Whitefern Read online

  For a few moments, I stood in her doorway and peered into the darkness. The curtains at the windows had been left open, but the sky was overcast. There wasn’t even any starlight. In fact, I thought I heard the tinkling of raindrops against the glass. I stepped in and immediately saw that Sylvia was not in her bed. I checked her bathroom, and then hurried downstairs.

  The living room had been cleaned up halfheartedly. Spilled drinks and bits of food were everywhere; there would be a lot of work to do tomorrow. Sylvia wasn’t there.

  I headed for the kitchen. Maybe she had gone down for a snack, since she had eaten nothing. There were many nights when I had found her doing just that. Sometimes Papa would be with her, and they would both be having a piece of cake or cookies with milk or tea. I assumed she’d recalled those nights and had gone to the kitchen, driven by memories.

  But she wasn’t there, either.

  “Sylvia?” I called. I checked every room, every bathroom. Growing frantic now, I hurried up to the cupola, but that was empty, too.

  The realization thundered around me. Sylvia wasn’t in the house! I thought about waking Arden to tell him, but when I looked in on him, he was snoring even louder. He’d be of no help and grumpy for sure, I thought. But where was she? Where would she go?

  I went to the closet in the entryway and put on one of my overcoats. Taking an umbrella, I stepped out and looked for her on the porch.

  “Sylvia?” I cried. “Where are you? Sylvia?”

  The rain was coming down harder, and the wind was now icy. A thick fog had blanketed the grounds and the woods. It was late October, but fall was obviously being crushed by a heavy oncoming winter. I realized I was still in my slippers, so I returned to the entryway closet and took out a pair of Papa’s black leather boots. My feet swam in them, but I was able to walk out and down the stairs with the umbrella shielding me somewhat. I had no idea where to look. Over and over, I called out her name. She wasn’t anywhere nearby. Where could she be? Then a terrifying possibility seemed to rush out of the bitter darkness and wash over me.

  “Oh, Sylvia,” I muttered. “Poor Sylvia.”

  I hurried down the path and through the woods as fast as I could, the rain soaking my face, but I was too frightened to feel the cold now. It was a long walk, a walk I couldn’t imagine her taking, but about a dozen yards from the cemetery, I heard it—a shovel—and I broke into a run, clomping along in Papa’s oversize boots and nearly falling a few times.

  Finally, I was there and saw her, in only her nightgown, digging away at Papa’s grave, the rain soaking her so that she looked as good as naked.

  “Sylvia!” I screamed. “What are you doing?”

  She paused and turned to me. “We can’t leave him down there,” she said. “Papa. It’s cold and dark. We can’t leave him, Audrina. Just like we didn’t leave you.”

  “No . . . oh, no, Sylvia. I was never dead. Papa is dead. Papa needs to stay there. He needs to stay near Momma.”

  I reached for the shovel. She held on to it tightly.

  “Please, Sylvia, leave Papa to rest in peace. You’re going to get pneumonia out here. He would be very angry at you.”

  “Angry? Papa? At me?”

  “Yes, very. And mad at me for letting you do this. He’s probably screaming at us now. Come on. Come back to the house. I need to get you into a warm bath. Come on,” I said, more forcefully, and I pulled the shovel out of her grip.

  She stumbled, and I put my arm around her waist, threw the shovel down, and, holding the umbrella above both of us as best I could, led her out of the cemetery and quickly back to the house. It was raining even harder. It seemed to take longer to get home. A few times, she paused to turn back, but I over­powered her and warned her again that Papa would be angry.

  When I finally got her inside, I helped her out of her soaked nightgown and used some towels from the powder room to dry her off. After I had taken off my coat and Papa’s boots, I led her up the stairs and to her bedroom, setting her on her bed while I ran her bath. Once she was submerged in the warm water, I washed her neck and shoulders and gave her hair a quick shampoo. She was quiet now, seeming very tired.

