am married.”
Brianna just stood there looking at him. “You’re kidding,” she finally said. She stepped back up to the window. “Married? You’re not wearing any ring.”
“I don’t usually when I go to the Underground looking for some action. I asked you to let me take you to a motel, didn’t I? I don’t understand why you want to go into your own house. Why would you want to do that?”
“I like making it in my own bed. Call me kinky. I’m better in my own bed,” she added. “You’ll see.”
“I don’t know. I mean, if someone does wake up, you have to explain, and then, I mean, one thing can lead to another, and I don’t need to get involved with a costly divorce right now.”
“You’re very deceptive. That’s very dishonest. What kind of a marriage do you have?”
“Obviously not the best, but…”
“But you’re disgusting,” she said, and turned away from him for a moment. I saw her look up again at Daddy’s bedroom, and then she turned back to him.
“Listen. There isn’t any problem and won’t be any. My room is away from everyone else’s rooms. The walls are thick. No one will hear us, and even if anyone did, she would ignore us. My maid certainly wouldn’t care. You’re not exactly the first guy I’ve brought home, you know.”
He didn’t reply. I could see Brianna was getting very agitated. She turned away again, looked up at the house again and then back to him. “I don’t know,” he said.
“Please come in for a little while,” she pleaded.
“What is with you? How could someone who looks like you be so desperate for a lover?”
“I’m not desperate,” she snapped back at him. “I don’t like being teased, and I don’t like my time and energy wasted.”
“Hey,” he said. “I’m not teasing. We can still make use of your time and energy, too. Get back into the car, and we’ll go to this motel I know. I don’t see why you…”
He stopped talking. I could see that something had captured his attention.
“Who’s that?” he asked her. She turned toward the house.
“It’s my father. Thanks a lot. You woke him up.”
“But you said he wasn’t home.”
“I didn’t kn
ow he was home.”
“I’d better go.”
I didn’t blame him for being frightened. I was sure Daddy was unhappy about being awakened at that time of the night. I held my breath, anxious to see what would happen to Brianna.
“No. You can’t just go,” she moaned, and actually opened his car door. “You’d better get out and at least let me introduce you. If you just drive away, he’ll think I’m trying to hide something, and I’ll be in big trouble.”
“Speaking of big, he looks… pretty big.”
“Will you just say hello? Please? Don’t worry, I won’t tell him you’re married. It will just take a minute or so, and you can go.”
With obvious reluctance, the young man got out of the car. Brianna took his hand, and they walked toward the front entrance. I couldn’t see around that far, but I waited by the window, expecting that he would come back to his car. I wondered if Brianna would walk back with him and maybe go to the motel he had suggested. But instead of that, I heard the young man shout and then scream like someone in great pain or danger.
My curiosity got the better of me, and I leaned too far out my window to try to see around the corner. I lost my grip on the windowsill and fell to the ground. Luckily, I wasn’t that high up. I brushed myself off, but the shock of falling and the pain in my shoulder caused me to call out for Daddy and then cry.
I started for the front entrance and saw Daddy backing up into the house with the young man in his arms. The young man was unconscious, his arms dangling, his legs dragging. He looked like a big doll. Daddy paused when he saw me.
“Brianna!” my father shouted, his voice deeper and louder than I had ever heard it, and he did look bigger than I had ever seen him. His shoulders were wider, his neck much thicker, and his arms and hands longer. His eyes glowed.
He closed the door. Brianna spun on me, a look of panic and shock on her face, her eyes almost as luminous as Daddy’s were in the moonlight. It was as grotesque an expression as I had ever seen on her.