Whitefern Read online

  “I told you that I want to think about it first, Arden. Why are you rushing me?”

  “Why? Why?” He slapped the table with his palm and sat back, folding his arms across his chest like a boy about to go into a sulk. “I’m chasing new, high-net-worth clients, Audrina,” he began, speaking with obviously forced self-control. “More than likely, these people will do their due diligence and investigate us inside and out before they place millions of dollars in our hands. They’ll certainly question why your father left the majority percentage of the company to you, someone who doesn’t work there and doesn’t even have a broker’s license. That’s what we call in the business a red flag. It will drive them away.”

  “I’m thinking of getting my broker’s license,” I said.

  “What? You’re thinking what?” His eyes widened, and he turned red with rage.

  “Don’t be so shocked at the idea, Arden. I was the one who tutored you in the beginning to help you get your license.”

  “That was years ago.”

  “Nothing’s changed. The stock market is still the stock market.”

  “Yes, a great deal has changed. There are new laws, regulations.”

  “I’ll study up on it. You know I’m good at that. Aunt Ellsbeth and even your mother told me I should have gone to college. I was always on the honor roll in school.”

  He stared coldly. “I can’t believe I’m hearing this.” He shook his head the way someone would shake water out of his ears after swimming.

  “It might be very attractive for our company to have a husband-and-wife team,” I suggested. “That, it seems to me, would make new clients comfortable and be a great advertisement.”

  “A great advertisement? Next, you’ll want to wear my pants.”

  “Stop it, Arden. Don’t treat me like a child.”

  “Then don’t act like one.”

  “At least, let’s let some time pass so we can think about it.”

  “I should think about this? I’ll tell you what I think about, Audrina. I think about why I’m doing all this, why we have all this, and why I work harder and harder. We have no children. We have a mentally slow young woman to care for. That’s all. And ourselves, of course, but where’s the future?”

  “We could adopt, I suppose. If I don’t get pregnant soon,” I said.

  “Soon? It’s been years. When will you realize it won’t happen?”

  He looked away for a moment and then turned back to me, his eyes smaller. He looked like he was about to cry, like a little boy who couldn’t go out to play.

  “And adopt a baby? You say it so casually. What about my feelings? I’d like to have my blood passed on, too, you know. I am not excited about making someone else’s unwanted child the heir to my fortune, my heritage.”

  “I’m sorry, Arden,” I said. I really did feel sorry for him now. “Let’s take a breath and give everything more thought. I’m not saying you’re wrong. Papa taught me that the best decisions come after they’re nurtured and turned around and around to check for cracks or dents in your thinking. Every decision is—”

  “Yes, I know, like a birth. He said that so much that I felt like checking into a maternity ward.”

  I smiled. “I’m making one of your favorites, grilled pork chops in plum sauce. Your mother used to make that. She taught me.”

  He looked down at the papers and then began stuffing them back into the envelope. “I need a drink,” he said.

  Sylvia came to the doorway. “Sauce is ready,” she announced, smiling from ear to ear.

  “Sauce is ready? You let her make it?” Arden asked, astonished.

  “She’s good at it, Arden. You’d be surprised at what she’s learned in the kitchen.”

  “Might be poison, for all we know. I guess I need this just in case.”

  He poured himself a hefty glass of bourbon. Then he looked at Sylvia, who was still standing there smiling at him. Her right cheek had a streak of plum sauce across it.

  “Looks like she was finger painting with our dinner.”

  “Oh, she just touched herself after handling the plums. Every cook gets a little messy.”

  “Cook. Artist. Next she’ll be CEO of our company,” he said, and gulped his drink, his eyes still on her. “What happened with her art teacher?”

  “I hired him. He’ll be here day after tomorrow. He’ll come three times a week at first, an hour each time, for twenty-five dollars an hour.”

  “Twenty-five dollars? Are you crazy? That’s seventy-­five a week to babysit. You might as well open the window and toss the money out,” he said, and finished his drink.

