I felt embarrassed to ask what I did, but still I had to know. "But . . . are you and Bart still lovers, despite your disagreements?"
Furiously she shook her head. "NO! Of course not! He's changing every day into someone I really can't even like. He's found religion, Cathy, and according to the way he tells it, religion is going to be his salvation. Every day he tells me I should pray more, go to church . . . and stay away from Jory. If he keeps it up I think I may well end up hating him, and I don't want that to happen. We had something so beautiful between us in the beginning. I want to keep that special time like a flower I can press between the pages of my memory."
She stood up to go, smearing her tears with her balled handkerchief, tugging down her tight white skirt and trying to smile. "If you want me to quit so you can hire a new nurse for Jory and his children, I'll do that."
"No, Toni, stay on," I answered quickly, afraid she'd go anyway. I didn't want her to leave now that I knew without a doubt that she didn't love Bart anymore, and Jory had finally given up hope of Melodie returning to him. And with the final hope dead, Jory had at last turned his eyes on the woman he believed was his brother's mistress.
As soon as possible I was going to inform him differently. But . . . even as Toni left the room, I sat on and on, thinking of Bart and how sad it was that he couldn't hold on to love once he had it. Did he deliberately destroy love, afraid it would enslave him as he often accused me of having enslaved Chris, my own brother?
The endless days crept by. No longer did Toni's eyes follow Bart with wistful yearning, pleading mutely with him to love her again as he had in the beginning. I began to admire the way she could keep her poise regardless of some of the insulting innuendoes Bart made during meal times. He took her former love for him and turned it against her, making it seem she was loose, depraved, immoral and he'd been wrongfully seduced.
Dinner after dinner, sitting there and watching the two drift further and further apart, driven there by all the ugly words Bart found so easy to say.
Toni took my place and played the games I used to entertain Jory with . . . only she could do so much more to light up his eyes and make him feel a man again.
Bit by bit the days began to mellow, the brown grass showed spikes of fresh green, the crocus came up in the woods, the daffodils blossomed, the tulips fired into flame and the Grecian windflowers that Jory and I had planted everywhere the grass didn't grow turned the hills into paint-smeared pallets. Chris and I stood again on the balcony watching the geese return north as we stared up at our old friend and sometimes enemy, the moon. I couldn't take my eyes from the winged skein as they disappeared beyond the hills
Life grew 'better with the coming of summer, when the snow couldn't keep Chris away during the weekends. Tensions eased now that we had the great outdoors to escape to.
In June the twins were one year and six months old and able to run freely anywhere we would permit. We had swings from which they couldn't fall hung from tree limbs, and how happy they were to be swung high . . . or what they considered high enough to be dangerous. They pulled the blossoms off the best of my flowers, but I didn't care--we had thousands blooming, enough to fill all the rooms with daily fresh bouquets.
Now Bart was insisting that not only the twins should attend church services but Chris and I and Jory and Toni as well. It seemed a small enough thing to do. Each Sunday we sat in our front row pews and stared up at the beautiful stained-glass window behind the pulpit. The twins always sat between Jory and me. Joel would don a black robe as he preached fire-andbrimstone sermons. Bart sat beside me, holding my hand in such a tight grip I had to listen or have my bones broken. Next to Toni, deliberately separated from me by my second son, was Chris. I knew those sermons were meant for us, to save us from eternal hellfires. The twins were restless, like all children their age, and didn't like the pew, the confinement, the dullness of the overlong services. Only when we stood up to sing hymns did they stare up at us and seem enchanted.
"Sing, sing," encouraged Bart, leaning to pinch tiny arms or tug on golden locks.
"Take your hands off my children!" snapped Jory. "They will sing or not sing, as is their choice."
It was on again, the war between brothers.
Autumn again, then Halloween when Chris and I took the twins by their small hands and led them to the one neighbor we considered "safe" enough not to recriminate us or our children. Our little goblins timidly accepted their first Halloween trick-or-treat candy, then screamed all the way home with the thrill of having two Hershey bars and two packs of chewing gum of their very own.
