Petals on the Wind

  He had the nerve to come that night at seventhirty just as he'd said he would. Nevertheless, I readily let him in, then led him silently to the dining table with no to-do about cocktails or other niceties. The table was set even more elaborately than the night before. I'd hauled out some boxes and done some unpacking, and on the table were my best lace mats and covered silver serving dishes. Neither of us had as yet spoken. All his forgive-me roses I'd gathered together and they were in the box near his plate. On his empty plate was the jeweler's velvet container with the diamond rose brooch inside. I sat to watch his expression as he put the jewelry box aside casually, and just as casually moved the flower box out of his way. He then took from his breast pocket a folded note that he handed to me. He'd written in a bold hand:

  I love you for reasons that have no beginning and no ending. I loved you even before I knew you, so that my love is without reason or design. Tell me to go and I will. But know first, if you turn me away, I will remember all my life that love that should have been ours, and when I'm stretched out cold, I will but love you better after death.

  I glanced upward to meet his eyes squarely for the first time since he'd entered. "Your poetry, it somehow has a familiar ring, with a bit of

  strangeness."

  "I composed it only a few minutes ago--how could it sound familiar?" He reached for the domed silver lid, ostensibly hiding the Beef Wellington underneath. "I warned you I was an attorney, not a poet--so that accounts for the strangeness. Poetry was not my best subject in school."

  "Obviously." I was very interested in his expression. "Elizabeth Barrett Browning is sweet, but not your type."

  "I did my best," he said with a wicked grin, meeting my eyes and challenging me before his gaze lowered to stare at the huge platter that held one hot dog and a small dab of cold canned beans. The disbelief in his eyes, his utter offended shock gave me so much satisfaction I almost liked him

  "You are now gazing upon Jory's favorite menu," I said, gloating. "It is exactly what he and.! ate tonight for dinner, and since it was good enough for us, I thought it was good enough for you, so I saved some. Since I've already eaten, all of that is yours alone, and you may help yourself."

  Scowling, he flashed me a burning, hard look, then savagely bit down into the hot dog which I'm sure had grown cold as the beans. But he gobbled down everything and drank his glass of milk, and for dessert I handed him a box of animal crackers. First he stared at the box in another expression of dumbfounded amazement, then ripped it open, seized up a lion and snapped off the head in one bite.

  Only when he'd eaten every animal cracker and then picked up each crumb did he take the trouble to look at me with so much disapproval I should have shrunken to ant size. "I take it you are one of those despicable liberated women who refuses to do anything to please a man!"

  "Wrong. I am liberated only with some men. Others I can worship, adore and wait on like a slave."

  "You made me do what I did!" he objected strongly. "Do you think I planned it that way? I wanted us to find our relationship on an equal basis. Why did you wear that kind of dress?"

  "It's the kind all chauvinist men prefer!"

  "I am not a chauvinist--and I hate that kind of dress!"

  "You like what I've got on better?" I sat up straighter to give him a better view of the old nappy sweater I had on. With it I wore faded blue jeans, with dirty sneakers on my feet, and my hair was skinned back and fastened in a granny's knot. Deliberately I'd pulled long strands free so they hung loose about my face, slovenly fringes to make me look more appealing. And no makeup prettied my face. He was dressed to kill.

  "At least you look honest and ready to let me do the pursuing. If there is one thing I despise, it's women who come on strong, like you did last night. I expected better from you than that kind of sleazy dress that showed everything to take the thrill from discovering for myself." He knitted his brows and mumbled, "From a damned harlot's red dress to blue jeans. In the course of one day, she changes into a teenybopper."

  "It was rose-colored, not red! And besides, Bart, strong men like you always adore weak and passive stupid women, because basically you're meek yourself and afraid of an aggressive woman!"

  "I am not weak or meek or anything but a man who likes to feel a man, not to be used for your own purposes. And as for passive women I despise them as much as I do aggressive ones. I just don't like the feeling of being the victim of a huntress leading me into a trap. What the hell are you trying to do to me? Why dislike me so much? I sent you roses, diamonds, imitation poetry, and you can't even comb your hair and take the shine from your nose."

