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I almost dropped the spoon in the steaming gravy. Who had taught Sylvia to sing that song?
“Are you all right, darlin’?” asked Billie, pulling herself along by grabbing the countertops.
“I’m fine,” I answered out of habit. “But I can’t remember teaching Sylvia to sing any song. Did you hear her singing, Billie?”
“No, darlin’, I didn’t hear her singing. I thought that was Vera’s voice. She sings that song a lot. It’s like a child’s song of reassurance—rather pitiful. It makes me hurt to think that Damian didn’t show Vera more kindness. And she’s trying so to make him appreciate her.”
Silently I poured the gravy into its bowl, then carried it into the dining room. On the way back I pulled Sylvia off the cart and scolded her thoroughly. “How many times do I have to tell you to leave that cart alone? It’s not yours. Go ride the tricycle Papa gave you. It’s red and pretty.”
Pouting her lower lip, Sylvia backed away from me. I pushed the cart with my foot into the kitchen.
That evening Papa and Arden picked up the purple chaise with Vera still lying there like an orange-haired Cleopatra and she ate with us in the dining room.
I hated seeing her on Momma’s purple chaise, but there Vera lay day after day, reading those same paperback novels she had read years and years ago.
Sylvia retreated into herself, refusing to enter the playroom and be taught again. Because Papa had to have gourmet meals and no longer could Billie be given relief by eating in restaurants with him, she did nothing but cook. I did all the housework, all the laundry, though Arden did what he could after he came home from work. Papa was always too busy, or too tired to do anything but talk or watch TV.
A month after the New Year had come and gone, I led Sylvia again into the playroom to continue our lessons. “I’m sorry I’ve neglected you, Sylvia. If Vera hadn’t broken her leg, I’ll bet you’d be reading by now. So let’s go back to where we left off. What is your name?”
We had reached the playroom door, and to my surprise, and Sylvia’s, too, Billie was in the rocker. She blushed when we caught her. “It’s silly, I know, but if there’s magic in this chair, I want a little of it myself.” She looked very girlish and pretty, then she giggled. “Don’t laugh. But I’ve got a dream, a wonderful dream that occupies most of my thoughts. I’m hoping this chair will help my dream come true.” She smiled at me tremulously. “I questioned your father and he said anything is possible, if you believe, so here I am … and I’m believing.” She smiled and held out her arms. “Come, Sylvia, let me hold you on my lap. Be my little girl today and tell me what your name is.”
“Noooo!” wailed Sylvia, loud enough to bring Vera hobbling down the hall on the crutches the doctor was allowing her to use now.
“Baaaad!” yelled Sylvia, pointing at Vera. “Baad!”
Sylvia would not sit on Billie’s lap, but on another day Papa found us both there rocking and singing together. “Just you, my love,” he said, looking at me and never at Sylvia. “Rock alone, become the empty pitcher that fills with everything wonderful.”
I ignored him, thinking him a fool on that particular subject. I turned to Sylvia, wanting to show her off in front of Papa. “Darling, tell Papa your name.” Only a moment ago she’d said it, before we started singing. “Tell him my name, too.”
My small sister on my lap made her beautiful but sometimes terrible eyes vacant, so that they looked straight through him, and some babbling nonsense came from her lips. I wanted to cry. I’d worked so hard, and denied myself many trips into the city with Arden to stay home and teach Sylvia. Now she refused to give me the reward I felt I needed.
“Oh,” said Papa in disgust, “you’re wasting your time. Give it up.”
My husband seldom came home before nine or ten at night. Often he missed dinner, explaining this by saying he had so much paperwork to do, so much technical data to read, he had to study in order to keep up.
“And there are so many distractions at home,” he said in an evasive way. “Now don’t jump on Damian. It’s not his fault but my own. I just don’t catch on as quickly as I should.”
The very next night Arden came home with even more papers to read. Financial reports, financial advisory services, technical stock charts, tax shelters to evaluate—more work than Papa had ever assigned to him before. At two in the morning, I awoke to see Arden still at our small bedroom desk, reading, making notes, his eyes tired and bloodshot.
“Come to bed, Arden.”
“Can’t, honey.” He yawned and smiled my way. As exhausted as he was, he still didn’t lose patience with me, or with Papa. “Today your father took off somewhere and left me in charge of the firm. I couldn’t take care of my own affairs when his are more important—and now I have to catch up.” He stood up and stretched, then headed for the shower. “Cold water will wake me up.”
In another moment he was back at the bathroom door, beginning to tug off his clothes as he said in a troubled way, “Well, there I was in Damian’s office, in charge, and I knew damn well he was expecting me to make every mistake possible so he could shout and humiliate me again in front of everybody. It was a quiet day, and as I sat behind his massive desk and waited for the telephone to ring, I started looking for something and discovered the drawers were very short. I couldn’t understand why such a large desk had such short drawers. So I fooled around, and soon found several small secret compartments way in the back of the drawers.”
Fully out of his clothes now, he stood there naked, as if he wanted me to look at him, something I could never do without quivering and blushing. Though he said nothing sexual to me or indicated he wanted me to do more than listen, I sensed a certain kind of expectation.
“Audrina, I’m not an expert bookkeeper, but when I found a ledger in one secret compartment, I couldn’t resist leafing through it and doing a little calcula
ting. Your father ‘borrows’ money from his more dormant accounts, uses it to invest in his own account, and when he’s made a nice profit, he puts the money back in months later. His clients never know the difference. He’s been doing it for years and years.”
Blankly I stared at him
“That’s not all he does, either,” Arden went on. “Just the other day I heard him telling one of his wealthiest clients that the stock certificates she found in her attic were worthless except for framing. She mailed him the certificates to frame and hang in his office—a little gift, she told him. Audrina, they were Union Pacific stocks that have split time and time again. When she gave him that little gift, she gave him hundreds of thousands of dollars—and she’s eighty-two years old. Rich, but old. He probably thinks she’s got enough and doesn’t need it nearly as much as he does, and he must figure she’s too old to find out he’s cheated her.”
He yawned again and rubbed at his eyes, and again he seemed boyish and very vulnerable. For some reason I was touched. “You know, for the longest time I wondered why he collected old stock certificates. Now I know why he wants them. He sells them on the West Coast. It’s no wonder he’s so rich now, no wonder at all.”
“I should have known he had to be doing something dishonest to have so much cash to invest, when only a few years ago we couldn’t even afford meat on our table. Oh, how dumb not to have guessed years ago!” I looked at him anxiously.
