I ran to save Sylvia from more harm as Vera raised her foot to kick, aiming for Sylvia’s pretty face. But before I could reach her, Sylvia rolled out of harm’s way. In so doing her shoe caught behind Vera’s foot and threw her off balance. Vera crashed to the floor like a felled tree. Then came the howls of pain.
Even before I knelt to check, I could tell from the grotesque position of her left leg that Vera had again broken it. Damnation! The last thing we needed was an invalid to wait on.
Fretting and fuming, I paced the Roman Revival room as Arden and Papa came home carrying Vera with another cast on her broken leg. Her black eyes met mine, challenging me as one of her arms encircled Arden’s neck. The other was around Papa. They supported her on the cradle they made with their arms.
“Audrina,” said Arden, “run for pillows to stack behind Vera’s back. She’ll need others to raise her leg above her heart level. She’s got to wear that thing seven to eight weeks.”
Slowly I gathered several pillows from other sofas and stuffed them behind Vera’s back. Arden tenderly lifted her heavy casted leg and put four more pillows under it. Her red toenails wiggled like little warning flags as he tended to her.
“How did Vera fall, anyway?” asked Billie that night as I helped her prepare dinner.
“An accident. I heard Vera tell you that Sylvia deliberately hooked her foot behind her ankle, but I was there and it was an accident.”
“It was not an accident!” screamed Vera from the other room. “The brat did it deliberately!”
“Audrina, I hope that’s not true.” Billie threw Sylvia an uneasy glance. Once again Sylvia was riding on the little red cart, speeding down the slick waxed floor of the back hall.
“You know, Billie, both you and Arden find it very hard to believe anything I say about Vera. I don’t mean to be overly critical, but it was the first real breakthrough for Sylvia. I saw her eyes light up with understanding … and then Vera had to show up at the door.”
I heard Sylvia singing as she raced up and down the back hall on that red cart. “Just a playroom … safe in my home … only a playroom …”
I almost dropped the spoon in the steaming gravy. Who had taught Sylvia to sing that song?
“Are you all right, darlin’?” asked Billie, pulling herself along by grabbing the countertops.
“I’m fine,” I answered out of habit. “But I can’t remember teaching Sylvia to sing any song. Did you hear her singing, Billie?”
“No, darlin’, I didn’t hear her singing. I thought that was Vera’s voice. She sings that song a lot. It’s like a child’s song of reassurance—rather pitiful. It makes me hurt to think that Damian didn’t show Vera more kindness. And she’s trying so to make him appreciate her.”
Silently I poured the gravy into its bowl, then carried it into the dining room. On the way back I pulled Sylvia off the cart and scolded her thoroughly. “How many times do I have to tell you to leave that cart alone? It’s not yours. Go ride the tricycle Papa gave you. It’s red and pretty.”
Pouting her lower lip, Sylvia backed away from me. I pushed the cart with my foot into the kitchen.
That evening Papa and Arden picked up the purple chaise with Vera still lying there like an orange-haired Cleopatra and she ate with us in the dining room.
I hated seeing her on Momma’s purple chaise, but there Vera lay day after day, reading those same paperback novels she had read years and years ago.
Sylvia retreated into herself, refusing to enter the playroom and be taught again. Because Papa had to have gourmet meals and no longer could Billie be given relief by eating in restaurants with him, she did nothing but cook. I did all the housework, all the laundry, though Arden did what he could after he came home from work. Papa was always too busy, or too tired to do anything but talk or watch TV.
A month after the New Year had come and gone, I led Sylvia again into the playroom to continue our lessons. “I’m sorry I’ve neglected you, Sylvia. If Vera hadn’t broken her leg, I’ll bet you’d be reading by now. So let’s go back to where we left off. What is your name?”
We had reached the playroom door, and to my surprise, and Sylvia’s, too, Billie was in the rocker. She blushed when we caught her. “It’s silly, I know, but if there’s magic in this chair, I want a little of it myself.” She looked very girlish and pretty, then she giggled. “Don’t laugh. But I’ve got a dream, a wonderful dream that occupies most of my thoughts. I’m hoping this chair will help my dream come true.” She smiled at me tremulously. “I questioned your father and he said anything is possible, if you believe, so here I am … and I’m believing.” She smiled and held out her arms. “Come, Sylvia, let me hold you on my lap. Be my little girl today and tell me what your name is.”
