Whitefern (12 page)

Nevertheless, when I walked into the woods slowly, my head down, the darkness seemed to close in on me. Tree limbs devoid of leaves looked spidery, swaying and trembling in the breeze like beckoning sirens, enchanting, hypnotizing, and seducing. Death lay in wait behind cold smiles. Dried leaves between small patches of evaporating snow crunched beneath my feet. It sounded like I was walking over shards of glass. Far off, a dog howled. The scent of some animal that had died in the woods recently flowed over me, churning my stomach.

I paused and opened my eyes like a sleepwalker awakening.

I was surprised to see that I had walked far enough to be near the infamous clearing in which I had been attacked. I could feel every muscle in my body tighten, and the chilled air seeped under my coat to run up my spine.

Suddenly, as if I had been nudged, tapped firmly on my right shoulder, I turned and looked back at Whitefern. There was something in the look of the mansion that alarmed me. I felt two hands on my back pushing me forward. I broke into a run and rushed back to the house. I charged through the front door and hurried up the stairs until I was at the cupola. There I paused to catch my breath and my wits. What was I doing? I didn't want to frighten them or look foolish. Quietly and slowly, I opened the door.

But then I froze.

Mr. Price was sitting in Sylvia's chair in front of her easel, and Sylvia was standing in front of him, her beautiful, full breasts uncovered, her hands clasped behind her head. She wore only her skirt, but it was lowered beneath her belly button. Her eyes were shifted so that she was looking at the ceiling.

I screamed, a scream so piercing that it knifed through both of them. Mr. Price raised his shoulders as if he'd been slapped on the back of his neck, and Sylvia brought her hands down and looked at me in confusion. He rose, turned, and backed away, his hands up and pumping the air as if he thought that would keep me away.

“Now . . . don't get excited. I can explain—” he said.

“Sylvia, dress yourself!” I shouted, and she hurriedly did so.

I turned to him, my eyes feeling like they were popping and on fire. “How
dare
you.”

“It's not what you think. I'm teaching her . . . all aspects of, of art, of being an artist,” he stuttered. “She's a perfect model, you see, and I'm an artist. This is nothing more than art, you see.”

“Get out!” I shouted. “Get out of my house!” I stepped away from the door to give him a clear exit.

He looked at Sylvia and then hurried past me, pausing in the hallway. “I'm an artist,” he insisted. “Don't you tell anyone anything else. I can sue you,” he warned, and then hurried down the stairs.

I turned back to Sylvia, my hands still pressed firmly on the base of my throat.

“Is that the end of my lesson?” she asked.

I was trembling so hard that I didn't think I could speak or move, but I slipped into the artist's chair and took deep breaths. Sylvia stood there looking at me in confusion but with great interest. She had never seen me like this. I glanced at her and then looked at the canvas. He had finished the drawing and done a remarkably good job of capturing both her face and her body. I reached up quickly and ripped it off the easel, then folded it and stood up.

“Did he tell you to tell me you were nervous when I was in the room?”

She thought a moment, remembering, and then smiled and nodded.

“Get dressed and come downstairs, Sylvia,” I said. “Quickly!”

I was afraid that Mr. Price was still in the house, so I descended slowly, but he was gone.

“Sit on the settee,” I told Sylvia when she appeared, and I went to the phone to call Arden. That self-important Mrs. Crown had started to tell me he was busy when I screamed, “Get my husband on the phone now!”

She stammered and squeaked out a “Right away.”

Moments later, Arden, irritated, said, “What is it, Audrina? You have Mrs. Crown shaking.”

I rattled off the details so quickly that I was sure he didn't understand.

He was silent for a few moments. “Tell me that again,” he said in a much quieter tone of voice than before.

I went through it slowly this time, even mentioning Mr. Price's threat to sue us.

“Is he gone?”

“Yes.”

“And Sylvia?”

“She's in the living room. She doesn't understand what's happened, what she has done, or why I am so upset,” I said, and then I started to cry.

“You didn't call the police, did you?” Arden asked.

