Christopher Dollanganger s Unmailed last letter. By V.C. Andrews

Transcription

1 Christopher Dollanganger s Unmailed last letter By V.C. Andrews Dear Corinne, I have begun and stopped writing this letter many times. We live in a dangerous world, as you know all too well with the loss of your brothers and I always fear that someday I might lose you or you might lose me. If something happened to me tomorrow, for example, there would be so many, many things I would wish I had said. Every day since we left the security and luxury of Foxworth Hall, I have taken pause and thought about what I have done. In no way is this an expression of regret, for I can t imagine loving any woman as much as I love you and will love you. Sometimes, however, love can be a very selfish thing. I wonder often if I didn t take advantage of you. I know you will never say I did, but you were so young, and, although I never told you and indeed pretended the otherwise, I was not a virgin when I returned home from college and we first made love in your grandmother s Swan room. I pretended to be because I thought it made you more comfortable, although it was clear that neither of us could keep away from the other much longer. I know that you and I have never really discussed whether or not we would ever tell the children the truth about us. A part of me wants us never to do it, but a part of me demands that we do, that they know everything about us and about themselves. And this brings me to a secret I have kept locked in my heart for all these years. When Malcolm and Olivia confronted us, enraged at our relationship and calling us incestuous, as well as many other terrible things, they were basing it on what you and I were told, that I was your half-uncle. You and I got passed that by telling each other that cousins often married. Indeed, for a long time, families wouldn t think of marrying out of the family line. They believed they were keeping their blood pure. However, the truth about us my darling was so stunning to me that I have buried it away for as long as I could, but I do not want to die or you to die without knowing it. That seems almost worse than anything we have done. People should never die not knowing themselves. I am not your half-uncle, my love. I am, in fact, your half-brother and not your half-uncle. Your father impregnated my mother. Actually,

2 he forced himself upon her when she was living in your house. I stumbled upon a letter my mother had written to Olivia, a letter in which my mother was thanking her for bringing you up as she would her own daughter. Yes, my dearest, you and I had the same mother. Olivia always knew all this. She knew what your father had done, but she had a way of willing the truth out of this world. Perhaps she did what she did to keep the peace and make all our lives possible after such a sin had been committed, a sin that could have doomed us all. Your father was your father and as any father who loved his daughter well, he lavished so much attention on you. However, every time he set eyes on you, especially in Olivia s presence, he must have felt pangs of guilt. I think he was always trying to make it up to Olivia, thinking that every time she looked at you, she saw the child her husband had created with his sister-in-law. I have up until now hesitated to tell you all this because as I write it and imagine you reading it, I can easily also imagine the shock in your face. Perhaps you will hate me for having kept such a dark secret buried away from you for so long. Believe me when I swear that there were so many, many times over the years when I was on the verge of telling you, but your sweet and trusting face, and your overwhelming love for me silenced my voice. You cannot imagine how many nights I tossed and turned, waking and getting up to battle with myself. But I always returned to lie beside you, silent. Half-brother and half-sister hung in the air around and over me like a crown of thorns. We had lost our rationalization, our easy path to accepting we had the same familial blood, but distant enough to keep us safe, and more important, our children safe. You never saw the abject terror and fear in my eyes every time one of our children was born. I knew what Olivia and your father meant when they talked about our children being born with horns and hooves and who knows what. I anticipated something terrible like two-headed babies, and then the doctor looking at us and wondering who and what we really were to each other. Does this make everything worse for us, and more important, for our children? I don t know. When I look at Cathy, at how beautiful she is, how intelligent Christopher Jr. is and how like precious jewels our twins are, I feel confident that we have somehow escaped the curse of incestuous love. Perhaps our love for each other was and has been too strong for it to matter. Is that a romantic idealism? Maybe. I worry, of course, that if and when the children find out, they will think so much less of themselves. Worse, I fear they will be afraid of themselves, afraid of what s inside them that might come out. They might think of themselves as evil, and who knows what they might do

