My Sweet Audrina

  Some of those classic books contained very wicked material, according to my cousin Vera, who always informed me about what was, or was not, wicked.

  I liked to watch Momma lying on her couch. Behind her was a concert-sized grand piano that her father had given her when she had won a gold metal in a music competition. Many a time she’d told me she could have gone on to play in all the best concert halls, but Papa hadn’t wanted a professional musician for his wife. “Don’t expect to have too many talents, Audrina. Men won’t approve if it’s likely you’ll earn more money than they do.” Downward her hand would drift. Without even looking, she would cleverly find the very piece of chocolate she wanted and pop it into her mouth. My father often warned her about eating too much chocolate and becoming fat, but she never did.

  My mother was tall, curvy where she should be and slender in all the places a woman should be. My papa often told me she was the greatest beauty on the East Coast and had been the catch of the season at her debutante ball. Many a handsome and rich man had asked for my momma’s hand in marriage, but it had been Damian Jonathan Adare who had swept my mother off her feet with his dashing dark good looks and his winning charm. “He towered over every other man in my life, Audrina,” my mother would tell me. “When your father came back from the sea, all the girls went gaga just to have him in the room. I felt so lucky when he had eyes only for me.” Then she’d frown as if remembering some other girl Papa might have “had eyes for.”

  Vera liked to joke that my father had married my mother only because he admired her hair color so much. “Witchy hair,” Vera called Momma’s hair and mine. “Chameleon hair,” Papa often called it. It was strange hair, and at times I believed Vera was right. Our hair didn’t know which color it was supposed to be, and was, instead, all colors. Flaxen blonde, with gold, auburn, bright red, chestnut brown, copper and even some white. Papa loved the strange prismlike color of our hair. I believed he’d ordered God to give me the kind of hair I had; if He hadn’t, Papa might have sent me back. For the first Audrina also had chameleon hair.

  My papa, six-foot five and weighing well over two hundred pounds, was the tallest man I had ever seen, though Vera was always telling me there were many men who were taller, especially basketball players. Papa’s hair was the darkest black, looking blue sometimes in the sunlight. He had beautiful almond-shaped eyes, so brown they appeared black, and his lashes were so long and thick they appeared false, even though they weren’t. I knew; I’d tried to pull them off after I saw Momma glue some false ones on. His eyes were slick as oil, scary and wonderful, especially when they glittered. He had smooth, soft skin that often appeared ruddy in the winters, and richly bronze in the summers. When Momma was displeased with Papa and his selfish ways of spending more on himself than on her, she’d call him a dandy and a fop, though what those words meant I didn’t know. I suspected she meant that my huge, powerful papa cared more about clothes than he cared about principles.

  He feared growing old, especially feared losing his hair. He checked his hairbrush each day, almost counting the hairs he found there. He saw the dentist four times a year. He flossed his teeth so often Momma grew disgusted. His doctor checked him over as much as the dentist did. He fretted about minor flaws no one would ever notice but him, such as thick, horny toenails he had difficulty clipping. Yet when he smiled, his charm was irresistible.

  Principles were another thing I didn’t understand, except Momma often said that Papa lacked them. Again I vaguely guessed she meant Papa wanted what he wanted, and no one had better get in his way and try to prevent him from taking what he had to have. Yet, sometimes when he was with me, and he was tender and loving, he’d give me my way. But only sometimes. There were other times—terrible other times.

  It had been agreed when my aunt came back to live here when Vera was only one year old that she would do all the housework in exchange for her board and keep, while my mother did the cooking. Unreasonably, my aunt wanted to do the cooking (which she considered easier) instead of the housework, but no one could eat anything my aunt prepared. Momma despised housework, but she could throw anything into a pot or bowl without measuring and it would come out tasting divine. Papa said she was a “creative” cook, because she had an artist’s mind, while Ellie (as only he called her) was born to be some man’s slave. How my aunt glared when he said mean things like that.