  "You are looking at the natural me, and now that you've seen, you can leave." I got up and walked to the front door and swung it open. "We are wrong for each other. Go back to your wife. She can have you, for I don't want you."

  He came quickly, as if to obey, then seized me in his arms and kicked the door closed. "I love you, God knows why I do, but it seems I've always loved you."

  I stared up in his face, disbelieving him, even as he took the pins from my hair and let it spill down. Out of long habit I tossed it about so it fluffed out and arranged itself, and smiling a little he tilted my face to his. "May I kiss your natural lips? They are very beautiful lips." Without waiting for permission he brushed his lips gently over mine. Oh--the shivery sensation of such a feathery kiss! Why didn't all men know that was the right way to start? What woman wanted to be eaten alive, choked by a thrusting tongue? Not me, I wanted to be played like a violin, strummed pianissimo, in largo timing, fingered into legato, and let it grow into crescendo. Deliciously I wanted to head toward the ecstatic heights that could only happen for me when the right words were spoken and the right kind of kisses given before his hands came into play. If he'd done for me only a little last night, this night he used all the skills he had. This time he took me to the stars where we both exploded, still holding tight to each other, and doomed to do it again, and then again.

  He was hairy all over. Julian had been hairless but for one thatch that grew in a thin line up to his navel. And Julian had never kissed my feet that smelled of roses from a long perfumed bath before I put on old work clothes. Toe by toe he mouthed before he started working upward. I felt the grandmother watching, blazing her hard, gray eyes to put us both in hell. I turned off my mind, shut her out, and gave in to my senses and to this man who was now treating me like a lover.

  But he didn't love me, I knew that. Bart was using me as a substitute for his wife, and when she came back I'd never see him again. I knew it, knew it, but still I took and I gave until we fell asleep in each other's arms.

  When I slept, I dreamed. Julian was in the silver music box my father had given me when I was six. Round and round he spun, his face ever turning toward me, accusing me with his jet eyes, and then he grew a mustache and was Paul, who only looked sad. I ran fast to set him free from death in a music box turned into a coffin--and then it was Chris inside, his eyes closed, his hands folded one over the other on his chest .. . dead, dead. Chris!

  I awoke to find Bart gone and my pillow wet with tears. Momma, why did you start this, why?

  Holding tight to my son's small hand I led him out into the cold morning air on my way to work. Faint and far away I heard someone calling my name, and with it came the scent of old-fashioned roses. Why don't you come, Paul, and save me from myself--why only call in your thoughts?

  Part one was done. Part two would begin when my mother knew I had Bart's child--and then there was the grandmother who had to pay as well. And when I looked I saw that the mountains curved upward into a satisfied smirk. At last I had responded to their call. Their vengeful, tormenting wail.

  The Grandmother, Revisited

  . Foxworth Hall was at the end of a cul-de-sac, the largest and most impressive of many fine, large homes and the only one that sat high, high on the hillside, looking down on all the others like a castle. For days I went to stare at it, making my plans.

  Bart a
nd I didn't have to sneak around furtively to meet. The houses where he lived were far apart and no one could see us when he came to me through the back door that opened out into a yard with a fence. In back of that was a country lane, shrubbed, and made private by many trees. Sometimes we met in a distant town and our lovemaking in a motel room was wild, sweet, tender, erotic and altogether satisfying, and yet I froze when he told me at lunch, "She called this morning, Cathy. She'll be home before Christmas."

  "That's nice," I said and went right on eating my salad and anticipating the Beef Wellington that would show up soon. He frowned and his fork loaded with salad hesitated on the way to his mouth. "It means we won't be able to see as much of each other. Aren't you sorry?"

  "We'll find ways."

  "If you aren't the damndest woman!" "Don't get so worked up over nothing. All women are monsters to men, and maybe to ourselves. We are our own worst enemies. You don't have to divorce her and give up your chance to inherit her fortune. Though she could outlive you and have the chance to buy another younger husband."

