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How exuberantly alive we should have felt to be freed, at last, from such a grim, lonely and stifling place. How pitifully delighted we should have been to be riding on a bus that rumbled slowly southward. But if we felt joy, we didn’t show it. We sat, all three, pale, silent, staring out the windows, very frightened by all we saw.
I wanted everything, needed everything, and I was so terribly afraid I’d never in all my life find enough to make up for what I had already lost.
“Do you always wear more than one outfit on Sundays?” he asked. “Only on the Sundays I run away,” I said. “And we have only two suitcases and need to save room for the valuables we can hock later on when we have to.”
“To Sarasota, Florida,” Chris said weakly. “Cathy and I used to swing from the ropes we tied to the attic rafters, so she thought we could become aerialists, with some practice.” It sounded silly when I heard him say it. I expected the doctor to laugh, but he didn’t. He just looked sadder.
“You are going to be a prima ballerina, and Chris is going to be a famous doctor, and you are going to achieve all of this by running away to Florida to perform in the circus? Of course I’m of another stodgy generation and I can’t fathom your reasoning. Does it really make good sense to you?” Now that we were out of the locked room and the attic and in the full light of reality, no, it didn’t make good sense.
“Is it fair to test him like that?” “Yes. It’s a good way to give him the chance to get rid of us and not feel guilty about it. You know, people like him often do nice things because they feel they should, not because they really want to.”
“So all my roses are old-fashioned roses that haven’t had the heady scent bred from them,” said Dr. Paul.
Written about in memoir The Gardener of Versailles
“We’re sorry for the loss of your wife and son, sir. But we can’t replace them, and I don’t know if we’d be doing right to burden you with the expense of three kids not your own.” Then he added, looking the doctor squarely in the eyes. “And you should think about this too. You’ll have one hell of a time finding another wife when you assume guardianship of us.”
sign it with this, “From the four Dresden dolls you didn’t want,” and I had to change that to “The three alive Dresden dolls you didn’t want, plus the dead one you carried away and never brought back.” I could see her staring at that card, thinking to herself, I only did what I had to.
“No! No!” Her foot was ready for kicking, her fists balled to do battle with anyone who tried to force her. “Don’t want no private ole school for funny lookin’ lil girls! I won’t go!
“I feel ugly asking you, when he’s done so much to help us, but still, sometimes I think he took us in only because, well, only because of you. Because he wants you!” “Chris, he’s twenty-five years older than me. How can you think like that?”
You talk about ballet classes, and sending my brother to college and medical school, and all the while you imply that sooner or later you are going to demand your payment, and I know what kind of payment you want!” I took my hands and ripped open the peignoir so the skimpy bodice of the aqua nightgown was revealed. “Look at the kind of gift you gave me. Is this the kind of nightgown a girl of fifteen wears? No! It’s the kind of gown a bride wears on her wedding night! And you gave it to me, and you saw Chris frown, and you didn’t even have the decency to blush!”
I am thirteenth in a long line of male dancers who have married ballerinas, most of them. How do you think that makes me feel?
“I dream every night of being in New York, on stage. I see my mother in the audience staring up at me with disbelieving eyes. She wanted to kill me. I want her to see me dance and realize I have more to give the world than she does.”
in those long months we were eating poisoned doughnuts! So don’t you dare talk to me of forgiving and forgetting! I don’t know how to forgive and forget! All I know how to do is hate! And you don’t know what it’s like to hate as I do!”
“Was it raining that day in June when you put Julia and Scotty in the ground?” “What difference does that make? Any day you put someone you love underground it’s raining!”
Nobody is going to push me around and make me do what I don’t want to—never again! Not Paul! Not Madame! Not Julian—and not you either!”
“You’re going to adore Madame Zolta! She’s Russian and the sweetest, kindest, most gentle little old lady you ever met. She’ll be like your mother. [Good God!]
I tried to resist him by fastening my eyes on Chris, Carrie and Paul, but Julian moved so he blocked out my view. All I could see was him.
He grinned in a self-effacing way. “Can’t help it if you got all the dancing talent and I got all the brains.” “Remarks like that could easily make me think you have no brains.”
“But I’m not blind, I’m not stupid and I’ve seen the way you look at that doctor—and so help me God if I haven’t seen you look at your own brother in the same way!
“Then do it right! First take three steps and then you kick, then jump for me to catch, and for God’s sake this time lay back immediately! Don’t stay upright and stiff, the moment I catch you fall backwards and go limp—if you can manage to do anything right or graceful today.” That was my trouble. I didn’t trust him now. I was afraid he was going to try to hurt me.
“It’s on the hospital records,” she said to me smugly. “You miscarried a two-headed embryo with three legs—twins who didn’t separate properly. You poor thing, don’t you know a D & C is an abortion procedure?”
“You go on back to New York, Cathy, where it snows all the time, and muggers get you in the park, and killers get you in the subway—but you leave me here! I used to want to be with you, now I don’t care! You went and married that ole Julian with the black eyes when you could have been Dr. Paul’s wife, and my real mother. I’ll marry him! You think he won’t want me ’cause I’m too little—but he will. You think he’s too old for me, but I won’t be able to get anybody else, so he’ll feel sorry and marry me, and we’ll have six children—you just wait and see!” “Carrie—” “Shut up! I don’t like you now!
