Petals on the Wind

  I leaned to embrace Carrie who trembled and I whispered, "Cheer up, make an effort to enjoy yourself. Don't feel abandoned. Every weekend we'll come to take you home with us. Now is that so bad?"

  She brightened and forced a smile. "Yes, I can do it," she murmured weakly.

  It wasn't easy to drive away and leave Carrie in that beautiful, white, plantation house.

  The very next day was Chris's time to depart for the boy's prep-school, and oh, how I hurt to see him pack up his things. I watched but couldn't speak. Chris and I couldn't even bear to look at one another.

  His school was even farther away. Paul drove thirty miles before we reached the campus with buildings of rose-colored bricks and, again, the obligatory white columns. Sensing we needed to be alone, Paul made some flimsy excuse of wanting to inspect the gardens. Chris and I weren't really alone, but in an alcove with big bay windows. Young men were constantly passing by to glance in and stare at us. I wanted to be in his arms, with my cheek against his. I wanted this to be a farewell to love, so complete we'd know it was forever gone, at least forever gone from being wrong. "Chris," I stammered, near tears, "whatever am I going to do without you?"

  His blue eyes kept changing colors, jumbling his kaleidoscope emotions. "Cathy, nothing will change," he whispered hoarsely, clinging to my hands. "When next we see each other, we'll still feel the same. I love you. I always will--right or wrong, I can't help it. I'll study so diligently I won't have time to think about you, and miss you, and wonder what's going on in your life."

  "And you'll end up the youngest graduate from med school in the history of mankind," I chided, though my voice was as hoarse as his. "Save a little love for me, and store it away in the deepest part of your heart, the same as I'm going to store my love for you. We can't make the same mistake our parents did.'

  He sighed heavily and hung his head, studying the floor at his feet, or maybe he was studying my feet in the high heels that made my legs look so much prettier. "You'll take care of yourself.'

  "Of course. You take care of yourself. Don't study too much. Have some fun, and write me at least once a day; I don't think we should run up phone bills."

  'Cathy, you're awfully pretty. Maybe too pretty. I look at you and see our mother all over again, the way you move your hands, and the way you tilt your head to the side. Don't enchant our doctor too much. I mean, after all, he's a man. He has no wife--and you'll be living in the same house with him." He looked up, his eyes suddenly sharp. "Don't rush into anything trying to escape what you feel for me. I mean it, Cathy.

  "I promise to behave myself." It was such a weak promise when he'd awakened that primitive urge in me that should have been held back until I was old enough to handle it. Now all I wanted was to be fulfilled and loved by someone I could feel good about.

  "Paul," Chris said tentatively, "he's a great guy. I love him. Carrie loves him. What do you feel for him?"

  "Love, the same as you and Carrie. Gratitude. That's not wrong."

  "He hasn't done anything out of the way?" "No. He's honorable, decent."

  "I see him looking at you, Cathy. You're so young, so beautiful, and so . . needing. ' He paused and flushed, looking away guiltily before he went on. "I feel ugly asking you, when he's done so much to help us, but still, sometimes I think he took us in only because, well, only because of you. Because he wants you!"

  "Chris, he's twenty-five years older than me. How can you think like that?"

  Chris looked relieved. "You're right," he said. "You are his ward, and much too young. There must be plenty of beauties in those hospitals who'd be happy to be with him. I guess you're safe enough."

  Smiling now, he pulled me gently into his embrace and lowered his lips to mine. Just a soft, tender kiss of good-bye-for-a-while. "I'm sorry about Christmas night," he said when our kiss was over.

  My heart was an aching ruin as I backed off to leave him. How was I going to live without him nearby? Another thing she'd done to us. Made us care too much, when we should never have cared in the way we did. Her fault, always her fault! Everything gone wrong in our lives could be laid at her door!

  "Don't overwork yourself, Chris, or soon you will be needing to wear glasses." He grinned, promised, made a reluctant gesture of farewell. Neither of us could manage to speak the word "goodbye." I spun about to run out, with tears in my eyes as I raced down the long halls, and then out into the bright sunshine. In Paul's white car I crouched down low and really sobbed, like Carrie when she bawled.

