If There Be Thorns Read online

  "Don't evade my question with silly talk of eating. Do you think for one moment I would pollute my body with your stupid lamb chops? I eat health foods, and health foods only."

  "Jory," said Mom, "in case Emma saw Madame, run tell her not to set another place."

  "What is all this idiotic chatter about lamb chops? I drove here to ask an important question, and you talk about food. Catherine, answer my question-- is Paul Sheffield dead?"

  Mom looked at me and gestured I was to disappear, but I couldn't. I stood my ground and defied her. She paled more and seemed appalled that I, her darling, would not obey. Then, as if resigned, she muttered in an indistinct way: "You never asked me about myself, about my husband, so I took it you weren't interested in anyone but Jory."

  "Catherine!"

  "Jory, please leave this room immediately. Or do I have to get up and shove you out?"

  I backed out the door just before she reached to throw it shut.

  Barely could I make out what she said on the other side of the door, but I pressed my ear against it and heard. "Madame, you don't know how much I have needed someone to confide in. But you were always so cold, so remote, I didn't think you could understand." Silence. A snort.

  "Yes, Paul died, years ago. I try not to think of him as dead but as still alive, though invisible. We brought his marble statues and benches here and tried to make our garden grow like his. We failed. But still, when twilight comes and I'm out in the garden it seems I can sense him near, still loving me. We were married for such a short time. And he was never really well . . . so when he died, I was left feeling

  unfulfilled, still yearning to give him the years of happy married life I owed him. I wanted somehow to make up for Julia, his first wife."

  "Catherine," said Madame softly, "who is this man your children call Father?"

  "Madame, what I do is none of your business." I could hear the anger building in Mom's voice. "This is not the same kind of world you grew up in. You have not lived my life, and been inside my mind. You have not known the kind of deprivations I suffered when I was young and needed love most. Don't you sit there and condemn me with your dark mean eyes, for you can't understand."

  "Oh, Catherine, how little credit you give my intelligence. Do you think me dumb, blind and insensitive? I know now very well who the man is my grandson calls Dad. And it's no wonder you could never love my Julian enough. I used to think it was Paul, but now I see it wasn't Paul you truly loved; it wasn't that Bartholomew Winslow either--it was Christopher, your brother. I don't give a damn what you and your brother do. If you sleep in his bed and you find the happiness you feel was stolen from you long ago, I can rationalize and say that much worse goes on every day than brother and sister who pretend to be husband and wife. But I must protect my grandson. He comes first. You have no right to make your children pay the price for your unlawful relationship."

  Oh!--What was she saying?

  Mom, do something, say something, make me feel good again! Make me feel safe and real again-- make it all go away, this talk of your brother you've never mentioned.

  I crouched down lower, bowing my head into my hands, not wanting to hear, not daring to leave.

  Mom's voice came strained and very hoarse, as if she were having trouble keeping tears away. "I don't know how you found out. Please try to understand . . ."

  "As I said before, I don't give a damn--and I think I do understand. You couldn't love my son, as you could never love any man more than you loved your brother. I'm bitter about that. I'm crying inside for Julian, who thought you an angel of perfection, his Catherine, his Clara, his sleeping beauty that he could never wake up. That's what you were to him, Catherine, the personification of all the dancing dolls of the ballet, virgin and pure, sweet and chaste, and in the end you are no better than the rest of us."

  "Please!" cried Mom, "I tried to escape Chris. I tried to love Julian more. I did, I really did."

  "No, you didn't try. If you had, you would have succeeded."

  "You can't know!" came Mom's distressed cry.

  "Catherine, you and I have traveled the same road for many a year, and you've let little bits and pieces of information drop along the way. And then there is Jory, who tries his best to shield you . . ."

  "He doesn't know? Please say he doesn't know!"

  "He doesn't know," Madame soothed in what was a soft voice--for her. "But he talks, and spills more than he knows. The young are like that; they think the old are so senile they can't put two and two together. They think the old can live to be seventy and still not know more than they do at fourteen. They think they have a monopoly on experience, because they see us not doing very much, while every moment of their lives are full, forgetting we too were young once. And we have turned all our mirrors into windows . . . and they are still behind the mirrors looking only at themselves."