Winter came, and Christmas and the New Year started without anything special happening, for this year Cindy didn't fly home. She was too busy with her budding career to do more than call long distance or write short but informative letters.
Bart and Toni now moved in different universes.
Perhaps I was not the only one who guessed that Jory had fallen deeply in love with Toni, now that all attempts at restoring a brotherly relationship with Bart had failed. I couldn't blame Jory, not when Bart had taken Melodic and driven her away and was even now trying to hold fast to Toni just because he could detect Jory's growing interest. To keep Jory from having her, he was turning again toward Toni . . .
Loving Toni gave Jory new reasons for living. It was written in his eyes, written on his new zeal for getting up early and beginning all those difficult exercises, standing for the first time, using parallel bars we'd had put in his room. As soon as the water was warm enough, he swam the length of our large swimming pool three times in early mornings and late evenings.
Maybe Toni was still waiting for Bart to make her his wife, though she often denied this. "No, Cathy, I don't love him now. I only pity him for not knowing who or what he is and, more importantly, what he wants for himself but money and more money." It occurred to me that, inexplicably, Toni was as rooted here as any one of us.
The Sunday church services made me nervous and tired. The strong words shouted from the weak lungs of an old man brought back terrifying memories of another old man I'd seen but once.
Devil's issue. Devil's spawn.
Evil seed planted in the wrong soil. Even wicked thoughts were judged the same as wicked deeds--and what wasn't sinful to Joel? Nothing. Nothing at all.
"We're not going to attend anymore," I stated firmly to Chris, "and we were fools to even try to please Bart. I don't .like the kind of ideas Joel is planting in the twin's impressionable young heads." True to Chris's agreement, he and I refused to attend "church" services or allow the twins to hear all that shouting about Hell and its punishments.
Joel came to the play area in the gardens, under the trees where there were a sandbox, swings, a slide and a spin-a-round that the twins loved to play on. It was a fine sunny day in July, and he looked rather touching and sweet as he sat between the twins and began to teach them how to do cat cradles, twining the string and intriguing the curious twins. They abandoned the sand- pile with the pretty awning overhead and sat beside him, looking up at him in bright anticipation of making a new friend out of an old enemy.
"An old man knows many little skills to entertain small children. Do you know I can make airplanes and boats out of paper? And the boats will sail on the water."
Their round eyes of amazement didn't please me. I frowned. Anyone could do that.
"Save your energies for writing new sermons, Joel," I said, meeting his meek, watery eyes. "I grew tired of the old ones. Where is the New Testament in your sermons? Teach Bart about that. Christ
was
born. He did deliver his Sermon on the Mount. Deliver to him
that
particular sermon,
Uncle.
Speak to us of forgiveness, of doing unto others as you would have done onto you. Tell us of the bread cast upon the waters of forgiveness returning to us tenfold."
"Forgive me if I have been neglectful of our Lord's one truly begotten son," he said humbly.
"Come, Cory, Carrie," I called, getting up to leave. "Let's go see what Daddy is doing."
Joel's lowered head jerked upright. His faded blue eyes took on heaven's deeper blue. I bit down on my tongue to observe the twisted smile that Joel displayed. He nodded sagely. "Yes,
I
know. To you they are the 'other twins'--those born of evil seed planted in the wrong soil."
"How dare you say that to me!" I flared.
I didn't realize then that by occasionally calling Jory's twins by the names of my beloved dead twins I was only adding fuel to the fire--a fire that was already, unknown to me, sending up small red sparks of brimstone.
Comes
a Morning Dark
.
A
storm threatened a perfectly lovely summer
day with dark ominous clouds, forcing me to hurry outdoors to cut my morning flowers while they were still fresh with dew. I drew up short when I saw Toni snipping yellow and white daisies that she brought to Jory in a small milkglass vase. She put them near the table where Jory was working on another watercolor showing a lovely dark-haired woman very much like Toni picking flowers. I was hidden by the dense shrubbery and could take a peek now and then without either one seeing me. For some strange reason, my intuitiveness warned me to stay quiet and say nothing.
