“Is on the bank’s board. Figures.”
“He wants to look at the property when you start working on removal,” I said. “I didn’t say yes or no. I didn’t mention anything else,” I added quickly. “He’s never been there in the daytime, and he has this nutty idea that some famous local site is about to disappear.”
“What do you mean, in the daytime?”
“He probably made some visits on Halloween.”
Dad nodded. “He can come whenever he wants.”
“Tomorrow?”
“We’re starting tomorrow, yes.”
“He’s picking me up for school. We’ll show up after school.”
Dad stared at me a moment. “A famous thing might be removed? I don’t consider it a historical site,” he said between his clenched teeth. “Best thing that was ever done for this community is getting rid of that wreckage and selling the property,” he added, with such firmness and anger that I held my breath. “Let’s get it out of our lives once and for all,” he said, and went upstairs to shower and change for dinner.
I watched him go up and then finished vacuuming and started to prepare my dinner. Rarely did I see Dad that red with anger. Sometimes he’d bring home some frustration because of work, but he usually dropped it quickly when he saw me or, more likely, thought about my mother.
“Your dinner smells good,” he said from the doorway when he had changed and come down. His tone was calmer.
“You’ll have a good dinner, Dad, I’m sure.”
“Yeah. Sorry I exploded out there over this Foxworth thing. I’m just tired of hearing about it. I get an earful at Charley’s Diner from whoever hears about the job. They start talking about the nut who rebuilt it and all that. Makes me almost wish I didn’t take the job. I’ll be home early,” he said, and kissed me before he left.
After I ate, I sat there for a while thinking about the last few pages I had read in the diary. This was a mystery wrapped in a mystery, I thought. They were only children. Why was it so important to my father to get them gone and forgotten?
I changed my mind. Maybe I would rush my homework, but I would be back in the diary tonight.
An hour and a half later, after making certain to set my alarm, I settled back against my pillow and opened the diary to where I had left off. I felt like Alice falling into a dark Wonderland.
From the moment they woke up, the twins complained. Cathy was just as vocal, which wasn’t helping matters. While I went to the bathroom and washed myself, the grandmother from hell came in with our tray of food, along with a specific list of rules we were to obey. She ordered me to read them aloud to my brother and sisters, and before she left, she told us to beware, that God saw all and would see the evil and sin we were prone to commit. The only positive thing she told us was that we could go up to the attic, where we would have more room, but only after ten a.m.
I took one look at Cathy’s face and saw that she was going to do or say something to show her defiance, maybe by pounding on the door. She surprised me with her suggestion, a fantasy that would take more root in reality as time went by.
“Okay,” she said. “Since we’re being deserted by what family we have, we’ll form our own. Christopher, you’re now the father. I’m the mother.”
I looked at Cory and Carrie and saw how the idea gave them some relief. There was a chance to have fun after all and get their minds off this dreadful situation. Our grandmother had typed out a list of rules for us to follow, and it was pretty clear from them that she was either a nutcase or simply sexually repressed. I found them so ridiculous that I read them aloud, imitating her voice and growly face.
“No being undressed in front of each other.”
“Boys and girls cannot use the bathroom together.”
The one that got me most was “No handling or playing with private parts.”
The most ridiculous one was “Do not look at the opposite sex unless absolutely necessary.”
I could see I was going to have a time of it explaining to Cory and Carrie what private parts were. Cathy had that self-satisfied grin on her face, enjoying my efforts to make it sound more scientific than sexual.
There were actually twenty-two rules, mostly to do with cleanliness and obedience. She threatened to add more as time went by
. Despite my satire and my imitation, Cathy stopped smiling. She looked around and then burst out with all her pent-up frustration, bemoaning how much we were hated for something we didn’t do, whatever it was, and declaring that this was all going to be a disaster. I remained calm and assured her that our mother would look after us and our demented grandmother would settle down.
She calmed. “You’re right,” she said. “Momma won’t let this go on much longer.”
I breathed a sigh of relief, but something inside me warned that this was only the first of many crises to come.
I set the diary aside for a moment and thought about their grandmother’s rules. Christopher had suspected early on that his grandmother was sexually repressed. I knew what a sexually repressed person was, but I doubted, even from the little I had read so far, that Cathy would have known at her age. Their grandmother would probably cut herself off completely from the outside world if she were still alive today and saw how we all dressed, what we read, what we watched on television, and how many of us were sexually active, not only before we had graduated high school but also in middle school. For sure, there were still people like her, who thought a liberated woman was simply promiscuous.