Petals on the Wind

  "Yes, Mother, I do hate you."

  "You wouldn't if you understood--"

  I laughed, hard and bitterly. "Dearest Mother, there is not one thing you could tell me to make me understand."

  "Corrine," said Bart, his tone sterile, as if his heart had been removed. "Your daughter is right. You can sit there and cry, and talk about your father forcing you to poison your children--but how can I believe when I can't remember him even giving you a hard glance? He looked at you with love and pride. You did come and go as you chose. Your father lavished money on you, so you could buy new clothes and everything else you wanted. Now you come up with some ridiculous tale of how you were tortured by him, and forced by him to kill your hidden children. God, you sicken me!"

  Her eyes took on a glassy stare; her pale and elegant hands trembled as they unfolded and fluttered up from her lap to her throat, and there they fingered over and over again the diamond choker that must be keeping her gown from falling off. "Bart, please, I'm not lying. . . . I admit I've lied to you in the past, and deceived you about my children--but I'm not lying now. Why can't you believe me?"

  Bart stood with his feet spread apart, as a sailor would to brace himself on a rocky sea. His hands were behind his back and clenched into fists. "What kind of man do you think I am--or was?" he asked bitterly. "You could have told me anything then, and I would have understood. I loved you, Corrine. I would have done anything legally possible to thwart your father and help you gain his fortune, and at the same time keep your children alive, free to live normal lives. I'm not a monster, Corrine, and I didn't marry you for your money. I would have married you if you were penniless!"

  "You couldn't outwit my father!" she cried, jumping up and beginning to pace the floor.

  In that shiny crimson dress my mother appeared a bright lick of a color that made her eyes dark purple as they darted from one to the other of us. Then, finally, when I couldn't stand to watch her as she was, broken, wild, with all her queenly poise gone, her eyes came to rest on her mother--that old woman who slumped in the wheelchair, as if without bones. Her gnarled fingers worked weakly at the afghan, but her gray zealot's eyes burned with a strong, mean fire. I watched as the eyes of mother and daughter clashed. Those gray eyes that never changed, never softened with old age or fear of the hell that must be lying in wait for her.

  And, to my surprise, from this confrontation my mother rose straight and tall, the winner in this battle of wills. She began to speak in a dispassionate way, as if discussing someone else. It was like hearing a woman talk who knew she was killing herself with each razored word, and yet she didn't care, not anymore--for I was the winner, after all, and to me, her most severe judge, she turned to appeal. "All right, Cathy. I knew sooner or later I would have to face up to you. I knew it would be you who would force the truth from me. It has always been your way to look through me, and guess I wasn't always what I wanted you to believe I was. Christopher loved me, trusted me. But you never would. Yet in the beginning, at the time your father was killed, I was trying to do the best I could by you. I told you what I believed to be the truth, when I asked you to come and live here hidden away until I won back my father's favor. I didn't truly think it would take more than one day, or possibly two."

  I sat as frozen, staring at her. Her eyes pleaded mutely, have mercy, Cathy, believe me! I speak the truth.

  She turned from me, and in great distress she appealed to Bart and spoke of their first meeting in a friend's home. "I didn't want to love you, Bart, and involve you in the mess I was in. I wanted to tell you about my children and the threat my father posed to them, but just when I would he'd worsen and appear ready to die, so I'd put it off and keep quiet. I prayed that when eventually I did tell you, you'd understand. It was stupid of me, for a secret kept too long becomes impossible to explain. You wanted to marry me. My father kept saying no. My children pleaded every day to be let out. Even though I knew they had every right to complain, I began to resent them, the way they kept harassing me, making me feel guilty and ashamed when I was trying to do the best I could for them. And it was Cathy, always it was Cathy, no matter how many gifts I gave her, who kept at it the most." She threw me another of her long, tormented looks, as if I'd tortured her beyond endurance.