Jory thanked Toni politely, gave her a brief smile, swished his brush in clean water, dipped it in his blue mixture and added a few 'touches here and there. "Never can seem to mix the exact color of the sky," he murmured as if to himself. "The sky is always changing . . . oh, what I could give to have Turner for my teacher . . ."
She stood watching the sun play on Jory's waving blue-black hair. He hadn't shaved, and that made him look twice as virile, although not as fresh. Suddenly he looked up and noticed her overlong stare. "I apologize for the way I look, Toni," he said as if embarrassed. "I was very anxious to be up and busy this morning before the rain sets in and spoils another day for me. I hate the days when I can't stay outside."
Still she said nothing, only stood there, the peekaboo sun glorifying her beautifully tanned skin. His eyes drifted over her clean, fresh face even before he briefly dropped his eyes and took in the rest of her. "Thank you for the daisies. They're not supposed to tell. What is the secret?"
Swooping down, she picked up a few sketches he'd tossed at the wastebasket and missed. Before she could drop them in the can, she gave the subjects her attention, and then her lovely face flushed. "You've been sketching me," she said in a low tone.
"Throw them away!" he said sharply. "They're no good. I can paint flowers and hills and make fairly good landscapes, but portraits are so damned difficult. I can never capture the essence of you."
"I think these are very good," she objected, studying them again. "You shouldn't throw away your sketches. May I keep them?"
Carefully she tried to flatten out the wrinkles, and then she was placing them on a table and stacking heavy books upon them. "I was hired to take care of you and the twins. But you never ask me to do anything for you. And your mother likes to play with the twins in the mornings, so that gives me extra time, time enough to do many things for you. What can I do for you?"
The brush dripping with gray colored the bottoms of clouds before he paused and turned his chair so he could look at her. A wry smile moved his lips. "Once I could have thought of something. Now I suggest you leave me alone. Crippled men don't play very exciting games, I'm sorry to say."
Appearing weary with defeat, she crumpled down on a long, comfortable chaise. "Now you're saying to me what Bart does all the time--`Go away,' he shouts, 'Leave me alone,' he yells. I didn't think you'd be the same."
"Why not?" he asked with his own bitterness. "We're brothers, half-brothers. We both have our hateful moments--and it's better to leave us alone then."
"I thought he was the most wonderful man alive," she said sadly. "But I guess I can't trust my own judgment anymore. I believed Bart wanted to marry me--now he yells and orders me out of sight. Then he calls me back and begs forgiveness. I want to leave this house and never come back--but something holds me here, keeps whispering that it's not time for me to go . . ."
"Yes," said Jory, beginning to paint again with careful strokes, tipping the board to make his washes run and create "accidental" blendings that sometimes worked out beautifully. "That's Foxworth Hall. Once you enter its portals, you seldom are seen again."
"So shd did; more credit to her than I believed when it happened."
"You sound so bitter."
"I'm not bitter, I'm sour, like a pickle. I enjoy my life. I am caught between Heaven and Hell in a kind of purgatory where ghosts of the past roam the hallways at night. I can hear the clank and clonk of their restraining chains, and I can only be grateful they never appear, or perhaps the silent tread of my rubber-rimmed wheels scares them off."
"Why do you stay if you feel that way?"
Jory shoved away from his painting table, then riveted his dark eyes on her. "What the hell are you doing here with me? Go to your lover. Apparently you like the way he treats you, or easily enough
you
could escape. You aren't chained here with memories, with hopes or dreams that don't come true. You aren't a Foxworth, nor a Sheffield. This Hall holds no chains to bind you."
"Why do you hate him?"
"Why
don't
you hate him?"
"I do sometimes."
"Trust your sometime judgment and get out. Get out before you are made, by osmosis, into one of us." "And what are you?"