  I stood up and took off my own damp nightgown. The tub was big enough for the two of us. We had taken baths together occasionally. I ran some more hot water. She opened her eyes when I got in and sat facing her.

  “Audrina,” she said insistently, “you came out of your grave. Papa can come out of his, too.”

  I closed my eyes. How would I ever get her to understand when half the time I didn’t understand myself? “Not tonight,” I said. That answer would have to do for now. “Not tonight.”

  We sat soaking for nearly half an hour, and after we got out and dried ourselves off, we put on new nightgowns. I blow-dried her hair and mine, and then I crawled into bed beside her.

  Which was where Arden found us both in the morning, sleeping, embracing each other, probably looking like two lovers to him.

  “Hey,” he said when I opened my eyes. “When did you come in here? Are you going to do this every night? I’ll get a bigger bed, and the three of us can sleep together.”

  Instinctively, I pulled away from Sylvia. “Stop it, Arden. This wasn’t funny. It was terrible.”

  “What was?”

  “What she did last night . . . and in the cold rain! It’s quite a story.”

  “Yeah, well, I have quite a story to tell, too. I’m going to work. The stock market doesn’t pay attention to personal sorrow. I’ll call our attorney, and we’ll talk later.”

  “That’s disrespectful, Arden. No one expects you to be in the office so soon, and you certainly should not call Mr. Johnson today.”

  “Death is disrespectful,” he replied, and closed the door between us.

  I heard him pound down the stairs, mumbling to himself.

  I hoped that strangers would see his rage as a result of his sorrow and not his ambition, not that it would matter to the people our business relied on, apparently. Our wealthy clients probably believed they could buy off death itself.

  The business had changed Arden, I thought. It was almost impossible now to recall the young man who was so devoted to his mother, an Olympic ice skater who had suffered from diabetes and lost her legs. So much had happened since, and so much had changed him. Papa must have realized it, and that must have been why he put that codicil in his will.

  But how could I defy my husband and bring him to his senses, even if only to obey my father, who was dead and gone?

  How could Papa expect me to step into his shoes and be as strong as he was?

  What had he seen in me that I had yet to see in myself?

  What had he seen looming on the horizon?

  What could possibly be worse than the horrors fate already had chosen to rain down on Whitefern?

  The Pain of Memory

  I feared I would spend most of my days immediately following Papa’s death listening to echoes trapped in every dark corner. I resisted as best I could, but it was difficult to shut them out. I had done that successfully for a while when I was a little girl who had been sexually and violently ravaged. But there would be no comfort from amnesia now.

  Perhaps this was why Papa had left me the controlling interest in his business. He knew this might happen to me, and he wanted me to have a path away from it all. He finally wanted me to find a life outside of this house and its dreadful memories. There were many times when he was proud of me, proud of my comments and ideas. Maybe he had come to believe that a girl could carry on her father’s successes as well as a boy could. Arden simply didn’t fit the bill for him.

  If I didn’t do something more, if I relegated myself only to household chores and caring for Sylvia, the past with all its tragedies would surely weigh me down. I’d grow old before my time, just as Papa had. I wouldn’t neglect Sylvia and her needs, but I had needs, too.
Arden must come to realize that, I thought. He must learn to see our marriage as more of a partnership. I must convince him that doing so would not diminish him.

  He was so angry. He seemed so changed. When he was younger, living in the cottage with his mother, he was sweet and considerate. I never knew then how much of a role his guilt from witnessing and not fighting to prevent what had happened to me played until he finally confessed. Was he still burdened with that guilt? Had he grown tired of it and resorted to anger as an alternative? He did seem to have a chip on his shoulder these days. I suspected Papa never let him forget.

  Of course, I had to overlook his affair with my half sister, Vera. His confessions were so heartfelt that I did blame Vera more than him. She was always there, trying to outshine me.