“What? No. Should I?”

“No,” he said, quickly and firmly. “That would be the worst thing for us—and for Sylvia. Can you imagine them arriving to question her? And when it got out to the public . . . oh, boy. Just do nothing until I get there.”

“We can't just do nothing. I have his drawing. It's clear evidence.”

“I'm not saying we will do nothing, but I'll handle it. Just keep her calm.”

“She's very calm, Arden. I assure you that she has no idea why what was going on was wrong.”

“Okay, okay. Just have tea or something. Wait for me,” he said, and hung up.

I hung up, too, and as calmly as I could, I returned to Sylvia, who waited with the expression of a little girl, frightened but confused, wondering whether or not she had to cry.

“Oh, Sylvia,” I said. I sat beside her and took her hand. “This is not your fault.”

“Art?”

“No, I'm not talking about art. This man, Mr. Price, he took advantage of you.”

She shook her head, not understanding.

“He asked you to do something you shouldn't have done. He was here to teach you art, not to exploit you for his own sexual needs.”

I could see that nothing was making sense to her. To her, I was just raving.

“Look, Sylvia, you should never undress in front of a strange man.”

“Was Mr. Price strange?”

“Not strange like that. Well, maybe, but what I mean is, he's not family. He's a stranger. He was supposed to just work for us, help you with your art. He used art as an excuse to have you undress.”

I thought a moment as she worked at understanding.

“Did you do this before today?”

She nodded.

“Did you undress more?”

She nodded.

I felt a cold chill first and then a hot flash in my chest. “Were you ever completely nude?”

“Like when I take a bath?”

“Yes.”

“Yes,” she replied.

My heart was pounding. “Did he touch you?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Where?”

“In the studio.”

“No, where on your body did he touch you? Show me,” I told her.

She thought about it and then nodded and put her hands on her breasts, her stomach, her thighs.

I started to breathe some relief until she put both hands between her legs. The blood left my face. I sat back.

“I had to stand right for the drawing and not move.”

“Oh, Papa,” I muttered. All I could think of was how angry he would be at me, not Sylvia. I had broken a promise. I hadn't protected her.

My mind was a workshop of miserable thoughts. While I had been dumbly cleaning the house, taking walks, reading, and minding my own business, Sylvia was being sexually abused, and the worst part of it was that she didn't understand. I thought about all the times the three of us sat here after the lessons and had tea and biscuits together. I should have noticed something, realized something. How conniving and clever he was. He was probably the one telling Sylvia how to dress, do makeup, and brush her hair. I had stupidly thought she was simply learning to take pride in herself. Perhaps in her limited vision and thinking, she was, but that wasn't why he was doing it. All those compliments he brushed over her, dipping her in the well of ego so that she would appreciate him and never resist his mauling of her beautiful body, now made sense to me.

“Mr. Price was simply another frustrated old man,” I muttered. “I don't know why the alarms didn't go
off in me. I'm simply too inhibited, too cloistered here, too out of the social world to recognize the clues. It's my fault, my fault. I'm sorry, Sylvia.”

I lowered my head and took her hand in both of mine. I couldn't help it. The tears began to flow.

“I'm not mad at you,” Sylvia said. “Don't cry, Audrina.”

“No, you're not mad at me,” I said, smiling and wiping away my tears. “You'll never be mad at me. You're the angel here, Sylvia. I'm mad at myself.” I took a deep breath. “Let's have some tea and biscuits, chocolate biscuits.”

She nodded and then paused. “But Mr. Price left,” she said.

“And he'll never be back, Sylvia. I guarantee that.”

“Oh,” she said. She looked stunned, worried, and then she smiled. “My lessons are over. That's all right, Audrina. I know what to do.”

“Good. That's the way to think of it. I'll try to think of it that way, too.”

