It stole my breath away to look down and see a man so very much like our father, if he had lived long enough to become old and feeble. He sat in a shiny wheelchair, dressed in a tuxedo, and his formal shirt was white with black trim. His thinning blond hair was almost white, and it shone silver under the lights. His skin was unlined, at least viewed from our far and high and hidden place. Appalled, as well as
fascinated, neither Chris nor I could move our eyes anywhere else once we spied him
He was fragile looking, but still unnaturally handsome for a man of his great age of sixty-seven, and a man who was near dead. Suddenly,
frighteningly, he raised his head and he gazed upward, directly at our hiding place! For one awful, terrifying moment, it seemed he knew we were there, hidden behind the wire screen! A small smile played on his lips. Oh, dear God, what did that smile mean?
Still, he didn't look nearly as heartless as the grandmother. Could he truly be the cruel and arbitrary tyrant we presumed him to be? From the gentle, kindly smiles he bestowed on all those who came up to greet him, and shake his hand, and pat his shoulder, he seemed benign enough. Just an old man in a wheel chair, who really didn't look very sick. Yet, he was the one who had ordered our mother to be stripped and whipped from her neck down to her heels, and he had watched. So, how could we ever forgive him for that?
"I didn't know he would look like Daddy," I whispered to Chris.
"Why not? Daddy was his much younger halfbrother. Grandfather was a grown man before our father was born, and married, too, with two sons of his own, before he had a half- brother."
That was Malcolm Neal Foxworth down there, the one who had kicked out his younger step-mother and her little son.
Poor Momma. How could we blame her for falling in love with a half-uncle when he was as young, and as handsome and charming as our father had been? With such parents as she'd described, she did have to have someone to love, and she did need to be loved in return--she did . . . he did.
Love, it came unbidden.
You couldn't help whom you fell in love with-- cupid's arrows were ill aimed. Such ran the whispered comments between Chris and me.
Then, we were suddenly hushed by the footfalls and voices of two people approaching our hiding place.
"Corrine hasn't changed at all," said a man unseen by us, "only to grow more beautiful, and even more mysterious. She's a very intriguing woman "
"Hah! That's because you always did have a yen for her, Al," responded his female companion. "Too bad she didn't have eyes for you instead of
Christopher Foxworth. Now there was a man who was really something else. But I marvel that those two narrow-minded bigots down there would allow themselves to forgive Corrine for marrying her halfuncle."
"They have to forgive her. When you have only one child left out of three, you are forced to take that one back into the fold."
"Isn't it peculiar how things work out?" asked the woman, her voice thick and guttural from too much liquor. "Three children . . . and only the despised, regretted one is left to inherit all of this."
The half-drunken man chortled. "Corrine wasn't always so despised. Remember how the old man adored her? She could do no wrong in his eyes until she eloped with Christopher. But that harridan mother of hers never had any patience with her daughter. Jealous, maybe. But what a luscious, rich plum to fall into the hands of Bartholomew Winslow. Wish it were mine," said the unseen Al, wistfully.
"I'll bet you do!" sarcastically scoffed the woman, who set something down on our table that sounded like a glass with ice inside. "A beautiful, young, and rich woman is indeed a plum for any man Much too heady for a slob like you, Albert Donne. Corrine Foxworth would never look at you, not now, not even when you were young. Besides, you're stuck with me."
The bickering pair drifted out of earshot. Other voices came and went as the long hours passed. My brother and I were tired now of watching, and we were both very much needing the bathroom. Plus we were worried about the twins, left alone in the bedroom. What if one of the guests wandered into the forbidden room and saw the sleeping twins? Then all the world-- and our grandfather--would know that our mother had four children.
A crowd gathered around our hiding place to laugh, talk, and drink. It took them forever to move away and give us the opportunity to open the cabinet door with extreme caution. Seeing no one, we scampered out, then dashed pell-mell in the direction from which we'd come. Breathless and panting, our bladders full enough to pop, we reached our quiet, cloistered place unseen, unheard.
And just as we'd left them, our twins lay deeply asleep in separate beds. They seemed identical, weaklooking pale dolls . . . like children used to look a long time ago in the pictures in history books. They weren't today's kind of children at all--but once they'd been. And they would be again, I vowed!
Next thing, Chris and I were arguing over who got to use the bathroom first--and this was easily settled. He just pushed me down on a bed and took took off, slamming the bathroom door behind him and locking it. I fumed that it seemed to take him forever to empty his bladder. Good golly, how could he hold so much?
Nature's calls eased, bickering over, we huddled together to discuss what we'd just witnessed and overheard.
"Do you think Momma plans to marry
Bartholomew Winslow?" I asked, twisting my everpresent anxieties into a knot
"How do I know?" answered Chris in an offhand manner. "Though it certainly seems everybody else thinks she will, and, of course, they know more about that side of her than we do."
What an odd thing to say. Didn't we, her children, know our mother better than anyone else?
"Chris, why did you say that?"
"What?"