He did, and then he smiled. “You put words into my mouth unfairly in your fantasy.” Then he brightened with a thought. “This is a fantasy Cathy might be having just at this point.”
“Maybe,” I said. “We’re not reading her diary, though.”
“Christopher is very intelligent. He knows she’s having it,” he insisted, and then he began to kiss me everywhere, moving randomly at first over my breasts, my stomach, and then my thighs.
I could feel my resistance rapidly defrosting, but I had a surge of caution and gently pushed him back.
“I’m dying here,” he protested.
“You insisted that I show you my fantasy,” I told him, and he groaned. I looked at him seriously and thought lovingly. “Not yet,” I said.
“When, then?”
“I don’t know. I just know . . . not yet,” I said. “Please.”
I felt his disappointment. It was that clear in his face, a face that was usually very good at hiding thoughts and feelings. He realized it, too, and gave me that smile and a shrug. “I promise I’ll respect you in the morning,” he said.
“But will I respect myself?” I countered, and put on my panties.
“Next time, I’ll keep my mouth shut, I think.” He put his hands behind his head and watched me finish dressing. “Was it the wig?” he asked when I was almost finished.
I looked at him. Was it? I wondered. “Maybe,” I said.
He reached for the diary quickly, so quickly it was as if he was positive that my hesitation would diminish somewhere in the pages to come.
And that was more eerie than anything.
Summer came, and because of the warmth, the attic was once again tolerable for us. Momma knew we needed more and more to keep us occupied. She began bringing us books that looked like they might have come from the library in the house, especially the history books. Sometimes I read things aloud to Cathy, and sometimes she read them to me. The twins would listen for a few moments and then get bored and distract themselves with their toys, Momma’s precious dollhouse, or just a nap.
One afternoon while they were napping, Cathy and I lay together on the stained old mattress by the attic window and had one of the most intimate conversations between us. We talked about what nudity could lead to and then about her menarche. I was honest about the changes in me, too. I was sure that the honesty we shared made us closer than most brothers and sisters. I pressed my face to her hair and assured her that what was happening to her and to me was right and good and nothing to be ashamed of. We clung to each other silently, as if the whole world swirled around us and we had no place else to go to be safe but into each other’s arms.
Before we parted, she asked me if I thought it was odd that Momma had kept us locked up so long, that she had put up with our grandmother’s demands no matter how it affected us. “She seems to be doing well,” she added. “Much better than we’re doing.”
I couldn’t deny that Momma seemed to have more money, beautiful clothes, and jewelry. I had to admit that I had the same thoughts, but I told her we had to have faith in her. She seemed to know what she was doing. She had a plan, and we had to let her work it out.
And then, after a time when she hadn’t been by to see us, Momma came and told us that, finally, her father was very ill. He was much worse than he was when we had first arrived. She was confident that he would die soon, and as soon as he did, we would be free. How happy Cathy and I were all those days as we waited, hopeful. I didn’t even feel guilty about wishing for my grandfather’s death.
And then one day, Momma came to our door, poked her head in, and told us he had recuperated and the doctors said he had passed through a crisis. She left before I could ask a single medical question.
Neither Cathy nor I could speak. We put the twins to bed that night and looked at the calendar. With rage in her fingers, Cathy made an X through the day, then turned to me and said something I had either deliberately forgotten or just hadn’t realized.
It was August.
We had been here a year!
When Kane stopped reading and lowered the diary, neither of us spoke. A dark pall of silence fell between us. Without looking at me, he got up and went to the windows and looked out. I watched him and waited, as if no matter what I said or how I said it, the sound of my voice would shatter us both. For a few moments, with him standing there like that and wearing that wig, I could easily imagine Christopher by a window in the Foxworth Hall attic, gazing out at the warm sunshine and the full-blown woods that surely resembled a green sea with waves of maples and oaks flowing toward the horizon. Perhaps he looked longingly toward the lake where Kane and I had picnicked. Perhaps he watched birds enjoying their freedom, soaring onto higher branches and enjoying their power of flight, and envied them. How torn he had to be, struggling to balance what he knew wa
s their need to grow and mature in a world with others their age and his mother’s desperate plan to bring them back into financial security and promise for their future. Surely he was wondering if the price they were paying was far too high, especially after a year. Maybe he was wondering how he could have lost track of that fact. Maybe he was more afraid now about what was happening to him. If he lost it, what would become of his little brother and sister? What would become of Cathy?
“How long were they really up there, exactly, you think?” Kane asked, without turning back to me.
“I only know from the same stories you read and heard, Kane.”
He turned to me. “Your father never offered an opinion, a hint at what was true?”
“I told you, he doesn’t like talking about it. He said my mother hated hearing about it. It disturbed her, and he can’t forget that.”
“To keep your children locked up for just one year is crazy enough, especially those little ones. How confused and frightened . . .” His voice trailed off. He wiped his head with a quick motion and swiped off the wig. He held it for a moment, turning it slowly in his hand as though he was looking for something, and then he opened one of the trunks and dropped it inside. “I have to go home for dinner tonight,” he said, coming back to the sofa bed. “My sister might be back from college in time for dinner.”