Secrets of Foxworth (18 page)

It was as if the Foxworths could feel themselves disappearing. Once the building was gone and there was a new owner changing it all, they would fade away. They were desperate. They wouldn't let go of us now.

Maybe not for a long time.

Maybe never.

I put it out of my mind and concentrated on what I would wear to dinner, even if it was only Charley's Diner. I was still going with my father, and I wanted him to be proud of me, proud of how I dressed, how I looked. He wouldn't harp on it; he wouldn't even mention it, because he assumed I would dress properly. I knew how he shook his head and muttered to himself when he saw the way some of my friends and classmates looked when they went out with their parents, even to fancy restaurants.

My father and I didn't go out to eat all that much, but I knew that whenever we did, especially when we went to Charley's, he enjoyed it, not so much because he and I didn't have to be in the kitchen as because it was his chance to meet some of his old friends and toss around stories and their form of gossip. Charley's Diner was just that sort of hangout for many other men who were involved with the construction industry. I saw all the pickup trucks and construction vehicles in the parking lot when we arrived.

One part of Charley's was like an old '50s diner with its faux-leather red booths with pleated white centers and chrome edges and tables. There was a long counter with swivel stools and lots of Formica and chrome, but there were also a good dozen or so retro dinette sets, again with lots of chrome and Formica. The floor was a black and white checker, and although some of them didn't work, there were miniature jukeboxes at the booths and on the counter. Consequently, there was always music but nothing anyone my age would appreciate.

Charley Martin was the original owner. He was well into his seventies, although he looked ten years younger, with his full head of salt-and-pepper hair swept back and to the sides as if he had just run a wet washcloth over it, maybe with a little styling lotion. He was stout, with the forearms of a carpenter, both arms stained with tattoos he had gotten in the Philippines when he was in the navy. Dad called him “Popeye.” He pretended to be annoyed, but I could see he liked it. They loved exchanging navy stories.

By now, my father's tight community of construction workers, electrical and plumbing employees, and people who worked in Deutch's lumberyard, the one Dad favored, all knew about “The Foxworth Funeral Project,” as it rapidly had been labeled. When I thought about it, I realized, what else could it be called?

It was inevitable, I guess, that new work on the property would revive the legends and stir up the stories, some quite exaggerated over the years since it
had burned down a second time. Some spoke about old man Foxworth constructing a private church in the mansion that rivaled the church his evangelist ancestor had built to house his own form of preaching the gospel. Ray Pantel, whose family-run company did a great deal of the electrical work and repairs in the first mansion, said his father had told him Olivia Foxworth had skirts put on the piano legs because she believed naked piano legs were too suggestive. That set them all trying to outdo one another with stories describing the Foxworths' fanatical Bible thumping, which somehow always returned to Olivia and Malcolm's sexual repression.

“I heard they only made love enough times to have their children, and always in the dark at that,” Jimmy Stark, a retired plumber, said. Everyone laughed.

“No wonder their daughter ran off,” Billy Kelly, the manager of Deutch's lumberyard, declared. “From what I was told, she was practically forbidden to look at any boy, much less go out on dates. She might even have been forced to wear a chastity belt.”

“She ran off with a good-looking young man,” Jimmy said. He was at least fifteen years older than my father but had the genes of an immortal, as my father would say. He looked younger than men twenty years younger than he was. “My father saw a picture of him once. He had to go down into the basement to work on a water heater when Malcolm was still alive and saw this damp, rotten carton with some photos in it. The old lady found out he saw the pictures and threw the whole damn carton full into the furnace. That
was the last time they called him to do any work for them.”

Everyone mumbled and complained about how the most recent inhabitant had gone outside of the Charlottesville community for all his labor when he rebuilt the mansion. Ray said his father had told him that the nutcase had located the original plans and tracked down the builder's company outside of Richmond.

“Probably didn't want any local people snooping around. Who knows, maybe they found that little boy's body but were all sworn to secrecy.”

I could see my father was starting to get annoyed with the discussion. At any moment, someone was going to ask him, as so many had, if my mother had mentioned any of this, and he might just explode. He glanced at me.

“Let's change the subject,” he said, nodding in my direction. “Not everyone here has ears full of grime and grit and doesn't mind rusty garbage flowing into their head.”

That worked, and they were back to talking about the hopeful surge in new housing, the economy, and politics. Gradually, they all peeled off to go their separate ways while Dad and I had our slices of Charley's famous apple pie.

“They can be a bunch of old women sometimes,” Dad muttered, sipping his coffee and looking in the direction his friends had taken. Jimmy was still at the counter having his coffee.

“I resemble that remark,” I said, imitating him
whenever I said something with which he might disagree. “Why not call them a bunch of old men?”

He nodded. “You're right. Chauvinistic. Anyway, that's why your mother hated gossip. Something begins with a nibble of the truth, and by the time it gets to where it's getting, it's as far from the truth as could be. Let's hope once I level what I have to and rebuild what Arthur Johnson wants, what I've always hoped happens.”

“Which is?”

“That Foxworth dies a long-needed death.”

I nodded, but I wasn't ready to go to that funeral, and he knew it. His eyes got smaller as he squinted and leaned in toward me.
Here it comes
, I thought.

“I won't stop you from reading that diary, Kristin, but I will be very unhappy if you talk about it, especially with other kids at school who might get their families talking about it all again and bring attention back to us, just when I don't want that. Understood?”

“Another warning? You couldn't have made it clearer if you wanted to,” I said with a half smile.

He smiled, too. “I promise. I won't talk about it anymore,” he added, raising his right hand.

I knew I should have been happy about that, but there was something about being alone with that diary and the story that made me tremble when I least expected it.

