Christopher's Diary: Echoes of Dollanganger

I had asked myself many times since my father opened that metal box and handed me the leather-bound book if I should continue to read it. My father’s displeasure about that notwithstanding, I had my own hesitations and cautions now. Kane would laugh at me if I even mentioned the idea that the devil had been in that house and maybe had invaded Christopher’s diary. Yet look at how it was affecting the two of us already.

Ever since I had begun to read the diary, everything I looked at, every laugh I heard coming from my friends, and almost every comment any of them made seemed to reach me through the prism of Foxworth Hall’s attic. In the morning, it was like waking up in two bodies, Cathy’s and mine, and carrying her inside me through the day. Finally, she could be released up in my attic as soon as Kane had begun to read. Was I possessed? Was Kane? How would it end?

Dressing and preparing to go out for dinner took my mind off these bleak and dismal thoughts. Somehow, because we were going to be double-dating with college-age people, this date was extra special. I wanted to look my best, dress up, and wear the jewelry that my father had given me, jewelry that was my mother’s. In the back of my mind was the idea that we should look older, more mature. I would never tell Kane that; he would laugh for sure.

I was going down the stairs when my father arrived. He stood back and watched me descend, as if I was making some dramatic entrance in a scene in a movie or on a stage.

“Excuse me,” he said when I stood before him, “but do you know where my daughter might be?”

“Very funny, Dad. I look all right?”

“All right? That’s not half the way I’d put it.”

I saw his eyes go to my mother’s necklace.

“How proud she’d be,” he said, touching it and then drawing his hand back quickly.

I leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek. “I don’t believe you. Fathers are supposed to exaggerate.”

“I’m not exaggerating. Blow something up bigger than it really is, and it will burst in your face someday.”

“Okay, Dad,” I said with the tone of someone who had heard that a thousand times, probably because I had.

“Where do I have to take you to get you to dress like this for me?” he asked.

“Anywhere but Charley’s.”

“Right. Well, I’ve got to go shower and dress. I’m going out to dinner tonight, too.”

“You are? With whom? Where?” I asked in shotgun fashion.

“The Johnsons again. Tiramisu.”

“Well, you always say that’s the best Italian food in Charlottesville.”

“Right, but I’m a little suspicious about the invitation this time.”

“Why?”

“Something about a good friend of his wife’s mother they want me to meet. Supposedly a professional home decorator, and this is just to—how did he put it?—marry it well to the architecture. Note the word ‘marry.’?”

“Don’t be so suspicious. Maybe that’s all there is to it.”

He smirked. “I wasn’t born yesterday,” he said. “You have a great time.” He hugged me and started for the stairs.

“You, too,” I called after him. He nodded and continued up.

Actually, I was surprised he had agreed to go out. He was relentless about avoiding setup dates. What had suddenly changed him? I didn’t think I had to look too hard for the answer. It surely had started when he had heard Kane and me in the shower. How many times this year had he heard someone say that I would soon be leaving the nest? I had filled out college applications, and it wouldn’t be long before I would begin to get responses. One day, he and I would discuss my choices, but most likely, any of them would involve my leaving home and returning only on holidays.

I knew it was difficult enough for parents of an only child to watch him or her go off to college or to the armed forces or to a job that took him or her out of the house, but at least those parents had each other. I had even heard some say it gave them a second honeymoon. For my father, my leaving would only add the memory of a second pair of footsteps to the ones he heard after my mother’s death. He would sit at the breakfast and dinner table alone all week. He surely had thought about it often, but in his way, he had put it aside or ignored it.

And then here I came along and demonstrated how fast I was maturing, how independent I was becoming, and how quickly I was leaving behind the little girl he knew and becoming the woman I was supposed to be. Not that showering with a boyfriend was exactly that. It just made it clear that I wasn’t thinking only about lollipops and dolls anymore.

The sound of Kane’s horn sent a little shock through me because I was so deep in though

t. He had gotten out of his car and was on his way to my front door when I opened it to step out.

“I see your dad’s home. Shouldn’t I say hello?”