Dollenganger 06 My Sweet Audrina (27 page)

in the two best salons, I'd really be grateful. Be sure to
use the attachments on the lamp shades, furniture and
draperies. It would help Audrina. She really has her
hands full trying to teach Sylvia how to talk and move
correctly, and she's succeeding, too."
"You're kidding." Vera sounded surprised, as if
she was hoping Sylvia would never talk. "That kid
can't really talk, can she?"
"Yes, she can say a few easy words. Nothing is
clearly enunciated, but understandable if you listen
closely."
Holding Sylvia by the hand, we followed Vera
to watch her enter the Roman Revival Salon, where
she pushed the vacuum without enthusiasm. I loved
Billie for putting her to work without asking, as if she
assumed Vera would be willing. Not to be willing
would spoil Vera's game. At least, I thought it was a
game. Vera pushed and pulled the vacuum, but all the
time her eyes were on the many treasures. While the
machine idled, she pulled out a notepad and began to write. Very quietly, leaving Sylvia in the hall, I
slipped up behind her to read over her shoulder. 1. Vacuum, dust, use furniture polish. (Mirrors,
huge, gold leaf, worth a fortune.)
2. Pick up newspapers, arrange magazines,
neatly. (Lamps, Tiffany, Venetian, solid brass,
priceless.)
3. Should make beds before coming downstairs.
(Genuine antiques everywhere now, oil paintings,
originals.)
4. Help with laundry. Don't use bleach on
towels. (Oriental and Chinese rugs, bric-a-brac of
porcelain and blown glass, especially birds.) 5. Run for the mail early.
Never
forget! (Checks
stored in his office safe. Never saw so many checks
come in the mail.)
"What an interesting way to list your chores," I
said when she sensed my presence and whirled
around, looking startled. "Along with the valuables,
you want to run for the mail. Are you planning to rob
us, Vera?"
"You little sneak," she snarled. "How dare you
steal up on me and read over my shoulder!"
"One always watches a cat who becomes very
quiet. Is it really necessary to list everyday ordinary chores? Don't they come naturally to you? As for the rest, most of it was here before. Everything has been refurbished and upholstered, that's all. Papa hunted up some of the older Whitefern antiques that had been sold. Since you weren't impressed before, why be
impressed now?"
For a moment it seemed she might slap me.
Then she sagged limply into a chair. "Oh, Audrina,
don't fight with me. If only you knew the horror of
being with a man who doesn't want you. Lamar hated
me for forcing him to take me with him to New York.
I kept insisting I was pregnant, and he kept insisting I
couldn't be. When we reached New York, we moved
into a boarding house, and he went to teach at
Juilliard. He was always throwing you in my face,
saying he wished I was more like you, and then
maybe he could have loved me. The fool! What man
could enjoy a woman like you?" Then she flashed me
a strange look and allowed tears to trickle from her
eyes. "I'm sorry. You are very beautiful in your own
way." She sniffled, then went on. "While Lamar
taught, I started my student nurse training. The pay
wasn't enough to feed a parakeet. In what little spare
time I had, I did some modeling for an art school. I
told Lamar he could do the same thing in his spare time, but he was too modest to take off his clothes. Models don't wear a stitch. I've always been proud of my body. Stupid Lamar was too modest to do that, and too proud. He hated me more for showing myself to all those men in the classes. Every time I modeled I'd come home to find him dead drunk. Soon he was drinking so much he didn't have any job at all. He lost his touch at the piano, forcing us to move to a slum area where he taught music to poor kids who never had the money to pay him--that's when I left. I was fed up. The day I graduated as a registered nurse, I picked up the newspaper to read that Lamar had drowned himself in the Hudson River." She sighed and stared into space. "Just another funeral I had to miss. I worked the day they buried him. I was glad his parents came to claim his body, or else he might have ended up one of the cadavers in the hospital where I worked." She grimaced before she looked downward.
A heavy silence filled the room.
I bowed my head, weighed down with sorrow
for a man who'd wanted to help me and had fallen
innocently into the trap Vera had set. I knew who'd
done the seducing.
"I suppose you're thinking I helped kill him,
aren't you?"
"I don't know what to think."
"No, of course you don't!" she cried scornfully,
jumping up and beginning to pace the room. "You've
had it easy, staying on here and being taken care of.
