Petals on the Wind

  Here was my chance to spill it forth--all of it! Let him know just what kind of woman he'd married! Why couldn't my lips part and my tongue speak the truth? "Why don't you ask your wife who I am? Why come to me when she has all the answers?"

  He leaned back against the gaudy, bright orange, plastic-covered chair and took out a silver cigarette case with his monogram in diamonds. That just had to be a gift to him from my mother--it looked like her. He offered that case to me. I shook my head. He tapped the loose tobacco from one end and then lit the other with a silver lighter with diamonds too. All the while his dark, narrowed eyes held mine and, like a fly caught in a web of my own making, I waited to be pounced upon.

  "Each letter you write says you need desperately a million dollars," he said in a flat monotone, then blew smoke directly into my face. I coughed and fanned the air. All around the walls bore signs reading No SMOKING. "Why do you need a million?"

  I watched the smoke; it circled and came directly to me, wreathed about my head and neck. "Look," I said, struggling to regain my control, "you know my husband died. I was expecting his child and I was inundated with bills I couldn't pay, and even after the insurance paid off, with some assistance from you, still I'm going under. My dance school is in the red. I have a child to support, and I need things for him, to save for his college education, and your wife has so many millions. I thought she could part with just one."

  His smile was faint, cynical. He blew smoke rings to make me dodge and cough again. "Why would an intelligent woman like you presume to think my wife would be so generous as to turn over one dime to a relative she doesn't even claim?"

  "Ask her why!"

  "I have asked her. I took your letters and pushed them in her face and demanded to know what it was all about. A dozen times I've asked just who you are and how you are connected to her. Each time she says she doesn't know you, except as a ballerina she's seen dance. This time I want straight answers from you." lb assure that I didn't turn my face and hide my eyes, he reached forward to firmly grip my chin so I couldn't turn my head. "Who the hell are you? How are you connected to my wife? Why should you think she would pay you blackmail money? Why should your letters send her running upstairs to take out a picture album she keeps locked in her desk drawer or in a safe? An album she quickly hides and locks away whenever I come into the room."

  "She took the album--the blue album with a gold eagle on the leather cover?" I whispered, shocked that she would do that.

  "Everywhere we go the blue album goes with her in one of her locked trunks." His dark eyes narrowed dangerously. "You described that blue and gold album exactly, though it's old and worn shabby now. While my wife looks in a picture album, my mother-in-law reads her Bible to rags. Sometimes I catch my wife crying over the photographs that blue album holds, which I presume are pictures of her first husband."

  I sighed heavily and closed my eyes. I didn't want to know she cried!

  "Answer me, Cathy. Who are you?" I felt he would grip my chin and hold me there throughout eternity if I didn't speak up and say something, and for some stupid reason I lied. "Henrietta Beech was your wife's half- sister. You see, Malcolm Foxworth had an extramarital affair, and three children were the result. I am one. Your wife is my half-aunt "

  "Ahhh," he sighed, releasing my chin and leaning back in his chair, as if satisfied I was telling the truth. "Malcolm had an affair with Henrietta Beech who gave him three illegitimate children. What extraordinary information." He laughed mockingly. "I never thought the old devil had it in him, especially after that heart attack soon after my wife married the first time. Gives a man inspiration to know that." He sobered then to give me a long and searching look. "Where is your mother now? I'd like to see and talk to her."

  "Dead," I said, hiding my hands under the table and keeping my fingers crossed like a superstitious, silly child. "She's been dead a long, long time."

  "Okay. I get the picture. Three young, illegitimate Foxworth children hoping to cash in on their bloodline by blackmailing my wife--right?"

  "Wrong! It was only me. Not my brother or my sister. I only want what is due us! At the time I wrote those letters I was in a desperate situation, and even now I'm not much better off. The hundred thousand the insurance paid didn't go very far. My husband had run up huge bills and we were behind in our rent and car payments; plus I owed hospital bills for him, the money for his funeral, and then the costs of having my baby. I could go on all night telling you my dance school's problems and how I was tricked into believing it was a profitable, going concern."

