Flowers in the Attic, Page 35

  And all we could see in the murky-gray and cold, damp clouds was that single great eye of God-- shining up there in the moon.

  I awakened before dawn. I stared over to where Cory and Chris slept. Even as my sleepy eyes opened, and my head turned, I sensed that Chris was awake, too, and had been for some time. He was already looking at me, and shiny, glistening tears sparkled the blue of his eyes and smeared the whites. The tears that rolled to fall on his pillow, I named as they fell: shame, guilt, blame.

  "I love you, Christopher Doll. You don't have to cry. For I can forget, if you can forget, and there's nothing to forgive."

  He nodded and said nothing. But I knew him well, right down to his bone marrow. I knew his thoughts, his feelings, and all the ways to wound his ego fatally. I knew that through me he had struck back at the one woman who had betrayed him in trust, faith and love. All I had to do was look in my hand mirror with the big C. L. F. on the back, and I could see my own mother's face, as she must have looked at my age.

  And so it had come to pass, just as the

  grandmother predicted. Devil's issue. Created by evil seed sown in the wrong soil, shooting up new plants to repeat the sins of the fathers.

  And the mothers.

  Color All Days Blue, But Save One for Black

  . We were leaving. Any day. As soon as Momma gave the word that she'd be out for the evening, she'd also be out of all her valuable, transportable possessions. We would not go back to Gladstone. There the winter came and lasted until May. We would go to Sarasota, where the circus people lived. They were known for having and showing kindness to those from strange backgrounds. Since Chris and I'd grown accustomed to high places, the roof, the many ropes attached to the rafter beams, I blithely said to Chris, "We'll be trapeze performers." He grinned, thinking it a ridiculous idea--at first--next calling it inspired.

  "Golly, Cathy, you'll look great in spangled pink tights." He began to sing: "She flies through the air, with the greatest of ease, the daring young beauty on the flying trapeze. . . ."

  Cory jerked up his blond head. Blue eyes wide with fear.

  "No! "

  Said Carrie, his more proficient voice, "We don't like your plans. We don't want you to fall."

  "We'll never fall," said Chris, "because Cathy and I are an unbeatable team." I stared over at him, recalling the night in the schoolroom, and on the roof afterward when he'd whispered, "I'm never going to love anyone but you, Cathy. I know it. . . I've got that kind of feeling. . . just us, always."

  Casually I'd laughed. "Don't be silly, you know you don't really love me in that way. And you don't have to feel guilty, or ashamed. It was my fault, too. And we can pretend it never happened, and make sure it never happens again."

  "But Cathy. . ."

  "If there were others for you and me, never, never would we feel this way for each other."

  "But I want to feel this way about you, and it's too late for me to love or trust anyone else."

  How old I felt, looking at Chris, at the twins, making plans for all of us, speaking so confidently of how we would make our way. A consolation token for the twins, to give them peace, when I knew we would be forced to do anything, and everything to earn a living.

  September had passed on into October. Soon the snow would fly.

  "Tonight," said Chris after Momma took off, saying a hasty good-bye, not pausing in the doorway to look back at us. Now she could hardly bear to look at us. We put one pillowcase inside another, to make it strong. In that sack Chris would dump all Momma's precious jewelry. Already I had our two bags packed and hidden in the attic, where Momma never went now.

  As the day wore on toward evening, Cory began to vomit, over and over again. In the medicine cabinet we had non- prescription drugs for abdominal upsets.

  Nothing we used would stop the terrible retching that left him pale, trembling,, crying. Then his arms encircled my neck and he whispered, "Momma, I don't feel so good."

  "What can I do to make you feel better, Cory?" I asked, feeling so young and inexperienced.

  "Mickey," he whispered weakly. "I want Mickey to sleep with me."

  "But you might roll over on him and then he'd be dead. You wouldn't want him to die, would you?"

  "No," he said, looking stricken at the thought, and then that terrible gagging began again, and in my arms he grew so cold. His hair was pasted to his sweaty brow. His blue eyes stared vacantly into my face as over and over again he called for his mother, "Momma, Momma, my bones hurt."

