If There Be Thorns Read online

  "He may not have done it," said Dad when we were home. "I can't believe he did it." By now I could believe anything.

  There was an old woman who lived next door. Who wore black rags and black covered her hair. She was twice Mom's mother-in-law, twice hated, and much more.

  And all I could do was wonder, wonder what she had done to my mom and my dad. Dad hadn't yet explained it all to me as he'd promised. Though I had found a glimmer of a fuzzy solution--I'd let my emotions run away with me, and for a moment I'd thought she was my grandmother too, for Chris was so much my real father in my heart.

  But in reality, it was Bart who was Paul's son, and I knew why his grandmother wanted him so badly and not me. I belonged to Madame Marisha as Bart belonged to her. It was the blood relationship that made them love each other. And I sighed to be only a stepgrandson to such a mysterious and touching woman who felt she had to suffer to redeem her mistakes. I thought I should take better care of Bart-- protect him, guide him, keep him straight.

  Right away I had to get up and look at Bart, who was curled on his side in his bed with his thumb in his mouth. He looked like a baby--just a little boy who'd always stood in my shadow, always trying to live up to what I'd done at his age, and never achieving the goals I'd already set. He hadn't walked sooner, talked at a younger age, or smiled until he was almost a year old. It was as if he'd known from birth that he'd always be number two, never number one. Now he'd found the one person in the world who would let him come first. I was happy Bart had his very own grandmother. Even if she did wear nothing but black, I could tell she'd once been very beautiful. More beautiful than my Grandmother Marisha could ever have hoped to be when she was young.

  Yet . . . yet . . . some pieces in the puzzle were missing.

  John Amos Jackson--just where did he fit into the picture? Why would a loving grandmother and mother who wanted to be reunited with her son and his wife and her grandson . . . why would she bring that hateful old man along with her?

  Honor Thy Mother

  . He never bothered to look around. He thought I was safely asleep, in that little bed where they liked to keep me. But I saw Daddy leave the house. Was he going to see my grandmother? Wish everybody'd leave her alone, so I could have her back like she used to be, all mine.

  Apple was gone. Gone to where puppies and ponies went. "That great big pasture in the sky," said John Amos with his glittery pale eyes watching me carefully, like he thought I was the one who stabbed the pitchfork in. "You saw Apple dead? You really saw him dead?"

  "Deader than a doornail." I sneaked along the winding jungle paths that were taking me straight into hell. Down, down, down. Caves and canyons and deep pits, and sooner or later we'd find the door. Red. The door to hell would be red--maybe black.

  Black gates. Magic gates swung wide to let Daddy through. She wanted him. Fine son he was, putting his mother into the loony bin, and next he'd put me in one of those funny farms where they laced you up in straitjackets (wonder what they were?). Terrible anyway, whatever it was.

  The gates clanked together. Knew Mom was back in her room typing away those pages like she really thought it was just as important as dancing. She didn't seem to mind sitting in that wheelchair, didn't seem to mind at all unless she heard Jory playing that dance music. Then her head would lift; she'd stare into space; her feet would begin to keep time.

  "What's intricate mean, Momma?" I'd asked when she said Jory had the concentration to learn intricate dances quickly.

  "Complicated," she'd answered, just like a dictionary. She had dictionaries all over the place, little ones, middle-sized ones, a huge fat one that had its own stand that swiveled around.

  Had to make my feet do intricate things. I tried as I slipped along behind Daddy, who never glanced backwards. I was always looking over my shoulder, staring to the left or to the right, wondering, always wondering. Dratted shoelace--ouch! Down I was-- again. If he heard me cry out, he didn't look back. Good . . . had to do all this secret stuff like a good spy. Or a thief, a jewel thief. Rich ladies had lots and lots of jewels. Ought to get in some practice while she was gabbing with her doctor son, crying and constantly asking him to forgive her, have mercy, take her back and love her again. Boring. Didn't like Daddy so much now, was back to how I used to feel before he saved my leg from being "amputated." Dratted man was trying to drive away the one grandmother I had. What other kid had a grandmother so rich she could give him everything?

