My Sweet Audrina

  That’s all he said to prepare me. Many times I wondered afterwards why he didn’t say much, much more.

  Billie

  Arden slammed the door behind us. Loud. Very loud. A warning to signal her. A few dead leaves had blown in with us. Quickly, I bent to pick them up. When I had them in my hand, I straightened to quickly glance around with a great deal of curiosity. The living room was very pretty, with bright chintzy fabrics covering the sofa and two comfortable-looking chairs. Compared to our huge rooms, it did look very small. The ceilings were hardly eight feet above the floor, giving me a claustrophobic feeling. Still, the room had a cozy charm our kind of rooms would never have, no matter how much money was spent to rejuvenate its lost splendor, or how many sofas and chairs were covered by chintz.

  There were no shadows here, only clear, winter sunlight that poured in brilliantly. There were no stained-glass windows to dazzle my eyes and enchant me with unwanted spells.

  “Mom,” called Arden, “I’ve got Audrina with me. Come on out. You can’t keep your secret forever.”

  I spun around to stare at him, the dead leaves forgotten in my hand. Secrets, secrets, everyone seemed to have secrets. I saw his anxiety, the nervous hands that he stuffed in his pockets as he looked back at me in apprehension. From the look in his eyes I knew that soon I would have to pass a test. God, I prayed, let me do this right—whatever it was.

  “I’ll be right out,” called Billie from another room. She sounded as anxious as her son looked. Her usually warm voice had lost its welcoming tone. Now I felt uncomfortable and ready to turn and leave. Still I hesitated, seeing Arden narrow his eyes as he watched me closely. No, I wasn’t going to run this time. I was going to stay and find out at least one secret.

  Nervously Arden glanced toward what I presumed was Billie’s bedroom door. He didn’t ask me to sit down. Perhaps he even forgot I wore a heavy winter coat with a hood, for he didn’t ask me to take off my coat. He was much too distracted by that closed door he kept watching. I shook off the hood but kept the coat on as I waited and waited, and waited some more. Arden hadn’t removed his coat, either, as if he expected we wouldn’t stay long.

  Then, as he bowed his head and stared at his shoes, I noticed for the first time a wooden wall shelf that held dozens of gold medals with dates and names. Irresistibly drawn, I stepped closer. Oh, good golly day! Delighted, I whirled around to flash a happy smile at Arden.

  “Arden! Billie used to be an ice-skating champion? How wonderful! Look at all these Olympic awards! How could you keep something so fantastic a secret for so long? Just wait until Papa hears about this.”

  Now what had I said wrong? He seemed even more embarrassed. Why, this was almost as good as Billie being Elizabeth Taylor. I could envision Billie gracefully skimming over the ice, wearing some skimpy little costume that glittered. She’d whirl and spin and do those things called double axles and never become dizzy. And in all the time I’d known her and Arden, they’d never boasted, never even hinted. She’d talked to me as if she was nobody special, and she was.

  A small noise distracted me. I whirled around to see Billie, who must have waited until my back was turned, then swiftly hurried to sit in a chair. I stared. Why was she wearing such a full, long skirt in the middle of the afternoon? The gown she wore looked very expensive, as if she were going to attend some gala formal affair.

  Her marvelous jet-black hair was piled high on her head in a mass of ringlets instead of just hanging loose down her back, and that alone made her look different. Her face was heavily painted, even garishly so. Her lashes were longer and thicker than I’d noticed before. And she must have put on every last piece of jewelry she owned. I smiled weakly, not knowing how to handle a situation like this. Without all that stage makeup she was stunningly beautiful. The fancy taffeta dress and heavy costume jewelry made her seem cheap, a fraud, someone I didn’t even know. And worse, someone I didn’t think I’d want to know.

  “Mom,” said Arden, a struggling smile trying to survive on his lips, “you didn’t need to go to so much trouble.”

  No, Billie, you didn’t. I liked you the way you looked before much better.

  “Yes, I did—and Arden, you should have warned me, you know that.”

