The Shadows of Foxworth Read online

  Pauline shook her head and looked down.

  “Do what I say, then, and do it now,” Aunt Effie snapped, and nodded at the twins. They practically lifted Aunt Pauline off the floor, turned her, and marched her out.

  As soon as they started away, Aunt Effie stepped toward me. She looked like she was about to slap me, but I didn’t cringe. I screwed my courage tightly and stared back at her.

  “Never interfere when I order Pauline to do something. Never.”

  “I didn’t interfere. I only tried to help.”

  “Help,” she practically spit. She thought a moment. “Did you tell her that?”

  “Tell who what?”

  “Did you tell her your coming here was like your father returning?”

  “No, Aunt Effie. I did not. I don’t think our father ever wanted to return to Richmond or to this house. The truth is, he never mentioned you, either of you, to Yvon or me. All our lives, we thought he was an only child.”

  She continued to stare at me with a cold smile, her eyes taking on that glassy look more at home with the dead. Maybe she was dead inside. I was frightened, but I wasn’t going to let her know.

  I looked at Yvon. “That’s the truth, n’est-ce pas, Yvon?”

  “Oui. It’s the truth.”

  “I don’t doubt it,” Aunt Effie said, not taking her eyes off me. “That is the way he lived, like an only child. He was never grateful for what he had, what he had inherited. In the end, he ran from his familial responsibilities, the act of a coward, not a son and brother.”

  “He did not,” Yvon said, stepping toward us. “He did the exact opposite and assumed those familial responsibilities, providing for us and our mother. We were a family, too.”

  She nodded. “Maybe he thought that was the way to redeem himself.”

  “For what?” Yvon snapped back. “Pursuing his own dreams and the woman he loved?”

  “For what he did to his own family by deserting us when he was most needed here.” She smiled at him. “I’m not surprised at your reaction and refusal to see it. In the Bible, it says the sins of the father will rest on the head of the son or heads of the sons. You’ll feel the burden. This is your opportunity.”

  “For what?”

  “To redeem him.”

  “And exactly how will I do that?”

  “Eventually, you will assume those responsibilities he abandoned. You will study and learn our business and relieve me of the burdens that belong on a man’s shoulders, not a woman’s. That is your true inheritance,” she said. She seemed to soften, her body relaxing. “In time, you will not only realize all this but welcome it. Back where you were, in the life you had, becoming a cobbler might have been sufficient, but before you reach another birthday, you will look back on it as if that was a pebble on the beach.”

  Yvon looked at me. He seemed at a loss for words. I had never seen him cower to anyone, especially a woman. I was waiting for him to give it back to her, to continue to defend Papa.

  “I know who you really are inside,” she continued. “You’re not simply arrogant, you are competitive, hungry. You’re a wolf, not a sheep. You would have died early in your shoes being a cobbler. There was simply not enough of a challenge to it for a young man like you.”

  To my surprise, Yvon continued to be silent. She was belittling what we were, what we had, but for some reason, he didn’t look upset. On the contrary, he was looking back at her as if he really did like the picture she was painting.

  She turned back to me.

  “As to your comments about what your father wanted and didn’t want… in the end, I cannot believe your father was anything but ashamed of himself, ashamed at how weak he had become, at how weak he was.”

  Yvon seemed to snap back with those words. He stepped closer to her. His eyes finally filled with the pride and outrage he easily called upon back in France.

  “Ashamed? He was very proud of what he was accomplishing. He was far from weak. He was becoming a well-known artist in France, and his work was getting more and more attention and money. Jean-Paul told you so.”

  “I’m not thinking of that. In his heart, he was surely ashamed of what he had done to us. You say he never mentioned us,” she continued, looking at me now. “You don’t mention what you are embarrassed to mention. You’re old enough to know that’s true. You either pretend it never happened or ignore it. That’s human nature. Some have too much of it.”

  I looked to Yvon again to say something.

  “He wanted to be an artist” was all he could think of at the moment.