  Suddenly Paul showed up from nowhere and silently took his place behind the wheel. He switched on the ignition, backed the car out and turned to head for the highway again. He didn't mention my reddened eyes or the sodden handkerchief I clutched in my hand to dab at the tears that kept coming. He didn't ask why I sat so silently when usually I teased, and gibed, and rattled on nonsensically just to keep from hearing silence. Quiet, silence. Hear the feathers fall, listen to the house squeal. That was the attic gloom.

  Paul's strong, well-cared-for hands guided the car with an easy, casual skill, while he sat back relaxed. I studied his hands, for, next to a man's eyes, I noticed his hands. Then I moved my glance to his legs. Strong, well-shaped thighs which his tight, blue knit trousers showed up well, perhaps too well, for all of a sudden I wasn't sad, or gloomy, but felt an onrush of sensuality.

  Giant trees lined the wide, black road, trees gnarled and dark, thick and ancient. "Bull Bay magnolias," said Paul. "It's a pity they aren't in bloom now, but it won't be too long. Our winters are short. One thing you must remember: never breathe on a magnolia blossom, or touch one; if you do it will wither and die." He threw me a teasing look so I couldn't tell whether or not he was speaking the truth.

  "I used to dread turning onto my street, before you came with your brother and sister. I was always so alone. Now I drive home happily. It's good to feel happy again. Thank you, Cathy, for running south instead of north or west."

  As soon as we got home Paul headed for his office and I headed upstairs to try to work off my loneliness by exercising at the barre. Paul didn't come home for dinner, and that made it even worse. He didn't show up after dinner either, so I went to bed early. All alone. I was all alone. Carrie was gone. My steadfast Christopher Doll, gone too. For the first time we were to sleep under separate roofs. I missed Carrie. I felt awful, afraid. I needed someone. The silence of the house and the deep dark of the night were screaming all about me.

  Alone, alone, you are alone, and nobody cares, nobody cares. I thought about food. I'd worried that I hadn't kept a big supply at hand. Then I remembered I needed some warm milk. Warm milk was supposed to help you fall asleep--and sleep was what I needed.

  Enchantress . . Me?

  . Soft firelight glowed in the living room. The gray logs had guttered into ashes in the hearth, and Paul, wrapped in his warm red robe, sat in a wingbacked chair and slowly drew on a pipe.

  I gazed at his smoke-haloed head and saw someone warm, needing, wistful and yearning, as I yearned, and I wished. And being the fool I often was, I drifted toward him on bare feet that didn't make a sound. How nice he'd wear our gift so soon. I wore a gift from him--a soft, turquoise peignoir of airy fabric that floated over a gown of the same color.

  He started to see me there, so near his chair, in the middle of the night, though he didn't speak to break the spell that was somehow binding us together in a mutual need.

  There was a lot I didn't know about myself, nor did I understand what impulse lifted my hand to caress his cheek. His skin felt raspy, as if he needed a shave. He put his head back against the chair and tilted his face to mine.

  "Why are you touching me, Catherine?" His question was asked in a tight, cold voice, and I could have felt rebuked and hurt, but his eyes were soft, limpid pools of desire, and I had seen desire before, only not in the kind of eyes he had. "Don't you like to be touched?"

  "Not by a seductive young girl wearing flimsy clothes who is twenty-five years my junior."

 
"Twenty-four and seven months your junior," I corrected, "and my maternal grandmother married a man of fifty-five, when she was only sixteen."

  "She was a fool and so was he."

  "My mother said she made him a good wife," I added lamely.

  "Why aren't you up in your bed asleep?" he snapped.

  "I can't sleep. I guess I'm too excited about school tomorrow."

  "Then you'd better go to bed so you'll be at your best."

  I started to go, really I did, for the thought of warm milk was still in my head, but I had other thoughts, too, more seductive. "Dr. Paul . . ."

  "I hate it when you call me that!" he interrupted.

  "Use my first name or don't speak to me at all."

  "I feel I should show you the respect you deserve."

  "A fig for respect! I'm not any different than other men. A doctor isn't infallible, Catherine."

  "Why are you calling me Catherine?"

  "Why shouldn't I call you Catherine? It's your name, and it sounds more grown up than Cathy."

