Echoes of Dollanganger (33 page)

I looked at my watch. “We could have some lunch now, anyway.”

He nodded. Neither of us would admit that we weren't that hungry, but both of us needed the break. He rose to start after me.

“Leave it up here,” I said, nodding at the diary in his hands.

He put it on the chair, and we left the attic.

We descended silently. I think neither of us knew quite how to begin this conversation. I talked instead about what to eat, and we both decided I'd make some toasted cheese and tomato sandwiches. He watched me start by neatly cutting the tomato the way my father had taught me years ago, and then Kane went out to the living room and stood there the whole time looking out the window at the street and the trees. He didn't turn when he heard me come to tell him our sandwiches were ready. He continued staring ahead.

“My father looks forward to winter. He's a good
skier. My sister's a good skier. I can ski passably well, but I'm not crazy about it. My mother likes going to ski lodges and sitting by the fireplaces drinking her Cosmopolitans. She has the best ski lodge fashions, all that white fur stuff and those fancy soft leather winter boots that hardly ever see any snow. My father took us on our first family ski trip when I was just six. He had a ski pro teach me on the children's slope. In those days, my sister and I shared a room. Separate beds, of course, but the same room. She would complain about it, but my father saw no reason to spend money on another room for a six-year-old.”

“Did you want to be in the same room with your sister?”

He turned quickly. I thought he was going to say something nasty, but he looked like he was giving my question deep thought. “I wasn't afraid of being alone or anything like that. Maybe in those days, I was closer to her than I am now. I mean, when you're six, you'd hate to hug your sister, but at this age, when we hug, I'm well aware of how beautiful she is. Whatever . . . you've got me questioning my own feelings.”

“Me?”

“Christopher, then. You ever go skiing?” he asked, eager to change the topic. I wasn't going to oppose it. These thoughts felt too heavy right now.

“No. When my father looks to recreate, he favors swimming in the ocean. We used to take long weekends in Virginia Beach, I remember, but we haven't done that since . . . for a long time. He says he gets enough exercise at work.”

“I'm sure he does,” Kane said.

“Sandwiches are ready.”

He followed me into the kitchen. I poured us both some chocolate milk, and we sat across from each other at the kitchenette table and ate.

“What did you do to make this so good?”

“I put a little avocado in it. My father does that, and he uses real butter.”

“Do you think he'd mind if I moved in?” he asked, smiling.

“Probably not, as long as you did KP duty.”

“I keep forgetting he was in the navy.”

“Yes. He doesn't have any tattoos.”

Kane laughed. “Neither does my father. He used to ask my sister and me if we knew any college graduates with tattoos. It was his way of telling us never to get one.”

“Suzette brags about the one she has on her rear end, a hummingbird. Ever see it?”

“Good try,” he said. “No, and I don't want to, either.”

We both finished our sandwiches, but neither of us stood up. The long pause seemed deafening.

“He was always in control when they were alone,” I began. “It wouldn't have happened if he didn't lose control of himself.”

“I'm not disagreeing, but somehow I don't hate him for it. I'm not even disgusted about it. I'm just a little shocked is all. I mean, I don't want to go into any deep psychological analysis about it. It happened. They were trapped at just the wrong time in their
development, their sexuality. But that doesn't excuse it,” he quickly added.

“Do you think it destroyed them?”

“They've survived so much. Why not that, too?”

“Their parents were incestuous by definition, and then they were. The old lady thinks it's inherited evil.”

“Why wouldn't she? She believed in original sin. She blamed men more, but it wasn't Adam who screwed up in the Garden of Eden. It was Mrs. Adam.”

I finally felt a smile on my face. “Right. You guys are the victims from day one,” I said, and cleared the table.

“We've got to finish it now, Kristin,” Kane said. “Neither of us will sleep tonight if we don't.”

“I know,” I said. I glanced at the clock. “We should be able to do that.”

“I'm going to the bathroom. I'll meet you upstairs,” he said.