“Noooo!” wailed Sylvia, loud enough to bring Vera hobbling down the hall on the crutches the doctor was allowing her to use now.
“Baaaad!” yelled Sylvia, pointing at Vera. “Baad!”
Sylvia would not sit on Billie’s lap, but on another day Papa found us both there rocking and singing together. “Just you, my love,” he said, looking at me and never at Sylvia. “Rock alone, become the empty pitcher that fills with everything wonderful.”
I ignored him, thinking him a fool on that particular subject. I turned to Sylvia, wanting to show her off in front of Papa. “Darling, tell Papa your name.” Only a moment ago she’d said it, before we started singing. “Tell him my name, too.”
My small sister on my lap made her beautiful but sometimes terrible eyes vacant, so that they looked straight through him, and some babbling nonsense came from her lips. I wanted to cry. I’d worked so hard, and denied myself many trips into the city with Arden to stay home and teach Sylvia. Now she refused to give me the reward I felt I needed.
“Oh,” said Papa in disgust, “you’re wasting your time. Give it up.”
My husband seldom came home before nine or ten at night. Often he missed dinner, explaining this by saying he had so much paperwork to do, so much technical data to read, he had to study in order to keep up.
“And there are so many distractions at home,” he said in an evasive way. “Now don’t jump on Damian. It’s not his fault but my own. I just don’t catch on as quickly as I should.”
The very next night Arden came home with even more papers to read. Financial reports, financial advisory services, technical stock charts, tax shelters to evaluate—more work than Papa had ever assigned to him before. At two in the morning, I awoke to see Arden still at our small bedroom desk, reading, making notes, his eyes tired and bloodshot.
“Come to bed, Arden.”
“Can’t, honey.” He yawned and smiled my way. As exhausted as he was, he still didn’t lose patience with me, or with Papa. “Today your father took off somewhere and left me in charge of the firm. I couldn’t take care of my own affairs when his are more important—and now I have to catch up.” He stood up and stretched, then headed for the shower. “Cold water will wake me up.”
In another moment he was back at the bathroom door, beginning to tug off his clothes as he said in a troubled way, “Well, there I was in Damian’s office, in charge, and I knew damn well he was expecting me to make every mistake possible so he could shout and humiliate me again in front of everybody. It was a quiet day, and as I sat behind his massive desk and waited for the telephone to ring, I started looking for something and discovered the drawers were very short. I couldn’t understand why such a large desk had such short drawers. So I fooled around, and soon found several small secret compartments way in the back of the drawers.”
Fully out of his clothes now, he stood there naked, as if he wanted me to look at him, something I could never do without quivering and blushing. Though he said nothing sexual to me or indicated he wanted me to do more than listen, I sensed a certain kind of expectation.
“Audrina, I’m not an expert bookkeeper, but when I found a ledger in one secret compartment, I couldn’t resist leafing through it and doing a little calcula
ting. Your father ‘borrows’ money from his more dormant accounts, uses it to invest in his own account, and when he’s made a nice profit, he puts the money back in months later. His clients never know the difference. He’s been doing it for years and years.”
Blankly I stared at him
“That’s not all he does, either,” Arden went on. “Just the other day I heard him telling one of his wealthiest clients that the stock certificates she found in her attic were worthless except for framing. She mailed him the certificates to frame and hang in his office—a little gift, she told him. Audrina, they were Union Pacific stocks that have split time and time again. When she gave him that little gift, she gave him hundreds of thousands of dollars—and she’s eighty-two years old. Rich, but old. He probably thinks she’s got enough and doesn’t need it nearly as much as he does, and he must figure she’s too old to find out he’s cheated her.”
He yawned again and rubbed at his eyes, and again he seemed boyish and very vulnerable. For some reason I was touched. “You know, for the longest time I wondered why he collected old stock certificates. Now I know why he wants them. He sells them on the West Coast. It’s no wonder he’s so rich now, no wonder at all.”