  "A moment or so ago, when I touched your cheek, you flared your eyes at me, as if you didn't want me to be grown up."

  "You're a witch. In a second you change from a naive girl into a seductive, provocative woman--a woman who seems to know exactly what she's doing when she lays her hand on my face.

  My eyes fled before the onslaught of his. I felt hot, uneasy, and wished now I'd gone directly to the kitchen. I stared at the fine books on the shelves and the miniature objets d'art he seemed to crave. Everywhere I looked was something to remind me that what he needed most was beauty.

  "Catherine, I'm going to ask you something now that is none of my business, but I must ask. Just what is there between you and your brother?"

  My knees began to click together nervously. Oh, dear God, Did it show on our faces? Why did he have to ask? It wasn't any of his business. He had no right to ask such a question. Common sense and good judgment should have glued my tongue to the roof of my mouth and kept me from saying what I did in a shamed, lame way. "Would you be shocked to hear that when we were locked up in one room, always together, four of us, and each day was an eternity, that sometimes Chris and I didn't always think of ourselves as brother and sister? He attached a barre in the attic for me, so I could keep my muscles supple, so I could keep on believing someday I'd be a ballerina. And while I danced on that soft, rotten wood, he'd study in the attic schoolroom, poring for hours over old encyclopedias He'd hear my dance music and come and stand in the shadows to watch. . . ."

  "Go on," he urged when I paused. I stood with my head bowed, thinking backward, forgetting him. Then he suddenly leaned forward, seized hold of me and yanked me down onto his lap. "Tell me the rest."

  I didn't want to tell him, yet his eyes were hot, demanding, making him seem a different person.

  Swallowing first, I continued with reluctance, "Music has always done something special for me, even when I was small. It takes me over and lifts me up and makes me dance. And when I'm up there's no way to come down except by feeling love for someone. If you come down and feel your feet on the floor, and there's no one there to love, then you feel empty and lost. And I don't like to feel lost or empty."

  "And so you danced in the attic, and dwelled in your fanciful imagination, and came back to the floor and found the only one there to love was your brother?" he said with icy heat, burning his eyes into mine. "Right? You had another kind of love you reserved for your little twins, didn't you? You were mother to them. I know that. I see that every time you look at Carrie and speak Cory's name. But what kind of love do you have for Christopher? Is it motherly? Sisterly? Or is it--" He paused, flushed, and shook me. "What did you do with your brother when you were locked up there, when you were alone?"

  Seized by panic, I shook my head, and pushed his hands from my shoulders. "Chris and I were decent! We did the best we could!"

  "The best you could'?" he fired, looking hard and belligerent, as if the kindly, gentle man I knew had been only a disguise. "What the hell does that tell me?"

  "All you need to know!" I flared back and flashed my eyes with temper as hot and red as his. "You accuse me of seducing you. That's what you're doing; you sit and you watch every move I make! You undress me with your eyes. You take me to bed with you with your eyes. You talk about ballet classes, and sending my brother to college and medical school, and all the while you imply that sooner or later you are going to demand your payment, and I know what kind of payment you want!" I took my hands and ripped open the peignoir so the skimpy bodice of the aqua nightgown was revealed. "Look at the kind of gift you gave me. Is this the kind of nightgown a girl of fifteen wears? No! It's the kind of gown a bride wears on her wedding night! And you gave it to me, and you saw Chris frown, and you didn't even have the decency to blush!

  His laughter mocked me. I smelled the strong red wine he liked to drink before retiring. His breath was hot on my face, his face very close to mine so I could see each strong dark hair that poked from his skin. It was the wine that made him act as he did, I thought. Only the wine. Any woman on his lap would serve-- any woman! Teasingly he touched the peaks of both my nipples, skipping from one to the other, and then he dared to slip his hand beneath my bodice so he could fondle the young breasts that were fired with heat from his unexpected caresses. Then my nipples rose up hard and I was breathing just as heavily and fast as he was. "Would you undress for me, Catherine?" he whispered in a mocking way. "Would you sit naked on my lap and let me have my way with you? Or would you pick up that Venetian glass ashtray and crash it down on my head?"