You've never had to face the real world and all the
ugliness out there, and all the things you have to do in
order to stay alive. I've done it all, Audrina, the whole
can of worms. I came back to help--and you don't
want me." Sobbing, tears beginning to course down
her cheeks, she fell onto the sofa.
Disbelievingly I watched her cry. Billie, who
must have been listening, came scooting into the
room. In a flash she was on the sofa beside Vera,
trying to comfort her.
Instantly, Vera bolted. A short hysterical
scream escaped her lips. Then she paled. "Oh . . . I'm
sorry. It's just that I don't like to be touched." "I understand." Billie lowered herself onto the
dolly and disappeared.
"You've hurt her feelings, Vera. And you
promised that as long as you're in this house, you
would never say or do anything to hurt Billie or make
her feel unwanted."
Vera said she understood. She was sorry, and
never, never would she pull away again. It was just that she was unaccustomed to being touched by a legless woman, a cripple. I stared down at her shoe with the inch lift, perversely enjoying the way she
blanched.
"You can't notice my limp now, can you?" she
asked.
"We all have small idiosyncrasies, such as
yours for forgetting."
Soon Arden was telling me whenever we were
alone, usually not until we were in bed, what a
wonderful help Vera was, taking so much work off his
mother's shoulders--and mine. "We should all be
glad she's back to help."
I turned on my side and closed my eyes. To
turn my back was my way of telling him to leave me
alone. Quickly he turned me against his front so that
my back was fitted into the warm curve of his body.
Our breathing coordinated even as those
uncontrollable hands of his began to search out the
curves he wanted to trace again and again.
"Don't be jealous of Vera, darling," he
whispered, moving so he could rub his cheek against
mine. "It's you I love, only you."
And once more, I had to let him prove it. Thanksgiving Day came and went, and Vera stayed on. For some odd reason Papa stopped ordering her to leave. I reasoned he saw how much help she was to Billie while I taught Sylvia how to talk, to walk, to dress herself, to comb her own hair, to wash her own face and hands. Slowly, slowly, Sylvia was emerging from her cocoon. With each new skill she mastered, her eyes came more into focus. She began to make a real effort to keep her lips together and not let the drooling begin. In some ways it was like
finding myself, as I taught her all she needed to know. In the First and Best Audrina's playroom, she
seemed to learn best. On my lap while we rocked
together, I'd read to her from Mother Goose and
simple books for very young children of two or three.
With the dolls and stuffed animals on the shelves for
schoolmates, we sometimes sat at the small tea table
and ate our lunch, and it was there that Sylvia picked
up a tiny spoon and stirred the bit of tea in her
miniature cup.
"And one day very soon, Sylvia is going to pick
up her own knife and fork and she will cut her own
meat."
"Cut meat . ." she repeated, trying to pick up the
fork and knife and hold them as I was demonstrating. "Who is Sylvia?"
"Who. . who ess . . ."
"Tell me your name. That's what I want to
hear."
"Tell me. . yer name . . ."
"No. What is
your
name?"
"N000 . what esss yer name . . ."
"Sylvia, you're doing wonderfully well today.
But do try to think about the reasoning behind what I
tell you. Everyone and everything must have a name,
or else we wouldn't know what to call one another, or
how to know a chair from a lamp. Take me, for
instance. My name is Audrina."
"Mah. . name. . esss. . . Aud . . . dreen . . . na." "Yes,
my name is
Audiina. But
your name
is
Sylvia."
"Yesss . . mah . . name . . ."
I picked up the hand mirror the First Audrina
had on her small dressing table, held it before Sylvia
and pointed. "See, in the mirror,
that
is Sylvia." Then
I held the mirror so my face was reflected, and again I
let her look so she could see what I was trying to
impart. "That is Audrina in the mirror." At the same
time I pointed to myself. "Audrina." I pointed to
myself, then put the mirror so she could see her own
face. "That is Sylvia. You are Sylvia."
Some flickering small light lit up her lovely
aqua eyes. They widened and focused on the mirror.
She grabbed for it and stared at her reflection, holding
it so close her nose was mashed against the glass. "Syl
. . vee . ah. Syl vee ah." Over and over again she said
it, laughing, jumping up and dancing awkwardly
around the playroom. Hugging the mirror hard against
her small chest, she glowed with happiness. Finally,
after many repetitions, she said it right. "My name is
Sylvia." I ran to hug her, to kiss her, to reward her
with the cookies I'd hidden in a drawer.
