My smile was wry. "You and who else is gonna make me sorry?"
"I know what you want," he said, all child again. "You want my puppy-pony. But he won't like you, he won't! You want my grandmother to love you more, but she won't! You want to take everything from me--but you can't!"
I felt sorry for him, but I'd neglected my duty long enough. "Aw, go suck your baby bottle!" and with that I was off. He screamed behind me, yelling out how he'd make me sorry by hurting something that couldn't fight back. "And you'll cry, Jory!" he warned. "You'll cry more than you ever have before!"
The road was dappled with sunlight and shadows, and soon enough Bart and his temper were far behind me. The sun burned down hot on top of my head, and behind me little feet came running. I turned to see Clover racing to catch up. Waiting, I knelt to catch him as he leaped into my arms, licking my face with the same devoted adoration he'd given me since I was three.
Three years old. I remembered where Mom and I had lived then, in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, in a little cottage nestled down near the mountains. I remembered a tall man with dark eyes had given me not only Clover but also a cat named Calico, and a parakeet we called Buttercup. Calico had roamed off in the night and never came back. And Buttercup had died when I was seven. "Would you like to be my son?" I heard the man's voice in my memory. That man who was called . . . what was his name? Bart? Bart Winslow? Oh, golly, was I just beginning to understand something that had slipped over my head until now? Was my half brother Bart the son of that man, and not Daddy Paul? Why would Mom name her baby for a man not her husband?
"You gotta go back home now, Clover," I said, and he seemed to understand. "You're eleven years old and not up to frisking around in the noonday sun. Go back and find your favorite cool place and wait for me, okay?"
Wagging his tail, he turned obediently and headed home, looking back often to see if I'd turn away and he could follow again. I watched until he was out of sight around the bend in the road. Then I headed once more for the huge old mansion. In my head the distant past beat like muffled drums, reminding me of events I'd forgotten. The ballet on Christmas Eve, and the handsome man who gave me my first electric train. I shut off memories, wanting to keep my mother sacred, my love for Daddy Paul intact, my respect for Chris intact too. No, I wasn't going to let myself remember too much.
Lovers came and went in everyone's life, I told myself, if ballets were just true stories exaggerated a bit. And like my dad would, I strode boldly up to the iron fence and demanded into the box to be let in. The iron gates swung silently open, like jail bars to beckon me forward. I almost ran up the curving drive until I was before the double front doors, and there I jabbed at the doorbell, then banged the brass knocker as loud as I could.
Impatiently I waited for that crochety old butler to show up. Behind me the iron gates had closed. I felt like I was walking into a trap. Gee, just like Bart and his imagination that gave him fun, I used my ballet background to write this script. I felt like some wretched, unwanted prince who didn't possess the magic password. Only Bart knew that.
Confusion and regrets brewed and unsettled my determination. This didn't seem the castle of some wicked fairy queen, only the big, outdated home of a lonely old woman who needed Bart just as much as he needed her. But she couldn't be his grandmother, she just couldn't be. That grandmother was way back in Virginia, locked up for something terrible she'd done once.
Quiet was all around me, smothering me, making me feel old. My home was full of noises from the kitchen, music, Clover barking, Cindy squealing, Bart shouting, and Emma bossing. Not even a squeak came from this house. Nervously I shuffled my feet about, thinking I might give up my idea of
confronting her. Then I glimpsed a dark shadow behind one of the windows draped with sheer curtains. I shivered. Almost left. But just then the door opened a crack, enough to allow the butler to put a squinty watery eye to the slit. "You can enter," he said inhospitably, "but don't you stay too long. Our lady is frail and tires easily."
I asked her name, tired of calling and thinking of her as old woman, or woman in black. My request was ignored. The butler intrigued me with his shuffling gait, his suggestion of a limp, his ebony cane that tapped on the hard parquet, his bald pate that was pink and shiny. His thin white mustache hung in long strands on either side of his grim lips. But as old as he was, and as weak as he appeared, he still managed to convey a scary, sinister air.
He beckoned me onward, but I hesitated. Then he smiled cynically, showing his too large, too even and too yellow teeth. I squared my shoulders and followed him bravely, thinking I could set everything straight and our lives would be as happy as they'd been before they came to live in this house that used to be ours alone.
I didn't know suspicions were in my head. I thought it was only curiosity.
The room she always used surprised me again, though I couldn't say exactly why. Maybe it was because she kept her drapes drawn together on such a beautiful summer day. Behind the drapes the window shutters were closed, making bars of light on the window coverings. The shutters and the drapes held the heat outside at bay, making her parlor
unexpectedly chill. There was no real need for airconditioning in our area. The nearby Pacific kept our weather cool, making sweaters in the evenings a real necessity, even in the middle of summer. But this house was
unnaturally cold.
Again she was in that wooden rocker staring at me. Her thin hand made some welcoming gesture to draw me closer. I knew instinctively she was a threat to my parents, to my own security, and most of all to Bart's mental health.
"You don't have to be afraid of me, Jory," she said in a sweet voice. "My home belongs to you as much as to Bart. I will always welcome you here. Sit down and chat for awhile. Will you share a cup of tea with me, and a slice of cake?"
Beguiled, our word yesterday to add to our growing vocabulary Daddy insisted upon. "The world belongs to those who know how to speak well, and fortunes are made by those who write well," he'd said.
I admit, she beguiled me, that woman in her hard rocker, sitting so old and yet so proud. "Why don't you open your shutters, pull your drapes and let in some light and air?" I asked.
Her nervous gestures brought into play the sparkling rays of the many gems she wore. Rubies, emeralds and diamonds on her fingers, each color spectrum. Her jewels seemed so out of place when she had to wear that plain black dress and cover her head with several layers of black chiffon--but today her eyes were revealed, her blue, blue eyes. Such familiar blue eyes.
"Too much light hurts my eyes," she explained in a faint husky whisper when I kept staring.
"Why?"
"Why does the light hurt my eyes?"
"Yes."
Her sigh was small. "For a long time I lived locked away from the world, shut up in a small room, but even worse than that, locked up within myself. When you are forced to encounter yourself for the first time in your life, you draw back from the shock. I recoiled when first I looked deep within myself, staring in a mirror they had in my room, and I was frightened. So now I live in rooms full of mirrors, but I cover my face so I can't see too much. I keep my rooms dim as I no longer admire the face I used to adore.
"Then take down the mirrors."
"How easy you make it. But you are young. The young always think everything is easy. I don't want to take down the mirrors. I want them there to remind me constantly of what I've done. The closed windows, the stuffy atmosphere are my punishments, not yours. If you want, Jory," she went on as I sat silently, "open the windows, spread the shutters; let in the sunlight and I will take off my veils and let you look at the face I hide from--but you won't find it pleasant. My beauty is gone, but it is a small loss compared to everything else that has come and gone, all the things I should have held onto valiantly."