Seeds of Yesterday

  "Joel," I said softly, pityingly, "Bart is a very handsome young man, and a passionate one, and even if he were a ditch digger, the girls would fall for him. When he lets go of his determination to show the world how brilliant he is, he's a very likeable young man. Leave him alone. Stop trying to mold him into something that will please you but might not suit him. Let him find his own way . . . for that will be what's the right thing for him, even if it's not what you have in mind."

  Scornfully he looked me over. "What do you know about what's right and what's wrong, niece? Haven't you already 'proved you have no perception of morality? Bart will never find himself without my guidance. Hasn't he been searching all his life and failed? Did you help him then--do you help him now? God will provide for Bart, Catherine, while you continue to plague Bart with your sins."

  He turned from me and shuffled off down the hall.

  While Bart was in New York with Toni and Cindy, Jory completed his most impressive watercolor depicting Foxworth Hall. He'd darkened the rosy bricks to a dusty and dreary old ash rose, made the immaculate gardens overgrown with weeds; the cemetery was moved in closer so that tombstones showed off to the left, casting long shadows that snared the Hall in their web. Foxworth Hall looked two thousand years old and full of specters.

  "Put that thing away, Jory, and try a happier subject," I said, feeling strange. I think that was the only watercolor Jory painted that didn't please me.

  Bart and Toni flew home from New York, and immediately I noticed the difference. They didn't look or speak to each other but went quietly to their rooms without spilling out happy tales of the fun they'd had. When I tried to broach the subject, both refused to give me details. "Leave me alone!" stormed Bart. "She's just another woman after all."

  "I can't tell you, Cathy," cried Toni. "He doesn't love me, that's all!"

  January fled by, and then came the February when we celebrated Jory's thirty-first birthday. We had a huge cake baked for him in the shape of a heart covered with red frosting to represent the Valentine gift he'd been, with his name in white icing, trimmed with white roses. The twins were delighted, squealing when they saw him blow out the candles. Both were seated in highchairs, one on each side of him, and before Jory could slice down into the cake, Deirdre and Darren reached simultaneously and grabbed great handfuls of the soft fresh cake. We all stared at the mess they'd made of a work of art, while they jammed the cake into their mouths and smeared their faces with red.

  "What's left is still edible," said Jory with a laugh.

  Silently Toni got up to wash the hands and faces of two very messy little one-year-olds. Bart followed her every movement with sad, wistful eyes.

  We were trapped, all of us, in the winter blizzards, caught in frozen time, making do with each other when others would have been welcomed, even as some of us kept on loving the wrong person.

  The day came when the snow stopped and Chris could drive back to his cancer research team, which worked on and on without ever reaching any conclusions that were absolute.

  Another blizzard kept Chris in Charlottesville, and two weeks dragged slowly by, although we talked every day when the lines weren't down--but they weren't comfortable conversations. Always I had the sensation that someone was listening in on another telephone.

  Chris called on the next Thursday to say he'd be home, have the home fires burning, the steak charcoaled, the salad fresh, ". . . and wear that new white nightgown I gave you for Christmas."

  Eagerly I waited at an upstairs window to spot Chris's blue car coming around the drive, and when I did, I raced down the stairs to the garage to be there when he left his car. We came together like long separated lovers who might never have the chance to kiss and hug again. But it wasn't until we were in the sanctuary of our rooms with the doors closed that my arms slipped around his neck again. "You still feel cold. So, just to warm you up, you are going to hear all the dull things that go on here--and in exquisite detail. Last night I overheard Joel telling Bart again that Toni is only after his money."

  "Is she?" he asked, nibbling on my ear.

  "I don't think so, Chris. I think she sincerely loves him, but I'm not sure how long her love will last, or his.

  It seems when they went with Cindy to New York for New Year's Eve, Bart scolded Cindy ruthlessly again, humiliating her in a nightclub, and Cindy's letter said he later on jumped on Toni for dancing with another man. He so shocked Toni with his brutal accusations that she hasn't been the same since. I think she's afraid of his jealousy."