  These memories and more drummed at the door, now that Papa had died. It was no longer necessary to avoid reminding him of the past. Death had trounced that concern. I hated the idea that I might spend my days reliving all the pain, that his death had opened the floodgates. Again, I told myself that what was important now, now that I was living in Whitefern without Papa, was finding a new sense of myself while still caring for Sylvia. I would have to be reborn yet again and become a third Audrina.

  I realized that I must ignore, even bury, the fragile young woman who had seen and heard more than most could bear. There were many times when I would actually envy Sylvia for being immature and unaware of the significance of most things. How soft and comfortable was her childlike world. Most of the pain she had suffered, a great deal of it at Vera’s hands, was lost to her. Back then, she greeted every new day by acting as if yesterday didn’t matter. She could smile and expect good things, even from a world that had given her only bad.

  Was that simply a result of her immaturity? Maturity meant many unexpected things. When you were an adult, there was no time to float about in a pond of wishes. There was only time to do, to be productive, to overcome obstacles. There were choices that once could be ignored or at least put off but now demanded attention and wouldn’t sit patiently waiting for you to act when you felt like it. That childlike world was the world in which Sylvia still lived.

  I thought about all this the next day, pausing only to make lunch for her and occasionally playing a board game with her to keep her from thinking. It was clear she still had not accepted Papa’s death. I seriously wondered if she ever would. She kept looking at the front door, expecting him to come home and cry out, “Where’s my Sylvia? Who’s bringing me my slippers?” Sometimes she used to wait at the front windows for his car to appear. When he was late, she would grow fidgety and needed to be reassured that he was coming home.

  “Papa told me he wanted lamb chops tonight,” she suddenly said while we were playing checkers. I always let her win. I looked at the clock. It was nearly three o’clock, about the time I would plan dinner. Where that tidbit of information came from I didn’t know, but it wasn’t unusual for her to come up with something someone said months, even years, ago. It was as if words bounced around in her childlike mind like balloons and suddenly found voice again.

  “You must try to remember what happened to Papa, Sylvia,” I told her softly. “It’s important. We all have to be strong, the way he would have wanted us to be. You want to be strong, don’t you?”

  She looked like she was going to go into one of her pouts but suddenly smiled with the burst of a new idea. “Let’s go to the cemetery,” she said. I had the eerie feeling that she expected we’d see an open grave and an open coffin. In her mind, Papa was capable of a resurrection, just like Jesus.

  I reached for her hand. “Nothing will be different there, Sylvia. I’ve already asked Mr. Ralph to go there and fill in the holes you dug.”

  Mr. Ralph, our groundskeeper, was the most trusted servant anyone could dream of having. He bore no relationship to the Whiteferns, the Adares, or the Lowes, but he had been with my family since he was about fifteen. He was more than seventy-five now, although no one would swear to his exact age, even him, and he was a little deaf, with fading eyesight. All his friends were gone or had moved away, he said. His whole life was caring for our property. He had always been fond and protective of Papa, but I thought he was more afraid than fond of Arden.

  “We’ll visit the cemetery when it’s right to do so, and we’ll say prayers for Papa at his grave, okay?” I added quickly.

  She pulled her hand back, looking angry as only she could, her beautiful eyes darkening into gray, her lips tightening, with pale spots interfering with their natural ruby tint. She liked to put on lipstick whenever I did, but she really didn’t need it.

  “I have a secret,” she said, her body recoiling like a spring. “Only Papa and I know it. Not Arden, not you.”

  “Then maybe you should not tell anyone else,” I said, a little annoyed at her. Her look reminded me too much of Vera whenever she tried to irritate me with some fact that had been hidden from me. Whatever Sylvia’s secret was, I thought, it would be something innocuous, something Papa had told her to keep her from being sad.

  She continued to look at me hard for a moment, harder than I ever saw her look at me. The thoughts were twisting and turning in her head. I could see her troubling over what she should do, whether to tell me or not. These past few years, Papa’s devotion to her was very important. She didn’t want to share his affection and at times hated hearing any references to anyone else he loved, including me. That was another way she reminded me of Vera. I supposed there was no way to get around it. There was a little of Vera in both of us. We shared too much blood, having had the same father.