  "And it's not?"

  "Not when it consists of so many little rich girls who take off and go on vacations two or three times a year and aren't really serious about dancing anyway. All they want to do is look pretty and feel graceful. If I had one really good student it would be worth all my efforts. But I don't have one, not one."

  He drummed his strong fingertips on the tablecloth, looking deeply reflective. Next he had a cigarette lit again, not as if he truly enjoyed smoking, but more as if he had to have something to keep his restless fingers busy. He inhaled deeply, then looked me straight in the eyes. "I'm going to speak very frankly to you, Catherine Dahl. First, I don't know if you are lying or telling the truth, but you do look like a member of the Foxworth clan. Second, I don't like you trying to blackmail my wife. Third, I don't like to see her unhappy, so much so that she cries. Fourth, I happen to be very much in love with her, though there are times, I admit, I'd like to choke the past from her throat. She never speaks of it; she is full of secrets my ears will never hear. And one great big secret I've never heard before is that Malcolm Neal Foxworth, the good, pious, saintly gentleman, had a love affair after he had heart trouble. Now before his heart trouble, I happen to know he had at least one, possibly, but no more."

  Oh! He knew more than I. I had shot an arrow into the sky, not knowing it would hit a bulls-eye!

  Bart Winslow glanced about the cafe Families were coming in to dine early, and I suppose he feared someone might recognize him and report back to his wife, my mother.

  "C'mon, Cathy, let's get out of here," he urged, getting to his feet and reaching to pull me on mine. "You can invite me to have a drink in your home, then we can sit and talk and you can tell me everything in more detail."

  Twilight came like a quickly dropped shade to the mountains--suddenly it was evening--and we'd been hours in that cafe. We were on the sidewalk when he held my cardigan sweater for my arms to fill the sleeves, though the air was so brisk I needed a jacket or coat.

  "Your home, where is it?"

  I told him and he looked disconcerted. "We'd better not go there . . . too many people might see me go inside." (He didn't know then, of course, I had chosen that cottage mainly because it backed up to a wooded area, and there was plenty of privacy for a man to come and go on the sly.) "My face is in the newspapers so often," he continued, "I'm sure your neighbors would see me. Could you call your babysitter and have her stay on awhile longer?"

  I did just that, speaking first to Emma Lindstrom, and then to Jory, telling him to be a good boy until Mommy was home again.

  Bart's car was sleek and black, a Mercedes. It purred along like one of Julian's sleek luxury cars, so heavy it didn't rattle or clank, and firmly it gripped the curved mountain roads. "Where are you taking me, Mr. Winslow?"

  "To a place where we can talk and no one will see us or hear us." He looked my way and grinned. "You've been studying my profile. How do I rate?"

  A hot rush of blood heated my face. Knowing I was blushing made me blush again, so then I felt damp. My life was full of handsome men, but this man was far different from any I had known. A rakish, bandit type of man who was filling me with alarm signals--go slow with this one! My intuitiveness warned as I studied his face and took note. Everything, his expensive, beautifully fitted suit, shouted that he should be as determined as I was in getting what he wanted, when he wanted.

  "Well-ll," I drawled to make a mockery of thi
s, "your looks tell me to run fast and lock the door behind me!"

  Wickedly he grinned again, seemingly satisfied. "So, you find me exciting and a bit dangerous. Nice. To be handsome but boring would be worse than being ugly and charming, wouldn't it?"

  "I wouldn't know. If a man is charming and intelligent enough, I often forget how he actually looks and think he's handsome regardless."

  "Then you must be easily pleased."

  I shifted my eyes and sat up primly. "Truthfully, Mr. Winslow--"

  "Bart."

  "Truthfully, Bart, I am very difficult to please. I'm inclined to put men up on a pedestal and think of them as perfect. As soon as I find out they have feet of clay, I fall out of love, become indifferent."