  His eyebrows shot up quizzically, though he said nothing to remind me he was "my Bart." "And Jory, how is he?"

  "He's adjusting marvelously, but he's lonely and melancholy, wanting Melodic to write. He wakes up in the night and calls her name. Sometimes he inadvertently calls me Mel. I found a small article about Melodic in Variety. Melodic has rejoined their old ballet company and has a new partner. I showed that to Jory just today, feeling he should know. His eyes went blank. He put away his watercolors just when he'd washed in the most beautiful winter sky and refused to finish the painting. Anyway, I put the painting in a safe place, thinking he can finish it later."

  "Yes . . . everything will work out." And with that we surrendered to each other, forgetting our problems in the ecstasy we knew so well how to create.

  Time flew by, wasted by small, trivial things. Daily arguments between Bart and Toni concerning his attitude toward Cindy, whom Toni really liked, as well as his suspicions of her loyalty to him and only him. "You shouldn't have danced with that man you just met!" and on and on. There were also daily fights between them about the twins and how they should be handled, and soon enough the narrow gulf between them widened into an ocean.

  We wore on each other's nerves. The sight, the sound, the closeness of living so tightly knit had its toll. I contributed nothing to help and nothing to harm as Bart and Toni fought it out. I felt they had to solve their differences between themselves, and I would only have added complications. Once again Bart started visiting the local bars, often staying out all night. I suspected he spent many a night in brothels, or else he'd found someone else in the city. Toni spent more time with the twins, and since Jory was trying to teach them to dance and speak more clearly, naturally she spent more time with him as well.

  March finally arrived with its fierce rains and winds, but also with welcome faint heralding signs of spring. I watched Toni carefully for signs of taking notice of Jory as a man and not as a patient. His eyes followed wherever she went. There were a few weeks that year when I was under the weather with a severe cold, and she took over all duties, including washing Jory's back, massaging his long legs that were bit by bit losing their fine shape. I hated seeing his beautiful legs turn into thin sticks. I suggested to Toni that she massage them several times a day. "He was always very proud of his legs, Toni. They served him so well and looked so great in tights. So, even if they don't walk or dance, or even move, do what you can to see they don't lose all their shape. Then he can retain a bit of his pride."

  "Cathy, his legs are still beautiful; thin, but well shaped. He's a wonderful man, so kind and understanding and naturally cheerful. And you know, for the longest time I didn't see anyone but Bart."

  "Do you think of Bart as beautiful?"

  Her expression changed and grew hard. "I used to. Now I'm seeing that he's very handsome, but not beautiful in the way that Jory is. Once I thought he was perfect, but during our stay in New York, he showed so much ugliness toward me and Cindy that I began to see him differently. He was nasty and cruel to both of us. Before I knew what was happening, he embarrassed me in a nightclub by jumping on me about my dress, when it was a perfectly nice dress. Maybe it was cut a little low, but all' the girls wear dresses like that. I came home from that trip a little afraid of him. Every day my fear of him grows; he seems too harsh about harmless events and believes that everyone is wicked. I think he corrupts himself with his thoughts and forgets that beauty comes from the soul. Just last ni
ght he accused me of trying to arouse his brother sexually. He couldn't talk like that to me if he really loved me. Cathy, he'll never love me as I want and need to be loved. I woke up this morning feeling a huge emptiness in my heart, realizing that what I felt for Bart is over. He's ruined what we had by letting me know what I'm in for if I marry him," she went on brokenly. "He's got an invisible model of the perfect woman, and I'm not perfect. He thinks your one flaw is your love for Chris . . . and if he ever found a woman he believed is perfect in the beginning, I'm sure he'll keep looking until he finds something he can hate about her. So I've given up on Bart."

  I felt embarrassed to ask what I did, but still I had to know. "But . . . are you and Bart still lovers, despite your disagreements?"

  Furiously she shook her head. "NO! Of course not! He's changing every day into someone I really can't even like. He's found religion, Cathy, and according to the way he tells it, religion is going to be his salvation. Every day he tells me I should pray more, go to church . . . and stay away from Jory. If he keeps it up I think I may well end up hating him, and I don't want that to happen. We had something so beautiful between us in the beginning. I want to keep that special time like a flower I can press between the pages of my memory."