  I looked from one to the other, guessing something was dreadfully wrong. The vibrations between mother and son were so strong I quivered, sensing their anxieties because I was inside their house—where she didn’t want me. Yet Arden was gazing at me with so much appeal; his eyes were pleading for me to notice nothing amiss. So I smiled and stepped over to shake her hand. I sat down and began a silly conversation. When she’d been at the window and I’d been on the ground outside, she’d been so easy to talk to. Now we were like strangers meeting for the first time. Soon I made some flimsy excuse about having to hurry home to help Aunt Ellsbeth.

  “Won’t you stay for dinner?” asked Arden. I flashed him a hurt look of reproach. At least Papa was direct with his hostility and didn’t hide it behind the guise of friendship as Billie was doing. Gee, I thought childishly, feeling hot tears stinging the back of my eyes, our friendship was only for the outside, not indoors. It was just as Vera had told me—I wasn’t respectable enough for Billie. Was I so crazy that people didn’t want me in their houses? Again my eyes clashed with Arden’s—mine accusing, his still pleading for understanding. Please, please, his eyes were begging. I decided to stay on long enough to find out what was making all of us so self-conscious.

  There was something burning in the oven. Maybe I was interrupting her cooking and she didn’t like it. There wasn’t enough for three and she didn’t really want me to stay for dinner. It was such a little house that the kitchen seemed part of the living room. “Billie, I think I smell something burning in the oven. May I take it out for you?”

  She blanched, shook her head, gave Arden a furtive signal before she weakly smiled at me. “No, thank you, Audrina. Arden can do all of that. But please do stay and have potluck with us.” But the expression of anxiety she couldn’t control gave lie to her words.

  Really distressed and embarrassed now, I bowed my head. “Thank you for asking me. But, as you know, my father doesn’t like for me to come through the woods and over here.”

  Arden glanced at me, then his mother, and said somberly, “Mom, this is getting to be a bit much. Can’t you tell Audrina?”

  She flushed, then paled. I didn’t want to know now. All I wanted to do was escape. I stood to go.

  Suddenly Billie gushed, “Oh, why not!” Flinging wide her slim, strongly muscled arms, she went on, “Audrina, my dear girl, you are now gazing upon what was once the world’s Olympic ice-skating champion until I turned professional. That lasted about eighteen years. I had a glorious time, loving every moment of the excitement. Arden can tell you tales of how we lived out of trunks. We traveled all over the world entertaining people, and then one fateful day I fell on the ice because someone had lost a bobby pin. I could have broken my leg, but I only received a cut from my skate. That small cut should have healed in a week or so. But it didn’t heal in six months because the doctors found out I had diabetes. Would you believe my leg was rotting right before our eyes and there didn’t seem to be anything the doctors could do to stop it. I hadn’t been to a doctor all during my career. I suppose if I had known what kind of vicious disease I had, I might have given up skating much sooner. But as it was, I had my day, didn’t I, son?”

  “Yes, Mom. You had your day in the sun, and I’m happy you did.” His eyes lit up with pride as he smiled. “I can close my eyes right now and see you skating, the star of the show. And I felt so proud, so very proud.” He paused and glanced my way again. “Audrina, what my mother is trying to say and having so much difficulty with is—”

  “I don’t have any legs—that’s what!” shrieked Billie. I stared at her disbelievingly.

  “Yes,” she cried, “I was hoping you’d never find out. I wanted us to be friends. I wanted you to treat me like a normal human being and
not like a freak.”

  So stunned by her information I felt sick, I stared at her face, trying not to look where her legs should be under all those rustling skirts. No legs? How did she get around? I wanted to get out, to run, to cry. For here was another beautiful, kind and wonderful woman whom God had punished—and somebody else Papa wouldn’t approve of.

  A dreadful silence filled the small room and spread throughout the whole cottage, almost as if time were standing still. We all hung on the brink of some chasm that would swallow Billie and forever separate Arden and me. Whatever I did or said, whatever expression was on my face this very moment, would tell them more than my words.

