Petals on the Wind Read online

  "My lady Catherine," said Chris from the open doorway. "You do look gorgeous but it is in

  appallingly bad taste to admire yourself so much you have to kiss your own reflection. Really, Cathy, wait for compliments from others--don't give them to yourself."

  "I'm afraid no one will tell me," I said

  defensively, "so I tell it to myself to give myself more confidence. Do I look beautiful and not just pretty?"

  "Yeah," he said in a funny, tight voice, "I doubt I'll ever see another girl as beautiful as you look right now." "Would you say I'm improving with age?" "I'm not going to compliment you anymore! It's

  no wonder the grandmother broke all the mirrors. I've got a good mind to do that myself. Such conceit!" I frowned, not liking to be reminded of that old woman. "You look fantastic, Chris," I said, giving him a big, warm smile. "I'm not ashamed or embarrassed to hand out compliments when they're deserved. You're as handsome as Daddy."

  Every time he came home from his school he looked more mature and more handsome. Though, when I peered closer, wisdom was putting something strange in his eyes, something that made him seem much, much older than I was. He also appeared sadder than me, more vulnerable, and the combination was extremely appealing. "Why aren't you happy, Chris?" I asked. "Is life disappointing you? Is it less than you thought it would be when we were locked away and we had so many dreams for the future? Are you sorry now that you decided on being a doctor? Are you wishing instead to be a dancer like me?"

  I had neared to watch his oh, so revealing eyes, but he lowered them to hide away and his hands tried to span my waist, but my waist wasn't that small or his hands weren't that large. Or was he just doing something to touch me? Making a game out of what was serious. Was that it? I ducked to peer into his face and I saw the love I was looking for and then wished I didn't know.

  "Chris, you haven't answered."

  "What did you ask?"

  "Life, medical training, is it living up to your

  expectations?"

  "What does?"

  "That sounds cynical. My style, not yours." He raised his head and smiled brightly. Oh,

  God! "Yes," he said, "life on the outside is what I thought it would be. I was realistic, unlike you. I like school and the friends I've made. But I still miss you; it's hard being separated from you, always wondering what you're up to." His eyes shifted again and became shadowed as he yearned for the impossible. "Happy birthday, my lady Cath-er-ine," he softly said, and then brushed my lips with his. Just a feathery little kiss that didn't dare much. "Let's go," he said resolutely, taking hold of my hand. "Everyone is ready but fussy, prissy you."

  We descended the stairs hand in hand. Paul and Carrie were all dressed and waiting, with Henny too. The house felt strange, so hushed and expectant--so weirdly dark, with all the lights off but in the hall. How funny.

  Then, suddenly, out of the dark came, "Surprise! Sur-prise!" Screamed by a chorus of voices as the lights all came on, and members of my ballet class, thronging about Chris and me.

  Henny carried in a birthday cake of three layers, each smaller than the one underneath and proudly said she'd made it and decorated it herself. Let me always succeed at what I set out to do, I wished with my eyes closed when I blew out all the candles. I'm gaining on you, Momma--getting older and wiser each day, so when the time comes, I'll be ready--your match.

  I blew so well the melted pink wax smeared the sugary pink roses nestled sweetly on pale green leaves. Across from me was Julian. His ebony eyes riveted as mutely he asked the same question over and over.

  Whenever I tried to meet eyes with Chris he had his turned another way or lowered to stare at the floor. Carrie crowded close beside Paul, who sat some distance away from the boisterous revelry and tried not to look stern. As soon as I had all the presents opened Paul got up, picked Carrie up in his arms, and both disappeared up the stairs.

  "Good night, Cathy," called Carrie, her small face happy and flushed with sleepiness, "this is the best birthday party I've ever been to."

  I could have cried from the pain of that, for she was almost nine years old and the birthday parties she could remember, except Chris's last November, had been pitiful attempts to make much out of little.

  "Why are you looking sad?" asked Julian who came up and swung me into his embrace. "Rejoice-- for now you have me at your feet, ready to set your heart on fire along with your body."