  "Sometimes you are just as bitchy as she is! She did not buy me! I loved her! She loved me! I was crazy about her, as crazy for her as I am for you now. But she changed. When I met her she was sweet, charming, everything I wanted in a woman and wife, but she changed. " He stabbed the salad fork toward his mouth and chewed viciously. "She's always been a mystery-- like you."

  "Bart, my love," I said, "very soon all mystery walls will crumble."

  He went on, as if I hadn't interrupted, "That father of hers, he too was a mystery; you'd look at him and see a fine old gentleman, but underneath was a heart of steel. I thought I was his only attorney, but he had six others, each of us assigned to different tasks. Mine was to make out his wills. He changed them dozens of times, putting this family member in, and writing another out, and adding codicils like a mad man, though he was sane enough right up until the very end. The last codicil was the worst."

  Of course, no children for him, ever. "Then you really were a practicing lawyer?"

  He smiled bitterly, then answered, "Of course I was. And now I am again. A man needs something meaningful to do. How many times can anyone tour Europe before boredom sets in? You see the same old faces, doing the same old things, laughing at the same jokes. The Beautiful People-- what a laugh! Too much money buys everything but health, so they have no dreams left to purchase, and no aspirations, so in the end they are only bored."

  "Why don't you divorce her and do something meaningful with your life?"

  "She loves me." That's the way he said it. Short. Sweet. He stayed because she loved him, forcing me to say, "You told me when we first met that you loved her, and then you say you don't--which is it?" He thought about it for a long time.

  "Honestly, ballerina, I'm ambivalent and resentful. I love her, I hate her. I thought she was what you seem to be now. So please, smother that bitchy side that reminds me of her and don't try and do to me what she did. You are putting a wall between us because you know something I don't. I don't fall in love easily, and I wish I didn't love you."

  He seemed suddenly a small boy, wistful, as if his pet dog might betray him and life would never be good again. I was touched and dared to say, "Bart, I swear there will come a day when you know all my secrets and all of hers--but until that time comes say you love me, even if you don't mean it, for I can't enjoy being with you if I don't feel you love me just a little."

  "A little? It seems I've loved you all my life. Even when I kissed you the first time it seemed I'd kissed you before--why is that?"

  "Karma." I smiled at his baffled expression.

  There was something I had to do before my mother came home. One day when. I had no classes and Jory was in his special school I slipped over to Foxworth Hall, using all the hidden ways. At the back door I used the old wooden key that Chris had fashioned so long ago. It was Thursday. All the servants would be in town. Since Bart had told me in detail his routine, that also told me a lot of the grandmother's daily life. I knew at this time the nurse would be napping, as my grandmother had her rest time in the afternoon too. She'd be in the same little room beyond the library, the same room that had confined our grandfather during his last days, while upstairs we four children waited for him to pass on to his rewards, and death would set us free.

  I strolled through all those rich, grand rooms and hungrily stared at all the fine furnishings and saw again the dual winding staircases in the front foyer large enough to be used as a ballroom. Where the curving staircases met was a balcony on the second floor, and from that rose another flight of stairs, straight up to the attic. I saw, the massive chest where Chris and I had hidden inside to watch a Christmas party going on below. So long ago, and yet my clock of time turned swiftly backward. I was twelve again and scared, afraid this mammoth house would swallow me down if I moved or spoke above a whisper. I was awed again by the three giant crystal chandeliers suspended from a ceiling some forty feet above the floor. And because it was a dance floor of mosaic tiles, I automatically had to dance just a little to see how it felt.

  I ambled on, taking my time, admiring the paintings, the marble busts, the huge lamps, the fabulous wall hangings that only the super-rich, who could be so stingy in small ways, could buy. Imagine my grandmother buying bolts of gray taffeta just to save a few dollars, when they bought the best to furnish their rooms and they had millions!