“I should have known he had to be doing something dishonest to have so much cash to invest, when only a few years ago we couldn’t even afford meat on our table. Oh, how dumb not to have guessed years ago!” I looked at him anxiously.
Something sweet, young, wistful and yearning was in his eyes that pleaded for me to come to him. And this time I felt the stirrings of sexuality in my own body, responding to his call. Alarmed by my surprising arousal, I whirled around to leave. I couldn’t let Arden distract me. I had to confront Papa with his thieving ways.
“Arden, you didn’t say anything to Papa about his embezzling funds, did you?”
I heard his sigh. “No. Besides, when I checked the secret compartments in his desk later, they were empty.” He looked toward the windows, his lips tightening, as if he gave up in trying to entice me by doing nothing aggressive, and he said nothing to keep me with him. “I suppose Damian thinks of everything and had some way of detecting when those papers and ledgers were tampered with.”
“Go to bed. I’m going to Papa.”
“I wish you wouldn’t. He’ll wonder how you know.”
“I won’t say anything that will let him know who told me.” I waited for him to protest again, but he turned and headed for the bed. I leaned above him and kissed him good night.
“Audrina…?” he murmured. “Do you really love me? Sometimes in the night I wake up and wonder why you married me. I hope it wasn’t just to escape your father.”
“Yes, I love you,” I said without hesitation. “It may not be the kind of love you want… but maybe one day soon you’ll be surprised.”
“Let’s hope so,” he muttered before he fell into exhausted sleep.
If only I’d stayed in bed that night and given to Arden what he needed. If only I hadn’t thought I could always set everything right.
I expected Papa to be asleep at almost three in the morning. Certainly I didn’t expect to see the thin line of yellow light under his closed bedroom door, any more than I expected to hear his laughter and a woman’s smothered giggle. I stopped short, not knowing what to think or do. Had he been so insensitive as to bring home one of his “playmates,” as Momma used to sarcastically call them?
“Now you stop that, Damian,” said a voice I couldn’t help but recognize. “I’ve got to go now. We can’t risk letting the children find out about this.”
Not for one second did I stop to consider what to do once I knew who it was with him, nor did I think of the consequences of my impulsive actions. I threw open the door and stepped into the dimly lit room that Papa had redecorated since Momma died. Red-flocked wallpaper, with gold-framed mirrors everywhere, made his room seem an opulent eighteenth-century bordello.
They were in bed together, Arden’s legless mother and my father, playing intimately with each other. When they saw me, Billie gasped and snatched her hand away. Papa quickly yanked up the covers to conceal them both. But I’d seen enough.
There was such a red rage in my brain I wanted to scream out every word I was to think of later but not now. All I could do was yell at her, “You whore!” Then at him I hurled, “You filthy son of a bitch! Leave my house, Billie! I never want to see you again! Arden and I are leaving you, Papa, and taking Sylvia with us.”
Billie began to cry. Papa slipped discreetly from the covers and pulled on a red brocade lounging robe. “You silly little girl,” he said easily, not appearing embarrassed at all. “As long as Billie wants to stay she will.”
Insulted, feeling Billie had betrayed me and Arden, too, I whirled about and raced back to my room to find Arden had gotten up from bed to resume his work. However, it had done him little good. He was slumped over on his desk, fast asleep on his papers. Sympathy rushed to erase my anger, and gently I woke him up and helped him off with his robe. Then, with my arm about his waist, I assisted him to the bed, and in his arms I lay as he fell asleep.
All night long I fretted before I reached my conclusion. It wasn’t Billie’s fault—it was Papa’s. He’d seduced her with his gifts, with his charm and good looks, so he could have the kinky thrill of having sex with a legless woman. I couldn’t drive Billie out. It was Papa who had to leave so we could all live decent lives.
And now I had the perfect weapon to force him to go. I’d threaten to expose him for the fraud and embezzler he was. Even if he had hidden the incriminating ledgers, I had all the information I needed about his illegal stock advisory firm in San Francisco—and that alone would be threat enough.
However, it wasn’t to be that way.
Billie came to me early the next day, soon after Arden and Papa had left for work. Her eyes were red-rimmed and swollen and her face seemed very pale. I turned my back and continued to brush my hair.