  Truly I hated him when he acted like that. He tried to demonstrate in every way possible that I belonged to him and him alone. His gift had been a leather tote to carry my ballet leotards, shoes, etc. I danced away from him, not wanting to be claimed tonight. All the girls who weren't already infatuated with Julian immediately fell for Chris, and this in no way enhanced Julian's liking for my brother. I don't know what happened to put the match to the grass but suddenly Chris and Julian were in a corner arguing and about to exchange blows. "I don't give a damn what you think!" stormed Chris in his eye-of-thehurricane calm way. "My sister is too young for a lover and not ready for New York!"

  "You! You --" fired Julian back. "What do you know about the dance? You know nothing! You can't even manage to move your feet without stepping on yourself!"

  "That may be true," said Chris in an icy voice, "but I have other skills. And we're talking about my sister and the fact that she is still underaged. I won't have you persuading her to accompany you to New York when she hasn't even finished high school yet!"

  My head swiveled from one to the other and between the two it was hard to say which was the better looking. I felt sick that they would show everyone their hostility, and sick because I wanted so much for them to like each other. I trembled on the brink of crying out, stop, don't do this! But I said nothing.

  "Cathy," called Chris, not moving his eyes for one second from Julian who appeared ready to throw a blow or deliver a kick, "do you honestly believe you are ready to make your debut in New York?"

  "No . . ." I said in a near whisper. Julian's eyes raged my way, for he was at me, demanding of me every second we were together, wanting me to accompany him to New York and be his mistress and dance partner. I knew why he wanted me--my weight, my height, my balance suited his abilities perfectly. It was of utmost importance to find the perfect partner when you wanted to impress in a pas de deux.

  "May all your birthdays be hell on earth!" Julian said as he headed for the front door, and he slammed it hard behind him. That's how my party ended, with everyone going home looking embarrassed. Chris stalked up to his room without wishing me good night. With tears in my eyes I began to pick up the trash from the living room carpet. I found a hole burned in the plushy green from a carelessly held cigarette. Someone had broken one of Paul's prized pieces of hand-blown glass--a transparent rose of shimmering crystal. I held it, thinking about buying glue that would put it back together again, even as I planned a way, for there had to be a way, to cover up the holes in the carpet and take the white rings from the tables.

  "Don't worry about the rose," Paul's voice came from behind me, "it's just a cheap knickknack. I can always buy another."

  I turned to look at him He was standing so casually in the archway of the foyer, meeting my teary look with his soft, kind eyes. "It was a beautiful rose," I choked, "and I know it was expensive. I'll buy you another if I can find a duplicate, and if I can't I'll buy you something better when I can. . . ."

  "Forget it."

  "Thank you again for the beautiful music box." Nervously my hands fluttered to my daring

  decolletage and sought to hide the cleavage. "My father gave me a silver music box with a ballerina inside once but I had to leave it. . . ." My voice trailed off and I could speak no more, for thoughts of my father always left me in childish ruins of bleakness without hope.

  "Chris told me about the music box your father gave you and I tried to find one just like it. Did I succeed?"

  "Yes," I said, though it wasn't the same.

  "Good. Now go to bed. Forget the mess--
Henny will clean up. You look sleepy."

  I was soon up the stairs and into my room, where to my surprise Chris was waiting for me.

  "What is going on between you and Julian?" he shot out fiercely.

  "Nothing is going on!"

  "Don't lie to me, Cathy! He doesn't fly down here so often for nothing!"

  "Mind your own damned business,

  Christopher!" I said viciously. "I don't try to tell you what to do and I demand the same from you! You are not a saint and I am not an angel! The trouble is you're just another man who thinks you can do anything you want while I have to sit prim and prissy on the sidelines and wait for someone to come along and marry me! Well, I'm not that kind of woman! Nobody is going to push me around and make me do what I don't want to--never again! Not Paul! Not Madame! Not Julian--and not you either!" His face paled as he listened and restrained himself from interrupting. "I want you to stay out of my life, Christopher. I'll do what I have to, anything I have to, to get to the top!"

