Touch the Stars (21 page)

"Eva goes with them sometimes."

"Eva is older than you."

"Only by a few years. Anyway, the boys get to go out all the time, wherever we're performing. You let them stay out until all hours last New Year's Eve in New York." With typical teenage pique, Julie was determined to get her way.

"It is different for boys. And they are also older than you are."

"Grandfather Anton, things have changed. Nowadays girls do whatever boys do. Anyway, my brother and my cousins aren't boys—they're men. And at eighteen, I'm hardly a girl—I'm a woman." Julie tossed her head.

"You are not eighteen yet, Julie. And in this family, things have not changed. If I say you cannot go out late at night, you cannot. I don't want to hear any more about it." Grandfather Anton turned his back. As the boss of the family, both on the high wire and off, this authoritarian old man was accustomed to having his way in everything.

Something in Julie snapped. She was sick of having to do what her grandfather said all the time, even though he thought he had her best interests at heart. She desperately wanted out from under his thumb, and she longed to make her own decisions for once. Her independence would have to come someday, and to her way of thinking, that someday was now. What better way to prove it once and for all than by going with the boys to Bourbon Street that night?

"I don't have to do what you say," she said in a low angry tone."And I won't."

"Julie," her mother began, visibly distressed.

"In a few months I'll be legally old enough to drink and vote. I'm a modern American woman, and Grandfather Anton's thinking is old-country and old-fashioned." She stuck out her bottom lip stubbornly.

"Do not attack your grandfather, Juliana!" barked her father, who would not stand for revolt against the family patriarch from his own child.

Julie's mother advanced toward her daughter, holding out both hands in a gesture of supplication.

"After the show tonight we will go for a snack together, you and me. Would you like that, Julie?" Clearly Elisabeth was trying to spread oil on troubled waters, but Julie was not to be distracted from what she saw as a major step in her maturing process.

"No, Mother," she said defiantly. "I'm going out with the boys."

Grandfather Anton whirled and confronted her with beetle brows lowered.

"That is enough," he said.

"You are wrong, Grandfather! You see me as the baby of this troupe, but I carry a full performing load just like the others! Why won't you let me have the privileges of an adult? It isn't fair!" Spots of color flared in her cheeks, but she stood her ground.

Elisabeth could never bear any dissension within the family. Quiet and soft-spoken herself, she was always the peacemaker.

"Father Anton," she said placatingly to her father-in-law, "perhaps just this once—"

"Elisabeth!" Julie's father said in shock. None of them ever questioned Grandfather Anton's benevolent dictatorship.

"But Sandor—" Elisabeth said, clearly distressed to be caught in the battle between generations.

"Enough! Julie has caused enough trouble." Sandor's dark eyes flashed the same fire as his daughter's, and he folded his lips into an unyielding line.

"Please, children, do not argue," Grandfather Anton said imperatively.

Julie felt bewildered by what she had accomplished. All she had managed to do was start a hair-raising family row. Now her father was insisting that her mother leave the room and let the two men handle the problem with Julie, and her mother was crying. Julie had stirred up a tempest, all right. She wished she could feel some sort of grim satisfaction about it, but all she felt was sadness.

She fled to her room, where Eva was sprawled on her bed sound asleep. Through the closed door Julie heard her father and mother arguing. Grandfather Anton was trying his best to smooth everything over.

Well, what would she do now? She obviously wasn't any closer to going out that night than she had been when she started. Perhaps she could sneak out. No, that would never work. Her mother always checked on her at night. Maybe she should have taken Elisabeth up on her offer to go out for a snack after the show. It still might be possible to finagle her mother into checking out Bourbon Street with her.

The argument in the living room diminished, then died out altogether. Her mother and father went to their room, and Grandfather Anton went to his. He always rested before a performance like everyone else, and he always called Nonna at home during his rest period. He was probably telephoning Nonna right now.

Julie must have fallen asleep, because the next thing she knew, her brother Tony was knocking gently on the door.

"Julie! Eva! Time to leave for the Superdome!"

Julie kept quiet during the ride to the arena. No one mentioned the argument with her parents and Grandfather Anton, so apparently no one else had heard it. This didn't surprise her, since the bedroom that she and Eva shared was the only one that opened off the living room. The others were situated off a long hall, and the door from the hall to the living room had been closed.

"All right," Grandfather Anton said when they had assembled in a quiet place outside their dressing rooms for costume check. They lined up, impressive in their blue leotards with the shiny silver spangles. Grandfather Anton consulted his clipboard. "Tonight are scheduled to perform—let's see—me, Sandor, Bela, Paul, Albert, Tony, Eva, Julie, and Michael. Elisabeth, you will sit out tonight."

"Julie, are you coming with us tonight to Bourbon Street?" Michael asked, leaning toward her and speaking in an undertone.

"No, Grandfather and my parents won't let me," Julie whispered back.

Michael opened his eyes wide. "I'm going! I thought they'd let you if I went!"

This galled Julie particularly, because Michael was only a few months older than she. Her father, standoffish toward Julie on the way to the Superdome, caught her eye and sent her a look which unmistakably meant "be quiet!" Her mother, red-eyed as though she had been crying, stared at the floor. Julie could tell that Elisabeth was still miserable over the afternoon's argument.

