If There Be Thorns

  "You don't speak English?" Dad asked in a tight voice.

  Vigorously she nodded, indicating she could understand English. His brows knitted. Puzzledlooking again. "Well, to get to the point of our visit, my son Jory has told me you and my youngest son Bart are very familiar. Jory says you give Bart expensive gifts and feed him sweets between meals. I'm sorry, Mrs. . . . Mrs? He paused, waiting for her to give her name. When she didn't, he went on: "When Bart comes again I want you to send him home unrewarded. He's done a number of ugly things that deserve punishment. His mother and I cannot have a stranger coming between Bart and our authority. When you indulge him here we face the consequences." All this time he was doing his darndest to see her hands--as she did her best to keep them hidden.

  What was this all about? Why did Dad want to see her hands? Was it all those fabulous rings that held his fascination? I'd never guessed he liked things like that, since Mom had an aversion for jewelry of any kind but earrings.

  And then, when Dad seemed to be looking toward another of her original oil paintings, her hands came into view and fluttered up near her throat to the magnet of her hidden pearls.

  His head jerked around. Dad spoke then out of context, startling me, startling her. "Those rings you wear--I've seen those very rings before!"

  When she too obviously shoved her hands inside her full sleeves, Dad jumped to his feet as if thunderstruck. He stared at her, spun around once more to survey the sumptuous room and once more nailed her with his eyes. She cringed.

  "The . . . best . . . that . . . money . . . can . . . buy," Dad said slowly, separating each word. I caught his bitterness, though I didn't understand. It seemed lately I never understood anything.

  "Nothing too good for the elegant and aristocratic Mrs. Bartholomew Winslow." he said. "Those rings, Mrs. Winslow--why didn't you have the good sense to hide them away? Then your disguise might have worked, though I doubt it. I know your voice, and your gestures too well. You wear black rags but your fingers sparkle with your status symbols. Do you forget what those symbols did to us? Do you think I've forgotten those endless days of suffering from the cold or heat, from the loneliness-- all our pain symbolized by a string of pearls and those rings on your fingers?"

  I was shocked and bewildered. Never before had I seen Dad so upset. He wasn't easily provoked-- and who was this woman he knew and I didn't? Why had he called her Mrs. Bartholomew Winslow--the very name of my half brother? Could it be true she really was Bart's grandmother--and Bart might not be the son of Daddy Paul?

  Dad railed on. "Why, Mrs. Winslow, why? Did you think you could hide here and we wouldn't find out? How can you fool anyone when even the way you sit and hold your head betrays your true identity? Haven't you done enough to hurt me and Cathy? Do you have to return to do more? I should have guessed that you were behind Bart's confusion--behind his weird behavior. What have you been doing to our son?"

  "Our son?" she asked. "Don't you mean, more correctly, her son?"

  "Mother!" he raged before he looked at me guiltily.

  Looking from one to the other of them, I thought, how wonderful and how strange. At last his mother was free from the loony bin and she really was Bart's grandmother after all. But why did he call her Mrs. Winslow? If she was his mother and Dr. Paul's mother, then she'd have to be Mrs. Sheffield-- wouldn't she?

  I was thinking all of this even as she said, "Sir, my rings are not that exceptional. Bart has told me you're not his real father, so please leave my home. I promise never to admit Bart again. I didn't come to harm him--or anyone." It seemed she gave my father a warning look. I guessed she was giving him a road out on account of me.

  "My dear mother, the game is up." She sobbed, then covered her veiled face with her hands. He shot out with no regard for her tears, "When did your doctors release you?"

  "Last summer," she whispered. Her hands lowered so she could use her voice better for pleading. "Even before I moved here I had my lawyers do what they could to help you and Cathy buy whatever piece of land you selected. I ordered them to keep me anonymous, knowing you wouldn't want my help."

  Dad fell into a chair, bent over to rest his elbows heavily on his knees.

  Why wasn't he happy to see his mother free from that place? She was living nearby, and he'd always wanted to visit her. Didn't he love his own mother? Or was he afraid she might go crazy any moment? Did he think Bart might have inherited her madness?--or her insanity might infect Bart like a physical disease? And why didn't my mother like her? I looked from one to the other, wanting answers to my unspoken questions, and so afraid I might learn Paul wasn't Bart's father at all.

