“Is Ava back yet?”
“Not yet,” he said. “She won’t be at dinner, either.”
She’s hunting, I thought, and mentally counted the days. It was time. I didn’t see or hear her until the middle of the night. Apparently, she had gone much farther for her catch this time.
To my surprise, Daddy wasn’t at dinner, either. When I asked why not, Mrs. Fennel said he had things to do and wouldn’t be home until late in the evening. Usually, she would just say, “He had things to do.” I was sensitive to the fact that she was speaking to me more now. Something had changed between us. She wasn’t sniping at me, and I thought I even saw her smile occasionally. There was no change in how she spoke or acted toward Marla.
Marla was quiet and solicitous at dinner. I thought she was still afraid I would tell Daddy how she had behaved and even some of the things she had said. It was clear also that Daddy was not unhappy with how I had handled things in school with Mark. She knew that eventually, as Ava had been my mentor, I would be hers. I saw how frightened she was now of my holding a grudge. I was pleasant to her but took advantage of her timidity and bullied her a little. It made me feel more and more like Ava, and I wondered if I was tumbling headlong into her persona. Perhaps it wouldn’t be much longer before she would feel usurped and move on to fulfill her own destiny, whatever that was.
After dinner, Marla went right up to her room. She asked me to stop in to listen to some music with her after I had done my work, and I said I might. I lingered in the dining room for a few moments longer, and when Mrs. Fennel came in to start cleaning up, I rose to help her. She never tolerated any help unless we had company and she wanted us to make a good impression. Since my younger days helping her in her herbal garden, I had always been timid about doing anything to assist her. We were responsible for our own things and our own rooms, but she guarded the rest of the house as if it were her special kingdom. No one was to move anything ever and certainly we were never to touch the very valuable antique artifacts.
Most girls my age would have loved not having to do kitchen and housework. A number of them in my class came from families that had permanent maids, and some even had cooks. Ava never minded our arrangements, and Marla, who was often too lazy to care for her own things, loved not being asked to do anything else, but I had a different feeling about it. As strange it would sound to my classmates, being so unattached to caring for our home made me feel more like a tenant. I wanted to cherish our possessions, feel that they were part of who I was. Sometimes I felt as if I were in some shop or model home, looking at things the way customers might look at merchandise.
Mrs. Fennel glanced at me when I started to pick up plates to follow her into the kitchen, but, unlike after my other attempts, she didn’t say, “Just leave it.” She went into the kitchen and let me follow her. I put the plates down on the counter and went back into the dining room to bring in the rest. She was quiet and worked as I cleared the dining-room table. And then, in a very uncharacteristic soft tone of voice, she turned to me, smiled softly, and said, “You want to talk to me tonight?”
“Yes,” I said, holding my breath.
“Return to the dining room,” she said.
I did, and a few moments later, wiping her hands with a dish towel, she returned as well and sat in Daddy’s seat.
She leaned forward and said, “Go ahead.”
“Marla was being a little brat today,” I said.
“Oh,” she said, sitting back with a look of disappointment. “Is that what this is about?”
“No, no,” I said quickly. “I’m not here to complain about her. I can handle Marla myself.”
She smiled at that. “So, what is it?”
“She claimed Ava told her things, things about you.”
“Did she?” She twisted her lips and then nodded. “Ava can be spiteful. She was like that with Brianna, too. None of you is perfect or as perfect as I would like.”
“She said you were Daddy’s sister.”
She stared at me a moment and then nodded. “Your father has been moving you along a little faster than the others, so your learning what Ava learned when she was older than you is appropriate.”
I held my breath. I had been waiting for this so long. How much would she tell me?
“Yes,” she began. “I am your father’s sister, but I am considerably older than he is.”
“What are your ages?” I asked in a low, meek whisper.
She smiled at me, and it was one of the few times I had ever seen a warm, truly humorous smile on her face. It made her look younger, too. “You know what, Lorelei? We’ve lived so long that after a while, we lose track. Time isn’t the same for us, anyway. We don’t look for it on watches and on calendars. It doesn’t move in increments. It all seems to stream, flow. It’s like trying to find a single drop of water in a stream. Just know we’ve both been around a very long time. You’ll understand someday.”
It was going so well, I thought I would continue. “Ava knows who her mother was. She’s angry about her. I’d almost say she hates the thought of her, blames her for dying. Is that true? Was her dying her own fault somehow?”
“No,” Mrs. Fennel said. “A man like your father can have children with an ordinary woman, but she will always die in childbirth. He knew this. I don’t want you talking to Ava about this anymore. Understand me?”
“Yes.”
“Good. That’s enough for now. Thank you for helping. Now, put all this away for now. You have a ways to travel yet before you can handle what more there is to learn and to do,” she said.
I didn’t get up immediately. I was trembling. My legs felt weak. Then I heard the door open and close and turned to see Daddy standing there.
“Why are you sitting by yourself in the dining room, Lorelei?”
“I…”
“She helped me with the cleanup, and then we had an important conversation,” Mrs. Fennel said. I supposed I should be thinking of her as Aunt Razi, I thought, but I wouldn’t, nor would I call her that until she told me it was okay to do so.