“Audrina … please. I wanted to sink through the floor last night when you stormed into his room. I know what you think, but it wasn’t that way, really it wasn’t.”
Viciously I tore the brush through my hair.
“Listen to me, please!” she wailed piteously. “I love Damian, Audrina. He’s the kind of man I always wanted but never had.”
Spinning around, my eyes blazed as I tried to scream out all my anger, but for some reason her tears stopped me. The colors in her eyes made me feel strange, as too many colors always did. She had a habit of always wearing bright clothes: crimson, scarlet, magenta, electric blue, emerald green, purple and bright yellows. Colors flashing … colors and the tinkling wind chimes when trouble came. I put my hand over my ears and closed my eyes, turned my back and refused to hold the gaze that pleaded for my understanding.
“Turn your back and close your mind as well as your ears, but I think he loves me, too, darlin’,” she went on. “Maybe you think because I’m crippled he can’t love me. Still, I think he does, and even if he doesn’t, I’ll just be grateful he gave me a little of what I always wanted—a real man. Compared to him my three husbands were little boys playing at being men. Damian would never have left me, I know he wouldn’t have.”
I had to look at her then, to see if she truly believed her words. Her beautiful eyes pleaded, just as her hands reached out to me. I stepped farther away.
She rolled closer to me. “Listen to what I say. Put yourself in my position, and maybe you’ll understand why I love him. Arden’s father walked out on us the day I lost my second leg. He was a weak man who expected me to support him with my skating. When I couldn’t, he sought out another woman who could. He never writes. He stopped sending child support long before Arden came of age. I had to earn what I could, and you know yourself that Arden has worked like a man since he was twelve, and even before that …”
Don’t! I wanted to yell. What you do with him is ugly, unforgivable, and you should have known better. We were bound to find out, bound to …
; “Your father is the kind of man who needs a woman in his life, just as my son is. Damian hates being alone, hates doing anything alone. He likes to come home and smell good food cooking. He likes someone to run his home, to keep it clean, to take care of his clothes, and I’d gladly do all that for him, even if he never marries me. Audrina, doesn’t love make it not ugly? Doesn’t love make all the difference … doesn’t it?”
I didn’t believe Papa loved her. Standing with my back to her, I stiffened and wanted to scream.
“All right, darlin’,” she whispered in a hoarse voice. “Hate me if you must, but don’t make me leave the only real home I’ve ever had, and the only real man who’s ever loved me.”
Pivoting to confront her, I said sarcastically, “Perhaps you’d be interested to hear that my aunt Ellsbeth loved him as much as you say you do, and he claimed he loved her in return, too. Regardless, he soon tired of her, and night after night, after she’d slaved all day to prepare his meals and keep his house clean, and take care of his children, he still had other women. She ended up just his slave. That’s what she used to call herself—his kitchen and bedroom slave. Is that what you want for yourself?”
I paused, gasping for breath as I heard the TV in Vera’s bedroom giving the morning news. Lazy, lazy Vera, who seldom got up until noon.
“There will come a day when he will stop loving you, Billie. A day when he’ll look at you and say such ugly words you won’t have any ego left. He’ll have some other woman he’ll say he loves like no other before, and you’ll be only another notch on his belt with many notches of conquest.”
She winced as if I’d slapped her. Fresh tears came to shine her blue, blue eyes. But perhaps she’d cried too many times before to let them spill because of anything I could say.
“If a kitchen slave is all I’ll ever mean to Damian, or just another conquest… even so, Audrina, I’d be grateful, even so.” Her voice lowered. “When I lost my legs I thought that never again would a man want to hold me and love me. Damian has made me feel like a whole woman again. Tell me that I smile and act cheerful, Audrina, but that’s the facade I wear, like a pretty dress. The ugly dress I wear is the fact that I hate the way I am now. There’s not a day goes by when I don’t think of the way I used to be, graceful and strong, with the agility to do anything, and when I walked down the street I pulled all admiring eyes my way. Damian has given me back the pride I used to feel. You don’t know what it’s like to feel half a woman. To be restored and complete again, even if only temporarily, is better than the bleakness I faced before.”