The Flowers in the Attic Series: The Dollangangers: Flowers in the Attic, Petals on the Wind, If There Be Thorns, Seeds of Yesterday, and a New Excerpt! (22 page)

Daddy used to do that. He’d hold all of us on his lap, even Momma. His arms had been long enough, and strong enough, to embrace us all, and give us the nicest, warmest feeling of security and love. I wondered if Chris could do the same.

As we sat in the rocker with Chris underneath, I caught a glimpse of us in the dresser mirror across the way. An eerie feeling stole over me, making all of this seem so unreal. He and I looked like doll parents, younger editions of Momma and Daddy.

“The Bible says there is a time for everything,” whispered Chris so as not to awaken the twins, “a time to be born, a time to plant, a time to harvest, a time to die, and so on, and this is our time to sacrifice. Later on will come our time to live and enjoy.”

I turned my head and nestled it down on his boyish shoulder, grateful he was always so optimistic, always so cheerful. It felt good to have his strong young arms about me—almost as protective and good as Daddy’s arms had been.

Chris was right, too. Our happy time would come the day we left this room and went downstairs to attend a funeral.

O
n the tall stalk of the amaryllis a single bud appeared—a living calendar to remind us that Thanksgiving and Christmas were drawing nigh. It was our only plant alive now, and it was, by far, our most cherished possession. We carried it down from the attic to spend warm nights with us in the bedroom. Up first every morning, Cory rushed to see the bud, wanting to know if it had survived the night. Then Carrie would shortly follow him, to stand close at his side and admire a hardy plant, valiant, victorious, where others had failed. They checked the wall calendar to see if a day was encircled with green, indicating the plant needed to be fertilized. They felt the dirt to see if it needed water. They never trusted their own judgment, but would come to me and ask, “Should we give Amaryllis water? Do you think she’s thirsty?”

We never owned anything, inanimate or alive, that we didn’t name, and Amaryllis was determined to live. Neither Cory nor Carrie would trust their frail strength to carry the heavy pot up to the attic windows, where the sunshine lingered but shortly. I was allowed to carry Amaryllis up, but Chris had to bring her
down at night. And each night we took turns marking off a day with a big red X. We now had crossed off one hundred days.

*  *  *

The cold rains came, the fierce winds blew—sometimes heavy fog shut out the morning sunlight The dry branches of the trees scraped the house at night and woke me up, making me suck in my breath, waiting, waiting, waiting for some horror to come in and eat me up.

On a day when it was pouring rain that might later turn into snow, Momma came breathless into our bedroom, bringing with her a box of pretty party decorations to put on our Thanksgiving Day table and make it festive. She had included a bright yellow tablecloth and orange linen napkins with fringe.

“We’re having guests tomorrow for a midday dinner,” she explained, dumping her box on the bed nearest the door, and already turning to leave. “And two turkeys are being roasted: one for us, one for the servants. But they won’t be ready early enough for your grandmother to put in the picnic basket. Now don’t worry, I’m not allowing my children to live through a Thanksgiving Day without the feast to fit the occasion. Somehow I’ll find a way to slip up some hot food, a little bit of everything we have. I think I’ll make a big to-do about wanting to serve my father myself, and while I’m preparing his tray, I can put food on another tray to bring up to you. Expect to see me about one tomorrow.”

Like the wind through the door, she blew in, blew out, leaving us with happy anticipations of a huge, hot, Thanksgiving Day meal.

Carrie asked, “What’s Thanksgiving?”

Cory answered, “Same as saying grace before meals.”

In a way he was right, I think. And since he’d said something voluntarily, darned if I was going to squelch him by any criticism.