When we got home, I returned to my homework. I had the feeling I was rushing through it to give myself time to get back to Christopher, especially after hearing all those stories and rumors at Charley's. I tried
to resist, telling myself I needed a good night's sleep. I set my alarm and got into bed, but moments later, as if Christopher was calling me through the pillow, I turned over, pulled out the diary, and turned the page. How could I not? They were all in such pain.

It wasn't until Momma got herself together and, all stunned, we were calm enough to listen to her that Cathy and I fully understood who we were. I hesitate to write “what we were,” for everything I knew and understood about good and evil in this world kept me from accepting that we were as our grandmother saw us, spawn of the devil, creatures inclined to be sinners.

Slowly, as if the words were coming up from her gut, regurgitated like sour milk, Momma began to tell her story. She spoke in almost a whisper, first describing how horrid her youth was, not only for her but also for her brothers who had died. Her parents wouldn't permit her and her brothers to be normal people. They couldn't go swimming because they would show too much of their bodies. They couldn't go to dances because they'd be too close to the opposite sex.

Cathy's eyes widened with every illustration Momma drew up.

“You and your brothers were like prisoners,” I said, not ignoring the irony that prisoners were what we were right now.

“Worse. Prisoners could have their thoughts. My parents would look at me and tell me I was
having sinful, dirty thoughts. She would listen in on my phone calls, read notes I wrote in my notebooks for school, read any card or letter addressed to me that came to the house first, and if she didn't like a word or something, she would burn it before I saw it. I would find out later that someone had sent me a birthday or holiday card. You can be sure if any boys did, I never saw them. I was never permitted to have a girlfriend in my room alone with me, and if any boy dared come to our house, he and I had to sit in the entryway. I couldn't even bring him into the living room.”

“And your father put up with all this?” I asked.

“My father?” She laughed. “First, he would never challenge anything my mother said to us or did to us, and second, my father was cruel even to his own, seizing control of his father's estate when he died and cutting his father's second wife and son out of their inheritance. When she died years later, her son was brought to live with us, Garland Christopher Foxworth IV, but my parents wouldn't permit him to be called anything but Christopher or Chris,” she said, and put her arm around me. She smiled. “Do you know who I mean?”

My mind was spinning. It was finally being brought home to us with details. Of course, Garland Christopher was my mother's half-uncle. They would still be considered close blood relatives. The word screamed and echoed in my mind: incest. We were the children of incest! It was true. All the innuendos and sly comments
made sense now. This was the horrible sin my grandparents saw our mother and father committing. I looked at Cathy. She was not grasping it as quickly as I was, or else she didn't want to grasp it.

Momma continued, describing our father's arrival at Foxworth Hall, telling us they fell in love at first sight. Both of them knew it. Her face brightened when she described that feeling.

“Goodness knows, we needed love in our house. I needed to feel some love, some happiness. My brothers were already dead from accidents. Neither of my parents smiled or laughed much at all. For a while, that changed when your father came to live with us.”

She told us that her parents treated our father like a son because of the sons they had lost. That, I realized, must have only cemented and intensified their fury over the romance she would have with my father. To my grandparents, he wasn't only her half-uncle; he had become a son, in their minds, a brother to her.

“Didn't you realize they would be upset, Momma?” I asked her.

“Of course. We both did, but someday you'll see and understand how real love can blind you to anything else but the one you love. Nothing else matters but your and his or her happiness. Please try to understand, even though I know you're both too young to realize the power of romantic
love. Please don't think of us as anything but two lovesick young people. Not only didn't we think of the sin my parents accused us of committing, but neither of us would ever say that word. We never believed anything bad could come of a love so strong and pure.”

I could see from the way she was looking at me that she was worried that I, especially, would condemn her, not from a biblical point of view but from a scientific one. From what I had read, children of incest could suffer genetic side effects. Perhaps there were things that would happen to us as we grew older, but right now, none of us looked less than perfect. With Momma at such a low point, I couldn't even let myself think of any of that. But I knew that I would, if not right away, then later when I had more time to consider it all.

Again, I glanced at Cathy. She looked like she was hearing a Romeo and Juliet story now. The pain, the suffering, and even the immorality of what our parents did were romanticized. I saw that dreamy, far-off look of fantasy in her face. Was it just a girl's characteristic? Momma didn't really pay attention to the stories Cathy brought home from school, but I knew she was already talking about boyfriends.

Maybe Momma's story was more of a Cinderella story than Romeo and Juliet. Our father was like a prince when he arrived and considering
the way her parents were treating him. Their love was that magic carriage that would turn into a pumpkin if they let it happen. I suppose our mother saw romance and marriage to our father as an escape from a horrid life. Never would she permit herself to imagine that she would have to return to it and bring us along. She was fitted with a pair of rose-colored glasses early in her life, and now I could see that she never took them off.

Once disaster struck, she went on about her plan to get her father to forgive her and reverse her disinheritance. She vowed to do anything he wanted to get herself back into his good graces. I wanted to believe it was not for herself as much as for us. Then she looked at me again, suspicious of my “thinking eyes,” as she sometimes called them. She insisted that there was nothing wrong with her marriage to our father, and despite all her father's predictions, we turned out to be so beautiful and perfect. Yes, I thought, we were the Dresden dolls. Both our parents always believed that.

I assured her that I had no contrary thoughts and that if God had condemned her and our father, we wouldn't be as healthy as we were.

“Maybe your mother is angry that we're not deformed and ugly,” I said.

She smiled. “Yes, she is having trouble accepting that the four of you are the result of our love. She mumbles that the devil always makes evil look attractive, but I can see that she is having trouble believing herself.”

“And we won't do anything to make it easy for her to,” I said. “I can promise you that.”