Ok, who’s ready for things to get really fucked up? Me, too. Let’s get started. This one’s a long one.
Another year has passed. Corrine is barely coming to see them. The kids are getting careless with the rules. One day Cathy has the bedroom to herself, and decides to strip down in front of the mirror, because she’s never seen herself fully naked. She starts to do her ballet exercises. She feels someone watching, and turns around, and finds Chris looking at her. She just stands there and lets him look. Suddenly, they hear the lock turning, and Cathy can’t get dressed fast enough. The Grandmother catches them. And she is pissed, y’all.
The Grandmother immediately figures out Cathy was admiring herself, and comes back with a pair of scissors, and says Chris is to cut off Cathy’s hair, and they’ll get no food until he does. Chris swears he won’t do it. That night, the Grandmother sneaks in and sticks Cathy with a hypodermic needle, and pours tar in her hair. Chris works all the next day to get it out. To trick the Grandmother, Chris just cuts the very front of Cathy’s hair, and she puts the rest of it up in a turban, like she’s ashamed of her bald head.
But she never comes with any food. They’re able to ration out what they had for a week, but another week passes with no food. Chris eventually slashes his wrist and feeds the twins his blood. Cathy and Chris are about to eat raw mice they’ve caught to give them strength to escape using a rope ladder, when the Grandmother sneaks in a food basket, including an extra treat, four powdered doughnuts.
Chris thinks they should still test out their rope ladder, and he and Cathy sneak off to a nearby lake while the twins sleep. It’s the first time they’ve touched the ground in two years. They swim and talk, and have a good time. Cathy has a hard time getting back up the ladder, and almost falls. Chris says they won’t do that again.
One day the Grandmother catches Chris looking out the window, and he talks back to her. So she takes him into the bathroom and whips him. Cathy can’t stop screaming, so the Grandmother does the same to her, plus beats her with a hairbrush until she blacks out.
Later, Chris and Cathy doctor each other’s wounds, then lay together naked on the bed. And he kisses her. Cathy at least makes him stop.
They capture a mouse without killing it in one of their traps, and Cory wants to keep it. So Chris doctors him up, and they name him Mickey. Eventually, he learns to trust humans.
Cathy looks at the twins one day, and realizes they haven’t grown; only their heads have gotten bigger. They measure them, and they’ve only grown two inches in two years.
Finally, after months, Corrine is back, bearing many gifts. But Chris and Cathy get mad at her, and she gets all melodramatic, and guilt trips them, and leaves. The children open their presents, and while the toys are good, the clothes don’t fit Chris and Cathy. Corrine stills thinks they’re children. Cathy gets pissed, and lashes out at the others, and says she wishes she were dead. She runs up to the attic to dance her anger out, and only results in injuring her knee. She crawls out onto the roof, and contemplates suicide. But she worries Corrine won’t even care. Chris finds her still there that evening, and they make up.
It’s another ten days before Corrine visits them again. When she does, she breaks the news that she’s married Bart Winslow, and they’ve been on their honeymoon. And no, he doesn’t know about them, because he’s their grandfather’s attorney.
Ok, shit's about to get real, now.
One day while the two of them are up in the attic, Chris and Cathy are talking, and he says he doesn’t know how a real man thinks. She says she knows how to make him feel manly. A haircut. So she gives him one, and them he casually takes the scissors, and makes like he’s going to cut her hair. She runs, and he chases. When she reaches the schoolroom, she trips, and so does he, with the scissors in hand, and he ends up cutting Cathy. Never run with scissors, kids.
Chris opens her sweater up, and declares it to only be a scratch. He doctors her up, then lays with her. He starts playing with her nipple, then kisses it. Cathy’s like all, “Eh, no big deal.” They talk about the fact that they know what comes next, and Chris says he wishes Cathy weren’t so pretty, and available. They stop there, though.
Chris vows to get them out of there, and then seals his promise with a long kiss. Of course.
Corrine is only visiting two or three times a month at this point. Cathy tries to tell her how they throw up a lot now, and their heads ache. She just tells them to keep their food cold. The next time she comes, Chris goes off to the bathroom with the key she left just laying there, and makes an impression of it. For the next three days, he works on whittling a key out of wood. Finally, it works.