*  *  *

While Chris cuddled the twins on his lap, sitting in one of the big lounge chairs, and told them of the first Thanksgiving Day
so long ago, I bustled about like any hausfrau, very happy to set a festive holiday table. Our place cards were four small turkeys with tails that fanned out to make orange and yellow honeycombed paper plumage. We had two big pumpkin candles to burn, two Pilgrim men, two Pilgrim women, and two Indian candles, but darned if I could light such pretty candles and see them melt down into puddles. I put plain candles on the table to light, and saved the costly candles for other Thanksgiving Day meals when we were out of this place. On our little turkeys, I carefully lettered our names then fanned them open and placed one of them before each plate. Our dining table had a small shelf underneath, and that’s where we kept our dishes and silverware. After each meal I washed them in the bathroom in a pink plastic basin. Chris dried, then stacked the dishes in a rubber rack under the table to await the next meal.

I laid out the silverware most carefully, forks to the left, the knives to the right, blades facing the plates, and next to the knives, the spoons. Our china was Lenox with a wide blue rim, and edged in twenty-four-karat gold—all that was written on the back. Momma had already told me this was old dinnerware that the servants wouldn’t miss. Our crystal today was footed, and I couldn’t help but stand back to admire my own artistry. The only thing missing was flowers. Momma should have remembered to bring flowers.

One o’clock came and went. Carrie complained loudly. “Let’s eat our lunch now, Cathy!”

“Be patient. Momma is bringing us special hot food, turkey and all the fixings—and this will be dinner, not lunch.” My housewifely chores done for a while, I curled up happily on the bed to read more of
Lorna Doone.

“Cathy, my stomach don’t have patience,” said Cory now, bringing me back from the mid-seventeenth century. Chris was deep into some Sherlock Holmes mystery that would be solved fast on the last page. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the twins could
calm their stomachs, capacity about two ounces, by reading as Chris and I did?

“Eat a couple of raisins, Cory.”

“Don’t have no more.”

“The correct way to say that is: I don’t have anymore, or there aren’t anymore.”

“Don’t have no more, honest.”

“Eat a peanut.”

“Peanuts are all gone—did I say that right?”

“Yes,” I sighed. “Eat a cracker.”

“Carrie ate the last cracker.”

“Carrie, why didn’t you share those crackers with your brother?”

“He didn’t want none then.”

Two o’clock. Now all of us were starving. We had trained our stomachs to eat at twelve o’clock sharp. Whatever was keeping Momma? Was she going to eat first herself, and then bring us our food? She hadn’t told it that way.

A little after three o’clock, Momma rushed in, bearing a huge silver tray laden with covered dishes. She wore a dress of periwinkle-blue wool jersey, and her hair was waved back from her face and caught low at the nape of her neck with a silver barrette. Boy, did she look pretty!

“I know you’re starving,” she immediately began to apologize, “but my father changed his mind and decided at the last minute to use his wheelchair and eat with the rest of us.” She threw us a harried smile. “Your table-setting is lovely, Cathy. You did everything just right. I’m sorry I forgot the flowers. I shouldn’t have forgotten. We have nine guests, all busy talking to me, and asking a thousand questions about where I was for so long, and you just don’t know the trouble I had slipping into the butler’s pantry when John wasn’t looking—that man has eyes in back of his head. And you never saw anyone hop up and down as much as I did; the guests must have thought I was very impolite, or just plain foolish—but I did manage to fill
your dishes, and hide them away, then back to the dining table I’d dash, and smile, and eat a bite before I had to get up again to blow my nose in another room. I answered three telephone calls that I made to myself from the private line in my bedroom. I had to disguise my voice so no one would guess, and I really did want to bring you slices of pumpkin pie, but John had it sliced and already put on the dessert plates, so what could I do? He’d have noticed four missing pieces.”

She blew us a kiss, bestowed a dazzling, but hurried smile, and disappeared out the door.

Good-golly day! We sure did complicate her life, all right!

We rushed to the table to eat.

Chris bowed his head to say a hasty grace that couldn’t have impressed God very much on this day, of all days, when His ears must ring with more eloquent phrasing: “Thank you, Lord, for this belated Thanksgiving Day meal. Amen.”