Jory drove his chair to the rim of the flagstones, where the flowerbeds began, and stared off toward the mountains. "Once I was a dancer, and I never thought beyond that. Now that I can't dance, I have to presume that I am nothing of importance to anyone. So I stay, thinking I belong here more than I belong anywhere else."
"How can you say what you just did? Don't you believe you're important to your parents, your sister, and most of all to your children?"
"They don't really need me, do they? And my parents have each other. My children have them. Bart has you. Cindy has her career. That leaves me the odd man out."
Toni stood, stepped behind his chair and began to massage his neck with skillful fingers. "Does your back still bother you at night?"
"No," he said in a hoarse voice. But it did, I knew it did. Hidden behind the shrubs, I went right on snipping roses, sensing they didn't know I was there.
"If ever your back aches again, buzz for me and I'll give you a massage to take away the pain."
Whirling his chair around in a full about-face, Jory confronted her fiercely. She had to jump back out of the way or be knocked down. "So, it seems if you can't get one brother, you'll settle for the other--the crippled one who can't possibly resist your many charms? Thanks, but no thanks. My mother will massage my aching back."
Slowly she drifted away, turning twice to look back at him. She didn't know that she left him staring after her with his heart in his eyes. She closed a French door behind her quietly. I stopped cutting roses for the breakfast table and sat on the grass. Behind me the twins were playing "church."
Following Chris's instructions, we were doing what we could to increase their vocabulary daily, and our instructions seemed to be working wonders.
"And the Lord said to Eve, go forth from this place." Darren's childish voice was full of giggles. I turned to look.
Both children had removed their brief sunsuits and taken off small white sandals. Deirdre stuck a leaf on her brother's small male organ, then stared down at her own private place. She frowned. "Dare . . . what's sinning?"
"Like running," answered her brother. "Bad when you're barefoot.
They both giggled and jumped up to run toward me. I caught them in my arms and held their soft, warm, nude bodies close, raining kisses on their faces. "Have you eaten your breakfast?"
"Yes, Granny Toni fed us grapefruit, which we hate. We ate everything but the eggs. Don't like eggs."
That was Deirdre who did most of the talking for Darren, just as Carrie had been Cory's voice most of the time.
"Mom--how long have you been there?" called Jory. He sounded annoyed, a bit embarrassed.
Rising, I held the naked twins in my arms, and headed for Jory. "I found Toni in the pool teaching the twins how to swim, so I took over and asked her to look in on you. They're doing very nicely in the water now, paddling all around with confidence. Why didn't you join us this morning?"
"Why did you keep yourself hidden?"
"Just snipping my morning roses, Jory. You know I do that every day. It's the one thing that makes this house cozy, the cut flowers I put in every room the first thing in the mornings." Playfully I stuck a red rose behind his ear. Quickly he snatched it away and stuffed it in with the daisies Toni had brought him.
"You heard Toni and me, didn't you?"
"Jory, when I am outdoors in August knowing September isn't far away, I just grab each moment and value it for what it is. The rose scent is in my nostrils, making me think I am in Heaven, or in Paul's garden. He had the most beautiful gardens. All kinds. He divided sections into those that held English gardens, Japanese, Italian--"
"I've heard all that before!" he said impatiently. "I asked if you heard us?"
"Yes, as a matter of fact, I did hear every fascinating thing, and when I had the chance, I peeked above the roses to watch the two of you."
He scowled very much like Bart as I moved to put the twins on their feet, then gave their bare bottoms small spanks, telling them to find Toni, who would help them dress. They scuttled away, little naked dolls.
I sat down to smile at Jory, who glowered at me accusingly. He seemed even more like Bart when he looked angry. "Really, Jory, I didn't mean to eavesdrop. I was there before either of you came out." I paused and looked at his frowning face. "You love Toni, don't you?"
"I
don't
love her! She's Bart's! Damned if I want to take Bart's leavings again."
"Again?"