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“Angel, saint, Devil’s spawn, good or evil, you’ve got me pinned to the wall and labeled as yours until the day I die. And if you die first, then it won’t be long before I follow.”
And me with my hatred for my mother, making me do crazy things, like sending off hateful letters and Christmas cards to sadden her life
“His name is Julian Janus Marquet, but I’m going to call him Jory.” Both Chris and Paul heard my thin whisper. I was so tired, so sleepy. “Why would you call him Jory?” asked Paul,
“But I’m a fool; I’ve always been a fool, wanting the impossible. I’m even fool enough to want us locked up again, the way we were—with me the only male available to you!”
“You are the damndest female I’ve ever known!” His dark eyes flashed. “How dare you imply my wife is stupid, old and fat? She looks very young for her age!”
You’re always running from me, Cathy, and you can’t ever run far enough or fast enough, because I’ll be right at your heels, loving you. Whenever anything good happens to me I sense you by my side, clinging to my hand, loving me as I love you, but refusing to recognize it because you think it’s sin. If it is a sin, then hell would be heaven with you.”
Her youth, her loveliness, her joy all touched me so much my heart ached in the awful apprehension that something might happen to spoil it for her.
“He told me something, Cathy. He’s decided he wants to be a minister.” Pain and sorrow were in her voice, and I didn’t understand at all. “Don’t you want to be a minister’s wife?” I asked, while I was so frightened underneath. She seemed so remote. “Ministers expect people to be perfect,” she said in that deadly, scary tone, “especially their wives. I remember all the things the grandmother used to say about us. About us being Devil’s issue and evil and sinful.
how can I tell Alex all of that and then tell him our mother married her half-uncle too? He’d hate me, Cathy. He wouldn’t want me then, I know he wouldn’t. He’d think I would give birth to deformed children, like me—and I love him so much!”
“He’s gonna be a minister. Religious people think everything is bad, just like grandmother. When he told me he was going to give up the idea of being an electrical engineer, I knew it was all over between us.”
“You won’t tell him!” I ordered sternly. She lay with her eyes fixed on the ceiling until finally she drifted off to sleep. Then I was the one left to lie awake, hurting inside, still astonished by the effect one old woman had on the lives of so many.
Thank all of you for never being ashamed to be seen with me, and tell Henny I love her. I think maybe God won’t want me either, until I grow taller,
“I saw a lady on the street.” Her voice was so low I had to lean to hear. “She looked so much like Momma I had to run up. I caught hold of her hand. She snatched hers away and turned cold hard eyes on me. ‘I don’t know you’ she said. Cathy, that was our mother!
“Jory’s got lots of people besides me to love and care for him . . . but Cory, he’s waiting for me, Cathy. I can see him right now. Look over there behind your shoulder; he’s standing next to Daddy and they want me more than anyone here.”
“You are indeed very good at forgiving, Christopher—but at forgetting, now that is another matter.”
“I wouldn’t know. If a man is charming and intelligent enough, I often forget how he actually looks and think he’s handsome regardless.”
“Well, little Miss Muffet—what kind of lap dog do you call me now? Or are you Little Red Riding Hood who has just met the wolf?”
“At least I didn’t have to buy you with my father’s millions!”
Part one was done. Part two would begin when my mother knew I had Bart’s child—and then there was the grandmother who had to pay as well.
I stepped inside and closed the door behind me. And only then did she see the willow switch I’d hidden behind my back. Casually I tapped the switch on my palm. “Grandmother,” I said softly, “remember the day you whipped our mother? How you forced her to strip in front of her father, and then you whipped her, and she was an adult—a shameless, wicked, evil deed, don’t you agree?”
She met a nice boy named Alex. They fell in love and were going to be married when she found out he was going to be a minister. That shook Carrie up. You see, you made us all deeply fearful of religious people. The day Alex said he was going to be a minister Carrie went into a despairing depression. She had learned the lesson you taught very well. You taught us that no one can ever be perfect enough to please God.
“Do you have a little boy I can play with?” questioned my son, concerned to see her tears, as if having a son would make up for not knowing how to dance. “No,” she said in a quivering weak whisper, “I don’t have any children.” That’s when I moved in to say in a cold, harsh voice, “Some women don’t deserve to have children.”
I was a few years younger, but yes, I did look like her. Not exactly, but almost—and enough to convince—for were two leaves from the same tree ever duplicates? I replaced the jewelry tray, put back the drawer, leaving everything as it had been. Except now I wore several hundred thousand dollars worth of gems I didn’t own. One more look at my watch. Ten-thirty. Too soon. At twelve I wanted to make my grand entrance, like Cinderella in reverse.
And then, when I should have known better, I headed for the closet and the high and narrow door at the very back end and the steep and narrow dark stairs. A million times I’d ascended these stairs. A million times in the dark, without a candle, or a flashlight. Up into the dark, eerie, gigantic attic,
my eyes took flight to the blackboard where I’d printed my enigmatic farewell message to those who came in the future. How was I to know it would be me? We lived in the attic, Christopher, Cory, Carrie and me— Now there are only three. Behind the small desk that had been Cory’s I scrunched down, and tried to fit my legs under. I wanted to put myself into a deep reverie that would call up Cory’s spirit that would tell me where he lay.
