I didn’t know what to say.
“There’s a boy in my class who looks at me so sympathetically, and he carries my books, and talks to me, and asks me all kinds of questions. He’s so handsome you just wouldn’t believe it. His name is Arden Lowe. Isn’t that an unusual and romantic name for a boy? Audrina, I think he’s got a case on me … and he’s kissed me twice in the cloakroom.”
“What’s a cloakroom?”
“My, are you stupid! Holes in the belfry with bats flying ‘round, that’s Papa’s sweet Audrina.” She giggled as she tossed her challenge. I didn’t want to fight, so she went on to tell me more about her boyfriend named Arden Lowe. “His eyes are amber colored, the prettiest eyes you ever saw. When you get real close, you can see little flecks of green in his eyes. His hair is dark brown with reddish highlights when the sun hits it. He’s smart, too. He’s a year older than me, but that doesn’t mean he’s dumb, it just means he’s traveled around so much he fell behind in his schoolwork.” She sighed and looked dreamy.
“How old is Arden Lowe?”
“Yesterday I was twenty, so Arden was younger, naturally. He doesn’t have my kind of talent for being any age I want to be. I guess he’s eleven, and kind of a baby when I’m twenty, but such a good-looking baby.”
She smiled at me, but I knew darn well she couldn’t be more than … than twelve? I went back to my dolls.
“Audrina, you love those dolls more than you do me.”
“No, I don’t …” But I wasn’t really too sure even as I said that.
“Then give me the boy and men dolls.”
“All the boy and men dolls are gone,” I answered in a funny, tight voice that made Vera open her eyes wide.
“Where did all the male dolls go, Audrina?” she whispered in the weirdest kind of knowing voice that made me shiver.
“I don’t know,” I whispered back, somehow afraid. I quickly glanced around with scared eyes. Tinkle-tinkle sounded the chimes above as they dangled perfectly still. I shrank tighter inside. “I thought you took them.”
“You’re a baa… ad girl, Audrina, a really wicked girl. Someday you’ll find out exactly how bad, and when you do, you’ll want to die.” She giggled and drew away.
What was wrong with me that she’d want to hurt me time and again? Or was something wrong with her? Like my mother and her sister … were we going to repeat history over and over?
Vera’s pale, pasty face grinned at me wickedly, seeming to represent all evil. When she turned her head the colors came to play upon her skin and her apricot hair turned red, then blue streaked with violet. “Give me all your dolls, even if the best ones have gone on to hell.” She reached to seize up half a dozen of the closest dolls.
Moving lightning fast, I snatched those dolls from her hands. Then, jumping to my feet, I ran about gathering up all the other dolls. Vera crawled to rake my legs with her long fingernails, always filed to sharp points. Still I managed to hold her off with one foot against her shoulder as I gathered up the last handful of dolls and costumes. With both hands full now, I shoved her with my foot so that she fell backward, and I was off and running down the spiraling stairs at breakneck speed, sure she couldn’t catch me. Yet I heard her right behind me, screaming out my name, ordering me to stop. “If I fall it will be your fault, your fault!” She added a few filthy names, which had no meaning for me at all.
“You don’t love me, Audrina,” I heard her wail. Her hard-soled shoes made clunking noises on the metal stairs. “If you really loved me like a sister, you’d do what I want and give me everything I want to make up for all the pain I have to suffer.” I heard her stop and gasp for breath. “Audrina, don’t you dare hide those dolls! Don’t you dare! They belong to me just as much as they belong to you!”
No, they didn’t. I’d been the one to find them in an old trunk. There was a rule about finders being keepers, and I believed in rules, old adages, maxims. They were tried and tested by time that knew so much more about everything than I did.
It was easy to duck out of sight as Vera tediously, clumsily clumbered down the steep and narrow stairs. Under a loose floorboard I stuffed the dolls and all their colorful Edwardian costumes that took them to many an important social function. That’s when I heard Vera scream.