  "Where you going, Bart?" John Amos appeared out of nowhere, his eyes glowing in the dark. "None of your damn business!" I snapped like Malcolm would have done. Had Malcolm's journal flat against my chest, under my shirt. The red leather was sticking to my skin. I was learning how to make money out of rage.

  "Your father is in that house, talking with your grandmother. Now you get in there and do your job, and report back to me every word they say. You hear?"

  Hear? Was him who needed a hearing aid, not me. Else he would do his own spying through the keyhole. But all he could do was peek, couldn't hear very good. Couldn't bend over much better, and couldn't pick up anything he dropped.

  "Bart . . . did you hear me? What the devil are you doing heading for the back stairs?" Turned to stare at him. On the fifth step I was taller. "How old are you, John Amos?"

  He shrugged and scowled. "Why do you want to know?"

  "Never saw anybody older, that's all."

  "The Lord has ways of punishing those who show disrespect to their elders." He gritted his teeth. They made the sound of dishes clinking in the sink.

  "I'm taller than you are now."

  "I'm six feet tall--or I used to be. Boy, that's a height you will never reach unless you always stand on stairs."

  I narrowed my eyes and made them mean like Malcolm would. "There will come a day, John Amos, when I'll stand head and shoulders taller than you. And on your knees you will come begging to me, pleading, pleading; sir, sir, you'll say, please let me get rid of those attic mice. And I will say to you, How do I know you are worthy of my trust, and you will say to me, In your footsteps I will follow, even when you lie in your grave."

  What I said made him slyly smile.

  "Bart, you are learning to be as clever as your great-grandfather, Malcolm. Now, put off whatever you plan to do. Go back to your father, who is with your grandmother this very second. Remember every word you hear, and report back to me."

  Like a spy, I crawled through the dumbwaiter, which was hidden behind a pretty Oriental screen. From there I could sneak my way to a hidden place behind the potted palms.

  There they were, the two of them, doing the same old thing. Grandmother pleading, Daddy rejecting. Sat down and made myself comfortable before I pulled out my pack of roll-my-owns. Cigarettes helped when life got boring, like now. Nothing to do but listen. Spies never got to say anything, and it was action I needed.

  Daddy looked nice in his pale gray suit, like I wanted to look when I grew up--but I wouldn't--I didn't have his kind of good looks. I sighed, wishing I was his real son.

  "Mrs. Winslow, you promised to move, but I look around and see you haven't even packed one box. For the sake of Bart's mental health, for the sake of Jory whom you say you love well too, and most of all for Cathy, go away. Move to San Francisco. That's not too far away. I swear I'll visit you when I can. I'll be able to find opportunities to see you and Cathy will never suspect."

  Boring. Why couldn't he say something different? Why did he care so much what my momma said about his mother? If ever I was so unlucky as to have a wife, I'd tell her she'd better accept my mother or get out. Get the hell out, as Malcolm would put it.

  "Oh, Christopher," she sobbed, pulling out another of those lacy handkerchiefs to wipe at her tears. "I want Cathy to forgive me so I can have a small place in your lives. I stay on because I'm hoping eventually she'll realize I'm not here to harm any of you . . . I'm here only to give what I can."

  Daddy smiled bitterly. "I suppose you are talking again about material things, bu
t that's not what a child needs. Cathy and I have done all we can to make Bart feel needed, loved and wanted--but he can't seem to understand his relationship to me. He isn't secure in what he is, who he is, or where he's going. He doesn't have a dance career like Jory to guide him into the future. Now he's grasping, trying to find himself, and you aren't helping. He keeps his innermost self very private, locked up. He adores his mother, he distrusts his mother. He suspects she loves Jory more than she loves him. He knows that Jory is handsome, talented, and most of all, adroit. Bart is not adroit at anything but pretending. If he would confide in us, or his psychiatrist, he could be helped--but he doesn't confide."

  I had to wipe a tear from my eye. So hard to hear about myself, and what I was, and worse, what I wasn't--like they knew me inside out, and they didn't. They couldn't.

