“I did for a while. It was going to be difficult at school for us.”
“I’m even more surprised that your scholar sister took this hiatus, but then again, there’s little Cassie does that doesn’t surprise me. I guess she’s good for my brother right now. I have to admit, she’s everywhere in the offices and the stores. I never thought she would take to it. She was never very excited about the stores, the merchandise, customers. But everyone responds differently to personal tragedy. This might just be her reaction. Perhaps it won’t last, and she’ll return to being the Cassie we know, huh?”
“I don’t think so,” I said, and he raised his eyebrows.
“Oh?”
“That would be like admitting she had been doing something wrong, and Cassie never does anything wrong.”
Uncle Perry roared with laughter.“I always wondered how you two came from the same parents. I still do,” he said.
After lunch, we took a walk around the property, and he told me he thought he hoped I was not going to continue the home-schooling much longer.
“You do need to be with young people, Sam. I know you do a lot here, but you need a normal life as soon as possible. Your father should hire some household help, too. I’ll bug him about it.”
“Please don’t, Uncle Perry.”
“Why not?”
“Cassie would think I put you up to it.”
He stopped and stared at me.“You shouldn’t be so intimidated by her, Semantha. I think she bullies you too much. From what I’ve seen, at least.”
“She only means well, Uncle Perry. She’s very worried about Daddy.”
“Um. So am I. So am I,” he said.
At his car, he hugged me and took my hand in his.
“You’re weathering a terrible time quite well, Sam. I can see how much you’ve grown, how it’s rushed you out of your adolescence. I’m sorry about that, but I’m proud of you, proud of what a support you are for your father, too.”
“Thank you, Uncle Perry.”
“I’ll call you soon,” he promised. “Thank you for a wonderful lunch.”
I watched him drive away. As his car disappeared around the turn at the base of the driveway, an overwhelming sadness rushed over me, and I just started sobbing. I cried so hard my chest ached. Never had our house and our property looked so empty, so depressing, even in the sunlight. It was as if Mother’s death had hollowed out the heart of what it had been. There’s a third hole, Cassie, I thought, and it’s in my heart and goes right into my very soul.
After I cleaned up the kitchen, I went up to my room to read and, perhaps because of my emotional stress, fell asleep. The next thing I knew, Cassie was shaking me to wake me up.
“What’s wrong with you? Why are you sleeping now? Don’t you realize what time it is? You should be thinking about dinner.”
I sat up, still groggy. She stood back with her arms across her breasts. Her blouse was unbuttoned down to her cleavage, and for the first time, I saw she was wearing Mother’s special locket, the one with her and Daddy’s pictures in it, pictures from when they were both very young.
“I was reading and just fell asleep.”
“How was your lunch with Uncle Perry?”
“Very nice. He wants to take me to dinner one night.”
“I wouldn’t hold my breath. Your father and I had a big lunch, so just do the light chicken salad,” she said. “We had a very busy day. I made some suggestions for changes at the Lexington store, changes your uncle Perry won’t like, but they’ll save money.”
“Why won’t he like them?”
“We’re cutting back on the teenage clothing displays, and I’m reducing the store space.”
“Why? I thought Daddy said Uncle Perry’s creations were successful.”
“He said it to make him feel good. They’re not that successful. It doesn’t fit the business model to keep it as it is,” she said. “Don’t worry about it, Semantha. It’s just another little thing annoying Daddy, and he’s still in a very dark, unhappy state of mind.”
“But—”
“Just worry about dinner,” she said, and left before I could ask anything else.
At dinner, when I mentioned to Daddy that Uncle Perry had come for lunch, he seemed totally surprised.
“He said he left you a message, Daddy.”
“He did? I didn’t get any such message. Do you remember such a message, Cassie?”
“No,” she said quickly.
“Well, that’s odd.”
“Maybe he thought he had left a message but actually forgot,” she said. “I showed you how he’s running his accounts.”
