Christopher's Diary: Echoes of Dollanganger

  Kane dressed quietly and then sat on the chair. When he looked at me with the diary back in his hand, I had the momentary thought that maybe what we had just done had all been a dream, a hallucination. He smiled and put his hand over his heart. I straightened myself out, brushed down my nightgown, and lay back.

  Take me home, I thought. Read on.

  Afterward, we went onto the roof, and I apologized. No matter how I said it, it sounded weak. I was doing it as much for myself as for her. My own loss of control shocked me. I was far from the perfect young man I wanted to be. How arrogant of me to think I was always going to be in full control of my emotions, my feelings, my body. I knew Cathy believed I was, and in a way, that made me feel even guiltier, but there was nothing to do now to change what had happened. I even hated my apology. I wasn’t absolutely sure, of course, but I assured her that she wouldn’t get pregnant. I vowed never to let it happen again, but to be honest, I was afraid it would, as long as we were trapped here. It was September, and I was thinking that with winter coming, we had to rush this escape now. We had almost four hundred dollars. I estimated that if we stole some of Momma’s jewelry, we could get by. The twins needed a good physical examination as soon as we arrived somewhere. For many reasons, therefore, we had to move soon.

  One early October evening, when we knew Momma was going out, we prepared sacks for our foray into her bedroom. Winter was well on its way. We had to get out before snow began to fall. I was prepared to do everything I had to do, but then the worst thing of all happened.

  Cory became very, very ill. He was throwing up so much I knew he would be dehydrated. My first suspicion was food poisoning, maybe sour milk, maybe bad meat. He fell asleep beside Carrie and Cathy, and I stayed up all night watching over him. He was far from better in the morning. It was even more serious than I had first thought. When our grandmother came in to leave our basket of food, Cathy told her how sick Cory was. She left without promising anything, and I was about to reveal that we had our key by going out for our mother myself, but just before I did, she and our grandmother came in.

  Cory was struggling to breathe by now, and Momma was standing back, whispering to our grandmother. Cathy lost her temper and began screaming at her. Momma slapped Cathy, and to my astonishment, Cathy slapped her back. I thought our grandmother would pound her or something, but she smiled at the confrontation as if it was the proof she needed that we were evil children or that Momma was getting what she deserved. I seized Cathy and pleaded with her to stop and let Momma do what had to be done. Cathy screamed at her anyway and vowed to take revenge on her.

  Grandmother Olivia surprised me again. She told our mother that Cathy was right. Cory had to be taken to a hospital. They both left and didn’t return until the servants were retired. Cory was in a horrible state. I thought he was practically in a coma. When they returned, Momma bundled him up to take him out, and Carrie got hysterical. Cathy calmed her by telling her that she would go with Momma and stay with Cory in the hospital. I told Momma that was a good idea, because Cory had become so dependent on Cathy, but Momma shook her head, and they left, locking us all in the room again.

  The three of us went to sleep that night, embracing each other, clinging to each other, terrified for our little brother and terrified for ourselves.

  How should I write the rest of this? I am sitting here and struggling with the words. My hand is shaking so hard that I don’t think I can write. The words will be distorted on the page. I feel like I’m crumbling inside. My body is turning inside out, in fact. Now Cathy looks like she’s the one in a coma. She holds Carrie as if Carrie is made of air, weightless, a hollowed-out doll.

  The best way to write this, to get it down, is to tell it straight and factually.

  Momma and our grandmother returned.

  Momma said she had admitted Cory to the hospital. It was under a different name, pretending he was her nephew.

  She said he was diagnosed with pneumonia.

  She said he died.

  It was too late.

  My little brother was dead.

  When we asked about a funeral for him, she said it was already done.

  Cory was dead and gone.

  Momma left without any more details, our grandmother following right behind her.

  I am writing all of this coldly, because I’m afraid if I don’t, I will not be able to write a word.

  I knew better than ever now that we were all dying or doomed, all three of us. Carrie was wilting even more quickly now without Cory at her side. I had read a great deal about the immune system people had normally, and I was convinced that ours were so weakened by our years of incarceration that we would die from the smallest germ. I explained it to Cathy, but she looked like she wasn’t hearing anything much anymore.

  I would go out one more time, I told her, and get everything of value I could, and then we would leave. We just had to wait until I was sure Momma would not be in her bedroom. I couldn’t imagine her going out to parties and dinners so soon after Cory’s death.

  Finally, I felt the timing was right. I told Cathy to prepare for our escape. I’d be back with whatever I could, and that would be that. The little glimmer of hope that appeared in her eyes urged me forward to be careful and to be fruitful. I had to get us out now.

