AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Audrina. Everybody knows about Billie Lowe. There was a time when her face was plastered on every magazine cover, and when she lost one leg, and then the other, that made the headlines. You were too young at the time to notice. Besides, your father only allowed you to read the financial pages.” She paused, as if ready to say more, but seemed to think better of it. “Don’t you realize your father has been coaching you about the stock market since the day you were born? Audrina, use your knowledge and benefit yourself, not him.”
What did she mean? I asked, but she refused to explain. Still, I loved her for trying to help me, never suspecting that maybe she was waiting for me to try and help her.
Later that night I decided she was depressed because Papa didn’t marry her, depressed because she hadn’t had but one Christmas card and one telephone call from Vera in five years. How hateful of Vera to treat her mother as if she’d never existed. I had to have a talk with Papa soon, very soon.
But Papa was seldom home, and when he was, my aunt was there and I didn’t want her to know I was going to urge him to marry her.
How complicated everything was. Those were almost the first words I said to Arden when he came home for a weekend. “My aunt knew all about your mother’s condition.”
He smiled, kissed me four or five times, held me for long, long moments so hard I felt every muscle in his strong young body. I felt something else, too, making me draw away and glance downward. That bulging hardness clamored the wind chimes in my head, filled me with frightened panic so I felt weak and ready to run. He noticed and seemed hurt, then embarrassed so much he held his topcoat to cover what betrayed his excitement. Lightly he said, “Well, I did what I could and she did what she could, and I’m sure you did what you could, but secrets will out, and maybe it’s for the best.”
He went on to speak of our marriage soon after he finished college, and that was only weeks away. Again panic visited and told me I needed more time. We were in the woods again, on the way to my home, when he embraced me, much more passionately than ever before. Until he grabbed me I’d heard the little birds overhead singing, but the moment he touched me the birds turned off. I froze and became stiff from one too intimate caress. I jerked from his arms and turned my back, clamping my hands over my ears to shut out the clamor of the wind chimes, which I shouldn’t be hearing way out here.
Tenderly Arden slipped his arms about my waist and pulled me back against him. “It’s all right, darling. I understand. You’re still very young, and I’ve got to keep remembering that. I want to make the rest of your life happy to reimburse you for … for …” and there he stumbled, making me yank away again and whirl to confront him. “Reimburse me for what?”
“For all the things that shadow your eyes. I want my love to erase your fears about everything. I want our child to respond to your care as Sylvia never has.”
Child, child, child. I didn’t need another child. Arden seldom spoke Sylvia’s name, as if he, too, wanted to pretend she didn’t exist. He did nothing to harm her, but nothing to assist her, either.
“Arden, if you can’t love Sylvia, then you can’t love me. She’s part of the rest of my life. Please realize that now and tell me if you can accept her, or else let’s say goodbye before this goes on any further.”
He glanced to where Sylvia was winding round and round the tallest tree in the woods. Her slender arm was outstretched so her fingers could lightly trail over the bark as endlessly she circled. I told myself she was trying to communicate with the tree by feeling its “skin” and there was some sense in what she did. That’s the way she was, always active, never still while she was awake, always doing something that was essentially nothing.
Right to the edge of the woods Arden escorted me and Sylvia. I was feeling right enough by this time to exchange happy plans with him for that evening and the next day.
My father and aunt were in the kitchen arguing. The minute they heard me enter the house, their voices stilled and I heard that unnatural quiet that comes to announce that you’ve interrupted something private.
I hurried up the stairs with Sylvia.
Arden returned to college for his last semester, and I settled down to helping Papa turn this house into better than new. Now that Papa was noted for making everything he touched turn to gold, Aunt Ellsbeth liked to tell him acidly that soon his head would be too large to come through the double front doors.