I rinsed off the plates and glasses and put everything in the dishwasher. Then I went up to my bathroom. I had the strangest urge when I came out. I don't know if I could ever explain it or why I did it, but in my mind, it was my effort to tell both Cathy and Christopher that I was still all right with them. I even thought Kane knew that when I entered the attic, dressed only in one of my sheer nightgowns.

But he also knew it wasn't my only reason.

*  *  *

Is there a point when a girl says to herself,
It's my time
, a time when you might tell yourself what the
poets say, “The stars are perfectly aligned”? When you start to date, you know that behind every small, tentative kiss, even behind holding hands, he's thinking about the possibility, supposedly more than you are. In all the novels I've ever read, especially the ones written in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, girls supposedly didn't think as much about having sexual intercourse, certainly not before they were married. In some books, especially those set in the Victorian era, they were practically asexual.

And yet the whole idea of young girls being chaperoned all the time suggested to me that there was a fear that if they weren't, they would succumb quickly, maybe even eagerly. The chaperone wasn't there only to watch the man's behavior. It was the unspoken secret everyone knew: girls were just as interested in and excited by the prospect of making love.

I remembered that old joke a comedian told on television when he was recalling his youth and thinking about his parents making love. To a little boy and a little girl, the concept of how it was done seemed like a big “Ugh!” How could you find pleasure in that place on your body that seemed reserved only for peeing? The comedian said that when he thought about it then, he thought, “My father, yes, but my mother . . . never.”

If all those adults who pretended or convinced themselves that girls were essentially different from boys when it came to all this could be flies on the wall in our girls' bathrooms or locker rooms and could
listen to the conversations there, they would revise and rewrite the whole thing.

At this moment, I pushed aside all denial. Later I would find a dozen different reasons for that, the leading one being that I was as much in love with Kane as I expected I would ever be with anyone, and I trusted that he loved me, too. Dumb romantic excuse? Maybe, but it worked, at least for now. Another reason that loomed high in my rationale was the fear that it might happen some other time with someone I had half as much feeling for. I'd be a little drunk or go just a little too far to stop, and the result of that would be horrible regret to follow me all my life.
Avoid that at all costs, Kristin Masterwood
, I told myself.
This is your chance to prevent that from ever happening.

And of course, this was very special. Kane and I had shared so much these past days and weeks. We had invaded those places in ourselves that were locked away from everyone else, even those we were so close to in our lives. Christopher's diary had brought us here. We were in our own attic world, and we were ready to step into that place where we would no longer be able to carry our childhood fantasies with us. We would have different eyes. We would recognize those who had entered with us and those who hadn't.

I could almost feel myself lifting the little girl inside me who clung around my neck away and then placing her behind me. I reached out. Kane took my hand and moved so slowly toward me that it was as if he was maneuvering through a very narrow path
between jagged rocks. There was that awareness in his eyes. Carefully, like someone concerned that one wrong gesture, one move too quick, would shatter the moment, he undressed. He had what he needed to keep us from suffering serious regret. We were, after all, thoughtful lovers. We knew where unbridled animal passion could lead. We would not step on that path.

Because we wanted this to last a lifetime in our library of memories, we were moving in exaggeratedly slow motion, each kiss sculpted like a work of art, each touch plotted strategically. There was to be nothing sloppy and awkward here, not now. There was no way we would later claim we had stumbled into it, simply gone too far to turn back, and blame it on a rush of passion. That would reduce it all to some blunder and have nothing to do with our deeper feelings for each other.

I remember thinking to myself that girls like Suzette never knew a moment like this, and absent that, their lives would take a different turn. They would never know love the way I would, even if it was to be with someone else later on. I would always fall in love through this moment, through Kane.

