Petals on the Wind Read online

  enough.

  Even as I spoke I planned the way. "Carrie, do

  exactly as I say. Don't lean to the right or to the left.

  Lie flat on your stomach, aim for my voice. I'm going

  to crawl in to you and take hold of you under your

  arms. Raise your head high so your face won't be

  scraped. Dr. Paul will grab hold of my ankles and pull

  us both out."

  "Tell her it's going to hurt her leg."

  "Did you hear Dr. Paul, Carrie? It's going to

  hurt your leg so please don't thrash about if you feel

  pain; everything will be over in a second or two and

  Dr. Paul will make your leg well again."

  It seemed to take hours for me to inch down that

  tunnel while the crates teetered and rocked, and when

  I had her by the shoulders I heard Dr. Paul cry out, "Okay, Cathy!" Then he pulled, fast and hard! Down thundered the wooden crates! Dust flew everywhere. In the confusion I was at Carrie's side, removing the

  gag and blindfold while the doctor untied her bonds. Then Carrie was clinging to me, blinking

  because the light hurt, crying from the pain, terrified

  to see the teachers and her leg so crooked.

  In the ambulance that came to take Carrie to the

  hospital Chris and I rode and shared the same stool,

  each of us holding one of Carrie's hands. Paul

  followed in his white car so he'd be there to supervise

  the orthopedist who would set Carrie's broken leg.

  Lying face upward on the pillow near her head with

  fixed smiles and rigid bodies were Carrie's three dolls.

  That's when I remembered. Now the crib was missing

  too, just as the cradle had disappeared years ago. Carrie's broken leg spoiled the long summer

  vacation trip our doctor had planned for all of us.

  Again I raged inwardly at Momma. Her fault; always

  we were punished for what she'd caused! It wasn't fair

  that Carrie had to be laid up and we couldn't journey

  north--while our mother gallivanted from here to

  there, going to parties, hobnobbing with the jet set and

  the movie stars as if we didn't exist at all! On the

  French Riviera now. I cut that item from Greenglenna's society column and pasted it into my huge scrapbook of revenge. That was one article I showed to

  Chris before I put it into the book. I didn't show him

  all of them. I didn't want him to know I had subscribed

  to the Virginia newspaper that reported on everything

  the Foxworths did.

  "Where did you get this?" he demanded,

  looking up from the clipping he handed back to me. "The Greenglenna newspaper--it's more

  concerned with high society than Clairmont's Daily

  News. Our mother is a hot item, didn't you know?" "I try to forget, unlike you!" he said sharply.

  "We don't have it so bad now, do we? We're lucky to

  be with Paul, and Carrie's leg will mend and be as

  good as ever. And other summers will come when we

  can go to New England."

  How did he know that? Nothing ever was

  offered twice. Maybe in other summers to come we'd

  be too busy or Paul would. "You realize, being an

  'almost' doctor, don't you, that her leg might not grow

  while she's in that cast?"

  He looked strangely ill-at-ease. "If she grew like

  average kids I guess there might be that risk. But,

  Cathy, she doesn't grow very much, so there's little

  chance one leg will be shorter than the other." "Oh, go bury your nose in Gray's Anatomy!" I

  flared, angry because he'd always make light of anything I said that made Momma the fault of anything.

  He knew why Carrie didn't grow as well as I did.

  Deprived of love, of sunshine and freedom, it was a

  marvel she'd lived to survive! Arsenic too! Damn

  Momma to hell!

