Out of the Attic Page 6

  This house, I thought, this house makes love so difficult unless it’s unusual, distorted, born out of some darkness rather than out of a heart.

  Would it always?

  Why should I think otherwise?

  When he came home just over an hour later, Garland made so much noise entering with Lucas that I thought he surely had woken the sleeping ghosts. He screamed for me, his voice bellowing. I had never heard him do that. In a panic I hurried to the stairway to see what was happening. Had I done something? Did he somehow hear about Malcolm and what he had done?

  “My Corrine,” he said in a softer voice, smiling as soon as I appeared. “My beautiful Corrine.”

  When I stepped off the final step in wonder, he handed a large box and a small box to Lucas and embraced me, whirling me around as if I were nothing more than a large rag doll while he peppered my cheeks and forehead with kisses, knocking off his derby. He reeked of whiskey and cigars, but I didn’t care. It had been some time since I had seen him this joyful and attentive.

  As soon as he put me down, he stepped back with his hands on his hips and gazed, smiling and nodding.

  “What?” I asked. His stare made me instantly self-conscious. My hair was pinned up, and I was wearing an ordinary light-blue blouse with puffed upper sleeves and a dark-blue tulip of bell skirt. Did I look too common, too ordinary for him?

  He continued smiling and shook his head, his expression changing to one of awe.

  “You look exactly how you did that night I first saw you at the Wexlers’ anniversary gala,” he declared. “What do you think, Lucas? You saw her shortly after that. Am I right? She hasn’t aged a day. Maybe she never will. Someday people will think she’s my daughter, eh, Lucas?”

  Lucas looked up quickly, obviously embarrassed. In five years, barely a word passed between us. Considering all that he did for Garland, all the places and events he had brought him to and had brought him home from quite drunk, I would have thought he would have lost his shyness long ago. However, sometimes when I caught him staring at me, he would turn red and quickly look away.

  He was a slim man not much taller than I was, with dark-brown hair that was habitually unruly, perhaps because of the way the wind brushed through it during his carriage rides. Garland liked going as fast as possible. But Lucas’s wild hair didn’t matter. He was still somehow attractive. He would always look like a teenage boy, I thought, with those hazel eyes and almost feminine soft facial features. His facial hair was more of a cross between brown and blond. It was so light that if he wore a beard, you wouldn’t see it from a dozen feet away. But Lucas’s shyness aside, Garland couldn’t ask for a more loyal servant. His dedication to and affection for Garland were unquestioned. It was easy for anyone to see how much he idolized him.

  That made sense when you knew his history. He was another young man, like Olsen, whom Garland had rescued from somewhat dire circumstances. Olsen had been in a terrible wagon accident and still stuttered badly because of it. He was only twelve at the time, and his parents had little money. Garland had heard about his magic hands when it came to gardening. He had natural talent designing flower beds and bushes and an artistic eye for laying them out, so Garland had looked after his medical needs and brought him to Foxworth.

  Lucas was an orphan working for a blacksmith in Charlottesville; “a white slave” is what Garland called him. He was barely fourteen and received no real wages. He worked for what he ate and the little he was provided in clothing. He had to sleep in the stables, in a corner where there was a coal stove at least.

  “Old Dimitri Korniloff wasn’t happy to lose him, but I saw how well he handled horses despite his youth, and so I gave Dimitri almost as much as he’d make in a year to let him come work for me,” Garland had told me when I once asked about Lucas and how he had found him. “Then I had Lucas trained properly to drive a carriage. Now he’s the best in Charlottesville, and he works for me. Invest well in people, and you’ll be rewarded,” Garland added pointedly, which was something he often said. Everything in the world was a matter of profit and loss to him. Long ago I wondered if that included me.

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Foxworth,” Lucas said now. “She surely doesn’t look a day older.”

  “Right,” he said, taking the larger box from Lucas, who stood back holding it and the other, which I was guessing was for me because of the paper and ribbon.

  “Know what this is?” Garland asked. I saw the picture of a locomotive, but I shook my head. “It’s a wind-up train with tracks. You know how much Malcolm loves trains. I was thinking of setting it up in the ballroom for now.”

  “Not now,” I said. “He doesn’t get a present now.”

  “What? Why not?”

  I described what had happened and what Malcolm had done to me. I rolled up my sleeve and showed him my bandaged scratch.

  “Thank goodness Olsen heard me screaming. I fear I would still be up there.”

  “Our wedding album?” he asked. I was expecting him to be more concerned about me. “Why did you leave that album out where he could get to it?” he demanded, his lips twisting into an ugly grimace.

  “Where he could get to it? It was in my bedroom, where he wasn’t supposed to be, Garland. Dora knows that. It was on the shelf on my closet where it has always been. What did you want me to do, keep it under lock and key? That’s not the point, is it? Didn’t you hear all I said, what he did to me?”

  He nodded but continued scowling just like his great-great-grandfather in the portrait above us.

  “I paid a fortune for that album,” he muttered. “That photographer is already charging three times the amount thanks to me.”

  I sighed. When he was fixed on something that involved money, it was difficult to get him to look elsewhere or listen. Besides, the album was first and foremost another Foxworth possession, valued only for what it cost and not what it was about.