  "Madame, please don't speak so loud. Bart has a way of hiding and eavesdropping."

  Her strident voice toned down, making it more difficult for me to hear. "All right, I'll have my say and go. I don't think your home is the proper place for a boy of Jory's sensitivities to grow up in. The atmosphere here is tense, as if a bomb might explode any moment. Your younger son is obviously in need of psychological help--why, he tried to stab me as I approached your home."

  "Bart is always playing games . ." said Mom weakly.

  "Hah! Some games he plays! His knife almost slit my coat. And this coat is almost new. It will be my last coat, the one I'll wear until I'm dead."

  "Please, Madame, I'm not in the mood for talk of death."

  "Did I ask for your pity? If you took it that way, then I reverse positions. I'll wear this coat as long as I live. And before I die I have to see Jory achieve the fame that should have been Julian's."

  "I'm doing what I can," said Mom wearily, sounding so terribly tired.

  "What you can? Hell and damnation! You live here with your brother, risking public humiliation, and sooner or later your fragile bubble will pop. Jory will suffer. His schoolmates will taunt him. The reporters will hound you, him, everyone in this house. The law will take your children from you."

  "Please sit down, stop pacing."

  "Damn you, Catherine, for not listening. I guessed a long time ago that in time you would succumb to your brother's adoration. I thought even when you married your Dr. Paul that you and your brother . . . well, never mind what I thought, but you married a man almost dead. Was it a guilty

  conscience?"

  "I don't know. I used to think it was because I loved him and I owed him. I had a thousand reasons for marrying him, the most important being he wanted me, and that was enough."

  "All right, you had reasons enough. But you hurt my son. You didn't give him what he needed, and I never understood how you could resist. He used to cry, saying you didn't love him enough. Always he said there was some mysterious man you loved more--and I didn't believe him then. Fool, wasn't I? Fool, wasn't he? But we were all fools when it came to you, Catherine. You were so beautiful, so young and innocent seeming. Were you born old and clever? How did you know so well, so early, all the ways of making a man love you beyond reason?"

  "Love is sometimes not enough," she said dully, while I felt almost paralyzed with the dreadful information I was overhearing. Moment by moment, heartbeat by heartbeat, I was losing the mother I loved. I was also losing the only father I'd ever had long enough to love. "How did you find out about Chris and me?" Mom asked, making me quiver more.

  "Does it matter?" shrieked Madame. I was pinning my hopes to her, hoping she too wouldn't betray me. "I'm not dumb, Catherine, as I said before. I asked a few questions. I listened to Jory's answers, and I added up the facts. It's been years since I saw Paul--but Chris was always there. Bart is on the brink of insanity from what Jory innocently lets out--never intentionally, only carelessly, for he loves you. Do you think I can stand quietly by and let you and your brother wreck my grandson's life too? I refuse to let you ruin his career, his mental
health. You give me Jory to take back East with me, where he'll be safe and far removed from the bomb that will explode and splatter your lives onto the front pages of every newspaper in this country!"

  I was sick. I'd opened the door a bit, enough to see my mother was paler than death. She began to tremble, as I was trembling--but she didn't have tears in her eyes as I had in mine Momma, how could you live with your brother when the whole world knows that's wrong? How could you deceive Bart and me? How could Chris do that to us? And all this time I'd thought he was so perfect, so right for you, for us. Sin, sin. No wonder Bart went around chanting about sin and the torments of everlasting hell. Somehow Bart had found out before me.

  I sank to my knees and leaned my head against the door, closing my eyes and trying to breathe deeply to stop my stomach rumbling and wanting to rise.

  Mom spoke again. It was easy to tell she was trying hard to hold onto her temper.

