His eyes filled with hope, with gratitude. "You'll help me?" Disbelief flooded his eyes. "I never thought you would .. ."
"Wait, please wait. Let Melodie have her child, then go to her, and then to Jory, and face up to him, Bart. Tell him how you feel about her. Don't steal his wife without giving him a chance to have his say."
"What can he say, Mother, that will make any difference? He's already lost. He can't dance. He can't even walk. He can't perform physically."
Seconds ticked away before I found more useless words to speak. "But does she honestly love
you? I
was in your sitting room. I heard her. She hasn't had her say in this matter. From what I can tell, she's torn between loving Jory and needing you. Don't take advantage of her weakness, or Jory's disabilities. Give him time to recover--then do what you must. It isn't fair to steal from Jory when he can't fight back. Give her time to adjust to Jory's condition. Then, if she still wants you, take her, for she'd only harm him more. But what would you do with Jory's child? Will you take that child from Jory, as well as take his wife? Are you planning to leave him nothing?"
Staring up at me, his eyes glittered
suspiciously. Bart jerked his eyes away to stare up at the ceiling. "I don't know yet about the baby. I haven't thought it out to that extent. I try not to think of the baby--and you don't have to go running to Chris or Jory with this. For once in your life, give me a chance to have something of my very own."
"Bart--"
"Go now, please. Leave me alone to think. I'm tired. You can weaken a man, Mother, with your demands, with your judgments. Just give me a fair chance this time to prove to you that I'm not as bad as you think, or as crazy as I once believed myself to be."
He didn't ask me again not to tell Jory, or Chris. As if he knew I wouldn't. Standing and turning about, I left his room.
On the way back to my room I thought about confronting Melodie, but I was too upset to face her without giving it more thought. She was already distraught enough, and I had to consider the health of her child.
Alone in my rooms, I sat before a guttering log fire and contemplated what to do. Jory's needs came first. In three months Jory's strong legs had begun to wither into thin sticks, reminding me of Bart's legs when he was very young. Short, thin legs covered with scratches, cuts and bruises, always falling, always breaking his bones. Punishing himself for being born and not living up to the standards Jory had set. That alone stood me up and headed me toward Jory's bedroom.
I stood in his doorway, my face washed clean of tear streaks, my eyes cooled by ice packs so they weren't red, and I smiled brightly at my firstborn. "Melodie is napping, Jory. But she'll see you before dinner. I think it would be nice for the two of you to dine alone before the fireplace. The rain outside will make it very cozy in here. I've asked Trevor and Henry to carry up logs and a special small table for dining. I've planned a menu with everything you like. Now, what can I do to help you dress and look your best?"
He shrugged indifferently. Before the accident he'd always loved clothes, had always groomed himself to perfection. "What difference now, Mom, what difference? I see you didn't bring her back with you, and why did it take you so long to come back and say she's napping?"
"The telephone rang. . . and Jory, I have to do a few things for myself once in a while. So now, what suit do you favor most?"
"Pajamas and a robe will do," he said distantly.
"Listen to me, Jory. Tonight you are going to sit in that electric wheelchair, wearing one of your father's suits, since you didn't bring a winter suit with you." Immediately he objected, while I insisted.
Already we'd sent to New York for all of Jory's clothes, but Melodie had requested we leave hers where they were--and that had made me heat with anger inside, although I'd said nothing.
"When you look good, you feel good, and that's half the battle. You've stopped caring about your appearance. I'm going to shave your face even if you do want to grow a beard. You're much too handsome to hide behind bristly hair. You've got the most beautiful mouth, and a strong chin. Only weakchinned men should hide behind beards."
Eventually he gave up and smiled sardonically, agreeing to all I wanted to do to make him look more like himself. "Mom, you're something else. You care so damned much--but I won't ask why. I'm just grateful somebody cares enough."
About that time Chris drove home from Charlottesville, and he was eager to help. He shaved Jory's handsome face with a straight-edge razor, claiming that kind of shave did more for a man than anything else.
I sat on the bed to watch Chris finish the shaving before he splashed on lotion and cologne. All the time Jory looked so tolerant. I couldn't help but wonder what Bart was doing, and how I was going to approach Melodie and tell her that I knew what was going on between her and my second son.
Already Jory's arms were strong enough to swing his upper body into the chair. Chris and I stood back and watched, not offering to help, knowing he had to do this for himself. He seemed somewhat humiliated, and also somewhat proud that he did It easily the first time. Once he was in the chair, Jory looked pleased despite himself. "Not so bad," he said as he studied his face in the mirror I held up. He activated the chair and buzzed around the room for a trial spin. He grinned at us both. "It is better than the bed. What a fool you must think me--now it will be easier to finish the ship before Christmas, and maybe, with pampering like this, I'll struggle through."