  “It was important to me, too, Garland. Dora is going to try to restore as many pages as she can.”

  He looked up the stairs and then at me, his eyes narrowing.

  “Why would he do that? Why attack our wedding album of all things?”

  “He was angry that I hadn’t paid enough attention to him while I was looking at it. That’s all I can think. I’m afraid your son has a vicious temper. But you should be angrier about what he did to me after I caught him doing it,” I insisted.

  “You shouldn’t have chased after him,” he said, echoing the very words I had heard him say earlier in my imagination. “He would have grown tired of hiding and come out. How did you punish him? What did you finally do?”

  “I wanted to spank him, but Dora pleaded for him and promised to do what I told her.”

  “Which is?”

  “Keep him locked in his room without any dessert for a week at least.”

  He nodded. And then, after another moment of thought, he smiled again and shook his head, laughing.

  “What?” I asked. “What is so funny, Garland?”

  “I wasn’t much older than he is when my father locked me in that attic for deliberately kicking over a statue he had on a pedestal.”

  “Why didn’t he keep you in your room? Why the attic?”

  “The attic was his idea of a prison, I guess. I was kept up there three days, but I amused myself so well that he never did it again. I told him I had conversations with our Confederate ancestors, who were happy to see me. He was so frustrated and came up with other ways to punish me.”

  “Was he starving you?” I asked. I knew the answer, but I wanted him to say it.

  “My mother wouldn’t allow that. If it wasn’t for my mother sometimes, I’d-a been tarred and feathered. But let’s not get into all that dark stuff now.”

  He put the large box down.

  “I’ll keep it in the library until he behaves. But maybe this will help you forget and make up for your displeasure,” he said, reaching for the smaller box in pink wrapping that Lucas held. “Go on, open it.”

  I
undid the ribbon, peeled off the paper, and opened the box to gaze upon a necklace.

  “Is this real?”

  He laughed. “Of course it’s real. That necklace comes from a famous store in New York, Tiffany and Company.”

  He took the necklace out and held it up with both hands.

  “This is stylized fleurs-de-lis and rosettes. There are two hundred sixty-five diamonds set in the gold mounting faced with platinum, Corrine. It’s worth more than most people’s homes and savings.”

  “I’d be afraid to wear it.”

  “Nonsense,” he said, and undid the clasp and stepped behind me to put it on me. Then he took me to the closest wall mirror. He stood behind me with his hands on my shoulders. “It belongs on you,” he said. “It looks like it’s come home to be around your beautiful neck and rest between those amazing breasts, which I spent good money protecting, by the way.”

  He leaned down to move my high collar away and kiss my neck.

  “I guess you did make a lot of money,” I said, touching the necklace. If anything made me feel like a queen, this did. “It’s beautiful. Thank you.”

  He laughed. “Yes, we made a lot of money, but the bigger thing that happened is I’ve been invited to sell my products overseas in what anyone would call a titanic business deal. I will have to go to New York in a few days to work out the details with an exporter, inspect some factories, and then visit another exporter in Maryland. This new business will triple our net worth, and I’m including our house and land in that total. Don’t even try to imagine how rich we are. My father is probably spinning in his grave with surprise. He never thought I’d outdo him.”

  “Why not?” I asked, leaping on the opportunity to find out more about his personal history.

  He sighed and looked sadly at the big box instead of replying. “I was so hoping to celebrate all this as a family, something my father rarely did.”

  “If we forgive Malcolm this quickly, Garland…”

  “I know. I know.” He clapped his hands as if he could change the weather at will. “Let’s not think about all that right now. I will permit no unhappiness tonight. Let’s dress for dinner. I sent word to Mrs. Wilson to prepare something very special for us. We’ll have champagne in the ballroom first, just the way we used to almost every night right after we were married.”

  “Every night you were home, you mean? And not exactly every night.”

  “Whatever…”

  He laughed and turned to Lucas.

  “You can go get Mr. LaRuffa,” he said. “We’ll be dressed by the time you return or soon after.”

  “Who’s Mr. LaRuffa?”

  “Only the most expensive and most talented musician in Charlottesville these days. I sent a telegram to him before I set out for home yesterday. He knows all the latest popular songs to play on the piano, and he’ll play the violin for us at dinner, too.”

  It did sound festive, and he was doing all this with no other guests present. It would be a really romantic evening. For once in a long time, he was contemplating a celebration with only me and none of his business friends.

  “That’s wonderful. I have a new dress I bought just today. I can’t wait for you to see it.”

  His smile faded a little. “I was thinking of that dress of my mother’s I had my tailor adjust for you weeks ago, the one I told you she wore the night of my parents’ fifth anniversary. The necklace is perfect for it. I was picturing you in that dress when I bought it. The governor was here that night she wore it.”

  “But… this new dress… I was thinking of you when I bought it,” I countered.

  “Were you?”

  “Of course.”

  He nodded. “Yes, yes, it’s all right. No unhappiness, not the glimmer of a frown tonight. Wear your new dress by all means. I’m looking forward to seeing you in the latest fashion. Go on. Get dressed. I have some new clothes to show you as well.”

