Petals on the Wind

  "Cathy, you've been hurt, haven't you? I don't want to hurt you more. You play games with me. I've always known that. What does it matter if it is only sex and not love? And tell me how to know where one ends and the other begins?"

  His teasing words were a knife in my heart, for somehow, without meaning to let it happen, I'd fallen madly, idiotically in love with him.

  According to Bart's enthusiastic report, his long gone wife came home from her rejuvenation trip looking smashingly young and beautiful. "She's lost twenty pounds. I swear, that face lift has done wonders! She looks sensational, and damn it, so unbelievably like you!"

  It was easy to see how impressed he was with his new, younger-looking wife, and if he was only trying to take the wind from my too confident sails, I didn't let it show. Then he was telling me I was just as necessary to him as before in a tone that said I was not. "Cathy, while she was in Texas she changed. She's like she used to be, the sweet, loving woman I married."

  Men! How gullible they were! Of course my mother was sweeter and nicer to him now--now that she knew he had a mistress who was very accessible, and that the other woman was her own daughter. She'd have to know, for it was whispered all about now-- everyone Knew.

  "So, why are you here with me when your wife is back and so like me? Why don't you put your clothes on and say good-bye and never come back? Say it was sweet while it lasted, but it's all over now, and I'll say thank you for a wonderful time before I kiss you farewell."

  "Well-ll," he drawled, pulling me hard against his naked body. "I didn't say she was that sensational looking. And then again, there is something special about you. I can't name it. I can't understand it. But I don't know if I can live without you now." He said it seriously, truth in his dark eyes.

  I'd won, won!

  Quite by accident my mother and I met in the post office one day. She saw me and shivered. Her lovely head lifted higher as she turned it slightly away, pretending she didn't know me. She would deny me as she'd denied Carrie, even though it was so obvious that we were mother and daughter and not strangers. I wasn't Carrie. So I treated her as she treated me, indifferently, as if she were nobody special and never would be again. Yet, as I waited impatiently for my roll of stamps, I saw my mother dart her eyes to follow the restless prowl of my young son who had to stare at everything and everyone. He was handsome, graceful, a charming boy who drew the eyes of everyone who had to stop and admire him and pat his head. Jory moved with innate style, unstudied and relaxed, at ease wherever he was, because he thought the whole world was his, and he was loved by everyone. He turned to catch my mother's long stare and he smiled. "Hello," he greeted. "You're pretty--like my mommy."

  Oh, the things children say! What innocent knowledge they had, to see so readily what others instinctively refused to acknowledge. He stepped closer to reach out and tentatively touch her fur coat. "My mommy's got a fur coat. My mommy is a dancer. Do you dance?"

  She sighed, I held my breath. See, Momma, there is the grandson your arms will never hold. You'll never hear him say your name . . . never!

  "No," she whispered, "I'm not a dancer." 'Mars filmed her eyes.

  "My mommy can teach you how."

  "I'm too old to learn," she whispered, backing off.

  "No, you're not," said Jory, reaching for her hand as if he'd show her the way, but she pulled back, glanced at me, reddened, then fumbled in her purse for a handkerchief. "Do you have a little boy I can play with?" questioned my son, concerned to see her tears, as if having a son would make up for not knowing how to dance.

  "No," she said in a quivering weak whisper, "I don't have any children."

  That's when I moved in to say in a cold, harsh voice, "Some women don't deserve to have children." I paid for my roll of stamps and dropped them in my purse. "Some women like you, Mrs. Winslow, would rather have money than the bother of children who might get in the way of good times. Time itself will sooner or later let you know if you made the right decision."

  She turned her back and shivered again as if all her furs couldn't keep her warm enough. Then she strode from the post office and headed toward a chauffeur- driven, black limousine. Like a queen she rode off, head held high, leaving Jory to ask, "Mommy, why don't you like that pretty lady? I like her a lot. She's like you, only not so pretty." I didn't comment, though it was on the tip of my tongue to say something so ugly he would never forget it.

