Shooting Stars 01 Cinnamon (3 page)

No one could tell anything about the inhabitants of our home by simply driving up, especially this time of the day. The front faced east so that all morning the windows were turned into glittering slabs,
impenetrable crystals, twisting, turning and reflecting the sunlight. In fact, if it wasn't a day for the gardeners, and today wasn't, there was a look of abandonment about the place. Our cars were always left in the rear, out of sight. Two tall weeping willows on the northeast end painted long shadows over one side of the structure, adding to the sense of desertion.

There was a swing under a maple tree to the right on the west side. I noticed it was going back and forth, which made me smile. Anyone looking at it would be convinced there was a ghost sitting on it. I imagined one myself, one of the Demerest girls, smiling.

Fall had just lifted its head and begun to blow the cooler winds over the landscape, waving a magical hand to change the greens into yellows, browns and oranges. The grass, however, seemed happier, waking to heavier dews every morning. It was a deeper green, I loved the aroma of freshly cut lawns, the freshness traveled into my brain and washed away the cobwebs and shadows from my darker thoughts.

As Grandmother Beverly turned up the drive, she finally revealed the situation in detail.
"I was in the living room, watching a good Cary Grant movie. when I heard her humming in the hallway. What is she doing downstairs? I wondered. The doctor had specifically told her that if she was going home, she was to remain in bed, resting, getting stronger. I offered to be her nurse, to march up and down those stairs as many times as need be, so she couldn't use that as any excuse.
"But your mother never listens to wiser voices. She hears only what she wants to hear. Secret voices out of the shadows." she muttered.
"Anyway, I went to the family room doorway. At first, I didn't see her. Then I heard her talking to her plants."
She paused smirked and shook her head.
Mommy often spoke aloud to her plants as if they were her little children. She said when she was sad, which was far too often, the leaves were limp and dreary, but when she was happy, they were crisp and alive.
Anyway, I didn't think much of that.
"She's always talking to flowers. Grandmother. Many people do that."
"Naked?"
"What?"
"She was standing there in the hallway, watering those plants naked, and she was using a bed pan to water them," she said, her voice rising, "Who even knows if it was water?"
I felt the blood drain a bit from my face and looked at the house as we started around back.
"But that wasn't the horror of it. Cinnamon, 'What are you doing, Amber?' I asked, and she turned slowly toward me, a crazed smile on her face."
Grandmother stopped the car and turned to me before shutting off the engine,
"Over her stomach. with a stick of red lipstick, she had drawn the outline of a baby, a fetus!" she cried with a grimace. "I screamed. 'Oh, my God!' I nearly fainted at the sight, but she continued to smile at me and then went back to watering the plants, humming and watering.
"So. I got into the car and went for you."
I swallowed back the rock that had risen into my throat and got out of the car. All I could think of was Ophelia's mad scene in Hamlet. With my head down, my feet feeling like they had turned into marshmallows. I charged toward the rear entrance and quickly went inside, through the rear entryway and down the corridor to the stairway, gazing in each room to be sure Mommy wasn't downstairs.
Then I pounded up the stairs and paused when I reached the top. I could hear her humming and talking to herself. It was coming from the room that had been set up to be the nursery. Slowly. I approached it and looked in. It was just as Grandmother Beverly had described: Mommy was naked, the imaginary baby crudely drawn over her stomach in her apple red lipstick.
She was folding and unfolding the same little blanket at the side of the bassinet.
"Mammy,"
I
said.
She stopped humming and looked at me.
"Cinnamon, you're home. Good. I was having labor pains this morning. It won't be long now," she said.
"Labor pains? But Mommy--"
"It's expected. I know, but it's still very difficult. Cinnamon. Most wonderful things are difficult," she muttered. "and worth the pain," she added with a new smile.
How could she have forgotten she had just had a miscarriage? It was so sad, so tragic, I thought, and then: Maybe that's why she's forgotten, She doesn't want to remember. She and I have done so much pretending in this house. This comes easily to her.
"Mommy, you've got to return to bed."
"I will as soon as I do this. I want everything to be ready when we come home with little Sacha," she said, gazing around the nursery.
"Come back to bed. Mommy," I said, moving to her. I gently took her by the elbow. She smiled at me and put the blanket in the bassinet.
"My grown-up little lady, taking care of me. You're going to be such a big help with Sacha. I know. I'm as happy for you as I am for Daddy and me." she said. "Did you know I always wished I had a sister, especially a little sister who would look up to me for everything?