  She stood up to go, smearing her tears with her balled handkerchief, tugging down her tight white skirt and trying to smile. "If you want me to quit so you can hire a new nurse for Jory and his children, I'll do that."

  "No, Toni, stay on," I answered quickly, afraid she'd go anyway. I didn't want her to leave now that I knew without a doubt that she didn't love Bart anymore, and Jory had finally given up hope of Melodie returning to him. And with the final hope dead, Jory had at last turned his eyes on the woman he believed was his brother's mistress.

  As soon as possible I was going to inform him differently. But . . . even as Toni left the room, I sat on and on, thinking of Bart and how sad it was that he couldn't hold on to love once he had it. Did he deliberately destroy love, afraid it would enslave him as he often accused me of having enslaved Chris, my own brother?

  The endless days crept by. No longer did Toni's eyes follow Bart with wistful yearning, pleading mutely with him to love her again as he had in the beginning. I began to admire the way she could keep her poise regardless of some of the insulting innuendoes Bart made during meal times. He took her former love for him and turned it against her, making it seem she was loose, depraved, immoral and he'd been wrongfully seduced.

  Dinner after dinner, sitting there and watching the two drift further and further apart, driven there by all the ugly words Bart found so easy to say.

  Toni took my place and played the games I used to entertain Jory with . . . only she could do so much more to light up his eyes and make him feel a man again.

  Bit by bit the days began to mellow, the brown grass showed spikes of fresh green, the crocus came up in the woods, the daffodils blossomed, the tulips fired into flame and the Grecian windflowers that Jory and I had planted everywhere the grass didn't grow turned the hills into paint-smeared pallets. Chris and I stood again on the balcony watching the geese return north as we stared up at our old friend and sometimes enemy, the moon. I couldn't take my eyes from the winged skein as they disappeared beyond the hills

  Life grew 'better with the coming of summer, when the snow couldn't keep Chris away during the weekends. Tensions eased now that we had the great outdoors to escape to.

  In June the twins were one year and six months old and able to run freely anywhere we would permit. We had swings from which they couldn't fall hung from tree limbs, and how happy they were to be swung high . . . or what they considered high enough to be dangerous. They pulled the blossoms off the best of my flowers, but I didn't care--we had thousands blooming, enough to fill all the rooms with daily fresh bouquets.

  Now Bart was insisting that not only the twins should attend church services but Chris and I and Jory and Toni as well. It seemed a small enough thing to do. Each Sunday we sat in our front row pews and stared up at the beautiful stained-glass window behind the pulpit. The twins always sat between Jory and me. Joel would don a black robe as he preached fire-andbrimstone sermons. Bart sat beside me, holding my hand in such a tight grip I had to listen or have my bones broken. Next to Toni, deliberately separated from me by my second son, was Chris. I knew those sermons were meant for us, to save us from eternal hellfires. The twins were restless, like all children their age, and didn't like the pew, the confinement, the dullness of the overlong services. Only when we stood up to sing hymns did they stare up at us and seem enchanted.

  "Sing, sing," encouraged Bart, leaning to pinch tiny arms or tug on golden locks.

  "Take your hands off my children!" snapped Jory. "They will sing or not sing, as is their choice."

  It was on again, the war between brothers.

  Autumn again, then Halloween when Chris and I took the twins by their small hands and led them to the one neighbor we considered "safe" enough not to recriminate us or our children. Our little goblins timidly accepted their first Halloween trick-or-treat candy, then screamed all the way home with the thrill of having two Hershey bars and two packs of chewing gum of their very own.

  Winter came, and Christmas and the New Year started without anything special happening, for this year Cindy didn't fly home. She was too busy with her budding career to do more than call long distance or write short but informative letters.

  Bart and Toni now moved in different universes.