  "Did you hear any of what I just said, Mrs. Winslow?" Daddy shouted. "Bart does not like his image that reflects only weakness--no skills, no grace and no authority. So he borrows from all the books he's read, from all the TV shows he's watched, and sometimes he even borrows from animals, pretending he's a wolf, a dog, a cat."

  "Why, why?" she moaned. He was telling all my secrets. And a secret told had no value, none at all.

  "Can't you guess why? Jory has thousands of photographs of his father, Bart has none. Not even one."

  That made her bolt straight up. She flared with anger. "And why should he have his father's pictures? Is it my fault my second husband didn't give his mistress his photograph?"

  I felt stunned. What was this? Sure, John Amos had told me crazy stories, but I'd thought he made them up, just as I made up stories to chase away boredom. Was it all true that my own momma had been the bad woman who had seduced my own grandmother's second husband? Was I really the son of that lawyer-man named Bartholomew Winslow? Oh, Momma, how can I ever stop hating you now?

  Daddy was wearing that funny smile again. "Perhaps your beloved Bart thought he didn't need to give her his photograph when she'd have the living man in her own home and in her bed as her lawful husband. She told him before he died that she was expecting his child, and he would have divorced you to be the father of his child, and have Cathy--I don't doubt that in the least."

  I was in a tight ball, agonized by all I'd heard. My poor, poor daddy, who died in the fire at Foxworth Hall. John Amos was a true friend, the only one who treated me like an adult and told me the truth. And Daddy Paul, whose picture set in my bedroom on the night table, had been only another stepfather, like Christopher. Was crying inside from losing yet another daddy. My eyes rolled from Daddy to her, trying so hard to know what to feel about him and her--and Momma. It wasn't right for parents to mess up the lives of little babies who weren't even born, mess it up so much I'd never really know who I was.

  Hopefully I stared at my grandmother, who seemed to be very hurt by what her son had said. Her white hands fluttered up to her forehead, which was glistening with beads of sweat, touching it as if her head ached. Oh, how easily she could feel pain, why couldn't I?

  "All right, Christopher," she said when I thought she might never find the words, "you've had your say, now let me have mine. When it came down to an ultimatum, Cathy and her unborn child, or me and my fortune-- Bart would have stayed with me, his wife. He might have kept her on as his mistress until he tired of her, but then he would have figured out some legal way to take possession of his child-- and then my husband would have bowed out of Cathy's life, holding fast to his son. I know he would have stayed on with me, even as he looked around for the next pretty face and younger body."

  My own daddy. My own blood father wouldn't have wanted my Momma after all. Tears stuck to my lashes. My throat hurt, proving I was human after all, not the freak I'd believed. I could feel a different kind of pain. But still I couldn't feel happy; why couldn't I feel happy and real? Then I remembered some of her words . . . my real daddy would have found some "legal way" to take possession of me. Did that mean he would have stolen me away from my own mother? That thought didn't make me happy either.

  Grandmother sat on, unmoving. I shriveled even smaller, scared, so scared of what I might hear next.

  Daddy, don't let out any more bad secrets and make me take action. John Amos would force me to take action. I glanced behind me, suspecting he might be listening with a glass held to the wall so he could hear better.

  "Well," said my father, wound up now. "Bart's psychiatrist shows an incredible interest in you, whom he believes to be my mother only. I wonder why time and again he keeps harping back to you. He seems to think you are the clue to Bart's secret inner life. He thinks you lived a secret inner life too--did you, Mother? When your father made you feel less than human, did you sit alone and plot how to have your own kind of revenge, and make him suffer?"

  What was this?

  "Don't," she pleaded, "please don't. Have mercy on me, Christopher. I did the best I could under the circumstances. I swear I did my best!"

