“But wasn’t that what Christopher really wanted to do at that moment? He was avoiding being anything like romantic with his sister, right? I think doctors hide behind their facts in order not to get too emotional over a patient. It’s a technique Christopher’s already mastered because of the circumstances. That was what he wanted, right?”
Suddenly, we were like two drama students discussing a scene we had just seen performed. It was like someone throwing a pail of cold water over me. “I’m sure,” I said, then turned away and began to dress.
He watched me for a moment and then began to dress, too. I thought he would protest. Now that we were moving away from what had been a very passionate few moments, I was surprised he had given up so easily, surprised and maybe a little disappointed that the heat of passion had cooled in him.
Perhaps this was exactly what had occurred between Christopher and Cathy at that moment. We were too loyal to the attic world we had decided to enter and respect. If it didn’t happen there and then, it wouldn’t happen here and now.
“I gotta go,” he said. “I have to do something before we have dinner with my sister and her boyfriend later.”
“Oh?”
“I’ve got to see my father at the Mercedes dealership. He wants me to start working weekends there. Until now, I’ve done a good job of avoiding it.”
“How are you going to get out of it now, assuming you still want to?”
“Oh, I want to. I don’t want to have anything to do with his dealerships, and we go around and around about it at least once a week. I’m going to claim that schoolwork demands my free time. I’m failing math.”
“But you’re not.”
“I deliberately failed two important tests this quarter. I have the exams in the car to show him. I can’t fail math and graduate. Solution? Being tutored by the girl who’s mostly likely to be valedictorian.”
“He’s going to believe that?”
“Maybe he won’t believe it, but he’ll put up with it. He has enough grief coming from my mother and her complaints about Darlena this week.”
We rearranged the attic, and he put his wig and my scarf in the same trunk before leaving. I followed him down to the front door, thinking more about what he had said. These days, we were thinking more about Cathy and Christopher than about ourselves. I was afraid of losing a grip on reality.
“What do you want to do, to be, Kane, if you don’t want to take over your father’s car dealership empire?” I asked him before he stepped out.
He smiled. “Empire? Yeah, that’s what it is. I don’t particularly feel like anyone’s emperor, though. Parents often think that if they’ve built something, you should be grateful and become part of it, but what about building something yourself, for yourself?”
“So what do you want to build for yourself?”
I could easily predict I’d get that Kane Hill shrug and smile. “I don’t know.” He stopped smiling. “Maybe I should think seriously about becoming a doctor,” he said. “Like Christopher.”
I closed my mouth when he leaned in to kiss me. “You’re not serious enough for that,” I said.
He shrugged. “Maybe I’ll get serious. I’ll return about six thirty, okay? We’ll meet them at the restaurant.” He started for his car. “Let me know what you want to do about going to Tina’s party afterward. We’ll do whatever you want,” he called back before he got into his car.
After he left, I thought about what I would do with the rest of my day and decided to go pay my father a visit at the site. We hadn’t spent that much time together this week. Maybe it was also because Kane had gone off to spend time with his father, too, and that reminded me that I should spend time with mine. I put myself together quickly and headed for the Foxworth property.
The deeper we got into the diary, the more intense were my feelings of tension whenever I approached the property now. It was as if I was returning to a place where I really had spent a great deal of time, unhappily and tragically. Something in me constricted in fear and disgust with every mile I drew closer. Even in broad daylight, I anticipated seeing ghosts, hearing voices, crying, and pleas for freedom.
It was my father who put the idea into my head that places, especially houses, took on the identities of those who lived there. “After all,” he’d said, “wasn’t that a prime reason why whoever bought someone else’s home wanted to redo so much of it? It’s like not wanting to wear someone else’s clothes. Lucky for guys like me who rip down the old and rebuild the new.”
How many people in construction thought so deeply about their work as my father did? No wonder he had even deeper feelings about Foxworth Hall.
* * *
When I got up there, I realized it was a little warmer than it had been. It was mostly sunny, with just a slight breeze from the south. I knew my father wanted to get as much of the exterior work done as possible before winter came rushing in full-blown on what he called “the skirts of the dropping jet stream.” I’d told him that from the way he could predict the weather, he could have just as easily been a farmer. “When I retire, that’s what I’ll do,” he’d replied.
I was surprised to see just how far along he and his team had gotten with the construction of the new house. Everything unusable from the restored Foxworth Hall had been hauled away. The part of the old foundation that was visible and utilized was freshly painted with an off-white waterproof material. The framing of the two stories was completed, with the upstairs floor laid. It was easy to envision it now even without having seen the plans.
Behind it and to the right, two bulldozers continued to expand the grounds by driving out the overgrowth and cutting back the forest of birch, maple, and oak saplings. I could see that the plans for this new property created what was going to be an even larger and more elaborate landscaping than what had been done for the development of the original and the restored Foxworth Hall. The bulldozers had already moved and flattened much of the ground. Footings for fountains and the setting of tile or cement pathways was to follow. The scent of fresh earth permeated the air. What had once been more like a rotting corpse of a property now had the look of something fresh and new, full of promise and potential beauty.
My father and Todd were standing back and observing the crew constructing the pool, which looked like it would be at least as long and as wide as the one in our school. Todd had his arms folded across his chest the way my father had his. If he could, he’d walk in my father’s footsteps all day, I thought. He saw me first and nudged my father to turn my way as I drove up and parked. They both watched me approach.