It wasn't supposed to be this way! Things remembered never lived up to expectations--why was this second Foxworth Hall overwhelming me even more than the original?
Then I saw something else--something I didn't expect to see.
Those dual curving staircases, one on the right, the other on the left of the vast expanse of red and white checkered marble. Weren't they the same stairs? Refurbished, but the same? Hadn't I watched the fire that had burned Foxworth Hall until it was only red embers and smoke? All eight of the chimneys had stood; so had the marble staircases. The intricately designed banisters and rosewood railing must have burned and been replaced. I swallowed over the hard lump that lodged in my throat. I'd wanted the house to be new, all new . . . nothing left of the old.
Joel was watching me, telling me my face revealed more than Chris's. When our eyes locked, he quickly looked away before he gestured that we were to follow him. Joel showed us through all the beautiful first-floor rooms as I remained numb and speechless, and Chris asked all the questions, before at last we settled down in one of the salons and Joel began telling his own story.
Along the way he'd paused in the enormous kitchen long enough to put together a snack for our lunch. Refusing Chris's offer to help, he had carried in a tray with tea and dainty sandwiches. My appetite was small, but as was to be expected, Chris was ravenous and in a few minutes had dispatched six of the tiny sandwiches and was reaching for another as Joel poured him a second cup of tea. I ate but one of the miniature tasteless sandwiches and sipped twice from the tea, which was steaming hot and very strong, expectantly anticipating the tale Joel would tell.
His voice was frail, with those gritty undertones that made it seem he had a cold and speaking was difficult. Yet soon I forgot the unpleasant sound of his voice as he began to relate so much of what I'd always wanted to know about our grandparents and our mother when she was a child. In no time at all it became clear that he'd hated his father very much, and only then could I begin to warm up to him.
"You called your father by his Christian name?" My first question since he'd begun his story, my voice an intimidated whisper, as if Malcolm himself might be hovering somewhere within hearing.
His thin lips moved to twist into a grotesque mockery of a smile. "Of course. My brother Mel was four years older than I, and we'd always referred to our father by his given name, but never in his presence. We didn't have that kind of nerve. Calling him Daddy seemed ridiculous. We couldn't call him Father because he wasn't a real father. 'Dad' would have indicated a warm relationship, which we didn't have and didn't want. When we had to, we called him Father. In fact, we both tried not to be seen or heard by him. We'd disappear when he was due home. He had an office in town from which he conducted most of his business and another office here. He was always working, seated behind a massive desk that was to us a barrier. Even when he was home, he managed to keep himself remote, untouchable. He was never idle, always jumping up to take long distance calls in his office so we couldn't overhear his business transactions. He seldom talked to our mother. She didn't seem to mind. On rare occasions we'd seen him holding our baby sister on his lap, and we'd hide and watch, with strange yearnings in our chests.
"We'd talk about it afterward, wondering why we'd feel jealous of Corrine, when Corrine was often just as severely punished as we were. But always our father was sorry when he punished her. To make up for some humiliation, some beating, or being locked in the attic, which was one of his favorite ways to punish us, he'd bring Corrine a costly piece of jewelry, or an expensive doll or toy. She had everything any little girl could desire--but if she did one wrong thing, he took from her what she loved most and gave it to the church he patronized. She'd cry and try to win back his affection, but he could turn against her as easily as he could turn toward her.
"When Mel and I tried to win gifts of consolation from him, he'd turn his back and tell us to act like men, not children. Mel and I used to think your mother knew how to work our father very well to get what she wanted. We didn't know how to act sweet, or how to be beguiling, or demure."
Behind my eyes I could see my mother as a child, running through this beautiful but sinister home, growing accustomed to having everything lavish and expensive, so that later on when she married Daddy, who had earned a modest salary, she still didn't think about how much she paid for anything.