  "Not many women know themselves so well," he mused. "Most go around never knowing what they are beneath their facade. At least I know where I stand--a sex symbol not on a pedestal."

  N000! I'd never put him on a pedestal. I knew him for what he was, a womanizer, a skirt-chaser, wind and fire, enough to drive a jealous wife crazy! Certainly my mother had never bought that sex manual to instruct him how to or when to and where to! He'd know everything. Abruptly he pulled his car to a stop, then turned to meet my gaze. Even in the darkness the whites of his dark eyes shone. Too virile, too vibrant for a man who should be showing signs of aging. He was eight years younger than my mother. That made him forty years old, a man's most attractive time, his most vulnerable time, his time to think youth would soon be over. He'd have to make his new conquests now, before the sweet and fleeting bird of youth had flown away and taken with it all the young and pretty girls that could have been his. And he must be tired of the wife he knew so well, though he professed to love her. Why then were his eyes gleaming, challenging me? Oh, Momma, wherever you are, you should be down on your knees praying! For I'm not going to show you mercy, no more than you showed us!

  Yet as I sat there summing him up I realized he was no self-sacrificing, quiet man like Paul. This one wouldn't need seducing. He'd do that himself, staccato time. He'd stalk like a black panther until he had what he wanted, and then he'd walk out and leave me and it would be all over. He was not going to give up his chance to inherit millions and the pleasures millions gave for some chance mistress who came his way. Red lights were flashing behind my eyes. . . go easy . . . do it right, for there's danger if you do it wrong.

  As I measured him, he was measuring me in just about the same way. Did I remind him too much of his wife so there would be no real difference? Or was my likeness to her an advantage? After all, didn't men always fall over and over again for the same type?

  "Beautiful night," he said. "This is my favorite season. Fall is so passionate, even more than spring. Come walk with me, Cathy. This place puts me in a strange, melancholy mood, as if I've got to run fast to catch up with the best thing in my life, which up until now has always eluded me."

  "You sound poetic," I said as we left his car and he caught hold of my hand. We began to stroll, with him deftly guiding me--would you believe it-- alongside a railroad track in the country! It seemed so familiar. Yet it couldn't be, could it? Not the same railroad track that had taken us as children to Foxworth Hall fifteen years ago when I was twelve!

  "Bart, I don't know about you, but I've got the weirdest feeling that I have walked this path with you before, on some other night before this."

  "De vu," he said. "I have that same feeling. As if once you and I were deeply in love, and we walked through those woods over there. We sat on that green bench beside these train tracks. I was compelled to bring you here, even when I didn't know where it was I was driving to."

  This forced me to stare up into his face to see if he could be serious. From his bemused and slightly discomforted look, I believe he was surprising himself. "I like to ponder all things considered impossible or implausible," I said. "I want everything impossible to become possible, and everything implausible to reverse and become reality. Then when everything is explainable I want new mysteries to confront me so I always have something inexplicable to think about."

  "You are a romantic."

  "Aren't you?"

  "I don't know. I used to be when I was a boy." "What made you change?"

  "You can't stay a boy with romantic notions when you go to law school and you are faced with the harsh realities of murder, rape, robbery, corruption. You have professors pounding dogmatic ideas into your head to drive out the romance. You go into law fresh and young, and you come out tough and hard, and you know every step of the way ahead you've got to fight and fight hard to be any good. Soon enough you learn you are not the best, and the competition is astounding."

  He turned to smile with a great deal of winsome charm. "I think, though, you and I have much in common, Catherine Dahl. I too had that need of the mysterious, the need to be confounded, and the need to have someone to worship. So I fell in love with an heiress to millions, but those millions she wanted to inherit got in my way. They put me off and scared me. I knew everyone would think I was marrying her just for her money I think she thought it too, until I convinced her otherwise. I fell for her hard, before I knew who she was. In fact I used to think she was like you."

  "How could you think that?" I asked, all tight inside from hearing his revelations.