"As if we ever believed anything else," said Chris happily.
"Now contain yourself, Jory . . . I'm going for Melodie," I said, delighted with the way he looked, and the glow of happiness in his eyes, and his excitement to be mobile again, even if he had wheels instead of legs. "Melodie is probably dressed and ready for dinner downstairs. As you know, our formerly sloppy Bart is now a stickler for all the niceties of living elegantly."
"Tell her to hurry," called Jory behind me, sounding more like his old self. "I'm famished. And the sight of that fire burning makes me want her very badly."
With many trepidations I headed for Melodie's room, knowing I was going to face her down with what I'd found out--and when I was finished, I might very well have driven her straight into Bart's ready arms. That was the chance I took.
One brother would win.
The other would lose.
And I wanted them both to win.
Softly I rapped on Melodie's door. I could hear faintly through the heavy wood the music from
Swan Lake.
She must have had it playing very loud, or else I wouldn't be hearing it at all. I knocked again. She didn't respond. This time when she didn't answer I opened her door and stepped inside, quietly closing the door behind me. Her room was messy with clothes dropped on the floor; cosmetics littered the dressing room table. "Melodie, where are you?"
Her bathroom was empty. Oh, damn! She'd gone to Bart. In a flash I was off and running back to Bart's wing. On his door I banged furiously. "Bart, Melodie . . . you can't do this to Jory."
They weren't there.
I flew down the back stairs, heading for the dining room, half expecting they'd start dinner without Chris and me. Trevor was setting the table for two, measuring with his eye the distance of the plate from the edge of the table with such precision it was as if he used a ruler. I slowed down to walk into the dining room. "Trevor, have you seen my second son?"
"Oh, yes, my lady," he said in his polite British way, beginning to lay out the silver flatware. "Mr. Foxworth and Mrs. Marquet just left to eat in a restaurant. Mr. Foxworth requested that I tell you he'd be back . . . soon."
"What did he really say, Trevor?" I asked, feeling sick at heart.
"My lady, Mr. Foxworth was just a wee bit drunk. Not too drunk, so don't worry about the rain and accidents. I'm sure he can control the car, and Mrs. Marquet will be just fine. It's a lovely night for driving if you like rain."
I hurried on toward the garage, hoping to be in time to stop them. Too late! And it was just as I'd feared. Bart had taken Melodie in his small, fast, sports car, the red Jaguar.
My steps were snail-like as I headed back up the stairs. Jory was glowing from the champagne he'd sipped as he waited. Chris had gone on to our room to change for dinner.
"Where is my wife?" asked Jory, seated at the small table Henry and Trevor had carried up. Fresh flowers from our greenhouse centered the table, and with the champagne cooling in a silver ice bucket the atmosphere was festive and seductive, especially with the log fire burning to chase away the damp chill. Jory looked very much like himself with his legs hidden, and the chair he'd hated was hardly noticeable.
Should I make up a lie this time, as I had before?
All the brightness in his eyes faded. "So she's not coming," he said in a flat way. "She never comes here anymore--at least not inside the room. She lingers in the doorway and speaks to me from a distance." His husky voice cracked, then broke entirely and he was crying.
"I'm trying, Mom, really trying to accept this and not be bitter. But when I see what's happening between me and my wife, I come apart inside. I know what she's thinking eyen when she says nothing. I'm not a real man anymore, and she doesn't know how to cope with that."
I fell upon my knees at his side and took him into my arms. "She'll learn, Jory, she'll learn. We all have to learn how to' cope with what can't be helped. Give her time. Wait until after the baby comes. She'll change. I promise she'll change. You will have given her your child. There's nothing like a baby of your own to hold in your arms to put joy in your heart. The sweetness of a baby, the thrill of having one small, tiny bit of humanity entirely dependent on you to shape and mold. Jory, just you'wait and see how Melodie changes."
His tears had stopped, but the anguish in his eyes stayed.
"I don't know if I can wait," he whispered hoarsely. "When there are others around to see, I smile and act content. But I'm thinking all the time about putting an end to this and setting Melodie free of all obligations. It's not fair to expect her to stay on. I'm going to tell her tonight that she can go if she wants, or she can stay until after the baby is born and then leave, and file for divorce. I won't contest."
"No, Jory!" I flared. "Say nothing to upset her more--just give her time. Let her adjust. The baby will help her adjust."
"But, Mom, I don't know if I can live through to the end now. I think all the time about suicide. I think of my father and wish I had the courage to do what he did."
"No, darling, hang on. You'll never be alone."
Chris and I sat down at the small table to keep him company. He didn't speak a dozen words during the meal.
At bedtime, I stealthily put away all the razors and everything with which he could harm himself. I slept on the couch in his room that night, fearful he was so despondent he might try to end his life just to give Melodie freedom to leave without guilt. His moans reached me even as I dreamed.
