My aunt threw my mother a startled look. “Oh, my God,” she responded dully. “Some people never learn.”
Vera’s pasty pallor sickened more. Panic seemed to fade her dark eyes as well. Then she caught me staring at her and she quickly straightened before she stood. “I’m leaving to visit a friend. I won’t be home until dark.”
She stood there waiting for someone to object, as surely everyone would if I were to say the same words, but no one said anything, almost as if they didn’t care whether or not Vera ever came back. Looking surly, Vera limped from the kitchen. I jumped up to follow her out to the front porch. “Who are you going to visit?”
“None of your damned business!”
“We don’t have any close neighbors, and it’s a long walk to visit the McKennas.”
“Never mind,” she said, choking, tears in her eyes. “You just go back inside and hear about the new baby, and I’ll visit my friend who could never stand you.”
I watched her limp off down the dirt road, wondering where she could go. Maybe she wasn’t going anywhere, but only looking for someplace to cry alone.
Back in the kitchen Papa was still talking. “They moved some of their things into the cottage last week, but they only started staying there yesterday. I haven’t met them myself, but the realtor says they’ve lived in the village for several years and always paid their rent on time. And just think, Lucky, now you’ll have a live woman to invite to your teas, and we can say goodbye to Mercy Marie. Though no doubt you two enjoy imitating her cruel wit very much, I want you to quit that game. It’s not healthy for Audrina to witness something so bizarre. Besides, for all you know, Mercy Marie may be the fat wife of some African chief, and not dead at all.”
Both my mother and aunt scoffed—they wanted to believe no man would want Mercy Marie.
“We’re finished with teatimes,” said Momma dully, as if she’d finished with all social life now that she was expecting a baby.
“Papa,” I began tentatively as I sat at the table again, “when did I last see Aunt Mercy Marie alive?”
Leaning across the table, Papa kissed my cheek. Then he shifted his chair closer to mine so his arm could encircle my shoulders. My aunt got up to sit in the kitchen rocker where she knitted, knitted. In a second or so she was so angry with her knitting that she threw it down, picked up a feather duster and began to swipe at dusty tabletops in the adjoining room, keeping always close to the door so she could listen.
“It was years and years ago when you knew Mercy Marie; naturally you don’t remember her. Sweetheart, stop troubling your brain with efforts to recall the past. Today is what counts, not yesterday. Memories are only important to the old who have already lived the best of their lives and have nothing to look forward to. You’re only a child and your future stretches long and inviting before you. All the good things are ahead, not behind. You can’t remember every detail of your early childhood, but neither can I. ‘The best is yet to be,’ some poet wrote, and I believe that. Papa’s going to make sure you have only the best kind of future. Your gift is growing stronger and stronger, and you know why, don’t you?”
The rocking chair. That chair was giving me the First and Best Audrina’s brain and erasing all my memories. Oh, I hated her. Why couldn’t she stay dead in her grave? I didn’t want her life, I wanted my own. I pulled from Papa’s embrace. “I’m going out into the yard to play, Papa.”
“Don’t go into the woods,” he warned. Aunt Ellsbeth seemed drawn back into the kitchen. She swung that duster in such a threatening way it seemed she might whack Papa with it.
Momma turned her violet eyes on her sister and said mildly, “Really, Ellsbeth, you’re flinging around more dust than you’re picking up.”
Once I was outside, Papa’s words kept resounding in my head. He didn’t really love me. He loved her, the First and the Best. The Most Perfect Audrina. For the rest of my life I had to live up to the standards she’d set. How could I be everything she’d been, when I was me?
I had been planning to slip through the woods and see our new neighbors, but my aunt called me back inside and kept me busy all morning helping her clean the house. Momma wasn’t feeling well. Something called “morning sickness” had her running to the powder room often, and my aunt would look pleased when she did that, muttering to herself all the time about fools who risked the wrath of God.
Vera came limping home around three, looking hot, pale and exhausted. She threw me a scathing glance and stomped up the stairs. I decided I’d check on what she was doing before I stole through the woods to meet the new neighbors. I didn’t want Vera to follow me. She’d be sure to tell Papa so I’d be punished.
