“Yes, but he doesn’t know much more than that and doesn’t care to know.”
“The answers to that won’t be in the diary, will they?”
“Probably not.”
He nodded and then stood. I hesitated. “Something else you want to tell me?”
“No.”
He knew what I was thinking. “It won’t be the same reading it anywhere else,” he said. “It’s too . . .”
“Bright and happy down here,” I finished for him.
He nodded.
“Okay.” I rose, and we walked up to the attic.
“I couldn’t sleep last night,” he said when we had settled in, him on his chair and me on the opened sofa.
“Dreams?”
“Yes, but mine were mostly about you,” he said. “Just as I know Christopher’s dreams have become mostly about Cathy at this point.”
“Would they be about me if we weren’t reading the diary?” I asked.
The question threw him for a moment. It was obviously something that hadn’t ever occurred to him. He smiled. “Of course. Remember, I was after you before you told me about the diary, Kristin.”
“Good answer,” I said, and he laughed.
“I will say, however, that my dreams about you are a lot more vivid.”
“I hope I’m not undressed in every one of them.”
“You must be spying on my dreams.”
I lay back and closed my eyes. I was doing that whenever he read now. The words were playing like a movie on the insides of my eyelids.
He took a deep breath and opened the diary, delving into it like a deep-sea diver.
Cathy was constantly talking about her dreams, mostly nightmares involving either our grandmother or our mother. I was having nightmares, too, but I didn’t want to harp on them. I knew we couldn’t go on like this much longer, and one day soon, I promised her, we would escape, all four of us. The first problem was the key that unlocked the doors, a key I now knew was a master key for most other doors, too. My promise excited Cathy and filled her with renewed hope. I told her we had to keep this plan secret, and to do that, it was best to let Momma believe we appreciated every little thing she was doing for us, buying for us. We even pretended to enjoy her stories about her own happiness.
On one of those occasions, Cathy kept Momma busy, asking her about her parties, her clothes, everything, while I slipped her key into my pocket, went into the bathroom, and pressed it into a bar of soap to get the impression. It took me three days after that to carve a successful hardwood version of it, but I did, and it worked.
But I told Cathy that an opening of the doors wasn’t enough. We would need money once we got out, money to travel and live on. There was only one way now to get it, to venture out when I could. I spent most of the winter pilfering from Bart Winslow’s pants and sometimes his wallet whenever I found it in their bedroom. I wanted us to have as much as possible, at least five hundred dollars. Of course, Cathy was impatient. She counted and recounted what we had, pressing me to say it was enough. But it wasn’t, and I had to convince her that it would be worse for us out there with two little children and no money. Oddly, our grandmother was taking relatively good care of us now, always there with the food, even some dessert, powdered sugar doughnuts. Cathy was still impatient. Finally, I asked her to come along on a money mission. I thought she should see the house, too, in all its grandeur. Our house in Gladstone would fit at least three times in this house. I especially wanted her to see our mother’s bedroom.
The truth was, I wanted to see her reaction to the opulence, the sight of our mother’s clothes and jewelry and that swan bed. I wanted Cathy to see how well Momma was livi
ng with us stashed away like forgotten old clothes in an attic and a bedroom one-quarter of the size of hers, and ours for four of us. Her eyes nearly exploded at the sight of it. She tested the bed and then went into the walk-in closet. “There are more clothes here than in a department store!” she cried. I smiled to myself and began my search for money, rifling through drawers, while she explored and then began to experiment with Momma’s makeup, just the way she had when we lived in Gladstone. I wasn’t paying attention to her now. I concentrated on searching every possible place, collecting even small change.
When I turned to her again, she had put on one of Momma’s bras and stuffed it with tissues, was wearing high heels, all that makeup, and a ridiculous amount of jewelry, dozens of bracelets and rings. In my mind, it was like someone turning my mother into a cartoon. “Take all that off!” I told her. “You look like a streetwalker. Ridiculous.”
Her joy collapsed like a balloon with a hole in it, but she took everything off.
“And put it all back neatly enough so no one will know it was used, Cathy. That’s very important.”
I didn’t notice what she was doing next, but when I turned to her, I saw she was engrossed in a book. I stepped up behind her and looked at what she was reading. It was a book depicting couples having sex, showing a variety of positions, even pictures of multiple people having sex. For a moment, I couldn’t breathe or take my eyes from the pages. She turned and looked up at me.
“We’ve got to get out of here now,” I told her, and took the book out of her hands. “Put this where you found it!”