  In the twilight of that evening I sat near the windows, staring toward Foxworth Hall and

  wondering what Bart and my mother were doing. My hands were on my abdomen which was still flat, but soon it would be swelling with the child that might be started. One missed period didn't prove anything-- except I wanted Bart's baby, and little things made me feel sure there was a baby. I let depression come and take me. He wouldn't leave her and her money to marry me and I'd have another fatherless child. What a fool to start all of this--but I'd always been a fool.

  And then I saw a man slipping through the woods, coming to me, and I laughed, made confident again. He loved me! He did . . . and as soon as I knew for certain, I would tell him he was to be a father.

  Then the wind came in with Bart and blew the vase of roses from the table. I stood and stared down at the crystal pieces and the petals scattered about. Why was the wind always trying to tell me something? Something I didn't want to hear!

  Stacking the Deck

  . "Cathy, you told me there was no need for precautions!"

  "There was no need. I want your baby."

  "You want my baby? What the hell do you think I can do, marry you?"

  "No. I did my own assuming. I presumed you'd have your fun with me and when it was over you'd go back to your wife and find yourself another playmate. And I'd have just what I set out to get--your baby. Now I can leave. So kiss me off, Bart, as just another of your little extramarital dalliances."

  He looked furious. We were in my living room, while a fierce blizzard raged outside. Snow heaped in mounds window-high, and I was before the fireplace, knitting a baby bunting before I began a bootie. I was getting ready to slip a stitch then knit two together when Bart seized my knitting from my hands and hurled it away. "It's unraveling!" I cried in dismay.

  "What the hell are you trying to do to me, Cathy? You know I can't marry you! I never lied and said I would. You're playing a game with me." He choked and covered his face with his hands, then took them down and pleaded, "I love you. God help me but I do. I want you near me always, and I want my child too. What kind of game are you playing now?"

  "Just a woman's game. The only game she can play and be sure of winning."

  "Look," he said, trying to regain his control of the situation, "explain what you mean, don't double talk. Nothing has to change because my wife is back. You'll always have a place in my life--"

  "In your life? Don't you mean more correctly, on the fringes of your life?"

  For the first time I heard humility in his voice. "Cathy, be reasonable. I love you, and I love my wife too. Sometimes I can't separate you from her. She came back different, as I told you, and now she is like she was when we first met. Maybe a more youthful figure and face has given her back some confidence she lost, and because of it she can be sweeter. Whatever the cause, I'm grateful. Even when I disliked her, I loved her. When she was hateful, I'd try and strike back by going to other women, but still I loved her. The one big issue we fight over is her

  unwillingness to have a child, even an adopted one. Of course she's too old to have one now. Please, Cathy, stay! Don't leave! Don't take my child away so I will never know what happens to him, or to her . . . or to you."

  I laid it out flat. "All right, I will stay on one condition. If you divorce her and marry me, only then will you have the child you always wanted. Otherwise, I'm taking myself, and that means your child too, far away. Maybe I'll write to let you know if you have a son or a daughter, and maybe I won't. Either way, once I leave, you are out of my life for good." I thought, look at him, acting a
s if that codicil weren't in the will forbidding his wife to have children. Protecting her! Just like Chris, when all along he had to know. He'd drawn up the will. He had to know.

  Before the fireplace he stood with his arm up on the mantel, then he rested his forehead on that and stared down at the fire. His free hand was behind his back and clenched into a fist. His confused thoughts were so deep they reached out and touched me with pity. He turned then to face me, staring deep into my eyes. "My God," he said, shocked by his discovery. "You planned this all along, didn't you? You came here to accomplish what you have, but why? Why should you choose me to hurt? What have I ever done to you, Cathy, but love you? True, it started with sex, and sex only was what I wanted it to stay. But it has grown into something much more than that. I like being with you, just sitting and talking, or walking in the woods. I feel comfortable with you. I like the way you wait on me, and touch my cheek when you pass, and rumple my hair and kiss my neck, and the sweet, shy way you wake up and smile when you see me beside you. I like the clever games you play, keeping me always guessing, and always amused. I feel I have ten women in one, so now I feel I can't live without you. But I can't abandon my wife and marry you. She needs me!"