  "It's all right," I soothed, picking him up and carrying him back to his bed, where I could change his soiled pajamas. How could he throw up again when there couldn't be anything left? "Chris is going to help you, don't worry." I lay beside him and held his weak and quivering body in my arms.

  Chris was at his desk poring over medical reference books, using Cory's symptoms to name the mysterious illness that struck each one of us from time to time. He was almost eighteen now, but far from being a doctor.

  "Don't go and leave me and Carrie behind," Cory pleaded. He cried out later, and louder, "Chris, don't go! Stay here!"

  What did he mean? Didn't he want us to run away? Or did he mean never sneak into Momma's suite of rooms again to steal? Why was it Chris and I believed the twins seldom paid attention to what we did? Surely he and Carrie knew we'd never go away and leave them behind--we'd die before we did that.

  A little shadowy thing wearing all white drifted over to the bed, and stood with big watery blue eyes staring and staring at her twin brother. She was barely three feet high. She was old, and she was young, she was a tender little plant brought up in a dark hothouse, stunted and withered.

  "May I"--she began very properly (as we had tried to teach her, and she had consistently refused to use the grammar we tried to teach, but on this night of nights, she did the best she could)--"sleep with Cory? We won't do anything bad, or evil, or unholy. I just want to be close to him"

  Let the grandmother come and do her worst! We put Carrie to bed with Cory, and then Chris and I perched on opposite sides of the big bed and watched, full of anxiety, as Cory tossed about restlessly, and gasped for breath, and cried out in his delirium. He wanted the mouse, he wanted his mother, his father, he wanted Chris, and he wanted me. Tears were pooling down on the collar of my nightgown, and I looked to see Chris with tears on his cheeks. "Carrie, Carrie . . . where is Carrie?" he asked repeatedly, long after she'd gone to sleep. Their wan faces were only inches apart, and he was looking directly at her, and still he didn't see her. When I took the time to look from him to Carrie, she seemed but a bit better off.

  Punishment, I thought. God was punishing us, Chris and me, for what we'd done. The grandmother had warned us. . . every day she'd warned us up until the day we were whipped.

  All through the night Chris read one medical book after another while I got up from the twins' bed and paced the room.

  Finally Chris raised his red-rimmed, bloodshot eyes. "Food poisoning--the milk. It must have been sour."

  "It didn't taste sour, or smell sour," I answered in a mumble. I was always careful to sniff and taste everything first before I'd give it to the twins or Chris. For some reason, I thought my tastebuds keener than Chris's, who liked everything, and would eat anything, even rancid butter.

  "The hamburger, then. I thought it had a funny taste."

  "It tasted all right to me." And it must have tasted fine to him, as well, for he'd eaten half of Carrie's hamburger on a bun, and all of Cory's. Cory hadn't wanted anything to eat all day.

  "Cathy, I noticed you hardly ate anything yourself all day. You're almost as thin as the twins. She does bring us enough food, such as it is. You don't have to stint on yourself."

  Whenever I was nervous, or frustrated, or worried--and I was all three now--I'd begin the ballet exercises, and holding lightly to the dresser that acted as a barre, I began to warm up by doing plies.

  "Do you have to do that, Cathy? You're already skin and bones. And why didn't you ea
t today--are you sick, too?"

  "But Cory so loves the doughnuts, and that's all I want to eat too. And he needs them more than I do."

  The night wore on. Chris returned to reading the medical books. I gave Cory water to drink--and right away he threw it up. I washed his face with cold water a dozen times, and changed his pajamas three times, and Carrie slept on and on and on.

  Dawn.

  The sun came up and we were still trying to figure out what made Cory ill, when the grandmother came in, bearing the picnic basket of food for today. Without a word she closed the door, locked it, put the key in her dress pocket, and advanced to the gaming table. From the basket she lifted the huge thermos of milk, the smaller thermos of soup, then the packets wrapped in foil, containing sandwiches, fried chicken, of bowls of potato salad or cole slaw--and, last of all, the packet of four powdered- sugar doughnuts. She turned to leave.

  "Grandmother," I said tentatively. She had not looked Cory's way. Hadn't seen.

