My Sweet Audrina

  “As long as you’re in this house, you will not refer to Sylvia as a moron, idiot or freak. And you will treat Billie with the respect due her, or else I’m sure that Papa will kick you out. And if he doesn’t, then I will.”

  Appearing surprised, Vera smiled weakly, then turned her back and strode on into her old room to unpack.

  I was silent at lunch as Billie did her best to welcome Vera home. Vera looked sophisticated in the lovely beige knit dress she’d changed into. The soft color flattered her complexion, which seemed not as sallow as it had once been. Her makeup was expertly applied, her hair styled to perfection while mine was windblown and wild appearing. My nails were short and unpolished since I had to help Billie with the housekeeping. Every one of my imperfections rose up like mountains as I stared at Vera.

  “I’m sorry about your mother, Vera,” said Billie. “I hope you don’t mind if Audrina told me all about that. She is like my own daughter, the one I always wanted to have.”

  Gratefully I smiled, happy she wasn’t going to abandon me for Vera, who seemed to have become the epitome of glamour. I knew Billie admired all that Vera now represented. Pretty clothes, long polished nails and the kind of jewelry Vera wore—that’s when I realized it was my mother’s jewelry, my aunt’s jewelry she was wearing. The stolen jewelry.

  Jewelry that she took off and stashed somewhere before Papa and my husband came home together.

  We were seated in the Roman Revival room. The sun had just settled down behind the horizon, leaving a bloody trail of fire clouds, when Papa threw open the door and strode inside with Arden at his heels.

  Papa was talking. “Damn, Arden, how the hell can you forget when you make notes? Do you realize your mistakes are going to lose several good clients? You have to list all the stocks each client owns and call them when dramatic changes occur, or, better, before they occur. Anticipate, boy, anticipate!”

  That’s when Papa saw Vera. He stopped in the middle of another chastising remark and stared at Vera with loathing. “What the devil are you doing here?”

  Billie winced. Papa had disappointed her. Arden threw Vera an uneasy glance, then came to kiss my cheek before he settled on the sofa beside me, putting his arm about my shoulders. “Are you all right?” he whispered. “You look so pale.”

  I didn’t answer, though I did snuggle closer to him, feeling safer with his arm about me. Vera stood up. With her high heels on she was still about five inches shorter than Papa, but on those stilts she managed to look formidable even so. In the corner of the large room, Sylvia squatted down on her heels and rolled her head about idiotically, as if she were deliberately going to undo all the progress we’d both struggled to achieve.

  “I had to come home, Papa, to see my mother’s grave,” said Vera in a small voice of apology. “A friend called and told me when she died, and I cried all night and really wanted to come for her funeral. But I was on duty and couldn’t get off until now. I’m a registered nurse now. Also, I didn’t have enough money to get down here, and I knew you wouldn’t send me the money to come. It comes as such a shock when someone healthy dies in an accident. That same friend sent me the newspaper obituary. It arrived on the day of her funeral.”

  She smiled then, tilting her head to one side in a charming manner, separating her feet so she stood staunchly, with her arms akimbo. Suddenly she appeared not so sweet, but defiant, masculine, taking up almost as much space as Papa did when he spread his legs wide and prepared himself for assault.

  Papa grunted and glared at her. He seemed to recognize her challenge. “When will you be leaving?”

  “Soon,” said Vera, casting down her eyes, gone dovelike and demure as she tried not to appear hurt. But her feet stayed apart, and that betrayed her put-on expression of meekness. “I felt I owed it to my mother to come as soon as I could.”

  Arden leaned forward to better watch her expression, dragging me along with him as he forgot his arm about me.

  “I don’t want you in my house!” snapped Papa. “I know what went on here before you left.”

  Oh, dear God. Vera threw Arden a nervous, warning look.

  Immediately I pulled free from Arden’s casual embrace and moved to the far side of the sofa. No, I tried to tell myself, Vera was deliberately trying to involve Arden and ruin my marriage. But Arden looked guilty. I felt my heart crack. All along he’d claimed I was the only one he loved. And Vera must have told the truth a long time ago about sleeping with Arden.

