Then I was sorry. “Oh, Arden, isn’t it silly of me to be scared when I’ve wondered what was taking you so long.” Why had I said that? It sounded like something Vera would say, and all along I’d been scared to death.
“Are you going to be a pushover? My mother was like that. I was hoping you’d be different, and that would prove to me that what we have now might last forever. Maybe Mom hasn’t told you, but she’s been married more than once. She was only seventeen the first time, and it was over in a few months. My father was her third husband, and, so she claims, her best. Sometimes I think she says that just to make me feel good about him.”
Three times? “I’m no pushover,” I said quickly. “It’s just that I love you. Puppy love, Aunt Ellsbeth tells me. I never tell her anything. She just looks at me and says it’s more than just being outside so much that makes my eyes shine and my skin glow. Even Papa says I never looked healthier or happier. But I think it’s you, and I think it’s because I’ve learned to love Sylvia so much. And she loves me, too, Arden. When I’m not around she crouches in a dim corner as if she doesn’t want anyone to notice her. I think she’s terrified of Aunt Ellsbeth. Then when I come into the room, she comes over to me and she tugs on my hand, or on the hem of my skirt, and her small face tilts backward … and she makes me the center of her life.”
He looked uncomfortable, refusing to turn and look at Sylvia, who was always with me—if not in sight, somewhere close by. She made him uneasy, yet he never said this. I think she embarrassed him with her odors, her messy habits, her inability to talk or focus her eyes.
Not too far away Sylvia crawled on the ground, following a long string of ants to their hole in the ground.
“Stop looking at Sylvia looking at the ants,” he teased, “and look at me.” Playfully he slapped at me when I refused to look at him. I shoved him away, and he shoved back, and then we both fell on the ground and wrestled around before his arms encircled me and we were soulfully staring into the eyes of the other. “I do love you,” he whispered hoarsely. “I know I’m too young to feel this way, but all my life I’ve been hoping it would be like this, while I’m young, with the kind of girl you are—special, clean, decent.”
My heart began its nervous throbbing as his amber eyes traveled slowly downward from my face to my neck, my bosom, my waist. Then he was looking to a lower place that made me blush. Staring into my eyes, and even looking at my breasts had made me feel beloved and beautiful, but to look there sent shivers of recognition darting through my memory, stirring up the nightmares of the rocking chair and all that had been done to the First Audrina, who had died because all three of those boys had looked there, despite her frantic efforts to kick them away. Shame filled me. Quickly I moved my leg to a concealing position. What I did made Arden blush.
“Don’t be ashamed of being a girl, Audrina,” he whispered with his head turned away. All of a sudden I began to cry. She’s made me ashamed. All my life I’d been tortured because of her. I hated her! I wished she’d never been born, and then maybe I’d feel right and natural, instead of wrong and unnatural.
Still I kept on shivering, even more violently. What feet were walking on my grave? Hers?
“I’m going home now,” I said stiffly, getting up to brush off my slacks.
“You’re angry with me.”
“No, I’m not.”
“It’s half an hour before twilight. Plenty of time before dark.”
“I’ll make up for it tomorrow.” I ran for Sylvia and seized her small hand, pulling her to her feet before I turned to smile weakly at Arden. “Just stand where you are and don’t walk us to the edge of the woods. If anything bad happens, I’ll call for you. I need to do this, Arden.”
The sun was in his eyes, preventing me from reading his expression. “Call out when you reach your lawn to let me know you’re all right.”
“Arden, even if sometimes I act strange, and I pull away and tremble, don’t pull away from me. Without you I wouldn’t know how to get through the woods, or the days.” Embarrassed, I whirled around and tried to run. But Sylvia didn’t know how to run. She stumbled on tree roots, tripped on sticks, fell over her own feet, and soon I had her in my arms. She was six years old now and getting heavy. The crystal prisms she carried in her pockets everywhere she went made her heavier. Soon I put her down and slowed my hurrying feet. Home before dark, I kept saying to myself. Home before it rained.
“I’m here, Arden!” I called. “Safe in our own yard.”
“Go inside … and good night. If you dream, dream of me.”
His voice from the woods sounded very close, making me smile sadly. He’d followed us, as if he knew what had happened to the First Audrina and wanted to save me from her fate.
Arden had been in college one year when I had my sixteenth birthday. He made top grades, but it was a dull year for me, lonely in the house, and even lonelier when I ran through the woods, hauling Sylvia with me when I visited Billie. The cottage seemed half empty without Arden, without its heart. I marveled that Billie could stay there alone and still manage to smile. Over and over again she read his letters to me, as I read bits and pieces of his letters to me to her. She’d smile when I skipped some little endearment, for in his letters he dared much more than he did in person.
High school pleased me more than grammar school, but the boys there were much more persistent. Sometimes it was hard to concentrate solely on Arden, whom I saw so seldom. I was sure he was dating other girls he never wrote about, but I was faithful, dating no one but him when he came home on school vacations. All the girls were envious that I had a college-age boyfriend.
Taking care of Sylvia filled my life, stole every spare moment when I could have made friends with girls my own age. I didn’t have time for any of the social activities they enjoyed. Every day I had to rush home as quickly as possible in case I had to rescue Sylvia from the switch my aunt liked to wield—and out of pure indifference my aunt made Sylvia suffer unnecessarily, waiting for me to tend to her physical needs.
I spent my afternoons with Billie, and in the years Arden was away, Billie taught me to cook, to sew, to can. Every once in a while she’d tentatively try to teach me just a little about men and what they expected from their wives. “A physical relationship is not everything, but it’s very important as far as men are concerned. A good sex life makes the best cornerstone for a long and happy marriage.”
The Christmas after I turned seventeen, a card arrived from New York, showing the city as seen from the Hudson River, all pastel and bluish with snow sprinkled over with glitter. My aunt had grunted at the message inside. It said only, “You’ll see me again, never fear,” and was signed Vera. It was the first we had heard from her in three years.
“At least she’s alive, and for that I should be grateful. But why did she address the card to Damian and not to me?”
A week later, I suddenly awakened in the wee hours of the night. Since Sylvia came into my life I’d developed some alert sixth sense that made me aware, even when I was asleep, of the passage of time, of events going on that needed me there. My first thoughts were of Sylvia when I heard the loud voices again. In a flash I was out of bed and racing to her room, only to find her deeply asleep.
A thin line of light came from under my father’s bedroom door, and to my utter amazement, my aunt’s voice was coming from there. “Damian, I want to go to New York. Yesterday Vera called. She needs me. I’m going to her. I’ve done all I can for you, and for your daughters. You can always hire a maid to cook and clean, and you do have Audrina, don’t you? You’ve managed to tie her hand and foot to Sylvia. It’s not fair what you’re doing. I know you love her, so let her go to college. Set her free, Damian, before it’s too late.”
“Ellie,” he said placatingly, “what would happen to Audrina if she left here? She’s too sensitive for the world out there. I’m sure she will never marry that boy, and he’ll find that out once he tries something. No man wants a woman who can’t respond, and I doubt if she’ll ever learn how.”
“Of course not!” she yelled. “You’ve done that to her. When she told you the rocking chair gave her those visions, still you made her use it.”
“To give her peace,” he said wearily, while I froze in panic. Why were they fighting over me? What was my aunt doing in his bedroom at three in the morning?