House of Secrets, Page 2

  Can you ever remember a cloud?

  What I finally realized was that life was simply the challenge to be meaningful to someone else besides yourself.

  Because of the way we lived and how I was brought up, and especially because of the great secret I would someday know, no one would be more surprised than I would that I was ever meaningful to anyone besides my mother.

  There were times I felt I wasn’t even meaningful to myself and never would be.

  1

  FOR MOST OF my youth, Saturdays and Sundays were not the jewels of the week that they were for my classmates and friends. Unlike other girls my age, I couldn’t invite anyone to sleep over or have a birthday party with my classmates as guests. Bea Davenport had laid that rule on my mother. She didn’t want strange children coming to the house and gawking at Wyndemere or disturbing the grounds. I couldn’t have breakfast, lunch, or especially dinner with Ryder or, for that matter, Samantha when she was no longer an infant. Bea Davenport wouldn’t permit me to be in either of their rooms by the time Ryder was eight and Samantha was five, and she continually discouraged both of them from coming to mine even when they were older.

  For Samantha, that was like reaching into the candy jar when no one was looking. The moment her mother left the house, she would drop what she was doing and sneak through the hallways to stand in my bedroom doorway, hoping I would invite her in to play or just to talk. When Ryder was older, he was more in his stepmother’s face about it, marching right past her to come to see me and often, again out of spite, inviting one of my friends to go rowing with us on the lake. Bea was furious about that and got Dr. Davenport to discourage it by telling Ryder there were insurance concerns. He was to use the rowboat only when either he or Bea was present, which was rare.

  I did recall the two times Dr. Davenport took my mother and me, Ryder, and Samantha out in his motorboat, but we were all very young and he wasn’t as busy as he was now. In fact, his motorboat was so neglected; it was in need of repair. It bobbed at the dock like some forgotten relative trying to get his attention.

  Bea Davenport did other things to keep us in our place. To this day, my mother and I were forbidden to enter the house from the front. Even when there was two feet of snow, we would have to go around to the rear entrance to get to our rooms. It was the same entrance where most deliveries were made, with my mother there to accept them. If Bea could, she would have stamped our foreheads with the word servants.

  With a voice that was strident and nasal, Bea would snap the rules at us frequently, especially adding newly conceived prohibitions like staying out of the gazebo and off the tennis court. If I did go through the house for any reason, I wasn’t to touch anything. I recalled how she had one of the maids clean and polish the banister after I had gone upstairs with my mother, especially when my mother was caring for Sam. My mother always had my hands washed before we approached the Davenport children, but that didn’t matter. It was as if I had some disease inherent in my skin. I remember feeling very dirty whenever I was in Bea’s presence. She looked at me closely, searching for some blotch, some smudge, anything to confirm her suspicions that I was not only imperfect but infectious.

  My mother was never to touch her jewelry and, of course, to be sure no maid ever did. Because my mother was the house manager, a title Bea would never pronounce, any mistake was her fault, down to having what Bea considered the wrong brand of margarine. It did no good, either, to protest that Mrs. Marlene had been serving it for years. There was a new sun shining on this house now. Furniture and paintings were shifted about, and window shades were opened and closed differently to move shadows from their traditional nests. Bea was always redecorating something. Only Dr. Davenport’s office was off-limits to her.

  If there was even the smallest impression that my mother and I were a little more than household servants, that impression was crushed the way you might stamp down on an insect. I think that was the reason she made the front entrance so sacrosanct. We couldn’t come through if we took off our shoes. We couldn’t come through even if we could remove our inferior souls.

  Most of the time, the pathway to the rear was cleared of snow. Mr. Stark, who managed the grounds, the long driveway, and all the outside fixtures, was very fond of my mother and me and was at the house especially early on weekdays in the winter to be sure we had an easy time going in and out. He was twenty years older than my mother, but I was sure, being a widower, he dreamed of her being more to him than simply a fellow employee. He’d leap at an invitation to have dinner with us and never forgot my mother’s birthday or mine. Despite his balding head of gray hair and the deep wrinkles worn into his face, he was stout and fit. My mother called him a walking tree trunk, even to his face.

  “George, you have bark for skin,” she would say, half-kiddingly, especially when he wore a coat too thin for the colder weather. But there wasn’t anything she could say that wouldn’t bring a smile to his face.

  In fact, there were times when I wondered if George Stark might be my father. He had been working at Wyndemere long before my mother arrived here, and once, when my mother was in the mood to tell me about her early days and my birth, she admitted she had needed help caring for me as well as caring for Ryder when I was born about two years after him.

  “Mr. Stark’s daughter Cathy helped me out for your first year. She stayed in what is your room. Dr. Davenport approved, but of course, that was before his second marriage. By the time his new wife moved in, I was able to handle both you and Ryder, so Cathy went home.”

  “I wondered why you always had me call her Aunt Cathy,” I said.

  “Just a kindness. She has a younger brother, Stuart, but they don’t see each other much. Sometimes you have to adopt a family,” my mother said. “It’s too bad some nice young man in Hillsborough hasn’t discovered how wonderful a wife Cathy Stark would make. The hospital here is lucky to have her nursing in the ER. Whatever she does, she does with great dedication and responsibility.”

