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Dreamlike, I saw Billie behind my eyes sitting at the cottage window, passing goodies out to Arden and me when we were children. I saw her as she’d looked the last week of her life, radiant with happiness because she was in love
. But why had Billie tried to use the front stairs when the back ones were so much closer to the kitchen? Just like Aunt Ellsbeth, who had also spent most of her days in the kitchen. Could it be that because the front stairs led straight down to the marble floor, without the sharp turns and carpeted landings of the back stairs, they were the only “deadly” stairs? Then that meant someone had deliberately pushed both my aunt and Billie.
I lived that day of Billie’s death over and over again, hearing her scream, then the clatter and thuds of both Billie and the cart crashing down the stairs.
“Stop crying!” ordered Vera harshly as she thrust a thermometer in my mouth. “Remember when my mother told you that tears never did any good. They don’t, never have, never will. You take from life what you want and don’t ask permission, or else you get nothing.”
As sick as I was I cringed from the harshness of her loud voice when there was no man around to hear her speak. She threw Sylvia, who was crouched in the corner, a malicious glance.
“I despise that little monster. Why didn’t you tell the truth to the police and rid yourself of her? She’s the one who killed my mother, just as she killed Billie.” She strode over to stand in front of Sylvia, making me shove up on my elbows to try to prevent what might happen next. “Get this, Sylvia,” shouted Vera, prodding Sylvia with her foot. “You are not going to sneak up behind me and shove me down the stairs, for I’ll be on my guard—and it’s not going to happen, understand?”
“Leave her alone, Vera.” My voice was weak, my vision fuzzy, but it seemed Sylvia was more terrified of Vera than Vera was of her … so terrified of Vera that she crawled under my bed and hid there until Papa and Arden came home.
Life went sour after Billie died. Perhaps because all of us (but Vera and Sylvia) missed her so much, perhaps because I was suffering a double loss now that I doubted and mistrusted Sylvia. I gave up on Sylvia and no longer bothered to try to teach her anything. Often when I turned suddenly I caught Sylvia staring at me wistfully, a yearning in her expression. It was not so much in her eyes as it was in her attitude as she tried to catch hold of my hand and tried to please me with wildflowers she brought in from the woods.
My cold lingered and lingered, keeping me coughing through most of the summer. I was nineteen still and looking forward to that birthday that would make me twenty. I’d feel safer then, with no nine to curse me. Life seemed too cruel, taking both my aunt and Billie in only one year. And Vera was still with us, taking over the household chores with a willingness that both surprised and pleased Papa.
I lost weight and began to neglect my appearance. My twentieth birthday came and went and the relief of escaping a year with a nine in it didn’t bring me happiness. I clung more to the shadows near the wall and eyed all colors with fear. I wished now my memory still had holes into which I could drop my anguish and my suspicions of Sylvia. But the Swiss cheese memory belonged to my childhood, and now I knew only too well how to hold on to that which grieved me.
Another autumn passed, another winter. There were nights when Arden didn’t come home at all, and I didn’t care.
“Here,” said Vera one spring day, near the anniversary of Billie’s death, “drink this hot tea and put some color in your cheeks. You look like death warmed over.”
“I like iced tea better,” I said, shoving the cup and saucer away. Angrily she shoved it back at me. “Drink the tea, Audrina. Stop behaving like a child. Didn’t you just say a few minutes ago you had a chill?”
Obediently, I picked up the cup and started to put it to my lips when Sylvia came running forward. She hurled her full weight against Vera, who fell forward and grabbed for me. In so doing she knocked the cup from my hand. It fell to the floor and broke and both Vera and I tipped over in the chair.
Screaming her rage, with pain twisting her face, Vera tried to punish Sylvia … but she’d sprained her ankle. “Oh, goddamn that moron! I’m going to talk to Papa about having her put away!”
Blinking my eyes and trying to pull myself back into focus, I picked myself up and out of habit pulled Sylvia into my arms. “No, Vera, not as long as I live will Sylvia be put away. Why don’t you leave? I’ll take over the housework and the cooking. We don’t need you any longer.”
She began to cry. “After all I’ve done to help you, and now you don’t want me.” She sobbed as if her heart were broken. “You’re spoiled, Audrina, spoiled. If you had a backbone at all you’d have left this place a long time ago.”
“I thank you for taking care of me, Vera, but from this day forward I’ll do for myself.”
One day in summer Arden came storming home from his office very early. He ran into our bedroom and yanked me from bed.
“Enough is enough!” he yelled. “I should have done this months ago! You cannot throw away your life and mine because you’re not mature enough to face facts. Death is all around us, from the moment we’re born we’re on our way to our graves. But think of it this way, Audrina,” he said as his voice softened and he pulled me into his embrace. “No one really ever dies. We are like the leaves of the trees; we bud out in the spring of our birth and fall off in the autumn of our lives, but we do come back. Just like the leaves of spring, we do live again.”
For the first time since that awful day Billie fell, I really saw my husband’s fatigue, the small lines etched around his tired, red-rimmed eyes. Eyes that had sunk deeper into his skull, like mine. He hadn’t shaved, and that lent him a raffish, out-of-character look, like a stranger I didn’t know and didn’t love. I saw faults in his face I’d never noticed before.
Pulling away, I fell back on the bed and just lay there. He came to kneel and bow his head on my breast, pleading for me to come back to him. “I love you, and day by day you are killing me. I lost my mother and my wife on the same day—and I still eat, still go to work, still carry on. But I can’t continue to live this kind of life—if this can be called living.”
Something in me cracked then. My arms slid around him and my fingers curled into his thick hair. “I love you, Arden. Don’t lose patience. Keep holding on and I’ll come your way … I know I will, for I want to.”
Almost crying, kissing me with a passion almost crazy, he finally drew away and smiled. “All right. I’m willing to wait—but not forever. Remember that.”
Soon he was in the bathroom showering and Sylvia had risen from her place in the corner to stand at the foot of my bed. Pitifully she tried to focus her eyes. Her small hands reached for me pleadingly, begging me to come back to her, too. She had changed. I hardly knew her.
At twelve years of age, Sylvia had developed almost overnight (or while I wasn’t looking) a woman’s figure. Someone had brushed her hair and tied it back in a ponytail with an aqua satin ribbon that matched the lovely outfit I’d never seen before. Totally surprised, I stared at her beautiful young face, her shapely young body that the form-fitting cotton dress revealed. What a fool I was to have suspected Sylvia could harm anyone. She needed me. How could I have forgotten Sylvia in my apathy?
I stared at Sylvia, who had moved to the dimmest corner and crouched with her knees pulled up so the crotch of her panties showed. Pull your dress down, I thought, and watched her obey without any sense of power or surprise. A long time ago Sylvia and I had developed a rapport between us.
Mothers and aunts could die, daughters and sons, too, yet life went on and the sun still shone, the rain still fell, and the months came and went. Papa began to show more definite signs of aging as he also showed faint signs of mellowing.
I knew that Arden was seeing a great deal of Vera away from Whitefern. Even under my own roof I often glimpsed them in some room that was seldom used. I closed my mind and my eyes and pretended I didn’t notice Arden’s flushed face and the way Vera had to smooth down her tight sheath dress that seemed painted on. She smiled at me smugly, mockingly, telling me she’d won. Why didn’t I care anymore?
Late one evening when I no longer expected to see Arden enter my room, he opened the door
