My aunt came and stood next to me. “Please don’t tell your father what you overheard here. There are some things bette
r left unsaid.”
I nodded, feeling sorry for her. “Can I help?”
Stiffly, she shook her head. “Don’t waken your mother. She needs to rest. I’m going upstairs. You’ll have to fix your own breakfast.”
On Saturdays Momma liked to sleep late, and that gave my aunt her chance to stay in the little room off the dining room where she kept her television set. She loved to watch old movies and soap operas. They were the only entertainment she had.
My appetite had fled with Vera. I didn’t doubt in the least that she would do just as she’d threatened. She’d destroy us all. I sat down and tried not to think of what Arden and his mother would think.
My mind was a workshop of miserable thoughts, wondering what made Papa the way he was, lovable and detestable, selfish yet giving. He needed someone nearby at all times, especially to watch him shave, and since Momma had to fix breakfast it was usually me who perched on the rim of the bathtub and listened to all the interesting things that went on in his brokerage office.
I asked many questions about the stock market, and what made stocks go up or down. “Demand,” was his answer for high fliers. “Disappointment,” was his explanation for those that went down. “Rumors of mergers and takeovers are great for sending stocks soaring but by the time the general public knows about those things, it’s too late to get in. All the banks and big investors have bought and are ready to sell off to the poor unknowing investor who buys in at the top. When you’ve got the right connections, you know what’s going on—if you don’t have those connections, keep your money in the bank.”
Bit by bit, I’d gained a great deal of knowledge about the market. It was Papa’s way of teaching me, too, about arithmetic. I didn’t think of money in cents but in eighths of points. I knew about triple tops that were sure to slide, and double bottoms that should take off. He’d showed me charts and how to read them, despite Momma ridiculing him about my being too young to understand. “Nonsense. A young brain is a quick brain; she understands much more than you do.” Oh, yes, in some ways I loved my father very much, for if he couldn’t restore my memory, he did give me hopes for my future. Someday he was going to own his own brokerage firm, and I’d be his manager. “With your gifts, we can’t miss,” was the way he put it. “Can’t you just see it now, Audrina: D. J. Adare and Company.”
Once again I went back to the most active lists and performed my string and ring trick, and again my pin pointer touched down twice on that same stock. Happiness swelled in my heart. I hadn’t left it to Providence. Papa was going to make money when I gave him this dream.
And if this stock I’d chosen did go up, as by now I was fully expecting it would, then never again would I have to sit in that First and Best Audrina’s rocking chair. I’d have her gift—or one even better. I knew Papa. It was money Papa wanted, and money he needed, and money was truly the one thing he didn’t have enough of.
I raced upstairs to dress, sure that soon I’d have my memories back, too. Maybe the string-and-ring trick would work if I swung it over the Bible. I laughed as I sped on by the First Audrina’s bedroom and hurried down to the kitchen, still tying my sash.
Momma was up and in the kitchen with blue curlers as fat as tin cans in her hair. “Audrina,” she began in a weary voice, “would you mind watching the bacon while I whip the eggs?” Dark circles were under her eyes. “I tossed and turned all night. This baby is unusually restless. Just as I fell asleep toward dawn, your father’s alarm went off, and he was up and talking ten miles a minute, trying to tell me not to worry about what that old woman said. He thinks I’m depressed, not tired, so he decided that he’s going to invite twenty people over tonight to a party! Can you imagine anything more ridiculous? Here I am, in my sixth month, so tired I can hardly manage to get out of bed, and he thinks I need cheering up by preparing fancy little goodies for his friends. He tells me I’m bored, when he’s the one who’s bored. I wish to God he’d take up golf or tennis, or anything that would use up some of his energy and keep him away from home on the weekends.”
Oh, oh, now I understood perfectly! Somehow that sixth sense Papa possessed had told him that today I had the gift—that had to be the real reason he wanted to celebrate. A hundred or more times he’d told me he’d celebrate with a party on the day my gift came to light. So it was true. I did have the gift now. Otherwise, the ring wouldn’t have settled twice on the same stock, when nine others were listed there. I felt so good I wanted to shout.
“Where’re Ellsbeth and Vera?” asked Momma.
I couldn’t tell her about the argument and what Vera had threatened to do. Momma’s maiden name was her most cherished possession. And if someone had picked Vera up, at this very moment she could be in the village shouting out all our secrets.
To think of Vera was to think of reality, and soon my confidence in my gift began to wane. All my life, or so it seemed, Papa had dumped all kinds of junk into my head about the supernatural, which he believed in and Momma didn’t. I was convinced what he told me was true when I was with him, and convinced it wasn’t true the moment he left the house.
“Where’s Ellsbeth?” Momma asked.
“She tripped and fell, Momma.”
“Cursed,” murmured Momma, reaching to prod me into turning over the bacon. “A house of idiots, determined to make you and me idiots, too. Audrina, I don’t want you to sit in that rocking chair anymore. The only gift your older dead sister had was an extraordinary amount of love and respect for her father, and that’s what he misses. She believed every word he said. Every one of his crackpot notions she took seriously. Think for yourself, don’t let him rule you. Just stay out of the woods—take that warning very seriously.”
“But Momma,” I began uncomfortably, “Arden Lowe lives in the gardener’s cottage in the woods. He’s my only friend. I’d want to die if I couldn’t see him often.”
“I know it’s lonely for you without friends your own age. But when the baby comes, you’ll have a friend. And you can invite Arden over here. And we’ll invite his mother to tea, and we won’t let Aunt Mercy Marie sit on the piano.” I ran to hug her, feeling so happy I could have burst.
“You like him a lot, don’t you?”
“Yes, Momma. He never tells lies. He never breaks a promise. He isn’t so fussy he’s afraid to get his hands dirty, like Papa. We talk about real things, not like the things Papa talks about so often. He told me once he read somewhere that a coward dies many deaths. He says that once he was so petrified he acted like a coward, and he can never forgive himself. Momma, he looks so troubled when he says that.”
Pity filled her beautiful eyes. “Tell Arden that sometimes it’s better to run away and live to fight another day, for there is such a thing as odds too great.”
I wanted to ask what she meant, but she had everything ready now to put on the table, and Papa wasn’t home, and my aunt was upstairs, and Vera … Lord only knew what Vera was doing this minute.
“Set the table, darling, and stop looking worried. I think Arden is a very noble-sounding name, and he’s living up to his name as best he can. Just try to love your father as much as his first daughter did, and he’ll stop forcing you into the chair.”
“Momma, when he comes home, I’m going to tell him to cancel the party.”
“You can’t do that,” she answered dully. “He’s driven into town to pick up party food and fresh flowers. As soon as his business meeting is over, he’ll be rushing back here. You see, your father never had parties when he was a boy, and now he uses any excuse to make up for that lack. Men stay children at heart, Audrina, remember that. No matter how old they become they manage to keep some boy inside them, always wanting what they wanted then, not realizing that when they were boys, they wanted to be manly instead of boyish. It’s strange, isn’t it? When I was a girl I wished we’d never have parties, for when we did have them I wasn’t invited and I had to stay upstairs, dying to come down. I’d hide and watch and feel so unwanted. It wasn’t until I was sixteen
that I danced in my own house.”