Cutler - Midnight Whipsers Part 14

Two days after our horrid first breakfast with Uncle Philip's family, Aunt Bet was true to her word.

She had one of the beds from what used to be Fern's room moved into Jefferson's. Richard wanted to be closer to the window, so Jefferson's bed was shoved all the way to the right and the dressers were rearranged. When Jefferson refused to cooperate and move his things, Aunt Bet a.s.sisted Richard in reorganizing the room.

Richard made labels out of adhesive tape and printed his name boldly on the white strips. Then he pasted them over the drawers that were to be his.

Because they had lost so much in the fire, Aunt Bet took the twins shopping and returned with bags and boxes of new clothes, underwear and socks. Richard then made an inventory of his things and neatly folded them in his drawers. When he complained he didn't have enough room, Aunt Bet consolidated Jefferson's clothes even more to provide Richard with an additional set of drawers and more closet s.p.a.ce. She then ordered Mrs. Boston to go over and over the carpet, insisting it was so dirty, she wouldn't want Richard to take his socks off and put his naked foot down.

"I do that room every day, Miss Betty," Mrs.

Boston protested. "That rug don't have a chance to get that dirty."

"Your idea of what clean is and my idea are obviously miles apart," Aunt Bet declared. "Please, just do it again," she said. She then proceeded to go about the house inspecting shelves, checking the corners of rooms, running her fingers over appliances and under tables, finding dust and dirt everywhere.

Melanie followed her around with a pen and pad and took notes. At the end of the inspection, Aunt Bet gave the sheets filled with complaints to Mrs. Boston and asked her to attend to these things immediately.

Not having spent much time in their living quarters at the hotel, I never realized how obsessed with cleanliness Aunt Bet was. The sight of a cobweb would throw her into a tirade and when Melanie brought her hand out from under a sofa and demonstrated dust on her palm, Aunt Bet nearly swooned.

"We're shut up in here so much of our time,"

she explained to Mrs. Boston, "and we're breathing this filth. Dust and grime is going in and out of our lungs, even when we sleep!"

"Ain't never had any complaints about my work before, Miss Betty," Mrs. Boston said indignantly, "and I worked for the toughest woman this side of the Mississippi, Grandmother Cutler."

"She was just as busy and distracted as my poor dead sister-in-law was," Aunt Bet replied. "I'm the first mistress of Cutler's Cove who's not wrapped up in the business so much she can't see the dust in the air in her own home."

Aunt Bet took personal control of the cleaning and reorganizing of my parents' room. She had some men take out all the furniture and then had the rugs steam-cleaned as if my parents had been full of contamination. Jefferson and I stood off to the side and- watched her supervise the work. All of Mommy and Daddy's things were piled outside the door. The walls of the closets were papered over, the drawers in the dressers relined, the mirrors and furniture cleaned and polished.

"I'm going to have all this neatly packed and placed in the attic," she told me, indicating Mommy and Daddy's clothes and shoes, "except for anything I can use or anything you need now. Go through it neatly and take what you want," she ordered.

It broke my heart to do it, but there were many of Mommy's things I didn't want to see shut away in the dark, damp corners of the attic. I quickly pulled out the dress she had worn to my Sweet Sixteen party.

There were sweaters and skirts and blouses that were dear to me because I could still vividly see Mommy wearing them. When I held them in my hands and brought them to my face, I could smell the scent of her cologne, and for a moment, it was as if she were still there, still beside me, smiling and stroking my hair lovingly.

Aunt Bet seized all Mommy's jewelry quickly, and when I protested about that, she said she would only be holding these things until I was old enough to appreciate them.

"I'll keep exact account of what was hers and what's mine," she promised and flicked me one of her short, slim smiles.

She had the linens and bedding changed and, literally overnight, redid the curtains and blinds. Then she attacked their bathroom, deciding she wanted to change the wallpaper.

"In fact," she declared at dinner one night after all this had started, "we should reconsider all the walls in this house. I was never crazy about the decor."

"You have no right to make all these changes,"

I retorted. "This house still belongs to my parents and us."

"Of course it does, dear," she said, her thin lips curled up at the corners, "but while you're underage, your uncle Philip and myself are your guardians and have the awesome responsibility of making important decisions, decisions that will affect your lives."

"Changing wallpaper and repainting the house is not going to affect our lives!" I responded.

"Of course it is," she replied with a small, thin laugh. "Your surroundings, where you live, have a major impact on your psychological well-being."