3 to themselves? These are good reasons never to tell them anything close to the truth. I know, but I can t help being haunted by it and feeling terribly guilty about keeping the truth buried. Do you think perhaps that it won t matter after all because it didn t matter to us? You knew how much I had wanted to be a doctor and how pleased I am that Christopher not only has the intelligence to become one but sees it as his true destiny, his purpose in life. I will live my dream through my son. I was willing to make that sacrifice for you and I m willing to keep making it. You must promise me, however, especially if you re reading this letter after I have been taken away from you and our children, that you will do everything you possibly can to see that Christopher lives his dream, his and my dream. I know it would be an unfair burden placed on your shoulders for I have not yet become the provider I dreamed I would be, but you surely will feel the same need to make this happen and somehow find the way. We both feel that our Cathy will do something wonderful with her fascination with dance. She is so graceful, even now, so young. It s easy to see she has inherited your beauty, your lithe, angelic movements. She must be encouraged, but more important, supported. Artists, musicians, anyone in entertainment have a special temperament, just like we can see Cathy has. Nurture it and like a candle that flickers to drive away the darkness in our lives, keep her flame burning. I hope you will understand why I kept this great secret, a secret that will at first seem so dreadful. But even though I knew the truth, I couldn t leave you. Perhaps, I didn t tell you because I was so afraid you would leave me. I will admit to having been a coward, especially when it came to imagining a life without you. I hope I wasn t wrong and you wouldn t despise me for it. I feel so relieved to have put all this down on paper. It s truly like going to confession or something. I will seal it in a special envelope and keep it hidden. Every day I tell myself I won t need to have you read this letter because I will eventually have the courage to tell you it all to your face. I know that s a better way because you will take one look at me and see how the burden weighed on me, but how my love for you was and remains so strong that it kept me from surrendering to what was really your father s sinful lust and not ours. John Amos was always preaching to us, telling us things like the sins of the father will rest on the heads of his children. I saw the way he looked at you whenever he said something like that. At first I had

4 no idea why and then, when I knew, I understood. He always knew the truth. He was a hateful man. It was more him than anyone who turned Olivia and Malcolm against us. Shall I tell you that I wasn t trembling when we left Foxworth Hall, cast out? How strong our hope and our love was, yes, but the shadow I carried in my heart made me turn back many times and wonder if there was enough forgiveness in that great house to get us back someday. Ironically, knowing how much sin we had taken on, I thought I must live a righteous life now and do all I can to keep our family safe and successful. I might not have tried so hard if I didn t believe I had more of an obligation to do so than any other man. I have not yet succeeded to reach the place I know we need to be, but I hope I will get us there. There is nothing I can end this letter with, but a plea for you to forgive me for loving you more than I loved myself and my chance to get into heaven. I can only hope that God is as forgiving as he is loving and knows we are truly of pure heart. I will put this letter in an envelope now, but I will not write your name on the outside until I find the courage. Something I might never find. Love always and forever, Your Christopher

5 Note: History of the Unmailed Letter of Christopher Dollanganger: In the spring of 1958, a bank clerk in the First National Bank of Gladstone Pennsylvania was assigned to go through the remnants of a home on which the bank had foreclosed years ago, a home of one Christopher Dollanganger. While sifting through documents, he found an unaddressed sealed letter which he read. He was so shocked by the contents, he left the letter in a satchel that was placed with the remnants of other foreclosed houses in the Second Street Warehouse on Loomis Road, Gladstone rented by the bank. Four years later, there was another inventory of items unclaimed and the letter was read by a Steven Clarkson who was also quite shocked with the contents. He brought the letter home and his mother-in-law, Tamatha Williams who was a close friend of Bernice Wheeler whom she knew to have been a neighbor of a family named Dollanganger brought the letter to Bernice to read. Bernice had the same reaction and at first wanted them to destroy the letter. However, both felt that someday it might be necessary to have the Dollanganger children read the letter so they kept it in a safety deposit box in the same bank, First National of Gladstone. On Mrs. Wheeler s death, her younger sister Christina Brooks discovered and read the letter and then sent the letter to a friend who worked at the Charlottesville Gazette in Virginia. That friend, Tad Jenkins, personally delivered the letter to our source, who must at this time remain undisclosed. His name will be revealed in a subsequent publication.