My Sweet Audrina

  Even before Arden and I returned from our seashore honeymoon, Billie had taken over in the kitchen Aunt Ellsbeth had so recently abandoned. Billie had her high stool there, carried over with most of her other belongings by my own father, who detested doing physical labor. I watched him as he watched her with admiration, adroitly putting meals together without one grumble, and not much fuss, either. She smiled, laughed in response to his many jokes. She cared expertly for his clothes and ran the huge house with so little effort that Papa couldn’t stop admiring her remarkable efficiency.

  “How do you do it, Billie? Why do you even want to? Why don’t you tell me to hire servants to wait on you?”

  “Oh, no, Damian. It’s the least I can do to repay you for all that you’re doing for us.” Her voice was soft and her eyes warm as she looked at him. “I’m so grateful that you wanted me and have welcomed my son as your own that I can never do enough. Anyway, having servants in the house steals your privacy.”

  I stared at Billie, wondering how a woman with her experience could be so easily fooled. Papa used people. Didn’t she realize that she was saving him tons of money by being his housekeeper and cook?—and that generous offer to hire servants was all fraud, calculated to make her feel she wasn’t being used.

  “Audrina,” said Billie one day when I’d been married about two months and Arden was still studying for his broker’s exam, “I’ve been watching Sylvia. For some reason she dislikes me and would like to see me gone. I’m trying to think as she might think. It could be she’s jealous because she sees you love me, too, and she’s never had to share your love with others. When I was in the cottage it was different, but now I’m in her home and stealing your attention and your time from her. Arden is her competition, too, but for some reason, maybe because he leaves her alone, she isn’t jealous of him. It’s me she’s jealous of. What’s more, I don’t believe she’s nearly as retarded as you think. She mimics you, Audrina. Whenever you turn your back, she follows you. And she can walk just as normally as you do—when she knows you can’t see her.”

  Whipping around, I caught Sylvia just behind me. She appeared startled and quickly her closed lips parted, and her focused eyes went vacant, blind looking. “Billie, you shouldn’t say things like that. She can hear. And if what you say is true—although I don’t believe it is—she might understand and be hurt.”

  “Of course she understands,” said Billie. “She isn’t brilliant, but she’s not beyond the pale.”

  “I don’t understand why she’d pretend …”

  “Who told you she’s hopelessly retarded?” Sylvia had drifted out into the hall tugging Billie’s little red cart along with her. As I watched, she sat upon it and began to shove herself along in Billie’s fashion.

  “Papa didn’t bring her home until she was more than two and a half years old. He told me what her doctors had told him.”

  “I admire Damian a great deal, although I don’t admire the way he’s burdened your life with the care of your younger sister, especially when he could afford to pay for a nurse to care for her, or, better, a therapist to train her. Do what you can to teach her skills, and continue with your speech training. Don’t give up on Sylvia. Even if those doctors gave what they thought was an honest evaluation, mistakes are often made. There is always hope and a chance for improvement.”

  In the months that followed, Billie convinced me that perhaps I had misjudged my father after all. She obviously adored him, even worshipped him. He ignored her legless condition and treated her with such gallantry he surprised me and pleased Arden. Papa even had a special wheelchair custom-made for Billie. He hated her little red cart with a passion, though the fancy “our kind” of chair with concealed wheels didn’t speed around fast enough for her. She never used that chair unless Papa was around.

  Arden worked like an Egyptian slave in the day, then studied half the night, trying to remember all he needed to know for his broker exams. It was what he said he wanted, but I knew his heart wasn’t in it.

  “Arden, if you don’t want to be a broker, give it up and do something else.”

  “I do want it—go on, teach.”

  “Now,” I began when he was seated across the table in our bedroom, “they will give you several kinds of tests to judge your reading ability and comprehension of the written word. Then comes your verbal agility, and you’ll have to understand what you’re saying, which goes without saying.” I smiled at him and shoved his roving foot away from my leg. “Answer, please, would you rather paint a picture, look at a picture or sell a picture?”

  “Paint a picture,” Arden answered quickly.

  Frowning, I shook my head. “Second question. Would you rather read a book, write a book or sell a book?”