  “Papa,” appealed Vera in her seductive, throaty voice, “I’ve made my mistakes. Forgive me for not being what I should have been. I’ve always wanted to win your approval and be what you wanted, but nobody told me anything. I didn’t know what Mr. Rensdale wanted when he kissed me and started petting. He seduced me, Papa!” She sobbed as if with shame and bowed her smooth cap of shining, orangey hair. “I came back to pay my respects at my mother’s grave, to spend Thanksgiving Day with the only family I have, to renew our family ties. And I also came to collect what valuables my mother left me.”

  Again Papa grunted. “Your mother had nothing of value to leave you after you ran from here and stole what jewelry she had, and what jewelry my wife left Audrina. Thanksgiving Day is a week away. Pay your respects at your mother’s grave today and leave tomorrow morning.”

  “Damian!” said Billie reprimandingly. “Is that any way to talk to your own niece?”

  “It’s exactly the way I talk to this one!” stormed Papa, pivoting about and striding toward the front stairs. “Don’t ever call me Papa again, Vera.” He glanced back at Billie. “It’s our night out on the town, have you forgotten? The movies after dinner in a good restaurant. Why aren’t you dressed and ready to go?”

  “We can’t leave the house on the day your niece comes home,” Billie said in her calm way. “She thinks of you as her father, Damian, regardless of what you call your relationship. We can always dine out and go to the movies. Damian, please don’t embarrass me again. You’ve been so kind, so generous—I’d be so disappointed if you—” There she broke off, looking at him with tears in her eyes.

  Her tears of distress seemed to affect him greatly. “All right,” he said, turning then to Vera. “I want to see as little of you as possible, and the day after Thanksgiving you leave. Is that understood?”

  Vera nodded meekly. Bowing her head, she sat down to lock her legs together and form a lap on which she could demurely fold her hands, a well-trained, modest young woman. And modesty was something Vera had never possessed. “Anything you want, Pa—Uncle Damian.”

  I turned my head just in time to see Arden gazing at her pityingly. From one to the other I stared, sensing it had already begun. The seduction of my husband.

  In no time at all Vera and Billie were fast friends. “You dear, wonderful woman, to take on all this housework all by yourself when my father could easily afford a maid and a housekeeper. I marvel at you, Billie Lowe.”

  “Audrina helps a great deal,” said Billie. “Give her credit, too.”

  I was in the powder room down the hall from the kitchen, tediously trying to untangle Sylvia’s wild mop of chestnut curls. Pausing, I waited to hear what else Vera had to say to Billie. But it was Billie who again spoke.

  “Now, if you’d do your bit and run the vacuum in the two best salons, I’d really be grateful. Be sure to use the attachments on the lamp shades, furniture and draperies. It would help Audrina. She really has her hands full trying to teach Sylvia how to talk and move correctly, and she’s succeeding, too.”

  “You’re kidding.” Vera sounded surprised, as if she was hoping Sylvia would never talk. “That kid can’t really talk, can she?”

  “Yes, she can say a few easy words. Nothing is clearly enunciated, but understandable if you listen closely.”

  Holding Sylvia by the hand, we followed Vera to watch her enter the Roman Revival Salon, where she pushed the vacuum without enthusiasm. I loved Billie for putting her to work without asking, as if she assumed Vera would be
willing. Not to be willing would spoil Vera’s game. At least, I thought it was a game. Vera pushed and pulled the vacuum, but all the time her eyes were on the many treasures. While the machine idled, she pulled out a notepad and began to write. Very quietly, leaving Sylvia in the hall, I slipped up behind her to read over her shoulder.

  1. Vacuum, dust, use furniture polish. (Mirrors, huge, gold leaf, worth a fortune.)

  2. Pick up newspapers, arrange magazines, neatly. (Lamps, Tiffany, Venetian, solid brass, priceless.)

  3. Should make beds before coming downstairs. (Genuine antiques everywhere now, oil paintings, originals.)

  4. Help with laundry. Don’t use bleach on towels. (Oriental and Chinese rugs, bric-a-brac of porcelain and blown glass, especially birds.)

  5. Run for the mail early. Never forget! (Checks stored in his office safe. Never saw so many checks come in the mail.)

  “What an interesting way to list your chores,” I said when she sensed my presence and whirled around, looking startled. “Along with the valuables, you want to run for the mail. Are you planning to rob us, Vera?”

