I sat.
He glanced at my mother, then at her mother.
"Corrine, if you have ever cared for me, loved me even a little--is any of what this woman says true? Is she your daughter?"
Very weakly my mother answered, ". . . Yes."
I sighed. I thought I heard the whole house sigh, and Bart along with it. I lifted my eyes to see my grandmother staring at me in the oddest way.
"Yes," she continued flatly, her dull eyes fixed on Bart. "I couldn't tell you, Bart. I wanted to tell you, but I was afraid you wouldn't want me if I came with four children and no money, and I loved and wanted you so much. I racked my brains trying to figure out a solution so I could keep you, my children and the money too." She sat up and made a ramrod of her spine as her head lifted regally high. "And I did figure out a solution! I did! It took me weeks and weeks of scheming, but I did figure a way!"
"Corrine," said Bart with ice in his voice as he towered above her, "murder is never a solution to anything! All you had to do was tell me, and I would have thought of a way to save your children and your inheritance."
"But don't you see," she cried out excitedly, "I figured out a way all by myself! I wanted you; I wanted my children and the money too. I thought my father owed me that money!" She laughed hysterically, beginning to lose control again, as if hell was at her heels and she had to speak fast to escape its burn. "Everyone thought I was stupid, a blond with a pretty face and figure but no brains. Well, I fooled you, Mother," she threw out at that old woman in the chair. And at a portrait on the wall she screamed, "And I fooled you too, Malcolm Foxworth!" Then at me she flared her eyes, "And you too, Catherine. You thought you had it so tough up there, locked away, missing out on schooldays and friends, but you don't realize how good you had it compared to what my father did to me! You, you and your accusations, always at me, when could I let you out? When down below my father was ordering me to do this, do that, for if you don't you won't inherit one penny and I'll tell your lover about your four children too!"
I gasped. Then jumped to my feet. "He knew about us? The grandfather knew?"
Again she laughed, hard, diamond-brittle laughter. "Yes, he knew, but I didn't tell him! The day Chris and I ran away from this horrible house he hired detectives to follow and keep tabs on us. Then, when my husband was killed in that accident, I was persuaded by my lawyer to seek their help. How my father rejoiced! Don't you see, Cathy," she said so fast her words piled one on the other, "he wanted me and my children in his house and under his thumb! He had it planned along with my mother, to deceive me and let me think he didn't know you were hidden upstairs. But he knew all the time! It was his plan to keep you locked up for the rest of your lives!"
I gasped and stared at her. I doubted her too; how could I trust anything she said now after she'd done so much? "The grandmother, she went along with his plan?" I asked, feeling a numbing sensation creeping up from my toes.
"Her?" said Momma, tossing her mother a hard look of contempt. "She'd do anything he said, for she hated me; she's always hated me; he loved me too much when I was a girl, and cared nothing at all about his sons whom she favored more. And after we were here, snared in his trap, he gloated to have his halfbrother's children captured as animals in a cage, to keep locked up until they were dead. So, while you were up there, playing your games and decorating the attic, he kept at me, day in, day out. 'They should never have been born, should they?' he'd slyly say, and cunningly suggest you would all be better off dead than kept prisoners until you grew old, or sickened and died. I didn't truly believe he meant this at first. I thought it was only another of his ways to torture me. Each day
he'd say you were wicked, flawed, evil children who should be destroyed. I'd cry, plead, go down on my knees and beg, and he'd laugh. One evening he raged at me. 'You fool,' he said. 'Were you idiot enough to think I could ever forgive you for sleeping with your half-uncle--the ultimate sin against God? Bearing his children?' And on and on he'd rave, screaming sometimes. Then he'd lash out with his walking cane, striking whatever he could reach. My mother would sit nearby and smirk with pleasure. Yet, he didn't let me know he knew you were up there for several weeks . . . and by that time, I was trapped." She pleaded with me to believe, to have mercy. "Can't you see how it was? I didn't know which way to turn! I didn't have any money, and I kept thinking his terrible temper tantrums would kill him, so I provoked him so he would die--but he kept on living, and berating me and my children. And every time I went into your room, you'd be pleading to be let out. Especially you, Cathy-- especially you.
"And what else did he do to make you keep us prisoners?" I asked sarcastically, "except scream and rail and hit you with his cane? It couldn't have been very hard, for he was very frail, and we never saw any marks on you after the first whipping. You were free to come and go as you wanted. You could have worked out some plan to slip us outside unknown to him. You wanted his money, and you didn't care what you had to do to get it! You wanted that money more than you wanted your four children!"
Before my very eyes her delicate and lovely restored face took on the aged look of her mother. She seemed to shrivel and grow haggard with the countless years she had yet to live with her regrets. Her gaze took wild flight, seeking some safe refuge in which to forever hide, not only from me, but from the fury she saw in her husband's eyes.