Oh, golly! She’d fallen again. I ran to where she lay in a crumpled heap. Her left leg was buckled under her in a grotesque way. It was the leg she’d broken twice before. I cringed to see a bit of jagged bone protruding through her torn flesh, which was gushing blood.
“It’s your fault,” she moaned, in so much agony her pretty face was twisted and ugly. “It’s your fault for not giving me what I wanted. Always your fault, everything bad that happens to me, your fault. Somebody should give me what I want sometime.”
“I’ll give you the dolls now,” I said weakly, prepared to give her anything she demanded now that she was hurt. “I’ll run for your mother and mine first—”
“I don’t want your damned dolls now!” she cried. “Just get out and leave me alone! But for you I would have had everything. Someday you’re going to pay for all that you’ve stolen from me, Audrina. I’m supposed to be the first and best, not you!”
It made me feel sick to back off and leave her alone like she was, broken and in pain, that left leg gushing blood. Then I noticed her left arm was lying there in a peculiar position, too. Oh, dear Lord. It had broken again. Now she’d have a broken arm, and a broken leg. But even so, God had not taught Vera anything about humility, as I’d been taught, and taught well …
How did I know that?
Flying down the stairs I bumped into Papa. “Haven’t I told you to stay out of the cupola?” he barked, grabbing hold of my arm and trying to prevent me from reaching my mother. “Don’t go up there until I have that guardrail put back. You could fall and hurt yourself.”
I didn’t want to be the one to tell Papa about Vera’s broken bones. Yet I had to, since he refused to let go of my arm. “She’s up there bleeding, Papa. Great gobs of blood, and if you don’t let go of me and call an ambulance, she might die.”
“I doubt it,” he said; still, he did bellow out to Momma, “Call for the ambulance, Lucky. Vera has broken her bones again. My health insurance will cancel my plan if this keeps up.”
Still, when it came down to the nitty-gritty, Papa was the one who calmed Vera’s fears and sat beside her in the ambulance and held her hand as he wiped away her tears. And on a stretcher, in an ambulance that knew her well, Vera was again on her way to the closest hospital to have yet another cast put on her arm, and on her leg, too.
I stood near the front door and watched the ambulance disappear around the bend of our long drive. Both my mother and my aunt refused to go to the hospital again and suffer through all the long hours of waiting and watching that shriveled leg being again put into a cast. The last time she’d broken her leg, Vera’s doctor said that if she broke it again, the leg might not grow as long as the other.
“Don’t look so worried, darling,” comforted Momma. “It wasn’t your fault. We have warned Vera time and again not to climb those spiraling stairs. That’s why we tell you not to go up there, knowing she’ll follow sooner or later to check on what you’re doing. And doctors always give you the most dire predictions, thinking how grateful you’ll feel when they don’t come true. Vera’s leg will grow to match the other … though God knows how she manages to break the same one over and over again so consistently.”
Aunt Ellsbeth said nothing at all. It seemed her daughter’s broken bones didn’t concern her nearly as much as hunting throughout the house for an old vacuum cleaner, which she finally found in the closet under the back stairs. She headed toward the family dining room, where six presidents hung to stare at the naked lady eating grapes.
“Is there anything I can do to help, Aunt Ellsbeth?” I asked.
“No!” snapped my aunt. “You don’t know how to do anything right, and in the end you only make more work. Why the devil didn’t
you give Vera the paper dolls when she asked for them?”
“Because she’d only tear them up.”
My aunt snorted, glared at me, at my mother, whose arms were around me, and then she tugged the vacuum down the hall and disappeared.
“Momma,” I whispered, “why does Vera always lie? She told Papa I pushed her down the stairs, but I wasn’t even near her. I was in the attic, hiding the dolls, while she was coming down the stairs. She fell in school, and even then she said I pushed her. Momma, why would she say that when I’ve never been to school? Why can’t I go to school? Did the First Audrina go to school?”
