Secrets of Foxworth Read online

  I’m going to stop writing in the diary for a while. I’m afraid of the things I might write.

  I think I might just be as upset and angry as Cathy is, and I don’t like it.

  My cell phone rang. I hated the interruption, but I answered it because I knew she would keep calling.

  “So?” Lana began. “How was your visit to the house of horrors?”

  Funny, I had read only a small portion of the diary, but I was beginning to feel an attachment to Christopher and Cathy and to think of them as people I really had known. It was as if the diary was making us closer relatives. I suddenly didn’t like the idea of anyone thinking of them as sick, mad people doing horrid things to each other.

  “It was just a pile of rubble, nothing remotely frightening about it. I think anyone who tells you they heard screams or cries or saw ghosts is crazy himself.”

  “So it was a waste of time?”

  “No. My father did what he had to do, and he’s helping to move the property off the bank rolls. He’ll get lots of work out of it.”

  “I don’t mean your father. I mean you, dummy.”

  “I went for a nice walk and saw the lake. It will be a very pretty property again. It’s actually very pretty now in a primitive, natural sort of way.”

  “Boring,” she sang. “Kane was very disappointed, by the way. I told him I’d call you to see if you wanted to go to the movies. They’ll meet us there.”

  “When?”

  “Tonight, dummy. When else?”

  “I can’t tonight. And if you call me ‘dummy’ one more time, I’ll tell everyone what you first thought a tampon was.”

  “All right, all right. I’m sorry. So why not go to the movies tonight?”

  “I have to do something very important for . . .”

  “For who?”

  “My family,” I said.

  “What?”

  “I’ll call you tomorrow. Maybe we’ll do something during the day.”

  “Are you serious? You’re going to blow us all off?”

  I looked at Christopher’s diary. Was I really going to give up going out on a date because of this? Maybe I was a little crazy. “Never more serious. It’s important.” I said.

  “Well, what is it? Maybe I can help.”

  “No,” I said, suffocating a laugh. “But thanks for offering. I’ll call you,” I added, and hung up before she could say another word.

  And then I turned the page.

  “See what you can do about her,” Momma told me after she and Daddy had spoken to Cathy, assuring her that neither would love her any less just because there would be new children in our family. “She can pout better than I can. She’ll make pure mush out of the man she marries.”

  Of course, I was happy Momma came to me for help with Cathy, but I noticed something I hadn’t noticed until now during the days that followed. Momma seemed to have less tolerance for Cathy. She was criticizing her more and more at the dinner table and afterward. Cathy’s sulking over the twins that were coming was no longer cute or understandable.

  “Your sister is just selfish,” Momma muttered to me one day. “You should know that it’s not easy for a woman when she’s pregnant. Look at my figure. Look at how difficult it’s getting for me to move around. I feel . . . like a truck. I don’t know why I even bother with my makeup or my hair. Your father says I’m as beautiful as ever, but I know he’s just trying to please me. You’re the only one who knows the truth and is not afraid to say it, Christopher. You will be a wonderful doctor, because you will always say what’s true and not what someone wants to hear. Go on. Tell me.”

  I shrugged. She was right. I didn’t like telling lies or distorting facts. What was true was true, and pretending it wasn’t wouldn’t change it. People who lived like that were weak and foolish. Putting off reality just made it more difficult to face it. I know this attitude doesn’t go over well with my classmates, but there’s none whose opinion really matters that much to me.

  “You can’t look the way you looked before you were pregnant, Momma. Of course, you don’t have the same figure, but your complexion is rosy. You look healthier than ever,” I told her. “It’s characteristic of pregnant women who take care of themselves, take their prenatal vitamins, and do whatever their doctors tell them to do. Women were made to be pregnant.”

  She looked at me and half-smiled. “I hope you won’t always couch your compliments in some medical observation. Any girlfriend you have won’t think that’s very romantic, Christopher, but thank you anyway,” she said. Then she thought about it for a moment and shook her head. “I think I’d rather hear your father tell me I’m no different. Little lies are okay if they make you happier.” She walked away, smiling.

  I went to see Cathy, who was pouting as usual. She was being destructive, too. She had practically torn apart one of the dolls Momma had bought for her and ripped most of the clothing. The gifts Daddy had been buying her to make her happy were piled up in a corner as if they had been discarded.

  I sat across from her and stared at her.

  “What?” she asked. She could never stand my staring at her with a sour expression on my face.

  “You don’t want anyone to treat you like a baby, but you go and act like one.”

  “I don’t care. Momma is mean to me, meaner than ever. Maybe those twins are making her meaner. I wish they’d fall out and go away.”

  “All right,” I said, sighing and sitting on her bed. “Let me try to explain things. When a woman first gets pregnant, a married woman, she’s usually very happy about it.”

  “So?”

  “As time goes by and the baby grows and she gains weight, she gets depressed. You remember what that means.”

  “So?”

  “She needs to be comforted and loved even more than before she became pregnant, Cathy. Someday you’ll be in the same condition.”

  Her eyes widened. “I’m not going to get pregnant. I don’t want to care for a real baby and change diapers full of poop and wipe drool.”