Literally thumbing his nose at her, Papa ordered workmen to tear down walls, to make some rooms larger and others smaller. He had bathrooms added to his rooms and to mine, and two more as well. He decided he needed two large walk-in closets to accommodate his many suits and dozens of pairs of expensive shoes. My own room was enlarged and a dressing room was added, and with my private bath, I felt splendidly decadent with all those crystal and gold fixtures and electric lights framing my dressing mirror. In the end it seemed we’d have a home not equal to but surpassing what it had been. Papa searched until he found all the genuine antiques the Whiteferns had sold years ago, proving that all that my aunt had thrown in my mother’s face about the “fakes” in our house was true. Even that grand bed Momma had believed was the real thing proved to be just a reproduction.
I listened with incredulity to all he planned to do. He had such miserly ways about petty things, and such extravagant ideas when it came to this house and his clothes.
To everyone in the financial world he was the “messiah” of the stock market. That gave him so much confidence he began to write a stock advice newsletter in his spare time. He listed the stocks to buy, to short, to sell and then sold what he told others to buy long the day his newsletter was delivered. He covered his shorts when others went in too short. He bought what he told his clients to sell. In a few hours of trading, he’d end up with thousands of dollars in profits. It seemed unfair, and I told him this. But he replied by saying that all of life was unfair. “A battle of wits to survive, Audrina. The victories in life belong to those who move fastest and most cleverly—and it’s not cheating. After all, the public should have better sense, shouldn’t they?”
Papa sent this stock advice letter to a friend who lived in San Francisco, and this friend had a publishing business, and all such “friends” were willing to collaborate in the fraud.
Then came that wonderful day when Arden was due home from college, having received his diploma. Papa had been so heartless as not to allow me to attend his graduation ceremonies.
Unknown to Papa, who’d have me always dependent on him, Arden had taught me to drive years ago. Therefore it was easy to “borrow” one of Papa’s older cars while he was at work, and with Sylvia dressed in her best, I headed for the airport terminal to wait for his plane to land. The moment was at hand. I was foolish enough to think I was ready for anything.
A Long Day’s Journey
Arden came running to me in the airport. Soon I was so tightly embraced and so fervently kissed that I pulled away, overwhelmed with his emotions. Frantically I looked for Sylvia, who’d disappeared the moment Arden seized me in his arms. After an hour’s search, we found my small sister staring at the colorful magazines. She was completely disheveled by this time, and I’d wanted Arden to see how pretty she was when she was fresh and clean. To make matters worse, someone who’d meant to be kind had given her a chocolate ice cream cone. Half the ice cream was on her face, part in her hair and in her nostrils, and very little of what was left was finding its melting way into her mouth. I took it from her grasp and held it for her to lick. Worse than anything was the stench that came from her diapers. I had managed to half toilet train Sylvia, but she still had enough accidents that I kept her in diapers.
There was little Arden and I could talk about on the way home, when every move Sylvia made was an embarrassment to both of us. “I’ll see you later this evening,” he said as I let him out on his corner. He tried not to wrinkle his nose when Sylvia clawed at him for affection.
No sooner were Sylvia and I inside the house than I heard the loud voice of my father. A terrible argument was going on in the kitchen.
I paused in the doorway with my arm protectively around Sylvia’s thin shoulders. Aunt Ellsbeth was dashing about, frantically preparing another of those troublesome gourmet meals that Papa loved so much. She wore a new dress, a very pretty, feminine dress that might well have been taken from my mother’s closet where all her clothes still hung, growing old and musty smelling. Aunt Ellsbeth wielded a huge cleaver so ferociously I wondered why Papa didn?
??t fear for his life when she glared at him with that thing in her hand. He didn’t seem afraid as he bellowed again, “Ellie, what the hell is wrong with you?”
“You need to ask?” she yelled back, slamming down her knife and whirling to confront him. “You didn’t come home until five-thirty this morning. You’re sleeping with someone. Who?”
“It’s really none of your business,” he answered coldly. I shuddered from his flat tone. Couldn’t he tell she loved him and was doing the best she could to please him?
