I looked at Kane. His eyes darkened as if anger had risen into his face from some dark place inside him. Had he told his sister not to mention Foxworth Hall at all? Or had he fallen into his Christopher Dollanganger state of mind and begun to resent anyone wishing the story about him and his siblings could be erased as easily as replacing a building and changing the details of a property?
I saw the way Julio was looking at me, waiting for my reaction.
“If anyone can do it,” I said, without any sign of emotion, “my father can.”
Kane seemed to relax. One crisis passed, I thought. What would come next?
Nothing more about the original Foxworth Hall or the story of the children was mentioned for the remainder of the dinner, but that didn’t mean it was out of my mind. Despite being intrigued by Julio and Darlena, I found myself drawn continually to Kane, to the way he talked and held himself. Something had changed in him with Darlena’s toast. It wasn’t simply being in a formal setting and being dressed up. He really didn’t sound like himself. He was so careful about his choice of words, so thoughtful about everything he said, and at times, he appeared older than Julio or Darlena. He corrected Darlena about the history of the city, but not in his usual offhanded or casual way that suggested indifference. He was more condescending, which really surprised me. I glanced at Darlena. She seemed to be getting upset with him and the way he was going on about the degeneration of some of the city neighborhoods and criticizing their father’s regular car customers and the salespeople who worked for him.
“My brother didn’t always sound like my mother,” Darlena said. “It wasn’t that long ago that I was the one changing his diapers,” she told Julio, after Kane had challenged Julio on his view of the economy. “And when he had a bad nightmare, he didn’t run to our mother. He ran to me.”
Kane’s face reddened a little. He shot a look my way and started to protest that she was exaggerating, but she was on a roll, I thought, out to get revenge or knock him down a peg or two.
“Mother would ask me to bathe him, because he whined and argued about it so much unless I did it. I even had to put out his clothes, because he wouldn’t wear what Mother wanted him to wear. I was still telling him how to dress when he was in the sixth grade.”
Kane had shrunk a bit but then suddenly recovered his superior tone. “Why don’t you mention how I had to lie for you when you snuck Ken Taylor into your room for the night after the senior prom?” He turned to Julio. “My parents heard a male voice, and she told them I had been in her room at two in the morning. To protect her, I had to pretend I had gotten into my father’s liquor and gotten sick because her boyfriend threw up in her bathroom.”
Julio’s eyes widened.
“That’s not the worst of it,” Kane continued.
“Okay, okay,” Darlena said, holding up her hands. “Truce.”
Kane smiled at me in victory, but I didn’t smile back. He had told me very little about his relationship with Darlena. The way he talked about his home life most of the time made it sound as if he were an only child, too. Now I wondered how close he really had been to Darlena during those earlier years. How close were they to each other now, despite this banter between them?
For the first time, I wondered if he could appreciate Christopher’s diary more than I could because he had a sibling and I was an only child. The way they were both talking about their mother also raised a new red flag in my mind. Kane always made fun of his mother. He was almost indifferent to her, but from the way they were talking about her now, it was as if they were as separated from their parents as the Dollangangers had been. His mother seemed to delegate her role as Kane’s mother to Darlena and then to whoever would take on one responsibility or another while she pursued her own social objectives.
That’s what made what happened in the original Foxworth Hall attic so fascinating to so many young people like us, I suddenly thought. In various degrees, parents ignored their children and looked for ways to avoid their problems and needs. From the sound of it, Mrs. Hill was more of a cousin to Corrine Foxworth than I or my mother was.
Maybe to bring some relief to the table, Julio began asking me more questions. Kane had told them I was in the running for class valedictorian. Julio revealed that he had been his high school class valedictorian. Darlena apparently hadn’t known that.
“Class valedictorian, and you didn’t know W. C. Fields’s famous tombstone?” Kane asked.
“Becoming valedictorian doesn’t mean you know trivia, Kane,” Darlena said, coming quickly to Julio’s defense.
Kane pursed his lips with annoyance and sat back.
Julio and I talked about our favorite subjects, and he described his interest in an international law career.
I saw that Kane was losing interest. Suddenly, he burst out, “Kristin and I have a party to go to. We’ll skip dessert, but you two enjoy.”
He saw the surprise on my face.
“Right?” he asked, more or less demanded.
“Yes, not that I’m so crazy about the person giving the party.”
“Yeah, but we’ll ignore her like we always do,” he said.
“I always do,” I corrected.
“Whatever you want,” Darlena said. “We enjoyed seeing you, Kristin. I’m sure we’ll see more of you.”
“You will,” Kane said, punching his words at her.
“Good,” she said, with just as much defiance in her voice. How quickly they had bounced from being loving brother and sister to competitive siblings.
Kane rose and Darlena and Julio stood to hug and kiss us good-bye. Kane took my hand, hardly giving me a chance to thank them for including me in their dinner. I felt like he was rushing us out of the restaurant.