  I was shocked at what I discovered when I snuck into Momma’s bedroom. Not only was she gone for the night; it looked like she was gone forever. Her vanity table was cleared, the drawers were empty, the closet was empty, and all the drawers in it were emptied of anything valuable. It looked like someone was told to vacate the premises and leave nothing of any value behind her. I kept searching. There were heavy mink coats left, but nothing we could carry out in a suitcase. I made one last desperate search of a drawer and was shocked to find our father’s picture. Beside it were Momma’s wedding and engagement rings. These were valuable pieces we could take, but why would she leave them? Did she want to forget her past that much? Did she know we were stealing from her and Bart and she’d left them for us? How ridiculous that sounded, and how foolish I was to cling to the hope that she still cared. Was that the last remnant of my once love for her, a love I thought would be undying? I chased the thought from my mind.

  We didn’t have enough, I kept thinking, and decided to take a great risk and sneak into our grandmother’s bedroom. But when I got there, I could hear that she was there. I peered through the slightly opened door and saw her sitting on her bed, her head bald. That hair we had come to hate was nothing more than a wig. She had never looked uglier to me. She was holding the Bible. I heard her asking God to forgive her sins, to consider that all she had done she had done to please him. Never did I think of her as more insane than at that moment. I hated and pitied her at the same time.

  Still worried about not having enough with which to leave, I ventured down to the rotunda and then into the library. I saw what had to be our grandfather’s desk and thought it was just possible that he had money in one of the drawers, but what caught my attention first was the sight of all the medical equipment neatly wrapped up and the hospital bed stripped of everything. How odd, I thought, but before I could investigate any more, I heard voices and quickly went down on my stomach behind a sofa. Two servants had entered, and I overheard their conversation.

  As I write this, my throat feels like it’s closing up on me, and I’ll soon struggle to breathe. I am writing quickly to get it down and over with.

  What I heard before they started to make love right there on the sofa.

  Our grandfather was dead. He had been dead for almost a year!

  He had left everything to our mother, who hadn’t come up to free us and start us on a new, wealthy life.

  As far as the servants knew, our grandmother had been poisoning an army of mice in the attic. She had been using arsenic, a white substance. She had been giving us sugar-coated doughnuts, which we all devoured, especially Cory.

  When I told all this to Cathy, she was stunned into disbelief. I c
lung to it, but I knew there was one test to make. I fed Cory’s pet mouse the sugar-coated doughnut we had, and as I feared would happen, he died just as any rodent would if it ate arsenic.

  Did our mother know what we were eating, how it was slowly killing us, and how it had killed Cory? She left us up here suffering for almost a year longer than we had to.

  We decided to leave the following morning. While we were planning, our grandmother appeared for the last time. Cathy thought she had snuck in many times and probably knew we could escape. She left, locking the door, but we had no time to worry about that now. We had to get ready to make our escape. We decided to take some samples of the doughnuts and the dead mouse in a plastic bag. If we were picked up by the police, we would hand it all to them and then tell our story.

  Despite all this, there was still a part of me that hoped there was some explanation for what Momma did or permitted to be done to us. I hated myself for clinging to that and went to sleep chastising myself for being such a little boy when it was time to be a man and face up to the ugly fact that our own mother cared more about herself than she cared about us.

  We didn’t have much of a plan for once we escaped this house. I knew that, but we had no choice. We could get to the train that had brought us here and ride it out and away to a future where we could grow healthy, pursue our dreams, and somehow, someway, bury the horror we had lived, bury it so deeply we could pretend it had just been a bad dream. Our mother had died with our father. Could I convince myself of that? Could Cathy?

  I barely slept. While Cathy was getting Carrie ready, I wrote my last lines in this diary. I’m going to leave it hidden up here in a small metal box I found that will lock automatically when closed. There is no key to it that I can find.

  As I write these last lines, I know that the diary belongs to the attic now.

  Along with the four young children who trusted and hoped and the three who survived.

  We were both crying when Kane closed the diary.

  He embraced me, and we clung to each other for quite a while, rocking on the sofa.

  Then, in silence, we rose, we restored the attic, and still without saying a word to each other, we left. I closed the door softly behind me. It would never be the same place for me. I thought in the near future, I would go through my mother’s things, take what I thought I could use sometime in the future perhaps, and then get my father to give away the rest to the local thrift store or some charity.

  It was time to let go of things that would not bring back my mother. I would explain to him that we didn’t need them in order to remember her. She would live forever in our hearts and minds. I knew he would listen and nod in agreement. He simply needed me to be the one to say it.

  “Let’s spend as much time today as we can with each other,” Kane suggested when we got to my room. “I’ll take you to a great restaurant, something lively and fun. Please,” he begged. “You said your father won’t be home for dinner.”

  “Okay,” I said. I didn’t want to be alone, either.

  While I showered and dressed and fixed my hair, I kept looking at the diary and thinking. I had promised my father I would give it to him when I was finished, but I knew he would either destroy it or throw it away, and more than ever, I didn’t want that to happen now.

  Where did it belong?

  Not buried away in my room, and not with Kane.

  I didn’t find the answer until weeks later.

