If There Be Thorns

  "Oh, she does, she does! I wish you could see her in her little pink leotards trying to imitate Jory or me--I mean when I could dance."

  "Your husband must be getting along in years by now," Madame said, disregarding photographs Mom tried to show her of Cindy, who was already in bed for the night.

  "Did Jory tell you I'm writing a book? It's really fascinating. I didn't think it would be when I first started but after I mastered transitions I really surprised myself, and now writing is more fun than work. Just as satisfying as dancing." She smiled and fluttered her hands about, plucking at lint on her blue pants, tugging down her white sweater, fiddling with her hair, shuffling papers to tidy her desk. "My room is a mess. I apologize for that. I need a study, but in this house we don't have the room . . ."

  "Is your brother making hospital rounds too?"

  I sat there, not understanding who this brother was. Cory was dead. He'd been dead for years. Though nobody laid in his grave, nobody at all. Little headstone beside Aunt Carrie and nobody there . . .

  "You must be hungry. Let's go into the dining room and Emma can heat up the spaghetti. The second time around it's always better . . ."

  "Spaghetti?" snapped Madame. "You mean you eat that kind of junk? You allow my grandson to eat starches? Years and years ago I warned you to stay away from pasta! Really, Catherine, don't you ever learn?"

  Spaghetti was one of my favorite dishes--but we'd had leg of Iamb tonight in Madame's honor, fixed the way Momma thought she liked it best. Why had she said spaghetti? I gave my mother a hard look and saw her flustered and breathless, looking as young as Melodie, as if she were terribly afraid something might go wrong--and what could?

  Madame M. wouldn't eat at our house, wouldn't sleep there either, for she didn't want to "inconvenience" us. Already she'd found a room in town, close to Mom's dance school. "And though you haven't asked me, Catherine, I'll be delighted to stay on and replace you. I sold out my school the moment Jory wrote and told me of your accident."

  Mom could only nod, looking queerly blank.

  A few days later Madame looked around the office that had been Mom's. "She keeps everything so neat, not like me at all. Soon I'll have it looking like my own."

  I loved her in an odd kind of way, the way you love winter when you're hot in the summer. And then when winter was shivering your bones, I wished it would go away. She moved so young and looked so old. When she danced she could almost make you think she was eighteen. Her black hair came and went according to which day of the week it was. I'd learned by now she used some color rinse that was shampooed in and soon came out to darken the teeth of her white comb. I liked it best when it was white, silvery under the lights.

  "You are everything my own Julian was!" she cried, smothering me with too much gushing affection. Already she'd dismissed the young teacher Mom had hired. "But what makes you so arrogant, huh? Your momma tell you that you are sensational? Always your momma thinks the music is what counts most in the dance, and is not, is not. It is the display of the beautiful body that is the essence of ballet. I come to save you. I come to teach you how to do everything perfect. When I am done with you, you will have flawless technique." Her shrill voice lowered an octave or two. "I come too because I am old and may soon die and I do not know my grandson at all. I come to do my duty by being not only your grandmother, but also your grandfather and your father too. Catherine was big fool to dance when she knew her knee could fold any second--but your mother was always big fool, so what's new?"

  She made me furious. "Don't you talk like that about my mother. She's not a fool. She's never been a fool. She does what she feels she must--so I'll tell you the truth and you let her be. She danced that last time because I pleaded and pleaded for her to dance at least one time with me professionally. She did it for me, Grandmother, for me, not herself!"

  Her small dark eyes turned shrewd. "Jory, take lesson number one in my philosophy course: Nobody ever does anything for anyone else unless it gives them even more."

  Madame swept all the little mementos Mom cherished into the trashcan, like they were so much junk. Next she hauled up a huge beat-up satchel, and in minutes had the desk more cluttered with her junk than it had been before.

  Immediately I knelt to take from the trashcan all the things I knew my mother loved.

  "You don't love me like you love her," complained Madame in a gritty voice of self-pity that sounded weak and old. Startled at the pain in her voice, I looked up and saw her as I'd never seen her before--an old woman, lonely and pitiful, clinging desperately to the only meaningful link to life she had--me.