  When Dad lifted his head I could see his drawn face, the deep lines that etched from his nose to his mouth. Lines I'd never seen before.

  "I cannot in good conscience call you Mother again," he said dully. "If you helped buy the land my home sits on, I thank you. Tomorrow I'll see that a For Sale sign is put up, and we'll move far away if you refuse to move first. I will not allow you to turn my sons away from their parents."

  "Their parent," she corrected.

  "The only parents they have," he said in return. "I should have known you'd come here. I've called your doctor and he told me you'd been released, but he didn't say when, or where you went."

  "Where else do I have to go?" she cried pitifully, wringing her bejeweled hands like pale limp rags. It was as if she reached out and touched him then, even as she restrained herself from reaching for him Each word she said, each look she gave him, said she loved him--even I could tell.

  "Christopher," she pleaded, "I have no friends, no family, no home--and nowhere to go but to you and yours. All I have left is you and Cathy and the sons she bore--my grandsons. Would you take them from me too? Each night I pray on my knees that you and Cathy will forgive me and take me back and love me as you once did."

  He seemed made of steel, so unreachable, but I was on the verge of crying.

  "My son, my beloved son, take me back and say you love me again. And if you cannot do that, then just let me live where I can see my grandsons now and then."

  She paused then, waiting for him to respond. When he refused, she went on: "I hoped you could be lenient if I stayed over here and never let her know who I was. But I've seen her, heard her voice; heard yours too. I hide behind the wall and listen. My heart throbs. My chest aches with longing. Tears fill my eyes from holding back my voice that wants to cry out and let you know I'm sorry! So terribly sorry!"

  Still he didn't say anything. He wore his detached, professional look.

  "Christopher, I would gladly give ten years of my life to undo the wrong I've done! I'd give another ten years just to sit at your table and feel welcomed by my own grandchildren!"

  Tears were in her eyes, in mine too. My heart cried for my father's mother even as I wondered why he and Mom hated her.

  "Christopher, Christopher, don't you understand why I wear these rags? I cover my face, my hair, my figure, so she won't know! But all the time I keep hoping, praying that sooner or later both of you can forgive me enough to let me become a member of your family again! Please, please, accept me as your mother again! If you do, perhaps then she can too!"

  How could he sit there and not feel the same pity for her that I did? Why wasn't he crying like I was?

  "Cathy will never forgive you," he said tonelessly.

  Strangely, she cried out happily, "Then you will? Please say it--you forgive me!"

  I trembled as I waited for him to speak.

  "Mother, how can I say I forgive you? By saying that I would betray Cathy, and I can never betray her. Together we stand and together we will fall, still believing we did right, while you stand guilty and alone. Nothing you say or do can undo death. And every day that you stay here sees Bart more and more deranged. Do you realize he is threatening our adopted daughter Cindy?"

  "No!" she cried, shaking her head so the veils swung violently. "Bart would not hurt his sister."

  "Wouldn't he? He hacked
off her hair with a knife, Mrs. Winslow. And he's threatened his mother as well."

  "NO!" she yelled more passionately than before. "Bart loves his mother! I give Bart treats because you are too busy with your professional life to give him all the attention he needs. Just as his mother is too busy with her life to care if he has enough love. But I cater to his needs. I try to take the place of the peers he doesn't have. I do everything I can to make him happy. And if feeding him treats and giving him gifts makes him feel better, what harm can I do? Besides, once a child has all the sweets he can eat, soon he loses the taste for them. I know. Once I was like Bart, loving ice cream, candy, cookies and other sweets . . . and now I cannot tolerate them at all."

  Dad got up and motioned to me. I stood and moved to his side as he looked at his mother with pity. "It's a terrible shame you came too late to try to redeem your actions. Once I would have been touched by any sweet word you said. Now your very presence shows how little you care if we are deeply hurt again, as we will be if you stay."