  "Cathy," she whispered then, her watery, drowning look of anguish brightening a little, as once more she turned to me. "I did do the best I could! I told my parents all of you did have hidden afflictions, especially Cory. They wanted to think God had punished my children, so they believed easily. And Cory was always having one cold after another, and his allergy. Can't you see what I tried to do, make all of you just a little sick, so I could rush you one by one to the hospital, then report back to my mother you died. I used a minute bit of arsenic, but not enough to kill you! All I wanted to do was make you a little bit sick, just enough to get you out!"

  I was appalled by her stupidity to scheme in such a dangerous way. Then I guessed it was all a lie, just an excuse to satisfy Bart who was staring at her in the oddest way. I smiled at her then, while inside I was hurting so badly I could cry. "Momma," I said softly, interrupting her pleas, "have you forgotten your father was dead before the sugared doughnuts started coming? You didn't have to trick him in his grave."

  She darted her tormented eyes to the

  grandmother who had a stern, forbidding look fixed on her daughter.

  "Yes!" cried Momma, knew that! But for that codicil I would never have needed the arsenic! But my father let our butler John in on our secret, and he was alive to see that I followed through and kept you upstairs until each one of you was dead! And if he didn't, then my mother was to see he didn't inherit the fifty thousand dollars promised to him. Then there was my mother, who wanted John to inherit everything!"

  A terrible silence came while I tried to digest this. The grandfather knew all the time and had wanted to keep us prisoners for life? And as if that weren't enough punishment, he then tried to force her to kill us? Oh, he must have been even more evil than I thought! Not human at all! Then, as I watched her and took note of her anxiously waiting blue eyes, her hands busily trying to twist an invisible rope of pearls, I knew she was lying. I glanced at the grandmother and saw her frown as she tried to speak. Fierce indignation was in her eyes, as if she would deny all my mother had said. But she hated Momma. She would want me to believe the worst--oh, God, how was Ito find out the truth?

  I glanced at Bart who stood before the fire, his dark eyes gazing at his wife as if he'd never seen her before, and what he was seeing now appalled him.

  "Momma," I began in a flat voice, "what did you really do with Cory's body? We have looked in all the cemeteries around here and checked their records, and not one little boy of eight years died in that last week of October, 1960.'

  She swallowed first, then wrung her hands, flashing all the diamonds and other jewels. "I didn't know what to do with him," she whispered. "He died before I could reach the hospital. Suddenly he stopped breathing, and when I looked in the back seat I knew he was dead." She sobbed with the memory, "I hated myself then. I knew I could be charged with murder, and I hadn't meant to kill him! Only make him a little sick! So I threw his body in a deep ravine and covered him over with dead leaves, sticks and stones. . . ." Her huge desperate eyes pleaded with me to believe.

  I, too, had to swallow, thinking of Cory in a deep dark ravine, left to decay there. "No, Momma, you didn't do that." My soft voice seemed to cut through the frozen atmosphere of the huge library. "I visited the end room of the northern wing before I came down here." I paused for better effect and made my next words more dramatic. "Before I came down the stairs to confront you I first used stairs that lead directly to the attic, then the hidden little stairway in the closet of our prison. Chris and I always suspected there was another way into the attic, and correctly we reasoned there had to be a door hidden behind the giant heavy armoires we couldn't shove out of the way no matter how hard we pushed. Momma . . . I found a small room we'd never
seen before. There was a very peculiar odor in that room, like something dead and rotten."

  For a moment she couldn't move. Her expression went totally blank. She stared at me with vacant eyes and then her mouth and her hands began to work, but she couldn't speak. She tried, but she couldn't speak. Bart started to say something, but she put her hands up to her ears to shut out anything anyone would say.

  Suddenly the library door opened. I whirled in a fury.

  My mother turned as in a nightmare to see why I kept staring. Chris pulled up short and gazed at her. She jumped then, as if terribly startled, then put up both her hands in a gesture that seemed to ward him off.

  Was she seeing a ghost of our father? "Chris. . . ?" she asked. "Chris, I didn't mean to do it, really I didn't! Don't look at me like that, Chris! I loved them! I didn't want to give them the arsenic--but my father made me! He told me they should never have been born! He tried to tell me they were so evil they deserved to die, and that was the only way I could make amends for the sin I'd committed when I married you!" Tears streamed her cheeks as she went on, though Chris kept shaking his head. "I loved my children! Our children! But what could I do? I only meant to make them a little sick--just enough to save them, that's all, that's all. . . . Chris, don't look at me like that! You know I wouldn't ever kill our children!"