“Oh? That’s good,” Daddy said. I thought he looked tired. His shoulders sagged, and his face was darker. “We’ll talk more tomorrow,” he added, and headed upstairs. I looked quickly at Mrs. Fennel.
“Tend to your own duties now,” she said, and returned to the kitchen.
I rose and went to my room. I heard Marla watching television in hers and started toward it but stopped. I really didn’t feel like talking to her. I certainly didn’t want her to ask me about any conversation I might have had with Mrs. Fennel. Instead, I went to my room and started my homework. I fell asleep once while I was reading and decided just to go to bed. There were so many different thoughts troubling me, but I did doze off.
The sound of a car door slamming woke me. I sat up to listen and, hearing nothing, went to my window. There was a strange car in the driveway. I saw no one near it, however, and went to my bedroom door. What surprised me was the sound of Ava’s voice. She wasn’t pleading so much as complaining. Her voice began to sound more strident. I stepped into the hallway and looked toward the entryway.
The young man Ava was with was obviously stoned. He was trying to get her to go right down on the floor with him. At one point, he simply sat at her feet and pulled on her arm to get her to join him. He was that out of it.
“I’m not climbing no stairway,” he said. “This rug’s about as soft as my bed.”
“Stop it!” she cried.
He laughed, and then he paused as Daddy stepped forward. I hadn’t heard him come down the stairway, either.
“What is this?” Daddy asked.
“Huh?” the man said. “Who’s this?” He blinked his eyes and wiped his face.
“Is he on drugs? You brought me someone stoned?”
“I couldn’t help it, Daddy,” Ava said, sounding years younger. “He took something on the way up here. I didn’t realize it until we were almost here.”
“This is spoiled food,
Ava. I can’t feed on this tonight.”
“What? What the hell’s he talking about?” the young man asked, and struggled to get to his feet.
I never saw the blow. Daddy’s hands could move that quickly. He struck him on the back of his neck, and the man folded to the floor. Then Daddy kneeled down and lifted him in his arms as if he were a child, when he looked to me to be more than six feet tall and easily more than two hundred pounds.
“I’ll have to put him in storage until nearly morning,” Daddy said sharply to Ava.
“I’m sorry, Daddy. We were just drinking earlier. I told him I didn’t want to take anything, and I thought he understood, but…”
Daddy didn’t wait for any further explanation. He turned and carried the young man toward the stairway. Ava stood there with her head down. She looked up when Daddy was nearly to the top, and then she started toward me.
“What happened?” I asked.
She glared at me for a moment. “You saw it. Why ask?”
“I don’t…”
“Let me tell you something,” she said, looking as if she might actually cry. “If you thought you were moving too quickly and magically before, it will be nothing compared to how he’ll move you along now.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m not little Miss Perfect anymore. You are, or you’d better be. The writing’s on the wall, Lorelei, and it’s in blood,” she told me, and walked on to her room.
8
Daddy Knows Best
The young man’s car was gone in the morning. I didn’t have to ask Mrs. Fennel why Daddy was still asleep, either. Even Marla looked tired that morning. I wondered if she had overheard anything or seen anything the night before, but as it turned out, she had simply stayed up too late watching television. Actually, I hadn’t slept that well myself.
Ava’s remarks to me had left me trembling. I tossed and turned, hearing her words echo in my head, and didn’t fall asleep for hours. It left me depressed, and I wasn’t very talkative in the car. I knew Marla thought I was still angry at her or that maybe I was worried about what might happen with Mark Daniels in school now. After we parked, she told me to come looking for her if I needed anything.
“I’m all right, Marla. Don’t worry about me,” I said.
“I’m not worrying about you. I’m worrying about us,” she reminded me. So much for that sisterly feeling I had been hoping would develop between us.
Mark wasn’t waiting for me at the door again and in fact, he was nearly late to school himself. All day, I anticipated him approaching me with some funny remark, but when I looked at him, he appeared depressed himself, walking with his head down and not volunteering any answers in any of our classes. I noticed that he wasn’t very talkative with his friends, and he left lunch early. Just before the last period of the day, one of the boys who did hang with him, Jeff Kantor, came up beside me and said, “Mark’s really taking your rejection hard. Don’t look for him in class. He went home.”
He continued walking past me.
I looked back to see if Mark was there and this was just another one of his jokes, but he wasn’t anywhere in sight, and when class began, his desk remained empty. Could this be true? Would my rejecting him really disturb someone like Mark so much? Was I simply a failed conquest, or did he really have strong feelings for me? On the way home, I told Marla about it, simply because I was truly amazed.
“I can’t help feeling a little sorry for him,” I said.
“That’s stupid, Lorelei. Maybe now he’ll leave you be,” she said. “Good work.”
Good work? I had blown off the best-looking, most charming and delightful boy in the school. How could I make her understand? What would it have been like if I could have had a little high school romance? What would it have been like to be picked up for dates, go to movies and dinner, hang out together at the beach, or just take long rides? What would it have been like to have a date for a dance, go to parties at other kids’ homes, talk on the phone, always be together in school, and maybe say dramatic things to each other?
