Christopher's Diary: Echoes of Dollanganger

When she asked me if I loved and trusted our mother as much as I used to, I snapped back at her, not because she was wrong to wonder but because I didn’t want to admit that I didn’t. She quickly changed the subject to what it was like to date, and her questions suggested that neither of us would know what to do because we had been out of socializing so long.

God, she was so right, I thought, and I exploded, revealing how angry I was at Momma. I raged about being shut away from life and feeling more like a first-grader when it came to my emotions now. I know my outburst frightened Cathy. Maybe because we were out in the open, I didn’t contain myself. I didn’t care who heard me. She hadn’t seen me this way for a long time, maybe never. She wanted to leave immediately.

“We have to get back to the twins,” she said.

On the way back, she suggested that we climb down with the twins, maybe make a sling to hold them so we could bring them down and escape. We had found a way. I knew she was saying all this because of how I had behaved. She was probably worried that I was losing it fast now and that if we stayed much longer, who knew what would happen? I couldn’t blame her for thinking that.

My mind reeled with the possibility of making an escape, but I didn’t want to give Cathy any false hope. After all, where would we go? How would we go anywhere? We would need money. How far could we get, considering we would be two teenagers traveling with small children? Everyone would look at us and wonder. Eventually, we were bound to attract some policeman, and then what? If we told him who we were, we might be returned to Foxworth Hall, but this time, we would be returned only to be thrown out with Momma. We would be children with a single parent who had nothing. What then? All Momma would do would be complain how we had destroyed our chances, our opportunities. She’d hate us, at least Cathy and me.

No, I thought, better to ignore her for now, even though the pleasure of being free was so great I couldn’t calm myself down enough to not think about it.

I let Cathy start up first. About three-quarters of the way, she lost her footing on the bottom knot and screamed in panic. I quietly, calmly told her how to regain her control, and she was able to continue up. By the time I joined her, we were both exhausted, but all Cathy could think of was what would have happened to the twins if she had fallen from that sheet ladder.

“I can’t believe I’m happy to be back here,” she said.

I didn’t say anything.

Instead, I thought, look what had happened to us if we could even for a moment be happy we were here.

Kane paused and stared at me for a moment before he swept off his wig, as if he had to do that before he could talk to me now as Kane Hill.

“You ever go skinny-dipping?”

“No.”

“My sister did at our house. She had a party for a half dozen of her friends in early June of her senior year. Our parents were away for the weekend. I had gone to an early movie, got bored, and came home early. I heard the laughter out at the pool and made my way there, sort of sneaking up on them. I remained in the darkness and watched.”

“So your sister didn’t know you were there?”

“No. I remember being more angry than amused.”

“Angry? Why?”

“I resented my sister being nude in front of those boys. Finally, I turned around, disgusted, and went back into the house.”

“Did you tell her how you felt about it later?”

“No.”

“So she never knew you were there?”

“No. The thing is, I’ve been at skinny-dipping parties but didn’t react like I did spying on hers.”

“Probably just . . . natural. You were embarrassed for her.”

“No, for myself,” he said. “What just happened between Christopher and Cathy has made me think of something.”

I smiled to myself. It hadn’t just happened to them, as he had put it, but also to us. Reading the diary this way, it was as if we were doing what he had done at his sister’s pool party, staying in the shadows and observing something happening right before us. “What?”

“Say you never met your sister your whole life. Say you didn’t even know you had a sister, and you met this girl and dated her and went skinny-dipping and did it all. Would it be sinful?”

“I don’t know. It might be sinful but not your fault, if that makes any sense,” I said.

“But the point is that every desi

re the brother had as a boy and every desire the sister had as a girl would still be there. No wall would go up between them miraculously. Nothing would click in their heads and stop their sexual activity.”

“I guess not.”