"Mel . . . my legs ache!" he cried out in his sleep. I got up to comfort him. He wakened and stared at me in a disoriented way. "Every night my back and my legs ache," he answered sleepily in reply to my questions. "I don't need sympathy for my phantom pains. I just want a full night's rest."
All through the night he writhed in agony. The legs that he couldn't feel during the day by night tormented him with constant pain. The lower part of his back stabbed him with repeated jabs.
"Why do I feel pain at night, when I feel nothing during the day?" he cried out, sweat pouring down his face, sticking his pajama jacket to his chest. "I still wish I had the nerve my father did--that would solve all our problems!"
No, no, no. I clung to him, covering his face with kisses, promising him everything and anything to make him cling to life. "It will work out, Jory, it will! Hang in there. Don't give up and lose the greatest challenge of your life. You have me and you have Chris and sooner or later Melodie will come around and be your wife again."
Bleakly he stared at me, as if I spoke of pipe dreams made of nothing but smoke.
"Go sleep in your own room, Mom. You make me feel more like a child by staying here. I promise not to do anything to make you cry again."
"Darling, be sure and ring for your father or me if you need anything. Neither one of us minds getting up. Don't call for Melodie, for she might trip and fall in the dark now that she's kind of unsteady on her feet. I've always been a light sleeper, and it's easy for me to fall asleep again. Are you listening, Jory?"
"Sure, I'm listening," he said with his eyes blank and remote. "If there's one thing I'm good at now, it's listening."
"And soon the physical therapist will come to start you on the road to recovery."
"Recovery, Mom?" His eyes looked tired, very shadowed and dark. "You mean that back brace I'll be fitted for? Indeed, I am looking forward to using that thing. The leg braces are going to be a real joy to wear.
Isn't it fortunate I won't feel them? And I'm not even going to mention that harness contraption that will make me think of myself as a horse. I'll just think it will keep me from falling . . ." He paused, covered his face with his hands briefly, threw back his head and sighed. "Lord, give me strength to endure--are you punishing me for having too much pride in my legs and body? You've done a damned good job of bringing me low."
His hands came down. Tears shone in his eyes, streaked his cheeks. In a moment he was apologizing. "Sorry about that, Mom. Tears of self-pity aren't very manly, are they? Can't be brave and strong all the time. Got my moments of weakness just like everyone else. Go back to your room. I'm not going to do anything to cause you and Dad more grief. I'll see this thing through to the end. Good night. Say good night to Melodie for me when she comes in."
I cried in Chris's arms, causing him to ask a thousand questions that I refused to answer. Frustrated and more than a bit angry, he flipped away. "You can't fool me, Catherine. You're holding something back, thinking it will add another burden, when not to know what's going on is the heaviest of all burdens!"
He waited for me to reply. When I didn't, he quickly fell asleep on his side. He had the most irritating habit of being able to sleep when I couldn't. I wanted him awake, forcing me to answer the questions I'd just avoided. But he slept on and on, turning to embrace me in his sleep, burying his face in my hair.
Every hour I was up and checking to see if Bart had brought Melodie home, checking to see if Jory was all right. Jory lay on his bed with his eyes wide open, apparently waiting, as I did, for Melodie to come home.
"Has the phantom pain eased up?"
"Yes, go back to bed. I'm fine."
I met Joel in the hallway outside Bart's room. He flushed to see me in my lacy white negligee. "Joel," I said, "I thought you changed your mind about living under this roof and went back to that small cell over the garage . . ."
"Used to, Catherine, used to," he muttered. "Bart ordered me into the house, saying a Foxworth shouldn't be treated like a servant." His watery eyes reproached me for not objecting when he'd informed us he liked the garage cell better than the nice room in Bart's wing of the house.
"You don't know what it's like to be old and lonely, niece. I've suffered from insomnia for years and years, troubled by bad dreams, with vague aches and pains that kept me from ever reaching that deep sleep I yearn for. So I get up to tire myself, I roam about . . ."
Roam about? Spying, that's what he did! Then, looking at him more closely, I felt ashamed. Standing there in the gloom of the hall, he appeared so frail, so sickly and thin--was I being unfair to Joel? Did I dislike him only because he was Malcolm's son?-- and had that detestable habit of muttering to himself incessant quotes from the Bible to take me back in time to our grandmother, and her insistence that we learn a quote each day from the holy book.
"Good night, Joel," I said with more kindness than usual. Still, as he continued to stand there, as if to win me to his side, I thought of Bart, who had said many a painful thing to me when he was a boy, but not since he'd been an adult. Now he, too, was reading the Bible, using the words written in there to prove some moot point. Had Joel helped bring life back to what I thought was dormant? I stared at the old man, who edged away from me almost fearfully.