  He stepped forward and kissed me, holding his lips that split second longer as if he was trying to draw something out of me, some of my energy, just the way he used to kiss me. Then he stroked my hair and looked into my eyes with that sexual intensity that could start my heart pounding.

  “We’ll make this a very, very special night. I promise,” he said. “You’ll remember nothing else about this day.”

  Moses on Mount Sinai probably hadn’t spoken with more assurance when he had recited the Ten Commandments.

  Garland turned away and took Malcolm’s present into the library.

  I hurried to the stairway, keeping my palm over my new, very beautiful necklace and imagining my mother’s face full of envy when she saw it. Like a magician, Garland had waved his hand over my depression and sent it fleeing back into the shadows. Two years ago, he had taken me on a trip to a place called Coney Island in New York. One of his investors had put money into something called a switchback railway in an amusement park called Steeplechase. It was a ride for a nickel. We climbed a tower to board a large benchlike car and then were pushed off down to another tower and went down again. I nearly peed in my pants and remembered how other women were screaming, even some men.

  That’s how I felt now. Malcolm had taken me so far down into the dark of anger and panic, and now Garland had lifted me up with his happiness, his success, his beautiful gift, and his plans for our celebration dinner. My emotions were on a switchback.

  However, when I hurried past Malcolm’s closed door, I felt sorry for him and paused to think. Maybe he was just a lonely, frightened child after all, flailing out every which way he could. His father was absent most of the time, and I would by no means call myself a perfect mother. After all, I had never intended to be one at seventeen. How much of this should I be blaming on myself? I made a mental note to spend more time with him and to give Dora more days off, force her to go to the city or go visit her brother, maybe. Perhaps my strained relationship with my own mother had begun when she plainly looked for ways to avoid me, even as a little girl. I was treating Malcolm the way she had treated me. If there was one person I didn’t want to become, it was my mother.

  But there was no time for forgiveness and understanding right now. He had to serve some time for what he had done, or he would never be repentant. When I entered the Swan Room, I found Dora in the corner still with the ironing board pressing on the crumpled pages. She held another up.

  “I’m nearly done getting them all back to a reasonable state, ma’am.”

  “My husband will be pleased,” I said. “But it’s time for me to dress for dinner. It’s going to be a very special one tonight.”

  “Oh, I’ll attend to the last few later. My,” she said, seeing what I was wearing, “what a beautiful necklace.”

  “Yes, it is. Thank you. My husband just gave it to me. This is a night of celebration.”

  She nodded, almost as if she already had known.

  “Something about profit and new contracts to sell Foxworth products internationally,” I muttered. I didn’t want to look totally daft when it came to business. That was my mother, not me.

  “Do you want me to prepare a bath?”

  “After my spending time in that attic today, I should say. Who knows how many spiderwebs broke in my hair and are still there.”

  I took off the necklace.

  “And we should wash and redress that scratch,” she said.

  “I can do that after.”

  “Very good, ma’am.”

  While she prepared my bath, I took my new dress out of the box. It was a pink and cream evening dress in silk satin with uncovered arms and neck. The saleslady called it a “full dress.”

  I thought my new necklace would work perfectly with it. I laid it out on the bed with the necklace beside it and was thinking about the right shoes to wear just as Dora returned.

  “Oh, how beautiful,” she said, and looked at it through dreamy eyes.

  Dora never appeared envious or jealous. There wasn’t an iota of resentment in her face because I had so much and she h
ad little. But for some reason, her purity and goodness annoyed me. She was everything I wasn’t but also everything I wouldn’t want to be. Women like her were like roses pressed in a book too soon. They’d never enjoy the fullness of life or their own beauty.

  “You need to take some of that money you’ve been earning and buy some new things for yourself, Dora. I’m frankly tired of seeing you looking so matronly. You’re still wearing your aunt’s hand-me-downs. New, more fashionable clothes will give you a better self-image. I’ve never known anyone who needs it more than you.”

  “Oh, dear me. I don’t know, ma’am,” she said with her hand on the base of her throat as if I had just suggested she go dancing naked on the back patio.

  “Well, I do. I’ll have Lucas take you on your next day off instead of your spending it locked away with a book and Malcolm still demanding everything of you. Do not argue,” I added firmly. She was probably still catching her breath from my rage at Malcolm. Even I was shocked at the heights of anger I could reach.

  She nodded reluctantly.

  “Good.”

  My secret thought was she would turn herself into an attractive woman, probably with my help, be seen by some young man who worked in the city, and get rescued from this place and this self-imposed retreat from life. Once she was gone, the strange trysts with my husband would be gone, too. I was still afraid she’d go and buy herself something unattractive, however, something more fitting for her aunt.

  “Maybe we’ll have Mrs. Steiner watch our little imp and I’ll go along to help you,” I said. Now she would have a more difficult time getting out of it, I thought, which was probably why she looked even more terrified of the idea.

  “Your bath will be ready, ma’am,” she said.

  “Thank you.”

  I started out and stopped.

  “Remember, he gets no dessert and is not permitted out of that room, Dora.”

  “He knows it, ma’am.”

  She started to go out with me.