Whitefern (Audrina 2)

I feared I would spend most of my days immediately following Papa’s death listening to echoes trapped in every dark corner. I resisted as best I could, but it was difficult to shut them out. I had done that successfully for a while when I was a little girl who had been sexually and violently ravaged. But there would be no comfort from amnesia now.

Perhaps this was why Papa had left me the controlling interest in his business. He knew this might happen to me, and he wanted me to have a path away from it all. He finally wanted me to find a life outside of this house and its dreadful memories. There were many times when he was proud of me, proud of my comments and ideas. Maybe he had come to believe that a girl could carry on her father’s successes as well as a boy could. Arden simply didn’t fit the bill for him.

If I didn’t do something more, if I relegated myself only to household chores and caring for Sylvia, the past with all its tragedies would surely weigh me down. I’d grow old before my time, just as Papa had. I wouldn’t neglect Sylvia and her needs, but I had needs, too.

Arden must come to realize that, I thought. He must learn to see our marriage as more of a partnership. I must convince him that doing so would not diminish him.

He was so angry. He seemed so changed. When he was younger, living in the cottage with his mother, he was sweet and considerate. I never knew then how much of a role his guilt from witnessing and not fighting to prevent what had happened to me played until he finally confessed. Was he still burdened with that guilt? Had he grown tired of it and resorted to anger as an alternative? He did seem to have a chip on his shoulder these days. I suspected Papa never let him forget.

Of course, I had to overlook his affair with my half sister, Vera. His confessions were so heartfelt that I did blame Vera more than him. She was always there, trying to outshine me.

These memories and more drummed at the door, now that Papa had died. It was no longer necessary to avoid reminding him of the past. Death had trounced that concern. I hated the idea that I might spend my days reliving all the pain, that his death had opened the floodgates. Again, I told myself that what was important now, now that I was living in Whitefern without Papa, was finding a new sense of myself while still caring for Sylvia. I would have to be reborn yet again and become a third Audrina.

I realized that I must ignore, even bury, the fragile young woman who had seen and heard more than most could bear. There were many times when I would actually envy Sylvia for being immature and unaware of the significance of most things. How soft and comfortable was her childlike world. Most of the pain she had suffered, a great deal of it at Vera’s hands, was lost to her. Back then, she greeted every new day by acting as if yesterday didn’t matter. She could smile and expect good things, even from a world that had given her only bad.

Was that simply a result of her immaturity? Maturity meant many unexpected things. When you were an adult, there was no time to float about in a pond of wishes. There was only time to do, to be productive, to overcome obstacles. There were choices that once could be ignored or at least put off but now demanded attention and wouldn’t sit patiently waiting for you to act when you felt like it. That childlike world was the world in which Sylvia still lived.

I thought about all this the next day, pausing only to make lunch for her and occasionally playing a board game with her to keep her from thinking. It was clear she still had not accepted Papa’s death. I seriously wondered if she ever would. She kept looking at the front door, expecting him to come home and cry out, “Where’s my Sylvia? Who’s bringing me my slippers?” Sometimes she used to wait at the front windows for his car to appear. When he was late, she would grow fidgety and needed to be reassured that he was coming home.

“Papa told me he wanted lamb chops tonight,” she suddenly said while we were playing checkers. I always let her win. I looked at the clock. It was nearly three o’clock, about the time I would plan dinner. Where that tidbit of information came from I didn’t know, but it wasn’t unusual for her to come up with something someone said months, even years, ago. It was as if words bounced around in her childlike mind like balloons and suddenly found voice again.

“You must try to remember what happened to Papa, Sylvia,” I told her softly. “It’s important. We all have to be strong, the way he would have wanted us to be. You want to be strong, don’t you?”

She looked like she was going to go into one of her pouts but suddenly smiled with the burst of a new idea. “Let’s go to the cemetery,” she said. I had the eerie feeling that she expected we’d see an open grave and an open coffin. In her mind, Papa was capable of a resurrection, just like Jesus.

I reached for her hand. “Nothing will be different there, Sylvia. I’ve already asked Mr. Ralph to go there and fill in the holes you dug.”

