Petals on the Wind (Dollanganger 2)

Time that had once moved so slowly speeded up, for our Carrie was in love with Alex! It sparkled from her blue eyes and danced her tiny feet around the room as she dusted, ran the vacuum, washed the dishes or planned menus for the next day. "Isn't he handsome, Cathy?" she asked and I agreed, though honestly he was just an average, nice-looking boy of five eight or nine with light brown hair that ruffled up easily and gave him a shaggy-dog appearance that was somehow appealing, for he was so neat in other ways. His eyes were turquoise and his expression that of someone who has never once had an ugly, unkind thought.

Carrie thrilled to hear the phone ring. She bubbled with excitement for so often the call was for her. She wrote Alex long, passionate love poems, then gave them to me to read and stored them away without mailing them off to the one who should read them.

I was happy for her and for myself too, for my ballet school was progressing nicely and any day Chris would be coming home! "Carrie, can you believe it? Chris's extended course is almost up!" She laughed and came running to me, as she had when she was a little girl, and in my outstretched arms she flung herself. "I know!" she cried. "Soon we will be a whole family again! Like we used to be. Cathy, if I have a little boy with blond hair and blue eyes, guess who I'll name him after." I didn't have to guess, I knew. Her firstborn, blond, blue-eyed son would be called Cory.

Carrie in love was pure enchantment to watch. She stopped talking of her small size and even began to feel she wasn't inadequate. For the first time in her young life she began to use makeup. Her hair was naturally wavy, like mine, but she had it cut shoulder length and there it curled upward in a wild tumble.

"Look, Cathy!" she cried when she came home from the beauty parlor with her new, smarter hair style. "Now my head doesn't look so big, does it? And have you noticed how much taller I've grown?"

I laughed. She was wearing shoes with threeinch heels and two inches of platform! But she was right. The shorter hair did make her head look smaller.

Her youth, her loveliness, her joy all touched me so much my heart ached in the awful apprehension that something might happen to spoil it for her.

"Oh, Cathy," said Carrie, "I would want to die if Alex didn't love me! I want to make him the best possible wife. I'll keep his house so clean dust motes won't dance in the sunlight. Every night he'll eat the gourmet meals I prepare--never frozen TV junk. I'll make my own clothes and his and our children's. I'll save him loads of money in lots of ways. He doesn't say much; he just sits and looks at me in that special, soft way. So, I take what I can from that and not what words he says--for he hardly says any."

I laughed and hugged her close. Oh, I did so long for her to be happy. "Men don't talk as freely about love as women do, Carrie. Some like to tease you, and that's a pretty good indication you've got their interest, and it can

grow into something larger. And the way you find out how much they care is by looking into the eyes-- eyes never learn how to lie."

It was easy to see that. Alex was enchanted with Carrie. He was still working part-time as an electrician for a local appliance store while he took summer courses at the university, but he spent every spare minute with Carrie. I suspected he either had asked or was about to ask her to marry him

I woke suddenly a week later to see Carrie sitting before the bedroom windows and staring off toward the shadowy mountains. Carrie who never had insomnia as I often did. Carrie who could sleep through thunderstorms, a tornado, telephone shrills a foot from her ears and a fire across the street. So naturally I was alarmed to see her there. I got up and went to her.

"Darling, are you all right? Why aren't you asleep?"

"I wanted to be with you near," she whispered, her eyes still riveted on the distant mountains, dark and mysterious in the night. They were all around us, boxing us in like they used to do. "Alex asked me to marry him tonight." She told me this in a flat, dull tone and I cried out, "How wonderful! I'm so happy for you, Carrie, and for him!"

"He told me something, Cathy. He's decided he wants to be a minister." Pain and sorrow were in her voice, and I didn't understand at all.

"Don't you want to be a minister's wife?" I asked, while I was so frightened underneath. She seemed so remote.

"Ministers expect people to be perfect," she said in that deadly, scary tone, "especially their wives. I remember all the things the grandmother used to say about us. About us being Devil's issue and evil and sinful. I didn't used to understand what she meant, but I remember the words. And she was always saying we were wicked, unholy children who should never have been born. Should we have been born, Cathy?"

I choked, overwhelmingly frightened, and swallowed over the lump that rose in my throat. "Carrie, if God hadn't wanted us to be born He wouldn't have given us life in the first place."

"But . . . Cathy, Alex wants a perfect woman-- and I'm not perfect."

"Nobody is, Carrie. Absolutely nobody. Only the dead are perfect."

"Alex is perfect. He has never done even one bad thing."

315

"How would you know? Would he tell you if he had?"

Her lovely young face was darkly shadowed. Falteringly she explained. "It seems Alex and I have known each other for a long, long time, and until recently he didn't tell me much about himself. I've talked my head off to him, but I've never told him about our past, except how we became wards of Dr. Paul's after our parents died in an auto accident. And that's a lie, Cathy. We aren't orphans. We still have a mother who is alive."

"Lies are not deadly sins, Carrie. Everyone tells little lies now and then. "

"Alex doesn't. Alex has always felt drawn toward God and religion. When he was younger he wanted to become a Catholic so he could be a priest. He grew older and learned priests have to live lives of celibacy, so he decided against being a priest. He wants a wife and children. He told me he's never had sex with anyone because he's been looking all his adult life for just the right girl to marry--somebody perfect, like me. Somebody godly, like him And Catheee," she wailed pitifully, "I'm not perfect! I'm bad! Like the grandmother was always telling us, I'm evil and unholy too! I have ugly thoughts! I hated those mean little girls who put me on the roof and said I was like an owl! I wished them all to die! And Sissy Towers, I hated her more than any other! And Cathy, did you know Sissy Towers drowned when she was twelve? I never wrote and told you, but I felt it was my fault for hating her so much! I hated Julian too for taking you away from Paul, and he died too! You see how it is; how can I tell Alex all of that and then tell him our mother married her half- uncle too? He'd hate me, Cathy. He wouldn't want me then, I know he wouldn't. He'd think I would give birth to deformed children, like me--and I love him so much!"

I knelt by the side of her chair and held her close as a mother would. I didn't know what to say, and how to say it. I longed for Chris and his support, and for Paul who always knew how to say everything just right. And remembering this I took his words, said to me, and I repeated them to Carrie, even as I felt a terrible wrath against the grandmother who'd implanted all these crazy notions in the head of a fiveyear-old child. "Darling, darling, I don't know how to say everything right, but I'm going to try. I want you to understand that what is black to one person is white to another. And nothing in this world is so perfect that it is pure white, or so bad it is pure black. Everything concerning human beings comes in shades of gray, Carrie. None of us is perfect, without flaws. I've had the same doubts about myself as you have."

Her teary eyes widened to hear this, as if she considered me, of all people, perfect. "It was our doctor Paul who set me straight, Carrie. He told me long ago, if a sin was committed when our parents married and conceived children, it was their sin and not ours. He said God didn't intend to make us pay the price for what our parents did. And they weren't that closely related, Carrie. Do you know in ancient Egypt the pharaoh would only allow his sons and daughters to marry a brother or sister? So you see, society makes the rules; and never forget, our parents had four children and not one of us is a freak--so God didn't punish them, or us."

She glued her huge blue eyes to my face, desperately wanting to believe. And never, never should I have mentioned "freak."

"Cathy, maybe God did punish me. I don't grow; that is punishment."