I turned with the cookies to see that all
happiness had fled from Sylvia's eyes. Sylvia was
frozen. Her eyes unfocused, her lips gaped and the
spittle ran. Once more she went mute.
Vera stood in the doorway.
She wore the expression of an angel, so pious
as she looked us both over. Lambs for the
slaughtering, I thought irrelevantly.
"Go away, Vera," I ordered coldly, hurrying to
protect Sylvia. "I've told you before not to come up
here when I'm teaching Sylvia."
"Fool!" she snapped, striding into the playroom
and sitting down in the rocking chair. "You can't teach
an idiot anything. She's just repeating what she hears you say, like a parrot. Go help Billie in the kitchen. I'm so damned sick of preparing meals and cleaning house. My God, it seems nobody does anything in this house but eat, sleep and work. When do you have
fun?"
"When the work is finished, Vera," I answered
angrily. I caught hold of Sylvia's hand and started for
the door. "Rock in the chair, Vera. I'm sure nothing
I've seen there would make you scream--for you've
known it all, the whole can of worms."
Screaming like a demon straight from the pits
of hell, my small sister ran to hurl herself at Vera. She
tore into her, scratching, kicking, and as Vera tried to
ward her off, Sylvia clamped her teeth down on Vera's
arm.
Violently Vera slammed Sylvia to the floor.
"You screwy little idiot! Get out of here! I've just as
much right in this room as you have!"
I ran to save Sylvia from more harm as Vera
raised her foot to kick, aiming for Sylvia's pretty face.
But before I could reach her, Sylvia rolled out of
harm's way. In so doing her shoe caught behind Vera's
foot and threw her off balance. Vera crashed to the
floor like a felled tree. Then came the howls of pain. Even before I knelt to check, I could tell from the grotesque position of her left leg that Vera had again broken it. Damnation! The last thing we needed
was an invalid to wait on.
Fretting and fuming, I paced the Roman
Revival room as Arden and Papa came home carrying
Vera with another cast on her broken leg. Her black
eyes met mine, challenging me as one of her arms
encircled Arden's neck.
The other was around Papa. They supported her
on the cradle they made with their arms.
"Audrina," said Arden, "run for pillows to stack
behind Vera's back. She'll
need
others to raise her leg
above her heart level. She's got to wear that thing
seven to eight weeks."
Slowly I gathered several pillows from other
sofas and stuffed them behind Vera's back. Arden
tenderly lifted her heavy casted leg and put four more
pillows under it. Her red toenails wiggled like little
warning flags as he tended to her.
"How did Vera fall, anyway?" asked Billie that
night as I helped her prepare dinner.
"An accident. I heard Vera tell you that Sylvia
deliberately hooked her foot behind her ankle, but I
was there and it was an accident"
"It was not an accident!" screamed Vera from
the other room. "The brat did it deliberately!" "Audrina, I hope that's not true." Billie threw
Sylvia an uneasy glance. Once again Sylvia was
riding on the little red cart, speeding down the slick
waxed floor of the back hall.
"You know, Billie, both you and Arden find it
very hard to believe anything I say about Vera. I don't
mean to be overly critical, but it was the first real
breakthrough for Sylvia. I saw her eyes light up with
understanding. . and then Vera had to show up at the
door."
I heard Sylvia singing as she raced up and
down the back hall on that red cart. "Just a playroom .
. . safe in my home. . . only a playroom. . ."
I almost dropped the spoon in the steaming
gravy. Who had taught Sylvia to sing that song? "Are you all right, darlin'?" asked Billie, pulling
herself along by grabbing the countertops.
"I'm fine," I answered out of habit. "But I can't
remember teaching Sylvia to sing any song. Did you
hear her singing, Billie?"
"No, darlin', I didn't hear her singing. I thought
that was Vera's voice. She sings that song a lot. It's
like a child's song of reassurance--rather pitiful. It
makes me hurt to think that Damian didn't show Vera more kindness. And she's trying so to make him
appreciate her."
Silently I poured the gravy into its bowl, then
carried it into the dining room. On the way back I
pulled Sylvia off the cart and scolded her thoroughly.
"How many times do I have to tell you to leave that
cart alone? It's not yours. Go ride the tricycle Papa
gave you. It's red and pretty."
Pouting her lower lip, Sylvia backed away from