Mr. Ralph, our groundskeeper, was the most trusted servant anyone could dream of having. He bore no relationship to the Whiteferns, the Adares, or the Lowes, but he had been with my family since he was about fifteen. He was more than seventy-five now, although no one would swear to his exact age, even him, and he was a little deaf, with fading eyesight. All his friends were gone or had moved away, he said. His whole life was caring for our property. He had always been fond and protective of Papa, but I thought he was more afraid than fond of Arden.

“We’ll visit the cemetery when it’s right to do so, and we’ll say prayers for Papa at his grave, okay?” I added quickly.

She pulled her hand back, looking angry as only she could, her beautiful eyes darkening into gray, her lips tightening, with pale spots interfering with their natural ruby tint. She liked to put on lipstick whenever I did, but she really didn’t need it.

“I have a secret,” she said, her body recoiling like a spring. “Only Papa and I know it. Not Arden, not you.”

“Then maybe you should not tell anyone else,” I said, a little annoyed at her. Her look reminded me too much of Vera whenever she tried to irritate me with some fact that had been hidden from me. Whatever Sylvia’s secret was, I thought, it would be something innocuous, something Papa had told her to keep her from being sad.

She continued to look at me hard for a moment, harder than I ever saw her look at me. The thoughts were twisting and turning in her head. I could see her troubling over what she should do, whether to tell me or not. These past few years, Papa’s devotion to her was very important. She didn’t want to share his affection and at times hated hearing any references to anyone else he loved, including me. That was another way she reminded me of Vera. I supposed there was no way to get around it. There was a little of Vera in both of us. We shared too much blood, having had the same father.

Her eyes narrowed, and she nodded to herself. “You’re right, Audrina. Papa told me never to tell anyone, even you.”

I raised my eyebrows at how adult she suddenly sounded. The memories of the various times my father had said something similar to me returned. Sometimes I felt I was being buried in secrets. Someone was always whispering one in my ear, whether it was Aunt Ellsbeth, Vera, or Papa.

Sylvia kept her gaze locked on me, waiting for my reaction, which I thought was quite unusual for her. I pulled back a little and wondered if Sylvia even understood the concept of a secret. Was this some sort of game my father had played with her when I wasn’t around?

“Do you have any secrets you can tell me?” I asked.

She shook her head. “No. When you tell a secret, you can’t take it back. That would be like trying to put ketchup back in the bottle,” she said. I knew that was something Papa had told her, because he had told it to me, too, when I was a little girl.

“Okay, Sylvia, don’t think about it. Keep your secrets in your bottle of ketchup.” I got up. “Let’s go make dinner now. Arden will be home soon, and you know how hungry he is when he comes through that door. He expects everything to be ready for him, just like all men.” I recited what I had been told over the years, especially by my aunt Ellsbeth. “They want you to be their cook and bottle washer and their clothes valet and keep the house spick-and-span. And you have to do all that and still be beautiful so they can go about proudly with you on their arm, looking up to them like they walk on water. When a husband says, ‘Jump,’ you’re supposed to ask, ‘How high, dear?’ ”

I paused when I saw she was staring at me with her eyes wide. She really hadn’t understood a word, especially couched in an angry tone. Maybe I sounded a little too much like Aunt Ellsbeth, someone she was not especially fond of being around. All our relatives and ancestors popped up occasionally in us, I thought. There was no escaping that.

“Oh, forget it, Sylvia. Fortunately, you won’t have to worry about all this business between a husband and a wife,” I added, and immediately regretted it. It was surely something Aunt Ellsbeth would have told her. “Come on. Let’s be good little housewives tonight. To the kitchen,” I said, and pretended we should charge like knights on horses.

She laughed and stood up quickly. Sylvia liked to help prepare the s

alad and, despite everything else that held her back, was meticulous about how she cut carrots, tomatoes, and onions, making perfect slices. She did have artistic talent. I had recently bought her some art supplies, and without instruction, she produced some interesting representations of our surroundings, the trees and ponds and paths. Or at least, I thought they were interesting. Arden thought her work was just a muddle of shapes and colors, more like a child’s finger painting. He never really studied them and saw the way she layered her pictures so that they looked like images fading into each other. They were like dreamscapes with interesting choices of color and shades. She never tried to draw a person or a face, but sometimes I thought I saw the image of someone caught in the fog or in a cloud.