  “Right. I wanted to be queen of England.” She stood straighter. “You heard a little about the financial empire we have built and are building. You will soon see firsthand that whatever your father was earning or could have earned was a pittance when compared to our financial worth as Dawson Enterprises. He enabled you to be a cobbler’s apprentice. I will enable you to become a major real estate entrepreneur. There’s a French word for you,” she said, with that smile I was beginning to hate. “Entrepreneur. Embrace it. Eventually, that’s who and what you will be.”

  She stabbed him in the chest with her long, bony right forefinger. He winced, but he didn’t utter a sound.

  “In your heart, that’s who you want to be.”

  She relaxed. I had nothing more to say, and apparently, neither did Yvon. The truth was, I was tired of arguing, here in the hallway, her shrill voice echoing off these cold, tall walls. We both looked quite wiped out.

  “Good. Now, my advice to you and your sister is to follow Pauline to bed. Tomorrow is a big day for both of you, and both Mr. Simon and I will need you two to be alert. You both have a lot to learn.”

  She turned back to me.

  “I don’t want to see or hear that you have encouraged Pauline any more.”

  “About what?”

  “Anything,” she said, and joined Mr. Simon, who had stood quietly by to continue to the library. We stood there side by side looking after them.

  “We can’t stay here, Yvon. She hates us because she hated Papa. She’ll make our lives as miserable as she has made Aunt Pauline’s.”

  His silence encouraged me.

  “We’ll sneak out of here tonight,” I suggested. “Pack what we have and go.”

  “Will we? How much money do you have?” he asked.

  “Money? None, of course.”

  “Then be realistic, Marlena. I have none, either. We’re in America. We know no one. We don’t even know where we would go.”

  “I have Mama’s jewelry.”

  “So? You’d sell it?”

  I was quiet. He was right. I couldn’t do that.

  “Besides,” he said, continuing to look after Aunt Effie and Mr. Simon, who turned into the library, “I wouldn’t want to give her the satisfaction. She’d only tell people, especially Jean-Paul and Anne, that we inherited Papa’s irresponsibility or something and like two frightened children ran off into the night. She’d feel she had done all she could for us. Her knotted, rotted conscience would be satisfied. I won’t let her get away with it.”

  “But… what will we do?”

  He smiled. “Maybe I will learn whatever I have to learn about the business and eventually, as she predicts, take over Dawson Enterprises or whatever it’s called. Who wouldn’t want to be filthy rich? Look around you. Look at all she has and what could be ours. When you have all this, you really have control of your life.”

  “I hate all this, Yvon. I hate being here. I want it to be back to the way it was.”

  “Well, it can’t be, Marlena. There’s no time to be a child bathed in fantasies anymore. Maybe right now it feels like we took a trip down into hell, and maybe,” he said, looking around, “this is hell in a way, but we’re not going to suffer anymore. I promise.”

  “She frightens me, Yvon.”

  “She’s mostly talk. Don’t you see what she wants or what she thinks she wants? We might be what she sees as her vengeance, some sort of way to punish Papa. For a while, we will feel like her slaves doing her bidding. You probably don’t remember because you were too young, but Jean-Paul had taken us out on his fishing boat, and we sat and talked about how sad some people in the village always were, like Monsieur Charcot, always complaining, blaming fate.”

  “I remember he was always drunk.”

  “Exactly. It did seem like fate was hurting him all the time, the failures, the losses. I asked Jean-Paul if he wasn’t right. What control did he have of his life, the sickness in his family, the loss of his business in that flood? ‘You can’t blame him,’ I said, and Jean-Paul said, ‘Yes, you can. He still had control of his life.’ ”

  “How?” I asked.

  “He was like a man caught in a wild current of bad luck. He couldn’t get out of it, but what he could do, Jean-Paul said, is swim faster in the current. Keep his pride that way, and eventually, he would enjoy life again. That’s what Jean-Paul told me. I’m going to do the same thing.”

  “How?”

