Sociopath?

Vicki Williams

Smashwords Edition

Copyright, 2012, Vicki Williams

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~ ~ ~

He laid claim to her from the day she came
home from the hospital. Everyone thought it was cute that he took
such a proprietary interest in his infant sister when he was only
going on three himself. And they did make a precious picture. He
with his hair as straight and black as pitch, eyes dark as midnight
and skin as brown as a gypsy’s and she with her rosy round cheeks,
big sea blue eyes and wispy white-blonde hair. There were nine of
them so, honestly, no one paid too much attention to yet another
baby. If anything, everyone was glad he seemed willing to be her
caretaker, albeit, a very young one.

The Vincennes family was extremely wealthy
and devoutly Catholic with the children ranging in age from 20 down
to these last two, Rafael Alain and Elena Justine, although
everyone called them Rafe and Lane until eventually, it almost
began to seem like one name, RafeandLane. They were all busy with
their own affairs so Rafe and Lane were mostly left to their own
devices. They were the last two to still be sleeping in the
nursery, the rest of them having grown old enough to move into
their own rooms. There had always been a nurse when the first seven
of the brood were younger but when the last one was let go after
Annecy started school, no one remembered they might need to hire
another for Rafe and Lane, stuck down there at the tail end of the
family.

Renny Vincennes, the father, was tall, dark
and handsome. A former Air Force pilot (Vietnam) and now financier
extraordinaire (being always near the top of Forbest Richest
Americans list), spent most of his time planning how to make the
family even richer. Magdelene, the mother, (her coming-out year’s
most desirable debutante) was still tiny, blonde and beautiful. She
spent most of her time involved in planning charity events, a job
which required many long lunches with her women friends. Renny and
Magdelene were passionate lovers even after all their years of
marriage. Would they have produced nine children if that had not
been so? It wasn’t that Renny and Magdelene didn’t love their kids,
because they did, but that they adored each other more. They simply
weren’t the kind of parents who took an active and personal
interest in their children’s day to day lives and that quality
became more pronounced with each additional child so, by the time
they got to numbers eight and nine…..

Those children included Morgan, a sophomore
at Princeton, where Vincennes sons had gone since there was a
Princeton. Morgan, a tall, rangy young man with dark mahogany hair
and hazel eyes, was an athletic superstar, excelling at every sport
he played. Next was Wyatt, as tall as Morgan but slender with black
hair, brown eyes and a winning smile. At 18, he was a senior at
Benedict High School and would be entering West Point next year, an
exception to the Princeton rule. All Wyatt had ever wanted to be
was a soldier. Then came Mariel, 16, cool and elegant and ash
blonde. No one who knew her could imagine that she wouldn’t be the
head cheerleader, the homecoming queen and the valedictorian of her
class. She was so self-assured about being entitled to these honors
that it was taken as a given that she would receive them. Denis at
14 was slight and dark and artistic, as well as outwardly and so
unashamedly gay that everyone accepted him as he was. (Of course,
being a member of Benedict’s first family didn’t hurt either). Next
was Jocelyn, 12, petite and platinum and delicate as a butterfly,
unless you had to deal with her slashing serves on the tennis
court. Gabe, 10, sturdily built with coal black hair, was a musical
virtuoso. His piano teacher gushed over his abilities and thought
he had the potential to be a great pianist although for now at
least, he was more interested in Eric Clapton and Eddie Van Halen
and other rock and roll guitar greats. Then, Annecy, the animal
lover at 8, with her green eyes and golden skin and palomino hair.
And, finally after a baby every two years, when Magdelene finally
thought she’d completed her duty to the church, six years later,
here came Rafe, followed almost three years after that by Lane,
conforming to the Vincennes pattern of intense dark boys and bright
blonde girls.

After Lane, Magdelene’s doctor insisted she
have her tubes tied for health reasons. Both she and Renny were
ecstatic that they could finally engage in the enthusiastic sex
they both so enjoyed without the depressing prospect hanging over
their heads that they might be creating yet another baby.

The Vincennes lived in a 32 room chateau on
the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay, called Heron Point, copied
from, though somewhat smaller in scale, than the grand family home
in the Loire Valley in their native France, Chateau Abricot, named
after its sandstone-hued walls. A long lane of locust trees led to
the impressive gardens and circle drive in front of the imposing
golden stone house with the twin towers anchoring each front corner
and the steeply pitched roof with tall decoratively capped
chimneys, the multiple dormers and balustraded terrace.

To the back were piers and decks and
sailboats and paddle boats and speedboats and jet skis.To the side
were garages, kennels, tennis courts, basketball courts and even a
regulation baseball field, as well as an Olympic-sized swimming
pool and an impressive stable of the same style as the house
itself. Renny spared no expense to indulge his children’s
amusements.

Farther back on the 1000-plus green acres
that made up the estate, were pastures and creeks and one large
hill, unusual in this terrain, joking referred to as Mount
Vincennes. There was a rustic small log cabin on top of the Mount,
just a living room/kitchen combination and one bedroom with a bath,
treasured for the view, because from one of the several rocking
chairs on the porch out front you could see far across the
countryside and then, to the Bay. In earlier years, Renny and
Magdelene slipped away there to escape, alone, from their children.
Now it was mostly used by the Vincennes kids themselves when they
needed privacy. Renny knew about the use the cabin was put to but,
having been quite a Lothario himself before he met Magdelene and
settled down, he understood about hormones and sex drives and
figured kids would be kids and the cabin was a better and safer
option than parking in a lover’s lane somewhere. Those kids
themselves, of course, had no clue that their old man knew what
they were up to.

