Casteel 05 Web of Dreams (25 page)

"Madam."
"Thank you." I took my seat and began to eat. Dressed only in this white sheet, I couldn't help feeling foolish sitting at the small table. But Tony acted as if it were quite an ordinary thing. Perhaps it was because of all his artistic experience, I thought. Whenever I moved, the sheet parted, so I held it together with one hand while I ate and drank with the other.
"Do you think girls are more modest than boys?" he asked, obviously noticing my awkwardness.
"No."
"Did you ever see a boy naked?"
"Of course not," I snapped. He laughed. I knew he was just teasing me again, but it made my nerve ends twang.
"Now don't tell me there aren't any Peeping Janes, just like there are Peeping Toms. I know when girls get together, they talk about boys they have seen naked, just like boys might talk about girls. I bet the girls at Winterhaven do when they get together, right?"
I didn't reply, but he was right. At one of our last get-togethers in Marie's room, Ellen Stevens told us about seeing her brother take a shower. Just recalling it now made me blush.
"It's all right," Tony said shaking his head and smiling from ear to ear. "It's only natural to have curiosity about the opposite sex." He drank his wine.
I took a tiny sip of the wine. I felt flushed. My face grew warmer. He finished his glass and poured himself another quickly.
"There's nothing wrong with modesty," he continued, "unless it's taken to a ridiculous extreme." His face hardened, his eyes turning cold and gray suddenly. "If you're married and your wife still shuts you out whenever she is dressing . ."
He looked up at me quickly as if I had said something to disagree, but I was so still and quiet, I was almost like the statue he wanted to create.
"Why would a wife not want her own husband to set eyes on her?" he asked as if I were the older and the wiser one. "Is she afraid he will see some imperfection, a wrinkle, a large birthmark? Would you always want the lights out whenever you made love with your husband?" he asked. I didn't know what to say. "Of course, you wouldn't. Why should you?" He looked down and muttered, "She's driving me crazy."
I knew he was talking about my mother, but I said nothing. Did Momma think that if Tony saw her naked in a brightly lit room he would know her true age? I wondered. She had such a perfect figure. How could it reveal her age?
I finished my sandwich and sipped a little more wine. Tony seemed in a daze. Suddenly, he snapped out of it and smiled.
"Time to go back to work," he announced and rose from his seat.
I followed him back to the living room that had been turned into a studio and stood where I had stood before.
"I see the wine has given you a crimson tint. I like that. I'll have to capture that," he said. "Does the glow continue down your neck?" he asked and drew closer and ran his right forefinger along my neckline to my collarbone. "You're truly exquisite," he whispered. "A young flower just blooming." His eyes were piercing, bright. He sighed and shook his head. "How lucky I am to have you, Leigh. This will succeed only because I have such a beautiful model"
He returned to the easel and began to draw. After a moment he stopped.
"Just unclip the sheet at your neck and hold it at your waist," he said as nonchalantly as he might say, "Turn your head to the left."
At my waist, I thought. My fingers trembled so when went to unclip it I couldn't do it. He laughed.
"Here, let me help you," he said, coming forward. He lifted my fingers from the clip gently and undid it. I held the sheet against my body for a moment. Then he peeled it down over my shoulders, over my arms, peeled it from my bosom, all the time keeping his eyes on my eyes. He smiled and stepped back, gazing at me. My heart pounded.
"I love that little birthmark under your breast," he exclaimed. "That's the kind of individualistic little thing I can put into the model to make it definitely you. Everyone will look for something that will make the doll more specifically a replica of themselves, don't you see?" He appeared so excited about it that I could only shake my head in astonishment. He rushed back to his easel and continued to sketch.
He worked for more than an hour, stopping often to study me with such intensity and sighing before shaking his head and smiling. Suddenly he stopped and bit down on his lip hard, shaking his head.
"What's wrong?" I asked.
"I'm not getting this right. It's o, unbalanced. I'm not doing justice to your symmetry," he declared.
"Does it have to be so perfect, Tony?"
"Of course," he said, a ripple of annoyance passing through his face. "It's the first and the best." He looked at his sketch and then looked at me. He turned back to the sketch and nodded. Then he stepped forward.
