She cried herself to sleep, at dusk, without dinner, and as she drifted off to sleep, feeling her cheek ache and her thigh throb where her mother had kicked her, she tried to think of other places, other things… a garden… or a park… with happy people in it… and children laughing as they played… everyone was playing, and they wanted her to play with them… a tall, beautiful woman came toward her and held her arms out to her and told her that she loved her… It was the most wonderful feeling in the world, and as she thought of it, everything else in her life faded away, and she drifted off to sleep, holding her dolly.
“Aren't you afraid you're going to kill her one of these days?” John said pointedly to his wife, and she looked at him in contemptuous amusement. He'd had more than a few drinks as he stood looking at her, gently reeling. The drinking had started at about the same time as the beatings. It was easier than trying to stop the beatings, or explaining Eloise's behavior. The drinking took the edge off and made an intolerable situation nearly bearable for him, if not for Gabriella. “Maybe she won't end up a drunk like you, if I beat a little sense into her now. It might save her a lot of heartache later.” Eloise sat calmly on the couch looking at him with disdain, as he made himself another martini.
“The sickest thing is, I think you believe that.”
“Are you suggesting I'm too hard on her?” Eloise said, visibly furious at being challenged.
“Too hard? Too hard? Have you ever taken a good look at her bruises? How do you think she gets them?”
“Don't be ridiculous, if you re trying to blame me for that. She falls on her face every time she puts her shoes on.” She lit a cigarette, and leaned back to watch him drink his martini.
“Eloise, this is me you're talking to. Who are you kidding here? I know how you feel about her… so does she… poor kid, she doesn't deserve this.”
“Neither do I. Do you have any idea what I have to put up with? She's a little monster underneath those curls, with those big innocent blue eyes you're so in love with.”
He looked at her as though a veil had been lifted from his eyes, swept away by the force of the alcohol in his system. “You're jealous of her, aren't you, El? That's what this is all about, isn't it? Just plain jealousy. You're jealous of your own daughter.”
“You're drunk.” She dismissed him with a wave of the cigarette, unwilling to listen to what he was saying.
“I'm right, and you know it. You're sick. I'm just sorry for her that we ever had her. She doesn't deserve a life like the one we give her… you give her…” He took no responsibility for his wife's cruelty and took great pride in the fact that he had never laid a hand on Gabriella. But he had never done anything to protect her either.
“If you're trying to make me feel guilty about her, don't bother. I don't. I know what I'm doing.”
“Do you? You beat her senseless practically every day. Is that what you had intended for her?” He looked horrified as he drained his glass, and felt the effect of his fourth martini. Sometimes it took more than that to drown the things that he remembered her doing.
“She's not an easy child, John. She needs to be taught a lesson.”
“Well, you've done that, El. I'm sure she'll always remember the lessons we taught her.” His eyes began to glaze as he said it.
“I hope so. Children don't need a lot of fussing over. It's not good for them. She knows I'm right too. She never argues with me when I punish her. She knows she deserves it.”
“She's too afraid to argue with you, and you know it. She's probably afraid you'll kill her if she says anything, or tries to resist you.”
“You make me sound like an ax-murderer, for God's sake.” She crossed one shapely leg over the other, but for several years now he was no longer moved by her. Seeing what she was doing to their child had made him begin to hate her, but not enough to try and stop her, nor leave her. He didn't have the guts to do that, and was slowly beginning to hate himself for it.
“We should send her to school somewhere in a few years, just to get her out of here, away from both of us. She deserves that.”
“She deserves a proper education from us before that.”
“Is that what you call this? ‘Education’? Did you see the bruise on her cheek when she went to her room tonight?”
“It will be gone by morning,” Eloise said calmly.
He knew it was probably true, but hated to admit it. Eloise always seemed to know just how much force to use so that the bruises never showed on the exposed areas of Gabriella's body. The marks on her upper arms and legs were usually a different story. She was an expert at it.
“You're one sick bitch,” was all he said to his wife as he left the room and walked unsteadily to their bedroom. She was, but there seemed to be nothing he could do about it. He stopped in the open doorway of his daughter's room on the way, and stared into the darkness. There was no sign of life there, no sound, and the bed appeared to be empty, but when he walked softly into the room and looked more closely, he saw a small lump at the bottom of the bed and knew it was Gabriella. She always slept that way, hidden way down in the bed, so that her mother wouldn't think she was there if she came to find her. Tears filled his eyes as he looked at the small, barely visible lump of battered terror that was his daughter. He didn't even dare pull her back up to the empty pillow. It would only expose her to Eloise's anger again, if she came in to see her. He left her there, lonely and alone and seemingly forgotten, and turned and walked on to his own room, wondering at the injustices of life, the inhumanity that had befallen his child, and yet he knew as he walked away from her, he knew that there was nothing he could do to save her. In his own way, he was as powerless against his wife as Gabriella. And he hated himself for it.
Chapter 2
THE GUESTS BEGAN arriving shortly after eight o'clock at the town house on East Sixty-ninth Street. A handful of well-known socialites were there, a Russian prince with an English girl, and all of the women Eloise normally played bridge with. The head of the bank where John Harrison worked had come with his wife, and waiters in dinner jackets were serving champagne on silver trays as the guests arrived, as Gabriella sat hidden at the top of the stairs, watching them. She liked watching the guests when her parents gave parties.