  Perhaps I was not the only one who guessed that Jory had fallen deeply in love with Toni, now that all attempts at restoring a brotherly relationship with Bart had failed. I couldn't blame Jory, not when Bart had taken Melodic and driven her away and was even now trying to hold fast to Toni just because he could detect Jory's growing interest. To keep Jory from having her, he was turning again toward Toni . . .

  Loving Toni gave Jory new reasons for living. It was written in his eyes, written on his new zeal for getting up early and beginning all those difficult exercises, standing for the first time, using parallel bars we'd had put in his room. As soon as the water was warm enough, he swam the length of our large swimming pool three times in early mornings and late evenings.

  Maybe Toni was still waiting for Bart to make her his wife, though she often denied this. "No, Cathy, I don't love him now. I only pity him for not knowing who or what he is and, more importantly, what he wants for himself but money and more money." It occurred to me that, inexplicably, Toni was as rooted here as any one of us.

  The Sunday church services made me nervous and tired. The strong words shouted from the weak lungs of an old man brought back terrifying memories of another old man I'd seen but once. Devil's issue. Devil's spawn. Evil seed planted in the wrong soil. Even wicked thoughts were judged the same as wicked deeds--and what wasn't sinful to Joel? Nothing. Nothing at all.

  "We're not going to attend anymore," I stated firmly to Chris, "and we were fools to even try to please Bart. I don't .like the kind of ideas Joel is planting in the twin's impressionable young heads." True to Chris's agreement, he and I refused to attend "church" services or allow the twins to hear all that shouting about Hell and its punishments.

  Joel came to the play area in the gardens, under the trees where there were a sandbox, swings, a slide and a spin-a-round that the twins loved to play on. It was a fine sunny day in July, and he looked rather touching and sweet as he sat between the twins and began to teach them how to do cat cradles, twining the string and intriguing the curious twins. They abandoned the sand- pile with the pretty awning overhead and sat beside him, looking up at him in bright anticipation of making a new friend out of an old enemy.

  "An old man knows many little skills to entertain small children. Do you know I can make airplanes and boats out of paper? And the boats will sail on the water."

  Their round eyes of amazement didn't please me. I frowned. Anyone could do that.

  "Save your energies for writing new sermons, Joel," I sai
d, meeting his meek, watery eyes. "I grew tired of the old ones. Where is the New Testament in your sermons? Teach Bart about that. Christ was born. He did deliver his Sermon on the Mount. Deliver to him that particular sermon, Uncle. Speak to us of forgiveness, of doing unto others as you would have done onto you. Tell us of the bread cast upon the waters of forgiveness returning to us tenfold."

  "Forgive me if I have been neglectful of our Lord's one truly begotten son," he said humbly.

  "Come, Cory, Carrie," I called, getting up to leave. "Let's go see what Daddy is doing."

  Joel's lowered head jerked upright. His faded blue eyes took on heaven's deeper blue. I bit down on my tongue to observe the twisted smile that Joel displayed. He nodded sagely. "Yes, I know. To you they are the 'other twins'--those born of evil seed planted in the wrong soil."

  "How dare you say that to me!" I flared.

  I didn't realize then that by occasionally calling Jory's twins by the names of my beloved dead twins I was only adding fuel to the fire--a fire that was already, unknown to me, sending up small red sparks of brimstone.

  Comes

  a Morning Dark

  .

  A storm threatened a perfectly lovely summer

  day with dark ominous clouds, forcing me to hurry outdoors to cut my morning flowers while they were still fresh with dew. I drew up short when I saw Toni snipping yellow and white daisies that she brought to Jory in a small milkglass vase. She put them near the table where Jory was working on another watercolor showing a lovely dark-haired woman very much like Toni picking flowers. I was hidden by the dense shrubbery and could take a peek now and then without either one seeing me. For some strange reason, my intuitiveness warned me to stay quiet and say nothing.

  Jory thanked Toni politely, gave her a brief smile, swished his brush in clean water, dipped it in his blue mixture and added a few 'touches here and there. "Never can seem to mix the exact color of the sky," he murmured as if to himself. "The sky is always changing . . . oh, what I could give to have Turner for my teacher . . ."