  “If it doesn’t help, we’ll stop it, but for now, she is happy about it, Arden. You know,” I added, “her name is on the estate Papa left, too. We hardly spend any of her money on her.”

  “I know. I know plenty,” he said, and poured himself more bourbon. He looked at us both while he sipped his drink and then turned and headed for the stairs. “I’m going to wash up and get out of this monkey suit that I have to wear every day to be sure our business is a success and I can make enough money for you to waste.”

  We watched him head up the stairs, pausing to sip his drink. Sylvia looked at me and then stepped toward the stairway, as if she expected she’d have to charge up and save him the way she had saved Papa from falling backward. But Arden continued on, his anger marching him the rest of the way.

  “Let’s set the table, Sylvia,” I said.

  Arden came down a half hour later. He did look refreshed and relaxed, but there was something else different about him. He wore the wry smile of someone who was carrying a secret full of self-satisfying irony. He opened a bottle of Papa’s prize red wine, which was to be used only for very special occasions, and poured a glass for each of us. We usually didn’t give Sylvia much alcohol of any kind. Arden knew why.

  Once, years ago, Vera had gotten her terribly drunk. She’d thrown up over everything in her room—her bed, her rug, her desk. The reaction she was having terrified her, and she flailed about, crying and waving her arms. Vera was hysterical with laughter when I came upon them, and when Papa found out, he went into a rage and beat Vera with his belt until Aunt Ellsbeth stopped him by clinging to his arm so tightly he lifted her off her feet with every attempted swing.

  I actually felt sorrier for Vera that day than I did for Sylvia, because Sylvia simply fell asleep after we bathed her and changed her into her nightgown. Vera was off in her room whimpering like a beaten puppy. Aunt Ellsbeth didn’t show her any sympathy, despite stopping Papa from beating her to death. She went to Vera’s room and told her she had gotten what she deserved. She didn’t even look after her welts. Some of them were bleeding. After Aunt Ellsbeth left, I went to see Vera. She was curled in the fetal position on her bed, shivering with pain.

  “You need to wash those welts, Vera,” I said, “before they get infected.”

  “Leave me alone. You’re happy this happened to me.”

  “I’m not happy. You shouldn’t have done that to Sylvia, but I’m not happy to see you so beaten,” I said. I said it sincerely enough for her to turn and look at me.

  “Okay. Go get me a warm washcloth and some antiseptic gel and some Band-Aids,” she ordered.

  When she took off her dress, I saw how Papa had hit her around her waist and thighs. She lay back so I could wash every welt and put on the medicine and bandages where she needed them.

  “You know why he hit me so hard, don’t you?” she asked as I worked.

  “Because you did a bad thing to Sylvia,” I said.

  “No. It’s because he loves me the most and wants me to be the perfect Audrina, not you,” she said. Then she leaned forward to whisper, “He even told me to sit in the rocking chair so I could learn her special gifts.”

  “No, he didn’t,” I said.

  She smiled through he
r pain and lay back. “He loves me more,” she insisted. I watched her close her eyes and smile, despite what must have been terrible stings and aches.

  I went back to sit with Sylvia, who was asleep, and brushed her hair off her face.

  “I won’t let her do mean things to you again,” I told her. “I won’t let anyone, sweet Sylvia.”

  The memory drifted away like smoke, but also like smoke, it left a bitter taste in my mouth.

  “A toast, then,” Arden said now, raising his glass after pouring the wine. “To the baby who is coming, who is always coming.”

  “A boy or a girl?” Sylvia quickly asked.

  “Why, a boy, of course,” he said.

  “Who told you? Papa?”

  He looked at me and smiled. “Of course,” he said. “Who else?”

  He drank his wine in one gulp and poured another. I looked at Sylvia. She drank hers quickly, too quickly, and he rose to pour more for her.

  “Don’t,” I said. “You know she can’t handle it, Arden.”

  “Oh, a little more,” he said. “To celebrate.”

