What did she mean? I asked, but she refused to explain. Still, I loved her for trying to help me, never suspecting that maybe she was waiting for me to try and help her.
Later that night I decided she was depressed because Papa didn’t marry her, depressed because she hadn’t had but one Christmas card and one telephone call from Vera in five years. How hateful of Vera to treat her mother as if she’d never existed. I had to have a talk with Papa soon, very soon.
But Papa was seldom home, and when he was, my aunt was there and I didn’t want her to know I was going to urge him to marry her.
How complicated everything was. Those were almost the first words I said to Arden when he came home for a weekend. “My aunt knew all about your mother’s condition.”
He smiled, kissed me four or five times, held me for long, long moments so hard I felt every muscle in his strong young body. I felt something else, too, making me draw away and glance downward. That bulging hardness clamored the wind chimes in my head, filled me with frightened panic so I felt weak and ready to run. He noticed and seemed hurt, then embarrassed so much he held his topcoat to cover what betrayed his excitement. Lightly he said, “Well, I did what I could and she did what she could, and I’m sure you did what you could, but secrets will out, and maybe it’s for the best.”
He went on to speak of our marriage soon after he finished college, and that was only weeks away. Again panic visited and told me I needed more time. We were in the woods again, on the way to my home, when he embraced me, much more passionately than ever before. Until he grabbed me I’d heard the little birds overhead singing, but the moment he touched me the birds turned off. I froze and became stiff from one too intimate caress. I jerked from his arms and turned my back, clamping my hands over my ears to shut out the clamor of the wind chimes, which I shouldn’t be hearing way out here.
Tenderly Arden slipped his arms about my waist and pulled me back against him. “It’s all right, darling. I understand. You’re still very young, and I’ve got to keep remembering that. I want to make the rest of your life happy to reimburse you for … for …” and there he stumbled, making me yank away again and whirl to confront him. “Reimburse me for what?”
“For all the things that shadow your eyes. I want my love to erase your fears about everything. I want our child to respond to your care as Sylvia never has.”
Child, child, child. I didn’t need another child. Arden seldom spoke Sylvia’s name, as if he, too, wanted to pretend she didn’t exist. He did nothing to harm her, but nothing to assist her, either.
“Arden, if you can’t love Sylvia, then you can’t love me. She’s part of the rest of my life. Please realize that now and tell me if you can accept her, or else let’s say goodbye before this goes on any further.”
He glanced to where Sylvia was winding round and round the tallest tree in the woods. Her slender arm was outstretched so her fingers could lightly trail over the bark as endlessly she circled. I told myself she was trying to communicate with the tree by feeling its “skin” and there was some sense in what she did. That’s the way she was, always active, never still while she was awake, always doing something that was essentially nothing.
Right to the edge of the woods Arden escorted me and Sylvia. I was feeling right enough by this time to exchange happy plans with him for that evening and the next day.
My father and aunt were in the kitchen arguing. The minute they heard me enter the house, their voices stilled and I heard that unnatural quiet that comes to announce that you’ve interrupted something private.
I hurried up the stairs with Sylvia.
Arden returned to college for his last semester, and I settled down to helping Papa turn this house into better than new. Now that Papa was noted for making everything he touched turn to gold, Aunt Ellsbeth liked to tell him acidly that soon his head would be too large to come through the double front doors.
Literally thumbing his nose at her, Papa ordered workmen to tear down walls, to make some rooms larger and others smaller. He had bathrooms added to his rooms and to mine, and two more as well. He decided he needed two large walk-in closets to accommodate his many suits and dozens of pairs of expensive shoes. My own room was enlarged and a dressing room was added, and with my private bath, I felt splendidly decadent with all those crystal and gold fixtures and electric lights framing my dressing mirror. In the end it seemed we’d have a home not equal to but surpassing what it had been. Papa searched until he found all the genuine antiques the Whiteferns had sold years ago, proving that all that my aunt had thrown in my mother’s face about the “fakes” in our house was true. Even that grand bed Momma had believed was the real thing proved to be just a reproduction.
