Secrets of Foxworth (7 page)

“I've seen some of the other girls in her class, Barbara. Maybe something's changed in the air or something, but some of these sixth-graders have the bodies of older teenage girls. Kristin can't be far behind. I
think she and her girlfriends are already talking turkey, if you get my drift. I mean, I know they teach them stuff in school, but it can't be the same as what goes on outside the school, right? I'd just like it to be someone in the family.”

My dad wasn't a prude, but he was quite shy when it came to what went on between men and women. There were so many times when I saw him redden after one of his workers or someone else made a remark he considered R-rated, especially if it happened in front of me. Usually, however, it was something that went over my head.

Anyway, he impressed Aunt Barbara enough with the need for my special talk even at my age that she made a quick trip to Charlottesville to see us, or
me
, I should say. She pretended she had come just to visit, but I knew and anticipated our tête-à-tête. It happened the second night she was there. After dinner, when I went up to my room to do my homework, she knocked on the door and came in.

Aunt Barbara was not an unattractive woman by any means. She had been engaged when she was in her mid-twenties, but her fiancé was in the army and was shipped to Afghanistan, where he was fatally wounded in a roadside bomb explosion. I know it took her years to get over that, and from the way my father talked about her, she had trouble with every date she had afterward. None of the men who asked her out wanted to be compared to her fiancé, and apparently, she let them believe they would be.

She did have another steady boyfriend for almost two years, but they broke up when he cheated on her. Most of her energy after that went into her work and taking care of my grandmother.

She sat on my bed and smiled at me. “You are growing up fast,” she began. “Your father says you're thinking about boys already.”

I shrugged.

“Do you have a boyfriend?”

“Not really,” I said.

“But there's a boy you like?”

I nodded.

“I was a little older than you when my mother talked to me about all this. You know how she began?”

I shook my head.

“She said, ‘I'm going to tell you about yourself and how you will be when you get close to a boy, and I'm going to warn you about things, but you know what, Barbara? You're going to do what you want anyway,' ” she said. “Every girl does, and any mother who thinks differently is just fooling herself to make herself worry less. So let me tell you how it was for me the first time I did more than kiss a boy,” she began.

I don't think I ever paid stricter attention to anything anyone had ever said. When I looked back on that evening and the way she followed up with me often, I thought that even though Cathy had a mother and a brilliant older brother, I was the luckier one for this part of life. At least, that was what I suspected, but I knew I had to keep reading to see if I was right, to see
if Cathy ever paid any attention to her brother Christopher's information about men and women or if her mother gave her the education my mother couldn't.

Today, Cathy and I were both surprised but for different reasons. I should write that Cathy was more shocked.

We learned something I was beginning to suspect.

I noticed some physical changes in Momma and went to the “Merck Manual” to confirm my suspicions.

When we came home from school, I knew immediately that something was very different. Momma wasn't at the door or even moving about the house. She was sitting in her favorite chair by the fireplace and knitting what looked like a tiny sweater.

She put it aside to hug us both. Cathy's eyes never left the sweater. I knew she was thinking it was probably for one of her dolls.

“It's freezing out there today, Momma,” I said, and moved to the fireplace.

Cathy never stopped staring at the knitting.

“I have news for you both,” Momma began. “I was at Dr. Bloom's today.”

“You're not sick,” I said. If anything, she looked healthier. After reading what I had, I suspected what she was going to say.

“No. I'm pregnant, children. Here, Christopher,” she said, and urged me to feel
her stomach. She watched me carefully. I think I realized what she was waiting to hear me say.

“There's a lot of movement in your womb.”

“What's a womb?” Cathy asked.

“A room for a fetus,” I said, looking at Momma.

She smiled. “Very good, Christopher. They heard two heartbeats,” she said.

“Twins?”

I looked at Cathy, who was acting very strangely now. She began to back away as if Momma might explode. She looked angry, too.

“Do you understand, Cathy? Momma is going to have at least twins. I hope two boys,” I said. “Identical twins, and not simply fraternal.”

“You'll be a wonderful older brother, no matter what they are,” Momma said, and looked at Cathy. “And you'll be a wonderful older sister.”

Cathy didn't say anything. She continued to back away and to shake her head as if she was looking at a ghost.

I rose. “What's wrong with you?” I asked her.

“I don't want twins!” she cried. “I don't care about being a good older sister. I don't want any more babies.”

“Cathy?” Momma said as my sister turned and ran out of the room and to her own. “What's wrong with her?” she asked me.

“Sibling rivalry,” I declared, and Momma looked at me as if I was speaking Chinese.

Slowly, she rose. “This is ridiculous,” she
muttered, and went off to Cathy's room to speak to her.

I went to mine to start my homework.

Because of how I acted afterward, Cathy thought I was as upset about Momma getting pregnant as she was. I'll admit here that I wasn't overjoyed. I would describe it more as being disappointed in both our parents, especially Daddy.

I thought Daddy was a very smart man, even though he wasn't what anyone might describe as rich or the top man in his field at the moment. Actually, I was under the impression that he was getting ready to make some very brilliant move. Whenever we were alone lately, maybe watching the news, which usually bored both Momma and Cathy, and there was a story about someone who had done something very important or made a lot of money, he would say things like, “That's the way it will be for us someday, Christopher. Someday we're going to live in a really nice house, a big house, and your mother will have all of the things she spends hours admiring in magazines or reading about in one of her romance novels.

“Cathy will train with the best to be a dancer, and you're going to attend one of the better medical schools. We won't have to worry about the cost of anything. We're going to travel a lot, too. I always wanted to do a lot of traveling.