With as much gentleness as we could manage in the throes of our building excitement, we both “crossed the Rio Grande,” but safely, with him wearing a condom. I wasn't a girl child. I didn't suffer any real pain. Wave after wave of delicious excitement flowed up and over my breasts, up my neck, and into my flushed face. When I was crying with joy, I remembered
having the flashing thought that Cathy Dollanganger would never know this beauty. For her, it was almost a savage leap out of childhood.

There were tears streaming down my cheeks when we were done. Kane kissed away some and held me until the trembling in my body stopped. We didn't talk about it. There were some moments in your life that you didn't want to analyze and review. They happened, and that was all there was.
Don't tempt conscience
, I thought.
Don't go measuring yourself against someone else's ruler of good and bad deeds. What you feel is good is good.
That was all there was to think and believe if you had faith in the goodness inside you.

Kane dressed quietly and then sat on the chair. When he looked at me with the diary back in his hand, I had the momentary thought that maybe what we had just done had all been a dream, a hallucination. He smiled and put his hand over his heart. I straightened myself out, brushed down my nightgown, and lay back.

Take me home
, I thought.
Read on.

Afterward, we went onto the roof, and I apologized. No matter how I said it, it sounded weak. I was doing it as much for myself as for her. My own loss of control shocked me. I was far from the perfect young man I wanted to be. How arrogant of me to think I was always going to be in full control of my emotions, my feelings, my body. I knew Cathy believed I was, and in a way, that made
me feel even guiltier, but there was nothing to do now to change what had happened. I even hated my apology. I wasn't absolutely sure, of course, but I assured her that she wouldn't get pregnant. I vowed never to let it happen again, but to be honest, I was afraid it would, as long as we were trapped here. It was September, and I was thinking that with winter coming, we had to rush this escape now. We had almost four hundred dollars. I estimated that if we stole some of Momma's jewelry, we could get by. The twins needed a good physical examination as soon as we arrived somewhere. For many reasons, therefore, we had to move soon.

One early October evening, when we knew Momma was going out, we prepared sacks for our foray into her bedroom. Winter was well on its way. We had to get out before snow began to fall. I was prepared to do everything I had to do, but then the worst thing of all happened.

Cory became very, very ill. He was throwing up so much I knew he would be dehydrated. My first suspicion was food poisoning, maybe sour milk, maybe bad meat. He fell asleep beside Carrie and Cathy, and I stayed up all night watching over him. He was far from better in the morning. It was even more serious than I had first thought. When our grandmother came in to leave our basket of food, Cathy told her how sick Cory was. She left without promising anything, and I was about to reveal that we had our key by going out for our
mother myself, but just before I did, she and our grandmother came in.

Cory was struggling to breathe by now, and Momma was standing back, whispering to our grandmother. Cathy lost her temper and began screaming at her. Momma slapped Cathy, and to my astonishment, Cathy slapped her back. I thought our grandmother would pound her or something, but she smiled at the confrontation as if it was the proof she needed that we were evil children or that Momma was getting what she deserved. I seized Cathy and pleaded with her to stop and let Momma do what had to be done. Cathy screamed at her anyway and vowed to take revenge on her.

Grandmother Olivia surprised me again. She told our mother that Cathy was right. Cory had to be taken to a hospital. They both left and didn't return until the servants were retired. Cory was in a horrible state. I thought he was practically in a coma. When they returned, Momma bundled him up to take him out, and Carrie got hysterical. Cathy calmed her by telling her that she would go with Momma and stay with Cory in the hospital. I told Momma that was a good idea, because Cory had become so dependent on Cathy, but Momma shook her head, and they left, locking us all in the room again.

The three of us went to sleep that night, embracing each other, clinging to each other, terrified for our little brother and terrified for ourselves.

How should I write the rest of this? I am sitting here and struggling with the words. My hand is shaking so hard that I don't think I can write. The words will be distorted on the page. I feel like I'm crumbling inside. My body is turning inside out, in fact. Now Cathy looks like she's the one in a coma. She holds Carrie as if Carrie is made of air, weightless, a hollowed-out doll.