  Epilogue

  Everyone at school was focused on the Christmas holiday. I felt sorry for our teachers. The closer it was, the more difficult it got to keep our attention on the subject matter. Between classes, the chatter and the laughter in the hallways seemed to be at a higher, more excited pitch. Some of my classmates were going to spend the holidays in Florida and other warmer places, but the majority talked about family gatherings at their homes in Charlottesville. The teachers were looking forward to their break, too, and their annual holiday party. Everyone had more charity in his or her heart, and those who violated rules or stepped out of line found the benefit of a wider embrace of forgiveness.

  All my girlfriends, especially Suzette, noticed how much closer Kane and I had become. There were small but telling revelations. More than ever, we held hands almost every opportunity we had. We sat closer to each other wherever we could sit together. We whispered and nudged each other gently. When we could, we kissed, quickly but lovingly. We were with each other almost every free moment after school and on weekends.

  Of course, Suzette was the first one to suggest I had “crossed the Rio Grande.” All my other girlfriends waited to hear me confirm it. I didn’t have to do anything or say anything. My silence brought envious smiles. They knew now that I was in a relationship deeper than most. It was so strong that we were sure to coast easily into graduation together, and then into that time that tests all high school romances. Most didn’t survive the distance and the worlds between them. But it was still exciting to think about it. At least, we had something to remember, a time to cherish.

  My more jealous friends wouldn’t miss an opportunity to remind me. In various ways, I heard, “Kane will date lots of girls, and you’ll date other boys.”

  “What a threat,” I replied, which didn’t give them the satisfaction they hoped for.

  Despite all this distraction, I aced my exams and quizzes and began to pull ahead of Theresa Flowman in a big way. Unless I stumbled in some serious manner, I was now the odds-on favorite to be our class valedictorian. Only one thing was happening that could have a detrimental emotional effect on me. My father was getting more serious with Laura Osterhouse. They dated frequently; she ate at our house as often as possible. Aunt Barbara and I chatted about it on the phone, and I gradually came to accept it. The three of us were going places together, and there was even a night when my father joked and said Kane and I could come along to make it a double date.

  Every day, I anticipated my father asking me if I had finished with the diary, but for some reason, he didn’t. Perhaps he thought I had become bored with it and had decided it was better not to mention it and get me started reading it again. Occasionally, Kane asked me if I had given it to my father. I just shook my head, and he immediately changed the subject.

  The construction at Foxworth had taken big leaps forward. The house exterior was complete, and all the work was now going on inside, which was perfect timing for the change in the weather. My father was busier than ever with it, and because of it, he was being offered some other opportunities. He was talking more about expanding his business and was meeting with accountants, lawyers, and even one or two investors. I saw that Laura was a big help to him during all this. Much of their conversation involved these new ideas and opportunities. Both their lives were fuller and more exciting. There was no room for me to feel or express any jealousy. If I had learned anything from Christopher’s diary, it was to cherish the joy your loved ones enjoyed, even if you weren’t part of it. Loving someone really meant hoping they were happy with or without you.

  That weekend before our holiday break was to begin, my father called me from the building site and asked me to sift through some of his mail from the day before that he had left on his desk. He needed a quote from a tile company, and he had forgotten to include it in his bag when he left for the site in the morning. I was on the phone with him, reading off the companies until I found the right one and gave him the information he needed.

  When I put the mail back, I noticed something, a handwritten letter. It wasn’t much more than a one-page note, but it was from Dr. West. In it, he made a specific reference to the future resident of the property and the importance of those “ramps to all entrances and not just the front.” From the fact that there was going to be an elevator for a two-story home, I already had guessed that whoever was going to live there was handicapped. But there was another interesting detail: “CC: Mr. and Mrs. William Anderson” under Dr. West’s signature.

  I returned to my father’s desk. I
sifted through his papers until I found a more formal letter from Dr. West, this time with his letterhead. He had an office in Richmond. Later, when Kane came over, I told him about what I had found.

  “What does it mean?” he asked, shrugging. “The house is really being built for this doctor and not the Arthur Johnson who was mentioned in that news story a while back? Maybe one of his handicapped relatives or something?”

  “I don’t know, but you’re right about Arthur Johnson. He was never really the owner.”

  I told him that my father finally had found out that the owner of the new house was involved in a trust managed by a hedge fund Arthur Johnson ran, but I knew nothing more. Because the property was so different from Foxworth Hall and because of the changes in the landscaping, neither my father nor I gave it very much thought. Kane knew how much my father wanted to put Foxworth Hall into the past. I explained that he was then introduced to this Dr. West, and he and I both concluded that Dr. West had treated Corrine Foxworth when she had been put into a mental clinic.

  “My father suspected that, because it was Dr. West who seemed to know so much about the interior of Foxworth Hall, something he would have learned from Corrine.”

  “So . . . okay. You think he’s the real owner now?”

  “No. That CC at the bottom of his letter makes me think he’s acting on behalf of someone else, this William Anderson.”

  “But . . . why should we care?”

  “What if it’s a pseudonym?”

  “For whom?”