Petals on the Wind (Dollanganger 2)

Then I was crying. Crying for Chris, for Carrie who didn't grow and for Cory who was by now, probably, only bones in his grave.

I turned over to grope for Carrie, reaching to draw her into my arms. But Carrie was in a private school for girls, ten miles outside the city limits. Chris was thirty miles away.

It began to rain hard. The staccato beats on the roof overhead were military drums to take me into dreams and back to exactly where I didn't want to go. I was dumped down in a locked room cluttered with toys and games and massive, dark furniture, and pictures of hell on the walls. I sat in an old wooden rocker, half coming apart, and on my lap I held a ghostly, small brother who called me Momma, and on and on we rocked, and the floorboards creaked, and the wind blew, and the rain pelted down, and below us, around us, above us, the enormous house of countless rooms was waiting to eat us up.

I hated the rain so close above my head, like it used to be when we were upstairs. How much worse our lives had been when it rained, and the room was damp and chill, and in the attic there was nothing but miserable gloom and dead faces that lined the wall. Bands like the grandmother's gray iron came to tighten about my head, smothering my thoughts, making me confused and terrified.

Unable to sleep, I left the bed and slipped on a filmy negligee. For some curious reason I stole to Paul's bedroom and cautiously eased open his closed door. The alarm clock on his nightstand read two o'clock-- and still he wasn't home! Nobody in the house but Henny who was so far, far away--way at the other end of the house in her room adjacent to the kitchen.

I shook my head and stared again at Paul's smoothly made bed. Oh, Chris was crazy to want to be a doctor! He'd never have a full night's rest. And it was raining. Accidents happened so often on rainy nights. What if Paul should be killed? What would we do then! Paul,

Paul, I screamed to myself as I raced toward the stairs and flew down them, then sped on to where I could peer out the French windows in the living room. I hoped to see a white car parked in the drive, or turning into the drive. God, I prayed, don't let him have an accident! Please, please--don't take him like you took Daddy!

"Cathy, why aren't you in bed?"

I whirled about. There was Paul sitting comfortably in his favorite chair, puffing on a cigarette in the dark. There was just enough light to see he wore the red robe we'd given him for Christmas. I was

so overwhelmed with relief to see him safe and not spread out dead on a morgue slab. Morbid thoughts. Daddy, I can barely remember how you looked, or how your voice sounded, and the special smell of you has faded away.

"Is something wrong, Catherine?"

Wrong? Why did he call me Catherine at night when we were alone, and only Cathy during the day? Everything was wrong! The Greenglenna newspapers and the Virginia one I'd subscribed to and had delivered to my ballet school both told stories of how Mrs. Bartholomew Winslow would make her second "winter" home in Greenglenna. Extensive renovation was being done so her husband's home would be as it was when it was new. Only the best for my mother! For some reason I couldn't fathom I lit into Paul like a shrew. "How long have you been home?" I demanded sharply. "I've been upstairs worrying about you so much I can't sleep! And here you were, all the time! You missed your dinner; you missed last night's dinner; you were supposed to take me out to a movie last night and you forgot all about it! I finished my homework early, dressed in my best clothes and sat around waiting for you to show up, and you forgot it! Why do you let your patients make so many demands on your time so you don't have a life of your own?"

For a long time he didn't answer. Then when my lips parted to speak again, he said in a mild tone, "You really do sound upset. I guess the only excuse I can offer is to say I'm a doctor, and a doctor's time is never his own. I'm sorry I forgot about the movie. I apologize for not calling and telling you there was an emergency and I couldn't leave."

"Forget--how could you forget? Yesterday you forgot to bring the things I had on my list, so after I waited for hours on end for you to come home I sat around thinking you might come home and bring me the shampoo I wanted, but you didn't!"

"I'm sorry again. Sometimes I have things on my mind other than movies and the cosmetics you need." "Are you being sarcastic?"

"I am trying to control my temper. It would be nice if you could control yours."

"I'm not mad!" I shouted. He was so like Momma, so much in control, so poised, when I never was! He didn't care. That's why he could sit there and look at me like that! He didn't really care if he made promises and broke them--like her! I ran forward as if to strike him, but he caught my fists and stared up at me in utter surprise. "Would you hit me, Catherine? Does missing a movie mean so much to you that you can't understand how I could forget? Now say you're sorry for screaming at me, as I said I was sorry for disappointing you."

What tortured me was more than mere disappointment! Nowhere was there anyone I could depend on--only Chris who was forbidden to me. Only Chris who would never forget anything I needed or wanted.

I shuddered. Oh, what kind of person was I? Was I so like Momma I had to have what I wanted, when I wanted, no matter what the cost to others? Was I going to make Paul pay for what she'd done? None of it was his fault. "Paul, I am sorry I yelled at you. I do understand."

"You must be very tired. Perhaps you take your ballet classes too seriously. Maybe you should let up a little."

How could I tell him I couldn't let up? I had to be the best, and to be the best at anything meant hours and hours of work. I fully intended to give up all the pastimes other girls my age enjoyed. I didn't want a boyfriend who wasn't a dancer. I didn't want any girlfriends who didn't dance. I didn't want anything to come between me and my goal, and yet, and yet .. . sitting there, looking up at me, was a man who said he needed me, and who was hurt by the hateful way I'd acted.

"I read about my mother today," I said lamely, "and a house she's having remodeled and redecorated. She always gets what she wants. I never get anything. So I act ugly to you and forget all that you've done." I backed off a few feet, aching with the shame I felt. "How long have you been home?"

"Since eleven-thirty," he answered. "I ate the salad and the steak Henny left for me in the warming oven. But I don't sleep well when I'm exceptionally tired. And I don't like the sound of the rain on the roof."

"Because the rain shuts you off and makes you feel lonely?"

He half-smiled. "Yeah, something like that. How did you know?"

How he felt was all over his face as dim as it was in that big room. He was thinking of her, his Julia, his dead wife. Always he looked sad when Julia was on his mind. I approached his chair and impulsively reached out to touch his cheek. "Why do you have to smoke? How can you tell your patients to quit the habit and keep on smoking yourself?"

"How do you know what I tell my patients?" he asked in that soft voice, in a way that tingled my spine. Nervously I laughed, telling him he didn't always close his office door tight, and if I happened to be in the back hail, sometimes, despite my will, I couldn't help overhearing a few things. He told me to go to bed and stop hanging around in the back hall where I didn't belong--and he'd smoke if he wanted to smoke.

"Sometimes you act like a wife, asking such questions, getting angry at me for forgetting to stop at the drugstore for you. Are you sure you didn't desperately need that shampoo?"

Now he had me feeling a fool, and again I was angry. "I only asked you to get those things because you pass by a discount store where everything is cheaper! I was just trying to save money! From now on I'll never ask you to pick up anything I need! When you invite me to dinner in a restaurant, or to a movie, I'll be prepared to be disappointed, and that way I won't be disappointed. I might as well get used to expecting the worst from everyone."

"Catherine! You can hate me if that's what you want, make me pay for everything you have suffered, and then, perhaps, you can go to sleep at night and not toss and turn and cry out in your sleep, and call for your mother like a child of three."