Could I explain to her how I would be excited every morning and look forward to seeing him? I’d really care about what I wore and what I looked like, how I fixed my hair, what makeup and nail polish I used. I’d look and act like everyone else. Other girls would be envious of our relationship and be dying to ask me questions or just hear me talk about us. He’d invite me to dinner at his home, and I’d invite him to mine. We’d see the world through four eyes and not two, hear the world through four ears, feel it through twenty fingers, and smell it through two noses, all of it merging into one feeling, one reaction. We’d giggle about anything and everything, comfort each other whenever one of us was unhappy about something. I’d be beside him at school ball games. In short, we’d be an item, the perfect couple, instead of two separate souls meandering awkwardly through our lives as if we had lost our senses. Everything wouldn’t be about only me.
Most of all, I’d feel even safer, more secure, knowing there were two strong arms ready to embrace me whenever I needed to be embraced when Daddy wasn’t around. He wasn’t with us every minute of the day, was he? I would have Mark’s shoulder to lean on whenever I needed comfort.
No, Marla, I thought. Although I can’t explain it to you in a way you might appreciate, believe me, it wasn’t good work. I did what I was told to do, but it didn’t make me happier. In fact, for the first time in my life, I wasn’t happier that Daddy was pleased with me. It was a feeling I had never expected. It frightened me, because I thought Mrs. Fennel would take one look at my face and know. She would tell Daddy, and they would have a serious discussion about me, about whether I was good enough to be one of his daughters after all.
I did my best to avoid her eyes without revealing that I was doing it. She didn’t seem to notice any difference in me. Daddy was still sleeping, of course. Ava had gone to class. Marla asked me to help her with some homework. I was happy to, because it kept me from thinking about everything. She started to ask me about Mark again, expecting to hear how happy I was now, but I cut her off.
“It’s better if we both just forget about him, Marla. It’s not good to bring him up. Daddy wouldn’t like it,” I added to put a firm period to my sentence.
She nodded and returned to her work. I had shut Mark out of her mind, but I hadn’t been able yet to shut him out of mine. I wondered what he was doing now. Had his parents noticed how upset he was? Did they ask him about it? What sort of a relationship did he have with them? Would he confide in his father, perhaps, tell him about this beautiful girl in school who completely rejected him? Look for sympathy, advice? Would his father tell him something that would renew his hope, and would he try again if and when he returned to school tomorrow? What would I do then? Would Daddy tell me to go to the dean? Would some invisible circle be drawn around me that Mark was never to cross? How stupid would all of this make me look? How much more difficult would it be for me to continue at the school? Ultimately, would Daddy take me out, and if he took me out, wouldn’t he have to take Marla out as well? It was all so troubling.
Just before dinner, Ava came to my room. She had a no-nonsense look on her face, as if she had come to the end of her patience.
“What happened with this boy?” she demanded.
I told her everything, except, of course, how I really felt about it.
“That’s such a crock of crap,” she said. “It’s another ploy to get at you. He’s playing for sympathy. Don’t even acknowledge that you realized he was gone. That will drive it home like a stake through his heart.”
She sounded so bitter, so angry. I wondered how she would feel if she saw him, met him. Would she at least understand why I wasn’t happy?
“You really and truly never regretted not having a boyfriend in high school, Ava?”
“No. They were all too immature for me. And where was I going with it if I started a high school romance? What was true for me is true for you, Lorelei. Don’t you realize that y
et?”
“I do. I just wondered.”
She gave me one of her scrutinizing looks again, the sort that made my insides curl.
“What?”
“Maybe… maybe you should ask Daddy about all this,” she suggested. The threat and implication that lay beneath that idea were clear. “Maybe he should know you have these thoughts.”
“You mean you won’t go running off to tell him?” I shot back at her.
“No need to,” she said with a crooked smile. “You know Daddy can see through you, can see through all of us.”
Why was she being like this? Was she taking out on me what happened to her last night, how she had angered Daddy? Did she think because I was able to do what Daddy wanted and she had blundered that now he would favor me even more? As long as I could remember, she had been afraid of that. She was even afraid that Mrs. Fennel would like me more, if that was possible. Now I was the one who felt a little impish.
“Mrs. Fennel told me things yesterday,” I said spitefully. “Without my asking.”
“Oh? What things?”
“Things about herself, mostly.”
“Oh,” she said, as if that wasn’t anything.
“And about your mother.”
Her eyebrows nearly jumped over her forehead. “What did she say?”
“Only what you know, Ava. Her dying wasn’t her fault. Daddy knew what would happen to her. Now I know the truth as well.”
“Good for you,” she said. “Now you know.”
“She told me she was Daddy’s older sister.”
“Did she?”
“You knew that. You told Marla. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Didn’t I?”
“You know you didn’t, Ava.”
She shrugged. “What difference does it make?” She started to turn away to leave, paused, and turned back. “You know why you’re learning more things now, don’t you?”
I didn’t want to say it, but I knew, deep down I knew, but was still trying to keep it buried.