  His eyes turned icy blue as he stared at her. "Then you did deliberately feed us arsenic?" he asked. "I never fully believed it once we were free of this house and had time to think about it. But you did do it!"

  She screamed then. In all my life I'd never heard such a scream as that one that rose and fell

  hysterically. Screams that sounded like the howls of the insane! On her heel she whirled about, still screaming, as she raced for a door I hadn't even known was there, and through it she ran and disappeared.

  "Cathy," said Chris, tearing his eyes from the door and scanning the library to take note of Bart and the grandmother, "I've come to fetch you. I've had bad news. We have to go back to Clairmont immediately!"

  Before I could answer Bart spoke up, "Are you Cathy's older brother, Chris?"

  "Yes, of course. I came for Cathy. She's needed someplace else." He stretched out his hand as I drifted toward him.

  "Wait a minute," said Bart. "I need to ask you a few questions. I've got to know the full truth. Was that woman in the red dress your mother?"

  First Chris looked at me. I nodded to tell him Bart knew, and only then did Chris meet Bart's eyes with some hostility. "Yes, she is my mother and Cathy's mother, and once the mother of twins named Cory and Carrie."

  "And she kept all four of you locked up in one room for more than three years?" asked Bart, as if he still didn't want to believe.

  "Yes, three years and four months and sixteen days. And when she took Cory away one night she came back later and told us he died of pneumonia. And if you want more details, you will have to wait, for there are others we have to think about now. Come, Cathy," he said, reaching for my hand again. "We've got to hurry!" He looked then at the grandmother and gave her a wry smile. "Merry Christmas, Grandmother. I had hoped never to see you again, but now that I have I see time has worked its own revenge." He turned again to me. "Hurry, Cathy, where is your coat? I have Jory and Mrs. Lindstrom out in my car."

  "Why?" I asked. Sudden panic filled me. What was the matter?

  "No!" objected Bart. "Cathy can't leave! She's expecting my child and I want her here with me!"

  Bart came to take me in his arms and tenderly he gazed with love at my face. "You have lifted the blinders from my eyes, Cathy. You were right. Certainly I was meant for better things than this. Perhaps I can still redeem my existence by doing something useful for a change."

  I threw the grandmother a look of triumph and avoided looking directly at Chris, and with Bart's arm about my shoulders we left the library and the grandmother and strode through all the other rooms until we reached the grand foyer.

  Bedlam had broken loose! Everyone was screaming, running, searching to find a wife or a husband. Smoke! I smelled smoke.

  "My God, the house is on fire!" Bart cried. He shoved me toward Chris. 'Fake her outside and keep her safe! I've got to find my wife!" He looked wildly about, calling, "Corrine, Corrine, where are you?"

  The milling throng were all headed for the same exit. From the stairs above black smoke billowed down. Women fell and people stepped over them. The merry guests of the party were hell-bent now on getting out, and woe to those who didn't have the strength to fight their way to the door. Frantically I tried to follow Bart with my eyes. I saw him pick up a telephone, no doubt to call the fire department, and then he was racing up the right side of the dual staircase and into the very heart of the fire! "No!"I screamed. "Bart--don't go up there! You'll be killed! Bart--don't! Come back!"

  I think he must have heard me, for he hesitated midway up and smiled back at me as I was frantically waving. He mouthed the words I love you--and then pointed toward the east. I didn't understand what he meant. But Chris took it that he was telling us of another way out.

  Coughing and choking, Chris and I sped through another parlor, and finally I had the chance to see the grand dining room--but it was full of smoke too! "Look," cried Chris, pulling me on, "there are French doors--the fools, there must be a dozen or more exits on the first 'floor, and everyone rushes for the front door!"

