Free Stepping by Nancy Thayer Page B

just had a little talk with the girls. They really don’t want to be left with a sitter. It’s understandable. They’ve been here only a short while. They’ve only barely learned to trust us. As Caroline put it, if I wanted to see them so badly this summer, how come I want to go off and leave them with a sitter? And poor little Cathy just broke down and cried.” Charlie stopped and took his hand off my arm, and stared away into the grass, looking miserable.
    It was the “poor little Cathy” that got to me more than anything else. Poor little Cathy had cold, hard metal faucets in her head, and she could turn her tears on and off at will. I’ve never seen anything like it except in a bathroom sink. After two or three weeks with us the girls had suddenly seemed to decide they could trust us. At the very least it was obvious that they weren’t getting hit or screamed at or neglected, and they were getting lots of toys and clothes and games and treats. But that didn’t mean we were all jolly friends forevermore. They seemed to have a score to settle now, a revenge to continually wreak. Caroline, already out of the baby stage and not cute anyway because of those awful buckteeth, chose the intellectual’s role of cold-shouldering and cool-mouthing. She had perfected a marvelously steady nihilistic stare; Sartre would have loved her. “Well, then,” she would say, “if we don’t go tonight, we’ll probably never get a chance to go again, at least not with you, Dad.” She would never, ever, hold anyone’s hand, and she sat on Charlie’s lap as rigidly as if her backbone were made of metal.
    But it was soft little, sweet little, pretty little, poor little Cathy who was the one to watch out for. She was such a darling girl, all big eyes and innocence, so cuddly and eager to please. But she knew what she wanted, and she knew how to get it. She knew how to handle Charlie like a baker making himself a pie. It wasn’t something she obviously worked at, it just came to her naturally; she was born with it. She knew even at seven how to get what she wanted from men. It came to her as easily and surely as a talent for swimming or singing or taming animals comes to others. Perhaps all girls who are especially winsome when little develop this special art. Caroline didn’t have it. She used to stare at Cathy with as much awe and amazement as I did. Even now when she compares herself to her sister, she has to laugh. For Christmas last year Cathy received acomplete set of ski gear—boots, skis, bindings, and poles—from one boyfriend and a portable stereo for her dorm room from another. “With my luck, I always seem to break up with my boyfriends just before Christmas,” Caroline laughed, and I laughed with her. Caroline feels no awe of Cathy anymore, and no envy. She is a smart girl; she will buy her own skis, her own stereo. And perhaps she’ll be able to have a better relationship with a man, when all is said and done, than Cathy will. Who can say? Perhaps one can use men and still establish a good mutual love. Certainly Charlie loves Cathy.
    And loved her then. She was pretty, she was the baby, she was affectionate. She seemed to understand that I wasn’t going to rat on her. What could I say? “I wish you could see the way Cathy looks at me when you’re holding her and can’t see her face?” I might have been willing to be petty, but not with such vague material. Frankly, I wasn’t, with all my twenty-two years, as clever as Cathy with her seven, and more important, I didn’t know what game we were playing. The third day on the farm, after Cathy’s tantrum over the shrimp and avocado salad and our later friendly silly talk about food in the bedroom, the day after that one nice night when I thought we had all become friends for good, Cathy got to me again.
    We had all finished breakfast, and Charlie had said, “Come on, Caroline. I’ll show you how to drive the tractor. I’ve got to mow. You can have a turn