I would hear them often in my mind.
And I would struggle to understand them as if my life depended on it.
Little did I know that it actually did.
Only the Beginning
THAT EVENING, I thought I was dreaming it, but I soon realized that Cassie was kneeling at my bedside and whispering in my left ear. I opened my eyes and continued to listen before I turned toward her. I wanted to be sure it wasn’t a dream, and I was terrified that it might be a ghost, one of the Heavenstones, of course, maybe even Asa Heavenstone, since his namesake was soon to be born. It wasn’t the first time I had thought I heard voices in this historic house. There were even times I had thought I had seen something ghostlike moving in the shadows.
I turned slowly and saw Cassie in her nightgown.
“She’s doing it again,” she whispered.
“Who?”
“Mother.”
“Doing what?”
“Crying, moaning, complaining. You’d have to be dead not to hear it. She’s walking the hallways, and Daddy is pleading with her to go back to bed.”
I sat up and listened. I didn’t hear anything.
“What do you mean, she’s doing it again? I don’t hear her,” I said.
“She’s not doing it now. He got her to go back to their bedroom,” Cassie said. “I told you, didn’t I? I told you this would happen. She doesn’t have the temperament for all this, for having a new baby. She’s too much into herself, into her own life.”
“How can a mother be too much into herself to have her own baby?”
“You really are so naive, Semantha, especially for someone your age. You ever wonder why our mother hasn’t ever been involved in Daddy’s business? She hardly visits one of our stores. You know why he really never talks about business at dinner? He knows she’s not in the slightest interested. Haven’t you noticed how much of an introvert she’s become?”
“What’s that? I’m not sure,” I admitted.
“Christmas trees, Semantha. You’re in the ninth grade. If you’d read more, you’d have a decent vocabulary.”
“I read.”
“It means she won’t belong to any club or go shopping with friends and always gives Daddy a hard time about going to social events. She’s happy just doing her housework and her jigsaw puzzles. Why do you think she has so few personal phone calls? She’ll never call anyone back. She’d rather be by herself than with anyone else, even Daddy.”
So that’s what it means, I thought. Of all people to call someone else an introvert, Cassie shouldn’t. She could easily be describing herself, not Mother.
“Daddy doesn’t seem unhappy with her,” I offered.
She stood up, towering over me now. In the distorted shadows carved by a half-moon glowing through my curtains, Cassie seemed to rise above her height and expand. Her face looked covered in a silvery-gold mask, with her eyes dark, vacant sockets.
“He would never come right out and tell us something like that, Semantha,” she whispered.
Whenever she whispered like this, I automatically whispered back. “Then how do you know it’s true, Cassie?”
She looked as if she was smiling.
“I know Daddy better than anyone, Semantha. I can tell immediately when he is happy and when he is not. He shoots me certain looks from time to time, looks he won’t permit anyone else to see, not even you, because he doesn’t want to upset you. He knows how fragile you are.”
“I’m not fragile.”
“Of course you are, Semantha. You know it’s because you were a premature baby, born nearly six weeks too early. You were kept in the hospital for almost three weeks. Everyone expected you would die.”
“But I thought the doctor said I would do just fine.”
“Of course, he would say something like that. He didn’t want to frighten and worry our parents. But think, Cassie. Haven’t you been ill with all the childhood diseases? You have much thinner bones than I do. When you’re naked, I can practically look right through you. The smallest, most insignificant little things get you upset or nervous. I know you’re afraid of almost everything, including your own shadow. That’s why I try to look after you as much as I do.”
I didn’t say anything for fear she would think I sounded ungrateful, and I did feel more secure knowing she was keeping an eye on me.
She leaned down again, kneeling slightly. Now I could see her eyes clearly because of the way they glittered in the moonlight. She looked very excited and, in an odd way, happy.