  My aunt was a fearsome woman. Tall, lean and mean was my father’s description. “It’s no wonder no man wants to marry you,” my father often teased my aunt. “You’ve got the tongue of a shrew.” Not only did she have a sharp tongue, as mean for me as for Vera, but she also had her golden rule about sparing the rod and spoiling the child. Neither Vera nor I were spared when she was in charge. Fortunately my parents seldom left us alone with her. In some ways, it seemed my aunt disliked her daughter even more than she disliked me. It had always been my belief that women were born to be loving mothers. Then, when I gave that more thought, I couldn’t remember how I had arrived at that conclusion.

  Momma liked for my aunt to chastise Vera, so then she could open her arms wide and welcome Vera into them, saying time and again to Vera, “It’s all right, I’ll love you even if your own mother can’t.”

  “That’s the weakness of being you, Lucietta,” said my aunt sharply. “You can give love to anything.”

  As if her own daughter, Vera, was less than human.

  Never would my aunt Ellsbeth name the man who was Vera’s father. “He was a cheat and a liar. I don’t want to remember his name,” she’d say with scorn.

  It was so difficult to understand what was going on in our house. Treacherous undercurrents, like the rivers that ran into the sea that wasn’t so very far away.

  It was true my aunt was tall, her face was long and she was skinny, even if she did eat three times more than my mother. Sometimes when Papa said cruel things to my aunt, her already thin lips would purse together to become a fine line. Her nostrils would flare, her hands would tighten into fists, as if she’d like to belt him one if she only had the nerve.

  Maybe it was Aunt Ellsbeth who kept our city friends from coming more often. There had to be some reason why they came only when we threw a party. Then, Momma said, our “friends” popped out of the woodwork like insects come to feast on the picnic. Papa adored all parties until they were over. Then, for one reason or another, he would jump on Momma and punish her for some trivial thing he called a “social error,” such as looking at a handsome man for too long, or dancing with him too many times. Oh, it was difficult being a wife, I could tell. One never knew just what to do, or how friendly to be. Momma was expected to play the piano to entertain while people danced or sang. But she wasn’t supposed to play so well that some people cried and told her later that she’d been a fool to marry and give up her musical career.

  No casual callers ever came to our doors. No salesmen were allowed either. Signs were posted everywhere: “No Solicitors Allowed,” and “Beware of the Dog,” and “Keep Off, This is Private Property. Trespassers will be Prosecuted.”

  I often went to bed feeling unhappy with my life, feeling an undercurrent that was pulling my feet from under me, and I was floundering, floundering, bound to sink and drown. It seemed I heard a voice whispering, telling me there were rivers to cross and places to go, but I’d never go anywhere. There were people to know and fun to have, but I wouldn’t experience any of that. I woke up and heard the tinkle of the whispering wind chimes telling me over and over that I belonged where I was, and here I would stay forevermore, and nothing I did would matter in the long run. Shivering, I hugged my arms over my thin chest. In my ears I heard Papa’s voice, saying over and over again, “This is where you belong, safe with Papa, safe in your home.”

  Why did I have to have an older sister dead and in her grave at the age of nine? Why did I have to be named after a dead girl? It seemed peculiar, unnatural. I hated the First Audrina, the Best Audrina, the Good and Perfect and Never Wrong Audrina. Yet I had t
o replace her if ever I was to win a permanent place in Papa’s heart. I hated the ritual of visiting her grave every Sunday after church services and putting flowers there bought from a florist, as if the flowers from our yard weren’t good enough.

  In the morning I ran to Papa and right away he picked me up and held me close as the grandfather clocks in the hallways relentlessly ticked on. All about us the house was as silent as a grave, as if waiting for death to come and take us all, as it had taken the First and Best Audrina. Oh, how I hated and envied my older dead sister. How cursed I felt to bear her name.

  “Where is everyone?” I whispered, glancing around fearfully.

  “Out in the yard,” he said, hugging me closer. “It’s Saturday, my love. I know time isn’t important to you, but it is to me. Time is never important to special people with unusual gifts. Yet for me the weekend hours are the best ones. I knew you’d be frightened to find yourself alone in an empty house, so I stayed inside while the rest went out to harvest the rewards of their planting.”