"We like it the way it is!" I cried.

She shook her head.

"You don't know what you like yet, Christie dear. You're far too young to understand these things, and Jefferson . . ."

She looked at him and he swung his eyes up to glare back at her.

"Poor Jefferson is barely able to care for his basic needs. Trust me, my dear. I was brought up surrounded by the best things. My parents hired the most expensive and renowned decorators and I learned what good taste is and what it isn't. Your parents, although they were delightful people, grew up in the most dire poverty. Wealth and position were thrust upon them and they didn't have the breeding to understand what had to be done and how to spend their money."

"That's not true!" I cried. "Mommy was beautiful. Mommy loved pretty things. Everyone complimented her on the things she did at the hotel. She . . ."

"Just as you say, dear, at the hotel, but not at her own home. This was"- she looked around as if we had lived in a hovel-"merely a retreat, a place to which they could run away for a few hours. They did all their real socializing at the hotel. Rarely did they have important guests to dinner here, right?" she sang.

She leaned toward me. "That's why Mrs. Boston, as sweet as she is, is not really schooled in serving properly. She didn't have to do it very much, if at all.

"But all that is going to have to change now, especially in light of the fact that the hotel has been destroyed and is being rebuilt. While that's being done, Philip and I will have to have our important guests over here for dinners and parties, and you can't expect us to invite the leaders of the community to this house as it is.

"But please," she concluded, "don't let all this disturb you. Let me worry about it. I have willingly accepted my responsibility and my burdens. All I ask is that you and the rest of the children cooperate.

Okay?"

I choked back my tears and looked to Uncle Philip, but as usual, he was quiet and seemingly distracted. How different our meals were from what they had been. Gone was the humor and the music and the laughter. No wonder Richard and Melanie were the way they were, I thought. All of the discussion at their dinner table was initiated by Aunt Bet, and Uncle Philip rarely had anything to say.

"One of the ways you can cooperate," Aunt Bet continued, "is to be sure you take off your shoes whenever you come into the house. Take them off at the door and carry them upstairs, please."

She paused, her lips tightening, her eyes growing narrow as she looked across the table at Jefferson.

"Jefferson, dear, didn't anyone ever show you how to hold a fork properly?"

"He holds it like a screwdriver," Richard commented and smirked.

"Watch how your cousins use their silverware, Jefferson, and try to copy them," she said.

Jefferson looked at me and then at her and then opened his mouth and dumped all the food he was chewing back onto his plate, the globs falling over his meat and vegetables.

"Ugh!" Melanie cried.

"Disgusting!" Richard screamed.

"Jefferson!" Aunt Bet stood up. "Philip, did you see that?"

Uncle Philip nodded and smirked.

"You get right up, young man," Aunt Bet said, "and march yourself upstairs right now. There'll be no dinner for you until you apologize," she said and pointed at the door. "Go on."

Jefferson looked anxiously at me. Even though I understood why he had done it, the sight of the globs of chewed food was revolting. My stomach churned from that and from all the tension and anger I felt inside.

"I'm not going upstairs," he shot back defiantly.

He got up and ran out of the dining room and to the front door.

"Jefferson Longchamp, you don't have permission to go out!" Aunt Bet called, but Jefferson opened the front door and shot out anyway. Aunt Bet sat down, her face and long thin neck beet-red. "Oh dear, that child is so wild. He's gone and ruined another meal," she complained. "Christie . . ."

"I'll go after him," I said. "But you're going to have to stop criticizing him," I added.

"I'm just trying to teach him good things," she claimed. "We've all got to learn to get along now.

We've got to-adjust."

"When are you going to adjust, too, Aunt Bet?"

I asked, rising. "When are you going to show some compromise?"

She sat back, her mouth agape. I thought I detected a slight smile on Uncle Philip's lips.

"Go get your brother and bring him back," he said. "We'll talk about all this later."

"Philip . ."

"Let it be for a while, Betty Ann," he added forcefully. She flicked an angry glance at me and then pulled herself up to the table. I left them sitting in silence, which was something I felt they did more often than not.

I found Jefferson on the swing in our backyard.

He was moving very slowly, his head down, dragging his feet along the ground. I sat next to him.