  Aunt Cathy was always so glad to see me and never forgot to bring me a present on my birthday and Christmas, just as her father never forgot. Suspicion ran deep, but I didn’t see much resemblance between myself and Cathy or with Mr. Stark. Maybe that was because I romanticized too much about my real father, dreaming of a handsome and exciting young man who had swooped in one day and swept my mother off her feet. It was why I searched so hard for some clues, a letter, something. It was easy to imagine what it would say. Sometimes I invented the idea that he was already married at the time or that he was from a family so rich and powerful that the idea of his marrying my mother was practically science fiction.

  In fact, I used to compose the love letters I imagined he would sneak into the house.

  Dear Emma,

  I was thinking so hard about you today and remembering how comforting and wonderful your smile for me could be that I forgot an important appointment. My wife was upset and demanded to know what I was thinking. I am so tempted to tell her. I am thinking about the most beautiful woman in the world. I am thinking about her kiss and how she embraced me. I am thinking of the minutes and hours that were precious jewels in my bank of memories, and I am thinking about the child we created out of our love.

  I made up different names to use as his signature, most taken from great romances I had read for extra credit in literature class, like Antony from Antony and Cleopatra or Tristan from Tristan and Isolde. I even signed one Romeo. As soon as I finished my letter and had read it at least ten times, I would tear it into shreds, afraid my mother would find it and be upset. It was always like ripping up a beautiful dream. Yet it was something I thought I might never stop doing, even when I was older and entering high school.

  Hillsborough was the township we lived in, and Ryder, Sam, and I attended Hillsborough Central School, which had the elementary school adjacent to the junior-senior high school. I went to school on a school bus, but Ryder and Sam were driven to school by Dr. and Bea Davenport’s limo driver, Parker Th
omson, a forty-five-year-old African-American man with premature chalk-white hair that made it look like a piece of a cloud had settled on his head. He had been one of Dr. Davenport’s patients and was devoted to him. He was always very nice to me, waving and smiling whenever he saw me, but less so when Bea was present.

  Ryder wanted me to ride with him and Sam, but Bea Davenport forbade it, and to my surprise and disappointment, Dr. Davenport rarely challenged anything she had decided regarding the house or the help. I thought he might make an exception when it came to me, but he didn’t and was quick to dismiss Ryder’s appeal to override his stepmother’s rules. When I complained to my mother, she said perhaps he didn’t want the distractions that came from domestic arguments.

  “A cardiac specialist and surgeon like Dr. Davenport certainly doesn’t want to leave the house for the hospital with any unnecessary worry on his shoulders. He could miss something important, and someone might die.”

  I couldn’t deny he was a very busy and dedicated doctor who, according to my mother, “took his responsibilities as seriously as a bishop who had to report to the Almighty. Few men have life and death in their hands as many times a week as Dr. Davenport has,” she said. But that still seemed like a weak excuse for his disinterest in what went on at Wyndemere.

  From what I knew of him and from the way I heard people in the community talk about him, it did seem as if he walked on water. If there was anyone I really tiptoed around, it was Dr. Davenport, but he really never chastised me for anything more than not listening to my mother or obeying her strictly. From time to time, whenever he did see me, he asked how I was doing in school, but his questions were quick and to the point. Invariably, he would simply say, “Keep up the good work,” quickly stroke my head like he might pet a kitten, and that would be that. I didn’t think he really cared all that much whether I did well in school or not. He was simply being polite. For some people, good etiquette was sewn into their skin. It was as automatic as breathing. Still, it meant something to me to catch his attention, even if only for a few seconds a week, usually outside the house and away from Bea Davenport’s disapproving eyes.

  Dr. Davenport stood just a little over five foot ten, but he always seemed taller to me. I was always afraid to look him in the eyes. When I was little and my mother told me he operated on people’s hearts, I thought he could see and know everything about someone, even his or her thoughts. His eyes were sterling-silver gray and piercingly intense whenever he spoke to anyone, especially me. He was very handsome in a distinguished sort of way, always closely shaven, his lips firm and straight. He went to an old-fashioned barber who cut his pecan-brown hair so precisely that there was never a strand too long or too short. Everything about his appearance was perfect. He wore a shirt and a tie like a uniform. My mother said he was one of those rare doctors “who actually practice what they preach.”

  His day began with an early-morning run along the banks of the lake, even on very cold days, and he watched his diet. When he did have a day off, he would go rowing on the lake for hours. As a consequence, he had a lean body and a ruddy complexion. What attracted my attention especially when I was little was how long his fingers were. If he shook hands with someone, his hand seemed to wrap completely around the other’s. Everything he did, he did purposefully, slowly, as if placing something on a table was as critical a motion as the first incision to begin a heart operation.

  He was as careful about his words as well. Whenever I heard him talking to Ryder or Sam, I smiled at how precise he was about what he wanted them to do or remember. He always repeated the important things, and when I asked my mother about that, she said, “Dr. Davenport believes few people listen the first time, and he’s used to dictating medical information, how many pills to take, how often, and what to avoid while taking it.”