"Cathy," pleaded my mother, "I know you hate me, but--"
"Yes, Mother, I do hate you."
"You wouldn't if you understood--"
I laughed, hard and bitterly. "Dearest Mother, there is not one thing you could tell me to make me understand."
"Corrine," said Bart, his tone sterile, as if his heart had been removed. "Your daughter is right. You can sit there and cry, and talk about your father forcing you to poison your children--but how can I believe when I can't remember him even giving you a hard glance? He looked at you with love and pride. You did come and go as you chose. Your father lavished money on you, so you could buy new clothes and everything else you wanted. Now you come up with some ridiculous tale of how you were tortured by him, and forced by him to kill your hidden children. God, you sicken me!"
Her eyes took on a glassy stare; her pale and elegant hands trembled as they unfolded and fluttered up from her lap to her throat, and there they fingered over and over again the diamond choker that must be keeping her gown from falling off. "Bart, please, I'm not lying. . . . I admit I've lied to you in the past, and deceived you about my children--but I'm not lying now. Why can't you believe me?"
Bart stood with his feet spread apart, as a sailor would to brace himself on a rocky sea. His hands were behind his back and clenched into fists. "What kind of man do you think I am--or was?" he asked bitterly. "You could have told me anything then, and I would have understood. I loved you, Corrine. I would have done anything legally possible to thwart your father and help you gain his fortune, and at the same time keep your children alive, free to live normal lives. I'm not a monster, Corrine, and I didn't marry you for your money. I would have married you if you were penniless!"
"You couldn't outwit my father!" she cried, jumping up and beginning to pace the floor.
In that shiny crimson dress my mother appeared a bright lick of a color that made her eyes dark purple as they darted from one to the other of us. Then, finally, when I couldn't stand to watch her as she was, broken, wild, with all her queenly poise gone, her eyes came to rest on her mother--that old woman who slumped in the wheelchair, as if without bones. Her gnarled fingers worked weakly at the afghan, but her gray zealot's eyes burned with a strong, mean fire. I watched as the eyes of mother and daughter clashed. Those gray eyes that never changed, never softened with old age or fear of the hell that must be lying in wait for her.
And, to my surprise, from this confrontation my mother rose straight and tall, the winner in this battle of wills. She began to speak in a dispassionate way, as if discussing someone else. It was like hearing a woman talk who knew she was killing herself with each razored word, and yet she didn't care, not anymore--for I was the winner, after all, and to me, her most severe judge, she turned to appeal. "All right, Cathy. I knew sooner or later I would have to face up to you. I knew it would be you who would force the truth from me. It has always been your way to look through me, and guess I wasn't always what I wanted you to believe I was. Christopher loved me, trusted me. But you never would. Yet in the beginning, at the time your father was killed, I was trying to do the best I could by you. I told you what I believed to be the truth, when I asked you to come and live here hidden away until I won back my father's favor. I didn't truly think it would take more than one day, or possibly two."
I sat as frozen, staring at her. Her eyes pleaded mutely, have mercy, Cathy, believe me! I speak the truth.
She turned from me, and in great distress she appealed to Bart and spoke of their first meeting in a friend's home. "I didn't want to love you, Bart, and involve you in the mess I was in. I wanted to tell you about my children and the threat my father posed to them, but just when I would he'd worsen and appear ready to die, so I'd put it off and keep quiet. I prayed that when eventually I did tell you, you'd understand. It was stupid of me, for a secret kept too long becomes impossible to explain. You wanted to marry me. My father kept saying no. My children pleaded every day to be let out. Even though I knew they had every right to complain, I began to resent them, the way they kept harassing me, making me feel guilty and ashamed when I was trying to do the best I could for them. And it was Cathy, always it was Cathy, no matter how many gifts I gave her, who kept at it the most." She threw me another of her long, tormented looks, as if I'd tortured her beyond endurance.
"Cathy," she whispered then, her watery, drowning look of anguish brightening a little, as once more she turned to me. "I did do the best I could! I told my parents all of you did have hidden afflictions, especially Cory. They wanted to think God had punished my children, so they believed easily. And Cory was always having one cold after another, and his allergy. Can't you see what I tried to do, make all of you just a little sick, so I could rush you one by one to the hospital, then report back to my mother you died. I used a minute bit of arsenic, but not enough to kill you! All I wanted to do was make you a little bit sick, just enough to get you out!"
I was appalled by her stupidity to scheme in such a dangerous way. Then I guessed it was all a lie, just an excuse to satisfy Bart who was staring at her in the oddest way. I smiled at her then, while inside I was hurting so badly I could cry. "Momma," I said softly, interrupting her pleas, "have you forgotten your father was dead before the sugared doughnuts started coming? You didn't have to trick him in his grave."
She darted her tormented eyes to the