We went into the kitchen. I was still clinging to the folded sheet on which Arthur Price had drawn my sister half-nude. I couldn't help glancing at it every once in a while, and that made the shock of the scene in the cupola return. Finally, I put it in a drawer by the refrigerator where we had other important household papers. Then I tried to talk about other things. We had our tea and biscuits in the kitchen. Suddenly, the idea of sitting in the living room to enjoy it had turned sour. Sylvia didn't care. I kept talking—babbling, really—and then I started to plan dinner, and she
quickly forgot about what had happened. I doubted that I ever would.

A little more than half an hour later, Arden came home. He looked at both of us to see if we were all right, and then he told me to follow him to Papa's office, which was now his. I left Sylvia mixing batter for a vanilla cake.

“What did you do?” I asked as soon as he closed the door.

“Where's the picture he drew?”

“In the drawer by the refrigerator.”

“Get it,” he said, and dropped himself into Papa's desk chair. His face was flushed with rage. I hurried out and returned with the drawing.

He studied it a moment and nodded. “This is good. I mean, it's important that we have it.” He took a breath, sat back, and said, “I confronted him at his home.”

“You did?”

“Yes. He tried to keep his wife out of the discussion by taking me to his home studio, but I think she was just outside the door listening. He swore up and down that he didn't mean any harm to Sylvia and that he did not sexually abuse her. I told him I didn't care. That if he came within a thousand yards of Whitefern, I'd press charges. To me, it was the same as abusing one of his students in school. He got the point quickly. He promised he wouldn't come anywhere near us, nor would he say a word. He offered to give back all the money he took. I accepted it.” He showed me a check he had in his inside jacket pocket.

“I don't want his money,” I said. “The money isn't the important thing, Arden.”

“Of course it's important. Money is always important. Consider this to be the fine levied against him, only we didn't have to go to court to sue him and attract all sorts of prurient public interest, get Sylvia—and us—in the newspapers. Can you even imagine what it would do to our business image?”

“I'm not worried about our image. I'm worried about Sylvia.”

“The two things go hand in hand,” he insisted. He looked at the drawing again and then put it in his desk drawer, the one that could be locked. “We'll hold this as our insurance. Have you had a talk with Sylvia? Does she realize what's happened now?”

“A little,” I said. “She's not upset with herself or him, however. She's upset that I'm upset. It's probably better if we don't talk about it anymore.”

“Exactly,” he said. “Over and done with. She'll be all right.” He put the check back into his jacket pocket.

“I'm upset with myself for letting it happen.”

“I'm sure you could never have imagined this happening. I did, but that's because I'm a man, and I can understand how the male mind and lust work. If anyone taught me that well, it was your father. So I'm not blaming you. Let's go about our lives with this stuffed away in the cellar of horrors Whitefern has accumulated.” He looked at his watch. “I have some calls to make because I left the office in a rush. Fortunately, Mrs. Crown did a good job of covering it up.”

“Does she know why you left?”

“Not really,” he said.

I wasn't sure what “really” meant, but I was mentally and emotionally exhausted and didn't want to talk about it anymore. “I'll get back to making dinner,” I said. “Although my stomach is in so many knots I don't think I can eat a thing.”

“You'd better. Don't get Sylvia upset,” he warned. “I know her. She'll be the one who gets sick over it.”

Suddenly, he was thinking more about her welfare than I was. That made me feel even more guilty. Arden was truly more mature and sensible than I was, I thought. He should be totally in charge of our business and our lives. Look at what a mess I had made of one simple thing.

I nodded and left, telling myself I had to put on as good an act as I could for Sylvia. She asked no questions and went about our dinner preparations as if it was just another day. I wondered how well her memory did work. I knew from the way she had usually acted toward Vera the day after Vera had abused her that bad memories didn't cling to her the way they did to me—or anyone else, for that matter.

But several days after the incident with Mr. Price, she looked up at me while we were having lunch and said, “Something bad happened in the cupola.”

“Yes, Sylvia, something bad happened.”

She thought for a moment and then looked at me and said, “I liked it, Audrina.”

“Liked what?”

She looked like she wasn't going to answer or
didn't know what to answer. I thought I knew what she meant.