  I laughed. “Sure you will, but”—I narrowed my eyes—“if you really love Momma, you will stop making her feel even worse. You’ll do more to help her. Daddy is upset with you, too,” I added, because I knew that would have more effect.

  “He is not.”

  “You know he tells me things he doesn’t tell you.”

  She looked down. “Momma loves you more, and now, with new children, she’ll love me even less,” she said. “There won’t be enough love to share, and I don’t want to share.”

  “A parent doesn’t love one of his or her children more than the others.”

  She looked at me strangely. I must admit that it was the first time she had ever looked at me like this. It was disturbing, because it was the look of someone who believed I was either lying to myself or completely fooled. I didn’t think she was capable of seeing through my words. Of course, our mother loved me better and always would. She depended on me more. But I wasn’t going to admit that to Cathy. She would be even more miserable and say hurtful things to our mother.

  How intensely she could glare back at me, though. No one else could make me look away.

  “Just think about what I said and see if you can be nicer,” I told her, and left.

  She was right to give me that look, of course. Maybe Daddy loved her as much as or a little more than he loved me, but he respected me more and always would.

  Knowing that and writing it will help me sleep better tonight.

  Christopher’s words resurrected old memories. I had often wondered why my parents didn’t have another child. I never asked my mother about it, but I did ask my father once, and all he said was a cryptic “It wasn’t in the cards.”

  I imagined Christopher being here with me right now and my turning to him to ask him to explain what my father had meant.

  He’d surely shrug as if there was no mystery, but I had heard my father say that when I was just ten. I wouldn’t shrug. Maybe I was more like Cathy
than like him.

  “There must have been some physiological reason your mother didn’t have another child,” he would tell me. “Men and women usually don’t feel comfortable talking about it, because one or the other was unable to make it work. Understand?”

  Yes, I understood. I understood years later but never brought it up again for exactly the reason my imaginary Christopher was citing. If there was one thing I would never want to do, it was make my father feel uncomfortable about anything, least of all himself.

  Still, after reading some of what went on between Christopher and Cathy and anticipating how their lives were about to change when the twins were born, I couldn’t help wondering what my life would have been like if I had a younger sister or brother, or even an older sister or brother.

  Cathy was obviously afraid that her parents wouldn’t have enough love for that many children and that she would suffer the most. Reading between Christopher’s comments, I realized she must have felt inferior even at that young age, inferior in the sense that she could see or feel that her mother loved her brother more and that her father held her brother in higher esteem. Both depended on him. She was still too young to be anything more than someone who needed care.

  What is our capacity to love? I wondered. Does a mother who has six or even ten children love each of them equally or as much as someone who had only one child? Was that even possible? Was Cathy really so wrong to be afraid and upset?

  “Hello, up there!” I heard Dad shout. I looked at the clock and leaped out of bed. It was way past time for me to set the table. When I appeared at the top of the stairs, he looked up at me and just shook his head, walking off. I hurried down.

  “Sorry,” I called, and headed to the dining room to unfold the tablecloth.

  “Don’t you have any homework for Monday?” Dad asked when I came into the kitchen to get the dishes and silverware. “Something else to read or do?”

  “I’ll do it tomorrow,” I said. “I don’t have that much. I always stay a little ahead, Dad. You know that.”

  “Um,” he said. He looked at me. “I want to remind you that what you’re reading doesn’t necessarily have to be the truth. Kids lie occasionally, or they exaggerate. Maybe he was too young to understand it all.”

  “I know that, Dad. Don’t worry. I’m not gullible. The meat loaf smells good,” I said, eager to change the subject.

  He didn’t say anything. I set the table and returned to the kitchen to prepare a small dinner salad.

  “Seems I recall your mentioning seeing some boy,” Dad practically mumbled.

  “I’ve gone to a few things with Kane Hill. Nothing formal. Just met at the mall or at the movies.”

  “Still looking him over.”

  “Something like that,” I said. “But it’s not like buying a new pair of shoes,” I added, and he laughed.

  “I’ve done some work for Stan Hill. He has about ten car dealerships. Don’t know much about the family. Is he a nice boy?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, it’s Saturday night. Nothing for you to do socially? No parties, no meeting friends?”

  “I wasn’t in the mood,” I offered.

  He had his chin down and his eyes up when he looked at me. “Is this a female thing?”

  I smiled. “Not exactly, but I don’t know any boys who would use not being in the mood as an excuse, claiming it’s a male thing, so maybe it is only a female thing.”

  He nodded. “What’s a bigger mystery than a woman?” he asked.

  “A man?”

  “Please. We’re so obvious it’s pathetic,” he told me, and continued to work on dinner.

  When Dad worried about something, the wrinkles in his forehead would deepen. I knew it was a nervous habit, but his ears would quirk, too. In fact, he was one of the few people I knew who could actually move their ears at will.

  “I have muscles everywhere,” he would tell me.

  I complimented him again on the meat loaf, and he went into one of his familiar stories about his days as a short-order cook, which usually led to a story about his time in the navy. Eventually, that would lead to him describing how Mom enjoyed his cooking on weekends so she could have time off.