  "Please, Christopher," she begged. "I have no other family, and no others who care if I live or die. Don't deny me your love when to do so will kill the very best part of you, the part that makes you what you are. You've never been like Cathy. Always you could hold onto some of your love--hold fast to it now, Christopher. Hold so fast and so true, you can eventually help Cathy to find a little love for me too!" She sobbed and weakened. "Or if not love, help her find forgiveness, for I admit that I could have served my children better."

  Now Dad was touched, but not for long. "I have to think of Bart's welfare first. He's never had much confidence in himself. Your tales have disturbed him so much he has nightmares. Leave him alone. Leave us alone! Go away, stay away, we don't belong to you anymore. Years ago we gave you chance after chance to prove you loved us. Even when we ran you could have answered the judge's summons and spared us the pain of knowing we weren't loved enough for you to even appear and show some interest in our futures.

  "So get out of our lives! Make another life for yourself with the riches you sacrificed us to get. Let Cathy and me live the lives we've worked so hard to achieve."

  I was baffled--what was he talking about? What had his mother done to her two sons,

  Christopher and Paul--and what did my mother have to do in their youthful lives?

  She rose too, standing tall and straight. Then, slowly, slowly, she removed the veil that covered her head and face. I gasped. My dad gasped. Never before had I seen a woman who could look so ugly and so beautiful at the same time. Her scars looked as if a cat had scratched her face. Her jowls sagged with age; her pretty blonde hair was streaked with gray. I'd been terribly curious to see up close what she hid under her veil--now I wished I hadn't.

  Dad bowed his head. "Did you have to do that?"

  "Yes," she said. "I wanted you to see what I did so I would no longer look like Cathy." She gestured to her wooden rocker. "See that chair? I have one in every room in this house." She indicated all the comfortable chairs with fluffy soft cushions. "I sit in hard wooden chairs to punish myself. I wear the same black rags every day. I keep mirrors on the walls so I can see how ugly and old I am now. I want to suffer for the sins I committed against my children. I despise this veil, but I wear it. I can't see well through the veil, but I deserve that too. I do what I can to make the same kind of hell for myself as I made for my own flesh and blood, and I keep on believing that there will come a time when you and Cathy will recognize how I am trying to atone for my sins so that you can forgive me and return to me, and we can be a whole family again. And when you and Cathy can do that, I can go peacefully into my grave. When I meet your father again, perhaps he won't judge me too harshly."

  "Oh," I cried out spontaneously, "I forgive you for whatever you did! I'm sorry you have to wear black all the time, with that veil over your face!" I turned to Dad and tugged on his arm. "Say you forgive her, Dad. Please don't make her suffer more! She is your mother, and I could always forgive my mother, no matter what she did."

  He spoke to my grandmother as if he hadn't even heard me. "You were always good at persuading us to do what you wanted." I'd never heard him speak so coolly. "But I'm not a boy anymore," he went on. "Now I know how to resist your appeal, for I have a woman who has never let me down in any important way. She has taught me not to be as gullible as I once was. You want Bart because you think he should have been yours. But you cannot have Bart. Bart belongs to us. I used to think Cathy did wrong when she sought revenge and stole Bart Winslow from you. But she didn't do wrong--she did what she had to do. And so we have two sons instead of one."

  "Christopher," she cried, looking desperate, "you don't want the world to know of your

  indiscretion, surely you don't."

  "Yours too," he responded coldly. "If you expose us, you expose yourself as well. And remember, we were only children. Who do you think a judge and jury would favor--you or us?"

  "For your own sakes!" she called as we stepped from her parlor and headed toward the double front doors (he had to push me ahead of him, for I was holding back, pitying her), "love me again, Christopher! Let me redeem myself, please!"

  Dad whirled about, furious and red-faced. "I cannot forgive you! You think only of yourself. As you have always thought only of yourself. I don't know you, Mrs. Winslow. I wish to God I had never known you!"

  Oh, Dad, I thought, you're going to be sorry. Forgive her, please.

  "Christopher," she called once more, her voice so weak and thin it sounded old and brittle, "when you and Cathy can love me again, you'll find better lives for yourselves and for your children. There is so much I could do to help if only you would let me."