  “I’m going to be a good student of this business, learn everything, and master this current we’re in, and when I do, and take over the way she wanted Papa to do, my first action will be to retire her to some home for the mean-spirited,” he said. His eyes brightened with the vision. “She’d regret the first day she decided to use me to get back at Papa. The twins will be taking her up to bed someday.”

  I envied him. He had found a purpose, a goal. I had no idea where I was, what I would do, and what I would become. I had more in common with Aunt Pauline at the moment.

  “But what will I do? How do I swim in this current?”

  “You’ll learn the skills she wants you to learn and eventually be right at my side. You’ll see. We’ll always be a team, Marlena. We’ll be as strong a
s Mama and Papa would expect us to be.”

  “Do you really think so?”

  “Oui,” Yvon said, holding out his arm. “Enjoy tomorrow. Let her buy you new clothes and shoes, and learn how to be an American girl.”

  It surprised me how quickly he seemed to be able to adjust to this new life. Could Aunt Effie be right about him, his ambition? Should I be upset? But then again, he was right. Who wouldn’t want to be rich, especially in America? Yvon always knew the right thing for us to do. He probably did here as well. Our mama and papa were gone. We had only ourselves now, and his wisdom was what I had to believe in and follow.

  I took his arm, and we headed for the stairway. We paused to listen to a ripple of Aunt Effie’s laughter coming from the library.

  “Do you think those two are lovers?” I asked.

  “Please,” he said. “Aunt Effie making love to someone? I just ate.”

  I smiled. My brother was truly like our mother. When he wanted to, he could make anyone feel better about him-or herself. We continued ascending the stairway. After we reached the second floor, we paused to watch the twins come toward us quickly.

  “How’s Pauline?” I asked.

  “She’s snugly in bed,” Minnie said.

  “Almost asleep already,” Emma added. “Miss Effie was right to send her up.”

  They walked past us to the stairway, but as soon as we reached Pauline’s room, I shouted for them. Both came back up quickly.

  “What is it?” Emma asked.

  “Why are you shouting outside her door? You’ll get her disturbed,” Minnie added.

  “Why did you lock her in her room?” I nodded at the lock that had been snapped shut.

  “We have to lock her in her room,” Minnie said.

  “It’s not something we want to do. Miss Effie wants us to do it,” Emma explained.

  “Why?” Yvon demanded, stepping toward them.

  “She walks in her sleep,” Minnie said.

  “The last time she did that, she fell down the stairs and broke her ankle,” Emma said. “Remember? We told you.”

  “You didn’t say she walked in her sleep. Even so… this is horrible,” I muttered, and looked at Yvon. He shook his head and shrugged. “No one should be locked up like this, no matter what. Tell them, Yvon.”

  “What can we do about it, Marlena? Maybe it’s the right thing to do,” Yvon said. “We don’t want her to hurt herself.”

  I looked at the lock. “There could be a fire,” I said quickly. “She might not get out in time.”

  “Miss Effie would save her,” Minnie said.

  “Before she would save herself,” Emma added, nodding.

  “Right. And there’s really a Santa Claus,” I told them.

  They both looked terribly confused. They started away, walking so closely they rubbed shoulders.

  “C’mon,” Yvon said. “Let’s go to bed before she has them lock us in, too.”

  He stopped with me at my doorway, and I realized how far we were from the home we loved in a small village that now seemed like a fantasy. My heart ached so. We hadn’t only lost our parents; we had lost an entire world, and our aunt from some island in hell was redesigning who we were and who we would be.

  “What’s happened to us, Yvon? It’s like we’re stuck in a nightmare.”

  He shook his head. “We either fell into a hole full of hate or one full of gold coins. We’ll see,” he said. “Try to get some sleep. Buying clothes with Aunt Effie will exhaust you. Anything with Aunt Effie will exhaust you. Maybe you can exhaust her.”

  “Me? I don’t think she is capable of feeling anything but anger and hate, and that gives her energy.”

  “Then we’ll watch her rot,” he said. “Don’t worry. She won’t harm a hair on your head with me nearby.”

  “I know.”

  He hugged me.