  Busily, day by day, I added to my collection of

  news clippings and blurry photographs cut from many

  newspapers. That's where most of my "pin money"

  went. Though I stared at all the pictures of Momma

  with hate and loathing, I looked at her husband with

  admiration. How very handsome, how powerfully

  built her young husband was with his long, lean,

  darkly bronzed skin. I stared at the photograph that

  showed him lifting a champagne glass high as he

  toasted his wife on their second wedding anniversary. I decided that night to send Momma a short

  note. Sent first class, it would be forwarded. Dear Mrs. Winslow,

  How well I remember the summer of your

  honeymoon. It was a wonderful summer, so

  refreshingly pleasant in the mountains in a locked

  room with windows that were never opened. Congratulations and my very best wishes, Mrs. Winslow, and I do hope all your future summers, winters, springs and falls will be haunted by the memory of the kind of summers, winters, springs and

  falls your Dresden dolls used to have.

  Not yours anymore,

  The doctor doll,

  The ballerina doll,

  The praying-to-grow-taller doll,

  And the dead doll.

  I ran to post the letter and no sooner had I

  dropped it in the mailbox on the corner than I was

  wishing I had it back. Chris would hate me for doing

  this.

  It rained that night and I got up to watch the

  storm. Tears streaked my face as much as the rain

  streaked the window glass. Because it was Saturday

  Chris was home. He was out there on the veranda,

  allowing the wind- driven rain to wet his pajamas and

  glue them to his skin.

  He saw me just about the time I saw him, and

  he stepped into my room without saying a word. We

  clung together, me crying and him trying hard not to. I

  wanted him to go, even as I held hard to him and cried

  on his shoulder. "Why, Cathy, why all the tears?" he

  asked as I sobbed on and on.

  "Chris," I asked when I could, "you don't still

  love her, do you?"

  He hesitated before he answered. That made

  anger simmer my blood into a rolling boil. "You do!" I

  cried. "How can you after what she did to Cory and to

  Carrie? Chris, what's wrong with you that you can go

  on loving when you should hate as I do?"

  Still he didn't say anything. And his very silence

  gave me the answer. He went on loving her because he

  had to if he were to go on loving me. Every time he

  looked in my face he saw her and what she'd been like

  in her early youth. Chris was just like Daddy, who had

  been just as vulnerable to the kind of beauty I had. But

  it was only a surface resemblance. I wasn't weak! I

  wasn't without abilities! I could have thought of one

  thousand ways to earn a living, rather than lock my

  four children in a miserable room and leave them in

  care of an evil old woman who wanted to see them

  suffer for sins that weren't even theirs!

  While I thought my vengeful thoughts and made

  my plans to ruin her life when I could, Chris was

  tenderly kissing me. I hadn't even noticed. "Stop!" I

  cried when I felt his lips pressing down on mine

  "Leave me alone! You don't love me like I want to be

  loved, for what I am. You love me because my face is

  like hers! Sometimes I hate my face!"

&n
bsp; He looked terribly wounded as he backed

  toward the door. "I was only trying to comfort you,"

  he said in a broken voice. "Don't turn it into something

  ugly."

  My fear that Carrie's leg would come out of the

  cast shorter than the other proved groundless. In no

  time at all after her leg was cut free from the plaster

  she was walking around as good as ever.

  As fall neared, Chris, Paul and I conferred and

  decided that a public school where Carrie could come

  home every afternoon would be best for her after all.

  All she'd have to do was board a bus three blocks from

  home; the same bus would bring her home at three in

  the afternoon. In Paul's big homey kitchen she'd stay

  with Henny while I attended ballet class.

  Soon September was upon us again, then

  November had gone by, and still Carrie hadn't made a

  single friend. She wanted most desperately to belong,

  but always she was an outsider. She wanted someone

  as dear as a sister but she found only suspicion,

  hostility and ridicule. It seemed Carrie would walk the

  long halls of that elementary school forever before she

  found a friend.

  "Cathy," Carrie would tell me, "nobody likes

  me." "They will. Sooner or later they will know how

  sweet and wonderful you are. And you have all of us

  who love and admire you so don't let others worry

  you. Don't care what they think!" She sniffed, for she

  did care, she did!