“Mark my words. This is only the beginning. Prepare yourself for a great deal more difficulty to come,” she said, then rose and slipped out of my room as quietly as she had slipped in. It was almost as if I had dreamed the entire thing. My heart was thumping. I had to take deep breaths. Cassie was always saying I probably had asthma, but Dr. Moffet said it wasn’t so.
In fact, this wasn’t the first time Cassie had told me I was fragile, weak, and prone to illness. Whenever I did get a cold or a bellyache, she was always there, nodding her head as if she had expected it. Maybe she’s right, I thought. Maybe I am fragile. I had to admit she hardly ever got sick. She had gone years without missing a day of school. When I had asked Mother about it once, she had said, “Cassie just has a better immune system than most people. She’s lucky, but don’t worry. There’s nothing terribly wrong with you. You’re a normal young girl.”
What did that mean? Cassie wasn’t normal?
I lowered my head to my pillow again but kept my eyes open. Was Cassie right? Would things get worse? What could we do about it, anyway? And why hadn’t I ever noticed how Daddy revealed things to her but not to me?
I had a hard time falling back to sleep, but I finally did, and when I woke up, dressed, and went down for breakfast, I was surprised to see Cassie already in the kitchen making breakfast. I glanced into the dining room and saw Daddy at the table reading the morning paper. This morning, he looked as well put together as ever in his pin-stripe suit and tie, his hair as perfect as usual. There was no evidence in his face or demeanor that he had suffered a horrible night with Mother.
“Where’s Mother?” I asked Cassie.
She continued to work, preparing some soft-boiled eggs the way Daddy liked them, all mashed up. She flitted about to get the toast, cream cheese, and coffee set up on a tray. Daddy liked his toast cut into perfect quarters, and she cut it as if she had a ruler in her head. Finally, she turned to me and grimaced.
“Mother’s not feeling well this morning, Semantha. I’m getting Daddy his breakfast first because he has to get to the office, and then I’ll look after Mother. Make your own breakfast. Squeeze your oranges for your juice. Also, I won’t be going with you to school today, so you’ll have to take the bus. Well? Get moving. Don’t dilly-dally.”
“Why aren’t you going to school?”
She glanced at the open doorway to the dining room and drew closer to me.
“I’m staying home to look after her,” she whispered. “Daddy can’t miss work.”
“Oh. Should I go up to see how she is?”
“She’s still asleep, which is not surprising. Just take care of your own needs for now, and behave yourself in school,” she added, as though she were decades older than I was, not just two years. I started to say something to defend myself. I always behaved in school, and except for the one time I was reprimanded for talking too much to Darlene Gavin, I never was sent to the dean’s office or assigned detention.
But the moment I opened my mouth, Cassie shot daggers from her eyes, and I snapped my mouth shut and went to squeeze my oranges. I watched how perfectly she continued to arrange Daddy’s breakfast, with the eggs placed at twelve o’clock, the juice at three, and the coffee at nine. The plate of cream cheese was at six. It looked good enough to be a picture in a food magazine. She smiled at me and then took it out to him. I hurried to join him with my juice and cereal.
When he smiled and said, “Good morning,” to me, I looked hard for some subt
le message, but I didn’t see anything like the suggestions of unhappiness with Mother that Cassie had described to me the night before.
“Mother’s not feeling well?” I asked.
“Oh, just some typical pregnant woman stuff,” he replied, not sounding at all concerned, and surely nowhere nearly as concerned as Cassie was. “I see here in the paper that your school’s basketball team is contending for first place.”
“Uh-huh.”
“First time in nearly ten years. You and Cassie should go to the next game on Friday night, a home game. It’s the big one, according to this article. It should be exciting. I was on my school’s basketball team, you know. We went to the finals when I was a senior.”
“I want to go,” I said quickly.
Kent had asked me if I was going. He wanted to sit with me. I was afraid that if Cassie did go with me, however, she wouldn’t let me sit with him.
“I’m not interested in the game,” Cassie said, coming in quickly. “It’s noisy and crowded and a waste of time.”
Daddy shrugged and smiled at me. “Well, I guess not everyone’s into sports.”