  Pity flooded me. "I'm glad you're here, Grandmother, and of course I love you. Don't ask if I love you more than anyone else, only be happy that I love you at all, as I'm happy you love me for whatever reason." I kissed her wrinkled cheek. "We'll get to know each other better. And I'll be the kind of son you wanted my father to be--in some ways--so don't cry and feel alone. My family is your family."

  Nevertheless, tears were in her eyes, streaking her face, making her lips quiver as she clutched at me desperately. Her voice came cracked and old: "Never did Julian run to me like you just did. He didn't like to touch or be touched. Thank you, Jory, for loving me a little."

  Until now she'd been just a summer event in my life, flattering me with too much praise, making me feel special. Now I was uncomfortable to know she'd be here always, shadowing all our lives--perhaps.

  Everything was going wrong in our lives. Maybe I could put all the blame on that old woman next door. Yet here was another old woman in black, ten times more trying than Bart's grandmother, more dominating too. Bart was a kid who needed some control, but I was almost a man and didn't need more mothering. With some resentment I pulled away from her clutching, clawlike hands and asked,

  "Grandmother, why is it all grandmothers like to wear black?"

  "Ridiculous!" she snapped. "Not all do!" Her jet eyes were like stones of black fire.

  "But I've never seen you wear any color but black."

  "You will never see me wear another color."

  "I don't understand. I've heard my mother say you wore black before my grandfather died, before my father died. Are you in perpetual mourning?"

  She sneered scornfully. "Ah, I see. You feel uncomfortable around black clothes, yah? Makes you feel sad, yah? Makes me feel glad. It makes me different. Anyone can wear pretty colors. Takes someone special to be pleased with only black clothes--and besides, it saves money."

  I laughed and drew away farther. I was sure it was more the money she saved than anything else.

  "What other grandmother you know who wears black?" she asked, her eyes very narrow and suspicious.

  I smiled and backed away more; she frowned and drew closer. My face took on a broader smile as I neared the door. "It's great having you here, Grandmother Madame. Be especially nice to Melodie Richarme. I'm going to marry her someday."

  "Jory!" she yelled. "You come back here! Do you think I flew halfway around the world just to replace your mother? I came for one reason only. I am here to see that Julian's son dances in New York, in every major city in the world, and achieves all the fame and glory that was due his father. Because of Catherine he was robbed, robbed!"

  She made me angry, she made me want to hurt her as her words hurt me, when only a moment ago I'd loved her. "Will my fame and glory help a father who lies dead in his grave?" I shouted back. I wasn't putty for her to mold--I was already a great dancer and my mother had done that for me. I didn't need her to teach me more about dancing--I needed her to teach me more about learning to love someone hateful, old and bitter. "I know how to dance already, Madame, my mother has taught me well."

  Her look of contempt made me blanch, but she surprised me when she got up to drop to her knees and put her hands in prayer position beneath her chin. She tilted her thin face backward and seemed to stare God straight in his face.

  "Julian," she cried passionately, "if you are up there looking down, he
ar the arrogance of your fourteen-year-old son. I make a pact with you today. Before I die I will see your son is the most acclaimed dancer in the world. I will make of him what you could have been if you hadn't cared so damned much for cars and women, to say nothing of your other vices. Your son, Julian-- through him you will live to dance again!"

  I stared as she fell exhausted into the swivel desk- chair again, sprawling her powerful legs before her. "Damn Catherine for marrying a doctor years and years older. Where was her common sense?--where was his? Though to give credit where credit is due, he was handsome years ago and appealing enough, but she should have known he'd be old before she even reached her sexual maturity. She should have married a man nearer her own age."

  I stood before her, baffled, trembling, beginning to feel closet doors in my mind opening-- creakily opening, reluctantly. No, no, my mind kept saying, keep quiet Madame. I watched her jerk upright, her dark stabbing eyes riveting me to one spot so I was unable to leave when what I wanted most was to run, and run fast.

  "Why do you tremble?" she asked. "Why do you look so strange?"

