"The letter," she murmured, and her head lifted and shadows darkened the blue of her eyes into green, "the letter my mother wrote when we were still in Gladstone. That letter invited us to live here. I didn't tell you that my father wr
ote a short note on the bottom."
"Yes, Momma, go on," I urged. "Whatever you have to tell us, we can take it."
Our mother was a poised woman, cool and selfpossessed. But there was one thing she could never control, and that was her hands. Always they betrayed her emotions. One willful, capricious hand rose to flutter near her throat, fingering there, seeking some string of pearls to twist and untwist, and since she wore no jewelry, her fingers just endlessly sought. The fingers on the hand she kept in her lap restlessly rasped together, as if to cleanse themselves.
"Your grandmother, she wrote the letter, signed it, but at the end, my father added his note." She hesitated, closing her eyes, waited a second or two, and then opened them to glance at us again. "Your grandfather wrote he was glad your father was dead. He wrote the evil and corrupt always get what they deserve. He wrote the only good thing about my marriage was it hadn't created any Devil's issue."
Once I would have asked: What was that? Now I knew. Devil's issue was the same as Devil's spawn-- something evil, rotten, born to be bad.
I sat on the bed with my arms about the twins, and I looked at Chris, who must be much like Daddy had been at his age, and a vision flashed of my father in his white tennis clothes, standing tall, proud, goldenhaired, and bronze-skinned Evil was dark, crooked, crouched and small--it didn't stand straight and smile at you with clear sky-blue eyes that never lied.
"My mother made the plans for your concealment on a page of the letter my father didn't read," she concluded lamely, her face flushed.
"Was our father considered evil and corrupt only because he married his half-niece?" asked Chris, in the same controlled, cool voice our mother had used. "Is that the only thing he ever did wrong?"
"Yes!" she cried, happy that he, her beloved, understood. "Your father in all his life committed one single, unforgivable sin--and that was to fall in love with me. The law forbids marriage between an uncle and niece, even those who are only half- related. Please don't condemn us. I explained how it was with us. Of us all, your father was the best . . ." She faltered, on the verge of tears, and pleaded with her eyes, and I knew, I knew what was coming next.
"What is evil, and what is corrupt, is in the eyes of the beholder," she rushed on, eager to make us see it her way. "Your grandfather could find these faults in an angel. He is the kind of man who expects perfection from everyone in his family, and he is far from perfect. But just try and tell him that, and he would smack you down." She swallowed nervously then, appearing near sick with what she had to say. "Christopher, I thought once we were here, and I could tell him about you, how you were the most brilliant boy in your class, and always have been a straight-A student, and I thought when he saw Cathy, and knew of her great talent for dancing--I thought surely those two things alone would win him over without him even seeing the twins, how beautiful they are and how sweet--and who knows what talent they have waiting to be developed? I thought, foolishly, hopefully, that he would easily yield and say he'd made a mistake in believing our marriage was so wrong."
"Momma," I said weakly, almost crying myself, "you make it sound as if you're never going to tell him. He's never going to like us, no matter how pretty the twins are, or how smart Chris is, or how good I can dance. None of it's gonna make any difference to him He'll still hate us, and think of us as Devil's issue, won't he?"
She got up and came to us, and she fell down on her knees again and tried to wrap us all in her embrace. "Haven't I told you before he hasn't got long to live? He gasps for breath every time he exerts himself in the least way? And if he doesn't die soon, I'll find a way to tell him about you. I swear I will. Just have patience. Be understanding. What fun you lose now, I'll make up for later on, a thousandfold!"
Her teary eyes were beseeching. "Please, please, for me, because you love me, and I love you, keep on having patience. It won't be long, it can't be long, and I'll do what I can to make your lives as enjoyable as possible. And think of the riches we'll have one day soon!"
"It's all right, Momma," said Chris, drawing her into his embrace just as our father would. "What you ask isn't too much, not when we have so much to gain."
"Yes," Momma said eagerly, "just a short while more to sacrifice, and a little more patience, and all that is sweet and good in life will be yours."
What was there left for me to say? How could I protest? Already we'd sacrificed over three weeks-- what was a few more days, or weeks, or even another month?
At the end of the rainbow waited the pot of gold. But rain- bows were made of faint and fragile gossamer--and gold weighed a ton--and since the world began, gold was the reason to do most anything.
To Make a Garden Grow
.
Now we knew the full truth.
We would be in this room until the day our
grandfather died. And it came to me in the night, when I was low and dreary, that perhaps she had known from the very beginning that her father was not the kind to forgive anyone anything.
"But," said my cheerful optimist Christopher, "any day could see him gone. That is the way of heart disease. A clot could break free and find its way to his heart or lung and snuff him out like a candle."
Chris and I said cruel and irreverent things between ourselves, but in our hearts we ached, knowing it was wrong, and we were disrespectful as a way to salve the pain of our bleeding self-esteem.
"Now look," he said, "since we are going to be up here a while longer, we should set about with more determination to placate the twins, and ourselves, with more entertaining things to do. And when we really apply ourselves, gosh knows, we might just dream up some pretty wild and fantastic things"
When you have an attic full of junk, and great armoires full of rotting, stinking, but nevertheless very fancy costumes, you are inspired to put on plays, naturally. And since one day I was going to be on stage, I would be the producer, the director, the choreographer, as well as the female star. Chris, of course, would have to play all the male lead roles, and the twins could participate and play minor parts.
But they didn't want to participate! They wanted to be the audience, and sit and watch and applaud.
It wasn't such a bad idea, for what was a play without an audience! It was a great pity they didn't have any money to buy tickets.
"We'll call this dress rehearsal," said Chris, "and since you seem to be everything else, and know everything about theatrical productions, you write the script."