Vera wasn’t in her room. Nor was she in mine, prowling through my drawers in hopes of finding something to steal. I kept searching, hoping to surprise her. Instead, she surprised me.
Inside the First Audrina’s room, which Papa usually kept locked except on the days Momma cleaned in there, Vera was seated in the rocking chair with the calla-lily back. The magic chair. Back and forth she was rocking, singsong chanting as Papa made me do so often. For some reason it made me furious to see her there. No wonder I wasn’t “catching” the gift—Vera was trying to steal it!
“Get out of that chair!” I yelled.
Reluctantly she came back to herself, opening her large dark eyes that glittered just like Papa’s. Her lips curled in a sneer. “You gonna make me, little girl?”
“Yes!” I stormed bravely, striding into the dreaded room and ready to defend my right to sit in that chair. Even though I didn’t want the First and Best Audrina’s gifts, I didn’t want Vera to have them, either.
Before I could do a thing, Vera was out of the chair. “Now you hear this, Audrina Number Two! In the long run it’s going to be me who takes the First Audrina’s place. You don’t have what she had, and you never will. Papa is trying and trying to make you over into what she was, but he’s failing, and he’s beginning to realize that. That’s why he told me to start using this rocking chair. Because now he wants me to have the First Audrina’s gifts.”
I didn’t believe her, yet something frail within me cracked and pained. She saw me weaken, saw me tremble. “Your mother doesn’t love you nearly as much as she loved the First Audrina, either. She fakes love for you, Audrina, fakes it! Both your parents would see you dead if they could get back the girl they really loved.”
“Stop saying things like that!”
“I’ll never stop saying what needs to be said.”
“Leave me alone, leave this room alone! You are a fake, Vera, the worst kind of fake!” Then, taking a wild swing, I tried to hit her. She chose to stand at that moment, and if she hadn’t timed it so well, my fist would have missed her. As it was, it caught her smack on her jaw. She fell back on the rocking chair, which tipped over. Surely that fall didn’t do as much damage as her loud howls of pain indicated …
Aunt Ellsbeth came on the run. “What have you done to my daughter?” she yelled, running to help Vera stand. Once she had Vera on her feet, she dashed back to me and slapped my face. Quickly I dodged her second blow. I heard Vera screaming, “Mother, help me! I can’t breathe!”
“Of course you can breathe,” snapped my aunt impatiently, but a trip to the emergency room proved Vera had four broken ribs. The ambulance men gave Momma and my aunt funny looks, as if they suspected Vera couldn’t possibly always be hurting herself. Then they looked at me and weakly smiled.
I was sent to bed without an evening meal. (Papa didn’t come home until late because of some business meeting, and Momma retired early, leaving my aunt in charge.) All that night I heard Vera moaning, gasping and panting as she tried to sleep. Doubled over like an old crone, she came into my room in the middle of the night and shook her fist in my face. “Someday I’m going to bring down this house and everyone in it,” she hissed in a deadly voice, “and you’ll be the first I fell. Remember that if you never remember anything else, Second and Worst Audrina.”
> Arden Lowe
In the morning I was desperate to escape the house. Since Ellsbeth was tending to the wounded Vera, and Momma was staying in bed with her morning sickness, I had the first opportunity of my lifetime to steal away unobserved.
The woods were full of shadows. Just like the First Audrina, I was disobeying, but the sky above said there wasn’t a chance of rain, and without the rain it couldn’t happen again. Shimmering sun rays fell through the lacy green canopy of leaves to pattern the path ahead with golden spots of light. Birds were singing, squirrels were chasing each other, rabbits ran, and now that I was free from Whitefern I felt good, yet slightly uneasy. Still, if ever I was going to make friends of my own I had to make the first move and prove something if to no one but myself.
