“Now listen to me, Damian,” my aunt went on, “and hear some common sense for a change. You like to pretend that Vera doesn’t exist, yet she does. And as long as she is alive, neither you nor Audrina nor Sylvia is safe. If you allow me to go to her, I can talk some sense into her head. She’s constructing her entire life around you and her revenge. If she comes back, she could destroy Audrina—let me go, please. Give me enough money to make the trip and tide me over until I find a job. I need to be with Vera, and you do owe me something, don’t you? That girl in New York is just as much your flesh and blood as Audrina and Sylvia, and you know it. You said you loved me.”
“It’s over and done with, Ellie,” he said wearily. “There’s more to life than regretting the past. Let’s get on with today, and the here and now.”
“Why did you say you loved me, when you didn’t!” she screamed.
“You had your charms then, Ellie. You were sweeter then.”
“I had hopes then, D
amian,” she said bitterly.
“Ellie, tell me what Vera is threatening to do if she comes back. I’ll kill that girl if she does one more thing to hurt Audrina.”
“Oh, God! You made her what she is. Behind every evil thing Vera did was frustration and pain from feeling rejected by her own father. You know what Vera’s threatening. When first you and Lucietta told me what you planned to do about Audrina, I thought the two of you fools, but still I sat back and said nothing, hoping it would work. I gave up trying to please you long ago, for I don’t know how to subjugate myself to your whims. It’s Audrina I want to save. There was a time when I thought that girl a weakling, but she’s proved she is not. I thought she had no spirit, no fight, but I applaud each time she slaps back at you. So sit there and glare those damn black eyes at me, I don’t give a damn, but tell Audrina the truth—before Vera does.”
“There’s a fortune in this house, and part of it could be yours,” he said to her in a cajoling voice. “But none of it will be yours if ever you or your daughter say one word to Audrina.” The persuasion left his voice and it turned colder. “How could you go anywhere without money, Ellie? Who would want you but me?”
“You don’t want me!” she yelled with so much anger I fell upon my knees and put an eye to the keyhole, just as Vera used to do so many years ago when Momma fought with him. “You use me, Damian, as you use all women.”
Ohhh … there was my prim and prissy aunt pacing my papa’s bedroom, dressed in nothing but a filmy peignoir that had once belonged to my mother. She was naked underneath. To my amazement she looked better without clothes than with them. Her breasts weren’t large and full like Momma’s had been, but smaller, firmer and very high. My aunt’s nipples were wine-colored and very large. How old was she, anyway? For the life of me I couldn’t remember my mother telling me her age, and she’d been vain enough not to want her birth date carved on her tombstone. Many times I’d heard her tell Papa not to let the newspapers publish her age.
It wasn’t the first time I’d realized that no one’s birthday was nearly as important as mine.
My aunt’s long, dark hair was loose and flowing, fanning out as she spun around. I stared at my aunt, wondering why she hadn’t found another man after losing Papa to my mother? As she was now, she seemed very exciting, and challenging, especially if I could judge from the way Papa’s eyes lit up even as he yelled at her and tried to talk her out of going to New York.
Suddenly he lunged, grabbed her by her waist and dragged her kicking and fighting onto his lap. She struck at him time and again as he laughed and ducked and then managed to crush his lips down on hers. All the fight went out of her then as her arms hungrily embraced him, and she held his head to hers, moaning as his lips began to explore all the crevices and hills of her body. I watched, shocked, as he kissed her breasts while his hand fondled beneath her peignoir.
“You’re wrong, Ellie,” he muttered, his face flushed with passion as he stood and carried her to his bed. “I do love you in my own way. Just as I loved Lucky in a very special way. It’s not my fault if I can’t keep love after the object of it is dead. I have to go on, don’t I? And if you think I love myself more than I love anyone else, then I haven’t tried to deceive you, have I? At least respect me for being honest, if you can’t respect me for anything else.”
Now I knew for a certainty, with no more guilty speculating, just who the man was my mother had stolen from her half-sister. I also knew definitely my father was also Vera’s father. The more I thought about it, the more uncomfortable I became about my mother. Had she deliberately stolen her older sister’s lover?
Standing, I left them on the bed. Now my aunt and my father were lovers again. Strangely, after more hours of thought, I wasn’t as shocked as once I would have been, or as distressed. Perhaps fate did work in mysterious ways to see that all things worked out equally. It also occurred to me that perhaps the two of them might have been lovers even when my mother was alive—right in this house, under her own roof. Certainly there were enough unused rooms that would have given them the place and opportunity. My memories went flittering back to “teatimes” when Aunt Mercy Marie’s photograph was on the piano, and in my head the echoes of all the harsh words exchanged between my mother and her sister resounded. Not once had my aunt showed one indication that she was anything but jealous of my mother. No, I decided, Aunt Ellsbeth had too much respect for herself, and scorn for Papa than to have had a clandestine affair with the man who’d rejected her once when Lucietta Lana Whitefern was still alive.