“Yes, of course she went,” said Momma, sounding as if a frog had caught in her throat. “Vera is a very unhappy girl, and that’s why she lies. Her mother gives her very little attention, and Vera knows you receive a great deal. But it’s hard to love such a mean, hateful girl, although we all try our best. There’s a cruel streak in Vera that worries me greatly. I’m so afraid she’ll do something to hurt you, to hurt us all.” Her lovely violet eyes stared off into space. “It’s too bad your aunt didn’t stay away. We didn’t need her and Vera to complicate our lives more.”
“How old is Vera, Momma?”
“How old has she told you she is?”
“Sometimes Vera says she’s ten, sometimes she says she’s twelve, and sometimes she’s sixteen, or twenty. Momma, she laughs like she’s mocking me … because I really don’t know how old I am.”
“Of course you know you are seven. Haven’t we told you that over and over again?”
“But I can’t remember my seventh birthday. Did you give me a birthday party? Does Vera have birthday parties? I can’t remember one.”
“Vera is three years older than you are,” said Momma quickly. “We can’t afford to have birthday parties anymore. Not because we can’t spend the money—but you know why birthday parties bring back tragic memories. Neither your father nor I can bear to think of birthday parties anymore, so we all stopped having birthdays and have chosen to stay the age we like best. I’m going to stay thirty-two.” She giggled and kissed me again. “That’s a lovely age to be, not too young and not too old.”
But I was serious and sick of evasions. “Then Vera didn’t know my dead sister, did she? She says she did, but how could she have when she’s only three years older than me?”
Again my mother looked distressed. “In a way she did know her. You see, we’ve talked so much about her. Perhaps we talk too much about her.”
And so it went, as always, evasions but no revelations, at least not the kind I really wanted, the kind I could believe in.
“When can I go to school?” I asked.
“Someday,” murmured Momma, “someday soon …”
“But Momma,” I persisted, following her into the kitchen and helping her chop vegetables for the salad, “I don’t fall and break my bones like Vera. So I’d be safer in school than she is.”
“No, you don’t fall,” she said in a tight voice. “I suppose I should be grateful for that—but you have other ways of hurting yourself, don’t you?”
Did I?
Papa’s Dream
Before darkness could steal the last rosy glow of dusk, Papa was home from the hospital and carrying Vera into the Roman Revival Salon. As if Vera weighed only a feather, even with a hip-length cast on her left leg, and a fresh cast on her left arm, too, Papa tenderly deposited Vera on the purple velvet couch that my mother loved to keep for herself. Vera appeared very happy with the large box of chocolates she’d half eaten on her ride home from the hospital. She didn’t offer the box to me, though I stood there longing to have just one. Then I saw that Papa had also bought her a new jigsaw puzzle to put together with her good right arm. “It’s all right, honey,” he said to me. “I brought you chocolates and a puzzle too. But you should be grateful you don’t have to fall and break your bones just to gain some attention.”
Immediately Vera threw away her puzzle and shoved the chocolates from the table to the floor. “Now, now,” soothed Papa, picking up the boxes and handing them back to her. “Your puzzle is very large, Audrina’s is very small. You have a two-pound box of candy. Audrina’s box weighs only one pound.”
Happy again, Vera smirked my way. “Thank you, Papa. You’re so good to me.” She stretched her arms forth, wanting him to kiss her. I cringed inside, hating her for calling him Papa, when he wasn’t her father, but mine. I resented the kiss he put on her cheek, resented, too, that huge box of candy, that larger puzzle that had prettier colors than the one Papa gave me.
Unable to bear watching longer, I wandered away to sit on the back veranda and stare at the moon that was coming up over the dark water. It was a quarter moon, what Papa called a horned moon, and I thought I could see the profile of the man in the moon, old and withered looking. The wind through the summer leaves had a lonesome sound, telling me that soon the leaves would die, and winter would come, and I hadn’t enjoyed summer at all. I had vague memories of happier, hotter summers, and yet I couldn’t pull them out to clearly view them. I put a round piece of chocolate in my mouth, even though we had yet to eat dinner. This August seemed more like October, really it did.
As if he heard me calling, Papa came to sit next to me. He sniffed the wind as he always did, an old habit, he’d told me many times, left over from his days in the Navy.