I was going to see the new family living in the gardener’s cottage that hadn’t been occupied for many years. I’d never seen this part of the woods, but still it seemed familiar. I stopped to stare down at the path, which branched off right and crookedly wandered forward, too. Deep inside some directing knowledge told me to turn right. Each little noise I heard made me freeze, listen, straining to hear the giggle I heard when I was in that rocking chair, reliving events that had happened to the First and Best, and were glued to that chair. Little whispers were in the summer leaves. Little butterflies of panic were fluttering in my head. I kept hearing all the warnings: “Dangerous in the woods. Unsafe in the woods. Death in the woods.” Nervously I quickened my steps. I’d sing like the seven dwarfs used to whistle to make them unafraid … now why did I think that? That was her kind of thought.
I told myself as I hurried along that it was time I braved the world by myself, time indeed. I told myself each foot away from that house of dim corners and brooding whispers was making me feel better, happier. I wasn’t weak, spoiled or unfit for the world. I was just as brave as any girl of … seven?
Something about the woods—something about the way the sun shone through the leaves. Colors were trying to speak to me, tell me what I couldn’t remember. If I didn’t stop thinking as I was, soon I’d be running and screaming, expecting the same thing to happen to me that had happened to her. I was the only Audrina left alive in the world. Truly I didn’t have to be afraid. Lightning never struck twice in the same place.
On the very edge of a clearing, I came upon the cottage in the woods. It was a small white cottage with a red roof. I ducked to hide behind an old hickory tree when I saw a boy come out of the cottage door carrying a rake and a pail. He was tall and slim, and already I knew who he was. He was the one who’d given Vera the box of candy on Valentine’s Day.
She had told me he was eleven, and in July he’d be twelve. The most popular boy in his class—studious, intelligent, quick-witted and fun—and he had a crush on Vera. That sort of proved he wasn’t too brilliant. But from what my aunt was always saying, men were only grown-up little boys, and the male sex knew only what their eyes and glands told them, nothing else.
Watching him, I could tell he was a hard worker from the diligent way he set about cleaning up the yard, which was a wilderness of tangleweed, briars, Virginia crabgrass, spidergrass.
He wore faded blue jeans that fit skintight, as if he’d outgrown them or they’d shrunk. His thin old shirt might once have been bright blue, but now it was faded gray-white. From time to time he’d stop to rest, to look around and whistle in imitation of some bird. Then, after a few seconds, he was back to work, pulling up weeds and throwing them in his pail, which he dumped often in a huge trash can. This boy didn’t scare me, even though Papa and that rocking chair had taught me to be terrified of what boys might do.
Suddenly he tore off the worn canvas gloves he wore, hurled them down and spun around, directly facing the tree I was hiding behind.
“Isn’t it time you stopped hiding and watching?” he asked, turning to pick up his pail of weeds to empty it in the larger can. “Come on out and be friendly. I don’t bite.”
My tongue stayed glued to the roof of my mouth, though his voice was kind.
“I won’t hurt you, if that’s why you’re afraid. I even know your name is Audrina Adelle Adare, the girl with the beautiful long hair that changes colors. All the boys in Whitefern Village talk about the Whitefern girls and say you’re the most beautiful one of all. Why don’t you go to school like other girls? And why didn’t you write me a note and thank me for that box of Valentine candy I sent you months and months ago? That was rude, you know, very rude not to even call on the phone …”
My breath caught. He’d given me the candy and not Vera? “I didn’t know you knew me, and no one gave me the candy,” I said in a small, hoarse voice. I wasn’t sure even now that he’d send a totally unknown girl a box of expensive candy when Vera was pretty enough and already shaping into a woman.
“Sure I know you. That’s why I wrote you that note with the candy. I see you all the time with your parents.” He continued, “The trouble is, you never turn your head to see anyone. I’m in your sister’s class in school. I asked her why you didn’t go to school and she told me you were crazy, but I don’t believe that. When people are crazy it shows in their eyes. I went into the drugstore and looked for the prettiest red satin heart of all. I hope Vera gave you at least one piece, since it was all yours.”
Did he know Vera that well, enough to suspect she’d lie and eat it all? “Vera said you gave the box of candy to her.”