  "To lose Bart for even a few months in some institution is nearly driving me crazy. But to lose Jory as well would drive me crazy. I love my sons, Madame, both of them. Though you have never given me credit for having mercy on Julian, I did the best I could for him. He was not an easy man to live with. You and your husband made him what he was, not me. I didn't force him to dance when he would have played ball if given his way. I didn't punish him by making him practice every weekend, so he never had time for fun--you and Georges did that. But it was me who paid that price. He wanted to devour me alive, forbidding me any friends but him. Jealous of every man who looked my way, every man I looked at. Do you know what it is to live with a man who suspects you deceive him when you're out of his sight? And it wasn't me who did the betraying--it was him. I was faithful to Julian. I never let another man touch me, but he couldn't have said the same thing. He wanted every pretty girl he saw. He wanted to use them, discard them, then come back to me and have me hold him in my arms and tell him how wonderful he was . . . and I couldn't say he was wonderful when the stench of some other woman's perfume was all over him. Then he'd hit me, did you know that? He had to prove something to himself. I didn't know then what he had to prove, but now I do--he had to find the love you denied him."

  I felt weaker, sicker, as I saw my grandmother blanch. Now I was losing my real father, whom I'd adored as a saint.

  "You make your points very well, Catherine, and they hurt. But now let me make mine. Georges and I did make mistakes with Julian, I admit that, and you and our son paid the price. Are you going to punish Jory in the same way? Let me take him back to Greenglenna. Once we're there I'll arrange for an audition for him in New York. I have important connections. I did manage to turn out two brilliant dancers, one named Julian, the other named Catherine. I was not all bad, nor was Georges. Perhaps we let our own dreams blind us to what others wanted and we tried too hard to live through our child. That's all we wanted, Catherine, to live through Julian. Now Julian is dead and he has left behind one child, one only-- your son. Without Jory I have no reason to stay alive. With Jory I have every reason to go on. For once in your life give, don't take."

  NO, NO! I didn't want to go with Madame.

  I watched Mom bow her head until her hair fell in two soft wings of pale gold. Her trembling hand fluttered to touch her brow, as if another of those terrible headaches was paining. I didn't want to leave her, sinner or not. This was my home, my world, and 278 she was still my mother and Chris was still my stepdad, and there was Bart, Cindy and Emma too. We were a family--rightly, wrongly, we were a family.

  Finally Mom seemed to find a solution. Hope rose in my heart.

  "Madame, I'm throwing myself on your mercy, and hoping to God you have some. I realize you could very well be right, but I cannot give up my firstborn son. Jory is the one good thing that came from my marriage to Julian. If you take him, you take part of me, a very important part of me I cannot surrender without dying. Jory loves me. He loves Chris as much as he could love his own father. Even if I have to risk his career, I cannot risk losing his love by letting him go away with you . . . so don't ask for the impossible, Madame. I cannot let Jory go."

  Madame stared at her long and hard while my heart thumped so loudly I was sure they'd both hear. Then Grandmother stood up and prepared to leave. "Hah," she snorted. "I'm going to speak honestly now, Catherine, and perhaps for the first time I'll give you the full truth. I have, since the first day I met you, envied your youth, your beauty, and most of all your genius for the dance. I know you have passed on to Jory your extraordinary skill. You have been a superb teacher. I see so much of you in him, and so much of your brother in him too. The patience Jory has, the cheerful optimism, the drive and dedication--derived from your family, not from Julian. But there is some of Julian in him too. He looks like my son. He has the fire of my son, and the fleshy desires of my son for women. But if I must hurt you to save him, I will do so. I will not spare your brother, or your youngest son either. If you do not turn Jory over to me I will do what I can to bring down your house. The law will give me custody of Jory, and there will not be one thing you can do to stop me once I go to them with the facts. And if you force me to do it this way, which is not the way I would choose, I will take Jory East, and he will never see you again."

  Mom rose to her feet and stood taller than my grandmother. I'd never seen her look taller, prouder, stronger. "Go on, do what you must. I will not give in one inch, and allow you to steal from me what is mine. Never will I give a child of mine away. Jory is mine I gave birth to him after eighteen hours of striving. If I have to face up to the whole world and its condemnation, still I will stand with my head held high, and hold fast to my children. There is no force in this world, you, the law, anything, that can force me to give up my children."