  “I’m going to write a letter to Jean-Paul and Anne before I go to sleep,” I told him. “I’m going to tell them everything. It will be a book, not a letter.”

  “You’ll be up all night if you start,” he said. He started away, then stopped. “But if you do, give them my love.”

  I watched him enter his room, and then I entered mine. It wasn’t until I sat to write that I realized damn Aunt Effie was right. I was exhausted. The letter would have to wait another day. Instead, I prepared for my first night in what had once been my father’s home. How I wished I could feel something warm and loving for it like I did for our small house in Villefranche-sur-Mer. I was afraid I would start crying, so I stopped thinking about it. Instead, I listened to the creaks and moans in the walls as the wind swept over the mansion. Somewhere nearby, I heard the sound of one of those funny automobile horns. To me it resembled the cry of a sick bird.

  The shadows seemed to shift and shake with the movement of clouds blocking and then floating away from the half-moon. A breeze stirred the curtains and tinkled the chandelier. A house this big with rooms this large encouraged loneliness, I thought. How I missed the sound of the sea and getting up to glance out at the water to be comforted by the light of stars dancing on the calm waves. With his art, Papa had made our world cozy and safe. Unlike my friends, I took none of it for granted but always looked for and was excited by the beauty. Every day was a surprise. The only surprise I envisioned here was a cobweb in some corner the twins missed when they cleaned.

  Thinking about living in a city this big with all those people walking the streets was even more frightening. How do you begin a new life in such a place? No one would know us when we walked these streets. Who would say “Bonjour” and smile because the sight of us helped him or her get through their day? Where would we find real aunts and uncles, grand-pères and grand-mères in a world full of strangers? How would I meet any new friends?

  The only education Aunt Effie had suggested for me was learning secretarial skills so I could be of some use to the family business. We were indentured servants, committed and condemned because of her hunger for vengeance. Both of us, Yvon and I, could feel the determination she had to make us pay for what she believed Papa had done. Our parents’ deaths came like a gift to her. What a terribly mean way to be! She had pounced on us like two lost and helpless baby birds that had fallen out of their nest.

  “The sins of the fathers,” I muttered. “What about her sins?”

  I turned over and hugged my pillow. I was truly exhausted. It wasn’t only the travel; it was all these emotions flowing in and out around us like the incoming tide. Would we drown in them?

  I felt myself drifting. Sometime during the night, I awoke to what I thought was the sound of Pauline’s door being pulled and pushed against that lock. It stopped, and I wondered if I had dreamed it. I was asleep again in moments, not waking again until the sunlight exploded on the walls to announce our first morning in America.

  Before I had a chance to get out of bed, the door was thrust open. Aunt Effie stood there in a dark-gray dress with a double-layered skirt, the fuller top skirt a mini crinoline, fur-trimmed. I had seen a drawing and a picture of a dress like it in a magazine on the ship. She held her hat in her right hand. But being stylish did nothing for her. She still looked dark and withered by her unhappiness.

  Live in anger, and you die in pain, Jean-Paul would tell us.

  “Why aren’t you up and dressed?” Aunt Effie demanded. I looked about and realized there was no clock.

  “I don’t know what time it is. I was tired. I…”

  “Get up, and put on that ridiculous dress you wore for now so we can organize the day. I’ll have you in something proper in less than two hours, and we’ll finish our shopping before lunch. Mr. Simon is arranging for you to have a tutor. He’ll be here this afternoon and begin your work to develop your necessary social and secretarial skills. I will not send you to some fancy girls’ school to prepare you for some arranged marriage. This is a different time from your mother’s, when girls who came from families with means were pampered.”

  “My mother’s? What do you know about my mother’s family?”

  “Enough to make me sick if I think too hard about it. Get moving.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I’m not asking you to. Just do what I ask.”

  “Is Yvon up?”

  “Yvon is up, had his breakfast, and has been taken to the offices,” she said. “And don’t bother inquiring about Pauline. I decided to avoid her whining when she sees we’re going out to shop and had her breakfast brought to her. She’ll remain in her room.”