Echoes of Dollanganger Read online

  I was older and surely more mature than everyone with whom I associated. I could see it in how casually they treated the risks they took, whether it was drinking and driving, recreational drugs, curfews, or, yes, sex. But I tried desperately not to preach or make anyone else feel guilty. I knew I wouldn’t hold on to any friends if I said what I thought. Ironically, there were many times when I wished I didn’t have these thoughts, when I wished I was more like them, when I longed to take those risks and fly without a parachute. There was an excitement just beyond me, something I never had tasted, something I never had felt. Despite all I knew was right, I resented my own self-control.

  So now, when I left this room and confronted my father, I knew he would be looking at me differently. He would do his best to disguise it; he might even make one of his silly jokes or try to ignore what he had just witnessed. Surely, with the bathroom door open, he had heard our laughter in the shower. I hoped he hadn’t stepped up to the door and looked in, but I couldn’t be sure.

  The thing was, I didn’t want to feel ashamed or guilty. I wanted the way he and I had often conducted ourselves, like two equal adults and not always a father and a young daughter, to carry over into this. I wanted him to trust me, but I knew in my heart that even if he wanted to do that, he couldn’t. As he would say, it was not in a father’s DNA.

  Before I started down, I looked in on Kane, who was dressing in the bathroom, and said, “My father’s home. He’s been home a while.”

  He paused. All the possibilities began to flash before him like trailers for an upcoming movie. He knew, of course, how close my father and I were. Was he going to face a man in a rage? Would he have to deny and lie? Was it better for him to somehow slip away? Would my father forbid us ever to see each other socially again? Would my father call his father and mother to complain? Would the turmoil spread quickly to his house, and would it leak out to the community, our friends? Some would ridicule us, some would joke about it, and some would actually envy us, but it would all make us uncomfortable, especially if our teachers found out. How bad was this?

  “Did he . . .”

  “I think so,” I said. “Let me go down first. Wait a few minutes and follow.”

  He nodded.

  I practically tiptoed down the stairway. He wasn’t in the living room, and he wasn’t in the kitchen, but I saw a note taped to the refrigerator door: Just stopped in to get an important invoice I needed. See you later. Dad.

  Just like him to let me know he was here, I thought. He wasn’t going to pretend he wasn’t just to let me off the hook. He might not bring it up, but he wasn’t going to let me believe he didn’t know. We knew each other too well for false faces.

  Kane came down the stairs slowly and paused in the doorway.

  “He went back to work. He was here only to pick up some important paper.”

  “Oh.” He looked relieved. “Then maybe he didn’t . . .”

  “He saw your car, Kane. He wouldn’t just walk in, get the paper, and walk out. Even though he left this note that implies just that,” I added.

  Kane looked at it. “What should we do?”

  “Nothing. We should do nothing.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to get you into trouble. I just assumed we would be alone. I mean . . .”

  “Let’s not apologize to each other for what we do together, okay? If we think we might have to apologize for something, then let’s just not do it.”

  He smiled.

  “And if and when we see my father soon, do not apologize to him or look guilty.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said, and saluted. He took a deep breath. “I’m still hungry.”

  “I will be once my stomach twists out of the knot it’s in,” I replied, and we headed out.

  While we were eating, Kane got a text from his sister.

  “You’ll be happy,” he said when he looked up.

  “Why?”

  “My sister and her boyfriend want to take us out to dinner tomorrow night at La Reserve, without my parents. Of course, if we feel generous afterward, we can stop by Tina’s house. Sound good?”

  “La Reserve? That’s très fancy.”

  “So we’ll dress up, okay?”

  “Yes,” I said, but without the enthusiasm I would have had before my father had come home unexpectedly.

  Kane knew me well enough to see the hesitation. “You don’t think your father will ground you, punish you or anything?”

  “No. My father doesn’t punish me for things I do wrong. He just looks at me with disappointment, and I punish myself,” I said.

  “We didn’t do anything wrong,” Kane said, his eyes more like I imagined Christopher’s would be, with that look of intensity and confidence. I almost anticipated a long, scientific explanation for our behavior, supported by references to the situation we were in. He did add, “It’s only natural for me to want to make love to you, Kristin. Both of us are really adults. We’re both less than a year away from being able to vote. Right? We drive cars. We’d be in adult court if we did something illegal, I’m sure.”

  “What a relief to know that,” I said.

  “I just meant . . .”

  “It’s all right. Don’t worry. I’m okay.”

  “We can’t legally drink alcohol, but in some countries, we’d be married with children by now,” he added. He was on one of his Kane rolls.

  “I’m not leaving the country,” I said, and he laughed.

  I was glad we were going to a movie, and for a few hours, at least, I didn’t have to think about anything else. Some of our friends were there, but we didn’t sit near them. When the film ended, we rushed out before anyone could suggest we join them for something. We tried to talk only about the film. When Kane brought me home, he wanted to come in to face my father.

  “No sense in running away. I’ve got to face him sometime.”