  Carrie slept on her twin bed pushed close beside

  mine, and every night I saw her kneel beside her bed,

  temple her small hands under her chin, and with

  lowered head she prayed, "And please, God, let me

  find my mother again. My real mother. And most of

  all, Lord God, let me grow just a little bit taller. You

  don't have to make me as tall as Momma, but almost

  as tall as Cathy, please God, please, please." Lying on my bed and hearing this, I stared

  bleakly up at the ceiling and I hated Momma, really

  despised and loathed her! How could Carrie still want

  a mother who'd been so cruel? Had Chris and I done

  right in sparing her the grim truth of how our own

  mother had tried to kill us? How she'd caused Carrie to

  be as small as she was?

  Upon her smallness Carrie placed all her

  unhappiness and loneliness. She knew she had a pretty

  face and sensational hair, but what did they matter

  when the face and the hair were on a head much too large for the thin little body? Carrie's beauty did nothing at all to win her friends and admiration, just the opposite. "Doll face, Angel Hair. Hey you, midget, or are you a dwarf? Are you gonna join a circus and be their littlest freak?" And home she'd run, all three blocks from the bus stop, scared and crying, tormented

  again by children without sensitivity.

  "I'm no good, Cathy!" she wailed with her face

  buried in my lap. "Nobody likes me. They don't like

  my body 'cause it's too little, and they don't like my

  head 'cause it's too big, and they don't even like what

  is pretty 'cause they think it's wasted on somebody too

  little like me!"

  I said what I could to comfort her but I felt so

  inadequate. I knew she watched my every movement

  and compared my proportions to hers. She realized I

  was very much in proportion and how much she was

  constructed grotesquely.

  If I could have given her a part of my height,

  gladly I would have done so. Instead, I gave her my

  prayers. Night after night, I too went down on my

  knees and prayed to God, "Please let Carrie grow!

  Please, God, she's so young, and it hurts her so much,

  and she's been through so much. Be kind. Look down,

  God! See us! Hear us!"

  One afternoon Carrie went to the only one who

  could deliver almost everything--so why not size? Paul was sitting on his back veranda, sipping

  wine, nibbling cheese and crackers. I was at ballet

  class, so I heard only Paul's version of what happened. "She came to me, Cathy, and asked if I didn't

  have a stretching machine to pull her out longer." I sighed when he told me.

  " `If I had such a machine,' I told her"--and I

  knew he'd done it with love, kindness and

  understanding, not with mockery--" 'it would be a

  very painful process. Have patience, darling, you're

  taller than you were when you came. Time will make

  you grow. Why, I've seen the shortest young people

  suddenly just shoot up overnight after they reach

  puberty.' She stared at me with those big blue haunted

  eyes and I saw her disappointment. I had failed her. I

  could tell from the way she ambled off with her

  shoulders drooping and her head hung so low. Her

  hopes must have ridden high when those cruel kids at

  her school chided her about finding a 'stretching

  machine.' "

  "Isn't there one thing modern medicine can do

  to help her grow?" I asked Paul.

  "I'm looking into it," he said in a tight voice. "I'd give my soul to see Carrie reach the height she wants. I'd give her inches of my height, if only I could."

  Momma's Shadow

  . We had been with our doctor for one year and a half, and what exhilarating and baffling days they were. I was like a mole coming out of darkness only to find the brilliant days weren't at all like I had supposed they would be.

  I'd thought once we were free of Foxworth Hall and I was almost an adult life would lead me down a clear and straight path to fame, fortune and happiness. I had the talent; I saw that in the admiring eyes of Madame and Georges. Madame especially harped on every little flaw of technique, of control. Every criticism told me I was worth all her efforts to make me not only an excellent dancer but a sensational one.