"Why do you look like that?" I asked sharply. "Like what, Catherine?"
"Like you're afraid of me."
His smile was thin, pitiful. "You are a fearsome woman, Catherine. Despite all your blond prettiness, you can sometimes act as hard as my mother."
I started, stunned that he could think that. I could not possibly be like that mean old woman.
"You also remind me of your mother," he whispered in his thin, brittle voice, drawing his old bathrobe more tightly about his skinny frame. "And you seem far too young to be in your fifties. My father used to say the wicked always managed to stay young and healthy longer than those who had a place waiting for them in Heaven."
"If your father went on to Heaven, Joel, then I will gladly go in the opposite direction."
He eyed me as if I were a pitiful object who just didn't understand before he ambled away.
Once I was back beside Chris, he woke up long enough for me to spill out the scene between Joel and me. Chris glared at me in the dimness. "Catherine, how rude of you to talk to an old man like that. Of course you can't drive him out. In a way he has more right here than all of us, and it is Bart's home legally, even if we do have lifetime residency privileges."
Anger filled me. "Can't you recognize that Joel has become the father figure Bart has been looking for all his life?" And there I'd gone and hurt him. He stiffened and turned away from me.
"Good night, Catherine. Perhaps you should stay in bed and mind your own business for a rare change. Joel is a lonely old man who is grateful to have a champion like Bart and a place where he can live out the rest of his life. Stop imagining you see Malcolm in every old man you meet, for eventually, if I live long enough. I'll be another old man."
"If you look and act like Joel, I'll be glad to see the end of you as well."
Oh, how could I say that to the man I loved? He shifted farther away, then refused to respond to my touch on his arm. "Chris, I'm sorry. I didn't mean that." My hand caressed his arm, then moved to slip inside his pajama jacket.
"I think it best if you keep your hands to yourself. I'm not in the mood now. Good night, Catherine, and remember, when you look for trouble, you usually find it."
I heard a distant door close. My illuminated wristwatch read three-thirty. Drawing on a robe, I slipped into Melodie's room and sat down to wait. It was four before she managed the long trip from the garage to her bedroom. Did she and Bart stop to embrace end kiss? Did they whisper love words they couldn't save for tomorrow? What else could be taking her so long? Faint hints of dawn approaching showed over the rimming mountains. I paced the floor of her room, growing terribly impatient. Finally I heard her coming. Stumbling in the door of her room, Melodie held her high-heeled silver slippers in one hand, and in her other hand she held a small silver clutch.
She was six months pregnant, but in her loosefitting black dress it was hardly noticeable. She jerked when she saw me rise from a chair, then choked as she backed away. "Well, Melodie," I said cynically, "don't you look pretty."
"Cathy, is Jory all right?"
"Do you really care?"
"You sound so angry with me. You look at me so hard--what have I done, Cathy?"
"As if you don't know," I said to her with angry emphasis, forgetting the tact I'd intended to use. "You slip out on a rainy night with my second son, and you come home hours later with red strawberry marks on your neck, with your lipstick smeared and your hair unbound, and still you ask,
what . . . have . .. you . . . done.
Why don't you tell me . . .
what
you have done."
She stared at me with huge eyes of disbelief, half- blended with guilt, with shame, but there was some element of hope there as well. "You've been like my mother, Cathy," she cried, her eyes tearing as they pleaded for my understanding. "Please don't fail me now--now when I need a mother more than I ever have before."
"But you forget, I am Jory's mother first and foremost. I am also Bart's mother. When you betray Jory, you betray me."
Melodie cried out again, pleading with me to listen to her.
"Don't turn away from me now, Cathy. I have no one but you who will understand. Certainly you of all people have to understand! I love Jory, I'll always love him--"
"And so you go to bed with Bart? What a fine way to show your love," I interrupted. My voice sounded cold and hard.
Her face lowered into my lap as her arms wrapped around my waist. She clung to me. "Cathy, please. Wait until you hear my side." Her face lifted, already stained with tears, black tears because of her mascara. Somehow this served only to make her look more pitifully vulnerable. "I'm part of the ballet world, Cathy, and you know what that means. We are the dancers who take music into our bodies and souls and make it visible for all to see, and for that we pay a price, a heavy price. You know the price. We dance with our souls bared for all to view and criticize if they will, and when the dance ends, and we hear the applause, and we accept the roses, and take the bows and the curtain calls, and hear the calls of
bravo! bravo!
finally we end up backstage to take off the makeup, to put on everyday mundane clothes, and then we know the best of what we are isn't real, only fantasy. We float on wings of sensuality so powerful nobody can realize as we do the pain of all that's so insensitive and cruel and brutal in reality."