"Sacha's going to idolize you. Cinnamon. Shell want to do everything you do just the way you do it, I'm sure. You mustn't be short with her or impatient,'" she warned, her face full of concern. "Always remember she's just a little girl who doesn't
understand. Explain things; make sure you and she always talk and never hide anything from each other. A sister can be your best friend in the whole world, even more than your mother. I'm sure mine would have been."
She started out with me, but she didn't stop talking.
"It's all right for her to be a better friend to you than I am.I'll never be jealous of the two of you. honey. I realize you will have more in common with her than you will with me. You don't ever have to worry about that."
"'Please get into bed. Mommy," I said when we entered the master bedroom.
Mommy and Daddy had a king-size, oak fourpost bed with an oversized headboard on which two roses with their stems crossed were embossed. Mommy loved roses. The comforter and the pillow cases had a pattern of red roses, which made the room cheerful. When they were younger and more affectionate toward each other. I used to think of their bed as a bed that promised its inhabitants magical love, a bed that filled their heads with wonderful dreams when they slept afterward, both of them, smiling, contented, warm and secure, those four posts like powerful arms protecting them against any of the evil spirits that sought to invade their contentment.
I pulled back the comforter and she got into the bed, slowly lowering her head to the pillow. She was still smiling.
"I want you to help take care of her right from the start. honey. You'll be her second mother, just as Agatha Demerest was a second mother to her younger brothers and sisters," she said. "'Remember?"
Mammy was referring to a story she and I had actually created during one of our earliest visits to the attic.
When I was a little more than fourteen, she decided one day that we should explore the house. She had been up in the attic before, of course, and told me that shortly after she and Daddy had moved into the house, she had discovered an old hickory chest with hinges so rusted, they fell off when she lifted the lid. The chest was filled with things that went back to the 1800s. She had been especially intrigued by the Demerest family pictures. Most were faded so badly you could barely make out the faces, but some of them were still in quite good condition.
Daddy, who works on Wall Street and puts a monetary value on everything in sight, decided that much of the stuff could be sold. He took things like the Union army uniform, old newspapers, a pair of spurs and a pistol holster to New York to be valued and later placed in a consignment store. but Mommy wouldn't let him take the pictures.
"I told him family pictures don't belong in stores and certainly don't belong on the walls of strangers. These pictures should never leave this house and they never will," she vowed to me.
She and I would look at the women and the men and try to imagine what they must have been like, whether they were sad or happy people, whether they suffered or not. We did our role-playing and I would assume the persona of one of the women in a picture. Mommy would often be Jonathan Demerest, speaking in a deep voice. That was when we came up with the story of Agatha Demerest having to take on the role of mother when her mother died of smallpox.
But Mommy was talking about it now as if it were historical fact and we had no concrete information upon which to base our assumptions, except for the dates carved in a couple of tombstones.
"Okay, Mammy," I said. I was thinking about washing the lipstick drawing off her stomach. but I was afraid even to mention it. I have to try to get in touch with Daddy, I thought.
"Oh," Mommy suddenly cried. "Oh, oh. oh. Cinnamon, it's happening again!" She clutched her stomach. "It's getting worse. I'm going into labor. You'd better call the doctor, call an ambulance, call your father." she cried.
She released a chilling scream that shook my very bones. "Hurry!"
I didn't know what to do. I ran from the room. Grandmother Beverly was already at the top of the stairway.
"What is it?" she asked, her hand on her breast, her face whiter than ever.
"She thinks she's in labor. I think she really is in pain!"
"Oh dear. dear. We'll have to call the doctor.
I
was hoping you could calm her down. Get her to sleep and be sane." she said. Another scream from Mammy spun her around and sent her fleeing down the stairway.
Mommy continued to moan.
I glanced at my watch. Daddy had to be at his desk. Why did Grandmother Beverly say before that she certainly couldn't reach him? He should be easy to reach.
I rushed to my room and tapped out the number for his office quickly.
It
rang and rang until his secretary finally picked up and announced his company.
"I need to speak to my father immediately." I practically screamed.
Mommy was crying out even louder now, her shouts of pain echoing down the hallway and through the house.
"He's not here at the moment," the secretary said. "But he has to be. The market is still open."
"I'm sorry," she said.
"Where is he?"
"He didn't leave a number." she said.
"It's an emergency," I continued.
"Let me see if he answers his page," she relented. Why hadn't she said that first? I wondered. I held on, my heart pounding a drum in my ears.
"I'm sorry," she said. "He's not responding."
"Keep trying and if you get him, tell him my mother is being taken to the hospital."