  I didn’t know what to do or what to say, or even what to think. I floundered helplessly, trying to grasp something that would give me the right words … and then I thought of my mother. Suppose, just suppose, that Momma had come home from the hospital with no legs. Would I have felt disgust, revulsion? Would I have been ashamed and embarrassed to have her seen? No, I’d have wanted her back, no matter what. I’d do anything to have Momma back, with or without legs. That’s when I found my voice.

  “You’re the most beautiful woman with dark hair I’ve ever seen.” I said it sincerely. “I’d say you were the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen, but my mother was beautiful, too. If only I could have my mother again, I wouldn’t care if she had legs or not—” I paused, flushed and felt guilty. For Momma would have cared. She wouldn’t have been able to cope with her loss. She’d cry, hide herself away and probably die from the lack of wanting to live without her legs.

  Admiration washed over me for Billie, who would live for Arden’s sake, for her own, too, no matter what the circumstances. “I think, too, that you are the kindest, most generous woman I’ve ever known,” I went on. “I’ve piled my problems on your shoulders and not once have you even hinted you had your own.” Humbled and ashamed, again my head inclined. I had felt sorry for myself just because my memory was perforated with holes through which the secrets of my existence had been dropped.

  Now that she’d told me a little, Billie was going to tell me everything. “My husband left me shortly after I came home from the second amputation two years ago.” There was no bitterness in her voice. “My son waits on me; at least, he helps me with what I can’t do myself. Although I’m pretty good about doing for myself, hey, Arden?”

  “Yes, Mom, you’re super. There’s very little you can’t do for yourself.” He smiled at me, so proud of his mother.

  “Of course, my ex-husband does send his piddling check once a month,” added Billie.

  “Dad will come back one day, Mom. I know he will.”

  “Sure he will. In a year of Sundays he’ll come back.”

  I jumped up to run and kiss her heavily rouged cheek, then impulsively I hugged her close. Her strong arms closed about me almost automatically, as if she couldn’t resist someone who loved and admired her, even though tears were streaming down her cheeks and black mascara ran in streaks. “I’m so sorry I burst in on you without warning,” I choked, crying, too. “I’m sorry you lost your legs. But Billie, if you were still skating, and this may sound selfish, I’d never have known you or Arden. Fate brought you both to me.” I smiled and brushed away my tears. “Papa says that fate is the captain of all our ships, only we don’t know it.”

  “That’s a fine way to put responsibility where it doesn’t belong. Now get along home, Audrina, before your papa comes looking for you, and I’ll see you another day. If you want to come back.”

  “Oh, I’ll be back soon,” I said with confidence.

  That day Arden again walked me back through the woods.

  I was full of admiration for Billie—and wonder, too. I wanted to know just how she managed to clean house and do the laundry when she had no legs. If only I could tell Vera all that Billie could do without legs, when she could hardly do anything with two. I wondered how I’d handle the day when finally I saw Billie without all those stiff, concealing skirts. For surely she couldn’t wear so many clothes in the summer.

  At the edge of the woods we said a hasty goodbye. Arden still had to deliver newspapers, and then bag groceries. It was likely he would never have enough sleep until he graduated from college. I watched him turn and race back home. He was so conscientious, so dedicated to his mother and helping her financially that I had less and less time with him. There was a price to pay for everything, I thought sadly, opening the side door and entering our house of shadows.

  Sprawled on the purple chaise, Vera was busy reading another of the romances that filled Momma’s closet shelves. She was so deeply engrossed she didn’t pay much attention to me. I wanted to tell her about Billie, but for some reason held back, afraid she’d say something ugly. And it wouldn’t make any difference if I told her how hard Billie worked. Vera thought work was for stupid people who didn’t know any better. “My brains will see me through,” she’d told me many times. As I watched her, and she was unaware of me, I saw the tip of her tongue moving back and forth on her lower lip. Her eyes appeared glassy; her breasts heaved upward and soon her hand was inside her blouse, caressing herself. Then she put the book aside, threw back her head and began to use her other hand under her skirts. I stared at what she was doing. “Vera! Stop that! It looks gross!”

  “Go ‘way,” she murmured without opening her eyes. “What do you know about anything? You’re a babe in the woods—or are you?”