Inwardly I smiled, for it was so like Chris to get directly to the point, and that was to play host, and dish up the food onto the plates we handed him one by one. He gave “Finicky” and “Picky” one slice of white turkey meat apiece, and tiny portions of the vegetables, and to each a salad that had been shaped in a pretty mold. The medium-sized portions were mine, and, of course, he served himself last—huge amounts for the one who needed it most, the brain.

Chris appeared ravenous. He forked into his mouth huge gobs of mashed potatoes that were almost cold. Everything was on the verge of being cold, the gelatin salad was beginning to soften, and the lettuce beneath it was wilted.

“We-ee don’t like cold food!” Carrie wailed as she stared down at her pretty plate with such dainty portions placed neatly in a circle. One thing you could say for Chris, he was precise.

You would have thought Miss Picky was looking at snakes and worms from the way she scowled at that plate, and Mr. Finicky duplicated his twin’s sour expression of distaste.

Honestly, I felt kind of sorry for Momma, who had tried so
hard to bring us up a really good hot meal, and messed up her own meal in the process, making herself look silly in front of the guests, too. And now those two weren’t going to eat anything! After three hours of complaining, and telling us how hungry they were! Kids!

The egghead across the way closed his eyes to savor the delight of having something different: deliciously prepared food, and not the hasty picnic junk thrown together in a hurry before six o’clock in the morning. Although to be fair to the grandmother, she didn’t ever forget us. She must have had to get up in the dark to beat the chef and the maids into the kitchen.

Chris then did something that really shocked me. He knew better than to stab into a huge slice of white turkey meat and shove the whole slice into his mouth! What was the matter with him?

“Don’t eat like that, Chris. It sets a bad example for you-know-who.”

“They aren’t watching me,” he said with a mouthful, “and I’m starving. I’ve never been so hungry before in my whole life, and everything tastes so good.”

Daintily, I cut my turkey into small bits, and put some in my mouth to show the hog across the way how it was properly done. I swallowed first, then said, “I pity the wife you’ll have. She’ll divorce you within a year.”

He went on eating, deaf and dumb to everything but enjoyment.

“Cathy,” said Carrie, “don’t be mean to Chris, ’cause we don’t like cold food, anyway, so we don’t want to eat.”

“My wife will adore me so much, she’ll be charmed to pick up my dirty socks. And Carrie, you and Cory like cold cereal with raisins, so
eat!”

“We don’t like cold turkey . . . and that brown stuff on the potatoes looks funny.”

“That brown stuff is called gravy, and it tastes delicious. And Eskimos
love
cold food.”

“Cathy, do Eskimos like cold food?”

“I don’t know, Carrie. I suppose they’d better like it, or starve to death.” For the life of me, I couldn’t understand what Eskimos had to do with Thanksgiving. “Chris, couldn’t you have said something better? Why bring up Eskimos?”

“Eskimos are Indians. Indians are part of the Thanksgiving Day tradition.”

“Oh.”

“You know, of course, the North American continent used to be connected with Asia,” he said between mouthfuls. “Indians trekked over from Asia, and some liked ice and snow so much, they just stayed on, while others had better sense, and moved on down.”

“Cathy, what’s this lumpy and bumpy stuff that looks like Jell-O?”

“It’s cranberry salad. The lumps are whole cranberries; the bumps are pecan nuts; and the white stuff is sour cream.” And, boy, was it good! It had bits of pineapple, too.

“We don’t like lumpy-bumpy stuff.”

“Carrie,” said Chris, “I get tired of what you like and don’t like—
eat!”

“Your brother is right, Carrie. Cranberries are delicious, and so are nuts. Birds love to eat berries, and you like birds, don’t you?”

“Birds don’t eat berries. They eat dead spiders and other bugs. We saw them, we did. They picked them out of the gutters, and ate them without chewing! We can’t eat what birds eat.”

“Shut up and eat,” said Chris, with a mouthful.

Here we were with the best food (even if it was almost cold) since we’d come upstairs to live in this hateful house, and all the twins could do was stare down at their plates, and so far hadn’t eaten a single bite!