  “He wouldn’t say anything to you, Kane. If he’s going to say anything, which I doubt, it will be to me. It’s late. He’s probably asleep in front of the television.”

  “What time should I come over tomorrow? He’s working, right? The construction guys always work on Saturdays around here.”

  “Yes. He’d work seven days a week if he could.”

  “Then we can get much further into the diary.”

  “Maybe we should just take a breather,” I said. Even in the dim glow coming from the light on the garage, I could see he looked like he had just lost his best friend.

  “Why?” he protested. “I thought you were into it as much as I was. We should take advantage of every opportunity.”

  “We’ll see.” I relented. “I’ll call you in the morning, okay?”

  “Whatever,” he said, his disappointment drifting into a shade of anger.

  “Kane, I’m just a little nervous. I was hoping you’d be understanding.”

  “I am. I am. I just feel as if it’s almost . . .”

  “Almost what?”

  “Almost unfair to Christopher.”

  “What? How?”

  “In my mind, he’s trusting us with his words. I know his diary was hidden and locked away, but I bet he’s thought about it often since he left the original Foxworth Hall, and he’s hoped that whoever found it would hold it sacred.”

  I couldn’t help smiling.

  “What?” he asked.

  “I can’t help but think we’ve completely changed places here. Those were my feelings when you first discovered it under my pillow and wanted to read it aloud with me. I was afraid you would end up making fun of it or something.”

  He grimaced. “You thought that of me?”

  “Kane, come on. You haven’t exactly been Mr. Serious before this. You’re not disrespectful or a cutup in school, but you have a way about you.”

  He turned completely to me, putting his right arm on the top of the seat. “Go on. You’re on a roll. Don’t stop with the Kane Hill description.”

  “Your family is one of the most respected in Charlott
esville, but you’re not conservative. I don’t mean how you dress. You’ve got rebel in you. You enjoy being an individualist. It’s what makes you kind of . . . dangerously attractive,” I said. “You’re unpredictable. That’s all I meant. So I wasn’t sure how you would react to the diary once we were into it. Okay?”

  He smiled, his eyes capturing the illumination from the light above the garage and dazzling me with their twinkling deep affection. “Kristin Masterwood,” he said, “I can’t imagine falling in love with anyone else would ever be any better than the way I feel about you right now.”

  Slowly, he leaned toward me to kiss me. It was a gentle kiss, more loving than passionate, a sign of truly deep feelings and not just a call for sex. It was the sort of kiss shared between people who have been together for a very long time, reminding them how important each was to the other. The sincerity surprised me.

  “Speechless finally?” he asked, when he pulled back. His words did make my heart flutter, as if I’d had a baby bird emerge from its shell under my breast, and stole away my breath.

  “Yes,” I managed.

  “I’ll wait for your call in the morning,” he said.

  I got out. He watched me walk around the car and up to my front door before he started his engine again. Then he pointed toward the attic and backed out. I didn’t open the door until he drove off. I wanted to gather my wits and not look like I had just stepped off a cloud.

  I wasn’t surprised that my father was awake in front of the television tonight. He would have been no matter what he had seen or heard earlier. Whenever I went out, he stayed awake and only half listened or followed whatever he was watching. He turned when I entered. Maybe he heard me enter; maybe he just knew whenever I was suddenly near him.

  There are so many little ways to read someone’s face, especially a father’s. There was no anger in it, and he didn’t look hurt, exactly. I would say he looked a little stunned, the way he might look if he had just heard or seen something very unexpected. But at the same time, he was obviously trying to hide it, hide his feelings.

  “Hey,” he said. “How was the movie?”

  “It was very good.”

  “What was it?”

  “Someone’s Watching. It was about these two teenagers about my age, a boy and a girl. The girl’s mother married the boy’s father, and they all lived together, only the father was a degenerate and started abusing his wife’s daughter, so she and her stepbrother ran away and camped out in an old, deserted hotel that wasn’t really deserted. The aged owner’s grandson lived in the building, a sort of recluse, not mentally deficient but socially. And he was big. Slowly, they get to know him. He comes to their defense when the stepfather hunts them down . . . sort of like Boo Radley from To Kill a Mockingbird.” I rattled on out of nervousness.

  “I remember that book and movie. It was one of your mother’s favorites,” he said.

  All my life, I would be moving through my father’s minefields of cherished memories, I thought. I would mention something, do something, or just look like my mother for a moment, and it would happen. I didn’t regret it, but I couldn’t help feeling some of his great emotional pain when one of those memories burst out and confronted us both again with her unexpected death.

  “Yes. We read it last year in English class,” I reminded him. Almost every time I held the book in my hands, he would smile, with the vision of my mother doing the same thing.

  “She was always after me to do more reading.”

  “Nothing to stop you now,” I said, and he smiled.

  “I have to be there a little earlier tomorrow,” he said, looking eager to change the topic. “Seems crazy to be working on this before I’m halfway finished with the house, but we’re setting up the pool, doing the dig, running electric and plumbing.”

  “I’ve never really looked at the plans,” I said.