  "Your best?" He laughed and sounded like Momma when she poked mean fun. "When your father's younger half brother walked into Foxworth Hall at age seventeen, did you immediately seize hold on an inspiration?--the supreme way to punish your father for making you dislike yourself? Did you set out to make our father fall in love with you? Did you? Did you hate him in a way too, because he looked like Malcolm? I think you did. I think you schemed and plotted to wound your father in the one way that would shatter his ego most, so it might never recover. And I think you succeeded! You eloped and married the younger half brother he despised, and you thought you'd won in two ways. You had stung him where it hurt most. Now you had power to gain his tremendous fortune through our father!--but it didn't work, did it? I haven't forgotten those days when we lived in Gladstone, when I overheard you pleading with my father to sue, to get what was rightfully his. But our father refused to cooperate. He loved you and married you for what he thought you were, and not for the money you couldn't keep from dreaming about."

  Stunned again, I stared at my grandmother. She was crying, her frail body shaking; even her rocking chair seemed to quiver. I was quivering too, crying too-- inside.

  "You're wrong, so wrong, Christopher!" she sobbed, her chest heaving. "I loved your father! You know I loved him! I gave him four children and the best years of my life--the best I had in me to give to anyone."

  "Your best is so poor, Mrs. Winslow, so very, very poor."

  "Christopher!" she cried out, getting to her feet painfully. She spread her hands in a helpless way, stepping closer to look up into his face. The black shroud she wore fluttered as she shook. She threw a fearful glance around the room, forcing me to shrink smaller into the dim shadowy corner. Her voice lowered.

  "All right, we've said enough about the past. Live with Cathy, but accept me into your lives. Let me have Bart as my own son. You have Jory and that little girl you adopted. Let me take Bart and go away, so far away you'll never see or hear from me again. I swear I'll never let anyone know about you and Cathy. I'll do what I can to protect your secret--but let me have Bart for my own, please, please!"

  She fell to her knees and clutched at his hands, and when he quickly moved them out of reach, she pulled on his jacket.

  "Don't embarrass me further, Mother," he said uneasily, but I could tell he was touched. "Cathy and I don't give away our children. He is not our pride and joy at this moment, but we love him, we need him, and we will do what is necessary to see that he is mentally healthy again."

  "Tell me what to do, and I'll do it," she pleaded, tears streaking her cheeks as at last she caught hold of his evasive hands and she crushed them to her breasts. "Tell me what to do--anything but leave. I need to see him, and watch and admire as he pretends. He's wonderfully gifted." She began to kiss his hands as he tried to pull them away, but he must not have tried too hard, for she was able to retain them both with her fragile strength.

  "Mother, please . . ." he begged, looking away before he sat down and hid his face.

  "He needs me, Chr
istopher, more than any of my own children have ever needed me. He loves me too . . . I know he does. He sits on my lap and I rock him, and I see a look of contentment on his face. He's so young, so vulnerable, so bewildered by things he can't understand. And I can help. I know I can help him.

  "Something inside of me says I won't be here too

  much longer," she whispered, and I had to strain my ears to hear. "Let me have him until then . . . please, as one last gift to the mother you used to love very much . . . the mother of your youth, Christopher . . . the mother who cared for you when you had the measels, the chicken pox, all those colds from staying outside in the snow too long. Remember? I remember. Without my memories of the good times, I could never have lived through the bad . . ."

  She was getting to him. He was staring down at her, his eyes soft.

  "You said a while ago I seduced your father and deliberately schemed to hurt my father by marrying him. You are wrong. I loved your father from the first moment I laid eyes on him. I could no more have held back from loving him than you held back from loving Cathy. Chris, I have nothing left of my past. I've lost everything. John's the only one from my past," she murmured low, like she was scared. "He's the only one I have left from the days at Foxworth Hall."

  "He must know who I am then! And who Bart is!"

  Leaning forward, she stretched to put her pale hand with all the rings on his trousered knee--I saw him shudder at her touch. "I don't know what John knows. He thinks all my children ran off and were lost somewhere in the world. As far as I know, he doesn't know Bart's middle name is Winslow . . but then again, he's so sly, he may know everything." She trembled and withdrew her hand as if she knew it offended him. "All this land around here belonged to my father. So he thinks it's only natural I would come out here and settle down on an estate that's been in our family for years and years."