“Papa, why are the geese flying south when it’s summer? I thought they only flew south in late autumn.”
“I guess the geese know more about the weather than we do, and they’re trying to tell us something.” His hand lightly brushed over my hair.
I started to put another piece of candy in my mouth when he said, “Don’t eat but one of those.” His voice was softer when he spoke to me, kinder, as if my sensitivities were as eggshell fragile as Vera’s bones. “I saw you looking jealous when I kissed Vera. You resented the gifts I gave her. Somebody has to pamper her when she’s suffering. And you know only you are the light of my life, the heart of my heart.”
“You loved the First Audrina better,” I choked. “I’m never gonna catch her gift, Papa, no matter how many times I rock in that chair. Why do I have to have her gift? Why can’t you take me like I am?”
With his arm about my shoulders he explained again that he only wanted to give me confidence in myself. “There’s magic to be had in that chair, Audrina. I do love you for what you are, I just want to give you a little extra something that she no longer needs. If you can use what she used to have, why not? Then your Swiss cheese memory would fill to overflowing, and I’d rejoice for you.”
I didn’t believe there was a gift to be gained from that chair. It was all another lie that gave me as much terror as it seemed to give him hope. His voice took on a pleading tone. “I need someone to believe in me wholeheartedly, Audrina. I need from you the trust that she gave me. That’s the only gift I want you to recover. Her gift for having faith in me, in yourself. Your mother loves me, I know that. But she doesn’t believe in me. Now that my First Audrina is gone, I’m depending on you to give me what once made me feel clean and wonderful. Need me as she needed me. Trust me as she trusted me. For when you expect only the best, that’s what you will get.”
That wasn’t true! I yanked away from his embrace. “No, Papa. If she expected only the best, and was so trusting of you, why did she go into the woods against your orders? Was she expecting the best the day she was found dead under the golden raintree?”
“Who told you that?” he asked sharply.
“I don’t know!” I cried, unsettled to hear my own words. I didn’t even know what a golden raintree was. His face bowed down into my hair as his hand gripped my shoulder so hard it hurt. When he finally found something he could say, he sounded miles and miles away, like the warm place those geese were going to. “In some ways you’re right. Perhaps your mother and I should have given her more explicit warnings. As it was, we were embarrassed and didn’t tell our First Audrina enough. But none of it was her fault.”
“None of what, Papa?”
“Dinnertime,” sang out Momma, as if she’d been listening and knew exactly when to interrupt our conversation. My aunt was already at the round table in the family dining room, glowering as Papa carried Vera into the room. Vera glowered back. The only time my aunt seemed to like her daughter was when she was out of sight. When Papa was around she could be so cruel to Vera even I winced. She wasn’t as cruel to me. Mostly she treated me with indifference, unless I somehow managed to irritate her, which was often.
Papa hugged Vera before he went to sit at the head of the table. “Feeling better, honey?”
“Yes, Papa,” she said with a bright smile. “I feel fine now.”
The minute she said that, Papa beamed a broad smile my way. He gave me a conspiratorial wink that I’m sure Vera saw. She dropped her eyes and stared down at her plate, refusing to pick up her fork and eat. “I’m not hungry,” she said when my mother tried to coax her.
“Eat now,” ordered Aunt Ellsbeth, “or you won’t eat anything until breakfast. Damian, you should have known better than to give the children candy before dinner.”
“Ellie, you give me a pain in a certain part of my anatomy I won’t mention in front of my daughter. Vera will not die of malnutrition. Tomorrow she’ll stuff herself as she stuffed herself before her fall.”
He reached to squeeze Vera’s pale long fingers. “Go on, darling, eat. Show your mother you can hold twice as much as she can.”
Vera began to cry.
How awful of Papa to be so cruel! After dinner, just like Momma did, I ran upstairs, threw myself on my bed and really bawled. I wanted a simple life with firm ground beneath my feet. All I had was quicksand. I wanted parents who were honest, consistent from day to day, not so changeable I couldn’t depend on their love to last for longer than a few minutes.