Daddy shook his head.“Well, I’m sorry I missed him. We could have put off the trip to another day. I spend so little time with him these days.”
“Semantha entertained him well, I’m sure,” Cassie said.
Daddy nodded. In fact, it brought a little more light into his eyes.“I’m glad, Semantha. We need to hold on to what little family we have.” He went back to eating silently. Cassie threw me a knowing look.
Later, in the kitchen, she hurried over to me.
“You see,” she whispered. “You see how much deeper the Asa hole is? It weighs on his mind.”
“What does?”
“Not having as much family, not having a son,” she said, and left me with the cleanup to join Daddy in the living room. It was the way we finished every night lately: I was in the kitchen; they were relaxing in the living room.
It was just the way it had been for Daddy and Mother, and Cassie’s excuse for it was always, “I’m trying to help him close the hole.”
After I was finally finished with the dining room and the kitchen, I went into the living room to join them. Cassie was sitting on the settee across from Daddy, who was in his favorite chair, the oversized-cushion one in which I would sit sometimes when I was very little and pretend I was on a magic chair that could take me to one wonderland after another.
Cassie was staring at him and didn’t hear me enter the living room. Daddy was apparently asleep. When she realized I was there, she turned in two jerky moves and looked at me. I was surprised, because she looked as if she was about to cry and that was one look that rarely dared plant itself on Cassie Ann Heavenstone’s face.
“No matter what I say … I was in the middle of telling him some wonderful new ideas for the stores. He just … closed his eyes and drifted off.”
“Maybe he drank too much, Cassie.”
“No! No,” she said more calmly. “It’s not the drinking. It’s the pain in his heart.”
I looked at him again. Our voices didn’t stir him, and while he sat there with his face so gray, his eyes closed, his upper body looking limp and weak, I had a terrible foreboding and fear. What if he couldn’t stand all this sorrow and did what Mother had done?
Cassie saw the terror in my face. “Go up to your room, Semantha. Do some homework or watch some television or something. If he takes one look at you, he’ll fall into an even deeper funk. Go on. I’ll stay with him. You did a very nice job with dinner,” she added.
“Thank you,” I said.
She smiled and then held out her arms. “Come here.”
Come here? How odd, I thought. She kept her arms out until I walked over to her. Then she embraced me and kissed me on my cheek.
“Good night, little one,” she said. Those had often been Mother’s good-night words. For a long moment, I couldn’t move. She was wearing Mother’s clothes and Mother’s perfume and makeup and jewelry. She was wearing Mother’s smile.
It took my breath away.
I hurried out and up the stairs. When I walked down the hallway, I paused at Cassie’s room. I was drawn to Mother’s vanity table. Maybe it was Cassie’s way of remaining close to her even though she was gone, I thought. I wanted some of that, so I went in and sat at the table. I looked at myself in the mirror. My eyes began to tear, and then I looked down and saw that wonderful locket. I took it in my hands and just ran my finge
rtips over it softly, lovingly, smiling to myself at the memory of that dinner when Daddy had given it to her. How happy, bright, and young she had been.
I flipped it open to relive that moment.
And my heart did a flip-flop.
Where Daddy had placed the picture of Mother as a young girl, Cassie had placed a picture of herself.
Porter
I STARED AT the open locket with such amazement that I didn’t realize how much time had gone by. Cassie had come up to change into something more comfortable. She intended to return to the living room and wait for Daddy to wake up. I had no idea how long she had been standing in her bedroom doorway watching me, but suddenly, as if a cold shadow had slipped over me, I realized she was there and turned abruptly.
“What are you doing in my room?” she asked softly, calmly.
Immediately, I closed my fist over the locket.
“I just felt like sitting at Mother’s vanity table.”
“That’s no longer Mother’s vanity table, Semantha. It’s mine. If we don’t think in those terms, we’ll be crying and beating our chests all over this house. What’s in your hand?”
“Mother’s locket. Why did you replace her picture with yours?”