I sat there with wide eyes as Joel went on. "Corrine' and our mother didn't like each other. As we grew up, we recognized the fact that our mother was jealous of her own daughter's beauty, and the many charms that enabled her to twist any man around her fingers. Corrine was exceptionally beautiful. Even as her brothers we could sense the power she would be able to wield one day." Joel spread his thin, pale hands on his legs. His hands were gnarled and knotted, but somehow they still maintained a remnant of elegance, perhaps because he used them gracefully, or perhaps because they were so pale. "Look around at all this grandeur and beauty--and picture a household of tormented people, all struggling to be free of the chains Malcolm put on us. Even our mother, who'd inherited a fortune from her own parents, was kept under stringent control.
"Mel escaped the banking business, which he hated and had been forced into by Malcolm, by jumping onto his motorcycle and racing away into the mountains, where he'd stay in a log cabin he and I had constructed together. We would invite our girlfriends there, and we did everything we knew our father would disapprove of deliberately, out of defiance for his absolute authority.
"One terrible summer day Mel went over a precipice; they had to dig his body out of the ravine. He was only twenty-one. I was seventeen. I felt half dead myself, so empty and alone with my brother gone. My father came to me after Mel's funeral and said I'd have to take the place of my older brother and work in one of his banks to learn about the financial world. He might as well have told me I'd have to cut off my hands and feet. I ran away that very night."
All about us the huge house seemed to wait, very quiet, too quiet. The storm outside seemed to hold its breath as well, although I could glimpse the leaden gray sky growing more and more swollen and turgid. I moved slightly closer to Chris on the elegant sofa. Across from us in a wing-back chair, Joel sat silently, as if caught in melancholy memories, and Chris and I no longer existed for him.
"Where did you go?" asked Chris, putting down his teacup and leaning back before he crossed his legs. His hand reached for mine "It must have been difficult for a boy of seventeen on his own . . ."
Joel jerked back to the present, seeming startled to find himself back in his hated childhood home. "It wasn't easy. I didn't know how to do anything practical, but at music I was very talented. I caught a freight steamer and worked as a deckhand to pay my way over to France. For the first time in my life I had calluses on my hands. Once I was in France, I found a job in a nightclub and earned a few francs a week. Soon I grew tired of the long hours and moved on to Switzerland, thinking I'd see all the world and never return home. I found another job as a nightclub musician in a small Swiss inn near the Italian border and soon was joining skiing parties into the Alps. I'd spend most of my free time skiing, and in the summer, hiking or bicycling. One day good friends asked me to join them on a rather risky trip, to downhill ski from a very high peak. I was about nineteen then, and the four others ahead were laughing and yelling at each other and didn't notice when I lost control and went tumbling headlong into a deep ice crevice. I broke my leg in the fall. I lay down there a day and a half, partly in shock, when two monks traveling on donkeys heard my weak cries for help. They knew how to get me out--but I don't remember much about that, for I was weak with hunger and half out of my mind from pain. When I came to, I was in their monastery, and smooth, bland faces were smiling at me. Their monastery was on the Italian side of the Alps, and I didn't know a word of Italian. They taught me their Latin as my broken leg healed, and then they used my slight artistic talent to help them paint wall murals and decorate handwritten scripts with religious
illustrations. Sometimes I played their organ. By the time my leg was healed so I could walk, I found I liked their quiet life, the artwork they gave me to do, the music I played at dawn and sunset, the silent routine of their uneventful days of prayers and work and self-denial. I stayed on and eventually became one of them. In that monastery, high in the mountains, I finally found peace."
His story was over. He sat looking at Chris, then turned his pale but burning eyes on me.
Startled by his penetrating gaze, I tried not to shrink away and show the revulsion I couldn't help feeling. I didn't like him, even though he faintly resembled the father I'd loved so well, and certainly I had no reason to dislike him I suspected it was my own anxiety and fear that he'd know that Chris was really my brother and not my husband. Had Bart told him our story? Did he see how Chris resembled the Foxworths? I couldn't really tell. He was smiling at me, using his own kind of failing charm to win me over. Already he was wise enough to know it wouldn't be Chris he had to convince .. .
"Why did you come back?" asked Chris.