  Turning to go, Madame glanced around the room, allowing her eyes to linger longest on the thick stack of papers on Mom's small desk. "You'll see things my way," she said in a soft cat's purr. I pity you Catherine, as I pity your brother. I pity Bart too, savage as the little monster is. I pity everyone in your household, for all will be hurt. But I won't let my compassion for you, and my understanding of what made you the way you are, hold back my hand. Jory will be safe with me, with my name, not yours."

  "GET OUT!" screamed Mom, who had lost all control. She picked up a vase with flowers and hurled it at Madame's head! "YOU RUINED YOUR SON'S LIFE AND NOW YOU WANT TO RUIN JORY! YOU WANT HIM TO BELIEVE THERE IS NO LIFE BUT IN THE BALLET, DANCING,

  DANCING-- BUT I AM LIVING! I WAS A DANCER, AND STILL I AM SURVIVING!"

  Madame looked around the room again, as if she too would like to hurl some object, and slowly she bent over to pick up the broken vase at her feet. "I gave you this. How ironic that you would hurl it at me." Something brittle and hard seemed to crack as she looked at Mom with softness, and she spoke with rare humility. "When Julian was a boy, I tried to do for him what was best, just as you try to do for yours what is best . . . and if my judgment was wrong, it was done with the best of intentions."

  "Isn't everything?" said Mom with bitterness. "Always the intentions are so right, so reasonable-- and in the end even the excuses ride the waves of indignation like that fabled straw everyone tries to grasp to keep from drowning. It seems all my life I've been grasping for straws that don't exist. I tell myself each night, before I climb into bed with my brother, that this is the reason I was born, and for every wrong I have done I have consoled myself by saying I have balanced the scales with the right decisions. I have finally given my brother the only woman he can love, the wife he so desperately needed. I have made him happy--and if that is wrong in your eyes, and in the eyes of the world, I don't give a damn I don't give a damn what the world thinks!"

  My grandmother just stood there, with conflicting emotions torturing her aged face. I could tell she, too, was hurting. I watched her thin, heavily veined hand reach to touch my mother's hair, but she drew it away and kept her eyes blank and her voice under control: "Again I say, I pity you, Catherine. I pity all of you, but most of all I
pity Jory, for he is the one with the most to lose."

  Quickly I backed away and hid as she hurled herself out of Mom's bedroom and strode down the back hall, bypassing Bart, who stabbed at her with his unsheathed knife.

  "Witch, old black witch!" he snarled, pulling back his upper lip in a frightful way. "I hope you never come back, never, never!"

  I was miserable enough now to want a hole to crawl into and die. My mother was living with her brother. The woman I'd loved and respected all my life was worse than any mother I'd ever heard of. None of my friends would believe, but when they did, I'd be so shamed, ridiculed, I'd never be able to face them. Then it hit me. Dad was my real uncle. Not just Bart's but mine too. Oh, God, what did I do now? Where did I run? It was not a platonic brother-sister relationship, a fake marriage for appearances sake, it was incest. They were lovers. I knew! I'd seen!

  Suddenly everything was too sordid, too ugly, too shocking. Why had they allowed their love to start? Why hadn't they stopped it from happening?

  I wanted to get up and go and ask, but I couldn't bear to look at Mom, or Dad either when he came home. In my room I fell on my bed, with the locked door making me feel safer. When I was called to dinner I said I wasn't hungry. Me, who was always starving. Mom came to the closed door and pleaded: "Jory, did you overhear anything your grandmother said to me?"

  "No, Mother," I answered stiffly. "I think I'm coming down with a cold, that's all. I'll feel fine in the morning, just fine." I had to say something to explain why my voice was husky.

  Somewhere in all those tears I shed I lost the boy I was earlier today. Now I had to become a man. I felt old, cold, like nothing mattered very much anymore, and for the first time I knew why Bart was so confused and peculiar acting--he must know too.

  I sneaked to watch Mom writing in her fine blue- leather journal, and when I had the chance, I stole into her room and read every word she'd written, as dishonest as that was. I was becoming just like Bart. But I had to know.