  He glared at me with his heavenly blue eyes shooting devilish electric sparks. "I take it you'll sleep with just any man if that's necessary."

  "I do what I have to!" I raged back, though I hadn't given that any thought.

  He seemed on the verge of slapping me, and the control it took to keep his hands at his sides made him clench them into fists. A white line etched about his tightened lips. "Cathy," he began in a hurt voice, "what's come over you? I didn't think you'd ever become another opportunist."

  Bitterly I met his eyes. What did he think he was doing? We'd stumbled fortunately upon an unhappy, lonely man and we were using him, and sooner or later there'd be a price to pay. Our grandmother had always told us nobody did anything for nothing. But somehow I couldn't hurt him more, and I couldn't speak a word against Paul who'd taken us in and was doing everything he could. Truthfully, I had reason enough for knowing he didn't expect any reward.

  "Cathy," he pleaded, "I hate every word you just said. How can you talk to me like that when you know how much I love and respect you? There isn't a day that passes that I don't long for you. I live for the weekends when I can see you and Carrie. Don't turn from me, Cathy, I need you. I'll always need you. It scares the hell out of me to think I'm not nearly that necessary in your life." He had hold of my arms and would have pulled me against his chest, but I yanked away and turned my back. How could I tell what was wrong and what was right when nobody seemed to care anymore?

  "Chris," I began brokenly, "I'm sorry I spoke like that. It matters to me very much what you think. But I'm all torn up inside. I think I have to have everything immediately to help make up for all I've lost and suffered. Julian wants me to go with him to New York. I don't think I'm ready yet and I don't have the discipline I need--Madame tells me that all the time and she's right. Julian says he loves me and will take care of me. But I'm not sure what love is, or if he loves me at all or only wants me to help him reach his goal. But his goal is my goal. So tell me how I can tell if he loves me or if he only wants to use me?"

  "Have you let him make love to you?" he asked flatly, his eyes dead looking.

  "No! Of course not!"

  His arms encircled me and held me fast. "Wait at least one more year, Cathy. Trust Madame Marisha, not Julian. She knows more than he does." He paused and forced me to lift my bowed head. I studied his handsome face and wondered why he hesitated and didn't go on.

  I was an instrument of yearning, filled with a ravenous desire for romantic fulfillment. I was scared too of what was inside me. So scared I was like Momma. When I looked in the mirrors I saw my mother's face beginning to emerge more definitely. I was exalted that I looked like her, and paradoxically I hated myself for being her reflection. No, no, I wasn't like her inside, only on the outside. My beauty was not only skin deep.

  I kept telling myself this as I made a special trip to Greenglenna downtown. In the city hall there I made some flimsy excuse about looking up my mother's birth certificate just so I could look up the birth certificate of Bart Winslow. I found out he was eight years younger than my mother and I also discovered exactly where he lived. I walked fifteen blocks until I came to a quiet, elm-lined street where old mansions were in a state of decaying disrepair. All but the home of Bart Winslow! His home had scaffolding all around. Dozens of workmen were putting up storm windows on a freshly painted brick home with white trim around the windows and a white portico.

  Another day found me in the Greenglenna library where I read up on the Winslow family. Much to my delight, when I searched back through the old newspapers I found a society editor who seemed to devote most of her column to Bart Winslow and his fabulously wealthy and very beautiful wife with her aristocratic background. "The heiress to one of the country's greatest fortunes."

  That column I snipped out furtively and sneaked home to Chris. I didn't want him to know Momma would live in Greenglenna. He showed some distress as he scanned the column. "Cathy, where did you find this article?"

  I shrugged. "Oh, it was in some Virginia paper they sell in a newsstand."

  "She's in Europe again," he said in a queer way. "I wonder why she keeps going to Europe." He turned his blue eyes my way and a dreamy expression softened his features. "Remember the summer she went on her honeymoon?"

  Remember? As if I could ever forget. As if I would ever let myself forget. Someday, someday when I was rich and famous too, Momma was going to hear from me and when she did, she'd better be well prepared, for bit by bit I was forming my strategy.