  We made it outside and finally over to the car I recognized as Chris', and there Emma held Jory in her arms as she stared at the great house that was burning. Chris reached inside and pulled out a car robe to throw over my shoulders, and then he held to me as I leaned against him and sobbed for Bart--where was he? Why didn't he come out?

  I heard the wail of fire engines winding around the hills, screaming in the night that was already wild with the wind and the snow. The snow that fell above the house on fire was speckled red dots that sizzled as they met the flames. Jory put out his arms, wanting me, and I held him close as Chris put his arms about me and held us both. "Don't worry, Cathy," he tried to comfort, "Bart must know all the ways to get out."

  Then I saw my mother in her red flame dress, being restrained by two men. She screamed on and on, crying out her husband's name--and then that of the grandmother. "My mother! She's in there! She can't move!"

  Bart was on the front steps when he heard her voice. He whirled about and sped back into the house. Oh, my God! He was going back to save the grandmother who didn't deserve to live! Risking his life--doing what he had to prove, after all, he wasn't just a lap dog.

  This was the fire of my childhood nightmares! This was what I'd always feared more than anything! This was the reason I'd insisted we make the rope ladder of torn-up sheets so we could escape and reach the ground--just in case.

  It was more than horrible to watch that mammoth house burn when once I would have been glad to see it go. The wind blew relentlessly and whipped the flames higher, higher until they lit up the night and fired the heavens. How easily old wood burned along with the antique furnishings, the priceless heirlooms that could never be replaced. If anything survived, despite what those heroic firemen did who raced about like crazy, connecting up hoses that squirted forth foam, it would be a miracle! Someone screamed, "People are trapped inside! Get them out!" I think it was me. The firemen worked with superhuman speed and agility to get them out while I cried wild and frantic. "Bart! I didn't want to kill you! I only wanted you to love me, that's all. Bart, don't die, please don't die!" My mother heard and she came running to where Chris was holding me tight in his arms.

  "You!" she screamed, her distraught expression that of the insane, "You think Bart loved you? That he would marry you? You are a fool! You betrayed me! As you've always betrayed me, and now Bart will die because of you!"

  "No, Mother," said Chris who tightened his arms about me, and his tone was that of ice, "it wasn't Cathy who cried out to remind your husband your mother was still inside. You did that. You must have seen he couldn't go back in that house and live.
Perhaps you would rather see your husband dead than married to your daughter."

  She stared at him. Her hands worked nervously. Her cerulean blue eyes were darkly shadowed by the pools of black mascara. And as I watched and Chris watched something in her eyes broke--some minute thing that had lent clarity and intelligence to the eyes dissolved and she seemed to shrink. "Christopher my son, my love, I'm your mother. Don't you love me anymore, Christopher? Why? Don't I bring you everything you need and ask for? New encyclopedias, games and clothes? What is it you lack? Tell me, so I can go out and buy it for you, please tell me what you want. do anything, bring you anything to make up for what you're losing. A thousandfold over you will be rewarded when my father dies, and he will die any day, any hour, any second, I know! I swear you won't have to be up here much longer! No, not much longer, not much longer, not much longer." And on and on until I could have screamed. Instead I put my hands over my ears and pressed my face against Chris's broad chest.

  He made some signal to one of the ambulance drivers, and warily they approached our mother who saw them, shrieked and then tried to run. I saw her stumble and fall, her heel caught in the long hem of her flaming red, glittering gown, and on the snow she fell flat, kicking, screaming and pounding her fists.

  They took her away in a straightjacket, still screaming of how I had betrayed her, while Chris and I clung to one another and watched with wide eyes. We felt like children again, helpless with the fresh grief and shame we bore. I followed him about while he did what he could for those who had been burned. I only got in his way, but I couldn't let him out of my sight.

  The body of Bart Winslow was found on the floor of the library with the skeletal grandmother still clutched in his arms--both suffocated by the smoke and not the flames. I stumbled over to fold down the green blanket and stared into his face to convince myself death had come again into my life. Again and again it kept coming! I kissed him, cried on his unyielding chest. I raised my head and he was looking straight at me--and through me--gone on to where I could never reach him and confess that I had loved him from the start--fifteen years ago.