  "Money?" he asked with scorn. "Are you going to use blackmail? We have enough money. We have enough happiness. We have managed to survive, and managed to love, and we have not killed anyone to achieve what we have."

  Killed? Had she killed?

  Dad pulled me by my hand as he stalked to the door. I said to him on the way home from her mansion, "Dad, it seemed I could smell Bart in that room. He might have been hiding and listening. He was there, I'm sure of it."

  "All right," he answered in a tired way. "You go back and look for him."

  "Dad, why don't you forgive her? I believe she's truly sorry for whatever she did to make you hate her--and she is your mother." I smiled and tugged on his arm, wanting him to go back with me and say he loved her. "Wouldn't it be nice to have both my grandmothers here for Christmas?"

  He shook his head, and strode away, leaving me to race back to the big house. He'd taken only a few steps before he turned. "Jory, promise not to tell your mother anything about tonight."

  I promised, but I was unhappy about it, unhappy about everything I'd heard. I didn't know if I had heard the full truth about my dad and his mother, or only part of a long, secret story never told to me. I wanted to run after Dad and ask why he hated his mother so much, but I knew from his expression that he wouldn't tell me. In some odd way, I was glad not to know more.

  "If Bart is over there, you bring him home and sneak him into his room, Jory. Please, for God's sake, don't mention anything to your mother about the woman next door again. I'll take care of her. She'll go away, and it will be just as it was before she came."

  Being what I was, I believed, though I felt sorry for his mother. I didn't owe her the loyalty I owed him, but I couldn't keep the most important question from my tongue. "Dad, what did your mother do that makes you hate her so much? And if you hate her; why did you always insist upon going to visit her, when Mom wouldn't?"

  He stared off into space, and, as if from a far distance, his voice came to me. "Jory, I fear you will know all of the truth soon enough. Give me time to find the right words, the true explanation that will satisfy your need to know. But believe this: your mother and I always intended to tell you. We were only waiting for you and Bart to grow up enough, and when you hear our story, I think you will understand how I can both love and hate my moth
er. It's sad to say, but there are many children who feel ambiguous about their mothers or fathers."

  I hugged him, even if it was unmanly. I loved him, and if that was unmanly too, then darn if being manly was so great. "Don't you worry about Bart, Dad," I said. "I'll bring him home safely."

  I managed to squeeze between the gates just in the nick of time. Softly they clanked behind me. Then . . . silence. If there was a more silent place in the world than those spacious grounds, I've never been there.

  I jumped and quickly dodged behind a tree. John Amos Jackson had Bart by the hand, and he was leading him away from the house.

  "Now you know what you have to do, don't you?" "Yes, sir," intoned Bart, as if in a stupor.

  "You know what will happen if you don't do as I say, don't you?"

  "Yes, sir. Bad things will happen to everyone, even me."

  "Yessss, bad thingsss, thingssss you will regret." "Bad things I will regret," he repeated flatly. "From woman man is born into sin . . ."

  "From woman man is born into sin."

  "And those who originate the sin . . ."

  "Must suffer."

  "And how must they suffer?"

  "In all ways, by any ways, by death they will be redeemed."

  I froze where I crouched, not believing my ears. What was that man doing to Bart?

  They drifted beyond my hearing, and I peeked just in time to see Bart disappearing over the wall, going home. I waited until John Amos Jackson shuffled into the house and turned out all the lights.

  Then suddenly I realized I hadn't heard Apple bark. Wasn't a dog as old and big as Apple supposed to bark and warn those in the house that a prowler was on the grounds? I sneaked into the barn and called Apple by name. He didn't come running to lick my face and wag his tail. "Apple," I called again, louder. I lit a kerosene lamp that hung near the door and I shone it into the horse stall where Apple had his home.

  I sucked in my breath! Oh, No! NO!

  Who would be so cruel as to starve a dog like that? Who could then drive a pitchfork into that poor bag of bones covered by beautiful fur . . and now he was all bloody. Dark with old blood that had dried to the color of black rust. I ran outside and threw up. An hour later Dad and I were digging a grave and burying a huge dog that never had a chance to reach maturity. Both of us knew "they" would lock Bart up forever if ever this got out.