  "Do I look strange?"

  "Don't answer questions with questions," she barked. "Tell me about Paul, your stepfather, how he fares, what he does. He was twenty-five years older than your mother, and she's thirty-seven now. Doesn't that make him sixty-two?"

  I swallowed over an aching lump that came to clog my throat. "Sixty-two is not so old," I said meekly, thinking she should know that; she was in her seventies.

  "For a man it is old; for a woman life is only beginning to stretch out."

  "That is cruel," I said, beginning to dislike her again.

  "Life is cruel, Jory, very cruel. You snatch from life what you can while you are young, for if you wait for better times to come tomorrow, you wait in vain. I told Julian that time and again, to live his life and forget Catherine, who loved that older man, but he refused to believe any girl could prefer a middle-aged man to someone as handsome and vibrant as he was, and now he lies dead in his grave, as you just said. Dr. Paul Sheffield enjoys the love that rightly belonged to my son, to your father.

  I was crying tears she couldn't see. Hot scalding tears of disbelief. Had my mother lied to Madame and made her believe Daddy Paul was still alive? Why would she lie? What was wrong about marrying Dr. Paul's younger brother Christopher?

  "You look ill, Jory. Why?"

  "I feel fine, Madame."

  "Don't lie to me, Jory. I can smell a lie a mile away, see a lie from across three thousand miles. Why is it Paul Sheffield never accompanies his family to his own home town? Why is it your mother always brings only her children and that brother,

  Christopher?"

  My heart was pounding. Sweat glued my shirt to my skin. "Madame, have you never met Daddy Paul's younger brother?"

  "Younger brother? What's that you say?" She leaned forward and peered into my eyes. "Never heard of any brother even during that awful time when Paul's first wife drowned their son. That was spread all over the newspapers, and no younger brother was mentioned. Paul Sheffield had only one sister--no brother, younger or older.."

  I felt sick, ready to throw up. Ready to cry out and run and do something wild and painful to myself, like Bart did when he was hurt and disturbed. Bart-- for the first time I was feeling what it was to be like Bart. I stood on unsteady ground, afraid everything might crumble if I dared to move.

  Through my mind kept running the steady stream of age, years and years of age difference, and Dad wasn't that much older than Mom, only two years and a few months. She was born in April, he was born in November. And they were so much alike in coloring, in background, they spoke without even saying a word, just a glance and they understood.

  Madame was sitting coiled, ready, so it seemed, to spring upon me--or Mom? Deeper lines etched around her narrowed eyes, her grim-thin lips. She pursed her lips and reached into some hidden pocket of her drab outfit for her pack of cigarettes. "Now," she said as if to herself, seemingly forgetting I was still there, "what was it Catherine gave as an excuse the last time Paul didn't come? Let's see, she called first, long distance, explaining Chris would come with her because Paul was too ill with his heart trouble to travel. She was leaving him in the care of his nurse. Thought that odd at the time, that she'd leave him when he needed a nurse, and travel with Chris." She bit down on her lower lip, chewed it unconsciously. "And last summer no visit because Bart hated ole graves and ole ladies--and I suspect, me in particular. Spoiled brat. This summer they don't come again because Bart has driven a rusty nail into his knee and develops blood-poisoning or something similar. Damn kid is more trouble than he's worth--serves her right to for playing around so soon after my son's death. And Paul has heart trouble, on and on he has heart trouble, yet he never has a fatal attack. Every summer she gives me that same worn excuse. Paul can't travel because of his heart--but Chris, he can always travel, heart or no heart."

  Abruptly she stopped talking, for I had moved to leave. I tried to make my eyes blank and erase all the milling suspicions I didn't want her to see. Never had I felt more afraid than I did at that moment, just watching her scheming eyes, the wheels churning, planning something I knew.

  At that moment she jumped to her feet with great agility. "Put on your coat. I'm going home with you to have a long chat with your mother."

  The Terrible Truth

  .

  "Jory," began Madame when we were in her ratty old car and driving homeward. "Your parents don't confide in you much about their past, do they?"

