Whitefern (Audrina 2)

She could finish her drawing of the baby.

I saw it in the way she rushed cleaning up after dinner. I didn’t want her to be deeply disappointed, even though I wished in my heart of hearts that it was all true, that a baby was going to come.

“You must not pay attention to everything Arden says, Sylvia,” I warned her. “He likes to tease you. He teases me, too.”

She nodded, holding her soft smile as if I was the one who didn’t understand. I helped her finish so she could go up to the cupola to work, and then I went into the living room, where Arden was having a brandy. His face was red from all the alcohol he had consumed.

“You can leave the documents here tomorrow,” I told him. “I’ll read them.”

He widened his eyes. “And?”

“I said I’ll read them and talk to you tomorrow.”

“Right. Tomorrow.” He reached for the Wall Street Journal, but I knew he wasn’t going to read anything. He was simply going to hold it up and fume behind it.

“I’m going up. I’m a little tired tonight.”

I scooped up the envelope and headed up the stairs. I had drunk too much wine myself, deliberately making sure there wasn’t too much left for Sylvia—or for Arden. He’d wanted to open another bottle, but I had talked him out of it.

I prepared myself for bed and then went up to the cupola. I didn’t want Sylvia staying up there deep into the night. She had no concept of time, especially when she was drawing or painting. She had the outline of the baby completed and was sitting there and staring at it. She turned and looked up at me.

“Is he going to be a pretty baby?” she asked me.

“We’re a handsome family, Sylvia. Everyone was very good-looking, as you can see from old photographs. Momma was so beautiful that Papa was afraid to let her out of the house.”

“Why?”

“Other men would look at her and want her to be their wife,” I said. “And you’re beautiful. Everyone who sees you says so.”

“Am I?”

“Yes, but you have to take care of yourself. It’s time you went to bed. You need sleep to stay healthy and pretty. Don’t forget, we’re going shopping tomorrow for your art supplies,” I said.

She stood and gazed at her drawing. “I don’t know what color eyes he’ll have. Or hair,” she said, looking frantic.

“We’ll worry about it tomorrow,” I told her.

She turned abruptly, the way Vera would when she became impatient with me, and marched out of the cupola and down the stairs. I followed her to her bedroom and watched as she prepared herself for bed. I remembered the early years when she could do almost nothing for herself. Papa was convinced that she was severely disabled and would be practically an invalid all her life. Every bit of progress I made with her had amazed him.

I was amused by how much care she was taking with herself right now. Usually, she did nothing with her hair, and I had to brush it and pin it back for her. Both Momma and Aunt Ellsbeth refused to go to bed without first putting Pond’s Cold Cream on their faces.

“Your skin dries when you sleep,” they told me. “Wrinkles wait in the darkness ready to pounce.”

So I put it on, and I taught Sylvia to put it on. Vera made fun of it, but she didn’t live to be old enough to see any wrinkles on her face.

Usually, I still had to tell Sylvia to do it, but she went right to it tonight, and then she looked at me and asked, “Am I really beautiful, Audrina?”

“Yes, you are,” I said. I smiled, happy that she was taking a female’s interest in herself. It meant she was developing a little self-respect, something else Papa had never believed would happen.

Afterward, I returned to our bedroom and waited for Arden. I believed him when he said we would try again to have a baby. He always expected that I would be in the mood for lovemaking whenever he was. Most of the time, he didn’t care if I was or not. I would never forgive him for telling Vera some of the details about our honeymoon night, how I had delayed and delayed coming out of the bathroom. If there was ever a time when I wasn’t ready to have sex, it was then. But he had waited long enough and demanded his conjugal rights. He actually had tried to break down the door, claiming that a man had a greater need than a woman. He claimed that there was a buildup in him that had to be satisfied and that the same was not true for women.

Those memories always haunted me, along with the horrible memories that had come to me in the rocking chair. I didn’t need a psychiatrist to explain my inhibitions now. Lately, Arden had come up with the idea that I was so psychologically wounded when it came to sex that my body might actually be preventing me from getting pregnant.

“Medical doctors like Dr. Prescott don’t understand the emotional power a woman can employ without herself even realizing it,” he’d said. “I read up on it. Until you really, really want to enjoy sex with me, you’ll never get pregnant.”

I tried, fearing that he might be right. But even when I thought I wanted it as much as or even more than he did, I did not get pregnant. These thoughts tormented me. Often at night, I would toss and turn in and out of sleep

, trying to throw off the haunting ideas and words. I felt like shouting, but I didn’t want to make any noise and wake Arden. He’d be angry about it. He might ask why I was so troubled, and he’d repeat those claims about women and about me.