“Aha!” he said. “That is exactly what my mom said when I told her you must be a very ungrateful kind of girl. And even if you didn’t eat a piece, I hope you realize I did try to let you know there’s one boy who thinks you are the prettiest girl he’s ever seen.”
“Thank you for the candy,” I whispered.
“I deliver the morning and evening newspapers. It’s the first time I’ve spent my hard-earned money on a gift for a girl.”
“Why did you do it?”
He turned his head quickly, trying to catch a glimpse. Oh, his eyes were amber-colored. The sun was in them, making him almost blind, but showing me in detail what a pretty color they were, a lot lighter in shade than his hair. “I guess sometimes, Audrina, you can look at a girl and know right away you like her a lot. And when she never even looks your way, you’ve got to do something drastic. And then it didn’t work.”
Not knowing what to say, I said nothing. But I did move a little so he could see my face, while my body stayed safely hidden by the bushes.
“Darn if I can understand why you don’t go to school.”
How could I explain when I didn’t understand? Unless it was like Aunt Ellsbeth said, that Papa wanted to keep me all for himself and “train” me.
“Since you haven’t asked, I’ll introduce myself. I’m Arden Nelson Lowe.” Cautiously, he stepped closer to my hiding place, craning his neck in order to see me better. “I’m an A name, too, if that means anything, and I think it does.”
“What do you think it means?” I asked, feeling perplexed. “And don’t come any closer. If you do, I’ll run.”
“If you run, I’ll only give chase and catch you,” he said.
“I can run very fast,” I warned.
“So can I.”
“If you caught me, what would you do?”
He laughed and spun around in a circle. “I really don’t know, except it would give me the chance to see you really close, and then I could find out if those eyes of yours are truly violet, or just dark blue.”
“Would it matter?” I felt worried. My eye color was like my hair color—ambiguous. Strange eyes that could change color with my moods, from violet to dark, dark purple. Haunted eyes, said Aunt Ellsbeth, who was always telling me in indirect ways that I was weird.
“Nope, it wouldn’t matter,” he said.
“Arden,” called a woman’s voice, “who are you talking to?”
“Audrina,” he called back. “You know, Mom, the youngest of those two girls who live in that big fancy house beyond the woods. She’s awfully pretty, Mom, but shy. Ne
ver met such a shy girl before. She stays behind the bushes, ready to run if I come too close. She sure isn’t like her sister, I can tell you that. Would you say that’s the proper way to meet a boy?”
From inside the cottage his mother laughed gaily. “It may be exactly the right way to interest a boy like my son, who likes to solve mysteries.”
I stretched my neck to see a beautiful dark-haired woman sitting at an open cottage window, showing from her waist up. She seemed to me as lovely as a movie star with all that long, blue-black curling hair tumbling down onto her shoulders. Her eyes were dark, her complexion as fair and flawless as porcelain.
“Audrina, you’re welcome here whenever you care to visit,” she called in a friendly, warm fashion. “My son is a fine and honorable boy who would never do a thing to harm you.”
I felt breathless with happiness. I’d never had a friend before. I had disobeyed, like the First Audrina, and dared the woods … only to find friends. Maybe I wasn’t as cursed as she’d been. The woods weren’t going to destroy me, as they had her …
I started to speak, to step forward and show all of myself and brave meeting strangers on their own ground. Just as I was ready to reveal myself, out of the depths of the woods behind me came the sound of my name being called repeatedly, commandingly. The voice was distant and faint, but each time it sounded it was closer.
It was Papa! How did he know where to find me? What was he doing home from his office so early? Had Vera called him to tell him I wasn’t in the house or yard? He’d punish me, I knew he would. Even if this wasn’t the forbidden, worst part of the woods, he didn’t want me out of sight from those who watched over me from morning until night.
“Goodbye, Arden,” I called hastily, peeking from around the tree and waving. I waved again to his mother in the window. “Goodbye, Mrs. Lowe. I’m happy to have met you both, and thank you for wanting me to be your friend. I need friends, so I’ll be back soon, I promise.”