Inside, the mansion featured elaborately
carved fireplace mantels and crystal chandeliers and fine wood
paneling and oriental rugs and ornate plaster pillars and a kitchen
the size of a cooking school. It was filled with antiques and
museum quality art. Except for an occasional foraging expedition
through the kitchen for snacks, and meals in the dining room at the
extra-long cherry table, hardly any of the Vincennes young even
visited this floor. The basement was their bailiwick. In one large
room, the wall-length flat-screen t.v. resided, along with the DVD
player and the XBoxes and the latest version of Playstation
(complete with their own t.v.s for playing games) and the computers
(one for each young Vincennes). A second vast room contained a
state-of-the-art sound system, a small dance floor and a real soda
fountain along with the pool table and the card tables and the
shelves of games and books and paper dolls and microscopes and (now
uninhabited) ant farms and anything else that had, at least
temporarily, caught the fancy of one of the siblings. A third,
smaller, soundproofed room was a small recording studio and home to
all the musical instruments played by the Vincennes young - with
her first seven children Magdelene had insisted on music lessons.
Each had to choose an instrument so there were guitars and drums
and flutes and saxophones and an organ (the concert grand piano
being upstairs in the drawing room, of course). Last was the
exercise room with its stairmasters and stationary bikes and rowing
machines and weights. And snaking through it all, a circular train
track with railroad cars, some of which dated back to the turn of
the century when Great-grandfather Phillip Vincennes had first
started the set. Of course, there was Renny’s extensive wine cellar
in the basement as well but it might as well not even exist so far
as hischildren were concerned since it was strictly off-limits.

So, while most of them were below ground
level, Rafe and Lane were usually up on the third floor by
themselves in the long nursery, a double room that would have made
any day care owner green with envy. Walls were painted with
colorful Bible scenes - not the more gory ones, but baby Moses in
the bulrushes and Jesus in the manger and wise men and shepherds
and a loving Mother Mary, comforting pictures. In the bedroom
section, were wooden cradles and cribs and youth beds, all
handsomely carved. There were 9 dressers lined up against the wall.
An archway led to the play room which was filled with toys for
younger children - story books and dolls and big metal trucks and
rocking horses and doll high chairs and buggies. Like the train,
some of the toys dated back to Renny’s childhood days and his
father’s and grandfather’s, such as the carved wooden alphabet
blocks. There were child-sized tables and chairs and rocking
chairs. And, of course, the nursery had its own television set,
programmed so that only the most innocuous channels could be
accessed. The floors were white tile for easy clean up of spilled
kool-aid or over-energetic finger painting.

* *

It’s hard to know what would have become of
Lane if not for Rafe. It was he who would take her off to find a
grown up when she cried for her bottle or when her diaper was wet
or dirty and needed changing. Eventually, as he got a little older,
he learned to keep food in the nursery in case an adult couldn’t be
found, things like peanut butter and bread and cookies and crackers
and little individual containers of applesauce and pudding. There
was a small refrigerator in the nursery which he kept stocked with
pop stolen from the big walk-in cooler in the kitchen so that when
she cried, he could fill a bottle with crème soda and it would
satisfy her at least for a while. He eventually learned to change
her himself, not very well perhaps, but at least he’d wash her off
and make her dry, powdering her liberally so that ever after, the
scent of baby powder brought to mind those days of their shared
early childhood. He didn’t especially enjoy doing it but after all,
he had to live in the same room with her and he didn’t like the
smell of stinky wet or poopy diapers.

They were always welcome downstairs at
mealtimes, of course, but no one usually bothered to tell them when
those were. If they slept through breakfast or didn’t realize it
was past lunch that was just too bad. Lots of times, the kitchen
staff didn’t even bother with a midday meal since no one was at
home with Renny being at work and Magdelene with her friends and
the kids all at school. The thought of Rafe and Lane never crossed
their minds until he was suddenly and silently in the kitchen to
remind them and they’d quick fix him a tray to take back
upstairs.

When she cried at night, Rafe pulled her out
of her crib and took her into bed with him, cuddling her until she
fell asleep.

By the time, he was four and she was two, you
never saw one without the other. People said Rafe reminded them of
a black cat. Slender and graceful, he seemed to walk on silent
cat’s paws. He would simply appear without anyone having heard him
coming. Because, again, these two were so seldom on anyone’s mind,
his hair was long, almost shoulder length, black and straight as
Indian hair. His brothers nicknamed him Injun. His eyes were almost
expressionless. No one would ever know what Rafe Vincennes was
thinking by looking into his eyes. He could smile, but it was
usually a quick white gleam in the darkness of his skin, a smile
that disappeared as quickly as it came. As he got older, women it
was said, would agree to almost anything just for the rare
opportunity of seeing that smile.

But for now, he was only four and she was
two, a small blonde shadow who toddled after him everywhere he
went. He was her hero, her protector, her teacher, her best friend.
If she fell and bumped her head or scraped her knee, it was Rafe
she went running to for sympathy. If she couldn’t figure out a
puzzle, she looked to him to help her. “How, Rafe?” He dressed her
in the morning and bathed her at night, putting her into her
pajamas afterwards.

“Go to sleep now, Laney, I’ll be right here
beside you if you need anything,” patting her on her little round
rump.