Again Joel tried to smile. "One day an American journalist came to the monastery to write a feature story about what it was like to be a monk in today's modern world. Since I was the only one there who spoke English, they used me to represent all of them. I casually asked if he'd ever heard of the Foxworths of Virginia. He had, since Malcolm had made a huge fortune and was often involved in politics, and only then did I learn of his death, and that of my mother. Once the journalist had gone, I couldn't stop thinking about this house and my sister. Years can easily blend one into the other when all days are alike, and calendars weren't kept in sight. Finally came a day when I resolved that I wanted to go home again and talk to my sister and get to know her. The journalist hadn't mentioned if she had married. It wasn't until after I came to the village, almost a year ago, and settled into a motel that I heard of how the original house had burned one Christmas night and my sister had been put away in a mental rest home, and all that tremendous fortune had been left to her. It wasn't until Bart came that summer that I learned the rest--how my sister died, how he inherited."
His eyes lowered modestly. "Bart is a very remarkable young man; I enjoy his company. Before he came, I used to spend a lot of my time up here, talking to the caretaker. He told me about Bart and his many visits to talk to the builders and decorators, how he had expressed his desire to make this new house look exactly like the old one. I made it my business to be here when Bart came the next time. We met, I told him who I was, and he seemed overjoyed . . . and that's the whole of it."
Really? I stared at him hard. Had he come back thinking he'd have his share of the fortune Malcolm had left? Could he break my mother's will and take away a good portion for himself? If he could, I wondered why Bart wasn't very upset to know he was still alive.
I didn't put any of my thoughts into words, just sat on, as Joel fell into a long, moody silence. Chris stood up. "It's been a full day for us, Joel, and my wife is very tired. Could you show us to the rooms we are to use so we can rest and refresh ourselves?"
Instantly Joel was on his feet, apologizing for being a poor host, and then he was leading the way to the stairs.
"I will be happy to see Bart again. He was very generous to offer me a room in this house. However, all these rooms remind me too much of my parents. My room is over the garage, near the servants' quarters.
Just then the telephone rang. Joel handed me the telephone. "It's your older son calling from New York," he said in that stiff, gritty voice. "You can use the phone in the first salon if both of you want to talk to him."
Chris hurried to pick up another phone as I greeted Jory. His happy voice dispelled some of the gloom and depression I was already feeling. "Mom, Dad, I've managed to cancel a few commitments, and Mel and I are free to fly down and be with you. We're both tired and need a vacation. Besides, we'd like to get a look at that house we've heard so much about. Is it really like the original?"
Oh, yes, only too much so. I was filled with joy that Jory and Melodie were coming to join us, and when Cindy and Bart arrived, too, we'd be a complete family again, all living under the same roof-- something I hadn't known in a long time.
"No, of course I don't mind giving up performing for a while," he said cheerfully in answer to my question. "I'm tired. Even my bones feel weak with fatigue. We both need a good rest . . . and we have some news for you."
He'd say nothing more.
We hung up, and Chris and I smiled at each other. Joel had retreated to give us privacy, and now he reappeared, tottering uncertainly around a jutting French table with a huge marble urn filled with a dried flower arrangement, speaking of the suite of rooms Bart had planned for my use. He glanced at me, then at Chris before he added, "And for you as well, Dr. Sheffield."
Joel swiveled his watery eyes to study my expression, seeming to find something there that pleased him
Linking my arm with Chris's, I bravely faced the stairs that would take us up, up, and back to that second floor where it had all begun, this wonderful, sinful love that Chris and I had found in the dusty, decaying attic gloom, in a dark place full of junk and old furniture, with paper flowers on the wall and broken promises at our feet.
Memories
. Midway up the stairs I paused to look down, wanting to see something that might have slipped my notice before. Even as Joel had told us his story, and we'd eaten our sparse lunch, I'd stared at everything I'd seen but twice before, and never had I seen enough. From the room where we'd been, I could easily look into the foyer with its myriad mirrors and fine French furniture placed stiffly in small groupings that tried unsuccessfully to be intimate. The marble floor gleamed like glass from many polishings. I felt the overwhelming desire to dance, dance, and pirouette until I blindly fell . . .