  “Celebrate what?”

  “Sylvia is getting an art teacher, and I’m getting a partner, apparently.” He laughed and drank.

  I served the salad, and we began to eat our first real formal dinner since Papa had died. I looked longingly toward his empty chair. Arden would never have said these things if Papa were still alive. Arden saw my gaze and read my thoughts.

  “Tomorrow night, Sylvia,” he said, “you set my place there. It’s time we faced the reality. I’m the head of Whitefern now, no matter what our estate documents read. Is that all right, Audrina?”

  “No. It’s not all right,” I said. “But you can sit there. Maybe it will help you think more of yourself. No matter what happened to him or to people he loved, Papa kept his self-respect.”

  “Why is it that after people die, we think only good things about them and forget the bad?”

  “I think about it all, Arden. Your mother told me to be that way. She knew I was proud of my father, even though there were many times I disliked him, regretfully so. She taught me that none of us is all good or all bad.”

  “Meaning me?”

  “Meaning all of us, Arden, so yes, you, too.”

  “What about you, Sylvia? Do you think about all this? Do you think everyone is bad and good? Do you think?”

  “Stop teasing her, Arden.”

  “Teasing? Am I teasing you, Sylvia?”

  He laughed, and we began to eat in silence. When I looked at Sylvia, I saw how happy she was despite Arden’s ridiculing her. At first, I didn’t understand why. Then I thought about what Arden had said and why that would make her happy. She was already planning it, I was sure.

  She could finish her drawing of the baby.

  I saw it in the way she rushed cleaning up after dinner. I didn’t want her to be deeply disappointed, even though I wished in my heart of hearts that it was all true, that a baby was going to come.

  “You must not pay attention to everything Arden says, Sylvia,” I warned her. “He likes to tease you. He teases me, too.”

  She nodded, holding her soft smile as if I was the one who didn’t understand. I helped her finish so she could go up to the cupola to work, and then I went into the living room, where Arden was having a brandy. His face was red from all the alcohol he had consumed.

  “You can leave the documents here tomorrow,” I told him. “I’ll read them.”

  He widened his eyes. “And?”

  “I said I’ll read them and talk to you tomorrow.”

  “Right. Tomorrow.” He reached for the Wall Street Journal, but I knew he wasn’t going to read anything. He was simply going to hold it up and fume behind it.

  “I’m going up. I’m a little tired tonight.”

  I scooped up the envelope and headed up the stairs. I had drunk too much wine myself, deliberately making sure there wasn’t too much left for Sylvia—or for Arden. He’d wanted to open another bottle, but I had talked him out of it.

  I prepared myself for bed and then went up to the cupola. I didn’t want Sylvia staying up there deep into the night. She had no concept of time, especially when she was drawing or painting. She had the outline of the baby completed and was sitting there and staring at it. She turned and looked up at me.

  “Is he going to be a pretty baby?” she asked me.

  “We’re a handsome family, Sylvia. Everyone was very good-looking, as you can see from old photographs. Momma was so beautiful that Papa was afraid to let her out of the house.”

  “Why?”

  “Other men would look at her and want her to be their wife,” I said. “And you’re beautiful. Everyone who sees you says so.”

  “Am I?”

  “Yes, but you have to take care of yourself. It’s time you went to bed. You need sleep to stay healthy and pretty. Don’t forget, we’re going shopping tomorrow for your art supplies,” I said.

  She stood and gazed at her drawing. “I don’t know what color eyes he’ll have. Or hair,” she said, looking frantic.

  “We’ll worry about it tomorrow,” I told her.

  She turned abruptly, the way Vera would when she became impatient with me, and marched out of the cupola and down the stairs. I followed her to her bedroom and watched as she prepared herself for bed. I remembered the early years when she could do almost nothing for herself. Papa was convinced that she was severely disabled and would be practically an invalid all her life. Every bit of progress I made with her had amazed him.

