“I’m okay,” she said. “I’ll be all right. Thank you, Cory. Thank you, Carrie.”
She kissed them and smiled, and they turned to occupy themselves with other toys and books. I waited for a moment and then reached for her, and she took my hand.
“It’s going to be all right,” I said. “I promise.”
She nodded. She was quiet again, but she didn’t believe me, and despite all I could do to convince myself, I wasn’t confident about it, either.
I heard my father enter the house, and I closed the diary and shoved it under my pillow. When I looked at myself in the mirror, I saw that I had been crying. How odd, I thought. I didn’t even realize it. It was almost like . . . almost like anything Cathy did now, any feeling she had, I did and felt, too. I felt possessed.
When I heard my father’s footsteps on the stairs, I rushed into the bathroom and washed my face. He knocked on my open bedroom door.
“Hey,” he said when I stepped out of the bathroom. “How was your picnic?”
“It was fun, and you were right. It was a perfect day for it. Is the new owner going to do something about the lake, clean it up, fix the dock? It’s so beautiful, but it could be even more beautiful.”
“All of the above,” my father said. “This is going to be the biggest project I’ve ever done. We’ll be doubling the help. I’ll have an architect’s rendition to show you in about two weeks. I’ll get cleaned up and then think about dinner. You don’t have a date, do you?”
“No, you have my full attention,” I said.
He tilted his head. “Oh?”
“It’s fine, Dad. We had a good time. I told him I wanted to get all my homework done tonight so I can spend more time with Uncle Tommy and you.”
He nodded. “It’s pretty soon to be telling him what he can and can’t do, isn’t it?”
“It’s never too soon to tell a man what he can and can’t do,” I said, and he looked like he was having the best laugh of the day, even the week.
As always, I set the table and helped with anything he let me do when he made a dinner for us. I thought he was going to grill me about my growing relationship with Kane, but he didn’t ask a single question. Instead, he talked about his new project. I could see that this one excited him more than anything else he had done, and not simply because it was the most expensive and largest residence he had ever worked on. He liked the owner and the architect. While we ate, he described the new mansion in detail, pointing out what he thought was brilliant about the design.
“They were very educated about the views up there,” he said. “They want to create some water effects, too. You know, little ponds and fountains and a Pebble Tec pool with a hot tub. I love the suggestion for the outside tile, and oh, the landscaping they’re planning, fantastic. It creates this almost magical approach to the property. Not simply straight in but curved, with hedges and interesting lighting. There’ll be nothing like it around here.” He leaned toward me. “Kane’s father is going to be quite jealous.”
“More like his mother might be, from what I understand.”
“Yeah, sure,” he said. Ever since my mother died, he seemed always to try to avoid referring to the mothers of kids my age.
“You’re like a little boy with a new Lego set,” I told him. “I guess it’s true.”
“What’s true?”
“Men turn everything into toys.”
He stared at me for a moment and then smiled. “Your mother used to accuse me of that,” he said. “I guess as long as I have you,
I’ll have her.”
“Then you always will,” I said.
“Right. Like you’re not going off to college, where you’ll meet your Prince Charming and move to some other state or continent.”
He was joking, but I sensed that this was a real fear for him. Was that true for the fathers of all daughters, or was it especially true for mine? I couldn’t imagine not missing him as much as he would miss me, although he was convinced that whoever I fell in love with would replace him.
I had read through the part of the diary about Christopher Sr.’s death so quickly that I really didn’t digest how traumatic it must have been for Cathy. Reading between the lines Christopher Jr. wrote, it seemed to me she obviously was fonder of her father than of her mother. It was natural for her to be angry at the world because of her father’s death alone, but afterward, to be imprisoned in the home of grandparents who didn’t want her, who didn’t even want her to exist, had to sharpen her rage. Christopher hadn’t said it yet, but I was sure that deep in his heart of hearts, he was terribly disappointed in their mother for being so oblivious to their economic condition after the death of their father and for putting them where they were now.
I cleaned up the dinner dishes and pots and pans and then went up to do my homework. Every once in a while, I paused and looked at the diary. Was I rushing my work so I could get back to it? If my grades suffered because of the diary, my father would have another reason to criticize me for reading it, I thought, and I tried hard to concentrate on my math, science, and history assignments. By the time I finished, it was late. My father had already stopped by to say good night.
Nevertheless, after I prepared for bed, I slipped the diary out from under the pillow, promising myself I would read only a few pages. There was another way I was getting to be like the Dollanganger children, I thought. I was lying to myself when I told myself I could limit what I read, even for an hour, as long as I was in the same room with this diary. It had become a magical door through which I passed to enter the Foxworth attic.
Cathy had no idea I had done it, but one afternoon soon after, when Momma was about to leave, I slipped her a note: “Momma, you have to do me a great favor. You have to get Cathy her ballet costumes, the leotards, toe shoes, and matching tutus. Quickly.”