  "I have not spoken to you," she said coldly. "Wait until I do."

  "I can't wait," said I, growing angry, rising up from my place on the side of Cory's bed, and advancing. "Cory's sick! He's been throwing up all night, and all day yesterday. He needs a doctor, and his mother."

  She didn't look at me, or at Cory. Out of the door she stalked, then clicked the lock behind her. No word of comfort. No word to say she'd tell our mother.

  "I'll unlock the door and go and find Momma," said Chris, still wearing the clothes he put on yesterday, and hadn't taken off to go to bed.

  "Then they'll know we have a key."

  "Then they'll know."

  Just then the door opened and Momma came in, with the grandmother trailing behind her. Together they hovered over Cory, touching his clammy, cold face, their eyes meeting. In a corner they drifted to whisper and connive, glancing from time to time at Cory who lay quiet as one approaching death. Only his chest heaved in spasms. From his throat came gasping, choking noises. I went and wiped the beads of moisture from his brow. Funny how he could feel cool, and still sweat.

  Cory rasped in, out, in, out.

  And there was Momma--doing nothing. Unable to make a decision! Fearful still of letting someone know there was a child, when there shouldn't be any!

  "Why are you standing there whispering?" I shouted out. "What choice do you have but to take Cory to a hospital, and get him the best doctor available?"

  They glared at me--both of them. Grim faced, pale, trembling, Momma fixed her blue eyes on me, then anxiously they sidled over to Cory. What she saw on the bed made her lips tremble, made her hands shake and the muscles near her lips twitch. She blinked repeatedly, as if holding back tears.

  Narrowly I watched each betraying sign of her calculating thoughts. She was weighing the risks of Cory being discovered, and causing her to lose that inheritance . . . for that old man downstairs just had to die one day, didn't he? He couldn't hold on forever!

  I screamed out, "What's the matter with you, Momma? Are you just going to stand there and think about yourself, and that money while your youngest son lies there and dies? You have to help him! Don't you care what happens to him? Have you forgotten you are his mother? If you haven't, then, damn it, act like his mother! Stop hesitating! He needs attention now, not tomorrow!"

  Sanguine color flooded her face. She snapped her eyes back to me. "You!" she spat. "Always it's you!" And with that she raised her heavily ringed hand, and she slapped my face, hard! Then again she slapped me.

  The very first time in my life I'd been slapped by her--and for such a reason! Outraged, without thinking, I slapped back-- just as hard!

  The grandmother stood back and watched. Smug satisfaction twisted her ugly, thin mouth into a crooked line.

  Chris hurried to seize hold of my arms when I would strike Momma again. "Cathy, you're not helping Cory by acting like this. Calm down. Momma will do the right thing."

  It was a good thing he held my arms, for I wanted to slap her again, and make her see what she was doing!

  My father's face flashed before my eyes. He was frowning, silently telling me I must always have respect for the woman who gave me birth. I knew that's how he would feel. He wouldn't want me to hit her.

  "Damn you to hell, Corrine Foxworth," I shouted at the top of my lungs, "if you don't take your son to a hospital! You think you can do anything you want with us, and no one will find out! Well, you can throw away that security blanket, for I'll find a way for revenge, if it takes me the rest of my life, I'll see that you pay, and dearly pay, if you don't do something right now to save Cory's life. Go on, glare your eyes at me, and cry and plead, and talk to me about money and what it can buy. But it can't buy back a child once he's dead! And if that happens, don't think I won't find a way to get to your husband and tell him you have four children you have kept hidden in a locked room with their only playground an attic . . . and you've kept them there for years and years! See if he loves you then! Watch his face and wait to see how much respect and admiration he has for you then!" She winced, but her eyes shot deadly looks at me. "And what's more, I'll go to the grandfather and tell him, too!" I yelled even louder. "And you won't inherit one damned red penny--and I'll be glad, glad, glad!"

  From the look on her face she could kill me, but oddly enough, it was that despicable old woman who spoke in a quiet way: "The girl is right, Corrine. The child must go to a hospital."

  .