  “Write a book … but I guess that’s wrong. The right answer is sell a book, sell a picture—right?”

  After three failures came the passing exam, and my husband became a Wall Street Cowboy.

  One day when my work was through, I wandered into the room where my mother’s piano was. I smiled ironically to myself as I pulled out Aunt Mercy Marie’s photograph and set it on the grand piano. Who would have ever thought I’d do such a crazy thing on my own? Perhaps it was because I was thinking about my aunt and how I’d missed her funeral. To make up for that, I went often to the graveyard to put flowers on her grave, and on my mother’s grave, too. Never, never did I bring any flowers for the First Audrina.

  In memory of them, I began my own “teatime.” As I began the routine once performed by two other sisters, Sylvia crept into the room and sat on the floor near my feet, staring up into my face with a look of bewilderment. A weird sensation of time repeating itself stole over me. “Lucietta,” said the fat-faced woman I was speaking for, “what a lovely girl your third daughter is. Sylvia, such a beautiful name. Who is Sylvia? There used to be an old song about a girl named Sylvia. Lucietta, play that song again for me, please.”

  “Of course, Mercy Marie,” said I in a good imitation of how I remembered my mother speaking. “Isn’t she beautiful, my sweet Sylvia? I think she is the most beautiful of all my three girls.”

  I banged out some tune on the piano that was pitifully amateurish. But, like a marionette controlled by fate, I couldn’t quit once I’d begun my act. Smiling, I handed Sylvia a cookie. “And now you talk for the lady in the photograph.”

  Jumping to her feet with surprising agility, Sylvia ran to the piano, seized up the photograph of Aunt Mercy Marie and hurled it into the fireplace. The silver frame broke, the glass shattered, and soon the photo in Sylvia’s hands was torn into shreds. Finished, and a bit scared looking, Sylvia backed away from me.

  “How dare you do that?” I yelled. “That was the only picture we had of our mother’s best friend! You’ve never done anything like that before.”

  Falling down on her knees, she crawled to me, whimpering like a small puppy—and she was ten years old now. Crouched at my feet, Sylvia clawed at my skirt, allowing her lips to part, and soon spittle wet her chin and dribbled down on her loose, shiftlike garment. A small child couldn’t have looked into my eyes with more innocence. Billie had to be mistaken. Sylvia couldn’t focus her eyes but for a second or two.

  In my dreams that night while Arden slept peacefully at my side, it seemed I heard drums beating, natives chanting. Animals howled. Bolting awake I started to wake up Arden, then decided the animals’ howling was only Sylvia screaming again. I ran to her room to take her into my arms. “What’s wrong, darling?”

  I swear I think she tried to say, “Bad … bad … bad,” but I wasn’t truly sure. “Did you say bad?”

  Her aqua eyes were wide with fright—but she nodded. I broke into laughter and hugged her closer. “No, it’s not bad that you can talk. Oh, Sylvia, I’ve tried so hard, so hard to teach you and at last you’re trying. You had a bad dream, that’s all. Go back to sleep and think how wonderful your life is going to be now that you can communicate.”

  Yes, I told myself as I snuggled
up close to Arden, liking his arms about me when he wasn’t passionate, that’s all it was, a bad dream Sylvia had.

  Thanksgiving Day was a week away. I was more or less happy as I sat with Billie in the kitchen and planned the menu. Yet I still treaded the long halls like a child, still taking care not to step on any of the colorful geometric patterns the stained-glass windows cast on the floor. I’d stop and stare for long moments at the rainbows on the walls, just as I had when I was a child. My memories of childhood were still so hazy.

  As I left the kitchen and started for the stairs, with the notion of visiting that playroom and evoking the past, challenging it to reveal the truth, I turned to find Sylvia trailing me like a shadow. Of course, I’d grown accustomed to her being my constant companion, but what surprised me was the way she managed to catch a random sunbeam with that crystal prism she clutched and flash the colors directly into my eyes.