  During summer vacation Chris obtained a job as a waiter in a cafe from seven in the mornings to seven in the evenings. In August he would leave again for Duke University where he would begin his second year in college. Carrie fiddled away her time playing on the swing, playing with her little girl toys, though she was ten now and should be outgrowing dolls. I spent five days a week in ballet class, and half of Saturday. My small sister was like a shadow tagging after me when I was at home. When I wasn't she was Henny's shadow. She needed a playmate of her own age but she couldn't find one. She had only the porcelain dolls to confide in now that she felt too old to act the baby with Chris and me, and suddenly she stopped complaining about her size. But her eyes, those sad, sad yearning eyes, told how she longed to be as tall as the girls we saw walking in the shopping malls.

  Carrie's loneliness hurt so much that again I thought of Momma and damned her to everlasting hell! I hoped she was hung over the eternal fires by her heels and prodded by imps with spears.

  More and more often I was writing Momma short notes to torment her sunny life wherever she was. She never settled down in one place long enough to receive my letters, or if she did she didn't respond. I waited for the letters to come back stamped

  ADDRESS UNKNOWN but none ever did.

  I read the Greenglenna newspaper carefully every evening, trying to find out just what my mother was up to and where she was. Sometimes there was news.

  Mrs. Bartholomew Winslow left Paris and flew on to Rome to visit Italy's new chic couturier. I cut out that clipping and added it to my scrapbook. Oh, what I would do when I met up with her! Sooner or later she'd have to come t
o Greenglenna and live in that home of Bart Winslow's which was newly repaired, redecorated and refurbished. I cut out that news article too and stared long and hard at a photograph which was not flattering. This was unusual. Customarily she could put on a brilliant smile to show the world how happy and contented she was with her life.

  Chris left for college in August, two weeks before I went back to high school. In late January I would graduate. I couldn't wait to be finished with high school so I studied like mad.

  The autumn days flew swiftly by, so much in contrast to other autumns when time had crept monotonously while we grew older and youth was stolen from us. Just keeping track of my mother's activities kept me busy, and then when I really put my nose on the trail of Bart's family history I used up more of my precious time.

  In Greenglenna I pored for hours over old books written about the founding families of Greenglenna. His ancestors had arrived just about the same time mine had, back in the eighteenth century, and they too had been from England, settling down in Virginia in the part that was now North Carolina. I looked up and stared into space. Was it just a coincidence that his ancestors and mine had been part of that "Lost Colony"? Some of the husbands had sailed back to England for more supplies only to return much later and find their colony abandoned, with not one single survivor to tell why. After the Revolution the Winslows had moved to South Carolina. How odd. Now the Foxworths too were in South Carolina

  Not a day passed as I shopped and traveled on the busy streets of Greenglenna that I didn't expect to see my mother. I stared after every blond I saw. I went into expensive shops looking for her. Snobbish salesladies would come up silently behind me and inquire if they could help. Of course they couldn't help. I was looking for my mother, and she wasn't hanging from a clothes rack. But she was in town! The society column had given me this information. Any day I would see her!

  One sunny Saturday I was rushing to do an errand for Madame Marisha when I suddenly spotted on the sidewalk ahead of me a man and a woman so familiar my heart almost stopped beating! It was them! Just to see her strolling so casually at his side, enjoying herself, put me in a state of panic! Sour gall rose in my throat. I dared to draw nearer, so I was very close behind them. If she turned she'd be sure to see me--and what would I do then? Spit in her face? Yes, I would like to do that. I could trip her and make her fall and watch how she lost her dignity. That would be nice. But I didn't do anything but tremble and feel ill as I listened to them talk.

  Her voice was so soft and sweet, so cultivated and genteel. I marveled at how svelte she still was, how lovely her pale, gleaming hair that waved softly back from her face. When she turned her head to speak again to the man at her side I saw her profile. I sighed. Oh, God, my mother in that expensive, rosecolored suit. The beautiful mother I had loved so well. My murdering mother who could still take my heart and wring it dry, for once I had loved her so very much and trusted her . . . and deep inside of me was that little girl, like Carrie, who still wanted a mother to love. Why, Momma? Why did you have to love money more than you loved your children?