  They came back that night. The two of them. After the servants retired to their quarters over the huge garage. Both of them were bundled up in heavy coats, for it had turned suddenly frigid- cold. The evening sky had gone gray, chilled with early winter that threatened snow. The two of them pulled Cory from my arms and wrapped him in a green blanket, and it was Momma who lifted him up. Carrie let out a scream of anguish. "Don't take Cory away!" she howled. "Don't take him, don't . . ." She threw herself into my arms wailing at me to stop them from taking away a twin from whom she'd never been separated.

  I stared down in her small pale face, streaked with tears. "It's all right for Cory to go," I said as I met my mother's glare, "for I am going, too. I'll stay with Cory while he's in the hospital. Then he won't be afraid. When the nurses are too busy to wait on him, I'll be there. That will make him get well quicker, and Carrie will feel good knowing I'm with him" I spoke the truth. I knew Cory would recover quicker if I was there with him. I was his mother now--not her. He didn't love her now, it was me he needed and me he wanted. Children are very wise intuitively; they know who loves them most, and who only pretends.

  "Cathy's right, Momma," Chris spoke up and he looked at her directly in the eye without warmth. "Cory depends on Cathy. Please let her go, for as she says, her presence there will help him get well sooner, and she can describe to his doctor all his symptoms better than you can."

  Momma's glassy, blank stare turned his way, as if struggling to grasp his meaning. I admit she looked distraught, and her eyes jumped from me to Chris, and then to her mother, and then to Carrie, and back to Cory.

  "Momma," said Chris more firmly, "let Cathy go with you. I can do for Carrie, if that's what you're worried about."

  Of course they didn't let me go.

  Our mother carried Cory out into the hall. His head was thrown back, his cowlick bobbing up and down as she strode away with her child wrapped in a green blanket, the very color of spring grass.

  The grandmother gave me a cruel smile of derisive victory, then closed and locked the door.

  They left Carrie bereft, screaming, tears flowing. Her small weak fists beat against me, as if I were to blame. "Cathy, I wanna go, too! Make them let me go! Cory don't wanna go nowhere I don't go . . . and he forgot his guitar."

  Then all her anger dissipated, and she fell into my arms and sobbed, "Why, Cathy, why?"

  Why?

  That was the biggest question in our lives.

  By far it was the worst and longest day of our lives. We had sinned, and how quickly God set about punishing
us. He did keep his sharpest eye turned on us, as if He knew all along sooner or later we would prove ourselves unworthy, just as the grandmother had known.

  It was like it had been in the beginning, before the TV set came to take over the better part of our days. All through the day we sat quietly without turning on the television, just waiting to hear how Cory was.

  Chris sat in the rocker and held out his arms to Carrie and me. We both sat on his lap as he rocked slowly back and forth, back and forth, creaking the floorboards.

  I don't know why Chris's legs didn't grow numb; we sat on him for so long. Then I got up to take care of Mickey's cage, and gave him food to eat and water to drink, and I held him, and petted him, and told him soon his master would be coming back. I believe that mouse knew something was wrong. He didn't play cheerfully in his cage, and even though I left the door open, he didn't come out to scamper all over the room, and head for Carrie's dollhouse that enchanted him the most.

  I prepared the pre-cooked meals, which we hardly touched. When the last meal of the day was over, and the dishes were put away, and we were bathed and ready for bed, we all three knelt in a row beside Cory's bed, and said our prayers to God. "Please, please let Cory get well, and come back to us." If we prayed for anything else, I don't recall what it was.

  We slept, or tried to, all three in the same bed, with Carrie between Chris and me. Nothing gross was ever going to happen between us again. . . never, never again.

  God, please don't punish Cory as a way to strike back at Chris and me and make us hurt, for already we hurt, and we didn't mean to do it, we didn't. It just happened, and only once. And it wasn't any pleasure, God, not really, not any.

  A new day dawned, grim, gray, forbidding. Behind the drawn draperies life started up for those who lived on the outside, those unseen by us. We dragged ourselves into focus, and poked about, trying to fill our time, and trying to eat, and make Mickey happy when he seemed so sad without the little boy who laid down trails of bread crumbs for him to follow.