  "Because she was like you, Cathy, for a while. But then she inherited millions, and in great orgies of shopping she'd buy everything her heart desired. Soon there was nothing to wish for at all--but a baby. And she couldn't have a baby. You can't imagine all the time we spent in front of shops that sold infant clothes, toys and furniture. I married her knowing we couldn't have children and I thought I didn't care. Soon I began to care too much. Those infant shops held a

  fascination for me too."

  The faint path we followed led straight to the green bench stretched between two of the four rickety old green posts that supported a rusty tin roof. There we sat in the cold mountain air, with the moon bright, the stars flickering on and off; bugs were humming, just as my blood was singing.

  "This used to be a mail pick-up and drop-off station, Cathy." He lit another cigarette. "They don't run the trains by here anymore. The wealthy people who live nearby finally won their petition against the railroad company and put an end to trains that so inconsiderately blew their whistles at night and disturbed their rest. I was very fond of hearing the train whistles at night. But I was only twenty-seven, a bridegroom living in Fox- worth Hall. I'd lie on my bed near my wife, with a swan overhead--can you believe that? She would sleep with her head on my shoulder or we'd hold hands all through the night. She took pills so she'd sleep soundly. Too soundly, for she never heard the beautiful music coming from overhead. It puzzled me so--and she said, when I told her, it was my imagination. Then one day it stopped, and I guessed she was right, it was only my

  imagination. When the music ended I missed it. I longed to hear it again. The music had given that old dry house some enchantment. I used to fall asleep and dream of a lovely young girl who danced overhead. I thought I was dreaming of my wife when she was young. She told me that often, as a way of

  punishment, her parents would send her into the attic schoolroom and force her to stay there all day, even in the summers when the temperature up there must have been over a hundred degrees. And they sent her up there in the winters too--she said it was frigidly cold and her fingers would turn blue. She said she spent her time crouched on the floor near the window, crying because she was missing out on some fun thing her parents considered wicked."

  "Did you ever go and take a look in the attic?"

  "No. I wanted to, but the double doors at the top of the stairs were always locked. And besides, all attics are alike; see one and you've seen them all." He flashed me a wicked smile. "And now that I've revealed so much about myself--tell me about you. Where were you born? Where did you go to school? What made you take up dancing--and why haven't you ever attended one of those balls the Foxworths throw on Christmas night?"

&nb
sp; I sweated, though I was cold. "Why should I tell you everything about myself. Just because you sat there and revealed a little about yourself? You didn't tell me anything of real importance. Where were you born? What made you decide to become an attorney? How did you meet your wife? Was it in the summer, the winter, what year? Did you know she'd been married before, or did she tell you only after you were married?"

  "Nosy little thing, aren't you? What difference does it make where I was born. I haven't led an exciting life like you have. I was born in the nothing little town called Greenglenna, South Carolina. The Civil War ended the prosperous days of my ancestors, and we went steadily downhill, as did all the friends of the family But it's an old story, told so many times. Then I married a Foxworth lady and prosperity reigned again in the South. My wife took my ancestorial home and practically had it reconstructed, and refurbished, and spent more than if she had bought a new place. And what was I doing during all of this? A top grad from Harvard running around the world with his wife. I've done very little with my education; I've become a social butterfly. I've had a few court cases and I helped you with your difficulties. And, by the way, you never paid the fee I had in mind."

  "I mailed you a check for two hundred dollars!" I objected hotly. "If that wasn't enough, please don't tell me now; I don't have another two hundred to give away."

  "Have I mentioned money? Money means little to me now that I have so much of it at my disposal. In your special case I had another kind of fee in mind."

  "Oh, come off it, Bart Winslow! You've brought me way out into the country. Now do you want to make love on the grass? Is it your lifelong ambition to make love to a former ballerina? I don't give sex away and I don't pay any bills that way. And what's so attractive about you, a lap dog for a pampered, spoiled, rich woman who can buy anything she wants--including a much younger husband! Why, it's a wonder she didn't put a ring through your nose to lead you around and make you sit up and beg!"