  Now that I was growing up, Papa would often take me to his brokerage firm, allowing me to watch and listen to learn all about what he did. I was his showpiece, replacing my mother, who’d often sat in the very chair he gave me beside his desk. Old men and women came to talk to me and to joke with Papa before they turned their conversations to financial talk Papa had taught me to understand. “My daughter is going to be my business partner one day,” Papa proudly informed all newcomers who hadn’t heard this a hundred times before. “With my kind of daughter, a man doesn’t need a son.”

  He made me feel good on days like this, which ended with dinner in a fine restaurant and a movie afterward. On the city streets I saw legless beggars on little carts they shoved along, sometimes with gloved hands. They used little things that looked like small rubber-bottomed irons to grab at the sidewalks and spare their hands the blisters. And before I’d never noticed them, or if I had, I’d turned my eyes away and pretended they didn’t exist.

  The very next day I had to say something to Billie that I’d held back since the day I knew about her lack of legs. “Billie, I’ve been looking at people in the city who have no legs. So I won’t be shocked if you don’t always wear those long skirts.”

  She scowled at me, then turned her head. She had a lovely profile, classical and perfect. “I’ll know when you’re ready to see me without my full, long skirts. I’ll tell by your eyes. And you’re not ready yet. It’s not pretty, Audrina. Those men you see on the streets wear trousers that they fold over so you don’t see the stumps. Once I had very beautiful legs; now I have eight-inch stumps that even I can’t look at without feeling disgust.” She sighed, shrugged, then gave me a charming smile. “Sometimes my missing legs still hurt. Phantom pain, the doctors call it. I wake up in the night and feel my legs below me, hurting so badly sometimes I can’t help but call Arden, and he comes running to give me some drug the doctor prescribes. He won’t let me keep it by my bedside, afraid I’ll take too much by accident. It makes my mind fuzzy so I can’t remember if I take one or even two pills. While I wait for the pill to take effect, he sits by my bedside and tells me silly stories to make me laugh. Sometimes that boy of mine stays up all night just to entertain me when the pains won’t go away. God was good to me the day he told me not to destroy the baby that might spoil my career. I thought twice and didn’t have an abortion. If I had known long ago all the children I prevented would have been like Arden, perhaps I’d have had twelve children.”

  Did that mean she’d had many abortions? I didn’t like to think she had. I convinced
myself she meant she’d done something else to keep from having babies and giving up her career. I also knew even if she’d had a hundred sons, only one would be like Arden, devoted, responsible, a man even before he finished being a boy. He was never depressed or angry, just even and steady and always there when he was needed. Like Billie.

  Overwhelmed with my thoughts, I got up to embrace Billie. I never was able to impulsively show affection to my aunt, when many times I wanted to. I needed Billie to be my substitute mother, especially when Aunt Ellsbeth always held me at arm’s length. “All right, Billie, maybe I’m not ready yet to see you without your long skirts, but one day when I come over here and you don’t have on your dressy clothes, I won’t feel disgust. You’ll look in my eyes and you’ll see nothing but admiration and gratitude for being what you are and giving Arden to the world as well.”

  She laughed and put her strong arms around me before she looked deep into my eyes. There was sadness in her voice when she spoke next. “Don’t go falling in love too soon, Audrina. Arden is my son, and I think he’s perfect, but all mothers think their sons are perfect. You need someone special. I’d like to think that Arden is that special, for I’d never want him to disappoint you—but if at some point he does, remember that none of us is perfect. We all have our Achilles’ heels, so to speak.”

  Then again, with a great deal of perception she was searching my eyes, and maybe my soul. “What troubles you so much, Audrina? Why all those shadows in such beautiful violet eyes?”

  “I don’t know.” I held fast to her. “I guess I just hate being named after an older sister who died mysteriously at the age of nine. I wish like crazy I’d been the First Audrina, who was also the Best Audrina. My papa won’t stop telling me how wonderful she was, and every word he says to praise her tells me I’m not living up to the standards she set. I feel cursed, and doubly cursed now that Momma died on my ninth birthday and Sylvia was born then, too. It’s weird and not right for so much to happen when the ninth day of the ninth month comes around.”