"The hospital? Oh. dear. Oh," she said. "Yes. I'll keep trying."
I hung up just as Grandmother Beverly came up the stairs, looking more her age.
"The doctor has called the ambulance," she said. She swallowed and continued. "It's no use. She has to return to the hospital. When I told him what she had done, he said he'd have her brought to the mental ward."
"Mental ward?"
"Of course. Look at her behavior. That's exactly where she belongs," she added with that damnable look of self-satisfaction I hated so much.
She put her hands over her ears, but Mommy's heart-wrenching scream drove Grandmother Beverly back down the stairs to wait.
I was hoping it would drive her out of our lives.

Apparently. Daddy's secretary was unable to each him before the ambulance arrived. I returned to Mommy's bedroom and held her hand while she went through her imaginary labor pains. I guess I shouldn't say imaginary. The doctor would emphasize later that she actually felt the pain.

"Psychosomatic pain is not contrived," he explained to Daddy when Daddy and I met with him in the corridor of the hospital. "The patient feels it: it's just caused by something psychological as compared to something physical." He looked at me and added. "We shouldn't get angry at her."

"I'm not angry at her," I snapped back at him. "I'm upset."
I almost added. I'm frightened, too, but he got me so angry I didn't want to confide in him.
Afterward. Daddy and I sat in the hospital cafeteria having a cup of coffee. Daddy said he hadn't had a chance to eat anything so he nibbled on a Danish pastry.
"When my secretary reached me. I was on my way home." he told me. "I stopped at the train station and called and Grandmother answered and told me what was happening so I came back as quickly as I could and took a cab here. Lucky Grandmother was still in the house."
"It wasn't luck. Grandmother didn't want to come along. I drove myself and followed the ambulance. I'm sure she was afraid she might be seen by one of her society friends." I muttered.
"That's not fair. Cinnamon. Your grandmother was never very good in hospitals. It makes her sick."
"So? What better place to be sick if you have to be sick?" I countered,
One thing Daddy wouldn't ever get from me was sympathy for Grandmother Beverly. I never saw her shed a real tear, not even at Grandfather Carlson's funeral. although I have seen her cry at sad scenes in her favorite old movies. She has a lock on the television set in the family room, fixing it on her oldtime movie channel. She complains incessantly about today's movies, television, music and books, calling it all depraved and claiming the most degenerate minds are responsible.
Occasionally. I would sit and watch an old movie with her. Some of them are very good. like Rebecca. I especially liked the scene where the evil housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers, tries to talk the second Mrs. de Winter into jumping to her death. The first time I saw it. I thought she was going to do it. Mrs. Danvers made it sound so inviting. I felt like jumping.
After I saw the movie. I began to think of Grandmother Beverly as our own Mrs. Danvers trying to talk Mommy into jumping off a cliff or at least helping drive her off the cliff of sanity into the bag of madness, where she now resided.
"That's not funny. Cinnamon," Daddy said. "Some people have less tolerance for unpleasant things."
"Grandmother Beverly? Weaker than other women? Please. Daddy," I said.
He blinked and nibbled on his Danish, quickly falling back to his relaxed demeanor. Daddy has a quiet elegance and charm. He is truly a handsome man with rich dark brown hair and the most striking hazel eyes I have seen on any man. He has those long eyelashes, too, and a perfect nose and firm mouth. He's almost square-jawed with high cheek bones and a forehead that's just wide enough to make him look very intelligent. He's an impeccable dresser and never goes any longer than three weeks without having his hair trimmed.
I understood why Mommy once told me he was the most attractive man who had ever looked at her twice. When she did speak about the early romantic days between them, she emphasized his solid, eventempered sensibility and how she had come to rely on him to keep her from going too far in one direction or another. Whatever happened to that? I wondered. It was almost as if he had abandoned ship.
"Your mother could be here a while," he said. "Or, she could be moved to a more comfortable place, a place that specializes in her problems."
"You mean a nut house?"
"No, a clinic," he corrected sharply.
I looked away. Tears didn't come into my eyes often, but when they did. I held them over my pupils tightly, battling to keep them locked behind my lids. I took deep breaths.
"We've got to be strong," Daddy said. "For her."
I looked at him. He was checking the time and looking toward the doorway.
"I haven't even learned about today's market results. I hopped on the train as quickly as I could," he muttered.
"Where were you. Daddy? Why weren't you in your office? I thought you have to be there to call your clients while the market is open."
"Sometimes. I go to visit a big account," he explained. "Ifs good politics. I have an assistant who does a good job covering for me."