  He stared at me then, suddenly shocked to find his hand where it was, cupping my left breast, and he yanked his hand away as if my flesh burned him. He pulled the fabric of my frail peignoir together and hid what his hungry eyes had devoured before. He stared at my lips that were slightly parted and waiting to be kissed, and I think he planned to kiss me just before he gained control and shoved me away. At that moment thunder crashed overhead, and a lightning bolt sizzled jaggedly to crackle with fire as it struck a telephone wire outside, I jumped! Cried out!

  As suddenly as he had withdrawn his hand, he snapped out of his fog and into what he was

  customarily--a detached, lonely man who was determined to keep himself aloof. How wise I was in my innocence to know this even before he snapped, "What the hell are you doing sitting on my lap half naked? Why did you let me do what I did?"

  I didn't say anything. He was ashamed; I could see that now in the glow of the dying fire, and in the intermittent flashes of lightning. He was thinking all sorts of self-condemning thoughts, chastising, berating, whipping himself--I knew it was my fault; as always it was my fault.

  "I'm sorry, Catherine. I don't know what possessed me to do what I did."

  "I forgive you."

  "Why do you forgive me?"

  "Because I love you."

  Again he jerked his head into profile, and I couldn't see his eyes well enough to read them. "You don't love me," he said calmly, "you're only grateful for what I've done."

  "I love you--and I'm yours, when, or if, you want me. And you can say you don't love me, but you'll be lying, for I see it in your eyes each time you look at me. I pressed closer against him and turned his face to mine. "When I was put away by Momma, I swore that when I was free, if love came and demanded of me I'd open my door and let it in. The first day I came I found love in your eyes. You don't have to marry me, just love me, when you need me."

  He held me and we watched the storm. Winter fought with spring and finally conquered. Now it only hailed, and the thunder and lightning were gone, and I felt so . . . so right. We were much alike, he and I. "Why aren't you afraid of me?" he softly asked, as his big, gentle hands stroked my back, my hair. "You know you shouldn't be here, letting me hold you, touch you."

  "Paul . . ." I began tentatively, "I'm not bad; neither is Chris. When we were locked away, we did do the best we could, honest. But we were locked in one room and gro
wing up. The grandmother had a list of rules that forbade us to even look at each other and now I think I know why. Our eyes used to meet so often and without a word spoken he could comfort me, and he said my eyes did that for him too. That wasn't bad, was it?"

  "I shouldn't have asked, and of course you had to look at each other. That's why we have eyes."

  "Living like we did for so long, I don't know a lot about other girls my age, but ever since I was only table high, any kind of beauty has made me light up. Just to see the sun falling on the petals of a rose, or the way light shines through tree leaves and shows the veins, and the way rain on the road turns the oil iridescent, all that makes me feel beautiful. More than anything, when music is playing, especially my kind, ballet music, I don't need the sun or flowers or fresh air. I light up inside and wherever I am magically turns into marble palaces, or I am wild and free in the woods. I used to do that in the attic, and always just ahead a dark-haired man danced with me. We never touched, though we tried to. I never saw his face, though I wanted to. I said his name once, but when I woke up I couldn't remember what it was. So, I guess I'm really in love with him, whoever he is. Every time I see a man with dark hair who moves gracefully I suspect he's the one."

  He chuckled and twined his long fingers into my unbound hair. "My, what a romantic you are."

  "You're making fun of me. You think I'm only a child. You think if you kissed me it wouldn't be exciting."

  He grinned, accepted the challenge and slowly, slowly his head inclined until his lips met mine. Oh! So this was what it was like, a kiss from a stranger. Electric tingles sizzled madly up and down my arms, and all those nerves that a "child" my age wasn't supposed to have burned with fire! I drew away sharply, afraid. I was wicked, unholy, still the Devil's spawn!

  And Chris would be shocked!

  "What the hell are we doing?" he barked, coming out of the spell I'd cast. "What kind of little devil are you to let me handle you intimately and kiss you? You are very beautiful, Catherine, but you are only a child." Some realization darkened his eyes as he guessed at my motives. "Now get this straight in your pretty head--you don't owe me, not anything! What I do for you, for your brother and sister, I do willingly, gladly, without expecting any repayment-- of any kind--do you understand?"