"Come off it, Mom. You know as well as I do the real reason why Mel left this house. He made it plain enough, and so did she that Christmas morning when the clipper ship was mysteriously broken. She'd have stayed on here forever if Bart had kept his position as replacement for me. I think she fell in love with him inadvertently, while trying to satisfy her need for me and the sex we shared. I used to hear her crying in the night. I'd lie on my bed, wanting to go to her but unable to move, feeling sorry for her, sorrier for myself. It was hell then. It's hell now. A different kind of hell."
"Jory--what can I do to help?"
He leaned forward, meeting my eyes with such intensity I was reminded of Julian and the many ways in which I had thwarted him
"Mom, despite all this house represents to you, it's grown to feel like home to me. The halls and doorways are wide. There's the elevator to take me up and down. There're the swimming pool, the terraces, the gardens and the woods. Actually, a kind of, paradise on earth-- but for a few flaws. I used to think I couldn't wait to get away. Now I don't want to go, and I don't really want to worry you any more than you already are, yet I must speak."
I waited with dread to hear about those few "flaws."
"When I was a child, I believed the world was full of many wonders, and miracles could still happen, and blind men would one day see, and the lame would one day walk, and so forth. Thinking like that made all the unfairness I saw all around, all the ugliness, much better. I think the ballet kept me from fully growing up, so I maintained the idea that miracles could truly happen if you believed in them enough-- like that song `When you wish upon a star, your dreams come true.' And in the ballet miracles do happen all the time, so I stayed childlike even after I became an adult. I still believed that in the outside world, the real world, everything would work out fine in the long run if I believed enough. Mel and I had that in common. There's something about ballet that keeps you virginal, so to speak. You see no evil, hear no evil, though I won't mention speak no evil. You know what I mean, I'm sure, for it was your world, too." He paused and glanced .up at the threatening sky.
"In that world I had a wife who loved me. In the outside world, the real world, she quickly found a replacement lover. I hated Bart for taking her when I needed her most. Then I'd hate Mel for allowing him to use her as just another way to get back at me. He's still doing it, Mom. And I wouldn't trouble you with what's going on if I wasn't sometimes afraid for my life. Afraid for my children."
I listened to him, trying not to show shock as he spoke of all he'd never hinted at before.
"Remember the parallel bars I exercise on, in order to use the back and leg braces? Well, somebody scraped the metal so that when I slip my hands along the rails I get metal splinters in both hands. Dad dug them out for me and made me promise not to tell you."
I shivered, shrank inside. "What else, Jory? That's not all, I can tell from the way you look."
"Nothing much, Mom. Just little things to make my life miserable, like insects in my coffee, tea and milk. My sugar bowl filled with salt, and my salt cellar full of sugar . . . dumb tricks, childish pranks that could be dangerous. Tacks appear in my bed, in the seat of my chair . . . oh, it's Halloween time all the time in this house for me. At times I want to laugh, it's so silly. But when I slip on a shoe and there's a nail in the toe that I can't feel, and it gives me an infection because my leg circulation isn't top-notch, it's not a laughing matter. It could cost me a leg. I waste so much time looking everything over before I use it, like my razor with new blades that are suddenly rusty."
He looked around as if to see if Joel or Bart were in earshot, and even though he saw nothing, for I looked, too, still his voice lowered to a whisper. "Yesterday was very warm, remember? You yourself opened three of my windows so I'd have fresh, cool breezes--then the wind shifted and blew from the north, and it turned dramatically cold. You came on the run to close my windows, to cover me with another blanket. I fell back to sleep. Half an hour later I woke up from a dream of being at the North Pole. The windows--all six of them--were wide open. Rain blew in and wet my bed. But that wasn't the worst of it. My blankets had been removed. I turned to ring for someone to come to my assistance. My buzzer was gone. I sat up and reached for my chair. It wasn't where I usually put it, right beside my bed. For a moment I panicked. Then, because I'm much stronger now in my arms, I lowered myself to the floor, used my arms to pull myself over to a regular chair that I could shove near the windows. Once I was on the chair seat, I could have easily pulled the windows down. But the first one refused to budge. I moved the chair to another window, and that wouldn't close any more than the first one would. Stuck with the fresh coat of paint applied a few weeks ago. I knew theft it was useless to try the other four and brave that fiercely cold wet rain and wind, for my leverage wasn't right, even if my arms are strong. Yet, foolhardy as you often say I am, I persisted. No luck. That's when I put myself on the floor again and made my way to the door. It was locked. I dragged myself along by pulling on furniture legs until I was in the closet, and there I pulled down a winter coat, covered myself and fell asleep."