  Julian didn't come to Greenglenna as much as he had before my sixteenth birthday party. I figured Chris had scared him off. I didn't know if that made me happy or not. When he did visit his parents he ignored me. He began to pay attention to Lorraine DuVal, my best friend. For some reason I felt hurt and resentment, not only against him but also against Lorraine. In the wings I half-hid myself and watched them dance a passionate pas de deux. That was when I determined I'd study twice as hard as I had before, for I was going to show Julian too! I was going to show everyone just what / was made of!

  Steel, covered over with frilly, silly tulle tutus!

  Owl on the Roof

  . Now I'm going to recount an event in Carrie's life, for this is her story and Chris's as well as mine When I look back now and reflect on how life turned out for Carrie, I truthfully believe what happened to Carrie in Miss Emily Dean Calhoun's School for Properly Bred Young Ladies had a great deal to do with how she thought of herself in the future.

  Ah, dig me a well to cry in before I begin, for I loved her so, and what pain she had to bear I bear, even now.

  From the jigsaw pieces that I've gathered from Carrie herself and from Miss Dewhurst, and from several other students at that school, this was Carrie's nightmare to endure, and I will report it as honestly as possible.

  Carrie spent her weekends with us but she had retreated into that quiet, little apathetic creature who'd grieved so when her twin died. Everything about Carrie worried me. Though when I asked her questions she insisted everything was all right and refused to say anything against that school or the student body or the faculty. She said one thing, and one thing only, to express her feelings--and what a clue it was. "I like the carpet--it's colored like grass." That was it. She left me wondering, worried, trying to guess what was troubling her. Something was wrong, I knew it, and she wouldn't tell me what it was.

  Each Friday about four Paul would drive to fetch Carrie and Chris and bring them back home. He did his best to make all our weekends memorable. Though Carrie appeared happy enough with us, she seldom laughed. Try as we would, all we could pull from her was a weak smile.

  "What's wrong with Carrie?" whispered Chris. I could only shrug. Somewhere along the way I'd lost Carrie's confidence. Her big, blue eyes fastened on Paul. They mutely pleaded with him. But he was looking at me, not Carrie.

  As the time approached for her to be driven back to school Carrie would grow very quiet; her eyes would become blank and resigned. We'd kiss her good
-bye and tell her to be good, make friends, "and if you need us, you know how to call."

  "Yes," she said weakly, her eyes downcast. I pressed her against me telling her again how much I loved her, and if she was unhappy she had to speak up and say so. "I'm not unhappy," she answered with her eyes fixed sadly on Paul.

  It was truly a beautiful school. I'd have loved to attend such a school. Each girl was allowed to decorate her side of a double room as she saw fit. Miss Dewhurst had only one restriction, and that was each girl had to choose "proper, ladylike" appointments. Soft, passive femininity was greatly stressed in the South. Soft, whispering clothes, drifting chiffon, dulcet voices, shy, downcast eyes, weak, fluttery hands to express helplessness, and absolutely no opinions that would conflict with male ones--and never, never let a man know you had a brain that might be better than his. And I'm afraid, after reconsidering, it wouldn't be the proper school for me after all.

  Carrie's bed was twin size, covered by a bright purple spread. On it she had decorator pillows of rose, red, purple, violet and green. Beside her bed was a night- stand with the milk-glass vase filled with plastic violets given to her by Paul. Whenever he could he brought her real flowers. Strangely, she adored that little pot of violets more than the real flowers that soon withered and died.

  Since Carrie was the smallest girl in the school of one hundred students, she was given as a roommate the next smallest girl, named Sissy Towers. Sissy had brick-red hair, emerald eyes that were long and narrow, thin, paper-white skin, and a spiteful, mean temper which she never displayed to any adult, but saved for the girls she knew how to intimidate. Worst of all, though she was the second smallest, she towered over Carrie by six inches!

  Carrie had celebrated her ninth birthday with a party the week before her ordeal began. It was May, and it began on a Thursday.