“Precisely for the same reason, Semantha, that I don’t call that vanity table Mother’s. It’s no longer Mother’s locket. Mother is gone. It’s my locket, so I put my picture in it.”
“Does Daddy know?”
“Of course. I showed it to him.”
“What did he say?”
“He said how remarkable it was that he could look at my picture and think he was looking at our mother. It pleased him, and it’s not easy finding things to please your father these days.” She walked in and took the locket out of my hands. “I would appreciate it if from now on, you didn’t rifle through my things.”
“I didn’t rifle through anything, Cassie. It was right here on the table. And why is it your locket, anyway? Why isn’t it just as much mine?”
“Mother gave it to me the morning of the day she died. She told me she wanted me to have it.”
“You never said anything about that.”
“Don’t be a child, Semantha. Why isn’t this yours? Why isn’t that? You don’t fit into the clothes, and you don’t have the same complexion and hair color, so it makes more sense that I have the makeup and other things, doesn’t it? Well?”
“I suppose. I remember the morning Daddy gave her that locket for their anniversary. I was just thinking about it today, in fact. I didn’t think you liked it.”
“Why wouldn’t I like something Daddy bought? He has impeccable taste when it comes to those things. He has a sense of style, classic style. Too bad his younger brother didn’t inherit that love and appreciation for what’s classic instead of flitting about from fad to fad.”
She opened a small drawer, dropped the locket in, and closed the drawer quickly. I got up, but as I started out, she put her hand on my arm to stop me.
“I thought you should know. I’ve met someone at work,” she said.
“What someone?”
“A nice young man, bright, ambitious. He’s working his way up to be manager of one of our stores. His name is Porter Andrew Hall. The Halls are an old family here, too, but not as old or as important as ours. I’m going on a date with him this Friday, so you’ll be totally in charge of taking care of Daddy.”
“A date?”
“A date,” she said. “Yes, a date.”
Not only had Cassie never gone on a date, but she had never spoken of any romantic interest in any boy in school or elsewhere. I knew there were nasty whispers and rumors about her because of that, so this was more than just a surprise. It was a happy surprise.
“That’s nice, Cassie.”
“I’ll let you know if it’s nice or not. Anyway, I’ll give you the menu to prepare for Friday.”
“Maybe Daddy would want to go out to dinner,” I suggested.
The idea seemed to shock her. Her eyes widened.“Don’t you dare pressure him to do that, Semantha Heavenstone. He’ll be coming home from a hard week. We had to make so many adjustments in how we do business, and he’s carrying terrible sorrow day in and day out. The last thing he needs is to come home and go right out again, especially to face people, restaurant owners, managers, waiters and waitresses who were accustomed to seeing him with Mother. They’ll kill him with their pitiful, sad looks of compassion, which is just what he does not need right now.”
“I won’t pressure him. I just thought—”
“Don’t think. I’m doing all the thinking for you. Now, I’m going to get out of these clothes, put on my robe, and see how he is.”
She nodded at her doorway as if to give me permission to leave, and I started out. Her robe, I thought. It’s Mother’s robe. Those are Mother’s slippers. And I didn’t care what she claimed, that was Mother’s locket and always would be to me. I couldn’t do what she was doing, erase Mother from all of these things just so I wouldn’t feel sad.
She closed the door behind me as soon as I stepped into the hallway. I heard her lock click. How odd, I thought. I couldn’t recall a time when she had locked her bedroom door. It was as puzzling as so many other things she was now doing, but I just shrugged and went back to my bedroom to finish the homework Mrs. Underwood had given me.
Much later, I heard her come up the stairway with Daddy. He sounded groggy, and when I looked out, I saw she was helping him along to his bedroom. He looked wobbly. He is drinking too much, I thought. I made a mental note to call Uncle Perry to tell him. I waited for quite a while in my doorway after Cassie had brought Daddy to his bedroom and then returned to my homework. Finally, I heard her come out, and I rushed back to the doorway.
