Whitefern (Audrina 2)

Of course, the room was dark, the bed was empty, and the cold reality rushed back at me. I did all I could to keep from fainting and made my way quickly to our bedroom, changed into my nightgown, and slipped under the covers. Despite my fatigue, I thought I was going to lie there for hours and hours sobbing and staring into the darkness.

Memories flowed freely around me. I could hear my mother playing the piano. I could see Papa’s look of admiration and love and also jealousy at the way other men looked at her, even when she was pregnant with Sylvia. I saw him reach for me so I would rush to him and sit on his lap when I was very little. We would both listen to Momma play. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Aunt Ellsbeth standing in the doorway, holding Vera’s hand. Both looked envious but for different reasons. Vera was always jealous of the love Papa showered on me, and Ellsbeth was simply jealous of her beautiful sister, who seemed to possess everything any woman would dream of having. She was always angry that Whitefern had been left mainly to my mother and not to her.

They tried not to say unpleasant things directly to each other. I recalled how they pretended to be Aunt Mercy Marie and used their imitations of her at their special Tuesday “teatimes” to let loose all the venom toward each other that they usually held back. Aunt Mercy Marie’s picture was on the piano. She looked like a queen, wealthy, with diamonds hanging from her ears. Aunt Ellsbeth would hold the picture up in front of her and change her voice to say nasty things, and Momma would do the same. I was still unsure about what had eventually happened to my great-aunt after she had gone to Africa. The family thought it was possible she had been captured by

heathens and eaten by cannibals.

It was all those conflicting memories that finally drove me to the edge of exhaustion and pushed me into sleep, a sleep so deep that I didn’t hear Arden come up much later. What woke me was the stench of alcohol. He was being clumsy, too, and quite inconsiderate, banging into chairs, mumbling loudly, slamming a glass down on a shelf in the bathroom, and then practically falling into the bed so that my body bounced as if I were on a trampoline.

“Are you awake?” he asked. “Huh?”

I tried to pretend I was not, but he nudged me. “What?”

“You heard them.”

“Heard who?”

“Our clients. You see how important it is that the business be completely under my control now,” he said, sounding sober. “We can’t give anyone the impression that we’re not as solid as ever. If they so much as suspected someone without real knowledge of today’s market was involved in their business, they’d leave us in droves. We have to talk about this, and you must do what I tell you.”

“We’ll talk tomorrow,” I said.

“Ah, tomorrow . . . tomorrow . . . Your father wasn’t in his right mind, I tell you. Well? Well?”

I wouldn’t answer him.

Finally, he turned onto his side, his back to me. I was trying to fall asleep again, but then he muttered, “Your sister was crying hysterically in your father’s room.”

“What?”

He didn’t respond.

“What did you say?” I sat up. Still, he didn’t respond. In a moment, he was snoring.

I got up and found my robe and slippers. Then I went to Papa’s bedroom. The door was open again, but when I looked in, I didn’t see Sylvia. I turned on a light and even looked into Papa’s bathroom, but she wasn’t there. Arden must have imagined it in his drunken stupor, I concluded, and I turned off the lights. Instead of returning to bed, I went to Sylvia’s room.

For a few moments, I stood in her doorway and peered into the darkness. The curtains at the windows had been left open, but the sky was overcast. There wasn’t even any starlight. In fact, I thought I heard the tinkling of raindrops against the glass. I stepped in and immediately saw that Sylvia was not in her bed. I checked her bathroom, and then hurried downstairs.

The living room had been cleaned up halfheartedly. Spilled drinks and bits of food were everywhere; there would be a lot of work to do tomorrow. Sylvia wasn’t there.

I headed for the kitchen. Maybe she had gone down for a snack, since she had eaten nothing. There were many nights when I had found her doing just that. Sometimes Papa would be with her, and they would both be having a piece of cake or cookies with milk or tea. I assumed she’d recalled those nights and had gone to the kitchen, driven by memories.

But she wasn’t there, either.

“Sylvia?” I called. I checked every room, every bathroom. Growing frantic now, I hurried up to the cupola, but that was empty, too.

The realization thundered around me. Sylvia wasn’t in the house! I thought about waking Arden to tell him, but when I looked in on him, he was snoring even louder. He’d be of no help and grumpy for sure, I thought. But where was she? Where would she go?

I went to the closet in the entryway and put on one of my overcoats. Taking an umbrella, I stepped out and looked for her on the porch.

“Sylvia?” I cried. “Where are you? Sylvia?”

The rain was coming down harder, and the wind was now icy. A thick fog had blanketed the grounds and the woods. It was late October, but fall was obviously being crushed by a heavy oncoming winter. I realized I was still in my slippers, so I returned to the entryway closet and took out a pair of Papa’s black leather boots. My feet swam in them, but I was able to walk out and down the stairs with the umbrella shielding me somewhat. I had no idea where to look. Over and over, I called out her name. She wasn’t anywhere nearby. Where could she be? Then a terrifying possibility seemed to rush out of the bitter darkness and wash over me.

“Oh, Sylvia,” I muttered. “Poor Sylvia.”

I hurried down the path and through the woods as fast as I could, the rain soaking my face, but I was too frightened to feel the cold now. It was a long walk, a walk I couldn’t imagine her taking, but about a dozen yards from the cemetery, I heard it—a shovel—and I broke into a run, clomping along in Papa’s oversize boots and nearly falling a few times.

Finally, I was there and saw her, in only her nightgown, digging away at Papa’s grave, the rain soaking her so that she looked as good as naked.