Her mother looked beautiful in a black satin gown, and her father looked handsome and elegant in a well-cut tuxedo. The women's dresses shimmered as they came into the hall, and their jewels sparkled in the candlelight as they took their glasses of champagne, and seemed to drift away toward the voices and the music. Eloise and John loved giving parties. They did it less often now, but they still entertained lavishly from time to time, and Gabriella loved watching the guests as they arrived, and lying in her room afterward listening to the music.
It was September, the opening of the New York social season. And Gabriella had just turned seven. There was no special occasion for the party that night, just a gathering of their friends, some of whom Gabriella recognized as she watched them. There were a few she had always liked, and who were nice to her on the rare instances when they saw her, which wasn't often. She was rarely introduced to their friends, seldom seen, never made much fuss of. She was simply. there, hidden away upstairs, mostly forgotten. Eloise didn't think children should be seen in social situations, and Gabriella's existence in their lives was anything but important to her. Now and then one of her friends asked about the child, mostly at her bridge club, and she dismissed their inquiries with a graceful hand, like an annoying insect that had crossed her path and could be brushed away just as quickly. There were no photographs of Gabriella in the house, although there were many of Eloise and John, in silver frames. There were never any photographs taken of Gabriella. Recording her childhood was of no particular interest to them.
Gabriella smiled as she saw a pretty blond woman walk into the hall downstairs. Marianne Marks was wearing a white chiffon dress that seemed to float as she moved, talking to her husband. She was one of her parents’ closest friends, and her husband worked with Gabriella's father. There was a diamond necklace glittering on her neck, and her hands moved gracefully as she took a glass of champagne from one of the waiters. And then, as though sensing something, she glanced upstairs, and stopped when she saw Gabriella. The woman's face seemed to be suffused with light, and from the glow of the candles in the chandelier, she almost seemed to be wearing a halo, and then Gabriella realized that the sparkle she saw there was from a tiny diamond tiara. She looked like a fairy queen to Gabriella.
“Gabriella! What are you doing up there?” Her voice was gentle and warm, as she smiled broadly, and waved to the child hiding on the top step in her pink flannel nightgown.
“Shhh…” Gabriella put a finger to her lips with a worried frown. If they knew she was sitting there, she would get in terrible trouble.
“Oh…” Marianne Marks understood instantly, or thought she did, as she ran upstairs quickly, on light feet, to see her. She was wearing high-heeled white satin sandals, and made no sound, as her husband waited for her downstairs, smiling at his wife and the pretty child who was whispering now, as Marianne embraced her. “What are you doing up here? Watching the guests arrive?”
“You look so pretty!” Gabriella said with an awestruck air as she nodded in answer to the question. Marianne Marks was everything that her mother wasn't. She was beautiful and fair, she had big blue eyes like Gabriella's and a smile that seemed to light everything around her. She seemed almost magical to Gabriella, as she watched her, and sometimes she couldn't help wondering why she couldn't have had a mother like this one. Marianne was about her mother's age, and always seemed sad when she said that she had no children. Perhaps there had been a mistake somewhere, perhaps Gabriella had been destined for a woman like this, and had come to her own parents by mistake instead… maybe because she was so bad, and needed to be punished. She couldn't imagine Marianne punishing anyone. She was always so kind and so gentle, and she seemed so happy, particularly now as she bent down to kiss Gabriella, and as she did, Gabriella could smell the warm, delicious smell of her perfume. Gabriella hated the scent of her mother's perfume. “Can't you come downstairs for a little while?” Marianne asked, wanting to whisk the little girl into her arms and take her downstairs with her. There was a quality to the child that always seemed to reach out to her and seize her heart. Everythi… out the little girl made her want to love and protect her. She didn't know why she felt that way, but Gabriella was one of those rare, fragile souls that reached out and touched you, and Marianne felt the pull of her now as she took her hand in her own and held it. It was small and cold and the fingers felt unbearably frail, the grip firm and almost pleading.
“No, no… I can't come down… Mommy would be really angry. I'm supposed to be in bed,” she whispered. She knew the penalty for leaving her bed and disobeying those orders, yet she could never resist the temptation to watch the people arriving for her parents’ parties. And now and then there was a bonus like this one. “Is that a real crown?” Marianne looked like the fairy godmother in “Cinderella” to her, and Robert Marks, waiting for his wife patiently at the foot of the stairs, looked very handsome.
“It's called a tiara,” Marianne giggled. Gabriella had to call her either Aunt Marianne, or Mrs. Marks. There were severe penalties for calling her parents’ friends, or any adult, by their first names, and she knew that. “Isn't it silly? It belonged to my grandma.”
“Was she a queen?” Gabriella asked solemnly with the huge, knowing eyes that always touched Marianne Marks’ heart in ways she didn't quite understand, but felt acutely.
“No, she was just a funny old lady in Boston. But she met the Queen of England once, that's when she wore this. I thought it would be fun to wear it tonight,” and as she explained, she unpinned it carefully from her elegantly coiffed blond hair, and set it gracefully on Gabriella's head of blond curls with a single gesture. “Now you look like a little princess.”
“I do?” Gabriella looked awestruck at the prospect. How could anyone as bad as she look like a princess?
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