  The library was easy to find. Lessons learned at an early age and under miserable conditions could never be forgotten. Oh, such a library! Clairmont didn't have a library with so many fine books! Bart's photograph was on the ponderous desk that had been my grandfather's. Many things were there to indicate that Bart often used this room for his study, and to keep his mother-in-law company. His brown houseslippers were beneath a comfortable-looking chair near the immense stone fireplace with a mantel twenty feet long. French doors opened onto a terrace facing a formal garden with a fountain to spray water into a bird bath formed by a rock garden of steps, with the water trickling down into a pool. A nice, sunny place for an invalid to sit, protected from the wind.

  At last I'd seen enough to satisfy my curiosity, harbored for years, and I sought out the heavy door at the far end of the library. Beyond that closed door was the witch-grandmother. Visions of her flashed through my mind. I saw her again as she'd been the first night we came, towering above us, her thick body strong, powerful, her cruel, hard eyes that swept over us all and showed no sympathy, no compassion for fatherless children who had lost so much, and she couldn't even smile to welcome us or touch the pretty round cheeks of the twins who had been so appealing at age five.

  The second night flashed, when the

  grandmother ordered our mother to show us her naked back striped with red and bleeding welts. Even before we'd seen that horror she'd picked Carrie up by the hair and Cory had hurled himself against her, trying to inflict some pain with his small white shoe that kicked her leg and his small sharp teeth that bit--and with one powerful slap she'd sent him reeling. All because he had to defend his beloved twin who had screamed and screamed. Again I saw myself before the mirror in the bedroom without a stitch on, and her punishment had been so harsh, so heartless, trying to take from me what I admired the most, my hair. A whole day Chris had spent trying to take the tar from my hair and save it from the shears. Then no food or milk for two whole weeks! Yes! She deserved to see me again! Just as I'd vowed the day she whipped me that there would come a day in the future when she would be the helpless one and I would be the one to wield the whip and keep the food from her lips!

  Ah, the sweet irony of it--that she would gloat to see her husband dead, and now she was in his bed and even more helpless--and alone! I took off my heavy winter coat, sat down to tug off my boots, and then I put on the white satin pointes. My leotards were white and sheer enough to let the pink of my skin show through. I unbound my hair so it fell in a luxuriant, golden cascade of rippling waves down my back. Now she would see and envy the hair th
e tar hadn't ruined after all.

  Get ready, Grandmother! Here I come!

  Very quietly I stole to her door. Then carefully I eased it open. She was on the high, high hospital bed, her eyes half-closed. The sun through the windows fell upon her pink and shining scalp, clearly revealing how nearly bald she was. And oh, how old she looked! So gaunt, so much smaller. Where was the giantess I used to know? Why wasn't she wearing a gray taffeta dress to whisper threats? Why did she have to look so pitiful?

  I hardened my heart, closed out mercy, for she'd never had any for us. Apparently she was on the verge of sleep, but as the door opened slowly, slowly her eyes widened. Then her eyes bulged. She recognized me. Her thin, shriveled lips quivered. She was afraid! Glory hallelujah! My time had come! Still, I paused in the open doorway, appalled. I had come for revenge and time had robbed me! Why wasn't she the monster I recalled? I wanted her that way, not what she was now, an old, sick woman with her hair so scant most of her scalp showed, and the hair left was pulled to the top of her head and fastened up there by a pink satin ribbon bow. The bow gave her a ghoulish-girlish look, and even bunched together as they were, the thin wisps were no wider than my small finger--just a tuft like a worn-out, bleached brush for watercolor painting.

  Once she'd stood six feet tall and weighed over two hundred pounds and her huge breasts had been mountains of concrete. Now those breasts hung like old socks to reach her puffy abdomen. Her arms were withered old dry sticks, her hands corded, her fingers gnarled. Yet, as I stared and she stared in complete silence as a small clock ticked relentlessly on, her old despicable personality flared hot to let me know her outrage. She tried to speak to order me out. Devil's issue, she'd scream if she could, get out of my house! Devil's spawn, out, out, out! But she couldn't say it, any of it.