“I’d like to go,” I said.
“And how do you intend to go, Semantha? I’m not driving you,” Cassie said, “and Daddy’s certainly too busy to—”
“No, that’s fine. I’ll take her and pick her up,” he offered.
Her face reddened. “You don’t have to do that, Daddy,” she said. “If she’s so intent on going, I’ll take her.”
He continued to eat his breakfast. “Whatever you girls decide,” he said. “What a beautiful breakfast! These eggs are perfect, Cassie. Just like your mother makes them.”
Her hard, angry look softened into a smile.
Later, before I went out to walk to the corner to meet the school bus, Cassie popped out at me from the living room, where she was dusting and polishing furniture. She grabbed my arm and tugged me closer to her. Daddy had already left for work.
“How could you do that to Daddy at breakfast?” she asked.
“Do what?”
“Be so selfish. With all that’s happening with Mother, how could you think only of yourself?”
“What did I do?”
“What did you do? Trying to get Daddy to take you to that stupid basketball game? He has no time to do those things now. What if Mother isn’t any better by Friday?”
“He didn’t think she was so sick, Cassie. I asked him, and—”
“I told you,” she said, shaking my arm. “He would never tell you how worried he is. He’ll always try to protect you from bad or sad things.”
“He’s the one who asked me about the game,” I said, rubbing my arm where she had grabbed it. I was sure I had a black-and-blue mark, but if I mentioned it, she would only tell me that was proof I was so fragile. “He was urging me to go, urging us both to go.”
“He was just being … nice. Being Daddy,” she said. “And with all that’s going on here, it’s a wonder he can do that. He’s so strong. Now you can see why he’s so successful in business, and you can certainly see the differences between him and Uncle Perry, can’t you?”
“Well, what should I do?” I asked.
“Nothing. It’s too late to do anything. It doesn’t matter. I’ll take you, but I’m not staying there. If you can’t arrange for a ride home, I’ll have to go back to get you. Next time, think about others before you speak,” she said, and returned to the living room.
“What about Mother? Did you bring her breakfast? Is she awake?” I called after her.
“Just go to school, Semantha,” she replied from inside the living room. “If you miss the bus, you’ll have to hitchhike or walk. I can’t leave now to take you. I have too much to do here, because Mother is too sick to lift a finger. Don’t forget. I predicted it. I predicted everything that’s happening and will happen.”
I looked back at the stairway. I should have gone to see Mother myself, but now I didn’t have enough time. I had to hurry out and down the long driveway to get to the bus stop. Since Cassie had gotten her license and Daddy had bought her a car, we drove to school, but now that she wasn’t going today, I had no choice but to take the bus. If I didn’t get there before it arrived, the driver wouldn’t look for me. He didn’t expect me to be there waiting. I reached the corner just in time.
I sat with some of the girls from my class, and we got into so many conversations I began to regret having to go to school and back with Cassie. She hardly even spoke during the trip, and if she did, it was rarely about anything fun at school. It was usually just one of her many lectures on boys or behavior, lectures full of dire warnings. The way she spoke and described all the dangers and traps in the world, it was a wonder she ever left the house.
The girls were all eager to talk to me. They had lots of questions about my house and the department stores, but their real curiosity was about Kent Pearson and me. Everyone had seen us together in the hallways and at lunch. Almost all of them thought we were a perfect couple, but I could tell that one girl, Meg Stein, was jealous. That didn’t bother me. If anything, it made me prouder.
Kent was very happy to hear that I would be at the basketball game on Friday. At lunch, he asked me if it might be possible for me to go to a party at Eddie Morris’s house, another boy in our class who had gotten permission from his parents to have an after-game party.
“It’s just until midnight, and my father will drive us there. I’m sure he would be happy to drive you home as well,” he said.
I could just imagine how Cassie would react. I wanted very much to go, but I didn’t know how I could manage it. It was very hard to lie to Cassie. She had eyes like X-rays, and, as she always said, my face was an open book. Anyway, it was hard to lie to someone you feared, whether he or she was good at seeing into your heart or not.