Now that they’ve got a way out, Chris figures they need money. So he slips out on the nights they know Corrine will be gone, and steals money from her room. One night he talks Cathy into accompanying him. Cathy is shocked at the opulence Corrine lives in, but has fun trying on her clothes and makeup. Chris tells her she looks like a streetwalker, though. She’s also shocked when she finds a sex book in Corrine’s nightstand.
One night Chris is sick, and sends Cathy out to do the stealing on her own. When she gets to Corrine’s room, she finds Bart Winslow dozing in a chair. She thinks about waking him up, but doesn’t. She just kisses him instead.
Another night Chris goes by himself, and gets distracted by the sex book. Then he hears voices coming, and he hides in the closet. It’s Corrine and Bart. He listens to them talk, and learns that they think the maids are stealing from them. He also learns about a “dream” Bart had, about a young blonde girl who kissed him while he slept. Oh shit.
When he gets back to the attic, Chris is pissed. And not only because he thinks Corrine will put it together. He starts yelling about how Cathy is his. Then he rapes her.
Afterwards, they go out on the roof and cry together. He apologizes, and Cathy says she could have stopped him if she really wanted to, that it was her fault, too. Ugh.
They decide they have to leave as soon as possible, and plan to steal Corrine’s jewelry, then go. But they night they plan on stealing, Cory becomes violently ill. They try saying something about it the next morning, to the Grandmother, but she leaves the room without saying anything. But she does return with Corrine, and they look Cory over, and have a whispered conversation. They decide to take him to a hospital, but won’t let Cathy go along. They sneak him out that night.
The others wait all the next day or news, and when Corrine returns that night, she’s obviously been crying. She tells them that she registered Cory under a fake name, and said he was her nephew. She says the doctor told her he had pneumonia, and they did all they could, but it was too late. Cory died.
Cathy thinks it happened because of her and Chris sinning. And poor Carrie. She just screams and screams, then never says another word.
This gives them all the more reason to leave. On the next opportunity, Chris slips out to go steal. But he doesn’t make it back until early the next morning. When he finally returns, he tells Cathy what he learned.
When he reached Corrine’s room, everything was gone. Everything. Not letting that stop him, Chris goes to find the Grandmother’s room, to see if he can find her jewelry. He finds it, but there’s a light on. He peeks in, and finds her bald, with her wig beside her on a dummy head.
He then goes to find the grandfather, because he wants to confront him. He finds the correct room, but it’s empty and dusty. He goes back into the library, and hears people coming, so he hides behind a sofa. It’s John the butler and a maid. They have sex, twice, on the sofa, but they also talk. A lot. And Chris learns everything he needs to know.
The grandfather has been dead for a year, and it’s been nine months since the will was read. Corrine has inherited everything. They also talk about how the Grandmother carries food up to kill the mice in the attic everyday.
Chris figures out that if you mix arsenic and powdered sugar, like on doughnuts, together, you can’t taste the bitterness.
Chris says there’s more, but that’s all he can tell her without throwing up. He’ll tell her the rest when they’re gone the next morning. While waiting out the day, they decide to test their theory on poor little Mickey, and feed him a piece of doughnut. Sure enough, he dies. They put him and the others doughnuts in a bag to take with them as evidence.
The next morning, escaping is just as easy as walking out the backdoor. The go back to the depot, and catch the train to Charlottesville. There they buy bus tickets to Sarasota, where they plan to join a circus. Nobody said it was a good plan.
While they’re waiting, Cathy asked Chris to tell her what he was holding back. Turns out there was a codicil added to the will. That if it ever came to light Corrine and Chris had had children, or if she has children with Bart, everything was to be taken from her. It was actually Corrine who was poisoning the children.
Chris tells Cathy it’s up to her what they do. She thinks about it, and throws the bag with Mickey and the doughnuts away. They decide to focus on the future, instead.
In my future, I’m looking forward to the movie tonight. I don’t actually think it will be good or anything. But it does look more faithful to the book than the other movie.
Full confession, I think Kiernan Shipka is awesome, and I don’t even watch Mad Men. I just know her from Suri’s Burn Book.
Don’t forget to follow me on Twitter for the live tweeting tonight!
o One of the ways Chris tries to get the tar out of Cathy’s hair, is by both of them peeing in the bathtub, figuring the ammonia might help.
o One day Cathy sees Chris holding the hair he cut off, smelling it, and then put it in a box to keep under his pillow.
o I always felt bad for Cathy not having a bra when she needed one. The other stuff didn’t get to me so much, but that bothered me.
No comments:
Post a Comment