  “Oh. Right. There’s a set on my desk.” He nodded at it, and I went over to the desk and unrolled the bound plans. He remained seated, watching me as I perused them.

  “Looks bigger than Foxworth Hall.”

  “No, it’s about twelve thousand square feet smaller, but of course, there’s more patio. There’s no ballroom as such, but there is a rather big living room. Six bedrooms, all with en suite bathrooms, and a den about the size of the one that was in Foxworth.”

  “All the bedrooms are upstairs?”

  “Maids’ are downstairs,” he said. “There’s a kitchen Charley would love to have in his diner.”

  “How long is all this going to take?”

  “I’ve put on more crew, but it’ll still be the best of a year and a half, with all the detail in the woodwork and landscaping.”

  I realized I had done all I could to avoid talking about Kane and myself. “Kane’s sister and her boyfriend have invited us to dinner tomorrow night.”

  “That so?”

  “He’s her boyfriend from college. I haven’t met him yet, and I haven’t seen her for years, it seems.”

  “I remember her vaguely. Nice girl, I think.”

  “I’ll give you a full report.”

  “Okay.”

  He rose. “I’d better get to bed. I want to get as much done as we can before we break for Thanksgiving.”

  We looked at each other. When two people knew each other as well as we did, they said a great deal in their silences.

  “You ever wish you had a boy instead?” I asked. I could see the question came out of nowhere as far as he was concerned, but my implication was clear. Parents generally worry less about their sons’ romances.

  “A boy?”

  “So he could be there to help you with the actual work? You know how I am with a hammer or a screwdriver.”

  “I can’t even imagine how bad my life would be without you standing there, Kristin.”

  I ran to him. He embraced me, kissed my hair, petted it, and held me as long as I held on to him. I didn’t say anything else, and neither did he. I turned away and ran up the stairs.

  I overslept the next morning, but it was a Saturday, so there was no need for an alarm. When I did get up, dressed, and went down for breakfast, however, I was disappointed that my father had already left for work. My breakfast setting was on the table, with a note telling me he had worked up an egg batter for my scrambled eggs. He said he would call later just in case I had to leave for dinner before he got home.

  I prepared my scrambled eggs. He seasoned them so well and uniquely that it was difficult eating them without thinking of him sitting across from me. It wasn’t until I was nearly finished that I noticed he had left the morning newspaper on the table where he’d sat. It was still open to an inside page. I looked at the stories. The biggest one was about the construction of a new home on the Foxworth property, “the site of one of the most horrendous child abuse stories in our city.” Almost always, whenever any reference to Foxworth was made, it was followed with that phrase: “most horrendous child abuse stories in our city.”

  The new owner was listed as Arthur Johnson, so the facts my father had uncovered were still not general knowledge. There was a short biography of Johnson, mentioning his successful hedge fund and his wife and children. He came from Norfolk, Virginia, attended William and Mary College, majoring in business, and then went to work in his father’s company before starting his own hedge fund. They had managed to get one quote from him: “I don’t know anything about the history of the property, which frankly doesn’t interest me. Every place and every thing has a history. You judge it by what it is, not by who owned it. That’s just good business.”

  My father’s company was mentioned, but he had made no comment other than that the work was going well. There was that now-famous picture of Foxworth Hall, depicting it more like a Gothic old house in which ghosts dwelled, the picture that was usually run on Halloween. Some people swore the cloudy spots in an upstairs window were Malcolm and Olivia Foxworth’s ghosts, their souls sentenced to be imprisoned for what they had done to their grandc
hildren.

  The article whetted my fascination and my need to get back to Christopher’s diary. I called Kane.

  “I’ve been sitting around with my phone on my lap hoping you would call early.”

  “Did you see the article in today’s paper?”

  “I didn’t, but my father did and mentioned it. I acted like I had little or no interest. My sister was interested. She’ll probably bring it up at dinner.”

  “Then let’s get started,” I said.

  “I’m already out the door,” he replied.

  I cleared the table, washed the dishes, and went up to my room to finish dressing. At one point, I paused and looked at some of my silk scarves. It came over me. I couldn’t help it. I wrapped it around my head, and when Kane saw me, he smiled with glee. We were like two children rushing ahead to unwrap Christmas gifts, only both of us knew that what was wrapped in this leather-bound book was not anything either of us would wish for.

  We set up the attic, and he began, quickly drifting into Christopher Dollanganger, wearing his wig, changing his voice and posture, and filling his voice with that constant stream of pain and disappointment, wonder, and mystery that was dragging Christopher into adulthood far too soon.

  At the beginning of the last week in August, I was mumbling to myself about how hot it was for us in the small bedroom and especially up in the attic, when an exciting idea suddenly occurred to me. I was staring at the sheet ladder I had created when I thought we had to escape from starvation. When I proposed my new idea to Cathy, she thought I had finally gone nuts, but I convinced her we could do it. We would climb down from the attic on the sheet ladder and go for a swim in the lake at night. Of course, it occurred to us both that we would be standing on the ground for the first time in more than two years.