  Almost blinded, I staggered backward, for some reason terrified. In the shadows near the wall I dropped the hand I’d used to shade my eyes and stared toward the huge chandelier that caught all the colors already on the marble floor. The mirrors on the walls refracted them back to Sylvia, who directed them again at me, as if to keep me from the playroom. Dizzy and unreal feeling, visions flashed in my head. I saw my aunt sprawled face down on the hard foyer floor. What if Sylvia had been downstairs in the foyer and had used that prism to blind my aunt’s eyes with sunlight colors? Could that have made my aunt dizzy enough to fall? Was Sylvia trying to make me fall, too?

  “Put that thing down, Sylvia!” I yelled. “Put it away. Never flash those lights in my eyes again! Do you hear me?”

  Like the wild thing Papa compared her to, she ran. Stunned for a moment I could only stare after her. Feeling frightened of my own violent reaction, I sat on the bottom step and tried to pull myself together—and that’s when the front door opened.

  A woman stood there, tall and slender, wearing a smart hat of many shades of green feathers. A mink cape was slung casually over one shoulder, and her green shoes matched her very expensive-looking green suit.

  “Hi,” she said in a sultry voice. “Here I am, back again. Don’t you recognize me, sweet Audrina?”

  A Second Life

  “What are you doing?” called Vera as, much in the manner of a very young child, I began to back up the stairs without standing up. “Aren’t you a bit old for such childish behavior? Really, Audrina, you don’t change at all, do you?”

  Striding into the foyer, Vera hardly appeared to limp. But when I checked I saw that the left sole of her high-heeled shoes was an inch thicker than the right sole. Gracefully she approached the stairs. “I stopped off in the village and they told me you really did marry Arden Lowe. I never thought you’d ever be adult enough to marry anyone. Congratulations to him, the fool, and my best wishes to you, the bride who should have known better.”

  The trouble was, what she said could very well be true.

  “Aren’t you glad to see me?”

  “Your mother is dead.” How cruelly I said that, as if I wanted to even the score and dish out pain for pain.

  “Really, Audrina, I know that.” Her dark eyes were cold as she looked me up and down, telling me in her own silent, eloquent way that I was no competition for her. “Unlike you, sweet Audrina, I have friends in the village who keep me posted as to what goes on here. I wish I could say I was sorry, but I can’t. Ellsbeth Whitefern was never a real mother to me, was she? Your mother was kinder.”

  She turned around slowly and exhaled a long withheld breath. “Wow! Would you look at this place! Like a palace. Who would have ever thought dear Papa would be idiot enough to fix up an old house like this. He could have bought two new ones for what it cost to restore this monstrosity.”

  Standing midway up the stairs, I tried to regain some lost composure. “Did you come back for some reason?”

  “Aren’t you happy to see me?” Smiling, she cocked her head to one side and scanned over me again, then laughed. “No, I can tell you aren’t. Are you still afraid of me, Audrina? Afraid your boy husband might find a real woman twice as appealing as a modest, shy bride who can’t really give him any pleasure? Just looking at you in that white dress tells me you haven’t changed. It’s November, little girl. Wintertime. The season for bright colors, parties, good cheer and holidays, and you wear a white dress.” Mockingly she laughed again. “Don’t tell me your husband is no lover at all and you are still Papa’s pure little darling.”

  “It’s a wool dress, Vera. The color is called winter-white. It’s an expensive dress that Arden selected for me himself. He likes for me to wear white.”

  “Of course he does,” she said even more mockingly. “He indulges your need to stay a sweet little girl. Poor Audrina, the sweet and chaste. Audrina the pure and virginal. Dear Audrina, the obedient little darling who can do no wrong.”

  “What do you want, Vera?” I asked, feeling very cold. I sensed danger, felt Vera’s threat. I wanted to order her out of the house. Go, leave me alone. Give me time to grow up, to find the woman that’s hidden somewhere in me.

  “I’ve come home for Thanksgiving,” said Vera smoothly, in that same sexy voice she must have copied from someone she admired, as she’d tried once to talk like a TV actress. “And if you’re nice to me, really nice, as a family member should be, then I’ll stay on for Christmas, too. It’s really not very hospitable of you to keep me standing in the foyer while my bags are on the porch. Where’s Arden? He can carry in my luggage.”