After I labeled their relationship as Papa’s need and my aunt’s reward, I put away their secret and determined never to let them know I knew. It was a long time before my aunt ever mentioned Vera again.
The Christmas I was seventeen, Arden put an engagement ring on my finger, then pulled me into his arms. “Now you can stop fearing any year with a nine. When you are nineteen, you’ll be my wife and I’ll take care to see that nothing bad ever happens to you.”
That June I graduated from high school. I still wore the engagement ring Arden had given me around my neck on the chain that used to suspend my little birthstone ring. I began to notice a steady change in my aunt, who didn’t seem as contented as before. I’d never thought of her as happy until I faced her unhappiness. She seldom went anywhere. Other women her age belonged to bridge clubs and attended coffee klatches, but my aunt didn’t have a single friend. What clothes she wore at home were old, and the new ones she wore to go out were chosen by Papa, just as he often selected my best clothes. She didn’t have one hobby other than knitting as she watched those everlasting soap operas. She had me, she had Sylvia, and Papa, and that eternal cooking and cleaning—and the reward of having a few hours to sit before her choice of new color TV sets. And I’d never realized that she needed or deserved more.
She didn’t complain. There were no obvious physical symptoms to make me think she was ill, but something had changed. She often paused in her work to stare into space. She began to read the Bible, as if looking for solace. She took long hikes alone, avoiding the woods and sticking to the shores of the river. Sometimes I walked beside her, neither of us speaking much. She’d stop to stare down at the ground with undue interest. She gazed up into the trees and at the sky with the same kind of intense curiosity, as if she’d never taken notice of nature before and it was brand new to her. She stared at the squirrels that infested all our impressive old trees. I told her I was sure they had been here when Columbus set sail from Spain, and my aunt had scoffed and told me I was unduly romantic like my mother. Practicality was my aunt’s virtue. Yet, if she hadn’t won Papa, why hadn’t she set her sights on another man? In no way would my “unrealistic and romantic” mother have remained unmarried all her life.
But how could I say any of this when I was just beginning to understand my aunt? And with the understanding came the love that had been lacking in our relationship before. I wanted to talk to her, but it was difficult to communicate with a woman who’d never learned the art of conversation. One day she surprised me. “Do you love that young man?”
“Arden? Oh, yes, of course I do. He makes me feel so safe, and beautiful, too. He tells me all the time how wonderful I am, and how much he loves me.” My own words gave me pause—it was like I was letting Arden convince me I had to love him because he loved me.
Frowning, my aunt glanced my way briefly, then looked away. “I hope you’ll always feel that way about him. People change, Audrina. He’ll change. You’ll change. You’ll see each other differently because of new perspectives. You may not love him at twenty as much as you do at eighteen. You’re a beautiful young woman and could pick from the best the world has to offer. But you have even more, something far better than beauty, for that won’t last. You think it will, pray that it will, but it goes sooner or later. The more beauty you have the worse it hurts when it’s gone. In one thing your father is right—you are special.”
“No, I’m not.” My head bowed in emba
rrassment. “I have no special gifts. My dreams are only ordinary.”
“Oh, that,” she said as if she’d known all along. “What difference does it make how you achieve your goals? At least your father leaves you alone now at nights, and you no longer scream out. I’ve always considered him a monster for forcing you into that room when you didn’t want to go there—but that’s beside the point. Without you, Damian wouldn’t have fared so well, so don’t let him take credit for all his good fortunes. You motivate him, and give him reason for accumulating wealth. To travel life’s road alone isn’t easy, and no one knows that better than I. Damian could never have survived your mother’s death without you. Men are strange creatures, Audrina, remember that. So stand up for your rights and demand a college education. Don’t let him talk you out of what you want. He’ll try to keep you from marrying, from ever leaving him—don’t let him succeed in chasing Arden away.”
“He couldn’t do that, or else Arden would have disappeared a long time ago. I know Papa’s tried. Arden’s told me he’s tried to make him stay away from me.”
“All right, then. But when you see your chance to escape, seize the opportunity and flee. You don’t need to live near those woods, and in that house filled with all its unhappy memories. Why, it would even be better if you moved into that cottage with his poor crippled mother …”
I gasped. “You know about Billie? I didn’t think anyone knew.”