“I’m not sure,” I said. “My mother is having a hard time with her pregnancy, and—”
“Your mother is pregnant?” he asked. It sounded as if he was asking if my mother had the plague. I simply nodded. “Wow. How come you never said anything?”
I shrugged. How could I tell him my sister forbade me to tell people, especially my schoolmates?
“Well, anyway, try to come,” he urged, and I promised I would.
It was on my mind the rest of the day. I didn’t think at all about Mother. Did that mean I was as selfish as Cassie accused me of being? She had me feeling guilty about so many things I was afraid to do more than tiptoe around her these days. Her whole personality seemed to have hardened ever since Daddy had announced Mother’s pregnancy.
On the bus ride home, some of the other girls mentioned the after-game party and asked if I was going. I could see Meg Stein was hoping, maybe even praying, I would say no. That would give her an opportunity to steal Kent away from me.
“Of course,” I said bravely. “Kent has already arranged our transportation.”
Meg’s face sank in like a heavy rock in quicksand. I sat back nervously, wondering how I would ever manage getting to this party.
Semantha Heavenstone, you have to develop the courage to stand up to your sister, I told myself. She shouldn’t be able to boss me around like this. Just because socializing wasn’t important to her didn’t mean it couldn’t be to me. She was fond of saying we were different. Okay, fine, so let it be that we were different.
As I walked home and then up the driveway, I kept firming up my courage, imagining how I would ask Daddy and Mother for their permission and then somehow avoid Cassie for two more days. Once she did find out, it would be just like her to find a reason she couldn’t take me to the game, and then I would be stuck. Semantha, if she does that, you’ll ask Kent to have his father come by to pick you up, I told myself defiantly. That would solve the problem. It would really enrage Cassie, but surely she would get over it. It was time I struck an independent note. Other girls my age had a great deal more freedom and wondered why I was still treated as if I were in elementary school.
I was
so excited about my new courage that I didn’t notice Daddy’s car until I was practically upon it. Why was he home so early? Of course, my first thought was that something was wrong with Mother. I rushed into the house. Normally, I wasn’t bothered by the quiet, the stillness, but right now, it felt ominous. I hurried up the stairway, but before I could turn to go to Mother’s room, Cassie called to me. She had to have been standing there in the shadows like one of the Heavenstone ghosts, waiting for me.
“Why is Daddy home?” I asked.
She was standing with her back to the wall, her arms folded, and her head down. She didn’t look up until I was right upon her.
“We had a little crisis here today, not long after you left for school, Semantha,” she said.
“What crisis?”
“Mother began to bleed, hemorrhage. She said she was calling on the intercom for me, but I was in the shower, and I didn’t hear her.”
I stood waiting for more. She looked down the hallway toward Mother and Daddy’s room and then added, “I found her on the floor with a towel between her legs, a bloody towel.”
“Oh, my God! Is she all right? What about the baby?”
When she answered, she didn’t look at me. She looked across the hallway and spoke as if she were reciting.
“Naturally, I helped her back to the bathroom, and then I rushed to call Daddy. He called Dr. Moffet, who was here a little before Daddy arrived. Daddy was at our store site in Lexington. We’re building one there, you know. It’s absolutely the worst time for Daddy to be so burdened.”
“Of course, I know we’re building one there.” How curious that she would think she had to tell me that, but she did look dazed. “I know how busy he is, Cassie, but Mother … what happened then?”
She turned back to me and quickly molded her face back into the adult face she always assumed around me.
“Daddy arrived, and we waited for Dr. Moffet to examine Mother. He said she was all right for now, but she has to remain in bed for at least forty-eight to seventy-two hours. She isn’t to move, and he meant move. I have to bring her all her food, even a bedpan. Daddy wanted to hire a nurse immediately, but I talked him out of it. I can get my schoolwork sent home. It’s not a big deal.”