Whitefern (Audrina 2)

“I can’t even imagine how I would explain it,” he said.

He couldn’t have had a better co-conspirator than Mrs. Matthews. I had to admit that. She’d had someone she trusted create the girdle-like apparatus I wore under my clothes. It had a large zippered pocket into which we stuffed large wads of wool that Arden brought home. As Sylvia expanded, so did I. Mrs. Matthews took great pains to be sure we were the same size.

At first, I felt terribly foolish wearing it. Early on, it was almost as burdensome as a real pregnancy. I’d forget and reach for something or bend down to pick something up and practically topple. I questioned Arden and Mrs. Matthews about it, pointing out that no other part of me reflected my simulated pregnancy.

“That’s why you should eat on the side,” Arden suggested. “Don’t follow Mrs. Matthews’s diet designed for Sylvia. Gain some weight.”

“That would work,” Mrs. Matthews seconded.

“What? I don’t want to gain unnecessary weight.”

“It’s not unnecessary,” Arden said. “You just made a good point about your appearance. We want people to believe you’re pregnant, don’t we?”

“But—”

“I’ll buy some high-calorie foods for you to eat,” Mrs. Matthews said, nodding. “You know, cakes and cookies and ice cream.”

“Is that a healthy thing to do?” I asked. “Force myself to gain weight?”

She shrugged. “You’ll go on a diet as soon as Sylvia gives birth. It will make sense then that you lose weight, although I must say, I’ve known many mothers who didn’t. There are women, you know, who won’t have children because they are afraid they will lose their precious beautiful figures.”

She smiled at Arden, who smiled back as if they shared her medical histories and he knew exactly the women to whom she was referring.

What if they didn’t have a beautiful figure to begin with, like you? I wanted to fire back. She could be so infuriating sometimes—actually, most of the time. The part I was playing to enable Arden’s plan to work sometimes made me feel foolish, but of course I understood why we were doing it. When I waddled around and sympathized with Sylvia, who really was beginning to feel the weight and slow down, complaining about her lower back pain, with me echoing about mine, I could see Arden and Mrs. Matthews off to the side watching us, smiling and whispering something that made the two of them laugh.

Sylvia was starting her seventh month, and Mrs. Matthews really began to restrict her activities. Arden had brought down her easel and her art supplies, but she wasn’t doing much with them now. The new sheet on her easel remained untouched.

“Why don’t you draw something new?” I asked her finally.

She looked at the easel and shook her head. “Papa wanted me to do my art in the cupola, Audrina. I need to be in the cupola.”

I had the feeling she was about to tell me that it was only there that he could tell her what to draw and when to draw it. Mrs. Matthews came around just then, and I decided not to discuss it. Without her artwork, however, Sylvia’s days were longer, and she looked so lost. When she just naturally, out of habit and routine, began to clean the kitchen or attempt to vacuum the carpets, Mrs. Matthews would lunge at her and take away dust cloths and cleaning sprays and practically tear the vacuum cleaner handle out of her hands, chastising her for disobeying orders.

She complained to me. “I told you she isn’t to do these things now. I can’t be following her around every moment of the day. You’re supposed to be part of this.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “She’s bored.”

“Don’t you have any jigsaw puzzles? It might take her months to finish one, and by then, she could go back to being your maid.”

“She’s not my maid; she’s never been our maid. This is her house, too,” I snapped back. “She takes pride in what it looks like.”

Mrs. Matthews looked at me without any sign of emotion. Any complaints directed at her were like water off a duck’s back. After all, Arden had put us in a situation where even the thought of firing her was impossible.

When I was a little girl, Papa had impressed on me how important it was to keep our secrets. “When you trust someone with a secret, Audrina,” he had said, “you make them your master. They can always threaten you with revealing it. Be careful about that.”

Of course, he’d been talking about all the secrets involving me, but it was still very true now.

“I don’t want you lifting things or pushing things now, Sylvia,” Mrs. Matthews told her. Her angry tone brought tears to my sister’s eyes, so I had to intercede quickly and explain that I couldn’t do those things, either.

Mrs. Matthews apparently thought housework was beneath her. She wouldn’t even wash a glass, much less a dish. I was permitted to do that, but only behind Sylvia’s back. The house was beginning to run away with itself. Half the time, we weren’t even making the beds.

I complained about it to Arden, but he said, “For a while, we’ll have to put up with it, Audrina. All of us have to make sacrifices. We certainly can’t hire a temporary maid and have some stranger in our home witnessing all this.”

“I’d be embarrassed to have anyone see how far behind we are with the upkeep of Whitefern.”

“It’ll be fine,” he insisted. “I have no intention of having guests until this is over. Just leave it all be.”

It was easy for him to say that. He wasn’t haunted day and night by images of Aunt Ellsbeth outraged at how Whitefern was being treated. She would explode over muddy feet on a carpet or food left on a counter in the kitchen, and if our beds weren’t made, she would have Vera and I make them twice just to teach us that we should care more.