  Her eyes narrowed, and she nodded to herself. “You’re right, Audrina. Papa told me never to tell anyone, even you.”

  I raised my eyebrows at how adult she suddenly sounded. The memories of the various times my father had said something similar to me returned. Sometimes I felt I was being buried in secrets. Someone was always whispering one in my ear, whether it was Aunt Ellsbeth, Vera, or Papa.

  Sylvia kept her gaze locked on me, waiting for my reaction, which I thought was quite unusual for her. I pulled back a little and wondered if Sylvia even understood the concept of a secret. Was this some sort of game my father had played with her when I wasn’t around?

  “Do you have any secrets you can tell me?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “No. When you tell a secret, you can’t take it back. That would be like trying to put ketchup back in the bottle,” she said. I knew that was something Papa had told her, because he had told it to me, too, when I was a little girl.

  “Okay, Sylvia, don’t think about it. Keep your secrets in your bottle of ketchup.” I got up. “Let’s go make dinner now. Arden will be home soon, and you know how hungry he is when he comes through that door. He expects everything to be ready for him, just like all men.” I recited what I had been told over the years, especially by my aunt Ellsbeth. “They want you to be their cook and bottle washer and their clothes valet and keep the house spick-and-span. And you have to do all that and still be beautiful so they can go about proudly with you on their arm, looking up to them like they walk on water. When a husband says, ‘Jump,’ you’re supposed to ask, ‘How high, dear?’ ”

  I paused when I saw she was staring at me with her eyes wide. She really hadn’t understood a word, especially couched in an angry tone. Maybe I sounded a little too much like Aunt Ellsbeth, someone she was not especially fond of being around. All our relatives and ancestors popped up occasionally in us, I thought. There was no escaping that.

  “Oh, forget it, Sylvia. Fortunately, you won’t have to worry about all this business between a husband and a wife,” I added, and immediately regretted it. It was surely something Aunt Ellsbeth would have told her. “Come on. Let’s be good little housewives tonight. To the kitchen,” I said, and pretended we should charge like knights on horses.

  She laughed and stood up quickly. Sylvia liked to help prepare the s
alad and, despite everything else that held her back, was meticulous about how she cut carrots, tomatoes, and onions, making perfect slices. She did have artistic talent. I had recently bought her some art supplies, and without instruction, she produced some interesting representations of our surroundings, the trees and ponds and paths. Or at least, I thought they were interesting. Arden thought her work was just a muddle of shapes and colors, more like a child’s finger painting. He never really studied them and saw the way she layered her pictures so that they looked like images fading into each other. They were like dreamscapes with interesting choices of color and shades. She never tried to draw a person or a face, but sometimes I thought I saw the image of someone caught in the fog or in a cloud.

  Recently, before Papa grew weaker and sicker, he and I had discussed the possibility of getting her an art teacher. When I told Arden, he said it would be a waste of money.

  “How can she learn anything like that? She barely knows how to dress herself and brush her teeth.”

  “There are people like her who can’t do well in school or even in everyday life with common activities but have specific talents, Arden.”

  “Then what good is it? They can’t handle any money they make or go shopping for themselves. She can’t even carry on a conversation. Just teach her how to clean and polish the floors and furniture. At least then she’ll be of some value,” he said, and went on reading his Wall Street Journal.

  Nevertheless, I promised myself I would look into getting an art tutor once our lives resembled any normalcy. More than any of us, Sylvia needed something to distract her and take her mind off our loss. I knew how her mind worked. When she picked up a thought, plucked it seemingly out of the air like a wild berry, she turned it over and over in her mind for hours if she was left alone. This told me that she wasn’t really dumb; she had deep curiosity about everything that was brought to her attention. The problem was trying to get her to think about something else once she hooked onto an idea, whether it was a dead fly she carried around all day or an old photo of Whitefern. She was that way about dinner preparations. No surgeon in an operating room had more intense concentration.