She read the note and looked at me. She understood what I meant, how close Cathy was to breaking and how difficult that would make our continuing to cooperate with her efforts to win back her father’s approval. The next time she came, she had the box. She had cleverly slipped in a card with the words “From Christopher” on it.
I was right about the change it would bring. I put up the barre, and Cathy went at her ballet practice, reviving all she had been taught. The twins would sit and watch her for hours, fascinated with her exercises. I had to admit that I had never realized just how graceful and beautiful Cathy was until I saw her dancing in the attic. How ironic. It took this dreadful situation to get me really to look at her and think of her as being on the verge of some greatness. She was blossoming right before my eyes.
Once she caught me watching her as intently as the twins were, and she suddenly turned and floated across the floor. That’s the way it seemed. She wanted me to dance with her. I thought I would escape by saying I was interested only in the waltz, but she found the right records and had me out there. I protested about my own clumsiness, but I had become a project for her. She would teach me every dance she could, even rock and roll.
“It’s not me,” I told her. “I can’t be someone I’m not.”
I saw how disappointed she was, but I couldn’t, even up here. I distracted her by suggesting that we work on our attic garden and change the leaves we had created to fall leaves. The twins were into it, and we spent hours changing the season as if we had become nature itself and just as powerful. Poof, there was yellow and brown and red, just like right outside the mansion.
For a while, I had managed to keep them all content again. The whining and complaints were fewer and fewer. I knew that as long as Cathy was with me, helping, managing the twins, we could last until Momma succeeded. But I also knew that Cathy craved relationships. She needed friends far more than I did. She was naturally full of questions and plans, dreams and fantasies. Ordinarily, I would ignore all that. I hated pretending, but it was clear she desperately needed it. So for hours at a time, I would lie beside her on our crummy mattress and talk about our futures. Somehow the conversation always ended up on the topic of who would be the right man for her and the right woman for me.
It was clear from these conversations that Cathy did not respect our mother anymore. She accused of her being stupid and selfish, and I had to defend her continually. I could see that no matter what I said, Cathy held on to her feelings. She was still raging inside, her anger only taking a short nap and ready to leap up at a moment’s notice.
Even though we were in a sort of limbo, which I feared because I could see the twins losing interest in so many things like even getting outside, I realized we were slipping into a darker and darker place. The withering of the real flowers frightened me, because I dreamed of us withering, too. Cathy sensed it. It was more her idea than mine for us to drag one of the old mattresses to the eastern windows so we could bathe in some sunlight. “Don’t all living things need it?” she asked. I didn’t want to mention those creatures that lived in total darkness, because she would say that was exactly what we were becoming. Instead, I dragged the mattress there.
Cathy asked me if it wouldn’t be better for us to lie naked in the sunlight, “so more of our bodies benefit.” We were never afraid of being naked in front of each other, but we were older now, changes coming faster than even I anticipated. I didn’t want to get into all that, so I agreed, and we all got naked.
I tried not to look at the changes in Cathy’s body, her thickening pubic hair, her budding breasts, the curve in her buttocks and the smoothness of her legs, some of the muscularity and shape coming from her dedicated ballet practice. She was looking at me now, too, but I resisted bringing my hands down to cover myself. I was afraid of that part of me acting on its own.
Suddenly, the twins were asking me questions about our sexual differences. Never was Cathy more interested in my clumsy attempts to make it all seem inconsequential. She wanted to know more about the male sexual experience, and I tried to change the subject, but I could see this was only the beginning.
Momma, I thought, please get us out of here soon.
I had more trouble than ever trying to fall asleep after reading this. The interest Cathy had in sex mirrored my own. I was closer than ever to realizing it fully with Kane. I would be lying if I said I hadn’t fantasized about it repeatedly during the last few weeks, especially now.
In a dream, I saw myself lying in the Foxworth attic, but instead of being naked next to Christopher, I was lying beside Kane. In this dream, we had decided to do that and see how long we could resist touching each other. We were both closing our eyes, but I was sure his heart was pounding as hard and fast as mine. Every once in a while, one of us would open our eyes and look at the other. Finally, we did so at the same time. He smiled.
“Kristin,” he whispered, and began by reaching for my hand. I gave him mine, and we held each other for a long moment. He turned toward me, and I turned toward him. He edged closer, and we kissed, only our lips touching. We both pulled back. “I’m dying inside,” he whispered.
“Don’t die,” I said, and he smiled and moved closer now, his legs against mine, his stomach touching mine, his lips grazing softly over my face, my neck, and my breasts. I could feel his growing excitement building between my legs, legs that were relaxing too quickly. The woman inside me was pushing to be fulfilled. I was growing more helpless, but it was a helplessness I welcomed. “Oh, Kane, we’ve got to be careful,” I said.
“I know. I’m ready,” he said. He was prepared. My last reason to resist dropped away. I was welcoming him, drawing him into me. We were sealing our lips together, clinging to each other as if we were afraid we would fall off the earth.
I think I actually cried out in my sleep. I awoke with my heart pounding and listened for a moment, anticipating my father coming to see what was wrong. A door opened and closed, but then the house was silent. I probably had imagined it, I told myself, and relaxed again. I was almost afraid to close my eyes. My body was like a bow pulled back, ready to be released. It was a struggle, but somehow sleep finally seeped in, slipping under my lids and soaking me in a repose so deep it took more than a splash or two of sunlight coming through my windows to waken me.
Since I had the day off from school because of teacher meetings, my father didn’t come to the door, but I knew he was up already, working on breakfast downstairs. I could hear him moving about. I thought a moment, remembered that Uncle Tommy was coming today, and got up quickly to dress and get downstairs.
“I think when girls get older, they sleep longer in the morning,” my father said as he scrambled eggs. No one made them tastier. He turned to me. “Is that because they have longer dreams or what?”
“It’s ‘or what,’?” I said, and he laughed.
I looked at the table. There were three settings.
“Who else is coming to breakfast?”
“Tommy called. He should be here any moment. He surprised us. He flew in last night, stayed at the airport hotel, and got up early. I think he just wants a good breakfast for a change,” my father said.
“You were always a cook, weren’t you, Dad?”
“My father couldn’t get over it. He was an old-fashioned guy. I did all the manly things he expected me to do, worked with him, fixed things around the house, joined different sports teams, whatever he had done at my age, but I did enjoy being in the kitchen with my mother. She had a lot of little tricks passed down to her, and I never forgot them. You’re really going to be eating your grandmother’s eggs today,” he said.
The doorbell sounded. I practically flew to answer it.
“I must be at the wrong house,” Uncle Tommy said when I opened the door. “The Kristin Masterwood I remember was an ugly duckling.” He laughed and scooped me up in his arms.
“Hi, Uncle Tommy!” I cried after he kissed my cheek and I kissed his.
He stepped back a