  “Nevertheless, she’d always find something to do for me and not herself,” he said. “Selfishness just wasn’t in her vocabulary. We used to argue about who loved who more. Finally, I told her I was bigger. There was more of me, so there was more love in me. She just shook her head, smiled, and walked off. That was how she was. I don’t think I had one real argument with that woman. Why . . .” He stopped himself.

  “What’s the matter, Dad?” I asked.

  “I gotta get to some paperwork on an estimate I promised someone tomorrow,” he said. I knew he wasn’t telling the truth. This happened often. He would realize how much he was talking about Mom and how that was only going to make him and me suffer the pain of our loss more. Neither of us ever said such a thing to the other, but it was out there, hovering between us like words caught in our throats.

  I cleared the table and cleaned up the kitchen. When I looked for him, I saw him at his desk, just staring down at whatever paperwork he was making for himself. He wasn’t reading it or writing anything. He was still lost in his memories. I didn’t say anything. Quietly, I returned to my room and the diary, which to me had become a gold mine of memories. I hoped only that what I came up with at the end would help me in my own life.

  I should have realized there was something going on when Daddy began staying home more and more to take care of Momma during the last weeks of her pregnancy. Why wasn’t he needed more at work? Was he just drawing from his vacation time?

  Momma was more irritable than ever, impatient, complaining that Dr. Bloom had her delivery date wrong. He wanted her to move around, but she resisted, some days lying in bed most of the day. I told her that wasn’t good, that everything I had read about pregnancy indicated she should keep active.

  She even snapped at me. “You’re not carrying this weight, Christopher. Go find thirty pounds and tie it around your waist and then tell me how it feels and let me see how active you are,” she said.

  I agreed that she was too heavy, but every time I commented about the candy Daddy brought home for her or the bowls of ice cream she ate, she glared at me. Then she would just start crying.

  “It will come off quickly,” Daddy assured her. He looked at me to be sure I didn’t contradict him.

  Finally, one night just before dinner, our neighbor Bertha Simpson came over to prepare the meal for Cathy and me. I knew something was happening, but Momma and Daddy’s bedroom door had been closed for hours. Suddenly, it opened, and he practically carried her out, warning us to be good.

  “Her water broke?” I asked as they made it to the front door. He nodded, and they left.

  “What water? How can water break? You can’t break water,” Cathy said. “That’s stupid.”

  Mrs. Simpson looked as interested as Cathy when I explained what that meant. “I never saw a little boy as young as you know so much,” she said. She shook her head as if that meant I was into witchcraft or something.

  “Christopher is not a little boy. He’s a genius,” Cathy piped up. No matter how jealous she might be of me or how angry about something I had said or done, she never failed to defend me if anyone outside of our family dared criticize me or chastise me. I couldn’t ask for a better watchdog or bodyguard.

  I tried to keep Cathy occupied after dinner. Although serious complications with baby deliveries were not as common as they used to be, I couldn’t help being a little worried as the hours went by. Maybe one or both of the twins had died. I didn’t even want to think about Momma dying, and whenever Cathy asked me why it was taking so long to push two tiny babies into the world, I acted as if it was supposed to. I told her it takes double the time, which seemed to quiet her for a while. I kept her watching television until her eyes began to close and I knew she wouldn’t fight going to bed. Mrs. Simpson wanted to
help me get her to sleep, but I told her I didn’t need her help. She looked at me oddly and followed me to Cathy’s room.

  “I don’t think you should be doing that,” she said when I began to undress Cathy, who was almost comatose by now.

  “I’m just getting her pajamas on her.”

  She stood back with her arms folded and didn’t leave the room until Cathy was under the covers and asleep.

  “I’ll be going to bed myself,” I said. “You don’t have to stay, Mrs. Simpson.”

  “Of course I have to stay,” she said. “Would I leave two young children alone at night?”

  “There isn’t anything you can do that I can’t do for myself and Cathy,” I told her, then shrugged and left her standing in the hallway.

  I was up almost all night, waiting to hear Daddy come home or for the phone to ring, but he didn’t, and it didn’t. Finally, just before dawn, I fell asleep. I woke with surprise and washed my face before I hurried out. The house was so quiet. Cathy, grinding the sleep out of her eyes, ventured into the hallway. She was still in her pajamas.

  “Did Momma bring the babies home?” she asked.

  “She wouldn’t bring them home so quickly,” I said, but I was very concerned.

  She followed me into the living room. I could hear Mrs. Simpson working in the kitchen. Cathy and I looked at each other, and then the front door opened and Daddy came in. He looked like he had slept in his clothes, but his face was beaming.

  “Twins, all right,” he announced.

  Mrs. Simpson came to the living room.

  “Boys or girls?” he asked us.

  “Boys,” I said.

  “Yes,” Cathy said. I knew she was hoping for that. She didn’t want to compete with another daughter.

  “Amazing,” he told Mrs. Simpson, and then he looked at us and said, “We have one of each. And they’re perfect, as perfect as you two. Let me get washed up and changed, and I’ll take you to see your brother and sister.”