  “You little sneak,” she snarled. “How dare you steal up on me and read over my shoulder!”

  “One always watches a cat who becomes very quiet. Is it really necessary to list everyday ordinary chores? Don’t they come naturally to you? As for the rest, most of it Was here before. Everything has been refurbished and upholstered, that’s all. Papa hunted up some of the older Whitefern antiques that had been sold. Since you weren’t impressed before, why be impressed now?”

  For a moment it seemed she might slap me. Then she sagged limply into a chair. “Oh, Audrina, don’t fight with me. If only you knew the horror of being with a man who doesn’t want you. Lamar hated me for forcing him to take me with him to New York. I kept insisting I was pregnant, and he kept insisting I couldn’t be. When we reached New York, we moved into a boarding house, and he went to teach at Juilliard. He was always throwing you in my face, saying he wished I was more like you, and then maybe he could have loved me. The fool! What man could enjoy a woman like you?” Then she flashed me a strange look and allowed tears to trickle from her eyes. “I’m sorry. You are very beautiful in your own way.” She sniffled, then went on. “While Lamar taught, I started my student nurse training. The pay wasn’t enough to feed a parakeet. In what little spare time I had, I did some modeling for an art school. I told Lamar he could do the same thing in his spare time, but he was too modest to take off his clothes. Models don’t wear a stitch. I’ve always been proud of my body. Stupid Lamar was too modest to do that, and too proud. He hated me more for showing myself to all those men in the classes. Every time I modeled I’d come home to find him dead drunk. Soon he was drinking so much he didn’t have any job at all. He lost his touch at the piano, forcing us to move to a slum area where he taught music to poor kids who never had the money to pay him—that’s when I left. I was fed up. The day I graduated as a registered nurse, I picked up the newspaper to read that Lamar had drowned himself in the Hudson River.” She sighed and stared into space. “Just another funeral I had to miss. I worked the day they buried him. I was glad his parents came to claim his body, or else he might have ended up one of the cadavers in the hospital where I worked.” She grimaced before she looked downward. A heavy silence filled the room.

  I bowed my head, weighed down with sorrow for a man who’d wanted to help me and had fallen innocently into the trap Vera had set. I knew who’d done the seducing.

  “I suppose you’re thinking I helped kill him, aren’t you?”

  “I don’t know what to think.”

  “No, of course you don’t!” she cried scornfully, jumping up and beginning to pace the room. “You’ve had it easy, staying on here and being taken care of. You’ve never had to face the real world and all the ugliness out there, and all the things you have to do in order to stay alive. I’ve done it all, Audrina, the whole can of worms. I came back to help—and you don’t want me.” Sobbing, tears beginning to course down her cheeks, she fell onto the sofa.

  Disbelievingly I watched her cry. Billie, who must have been listening, came scooting into the room. In a flash she was on the sofa beside Vera, trying to comfort her.

  Instantly, Vera bolted. A short hysterical scream escaped her lips. Then she paled. “Oh … I’m sorry. It’s just that I don’t like to be touched.”

  “I understand.” Billie lowered herself onto the dolly and disappeared.

  “You’ve hurt her feelings, Vera. And you promised that as long as you’re in this house, you would never say or do anything to hurt Billie or make her feel unwanted.”

  Vera said she understood. She was sorry, and never, never would she pull away again. It was just that she was unaccustomed to being touched by a legless woman, a cripple. I stared down at her shoe with the inch lift, perversely enjoying the way she blanched.

  “You can’t notice my limp now, can you?” she asked. “We all have small idiosyncrasies, such as yours for forgetting.”

  Soon Arden was telling me whenever we were alone, usually not until we were in bed, what a wonderful help Vera was, taking so much work off his mother’s shoulders—and mine. “We should all be glad she’s back to help.”

  I turned on my side and closed my eyes. To turn my back was my way of telling him to leave me alone. Quickly he turned me against his front so that my back was fitted into the warm curve of his body. Our breathing coordinated even as those uncontrollable hands of his began to search out the curves he wanted to trace again and again.