I listened with incredulity to all he planned to do. He had such miserly ways about petty things, and such extravagant ideas when it came to this house and his clothes.
To everyone in the financial world he was the “messiah” of the stock market. That gave him so much confidence he began to write a stock advice newsletter in his spare time. He listed the stocks to buy, to short, to sell and then sold what he told others to buy long the day his newsletter was delivered. He covered his shorts when others went in too short. He bought what he told his clients to sell. In a few hours of trading, he’d end up with thousands of dollars in profits. It seemed unfair, and I told him this. But he replied by saying that all of life was unfair. “A battle of wits to survive, Audrina. The victories in life belong to those who move fastest and most cleverly—and it’s not cheating. After all, the public should have better sense, shouldn’t they?”
Papa sent this stock advice letter to a friend who lived in San Francisco, and this friend had a publishing business, and all such “friends” were willing to collaborate in the fraud.
Then came that wonderful day when Arden was due home from college, having received his diploma. Papa had been so heartless as not to allow me to attend his graduation ceremonies.
Unknown to Papa, who’d have me always dependent on him, Arden had taught me to drive years ago. Therefore it was easy to “borrow” one of Papa’s older cars while he was at work, and with Sylvia dressed in her best, I headed for the airport terminal to wait for his plane to land. The moment was at hand. I was foolish enough to think I was ready for anything.
A Long Day’s Journey
Arden came running to me in the airport. Soon I was so tightly embraced and so fervently kissed that I pulled away, overwhelmed with his emotions. Frantically I looked for Sylvia, who’d disappeared the moment Arden seized me in his arms. After an hour’s search, we found my small sister staring at the colorful magazines. She was completely disheveled by this time, and I’d wanted Arden to see how pretty she was when she was fresh and clean. To make matters worse, someone who’d meant to be kind had given her a chocolate ice cream cone. Half the ice cream was on her face, part in her hair and in her nostrils, and very little of what was left was finding its melting way into her mouth. I took it from her grasp and held it for her to lick. Worse than anything was the stench that came from her diapers. I had managed to half toilet train Sylvia, but she still had enough accidents that I kept her in diapers.
There was little Arden and I could talk about on the way home, when every move Sylvia made was an embarrassment to both of us. “I’ll see you later this evening,” he said as I let him out on his corner. He tried not to wrinkle his nose when Sylvia clawed at him for affection.
No sooner were Sylvia and I inside the house than I heard the loud voice of my father. A terrible argument was going on in the kitchen.
I paused in the doorway with my arm protectively around Sylvia’s thin shoulders. Aunt Ellsbeth was dashing about, frantically preparing another of those troublesome gourmet meals that Papa loved so much. She wore a new dress, a very pretty, feminine dress that might well have been taken from my mother’s closet where all her clothes still hung, growing old and musty smelling. Aunt Ellsbeth wielded a huge cleaver so ferociously I wondered why Papa didn?
??t fear for his life when she glared at him with that thing in her hand. He didn’t seem afraid as he bellowed again, “Ellie, what the hell is wrong with you?”
“You need to ask?” she yelled back, slamming down her knife and whirling to confront him. “You didn’t come home until five-thirty this morning. You’re sleeping with someone. Who?”
“It’s really none of your business,” he answered coldly. I shuddered from his flat tone. Couldn’t he tell she loved him and was doing the best she could to please him?
“None of my business, hey?” she stormed. Her long, handsome face flamed redder. “We’ll see about that, Damian Adare!” Her dark eyes furious, my aunt seized up the large bowl full of her chopped vegetables and quickly dumped them down the garbage disposal. Then she was emptying all the steaming pots and pans into the sink.
“Stop that!” roared Papa, appearing beside himself. “That food cost me good money! Ellsbeth, behave yourself!”