"How come you didn't leave a telephone number where you could be reached?"
"I just forgot." he said. "I left too quickly."
Lying is an art form. I thought. Good lying, that is. It requires almost the same techniques, skills and energy that good acting requires. When you tell lies, you step out of yourself for a while. You become another version of yourself and yet, you have to do it so that the listener believes it's still you talking because he or she has come to trust you, have faith in you. I like making up stories, exaggerating, changing the truth a little-- or maybe a little more than a little- sometimes just to see how much I can get away with. It's all in how you hold your head, keep your eyes fixed on the listener and how much sincerity you can squeeze into the small places around the lie.
Maybe Daddy was a bad liar in person because he did mast of his lying over the phone. He didn't have to be face-to-face with his customers. He could quote statistics, talk in generalities, blame his mistakes on other people, other businesses or agencies than his own. It's much easier to sound convincing when you talk to an ear and not a pair of eyes.
I knew Daddy was lying, but I didn't know why. It never occurred to me what the reason might be. Maybe I was spending a little too much time in my make-believe world,
"We'd better head home," he said. "You've got schoolwork to do. I'm sure, and there is really nothing else we can do here tonight."
"I want to go see her one more time." I said. "You might only disturb her more."
"I might help her be comfortable in an uncomfortable place," I countered.
I could hold my gaze on Daddy so firmly that he would be the first to look away. Mammy taught me how to do that. You actually think of something else, but keep your eyes fixed on the subject.
"All right, but make it quick," he said. "I'm going to make a few phone calls."
He left and I went back upstairs. Mommy had been given a sedative to help her sleep, but she was still moaning and turning her head. I took her hand in mine and spoke softly to her.
"Mammy, it's me. Don't you feel a little better now?"
"Baby... born too soon," she muttered.
"What?"
"Little Sacha." She opened her eyes and looked up at me. Then she smiled.
"Cinnamon! How is she?" she asked. "What have they told you?" I shook my head.
Now she believes she has given birth, I thought, but to a premature baby.
"I know she'll be all right. I know it. She's in the prenatal intensive care unit, but premature babies can do fine. You tell me how she's doing, all right? Tell me," she insisted, squeezing my hand tightly.
If I told her the truth.
I
thought she'd come apart right before my eyes, her hand crumbling in mine like a dry fall leaf.
"She's doing fine. Mommy. She's getting bigger every moment."
She smiled.
"I
knew it.
I
knew she would. How wonderful. How beautiful. She is beautiful, too, isn't she. Cinnamon? As beautiful as you were when you were born.
I'm
right? Aren't
I?"
she asked with a
desperation that nearly took my breath away,
"Yes. Mommy. she's beautiful,"
"I
knew she would be. You've got a little sister. How wonderful, Wonderful," she said relaxing, her eyes closing and staying closed. Her breathing became regular. At least she was relaxed and at ease for a while.
Set.
I
told myself, you can lie better than anyone you know. Sometimes, that comes in very handy.
Maybe you will be a successful actress, after all.
Daddy and
I
rode back in silence, mine growing out of the soil of sadness and fear. Daddy looked like he was in deep thought, probably worrying about a stock he had recommended today. Lately.
I
felt that my father was a guest in his own house, and when he looked at me, he was surprised to discover he had a daughter. It's almost as if he thinks he's having a dream. His whole life-- my mother and
I.
all of it-- is just a passing illusion. He would blink hard and we would be gone,
I
thought,
I
almost wished it were true.
"How's school?" he asked suddenly. It was as if the question had been stored for months in a cupboard in his brain and he had just stumbled upon it.
"School?"
"Yes, how are you doing in your classes these days?"
"Fine, Daddy. I've been on the honor roll every quarter," I reminded him.
"Oh, right, right. Well, that's good. Cinnamon. You want to get yourself into a fine college like my alma mater. NYU. It's important." He looked at me quickly. "I hope this unfortunate situation Ivon't have a detrimental effect on your school grades. I know it can," he said. "You've just got to be strong and take care of business, consider priorities."
"Mommy's wellbeing is my priority," I said dryly. I wanted to add, as it should be yours, but I kept my lips pressed together as if I were afraid my tongue would run off on its own and say all the things I had been thinking for months and months. Thoughts, words, screams, all were stored in my mouth, waiting to pop out like bees whose hive had been disturbed and sting Daddy in places he couldn't reach. That way, he'd wake up to what had been happening all this last year or so since Grandmother Beverly had moved into our home and invaded our lives.