“How is he?”
“Suffering,” she said, and went into her bedroom, locking her door again. The click echoed down the hallway.
How different everything in my life seemed now. I knew it was my overworked imagination, but after Mother’s death, the house changed. Shadows were deeper, darker. The faces on the ancestral portraits were gloomy, foreboding. Suddenly, they all looked like Daddy, depressed, with a sadness that flowed inside them with their blood.
Every sound in the house was different now, too. Footsteps echoed longer, spidery creaks formed webs of sound that vibrated in the ceilings and through the walls, sometimes resembling groans and moans. All of the lights were dimmer, and the windows filtered and weakened the sunlight that had once brightened our rooms and our lives. For the first time, I thought I could smell the age in the walls. It was as if our ancestral home was decomposing like the skeletons of our relatives.
The once beautiful and comfortable, classically styled living room had become a funeral parlor in which my father sat to suffer through his reminiscences. The sound of my mother’s voice was still fresh in his ears, the whiff of her perfumed hair still lingered in his nostrils, the feel of her soft skin remained on his fingertips, and the taste of her lips coated his. Surely, she stood before him, a shimmering ghost so close and yet a world away.
I feared he toyed with ending his own life like some modern-day Romeo challenged by the realization that all that had once been wonderful and beautiful was gone. The death of his soul mate was like a sword through his heart. Why go on? Every pleasure would be half a pleasure, every joy half a joy, even the joy he took in Cassie and me.
Perhaps Cassie felt this even more strongly than I did, and that was why she was so adamant about protecting him, pleasing him, helping him. She would never admit it as quickly or as easily as I would, but she might be as afraid for him as I was. I have to be a little more understanding, I thought, a little more forgiving, even when she seems to be so mean to me.
Because of these thoughts, I had trouble sleeping. A string of disturbing visuals streamed under my closed eyelids: Cassie’s angry face at the sight of the locket in my hand; Daddy’s darkened sad eyes; him asleep in the chair, his face ashen; Mother’s glassy eyes focused on the cei
ling, that empty pill bottle on its side; Uncle Perry’s worried look. Every vision was like a needle stuck in my heart. By the time I actually fell asleep, it was nearly morning and time to get up. I wouldn’t have woken if Cassie hadn’t slammed her bedroom door. That sound was followed by her clicking footsteps on the tiled hallway floor. I hurried to get up, dressed, and down to breakfast.
I was surprised to see Cassie sitting by herself at the table. Dressed for work, she was sipping coffee and looked very deep in thought, so deep, in fact, that she didn’t realize I was there. I saw her reach out toward Daddy’s chair and place her hand on the table as if his was there as well.
“Where’s Daddy?” I asked.
She pulled her hand back and spun on me.“Why are you sneaking up on me like that?”
“I’m not, Cassie. I was—”
“Never mind. He’s having breakfast with the CEO of our public-relations firm. Neither of us is happy with their presentations lately.”
“How come you didn’t go along, too?”
She pinched the bridge of her nose and looked up at me.“I guess you don’t have the ability to realize just how quickly I’ve become important to your father. I have to cover at the office.”
I felt the back of my neck stiffen. I was tired of hearing your father.
“Why do you say ‘your father’? He’s your father, too, Cassie.”
She put her coffee cup down and rose, ignoring what I had said. “Make sure you have a good day with Mrs. Underwood. I’ve seen some of the results, and frankly, I could do just as well tutoring you. If there’s no improvement, significant improvement, I can’t see keeping her.”
“But I thought I needed a licensed tutor.”
“Whatever. We’ll deal with that when the time comes. Right now, we have far more serious concerns than your high-school achievements.”
She started out and then paused, turning back.
“Look. You’re no brain, Semantha. I could almost predict every moment of your future. You’ll get a high-school diploma and maybe attend some community college or something, but you’ll surely end up marrying and having a small herd of kids. Just keep up your good looks.”