"I hope you don't mind," he said, "but sometimes, we artists see things clearer with our eyes closed."
"But how can you see with your eyes closed?" I asked.
"We see through our other senses. An artist who paints beautiful birds must listen to them sing and get their songs into the painting as well as their colors and shapes. When an artist paints a beautiful green field, he gets the aroma of grass and flowers into his painting. Understand?" I nodded. It did sound right.
"And through touch," he said, "an artist brings depth, texture, fullness to his work. This will be a great asset to me when I transform the drawing into a sculpture. Just relax a moment," he requested in a breathy whisper. He brought his hands to my waist and closed his eyes. Then his fingers traveled up over my ribs, pausing as they pressed against my bones. "Yes," he said. "Yes." He moved his hands farther up and the tips of his fingers touched the undersides of my breasts. I started to step back.
"Easy," he said. "I'm seeing it all perfectly now."
I looked into his face. His eyes were still shut tight, but I could see them moving back and forth under the lids.
The tips of his fingers moved very slowly up the sides of my breasts and then came down over the tops. He paused there for a moment, holding his breath. I held mine as well.
The tickling sensation I had first experienced disappeared rapidly and was replaced with a tingling that traveled deep into my body, exploding
everywhere. It was as if a dozen fingers were on me, sending the same sensation through my legs and arms and stomach.
The mixture of feelings was bewildering, frightening and thrilling at the same time. I was so confused. Should I pull away, take his hands from my body? Did all artists' models permit the artist to explore their bodies this way? Sometimes when he looked at me so intensely, it felt as if Tony's eyes did touch me, but this was different. His fingers moved under my bosom and over it as if he were shaping me in his mind. My legs grew weak and began to tremble.
Finally, Tony stepped back, holding his hands off me but keeping them in the air just at the height of my bosom. He lingered there for a moment, nodded, and returned slowly to the easel, opening his eyes only when he began to sketch.
He worked with a frenzy now, his lips tight and his jaw firm. I barely moved. My heart was thumping so hard I thought it would burst through my chest. What had he just done? What had I permitted him to do? Did Momma know this would happen? Why hadn't she warned me?
"Yes," Tony said. "It's coming now. It's working," He smiled at me and worked on. Not long after, he stopped abruptly, stepped back to look at his work, and the nodded.
"Okay," he said. "We've done enough for today. Why don't you get dressed while I clean up."
I turned my back to him and began putting on my clothing. When I was finished, he beckoned for me to look at the work.
"Well? What do you think?"
I did see resemblances to my face. He had captured the shape of my head and my chin perfectly, but my torso looked far more mature than I was. My body looked more like my mother's body.
"It's very good, Tony," I said, "but you've made me look older."
"It's how I see you too, you know. This is a work of art, not a photograph. Half of it is in the artist's mind. That's why it was so important for me to touch you, too. I hope you understand, Leigh," he said, an expression of concern on his face.
"Yes, I understand," I replied, but I didn't really understand. I didn't understand my own feelings, as well. I had felt embarrassed, frightened and thrilled at the same time. It was all so confusing. I made up my mind I would talk to my mother about it, no matter what.
But she was already gone for the evening when Tony and arrived at the house. She had left a note explaining that she was going to dinner and the theater in Boston with some of her women friends. It came as just as much a surprise to Tony as it did to me.
"Looks like you and I will dine alone again tonight," he muttered and rushed upstairs to his suite.
Soon after I went up to mine, Troy came to see me. His bouts with the chicken pox and the measles, his allergies and colds, had left him so thin and pale. Even the time he spent in the summer sun didn't do much to make his complexion richer. Because he had lost a little weight, too, he looked gaunt and his eyes were drawn and had dark circles around them. Despite his condition he brightened when he came charging into my bedroom to see how the work on the Tatterton portrait doll had gone.
"When will it be ready?" he asked. "This week?"
"I don't know, Troy. All we did today is sketch in the picture. Tony has to paint and then begin making a sculpture. Did you have your dinner?" I asked. The doctors had put him on a different feeding schedule and he was eating earlier than the rest of us. I knew that pleased my mother, but it made him very unhappy to have to eat alone or only with his nurse.