He should have waken the moment we entered the house. Grandmother Beverly had been busy all day, ever since the ambulance had come to take Mommy to the hospital. The first thing
I
noticed was that Mommy's favorite two works of art, the pictures she had bought in New Orleans when she and Daddy and
I
had gone there for a short vacation. They were gone from the wall in the hallway. They were both watercolors of swamps with the Spanish moss draping from the trees.
In
one a toothpick-legged Cajun home was depicted in great detail, shrimp drying on a rock, animal skins hung over a porch railing, and a woman working on the porch weaving a rug.
In
the other picture, a young couple were in a canoe, poling into the mist. They looked romantic, but in a deeply sad way.
Grandmother Beverly always complained that the pictures were too depressing to be art. She said they were more like someone's nightmares and certainly not the first thing with which to greet a visitor to our home.
"Where are Mammy's pictures?"
I
demanded as soon as Grandmother Beverly stepped out of the family room.
"How is she now?" she asked my father instead of responding to me. He shook his head.
"They've given her a sedative, but the doctor wants to treat her for deep depression.
If
she doesn't snap out of it soon, he's recommending more serious therapy, the sort that takes place in a mental clinic." he replied.
"Exactly what
I
expected would happen someday. You had to be blind not to see this coming. Taylor."
My father didn't agree or disagree. He kept his head slightly bowed, looking like an ashamed young boy confronting his mother.
"Where are Mommy's pictures?" I repeated. She finally turned to me.
"I thought there was enough gloom and doom in this house today. I'm trying to cheer things up."
"Mommy wants those pictures on the wall," I cried. I looked at Daddy. "Make her put them back."
"We'll put up something more pleasant," Grandmother Beverly continued. "I'll buy brighter pictures. We've got to lighten up this hallway. It needs stronger lighting, the walls should be painted a lighter color and I think this entryway rug is worn to a thread. Good riddance to it."
"It is not. What are you talking about? Daddy!" I moaned. "Tell her!"
"I'm so tired." he said. "It's all been quite a shock and right after losing the baby." He shook his head.
"Of course. You're exhausted. Taylor. Come have a nice cup of tea.
I
made your favorite biscuits," she added "and there's some of that jam you love, the kind that tastes homemade. I bought it for you yesterday."
"Yes, that would be good," he said. He glanced at me. "Don't worry about this stuff now, Cinnamon. It's not what's important at the moment."
Grandmother Beverly smiled at me. "Would you like something, dear?"
Mommy hated her in the kitchen. Until she had suffered the miscarriage. Mommy had not permitted her to make a single dinner for us, even though she claimed she knew all of Daddy's favorite meals. I knew Mommy's resistance wasn't born out of any great desire to be a cook. She warned me from the start that Grandmother Beverly wasn't just moving into the house.
"That woman can't live in a home without taking over," Mommy assured me. "It's not in her nature to be second in any sense. She'll take over and replace me everywhere except in bed, and
sometimes," Mommy said her eyes small. "I even fear that."
Of course, she was exaggerating.
That's what I tell myself even though it gave me a different kind of nightmare.
"I'm not hungry," I told Grandmother Beverly, glared furiously once more at Daddy and ran up the stairs to my room, slamming the door behind me.
I was fuming so hot and heavy, I was sure smoke was pouring out of my ears.
The ringing of my phone snapped me out of my seething rage. I took a deep breath and lifted the receiver.
"Hello."
"Cinnamon, what happened?" Clarence asked.
"My mother had to be taken to the hospital," I replied. He was the only one who knew Mommy had suffered a miscarriage. "She's had a nervous
breakdown because of what happened.'"
"Oh. Um sorry," he said. "Is there anything I can do for you?"
"Yes, call the Mafia and get a hit man over here pronto to save me from my grandmother," I replied.
He laughed, but the sort of short laugh that indicated he knew it really wasn't funny.
"You were all the buzz at school."
"I'm glad the airheads had something to talk about."
"I could see Miss Hamilton was upset for you. You coming to school tomorrow?"
"I'm not staying here, that's for sure," I said.
"What are you going to tell people?" he asked.
"I'll come up with something."
"Let me know so I can be part of it," he said. I knew what he meant.
Ike and I enjoyed making up stories and telling them together, verifying what the other had said, shocking other students whenever we could.
"Meet me at my locker in the morning before homeroom," I told him. He promised he would and hung up.
I fell back spread-eagled on my bed and looked up at the eggshell white ceiling. Sometimes. when I stared into the white void long enough. I'd see the faces of the young women who once lived in this house. It was as if their spirits had been trapped in the walls and I was the only one with whom they could communicate.