"Now," Grandfather Anton was saying encouragingly, psyching them up for the performance as he always did. "We have a large crowd out there, and we will give them our best. Remember—no other troupe in America performs the nine-person pyramid. We are the very best on the high wire." Then he paused as he always did. What he was to say next was the most important part of his speech before a show.

"Is everyone feeling well? If there is any reason, mental or physical, why you cannot go on the wire, please tell me now." His dark eyes swept over the troupe. It was his policy that anyone could refuse with no questions asked. That was why there were ten performing Andrassys and only nine in their famous pyramid.

Suddenly Julie, acting purely out of spite, stepped forward. "I cannot go on the wire, Grandfather," she said. She was aware of Eva's quick, puzzled glance. Her father's head shot up, and his eyes narrowed.

Grandfather smiled, their earlier argument forgiven. "That is fine, Julie. If you feel that you are not ready, Elisabeth will take your place. Elisabeth?"

"Yes," her mother said, reaching in front of Michael and solicitously touching the back of her hand to Julie's forehead. "I'll go instead of Julie." She dropped her hand at Julie's hostile stare, looking relieved that Julie didn't have a fever.

"Julie, is something wrong?" Eva asked as the performers slipped on their clogs for the walk to the arena.

"I don't feel well," Julie said, refusing to smile.

"Well, then," Eva said. But she was obviously perplexed. Julie was always in the best of health and had never sat out before when scheduled to perform.

Julie's mother reached over and gave Julie an unexpected hug. But Julie scowled and stared straight ahead. She was still angry at the three of them—her father, her mother and Grandfather Anton.

The band in the arena struck up a brassy fanfare, and the performing troupe donned their blue satin capes and lined up in order, with stately Grandfather Anton in the lead. Then, as the crowd cheered, they marched briskly in time to the music into the arena, heads held high, right arms raised, smiling and confident. No one would guess that any of them had been involved in a family row just hours before.

Julie, alone in the corridor, almost went back to the dressing room to wait out the performance. But for some reason, she changed her mind and tugged on a raincoat over her costume. Then she slipped into the arena and sat on the sidelines, watching as the Amazing Andrassys climbed the tall ladder to the platform where they would embark upon their journey on the wire—their last one together for a long, long time.

Chapter 12

For two or three minutes after Julie's low voice ceased to speak, nothing was said between the two of them. Julie, her hands clasped in front of her, stared into space, reliving the nightmare of that night. Overwhelmed by the sorrow with which she told her story, Stephen was reluctant to break the silence.

Finally he said quietly, "It must have been very difficult for you to tell me this."

She looked at him, and it was with relief that he saw that her eyes were clear and bright, not glazed with tears.

"It was," she admitted, "but I feel better for it."

"So you have been living with this self-imposed guilt all these years," he said, caressing her forearm.

"I have been living with guilt, but it wasn't exactly self-imposed. It was real, Stephen." Her eyes, black as onyx, glinted with self-loathing.

"Many things can go wrong on the wire. You were not on the wire that night with the others. There is no way you could possibly know what caused the pyramid to fall."

"I
know
what caused it to fall. It was my mother. She was the weak link that night. I saw her falter on the bar where she balanced between my father's and Michael's shoulders; I saw her desperately try to save herself. But it was too late by the time she lost her balance. And then she took all of them with her." Julie shuddered, remembering the panic-stricken look on Elisabeth's face as she attempted and failed to grasp a guy wire as she fell.

"This is not your fault, Juliana." Stephen lifted himself up from the pillows and tried to pull her close, but she shook off his hands.

"Of course it's my fault. Stephen, don't you see? I refused to go on the wire for no reason at all except my stupid teenage tantrum, and my mother took my place. She was still upset about our argument that afternoon, but she thought I was sick! So she went up anyway!
She
is the one who should have sat out that night, not me!"

Stephen's chest constricted at the thought of the torture that Julie had hidden in her soul all these years. "So afterward, you shouldered sole responsibility for taking care of Nonna, is that right? Because it was your fault that Grandfather Anton and the others died?"

Julie nodded, pressing one hand to her mouth as if to contain the grief knotting in her throat.

"Have you ever told anyone else any part of this story?"

Julie shook her head. "No. No one knew about the argument except Grandfather, Mother, Dad, and me. And they were dead. I couldn't bear for the others to know that I was the reason the accident happened. How could they ever forgive me?

Stephen was silent for a time, but then he reached out for her. Now, when he tried to pull her into his embrace, she didn't resist. He bent his head to kiss her, and her ferocity caught him off guard. This time Julie seemed to want to savage him in frenzied need, raking her fingers through his hair, heaving her body against his, pitching and clutching as though she were trying to exorcise all the dark spaces within herself. When at last they gasped in pleasure, needing nothing more from each other, Stephen rolled away but remained linked to her by their hands.

She sighed and smiled briefly at him before she slept, but Stephen remained thoughtfully awake until the moonlight faded and dawn shimmered beyond the mountain. When he saw the encroaching light through the uncurtained window, he knew that soon he must awaken Julie so that she could creep back to the room she shared with Eva before anyone in the house awoke.

The sun wove pale streamers of light into the gray sky, and still Stephen stared at the ceiling. Beside him, Julie continued to sleep, her breathing soft and steady. He loved her more than any other woman he had ever known, and he couldn't bear to think of going through life without her.