  "They tell us enough," I said stiffly, resenting the way she kept prying, when it didn't matter, it didn't. "They are very good listeners, and everyone says they make the best kind of conversationlists."

  She snorted. "Being a good listener is the perfect way to avoid answering questions you'd rather ignore."

  "Now you look here, Grandmother. My parents like their privacy. They have asked both Bart and me not to talk about our home life to our friends, and after all, it does make good sense for a family to stick together."

  "Really . . . ?"

  "Yes!" I shouted, "I like my privacy too!"

  "You are of an age to need privacy; they are not." "Madame, my mother was a celebrity of sorts, and Dad is a doctor, and Mom has been married three times. I don't think she wants her former sister-in-law, Amanda, to know where we live."

  "Why not?"

  "My aunt Amanda is not a very nice person, that's all."

  "Jory, do you trust me?"

  "Yes," I said, but I didn't.

  "Then tell me all you know about Paul. Tell me if he's as sick as she says, or if he is alive at all. Tell me why Christopher lives in your home, and is the one who acts like the father of you and Bart."

  Oh, I didn't know what to say, and I was trying hard to be a good listener so she'd keep on talking and I'd be able to put the pieces of the puzzle together. Certainly I didn't want her to get the picture before I did.

  A long silence grew, and finally she spoke. "You know, after Julian died, your mother lived with you in Paul's home, then she took you and her younger sister, Carrie, to the mountains of Virginia. Her mother lived there in a fine home. It seems Catherine was determined to ruin her mother's second marriage. The husband of your mother's mother was named Bartholomew Winslow."

  That cursed darn lump came back in my throat and ached there. I wasn't going to tell her that Bart was the son of anyone but Daddy Paul, I wasn't!

  "Grandmother, if you want me to keep on loving you, please do not tell me ugly things about my mother."

  Her skinny hand reached to squeeze mine. "All right, I admire you for being so loyal. I just want you to know the facts." About that time she almost careened off the road into another ditch.

  "Grandmother, I know how to drive. If you are tired and can't see the road signs very well, I can take over, and you could sit back and relax."

  "Let a fourteen-year-old kid drive me around? Are you crazy? Are you saying you don't feel safe
with me at the wheel? All my life I've been driven around, first in hay wagons, then carriages, then taxis or limousines, but three weeks before I came here, soon after your letter came telling about your mother's accident, I took driver's lessons at the age of seventyfour . . . and you see now how well I learned."

  Finally, after four near misses, we made the turn into our circular drive. And there out front was Bart stalking some invisible animal with his pocketknife held like a dagger, ready to thrust and kill.

  Madame ignored him as she pulled to a stop. Briskly I jumped out and raced to open her door, but she was out before I got there, and just behind her Bart was stabbing into the air with his knife. "Death to the enemy! Death to all old ladies who wear black raggedy- clothes! Death, death, death!"

  Calmly, as if she didn't hear and didn't see, Madame strode on. I shoved Bart aside and

  whispered, "If you want to be locked up today, keep on with what you're doing."

  "Black . . hate black . . . gotta wipe out all dark black evil."

  But he put the knife in his pocket after he carefully folded it and stroked the pearl handle he admired. He should. It had cost me seven bucks for that present.

  Without waiting for a response to her impatient push on the doorchimes, Madame stalked into our house and tossed her purse on the loveseat in the foyer. The clack of typewriter keys came to us faintly.

  "Writing," she said, "I guess she goes at that just as passionately as she did dancing . . ."

  I didn't say anything, but I did want to run ahead and warn Mom. She wouldn't let me. Mom looked up very startled to suddenly encounter Madame Marisha again in her bedroom.

  "Catherine! Why didn't you tell me Dr. Paul Sheffield was dead."

  Momma's face went red, then white. She bowed her head and put her hands up to cover her face. Regaining her composure almost immediately, she raised her head, flashed angry eyes at Madame, then began to shuffle her papers into a neat pile. "How nice to see you, Madame Marisha. It would have been nicer if you had called in advance. However, I'm sure Emma can split the lamb chops unevenly and let you have two . . ."