  I was amused by how much care she was taking with herself right now. Usually, she did nothing with her hair, and I had to brush it and pin it back for her. Both Momma and Aunt Ellsbeth refused to go to bed without first putting Pond’s Cold Cream on their faces.

  “Your skin dries when you sleep,” they told me. “Wrinkles wait in the darkness ready to pounce.”

  So I put it on, and I taught Sylvia to put it on. Vera made fun of it, but she didn’t live to be old enough to see any wrinkles on her face.

  Usually, I still had to tell Sylvia to do it, but she went right to it tonight, and then she looked at me and asked, “Am I really beautiful, Audrina?”

  “Yes, you are,” I said. I smiled, happy that she was taking a female’s interest in herself. It meant she was developing a little self-respect, something else Papa had never believed would happen.

  Afterward, I returned to our bedroom and waited for Arden. I believed him when he said we would try again to have a baby. He always expected that I would be in the mood for lovemaking whenever he was. Most of the time, he didn’t care if I was or not. I would never forgive him for telling Vera some of the details about our honeymoon night, how I had delayed and delayed coming out of the bathroom. If there was ever a time when I wasn’t ready to have sex, it was then. But he had waited long enough and demanded his conjugal rights. He actually had tried to break down the door, claiming that a man had a greater need than a woman. He claimed that there was a buildup in him that had to be satisfied and that the same was not true for women.

  Those memories always haunted me, along with the horrible memories that had come to me in the rocking chair. I didn’t need a psychiatrist to explain my inhibitions now. Lately, Arden had come up with the idea that I was so psychologically wounded when it came to sex that my body might actually be preventing me from getting pregnant.

  “Medical doctors like Dr. Prescott don’t understand the emotional power a woman can employ without herself even realizing it,” he’d said. “I read up on it. Until you really, really want to enjoy sex with me, you’ll never get pregnant.”

  I tried, fearing that he might be right. But even when I thought I wanted it as much as or even more than he did, I did not get pregnant. These thoughts tormented me. Often at night, I would toss and turn in and out of sleep
, trying to throw off the haunting ideas and words. I felt like shouting, but I didn’t want to make any noise and wake Arden. He’d be angry about it. He might ask why I was so troubled, and he’d repeat those claims about women and about me.

  Now, as I waited for him, I wondered if it wasn’t the other way around. Because he thought I was so troubled by sex, it was affecting him. He would never, ever admit that he could be affected, but deep down inside his angry heart, those feelings surely twirled about and worried him. What would bother him the most, and what did he fear other men would think about him? That he couldn’t satisfy his wife, that he couldn’t produce a child? Not Arden Lowe. He wouldn’t stand for that.

  I turned over in bed and closed my eyes. He was taking so long. How long did he expect me to wait? I fought sleep, but it was heavy tonight and easily forced my eyelids closed. I had no idea what time it was when my eyes snapped open, but I saw that the light beside me was still on, so I sat up, rubbed my eyes, and looked at the clock. It was well after one. Arden hadn’t come up. Where was he? Had he started drinking again? Had he fallen asleep on the sofa? He’d be upset with himself, I thought. I put on my robe and slippers and went out.

  I had just started toward the stairs when I saw him. He looked like he had fallen asleep in the living room. His hair was wild, his shirt was unbuttoned and out of his pants, and he wasn’t wearing his shoes. But he wasn’t coming up the stairs. He was coming from the direction of the first Audrina’s room and Sylvia’s room.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “What you should have been doing,” he said. “Why didn’t you?”

  “Do what?”

  “Come and get her.”

  “Why?”

  “Why? She was making enough of a racket in that damn rocking chair. I thought someone was cutting up the floor. She’s lucky she didn’t go over backward in it, the way she was rocking back and forth. I heard it above me. I didn’t know she would go rocking. It sounded like animals eating away at the roof. You were dead asleep, so I went to check, and there she was, rocking away. Do you know why? She thinks your father talks to her when she’s rocking.”