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She lived next door, and was always saying Momma and Daddy looked more like brother and sister than husband and wife.
“Doesn’t everybody love their mother?” “No,” she said with a queer expression, “there are some mothers you just can’t love, for they don’t want you to love them.”
We would play in the back garden, trying to find solace in the sunshine, quite unaware that our lives were soon to change so drastically, so dramatically, that the words “backyard” and “garden” were to become for us synonyms for heaven—and just as remote.
he, too, stood and stared at the grandmother who could so easily talk of the death of her husband, showing no distress. It was as if she were speaking of some goldfish in China that would soon die in a fishbowl.
“Eight: if I ever catch boys and girls using the bathroom at the same time, I will quite relentlessly, and without mercy, peel the skins from your backs.” My heart seemed to flip over. Good-golly day, what kind of grandmother did we have?
“Don’t take any of this seriously. She’s a nut, a loony-bird. Nobody as smart as our grandfather can have the idiot ideas his wife does—or else how could he make millions of dollars?”
Huge, dim, dirty, dusty, this attic stretched for miles! The farthest walls were so distant they seemed hazy, out of focus.
“Cathy, it is going to be all right. There must be very simple explanations for everything that seems to us very complex and mysterious.”
I was drawn to the small desks, where names and dates were etched, such as Jonathan, age 11, 1864! And Adelaide, age 9, 1879! Oh, how very old this house was! They were dust in their graves by now, but they had left their names behind to let us know that once, they, too, had been sent up here.
It was very apparent the Foxworths didn’t throw anything away—they stored their trash in the attic. Maybe they were afraid of one day being poor, and suddenly needing what was put away so miserly.
I was the kind of child who’d always looked for fairies dancing on the grass. I wanted to believe in witches, wizards, ogres, giants, and enchanted spells. I didn’t want all of the magic taken out of the world by scientific explanation. I didn’t know at that time that I had come to live in what was virtually a strong and dark castle, ruled over by a witch and an ogre.
To believe in God is a good thing, a right thing. But when you reinforce your belief with words you take from the Old Testament that you seek out, and interpret in the ways that suit your needs best, that is hypocrisy,
“I am here to do what I can to make my father like me again, and forgive me for marrying my half-uncle.
So if God had wanted to punish us, he had four chances to give us deformed or mentally retarded children. Instead, he gave us the very best.
Never would I become so dependent on a man I couldn’t make my way in the world, no matter what cruel blow life delivered!
“What would he do if he knew about us?” I asked, ignoring Chris, who kept frowning at me. Already he’d told me if I kept asking so many questions, Momma would stop coming to see us everyday. Then what would we do?
At the end of the rainbow waited the pot of gold. But rainbows were made of faint and fragile gossamer—and gold weighed a ton—and since the world began, gold was the reason to do most anything.
I don’t want people to wonder why I stay home every weekend; that’s why occasionally I do have to go sailing, or to the movies.”
“Where has all the grass gone?” “God took the grass to heaven.” And thusly, Carrie saved me from answering. “Why?” “For Daddy. Daddy likes to mow the lawn.”
“Ask your older brother—he’ll know what I mean. The male of the species is born knowing everything evil.”
“Here are real flowers for your fake garden,” she said without warmth.
If you don’t set your goals firmly in mind, and strive always to reach them, then you never do.
Children needed sunlight in order to grow. All we had to do was look at our dying plants, and register what the attic air was doing to our greenery.
“Tomorrow I’ll bring bananas. Your grandfather doesn’t like them.” “What has he got to do with it?” “It’s the reason bananas are not purchased.” “You drive back and forth to secretarial school every weekday—stop yourself and buy the bananas—and
“And what would you like for yourself?” she asked. “Freedom! I want to be let out. I’m tired of being in a locked room. I want the twins out; I want Chris out. I want you to rent a house, buy a house, steal a house—but get us out of this house!”
Didn’t he see our mother wasn’t the same anymore? Didn’t he notice she no longer came every day? Was he so gullible he believed everything she said, every excuse she made?
“When it belonged to my mother, it was kept in a huge glass box. She was allowed to look at it, but she could never touch it. When it was given to me, my father took a hammer and broke the glass box, and he allowed me to play with everything—on the condition that I would swear, with my hand on the Bible, not to break anything.”
Poor Momma. How could we blame her for falling in love with a half-uncle when he was as young, and as handsome and charming as our father had been?
Secrets? And he said I was given to exaggerations! What was the matter with him? Didn’t he know that we were the secrets?
“If you’re thinking of Momma, she didn’t mean what she said and did. I believe, though I’m not sure, once you are an adult, and come back to the home of your parents to live, for some odd reason, you’re reduced to being a child again, and dependent.
And all this mess, this pain, these cramps, just so my uterus could ready itself to receive a “fertilized egg”
Oh, good-golly, to think I was so evil as to want that old man to die this very second! God forgive me. But it wasn’t right for us to be shut up all the time;
“I’m going to call him Mickey,” said Cory—a thousand candles behind his eyes because one small mouse would live to become his pet. “It may be a girl,” said Chris, who flicked his eyes to check. “No! Don’t want no girl mouse—want a Mickey mouse!”
Had we suffered? Had we only missed her? Who was she, anyway? Idiot thoughts while I stared at her and listened to how difficult four hidden children made the lives of others. And though I wanted to deny her, keep her from ever really being close again, I faltered, filling with hope, wanting so much to love her again, and trust her again.
Long ago, when you first told us about this house and your parents, you said we’d only be shut up in this room for one night, and then you changed it to a few days. And then it was another few weeks, and then another few months . . . and over two years have passed while we wait for an old man to die, who may never die from the skilled way his doctors keep pulling him back from the grave. This room is not improving our health. Can’t you see that?”
So, when she showed up, at long last, we were thoroughly chastised, and most fearful she would never come back if Chris and I showed more hostility or repeated our demands to be let out.
Nobody in their right mind would want to seduce a man with eight children.”
This book depicted many couples all in one room, all naked, and all into each other in one way or another. Against my will, or so I wanted to think, my hand stole out to slowly turn each page, growing ever more incredulous! So many ways to do it! So many positions! My God, was this what lovesick Raymond and Lily had in mind from page one of that Victorian novel? I lifted my head and stared blankly into space. From the beginning of life, were we all headed toward this?
“Why are you standing there whispering?” I shouted out. “What choice do you have but to take Cory to a hospital, and get him the best doctor available?”
“Damn you to hell, Corrine Foxworth,” I shouted at the top of my lungs, “if you don’t take your son to a hospital! You think you can do anything you want with us, and no one will find out! Well, you can throw away that security blanket, for I’ll find a way for revenge, if it takes me the rest of my life, I’ll see that you pay, and dearly pay, if you don’t do something right now to save Cory’s life.
Her glazed blue eyes turned our way; void eyes, staring vacantly; lost eyes, seeking something gone forever—I guessed it was her humanity.
And in it, Cathy, was a silver-framed photograph of Daddy, and their marriage license, and a small velvet box of green. Cathy, inside that little green velvet box, inside was Momma’s wedding band, and her engagement diamond—the ones our father gave her. It hurt to think she would take everything, and leave his photograph as valueless, and the two rings he’d given her.