  “Papa, why can’t I remember every day like other people? I don’t remember last year, or the year before—why?”

  “We are all victims of dual heritages,” he said softly, stroking my hair and gently rocking me back and forth in the rocker that my great-great-great-grandmother had used to nurse her twelve children in. “Each child inherits genes from both parents, and that determines his or her hair color, eye color and personality traits. Babies come into the world to be controlled by those genes and by the particular environment that surrounds them. You are still waiting to fill with your dead sister’s gifts. When you do, all that is good and beautiful in this world will belong to you, as it belonged to her. While you and I wait for that marvelous day when your empty pitcher is filled, I am doing my damnedest to give you the very best.”

  At that moment my aunt and mother came into the kitchen, trailed by Vera, who carried a basket of freshly picked butter beans.

  Aunt Ellsbeth must have overheard most of what Papa had just said, because she remarked sarcastically, “You should have been a philosopher instead of a stockbroker, Damian. Then maybe someone would care to listen to your words of wisdom.”

  I stared at her, dredging up from my treacherous memory something I might or might not have dreamed. It could even be a dream that belonged to the First Audrina, who’d been so clever, so beautiful and so everlastingly perfect. But before I could capture any illusive memory, all were gone, gone.

  I sighed, unhappy with myself, unhappy with the adults who ruled me, with the cousin who insisted she was really my only sister because she wanted to steal my place, when already my place had been stolen by the First and Best Audrina, who was a dead Audrina.

  And now I was supposed to act like her, talk like her and be everything that she’d been … and where was the real me supposed to go?

  Sunday came, and as soon as the church services were over, Papa drove, as he always did, straight to the family cemetery near our house where the name Whitefern was engraved on a huge arching gateway through which we slowly drove. Beyond the archway the cemetery itself had to be approached on foot. We were all dressed in our best, and bearing expensive flowers. Papa tugged me from the car. I resisted, hating that grave we had to visit and that dead girl who stole everyone’s love from me.

  It seemed this was the first time I could clearly remember the words Papa must have said many times before. “There she lies, my first Audrina.” Sorrowfully, he stared down at the flat grave with the slender white-marble headstone bearing my very own name, but her birth and death dates. I wondered when my parents would recover from the shock of her mysterious death. It seemed to me that if sixteen years hadn’t healed their shock, maybe ninety wouldn’t, either. I couldn’t bear to look at that tombstone, so I stared up into my papa’s handsome face so high above. This was the kind of perspective I would never have once I grew up, seeing his strong, square chin from underneath, next his heavy pouting lower lip, then his flaring nostrils and the fringe of his long lower dark lashes meeting with the upper ones as he blinked back his tears. It was just like looking up at God.

  He seemed so powerful, so much in control. He smiled at me again. “My first Audrina is in that grave, dead at nine years of age. That wonderful, special Audrina—just as you are wonderful and special. Never doubt for one moment that you aren’t just as wonderful and gifted as she was. Believe in what Papa tells you and you will never go wrong.”

  I swallowed. Visiting this grave and hearing about this Audrina always made my throat hurt. Of course I wasn’t wonderful or special, yet how could I tell him that when he seemed so convinced? In my childish way I figured my value to him depended on just how special and wonderful I turned out to be later on.

  “Oh, Papa,” cried Vera, stumbling over to his side and clutching at his hand. “I loved her so much, so very much. She was so sweet and wonderful and special. And so beautiful. I don’t think in a million years there will ever be another like your First Audrina.” She flashed a wicked smile my way to tell me again that never would I be as pretty as the First and Best and Most Perfect Audrina. “And she was so brilliant in school, too. It’s terrible the way she died, really awful. I’d be so ashamed if that happened to me, so ashamed I’d rather be dead.”

  “Shut up!” roared Papa in a voice so mighty that the ducks on the river flew away. He hurried then to put his pot of flowers on that grave, and then he seized my hand and pulled me toward his car.

  Momma began to cry.

  Already I knew Vera was right. Whatever wonderful specialness the First Audrina had possessed was buried in the grave with her.