  “My husband is working, Vera, and you can bring in your own bags. Papa won’t be happy to see you. I suppose you must know that.”

  “Yes, Audrina,” she said in that smooth, hateful voice. “I know that. But I want to see Papa. He owes me a great deal—and I intend to have what belongs to my mother, and what belongs to me.”

  A small scuttling sound made me look toward the back hall to see Billie shoveling along on her little red dolly cart. As if she’d just seen a mouse, Vera jumped backward and nearly lost her footing because of that thick sole. Her gloved hand reached to smother her cry. Her other hand stretched forward as if to ward off contamination. I watched her struggle to gain her composure as the small half-woman, twice as old and three times as beautiful as Vera, looked at her appraisingly and with a great deal of self-composure. I admired Billie for holding her own.

  Then, to my amazement, Vera smiled brilliantly at my mother-in-law. “Oh, of course. How can I have forgotten Billie Lowe. How are you, Mrs. Lowe?”

  Cheerfully Billie greeted Vera. “Why, hello there. You’re Vera, aren’t you? How beautiful you look. How nice you’ve come home for the holidays. You’re just in time for lunch. Your old room is clean, and all I have to do is put on fresh linens and you’ll feel right at home.” She looked upward to give me a special warm smile. “Well, Audrina, that itchy nose of yours really did herald a visitor after all.”

  “Do you live here, too?” asked Vera, rather taken aback. Someone in the village didn’t know everything that went on in Whitefern.

  “Oh, yes,” gushed Billie happily. “This is the most wonderful house I’ve ever been lucky enough to call home. Damian has been absolutely marvelous to me. He’s given me the rooms that used to belong to”—here she hesitated, looking a bit embarrassed—“your mother.” Her appealing look at Vera touched my heart. “At first I thought it was wrong to take such a grand suite of rooms when Audrina might want them, but Audrina hasn’t said a word to make me feel I’m usurping anyone’s place. What’s more, Damian carried over all the things I wanted from the cottage himself. He did that the very day Arden and Audrina eloped.”

  Billie gave me another loving smile. “Come, darlin’, it’s time for lunch. Sylvia is already at the table. There’s plenty for all of us.”

  “Help me bring in my luggage, Audrina,” said Vera, abruptly turning to head toward the porch, as if tired of responding to all the warmth and good cheer Billie showed her. “I’ll be leaving in a few weeks
, so you don’t have to look so bothered. I don’t want your husband.”

  “Because you have your own?” I asked hopefully.

  Laughing, she half turned to grin at me with Papa’s own cunning. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? But no, I don’t have my own. Lamar Rensdale was a miserable failure who took the easy way out once things got rough. What a coward he proved to be. No talent at all once you took him away from the provinces. Do you still play the piano?”

  No, I didn’t practice on the piano anymore. There was too much to do. But as I helped Vera bring in her three bags, carrying two while she carried one, I vowed that when I had the time I’d find another music teacher and pick up where I’d left off. “Vera, I’d like to hear more about Lamar Rensdale. He was very kind to me, and I’m sorry he’s dead.”

  “Later,” said Vera, following me up the stairs. “After we eat, we’ll have a nice long talk while we wait for Papa to come home and rejoice at seeing me again.”

  On the way to her room we found Sylvia riding Billie’s cart, shoveling along with some expertise. “Sylvia, take Billie’s cart back to the kitchen. You have no right to use it even when she isn’t. Any moment she may want to hop down and her cart won’t be there.” I reached to pull Sylvia from the dolly. If there was one thing that made Sylvia stubborn and hateful, it was taking from her that little red cart she wanted for her own.

  “Good God,” exclaimed Vera, staring at Sylvia as if at some creature in a zoo, “why waste your breath on an idiot? Why not just shove her off and be done with it?”

  “Sylvia is not as retarded as Papa led us to believe,” I said innocently enough. “Bit by bit she’s learning to talk.”

  For some reason Vera turned to stare at Sylvia with narrowed, suspicious eyes, distaste clear on her face. “God almighty, this house is full of freaks. A legless woman and a stammering moron.”