What had happened to my face? It felt so numb that I couldn't move my lips and speak, nor could I manage to show shock. Jory stared at me hard.
"Mom, are you listening? Are you thinking? Now . . . don't try to comment until I complete this story. As I just said, I fell asleep in the closet, on the floor, soaking wet. When I woke up, I was back on my bed. A
dry
bed, the sheet and blankets covered me, and I was wearing a fresh pair of pajamas." He paused dramatically and met my horrified eyes.
"Mom ... if someone in this house wanted me to catch pneumonia and die, would that someone have put me back in bed and covered me up? Dad wasn't home to pick me up and carry me, and certainly you don't have the strength to do that."
"But," I whispered, "Bart doesn't hate you that much. He doesn't hate you at all . . ."
"Perhaps' it was Trevor who found me, and not Bart. But somehow I don't think Trevor is young and strong enough to lift me. Still, somebody here hates me," Jory stated firmly. "Somebody who would like to see me gone. I've thought about this considerably and come to the conclusion that it had to have been Bart who found me in the closet and put me back to bed. Has this occurred to you: if you, Dad, I and the twins were out of the way, Bart would have our money as well as his own?"
"But he's already filthy rich! He doesn't need more!"
Jory spun his chair so that it faced east, staring at the faded sun. "I've never really been afraid of Bart before. I have always pitied him and wanted to help him. I think about taking the twins and leaving with you and Dad .. . but that's a coward's way. If Bart did open those windows to let in the rain and wind, he later changed his mind and came back to rescue me. I think about the clipper ship and how it was broken, and certainly Bart couldn't have been responsible for that, not when he wanted it so much. And I think about Joel, whom you think was responsible--and again I think about who influences Bart more than anyone here. Someone is taking Bart and twisting him and turning back the clock, so he's again like that tormented ten-year-old kid who wanted you and his grandmother to die in fire and be redeemed . . ."
"Please, Jory, you said you'd never mention that period in our lives again."
Silence came, stretched out interminably before he went on. "The fish in my aquarium died last night. Their air filter was turned off. The temperature control smashed." Once again he paused, watching my face closely. "Do you believe any of what I've just told you?'
I fixed my eyes on the blue-misted mountains with their soft, rounded tops to remind me of ancient, gigantic, dead virgins laid out in jagged rows, their upthrust, moss-covered bosoms all that remained. My eyes lifted to the sky, deeply blue, and the featherbrushed storm clouds with wisps of shimmering gold clouds behind them, heralding a better day.
Under such skies as this, surrounded by the same mountains, Chris, Cory, Carrie and I had faced terrors while God watched. My fingers nervously wiped away those invisible cobwebs, trying to find the right words to say.
"Mom, as much as I hate to say this, I think we have to give up on Bart. We can't trust his now-andthen love for us. He needs professional help again. Truthfully, I've always believed he had a great deal of love within him that he didn't know how to release or express. And here I am, now thinking he's beyond saving. We can't drive him out of his own home-- unless we want him declared insane and put in an institution. I don't want that to happen, and I know you don't. So, all we can do is leave. And isn't it funny--now I don't want to go, even when my life is threatened. I've grown accustomed to this house; I love it here, so I risk my life, the lives of all of us. The intrigue of what might happen today keeps me from ever being bored. Mom, the worst thing in my life is boredom."