  In the Cupola

  Not wanted, not worthy, not pretty and not special enough were the words I thought as I went up the stairs and into the attic. I wished the First Audrina had never been born. I had to wade through the clutter of old dusty junk before I came to the rusty, iron, spiraling stairs that would take me through a square opening in the floor that once had a rickety iron guardrail that someday Papa was going to replace.

  In that octagon room there was a rectangular Turkey rug, all crimsons, golds and blues. Each day I visited I combed that fringe with my fingers, as Papa often raked through his dark hair with his fingers when he was enraged or frustrated. There were no furnishings in the cupola, only a pillow for me to sit on. The sunlight through the stained-glass windows fell upon the carpet in swirls like bright peacock feathers and confused the designs with patterns of colored light. My legs and arms were patterned, too, like impermanent tattoos. High above, dangling down from the apex of the pointed roof, were long rectangles of painted glass—Chinese wind chimes that hung from scarlet silken cords. They hung so high the wind never made them move, yet I often heard them tinkle, tinkle. If just one time they would sway for me while I watched, then I could believe I wasn’t crazy.

  I fell down on the cushion on the rug and began to play with the old paper dolls that I kept lined up around the walls. Each one was named after someone I knew, but since I didn’t know too many people, many of the paper dolls had the same names. But only one was named Audrina. It seemed I could vaguely remember once there had been men and boy dolls, but now I had only girls and ladies.

  I was so absorbed in my thoughts that I didn’t hear a sound until suddenly a voice asked, “Are you thinking about me, sweet Audrina?”

  My head jerked around. There stood Vera in the haunted, colored lights of the cupola. Her straight hair was a pale apricot color unlike any other color I’d ever seen, but that wasn’t unusual in our family. Her eyes very dark, like her mother’s, like my father’s.

  The colors refracted from the many windows cast myriad colored lights on the floor, tattooed patterns on her face, so I’m sure my eyes were lit up just like hers, like many-faceted jewels. The cupola was a magic place.

  “Are you listening to me, Audrina?” she asked, her voice whispery and scary. “Why do you just sit there and not answer? Have you lost your vocal cords as well as your memor
y?”

  I hated her being in the cupola. This was my own special, private room for trying to figure out what I couldn’t remember as I moved the dolls about and pretended they were my family. Truthfully, I was putting the dolls through the years of my life, trying in this way to reconstruct and dredge up the secret that eluded me. Someday, some wonderful day, I hoped to retrieve from those dolls all I couldn’t recall so that I’d be made whole, and just as wonderful as that dead sister ever was.

  Vera’s left arm had just come out of a cast. She moved it gingerly as she stepped into my little sanctuary.

  Despite my off-and-on dislike for Vera, I felt sorry she could break her arm just by banging it against something hard. According to her she’d had eleven broken bones, and I’d never had any. Little brushes against a table and her wrist fractured. A slighter bump and huge purple bruises came to mar her skin for weeks. If she fell off her bed onto a soft, padded carpet she still broke a leg, an ankle, a forearm, something.

  “Does your arm still hurt?”

  “Don’t look at me with pity!” ordered Vera, limping into the cupola, then scrunching down on her heels in an awkward way. Her dark eyes bore holes into me. “I have fragile bones, small, delicate bones, and if they break easily, it’s because I have more blue blood than you do.”

  She could have her blue blood if it meant broken bones twice a year. Sometimes when she was so mean to me I thought God was punishing her. And sometimes I felt guilty because my bones were tough and refused to break even when I occasionally fell.

  Oh, I wondered again, if the First, Best and Most Perfect Audrina had been as aristocratic as Vera.

  “And of course my arm hurts!” shrilled Vera, her dark eyes flashing with reds, greens and blues. “It hurts like hell!” Her voice turned plaintive as she went on. “When your arm is broken it makes you feel so helpless. It’s really worse than a broken leg because there are so many things you can’t do for yourself. Since you don’t eat much, I don’t know why your bones don’t break more easily than mine … but, of course, you must have peasant bones.”