"I didn't mean any of it, Chris, really I didn't. You know how melodramatic I am--I want to live as much as anyone does, but I'm so afraid something terrible is going to happen to us, shut up all the time. So I say awful things just to shake you up, make you see. Oh, Chris, I just ache to be with lots of people. I want to see new faces, new rooms. I'm scared to death for the twins. I want to go shopping, and ride horses, and do all the things we can't do in here."
In the dark, on the roof, in the cold, we reached for each other intuitively. We clung as one, our hearts throbbing loud against each other. Not crying, not laughing. Hadn't we already cried an ocean of tears? And they hadn't helped. Hadn't we already said a zillion prayers and waited for deliverance that never came? And if tears didn't work, and prayers weren't heard, how were we to reach God and make him do something?
"Chris, I've said it before, and I'm saying it again. We've got to take the initiative. Didn't Daddy always say God helps those who help themselves?"
His cheek was tight against mine while he reflected for so darned long. "I'll give it some thought, though, as Momma said, we could come any day into that fortune."
Our Mother's Surprise
Each day of the ten that passed before Momma visited us again, Chris and I speculated for hours on end just why she had gone away to Europe and stayed so long, and most of all--what was the big news she had to tell us?
We thought of those ten days as just another form of punishment. For punishment was what it was, and it hurt to know she was in this same house, and yet she could ignore us and shut us out, as if we were only mice in the attic.
So, when she showed up, at long last, we were thoroughly chastised, and most fearful she would never come back if Chris and I showed more hostility or repeated our demands to be let out. We were quiet, timid and accepting of our fate. For what would we do if she never returned? We couldn't escape by using the ladder made of torn-up sheets--not when the twins went hysterical just to be on the roof.
So we smiled at Momma, and uttered not one word of complaint. We didn't ask why she had punished us again by staying away ten days, when already she'd been gone for months. We accepted what she was willing to give us. We were, as she had told us she had learned to be with her father, her dutiful, obedient, and passive children. And, what's more, she liked us this way. We were again, her sweet, her loving, her private "darlings."
Since we were so good, so sweet, so approving of her now, and so very respectful, and apparently trusting, this was the time she chose to drop her bombshell.
"Darlings, rejoice for me! I am so happy!" She laughed and spun around in a circle, hugging her arms over her chest, loving her own body, or so it seemed to me. "Guess what happened-- go on, guess!"
Chris and I glanced at each other. "Our
grandfather has died," he said cautiously, while my heart was doing pirouettes, preparing to really leap and bound if she gave us the glad tidings.
"No!" she said sharply, as if her happiness had dimmed some.
"He's been taken to the hospital," said I, guessing second best.
"No. I really don't hate him now, so I wouldn't come to you and say I was rejoicing over his death."
"Why don't you just tell us your good news, then," I said dully. "We'll never be able to guess; we don't know much about your life anymore."
She ignored what I implied and rhapsodized on: "The reason I was gone for so long, and what I found so difficult to explain--I've married a wonderful man, an attorney named Bart Winslow. You're going to like him. He's going to love all of you. He's dark-haired and so handsome, and tall and athletic. And he loves to ski, like you do, Christopher, and he plays tennis, and he's brilliant, like you are, darling," and she was looking at Chris, of course. "He's charming and everybody likes him, even my father. And we went to Europe on our honeymoon, and the gifts I brought to you all came from England, France, Spain or Italy." And on and on she raved about her new husband, while Chris and I sat silent.
Since the night of the Christmas party, Chris and I had voiced our suspicions many times. For as young as we had been back then, we were wise enough to know that a beautiful young woman who was as needing of a man as our mother, was not likely to remain a widow for long. But still, almost two years passed without a wedding, and that had given us reason enough to believe that the handsome, darkhaired man with the big moustache was of no real importance to Momma--just a passing fancy--one suitor amongst many. And deep down in our foolish hearts, we had convinced ourselves that she was going to be ever-faithful, ever-devoted to our dead father-- our blond and blue-eyed Grecian god father whom she had to love beyond reason to have done what she did--marry a man so closely related.
I closed my eyes to try and shut out her hateful voice, telling us of another man who was taking our father's place. Now she was another man's wife, a totally different kind of man, and he'd been in her bed and sleeping with her now, and we'd see even less of her than we had. Oh, dear God, how long, how long?
Her news and her voice gave birth to a little gray bird of panic that fluttered wild in the cage of my ribs . . . wanting out, out, out!
"Please," Momma begged, her smiles and laughter, joy and happiness all struggling to survive in the bleak, sterile air of our reception to her news. "Try and understand, and be happy for me. I loved your father, you know that, but he's gone, and been gone for so long, and I need someone else to love, and someone to love me."
I saw Chris open his mouth to say he loved her, that we all loved her, but then he tightened his lips, realizing, as I did, that love from her children wasn't the kind of love she was speaking about. And I didn't love her anymore. I wasn't even sure I liked her now, but I could smile and pretend, and say the words just so the twins would not be frightened by my
expression. "Yes, Momma, I'm glad for you. It's nice you found someone to love you again."
"He's been in love with me for a long time, Cathy," she rushed on, encouraged and smiling with confidence again, "though he did have his mind set on being a bachelor. It wasn't easy to convince him he needed a wife. And your grandfather never wanted me to marry a second time, just as another punishment for the evil I did when I married your father. But he likes Bart, and when I kept on begging and begging, he finally relented, and said yes, that I could marry Bart and still inherit." She paused to chew on her lower lip. Then she swallowed nervously. Her beringed fingers fluttered to her throat, to nervously work the string of genuine pearls she wore, and thus betrayed all the ways of a woman in distress, who could smile, even so. "Of course, I don't love Bart as much as I did your father."
Hah! How weakly she said this. Her glowing eyes and radiant complexion betrayed a love that loomed larger than any she'd known before. And I sighed. Poor Daddy.
"The gifts you brought us, Momma. . . they weren't all from Europe, or the British Isles. That box of maple sugar candy came from Vermont--did you go to Vermont, too? Is that where he's from?"
Her laughter came with lilting joy, uninhibited and even a lit- tle sensual, as if Vermont had given her much. "No, he isn't from Vermont, Cathy. But he has a sister living there and we visited her for a weekend after we came from Europe, and that's where I bought the box of candy, for I know how much you love maple sugar candy. He has two other sisters living down South. He's from some little town in South Carolina--Greenglena, Grenglenna, or something like that. But he stayed so long in New England, where he graduated from Harvard Law School, that he sounds more like a Yankee than a Southerner. And oh, it is so beautiful in Vermont in the autumn; it absolutely took my breath away. Of course, when you're on your honeymoon, you don't want to be with other people, so we visited his sister and her family only a short while, and then spent some time on the seashore." She flicked her eyes uneasily at the twins, and again her pearls were twisted so likely they'd break any second. Apparently, genuine pearls are more strongly strung than the simulated kind.
"Did you like the little boats I brought you, Cory?"
"Yes, ma'am," he answered, very politely, staring at her with his large, shadowed eyes, just as if she were a stranger.