“To hell with you!” she screamed back at him. She tore off her apron and hurled it in his face, then shouted, “I need a life of my own, Damian! A life far from here. I’m sick of being your housekeeper, your cook, your gardener, your laundry expert, and, most of all, I’m sick of being your now and then bed partner! I’m also sick of taking care of your idiot daughter—and as for your Audrina—”
“Yesss?” drawled Papa, his eyes narrowing, his voice taking on that deadly, silky tone that made the hackles on my neck rise. “What is it you want to say about my Audrina?”
I quivered as I drew Sylvia into my embrace, trying to cover her ears and her eyes and shield her as much as possible from this. I had to hear what they were going to say. They didn’t seem to see either of us. I watched the color in my aunt’s usually pale face drain away.
Nervously my aunt fluttered her hands toward him in a helpless, appealing way. “I wouldn’t tell her, Damian, really I wouldn’t. I would never tell Audrina anything to make her unhappy. Just let me go. Give me what is mine, and let me go.”
“And what is it that is yours, Ellie?” asked Papa in that same oily voice, sitting at the kitchen table with his elbows propped there and his hands templed under his chin. I didn’t trust him when he looked like that.
“You know what is mine,” she said in a hard and very determined voice. “After you lost Lucietta’s inheritance, you went after the little I had left. You promised to pay it back doubled in three months. What a fool I was to have believed in you. But hasn’t that always been my weakness, believing in you? Now, Damian, give me back my two thousand dollars—doubled!”
“Where would you go if you left here, Ellie? What would you do?” He picked up the little paring knife she’d used to peel potatoes and began to clean under his nails, which were always clean.
“I’m going to my daughter, to your daughter, too, though you don’t want to admit she is. She’s in that huge city all alone, cast off by that man she ran away with.”
He stayed her with his upraised hand, like a king who had to turn his head away from a distasteful subject. “I don’t care to hear more. You’re a fool if you go to her. She doesn’t love you, Ellie, she just wants to take what you’ll bring. I heard in the village that Lamar Rensdale killed himself. No doubt your daughter had a lot to do with his suicide.”
“Damian, please!” she wailed, all her fire gone now. “Just give me what is mine, that’s all I want. I’ll go and never bother you again. I swear you’ll not hear from me or Vera—just give me enough so I won’t starve.”
“I am not giving you one red cent,” said Papa coldly. “As long as you stay in my home you’ll have food to eat and clothes to wear, a place to sleep and money to spend on the trifles you need. But hell will freeze over before I give you money to go and live with that hellcat you gave birth to. And remember this, Ellie: Once you leave, you can’t come back. Not again. Life is hard on the outside, Ellie, very hard. You’re not a young woman anymore. And even if it isn’t heaven here, it isn’t hell, either. Think twice before you leave me.”
“Isn’t it hell?” Her voice rose to a shriek. “It’s hell with a capital H, Damian, pure, unadulterated hell! What am I here but an unpaid housekeeper? After Lucietta died and you began to look my way with kind eyes, I thought you’d love me again. You came to my bedroom when you needed release, and I gave you that. I should have denied you, but I wanted you, as I’ve always wanted you. When you lived in this house with my sister, I stayed awake at night picturing the two of you in your bedroom—and how I envied her, and hated her. I began to hate you, too, even more than I did her. Now I wish to God I’d never come back with Vera. There was a young doctor in the hospital where I gave birth to Vera who wanted me to marry him, but I had your image engraved on my brain. It was you I wanted. God alone knows why when I knew even then what you were, and still are. Give me my money, Damian,” she said, striding toward his office as I backed away, pulling Sylvia with me. She didn’t see us as we crouched in a dim corner of the wide hall cluttered with furniture.
In a few seconds, while my father sat at the table, she was back, carrying my father’s corporation checkbook. “Write,” she ordered. “Make it twenty-five thousand. After all, this was my home, too, and I should get something for abandoning my lifetime privilege to live under this roof. Wasn’t it considerate of my sister to include me in her will? It was almost as if she meant for her husband to be part of her legacy—but I don’t need you nearly as much as I need the money.”