Chris grew impatient as I lingered and tugged me upward until at last we were in the grand rotunda and again I was staring down into the ballroom-foyer.
"Cathy, are you lost in memories?" whispered Chris, somewhat crossly. "Isn't it time we both forget the past and move on? Come, I know you must be very tired."
Memories . . . they came at me fast and furious. Cory, Carrie, Bartholomew Winslow--I sensed them all around me, whispering, whispering. I glanced again at Joel, who'd told us he didn't want us to call him Uncle Joel. He was saving that distinguished title for my children.
He must look as Malcolm did, only his eyes were softer, less piercing than those we'd seen in that huge, lifesize portrait of him in the "trophy" room. I told myself that not all blue eyes were cruel and heartless. Certainly I should know that better than anyone.
Openly studying the aged face before me, I could still see the remnants of the younger man he'd once been. A man who must have had flaxen blond hair and a face very much like my father's--and his son's. Because of this I relaxed and forced myself to step forward and embrace him. "Welcome home, Joel."
His frail old body in my arms felt brittle and cold. His cheek was dry as my lips barely managed a kiss there. He shrank from me as if contaminated by my touch, or perhaps he was afraid of women. I jerked away, regretting now that I'd made an attempt to be warm and friendly. Touching was something no Foxworth was supposed to do unless there was a marriage certificate first. Nervously my eyes fled to meet Chris's. Calm down, his eyes were saying, it's going to be all right.
"My wife is very tired," reminded Chris softly. "We've had a very busy schedule what with seeing our youngest son graduate, and all the parties, and then this trip . . ."
Joel finally broke the long, stiff silence that kept us standing uncomfortably in the dim upstairs rotunda and mentioned that Bart would be hiring servants. Already he'd called an employment agency, and, in fact, had even said we could screen people for him He mumbled so inaudibly that I didn't catch half of what he said, especially when my mind was so busy with speculations as I stared off toward the northern wing and that isolated end room where we'd been locked up. Would it still .be the same? Had Bart ordere
d two double beds put in there, with all that clutter of dark, massive, antique furniture? I hoped and prayed not.
Suddenly from Joel came words I wasn't prepared for. "You look like your mother, Catherine."
I stared at him blankly, resenting what he must have considered a compliment.
He kept standing there, as if waiting for some silent summons, looking from me to Chris, and then back to me before he nodded and turned to lead the way to our room. The sun that had shone so brilliantly for our arrival was a forgotten memory as the rain began to pelt down with the hard, steady drive of bullets on the slate roof. The thunder rolled and crashed overhead, and lightning split the sky, crackling every few seconds, sending me into Chris's arms as I cringed back from what seemed to me the wrath of God.
Rivulets of water ran on the windowpanes, sluiced down from the roof into drains that soon would flood the gardens and erase all that was alive and beautiful. I sighed and felt miserable to be back here where I felt young and terribly vulnerable again.
"Yes, yes," Joel muttered as if to himself, "just like Corrine." His eyes scanned me critically once more, and then he was bowing his head and reflecting so long five minutes could have passed. Or five seconds.
"We have to unpack," Chris said more forcefully. "My wife is exhausted. She needs a bath, then a nap, for traveling always makes her feel tired and dirty." I wondered why he bothered to explain.
Instantly Joel pulled himself back from where he'd been. Maybe monks often just stood with bowed heads and prayed, and lost themselves in silent worship, and that was all it meant. I didn't know anything at all about monasteries and the kind of lives monks lived.
Slow, shuffling feet were at last leading us down a long hall. He made another turn, and to my distress and dismay he headed toward the southern wing where once our mother had lived in sumptuous rooms. I'd longed to sleep in her glorious swan bed, sit at her long, long dressing table, bathe in her black marble sunken tub with mirrors overhead and all around.