“You get your curiosity about life from me, you know, even though I was never interested in
medicine. Oh, I always respected doctors and still do, but I want to take us all on European trips and trips to Asia and safaris in Africa. The nicer ones, of course. Your mother won't stand for camping out in tents. Nothing like that. We'll always go first-class.

“We'll even go on the ‘Queen Mary,' ” he said.

Sometimes, when I sat with him and listened to him talk like this, it seemed to me he was just thinking out loud. He wasn't even looking at me. He was just going on and on about owning a boat or a very expensive automobile and a wardrobe of the finest custom-made clothes.

I would never think of him as a dreamer. I thought he was voicing real plans. Someday soon, he would come walking into the house and announce that we had it. He would either have a bigger, more important, very high-paying executive position or have made a wise investment, and we would be very rich.

Why wouldn't I think this about my father? Until now, he had never made a terribly foolish mistake. At least, as far as I knew.

So even though I had my suspicions, when Cathy and I came home from school today, the furthest thing from my mind was that Momma would tell us she was pregnant. Maybe I had snuffed out my suspicions because I didn't want to believe them.

See? No matter what Cathy says about me, I am not Mr. Perfect, and I will admit when I make a
mistake. I don't need to go to a therapist to know why I snuffed out the truth that was as plain as day, and it's not because of sibling rivalry. I'm far above that.

First, I don't want to think my father is that careless, and second, I don't want to see my mother worn down by caring for babies.

Just think of it. I am nearly ten, and Cathy is nearly eight. That's a long time between children. Momma isn't used to being up all night and changing diapers and doing feedings, and with Daddy's travel schedule, he won't be that much of a help.

What I know in my heart is that if Momma starts looking dragged out and sees her beauty being sacrificed, she will be one very, very unhappy woman.

Daddy cherishes his private time, too. He loves going with his friends to play tennis when he's off or to play golf with his business associates. He doesn't have all that much time off. There have been many weekends when his travel has taken him into Sundays, too. It's not hard to imagine Momma telling him she is working seven days a week, so when he is free, he is going to have to lend more than just a helping hand now. He is going to have to give her free time to do her window-shopping or have lunch with her girlfriends, not to mention taking us shopping.

At this point in their lives, why did they decide to take on new children? I didn't think they would have sexual accidents. I thought Daddy would be
more careful, or if he wasn't, my mother would certainly be. There is something going on here that I don't know. Did Daddy promise our mother something if she would agree to have more children? Our lives are too cluttered with secrets, and I don't like thinking that whatever they are, they are deliberately being kept from me.

I'm going to stop writing in the diary for a while. I'm afraid of the things I might write.

I think I might just be as upset and angry as Cathy is, and I don't like it.

My cell phone rang. I hated the interruption, but I answered it because I knew she would keep calling.

“So?” Lana began. “How was your visit to the house of horrors?”

Funny, I had read only a small portion of the diary, but I was beginning to feel an attachment to Christopher and Cathy and to think of them as people I really had known. It was as if the diary was making us closer relatives. I suddenly didn't like the idea of anyone thinking of them as sick, mad people doing horrid things to each other.

“It was just a pile of rubble, nothing remotely frightening about it. I think anyone who tells you they heard screams or cries or saw ghosts is crazy himself.”

“So it was a waste of time?”

“No. My father did what he had to do, and he's helping to move the property off the bank rolls. He'll get lots of work out of it.”

“I don't mean your father. I mean you, dummy.”

“I went for a nice walk and saw the lake. It will be a very pretty property again. It's actually very pretty now in a primitive, natural sort of way.”

“Boring,” she sang. “Kane was very disappointed, by the way. I told him I'd call you to see if you wanted to go to the movies. They'll meet us there.”

“When?”

“Tonight, dummy. When else?”

“I can't tonight. And if you call me ‘dummy' one more time, I'll tell everyone what you first thought a tampon was.”

“All right, all right. I'm sorry. So why not go to the movies tonight?”

“I have to do something very important for . . .”

“For who?”

“My family,” I said.

“What?”

“I'll call you tomorrow. Maybe we'll do something during the day.”

“Are you serious? You're going to blow us all off?”

I looked at Christopher's diary. Was I really going to give up going out on a date because of this? Maybe I was a little crazy. “Never more serious. It's important.” I said.

“Well, what is it? Maybe I can help.”

“No,” I said, suffocating a laugh. “But thanks for offering. I'll call you,” I added, and hung up before she could say another word.

And then I turned the page.

“See what you can do about her,” Momma told me after she and Daddy had spoken to Cathy, assuring her that neither would love her any less just because there would be new children in our family. “She can pout better than I can. She'll make pure mush out of the man she marries.”

Of course, I was happy Momma came to me for help with Cathy, but I noticed something I hadn't noticed until now during the days that followed. Momma seemed to have less tolerance for Cathy. She was criticizing her more and more at the dinner table and afterward. Cathy's sulking over the twins that were coming was no longer cute or understandable.

“Your sister is just selfish,” Momma muttered to me one day. “You should know that it's not easy for a woman when she's pregnant. Look at my figure. Look at how difficult it's getting for me to move around. I feel . . . like a truck. I don't know why I even bother with my makeup or my hair. Your father says I'm as beautiful as ever, but I know he's just trying to please me. You're the only one who knows the truth and is not afraid to say it, Christopher. You will be a wonderful doctor, because you will always say what's true and not what someone wants to hear. Go on. Tell me.”

I shrugged. She was right. I didn't like telling lies or distorting facts. What was true was true, and pretending it wasn't wouldn't change it. People who lived like that were weak and foolish. Putting off reality just made it more difficult to face
it. I know this attitude doesn't go over well with my classmates, but there's none whose opinion really matters that much to me.