  "You should have been an actor, Bart. Your words move me to tears."

  "Damn you for taking this so lightly!" he bellowed. "You've got me on a rack and you're twisting the screws! Don't make me hate you and ruin the best months of my life!"

  With that he stormed out of my cottage, and I was left alone, ruefully regretting that always I talked too much, for I would stay as long as he needed me.

  Emma, Jory and I thought it a wonderful idea to make an excursion to Richmond and do some Christmas shopping. Jory had never seen Santa Claus that he could remember, and most fearfully he approached the red-suited, white-bearded man who held out his arms to encourage him. Tentatively he perched on Santa's knee in Thalhimers Department Store, and stared disbelievingly into twinkling blue eyes while I snapped pictures from every angle, even crawling to get what I wanted.

  Next we visited a dress shop I'd heard about where I handed to them a sketch I'd drawn from memory. I selected the exact shade of dark green velvet, and then the lighter green chiffon for the skirt. "And make the straps of the velvet bodice shoestrings of rhinestones-- and remember, the floating panels must reach the hem."

  While Jory and Emma watched a Walt Disney movie, I had my hair cut and styled differently. Not just trimmed, as was my habit, but really cut shorter than I'd ever worn it. It was a style that flattered me, as it should, for it had flattered my mother when she wore her hair this way, fifteen years ago.

  "Oh, Mommy," cried Jory, distress in his voice. "You've lost your hair!" He began to cry. "Put your long hair back on--you don't look like my mommy now!"

  No, that was the purpose. I didn't want to look like me this Christmas--not this special Christmas when I had to duplicate exactly what my mother had been when first I saw her dancing with Bart. Now, at long last, my chance--in a gown the same as hers, with her hair style, her younger face, I would confront my mother in her own home, on my terms. Woman to woman and let the best one win! She'd be forty-eight, with a recent face lift--still I knew she was very beautiful. But she couldn't compete with her daughter who was twenty-one years younger! I laughed when I looked in the mirror after slipping on the new green gown. Oh, yes, I'd made myself into what she was-- the kind of woman men just couldn't resist. I had her power, her beauty--and ten times more brains--how could she win?

  Three days before Christmas I called Chris and asked if he'd like to go with me to Richmond. I'd forgotten a few necessary items the little local shops didn't have. "Cathy," he said sternly, his voice cold and hostile, "when you give up Bart Winslow you will see me again, but until you do, I don't care to be near you!"

  "All right!" I flared. "Stay where you are! You can miss out on your revenge, but I am not going to miss out on mine! Good-bye, Christopher Doll, and I hope all the bedbugs bite!" I hung up!

  I didn't teach ballet class as often as I used to, but at recital times I was always there. My little dancers delighted in dressing up, and showing off before their parents, grandparents and friends. They looked adorable in their costumes for The Nutcracker. Even Jory had two minor roles to play, a snowflake and a sugarplum.

  In my opinion there was no more magical way to spend at least one Christmas Eve than as a family attending a performance of The Nutcracker. And it was a thousand times more wonderful when one of those gifted, small, graceful children was your own small son, fifty-two days short of being four years old. The sweet babyness of him dancing on stage with so much passion drew applause time and again from the audience who stood up to cheer his solo performance that I'd choreographed especially for him.

  And best of all, I'd made Bart swear he'd force my mother to attend that recital--and they were there; I checked by peeking through the curtains, front row center, Mr. and Mrs. Bartholomew Winslow. He looked happy; she looked grim. So I did have some control over Bart. It showed up in a huge bouquet of roses for the dance instructor, and a huge box for the solo performing snowflake.

  "What can it be?" asked Jory, his face flushed, his happiness rebounding from the sky. "Can I open it now?"

  "Sure, soon as we're home, and tomorrow morning Santa will leave a hundred gifts for you."

  "Why?"

  "Because he loves you."

  "Why?" asked Jory.

  "Because he couldn't help but love you--that's why."

  "Oh."