He gave the blue checkbook a funny look, then took it and with precision wrote a long blue check, which he handed to her with a tight, ironic smile. She glanced at the figure, then glanced again. “Damian, I didn’t ask for fifty thousand.”
“Don’t leave me, Ellie. Say you’re sorry for all those ugly words. Tear up the check or keep it, but don’t go.”
Rising again to his feet, he tried to take her in his arms. She kept staring at the check. As I watched, I saw a blush of excitement heat her face.
Then Papa seized her from behind and turned her around to crush his full lips down on her thin ones. Even as she tried to struggle, the check slipped from her grasp and fluttered to the floor. Greatly to my surprise, after all she’d screamed at him, her arms slipped eagerly around his neck, and she responded to his kisses with just as much ardor as he showed. Helplessly, as if unable to resist, she allowed him to pick her up. He headed for the back stairs with my aunt in his arms.
Feeling numb and dazed, a queasiness in my stomach, I dragged my trembling sister into the kitchen. I picked up the check and stared at the fifty thousand dollars and no cents made out to Ellsbeth Whitefern. I pinned the check to the corkboard where my aunt was sure to see it in the morning, and with it she could leave—if she wanted to.
All that I’d heard and seen in the kitchen churned in my head that night like a carousel of skeletal ponies, going round and round and up, down. Lamar Rensdale had killed himself—why? How did the villagers know? Had his death been in the local newspapers, and if it had, why hadn’t I seen it? It had to be that Vera had called and told my aunt, and she was so grief-stricken now she needed someone, and the only one she had was her mother. Had Vera truly loved my handsome music teacher? If so, why had he taken his own life? I sighed and heard the wind answer … and that was about all the answer I was likely to get.
Deep in the recesses of my mind I avoided the biggest question of all. What was it my aunt promised she wouldn’t tell me? What was the secret that would make me so unhappy if I learned it?
Bad dreams woke me up early the next morning. At the top of the front stairs, with the early sun pouring through the stained glass, I stopped short and froze.
Down on the foyer floor, with the sun coming through that rich, colorful glass to throw geometric designs on the floor, my aunt was sprawled face down and very still. I took the steps slowly, slowly, like someone sleepwalking and fearful every second of facing too many horrors. She’s not dead, I kept telling myself, not dead, not dead, only hurt. I had to call an am
bulance before it was too late. She very seldom used the front stairs because the back ones took her down so near the kitchen, which was where she stayed almost all day. I thought I heard a faint sound from the kitchen, like a door being carefully closed.
Tentatively I approached her. “Aunt Ellie,” I whispered fearfully. I knelt to roll over the body of my aunt, and then I stared into her face. “Don’t be dead,” I pleaded over and over. She was difficult to move, like lead. Her head lolled unnaturally loose as I shoved and pushed and finally had her on her back. Her dark and fiery eyes gazed glassily at the intricately carved ceiling. Her skin had a sickly, greenish gray color.
Dead, she was dead. Dressed for traveling in a suit I’d never seen before, she was dead and already traveling to compare His heaven and hell with here.
There was a scream stuck in my throat. Rasping sobs kept it from sounding. I didn’t want her dead. I wanted her to have that check and have the chance to enjoy herself, and at the same time I wanted her to stay on here with us. Crying freely now, I began to straighten the bow at the neck of her new white blouse. I tugged down her skirt so her slip wouldn’t show, and arranged her broken legs beneath her so they didn’t look broken anymore. With that huge bun at the back of her neck, her head kept falling to a crazy angle. Crying harder, I undid her figure-eight knot and spread her hair so it looked pretty. Then her head stayed in position.
Everything done now, I heard the screams. Over and over someone was screaming. It was me. Out of the kitchen heavy feet came running fast, a voice calling my name. I whirled to see Sylvia tripping awkwardly down the stairs, babbling to herself as she tried to hold onto the bannister and the prisms at the same time. She was coming to me as fast as possible, a big smile on her pretty face. And her eyes were focused! I thought she was going to speak when suddenly from behind me a voice …