  “Maybe he thinks everyone’s his patient, even his children,” I said. “Even me!”

  She gave me a strange look and then nodded. I caught her smiling to herself and wondered what I had said to bring some humor to mind. Maybe it was because she had thought something similar about Dr. Davenport but would never say it. She would never do or say anything even slightly disrespectful when it came to him. I don’t think it was because she thought he was so much better than everyone, including herself, as much as it was because she had been here when he had suffered the loss of his parents and his first wife and then had cared for his children.

  I used to be jealous of how well and lovingly she took care of Sam especially. I was three when Sam was born, and for those early years, at least, because my mother had me to care for, too, when Aunt Cathy wasn’t available, Bea Davenport permitted me to be beside my mother when she looked after Sam. But I was forbidden to touch her. Sometimes when Bea wasn’t in the house, however, my mother let me hold Sam’s bottle while she drank. A real live baby, as opposed to a doll, was fascinating to watch. My mother assured me that Sam recognized me and smiled at me. I think she was trying to contain my jealousy.

  Anyway, that was also how Ryder and I were able to spend more time together when we were little, when I accompanied my mother to do something for him or care for Sam, especially when Bea Davenport was out of the house. She was always attending this or that charity function and getting her picture on the society page of the local newspaper. Ryder got used to me being around him and loved to teach me how to work some of his toys. We would watch television together often during those years, too. Until Bea Davenport built “the Berlin Wall” between us in the house, Ryder used to say, “We’re all like brother and sisters.”

  He wasn’t saying that now, and it wasn’t only because Bea Davenport insisted there be boundaries between us. No, there was another reason, or at least I hoped so. Deep in my heart, I felt it when he looked at me thinking I wasn’t aware of it, but, like other boys at school, he suddenly realized I was capable of stirring him up, and maybe I could even be found in one of his sexual fantasies. I knew I had some about him. Well, maybe more than some.

  One day recently, when he came to my room after school because I had asked him to help me with my math homework, which was really just an excuse to be close to him, he appeared sooner than I had expected. I had just started to change my clothes and was in my bra and panties when he stepped through my open doorway. My mother was in the kitchen helping Mrs. Marlene.

  “Oh,” he said, his face bursting with what I thought was delightful surprise, a rich crimson shade.

  I shrugged and reached for my sweatshirt slowly. “It’s the same as my two-piece bathing suit,” I said. Of course, it wasn’t. My panties were almost transparent, but I wanted to impress him with how sophisticated I was and how mature my body had become.

  He nodded and went to my desk to look at my math text while I put on my jeans. He concentrated on explaining my math problem to me, but both of us sensed something had changed between us. Suddenly, he was affected by how close to him I stood and if we touched our arms or grazed our shoulders. It seemed like he couldn’t wait to leave that afternoon, but I was confident it was because of how he was reacting to me rather than any displeasure with me.

  “I’ve got a ton of homework myself,” he blurted when I assured him I understood the math problem. I had to shout “Thanks!” after him. He was practically running down the hall to get away from himself as much as from me. Anyone else might have been offended, clamoring with annoyance. What, do I have bad breath or something? But not me. I knew Ryder too well. Something unexpected had stirred inside him, something that had already stirred in me as well. It was true, I thought, that girls grew up faster than boys.

  My girlfriends would often tease me about Ryder. They had all sorts of romantic scenarios in mind because we lived in the great house. Most of what they imagined were really wishes for themselves, understandable wishes. Ryder was even more handsome than his father, and he had the same firm, athletic build. I was sure he had inherited his father’s intelligence, being a straight-A student.

  I don’t know when
exactly I had begun to notice the smallest things about him, delicious things. I liked the way he would sweep his dark-brown bangs away from his eyes when he grew serious about something. Ever since he was fourteen, Ryder had wanted his hair longer than his father wanted him to have it. I think that was more a result of his stepmother Bea’s negative comments about how he dressed and looked. I knew he often did things just to displease her, which usually resulted in Dr. Davenport having a heart-to-heart talk with him in his office. Ryder told me that it was almost like being called to the principal’s office in school. I was fascinated with his descriptions of these sessions.

  “He looks like he’s about to take my pulse first, and he asks me questions like a doctor trying to diagnose what’s wrong with you. ‘Why did you do this? How do you feel when you do things like this?’ By the time he’s finished, I do feel sick,” Ryder said. “I always expect him to say ‘take two aspirins and behave’ or something.”

  I felt sneaky knowing all this. After all, it wasn’t my business. It was as if I had listened at the door. I never told my mother what he had told me, however. I didn’t want her to think ill of him, not that she could, and to me it always seemed Ryder had more affection for my mother than he certainly did for his father’s second wife. After all, my mother had practically brought him up herself. I knew Bea resented that, and it was probably why she was so adamant about keeping us in our servants’ mode. We weren’t permitted to forget that we were the hired help, not for an instant, even on our birthdays. Ryder would get us presents and usually say, “This is from my father and me,” making a point of not including Bea.