Available in February 2015 from Pocket Books
Becoming Christopher and Cathy
The shorter days of approaching winter darkened every corner of my attic earlier and earlier every afternoon. Usually, when you think of yourself ascending, whether it’s hiking up a mountain, flying in an airplane, or walking to the top floor of your house, you imagine moving into brighter light. But as my boyfriend Kane Hill and I walked up the attic stairway for the first time together, I could almost feel the shadows growing and opening like Venus flytraps to welcome us.
The stairs creaked the way they always had, but it sounded more like a warning this time, each squeak a groan of frantic admonition. Our attic didn’t have an unpleasant odor, but it did have the scent of old things that hadn’t seen the light of day for years: furniture, lamps, and trunks stuffed with old clothing too out of fashion to care about or throw out when the previous owners left. They were still good enough for someone else to use. All of it had been accumulated by those my father called “pack rats,” but he also admitted to being one himself. Our garage was neat but jammed with his older tools and boxes of sample building materials, my first tricycle, various hoses, and plumbing fittings he might find use for someday.
The attic floor was a dark brown hardwood that had worn well and, according to my father, was as solid as the day it had been laid. He looked in on it once in a while, but I would go up regularly to dust a bit, get rid of spiderwebs, and clean the two small windows, spotted with small flies and other tiny bugs who thought they had died outside. I felt I had to maintain the attic mostly because my father kept my mother’s things in an old wardrobe there, a hardwood with a walnut veneer that had embossed cherubs on the doors, another antique. Even after nearly nine years, my father couldn’t get himself to throw out or give away any of her things: shoes and slippers, purses, dresses, blouses, nightgowns, coats, and sweaters.
Just like in the Foxworth attic Christopher had described in his diary, there were other larger items that previous occupants had left, including brass and pewter tables and standing lamps, a dark oak magazine rack with some old copies of Life and Time, some black and silver metal trunks that had once worn their travel labels proudly, bragging about Paris, London, and Madrid, and other pieces of furniture that had lost their places in the living room and the bedrooms when the decor had been changed.
Despite being thought useless and relegated to this vault, to my father they were almost a part of the house now. He said that their having been there so long gave them squatters’ rights. It really didn’t matter whether they had been there long or whether they would find another home, fulfill another purpose. Memories, no matter whose they were, were sacred to him. Things weren’t ever simply things. Old toys were once cherished by the children who owned them, and family heirlooms possessed history, whether or not you knew exactly what that history was. It didn’t surprise me that a man who built and restored homes had such respect for what was in them. I just hadn’t paid much attention to any of it until now.
I was still not convinced that what Kane Hill had suggested the day he discovered Christopher’s diary under my pillow was a good idea. At first, I suspected that he might be playing with me, humoring me, when he had said he would read it aloud to me, pretending to be Christopher Dollanganger, the oldest of the four children who had been incarcerated in Foxworth Hall more than fifty years ago. I didn’t want to diminish the diary’s historical importance for Charlottesville or in any way make fun of it. He had assured me that he wouldn’t do that.
And then he had added, “To get into it, really get into it, we’ll read it up in your attic.”
The Foxworth attic was where the four Dollanganger children spent most of their time for years, there and in a small bedroom below. According to what I knew and how Christopher had described it, the attic was a long, rambling loft that they had turned into their imaginary world because of how long they had been shut away from the real one. The idea of reading Christopher’s thoughts and descriptions aloud in a similar environment both fascinated and frightened me. We would no longer be simply observers. In a sense, by playing the roles of Christopher and Cathy, we would empathize, and not just sympathize, with them.
As soon as he had said it, Kane saw the indecision in my face, however, and went on to explain that it would be like acting on a movie set. Movie sets in studios were suggestions of what really was or had been, weren’t they?
“This is no different, Kristin,” Kane said.
I pointed out that my attic was so much smaller than the one in Foxworth, but he insisted that it was an attic, a place where we could better pretend to be imprisoned and therefore better understand what Christopher and Cathy had experienced.
He thought we’d get a more realistic sense of it. “It will be like reading Moby Dick while you’re on a ship on the ocean. This way, you’ll appreciate what happens to the older sister more, and I’ll appreciate Christopher’s words more, I’m sure.”
Of course, I had found myself empathizing with Cathy often when I read Christopher’s diary, anyway, but not to the extent he was suggesting. It was more like putting on her clothes and stepping into her shoes. In moments, I would lose myself completely and for a while become her. Maybe I did have to be in an attic for that. However, what frightened me about pretending to be her in front of someone else was the possibility that I would be exposing my own vulnerabilities, my own fears and fantasies. Everyone knew the Dollanganger children were distant cousins of mine.
What if I was more like her than I imagined?