  “Don’t be jealous of Vera, darling,” he whispered, moving so he could rub his cheek against mine. “It’s you I love, only you.”

  And once more, I had to let him prove it.

  Thanksgiving Day came and went, and Vera stayed on. For some odd reason Papa stopped ordering her to leave. I reasoned he saw how much help she was to Billie while I taught Sylvia how to talk, to walk, to dress herself, to comb her own hair, to wash her own face and hands. Slowly, slowly, Sylvia was emerging from her cocoon. With each new skill she mastered, her eyes came more into focus. She began to make a real effort to keep her lips together and not let the drooling begin. In some ways it was like finding myself, as I taught her all she needed to know.

  In the First and Best Audrina’s playroom, she seemed to learn best. On my lap while we rocked together, I’d read to her from Mother Goose and simple books for very young children of two or three. With the dolls and stuffed animals on the shelves for schoolmates, we sometimes sat at the small tea table and ate our lunch, and it was there that Sylvia picked up a tiny spoon and stirred the bit of tea in her miniature cup.

  “And one day very soon, Sylvia is going to pick up her own knife and fork and she will cut her own meat.”

  “Cut meat…” she repeated, trying to pick up the fork and knife and hold them as I was demonstrating.

  “Who is Sylvia?”

  “Who … who ess …”

  “Tell me your name. That’s what I want to hear.”

  “Tell me … yer name …”

  “No. What is your name?”

  “Nooo … what esss yer name …”

  “Sylvia, you’re doing wonderfully well today. But do try to think about the reasoning behind what I tell you. Everyone and everything must have a name, or else we wouldn’t know what to call one another, or how to know a chair from a lamp. Take me, for instance. My name is Audrina.”

  “Mah … name … esss … Aud … dreen … na.”

  “Yes, my name is Audrina. But your name is Sylvia.”

  “Yesss … mah … name …”

  I picked up the hand mirror the First Audrina had on her small dressing table, held it before Sylvia and pointed. “See, in the mirror, that is Sylvia.” Then I held the mirror so my face was reflected, and again I let her look so she could see what I was trying to impart. “That is Audrina in the mirror.” At the same time I pointed to myself. “Audrina.” I pointed to myself, then put the mirror so she could
see her own face. “That is Sylvia. You are Sylvia.”

  Some flickering small light lit up her lovely aqua eyes. They widened and focused on the mirror. She grabbed for it and stared at her reflection, holding it so close her nose was mashed against the glass. “Syl … vee … ah. Syl … vee … ah.” Over and over again she said it, laughing, jumping up and dancing awkwardly around the playroom. Hugging the mirror hard against her small chest, she glowed with happiness. Finally, after many repetitions, she said it right. “My name is Sylvia.” I ran to hug her, to kiss her, to reward her with the cookies I’d hidden in a drawer.

  I turned with the cookies to see that all happiness had fled from Sylvia’s eyes. Sylvia was frozen. Her eyes unfocused, her lips gaped and the spittle ran. Once more she went mute.

  Vera stood in the doorway.

  She wore the expression of an angel, so pious as she looked us both over. Lambs for the slaughtering, I thought irrelevantly.

  “Go away, Vera,” I ordered coldly, hurrying to protect Sylvia. “I’ve told you before not to come up here when I’m teaching Sylvia.”

  “Fool!” she snapped, striding into the playroom and sitting down in the rocking chair. “You can’t teach an idiot anything. She’s just repeating what she hears you say, like a parrot. Go help Billie in the kitchen. I’m so damned sick of preparing meals and cleaning house. My God, it seems nobody does anything in this house but eat, sleep and work. When do you have fun?”

  “When the work is finished, Vera,” I answered angrily. I caught hold of Sylvia’s hand and started for the door. “Rock in the chair, Vera. I’m sure nothing I’ve seen there would make you scream—for you’ve known it all, the whole can of worms.”

  Screaming like a demon straight from the pits of hell, my small sister ran to hurl herself at Vera. She tore into her, scratching, kicking, and as Vera tried to ward her off, Sylvia clamped her teeth down on Vera’s arm.

  Violently Vera slammed Sylvia to the floor. “You screwy little idiot! Get out of here! I’ve just as much right in this room as you have!”