In Apple's stall, which was my special place for reading Malcolm's journal, I fell on the hay and tried to read the ten pages a day John Amos had assigned me. Sometimes I hid the book under the hay, sometimes I wore it next to my skin. As I began to read I chewed on a piece of the hay, finding my place marked with one of Momma's little leather
bookmarks:
I remember so well the day when I was twentyeight and came home to find my widowered father had finally remarried. I stared at his bride, whom I later found out was only sixteen. I 246 knew immediately a girl so young and beautiful had married him only for his money.
My own wife, Olivia, had never been what anyone would call a beauty, but she'd had some appealing aspects when I married her, and her father was very wealthy. Suddenly I found out after she'd borne me two sons, she had no appeal for me whatsoever. She seemed so grim compared to Alicia, my stepmother of sixteen .
I'd read this mushy love-junk before. I'd lost my place, gosh darn it. But I had a way of flipping through the book and reading here and there, especially when boring stuff like kissing came into Malcolm's story. It seemed so odd, as much as he hated women, that he'd want to kiss them.
Now, here it was, where I'd left off.
Alicia was giving birth to her first child, whom I hoped desperately would be a girl. But no, it had to be another son to compete with me for my father's fortune. I remember standing and looking at her, and the baby she snuggled at her side in the big swan bed, and I hated them both.
I said to her when she smiled up at me innocently, and so proud of her son, as if I'd welcome him as much as my father did, "My dear stepmother, your son will never live long enough to inherit your husband's fortune, for I am alive to prevent that."
She annoyed me then so much I could have slapped her beautiful, cunning face. "I don't want your father's money, Malcolm. My son won't want it either. My son will earn his way, not inherit what money other men have made. I'll teach my son the true values in life--the values you know nothing about."
Wonder what she'd been talking about? What were values anyway?--sa
le prices? I turned my attention to Malcolm's journal again. He had skipped fifteen years before he wrote again.
My daughter, Corrine, grew more and more like the mother who had abandoned me when I was only five.
I saw her changing, beginning to develop into a woman, and I'd find myself staring at her young budding breasts that would soon entice some man. Once she saw me staring there and blushed. I liked that--at least she was modest. "Corrine, promise that you will never marry and leave your father when he's old and sick. Swear to me you won't leave me ever."
Her face grew very pale, as if she feared I might send her back into the attic if she refused my simple request. "All my fortune, Corrine, if you promise--every cent I will leave to you if you never leave me."
"But, Father," she said, inclining her head and looking miserable, "I want to get married and have babies."
She swore she loved me, but in her eyes I could see she'd leave me at the first opportunity.
I'd see to it she had no boys or men in her life. She'd attend a school for girls only, a strict religious school that would allow no dating.
I closed the book and headed home. To my way of thinking Malcolm should never have married Olivia and had any children--but then, as I thought about it more, I would never have known my grandmother.
And even though she was a liar and had betrayed me, still I wanted to love and trust her again.
Another day I was in the barn reading about Malcolm when he was fifty. He wasn't so regular now about writing in his journal.
There's something sinful going on between that younger half brother of mine and my daughter. I've done what I can to catch them touching, or looking at each other in a suggestive way, but they are both very clever. Olivia tells me my fears are groundless, that Corrine could never feel anything for her half uncle, but then, Olivia is just another woman, true to her devious sex. Damn the day she talked me into taking that boy into our home. It was a mistake, perhaps the most grave mistake of my life.
So, even Malcolm made a few mistakes, but only with those people who were members of his family. Why was it he couldn't stand for his sons to be musicians?--for his daughter to marry? If I'd been Malcolm, I'd have been glad to get rid of her, just like I wished day after day that Cindy would disappear.
I hurled Malcolm's journal to the floor and kicked hay over it, then stomped toward the mansion, wanting Malcolm to write about power, and how to get it, and money, and how to earn it, and influence, and how to demand it. All he did was write about how miserable his two sons, his wife and his daughter made him, to say nothing of that young half brother who liked Corrine.
"Hello, darling!" cried my grandmother when I limped into her parlor. "Where've you been? How's your mother's knee?"
"Bad," I said. "Doctors say Momma will never dance again."
"Oh," she sighed. "How dreadful. I'm so sorry."
"I'm glad she won't dance again," I assured her. "She and Daddy can't even waltz anymore, and they used to do a lot of that in the living room which they don't want us to use."
She looked so sad. Why should see look so sad? "Grandmother, my momma don't like you."
"You should watch your grammar, Bart," she choked as she wiped away her tears. "You should say, she doesn't like you--and how can you say that, when she doesn't know I'm here?"
"Sometimes you sound like her."