  Before five in the morning Jory was up, playing with the electric train Bart had sent him. All over the living room floor were the splendid wrappings from hundreds of gifts from Paul, Henny, Chris, Bart, and Santa Claus. Emma gave him a box of homemade cookies that he polished off between ripping open the packages. "Gee, Mommy," he cried, "I thought it would be lonely without my uncles, but I'm not lonely. I'm having fun."

  He wasn't lonely, but I was. I wanted Bart with me, not over there with her. I waited for him to make up some excuse to drive to the drug store and slip over to see me and Jory. But all I saw of Bart on Christmas morning was the two-inch wide diamond bracelet he enclosed in a box with two dozen red roses. His card read, "I love you, Ballerina."

  If ever there was a woman who dressed more carefully than I did that night it must have been Marie Antoinette. Emma complained it was taking me forever. I painted my face as if a camera was going to shoot me close up for a magazine cover. Emma styled my hair as my mother had worn hers long ago. "Wave it back softly from the face, Emma, then catch it high at the crown with a cluster of curls, and make sure a few hang long enough to brush my shoulders."

  When she finished, I gasped to see I was almost an exact duplicate of what my mother had been when I was twelve! My high cheekbones were emphasized just as hers had been with this hair style. As in a dream I never truly expected to happen I stepped into the green gown with the velvet bodice and chiffon skirt. This was the type of gown that never went out of fashion. I spun around before the mirror, getting the feel of being my mother with her power to control men, while Emma stood back and flattered me with compliments.

  Even my perfume was the same. Musky with an Oriental garden scent. My slippers were straps of silver with four-inch heels. My silver evening bag matched. All I needed now was the emerald and diamond jewelry she had worn. Soon I'd have that too. Surely fate wouldn't let her be wearing green tonight. At some point in my life fate had to be on my side. I figured it was due tonight.

  Tonight I'd deliver the surprises and the slaps. She would feel the pain of losing! What a pity Chris wouldn't come and enjoy the ending of a long, long play, started the day our father was killed on the highway.

  I threw myself one more admiring glance, picked up the fur stole Bart had given me, gathered up my faltering courage, took a last peek at Jory who was curled up on his side and looking angelic. I leaned over to tenderly kiss his round, rosy cheek. "I love you, Jory," I whispered.

  He partial
ly awakened from a hazy dream and stared up at me as if I were part of that dream. "Oh, Mommy, you look so pretty!" His dark blue eyes shone with childish wonder as he asked quite seriously, "Are you going to a party to get me a new daddy?"

  I smiled and again kissed him and said yes, in a way I was. "Thank you, darling, for thinking I look pretty. Now go back to sleep and dream of happy things, and tomorrow we'll build a snowman."

  "Bring a daddy to help."

  On the table by the front door was a note from Paul. "Henny is very ill. It's a pity you can't give up your plans to visit her before it is too late. I wish you good luck, Catherine." With a sigh I put that note aside and picked up the note Henny had enclosed with Paul's written on festive red paper, with the letters made rooked because of painful arthritic knuckles.

  Dear Fairy-Child,

  Henny is old; Henny is tired; Henny is glad own son is by her side, but unhappy because other children far away.

  I tell you now, before I go on to better place, the simple secret of living happy. All you need do is say good-bye to yesterday's loves, and hello to the new. Look around and see who needs you most and you won't go wrong. Forget who needed you yesterday.

  You write and say you have new baby inside you made by husband of your mother. Rejoice in child, even if mother's husband will stay married to her. Forgive your mother, even if once she did evil. Nobody all bad, and a lot of the good in her children must have come from her. When you can forgive and forget the past, peace and love will come again to you, and this time it will stay.

  And if you never in this world see Henny again, remember that Henny loved you well, as her own daughter, just as I loved your angel-sister whom I expect to meet again soon.

  Soon to be in heaven,

  Henny

  I put the note down with a heavy feeling of sadness it my chest, then shrugged my shoulders. What had to be done would be done. A long time ago I'd set my feet on this path, and I'd follow it, come what may.