“What do you mean? There was a life insurance policy? She had some money?”
“Like I said, who knows what was and wasn’t true? It was too long ago, and the people who knew her well enough are either dead or gone.”
“Didn’t this Bart Foxworth who rebuilt the house ever talk to anyone about it?”
“Talk about it? He chased people off that property at gunpoint if they came around with that intention. You heard them talking at Charley’s. He didn’t have much to do with local people. There was something about them that brought out the hermit in him. Maybe they were termites in a previous life. No, he and his cousins or whoever they were only fanned the wild stories with their weird ways. First, he rebuilt the place and left it standing for years and years without anyone living in it, and then he abandoned it like a rat fleeing a sinking ship.”
“I don’t understand the second fire, then. No one was living there?”
“Hobos discovered it or . . .”
“Ghosts?” I said with a slight smile.
He shook his head and then pointed his right f
orefinger at me like a pistol. “I don’t want to hear you say something like that outside of this house.”
“Don’t worry. I won’t. I’ll get the dishes, Dad. I’ve got time this morning.”
“Thanks to your alarm clock,” he said. He looked at me and added, “Be careful.”
“You, too,” I shot back, and he finally smiled.
“Oh,” he said turning back. “I nearly forgot. Your uncle Tommy is going to spend a day and a night with us next week. He’s stopping by after some business meeting. Worked it into his schedule. Seems he wants to see how much you’ve grown or something.”
“That’s great!”
“Thought you’d be happy about it. Okay. If I’m not back before you leave, have a good time,” he said.
Dad knew how much I liked Uncle Tommy. He had remained a bachelor, but he was not unattractive, and he did have a couple of very serious romantic relationships as far as I could remember. Dad claimed that was because he was in the mad Hollywood world. One of his relationships lasted about five years, and then his girlfriend broke off with him, probably frustrated with his lack of interest in a permanent relationship. Dad told me he once told him that he was afraid of commitment because he was afraid of being a disappointment. When I asked him what that meant exactly, Dad hesitated and then said, “He doesn’t sing that song.”
“What song?”
“?‘I Only Have Eyes for You,’?” Dad replied. “He’s certainly not the first who couldn’t be faithful to one woman, but he’s rare because he admits it. Maybe he just likes emotional good-byes.”
I didn’t want to think of Uncle Tommy as weak or selfish. I certainly didn’t like thinking he was deceitful, but I couldn’t help comparing him with my father. There wasn’t all that much age difference. Uncle Tommy was three years younger, but he always seemed much younger to me. It went back to Dad’s point about wanting to be responsible for someone other than yourself, I thought. Uncle Tommy just wasn’t cut out to be that way. Oh, he took care of my grandmother, but taking care of your mother was not the same thing. That, whether you liked it or not, was built into your DNA. At least, that was what I thought.
Was I cut out to be responsible for someone else? Many women were the primary wage earners in families these days. Or at least, they were on practically an equal basis. Did I want to have children sooner or later in my life? It was still harder for women to decide, even women who could afford nannies from day one. I didn’t see myself as a mother who would gladly relegate her motherhood role to an employee.
It made me wonder again why Corrine wanted to have so many children. Was it more her husband’s desire? Did she go along expecting something more for herself? Maybe she had made a deal first: she’d have the children, but he had to get her help and not stop buying her things. Then he died, and she was left with empty promises. Just from the little I had read about her, I could see she would regret having had four children, especially when it came to looking for a new husband. The man would have to be committed not only to her but to four children who weren’t his own. She was smart enough to know that wouldn’t be an easy task. On the other hand, if she inherited great wealth, none of it would matter. Was that always one of her goals? Had she discussed it with Christopher Sr.?
Could that rumor Daddy mentioned be true, that she did have some money, enough to take care of the family until she found employment? How conniving and dishonest was Corrine Foxworth? I wondered. With Christopher Jr. so observant and intelligent, she would have had to put on quite a show of desperation. There was no question that he believed her, believed it was happening to them. Did he want to believe her? Although he said he knew his mother had weaknesses, did he deliberately avoid seeing them?
Perhaps Dad was right. Perhaps she could have managed and not submitted to her parents’ insanity and punished her children so, but not only their futures were at stake. Hers was, too, and she was a woman who liked to be pampered. Only lots of money would make her happy.
There were so many questions to answer. Could Christopher Jr. do that in his diary, or would he avoid not only the answers but the questions themselves? He said he was writing facts, but even he would admit that the facts were seen through his eyes and those eyes had their own prejudices and feelings. He could do nothing about it, no matter how hard he tried. I’d have to get better at reading between the lines, I thought.
And what was up with my father, suddenly telling me something about the Foxworths willingly? Was he subtly trying to warn me that what I read in the diary might not be the truth? Did he want to prepare me for something more terrible and fill me with skepticism before I had read it? I was back to the question that haunted me. How much had he and my mother really known?
I finished cleaning up our breakfast dishes and the frying pan he’d used and then headed upstairs to get my things and go. Because of his military experience, my father always made his bed before he left for work. When I was only five, I studied how carefully he did it and tried to do it for my own bed. Eventually, I became as good at it as he was. Keeping things clean and organized was also important to my mother. Dad was meticulous when it came to his tools at home. Anyone who saw our garage always commented on how neat it was. My father believed that how you treated your possessions said a great deal about how you treated yourself and others.
When I made my bed, I tucked the diary in under the pillow as I had been doing, and I thought about the messy world in which Corrine had permitted her children to be placed. Rats and mice, insects and dust, stale air and poor ventilation were not ideal, especially for the twins. Most mothers would be very concerned about their children’s health, but from the way Christopher described her acceptance of it, she didn’t seem to worry the way a normal, caring mother should. Was this the first clue concerning what eventually happened?
I was eating and sleeping this diary, I thought. Maybe if I thought of it the way I thought of any novel I had read, it would lose its grip on me. I hurried out, making sure I didn’t look back at my bed and that diary burning under my pillow, the covers closed but the voices not silent.
When I arrived at school, my girlfriends practically attacked me with their questions about Kane’s party. It was happening tonight. Suddenly, I felt like I was moving in a spotlight. Everyone was more interested in my opinion. What was I going to wear? What should they wear? What did I think of this blouse, this skirt, these shoes? What about lipstick? Eye shadow? How should they wear their hair? What would I suggest?
Girls who really couldn’t care less about my opinions about their hair and clothes before were suddenly intent on hearing what I had to say.