Above us, long thin wisps of clouds broke here and there to reveal the stars. Since Mommy and Daddy's horrible deaths, nothing seemed as bright and as beautiful as it had been, including the constellations. I recalled a time Mommy and I had sat outside on a summer's night and stared up at the heavens. We talked about the magnificence and wonder and let our imaginations run wild with the possibilities of other worlds, other people. We dreamt of a world without sickness and suffering, a world in which words like unhappy and sad didn't exist. People lived in perfect harmony and cared about each other as much as they did about themselves.

"Pick a star," Mommy said, "and that will be the world we've described. Then, every time we're out here at night, we'll look for it."

Tonight, I couldn't find that star.

"You shouldn't have done that at the table, Jefferson," I told him and took the swing beside him.

He didn't answer. "You should just ignore her," I added.

"I hate her!" he exclaimed. "She's . . . she's an ugly worm," he said, desperate to find a satisfactory comparison.

"Don't insult worms," I said, but he didn't understand.

"I want Mommy," he moaned. "And Daddy."

"I know, Jefferson. So do I."

"I want them to get out of here, and I don't want Richard sleeping in my room," he added to his list of demands. I nodded.

"I don't want them here either, Jefferson, but right now we don't have any other choice. If we didn't live with them, we'd be sent away someplace," I said.

"Where?" The idea both intrigued and frightened him.

"A place for children without parents, and maybe we wouldn't be together," I said. That ended his willingness to risk an alternative.

"Well, I'm not going to say I'm sorry," he declared defiantly. "I don't care."

"If you don't, she won't let you eat with us and you don't want to eat alone, do you?"

"I'll eat in the kitchen with Mrs. Boston," he decided. I couldn't help but smile. Jefferson had Daddy's temper and stubbornness. That was for sure.

If Aunt Bet thought she was going to break him with her tactics, she was in for an unpleasant surprise.

"All right, Jefferson. We'll see," I said. "Are you still hungry?"

"I want some apple pie," he admitted.

"Let's go back in through the pantry door. Mrs.

Boston will give you some pie," I said, coaxing him.

He took my hand and followed me. Mrs. Boston smiled happily when she saw us. I sat Jefferson at the kitchen table and she cut him a piece of the pie she had just served in the dining room. I wasn't hungry; I just watched him eat. Aunt Bet came in when she heard us talking. She stood glaring angrily in the doorway.

"That young man should come in and apologize to everyone at the table," she reiterated.

"Just leave him be, Aunt Bet," I said firmly.

When our eyes locked, she saw my determination.

"Well, until he does, this is where he will take his meals," she threatened.

"Then this is where we will both take them," I said defiantly. She pulled her head back as if I had spit in her face.

"You're not being a good big sister by encouraging and excusing his bad behavior, Christie.

I'm very disappointed in you."

"Aunt Bet, you can't imagine how disappointed I am in you," I replied.

She pressed her lips together until they were a thin white line, pulled up her shoulders and pivoted to parade back into the dining room to tell Uncle Philip what I had said. I'd been brought up by my parents not to talk back or be rude to adults and it made me feel bad to do so. But Mommy and Daddy had also taught me about honesty and justice and kindness to those I loved. I knew in my deepest heart of hearts that Aunt Bet deserved the things I'd said. She was not treating Jefferson and me lovingly or even fairly, it seemed to my grief-scarred mind. Every day in so many tiny ways Aunt Bet was wiping away with her cleaning rag any proof that our family had ever existed. By covering over the comforting and familiar with wallpaper and paint and, worst of all, the new rules that we were told to live by, she was covering up my memories. And they were all I had left of Mommy and Daddy.

I expected Richard would tease and criticize Jefferson for his behavior at the table that night. He had been complaining about Jefferson's personal habits from the moment he moved into the room with him. As a result, Jefferson had begged me several times to let him sleep with me. All I could think of was Mommy and Daddy forced to sleep in a sofa-bed pull-out when they were children. Why should something like that be happening to Jefferson and me?

We had all this room and beautiful furniture. But I couldn't be mean to Jefferson, so I let him crawl in beside me that first night. Now he wanted to do it every night, and especially tonight because of the turmoil at the dinner table.

"You have to stay in your own room, Jefferson," I told him when he asked me later. "Don't let Richard terrorize you and force you out. It's your room, not his."

Reluctantly, he returned and tried to do what I said: ignore Richard. But in the morning, he came to my room howling. At first I thought Richard had hit him, but Richard wasn't a physical boy. I could see that the idea of striking someone and someone striking him back frightened him.

"What's wrong now, Jefferson?" I asked, grinding the sleep out of my eyes and sitting up.