"Yes. I had to drink that gooey stuff again, too," he complained.
"It's good for you, Troy, and it will make you stronger so you will be able to live a normal life again. You will get better and be Able to ride your pony and swim and . . ."
"No, I won't," he said with a frighteningly assured and mature expression. His eyes were as sharp and as cold as Tony's could be at times. "I'll never get better and I won't live as long as everyone's supposed to live," he added firmly.
"Troy! You must not say such things. That's a terrible thing to say," I chided.
"I know it's true. I heard the doctor say it to the nurse." "What did he say?" I demanded, outraged that a doctor would utter such comments in his presence.
"He said I was as delicate as a flower, and just as a flower would snap in a harsh wind, I would snap if I ever became seriously ill."
I stared at him a moment. In a strange way his sicknesses had matured and aged him. Right now he appeared to be an old man in a child's body, his eyes had that much wisdom and experience in them. It was as if the months were ticking away like days and the days like hours for him. Perhaps his wisdom gave him a window on the future and he did see his own early death. I shuddered with the thought.
"Troy, he just meant that if you didn't improve, you would be sickly, but you're going to improve. You're just a little boy. You have plenty of time to grow stronger and stronger. Besides, if you died, who would be my little stepbrother?"
His eyes lit up with that.
"You will always want me to be your little stepbrother?"
"Of course."
"And you will never leave me here by myself?" he asked with Tony's skepticism.
"Where would I go? This is my home now, just as it is yours."
His smile washed out the melancholy shadow that had clung to his face. I seized his wrist gently and brought him to me for a quick hug. The tears that gathered in the corners of my eyes started a slow trickle down my cheeks. When he pulled back and saw them, he looked surprised.
"Why are you crying, Leigh?"
"I'm just . . . happy you will be my little brother forever and ever, Troy," I said. His face became resplendent and he glowed with happiness. I thought he grew stronger, healthier, right before my eyes.
All he really needed, I thought, was someone to love and to cherish him, someone to make him feel wanted. Tony loved him very much, I was sure, but Tony was so involved in all his business activities, he couldn't be the father Troy needed; and my mother . . . she was so involved with herself and so put off by Tray's illnesses, she didn't even see him. I could imagine that when she looked at him, she looked right through him; and Troy, being the sensitive little boy he was, surely felt invisible and alone because of all that. It dawned on me that he really had only t e now.
In some ways I felt just like him. There were so many tit es now when my mother looked right through me, had her mind on her own activities and concerns. And my father was preoccupied with a new love. Troy and I were two orphans thrown together in this big house, surrounded by things other children and young people dreamed of having. rut things without love and someone to cherish, and to cherish you along with them, were really only things.
"Will you come into my suite later to read to me, Leigh?" he asked.
"After dinner. I promise."
"Okay. I've got to go see Tony," he said. "Don't forget," he added and ran out, his little legs wobbling as he charged out of my suite. It made me laugh, but it also made me sad.
I changed and dressed for dinner. Tony was already in the dining room when I came down.
"How are you, a little tired?" he asked.
"Yes, although I don't know why modeling should make me tired. I just stood there," I said.
"Don't underestimate what you're doing. It's work. You're concentrating too and don't forget, you were nervous today. That can tire you out. Tomorrow, you will be less nervous and as the days go by, it will get easier and easier."
"How much longer will it be, Tony?" I asked. He had said "as the days go-by."
"A while, I have to spend a lot of time on the actual painting. I want your skin tones perfect and your eyes and hair. And then, there is the actual sculpting. We can't rush this along," he said with a smile.
I didn't know what to say. It sounded as if he would spend the entire summer with me standing nude before him in the cottage. Would he have to touch me again and again? Could I ever really get used to that? And what about his other work . . . his business?
"But don't you have other things to do?"
"I have very competent help, and as I told you, this is one of the most important projects Tatterton Toys has ever undertaken," He patted my hand. "Don't worry, you'll have time of to do anything you want."
I nodded. How could I tell him what my real concerns were? Who could I tell? Where was my mother when I needed her? Where was my father?
After dinner, I went up to Troy's room to read to him, but his nurse greeted me outside his suite and told me he was already asleep.