Petals on the Wind (Dollanganger 2)

There must be something weird about me, I was thinking as I stood on the balcony overlooking Paul's magnificent gardens. I wasn't that beautiful, or that unforgettable, or that indispensable, to any man. I stayed there and let Chris come up behind me and put his arm about my shoulders. I leaned my head against him and sighed, staring up at the moon. The same old moon that had known our shame before, still there to witness more. I didn't do anything; I swear I didn't, just let his arm stay about me. Maybe I moved a little to contour myself against him when he had me in a tight embrace. "Cathy, Cathy," he groaned, pressing his lips down into my hair, "sometimes life just doesn't have any meaning without you. I'd throw away my M.D. and set out for the South Pacific if you'd go with me. . . ."

"And leave Carrie?"

"We could take her with us." I thought he was playing a game of wishing, like we had when children. "I'd buy a sail boat and take out tourists, and if they cut themselves I'd have all the training to bandage their cuts." He kissed me then with the fervor of a man gone wild from denial. I didn't want to respond, yet I did, making him gasp as he tried to coax me into his room.

"Stop!" I cried. "I don't want you except as a brother! Leave me alone! Go find someone else!"

Dazed and hurt-looking, he backed off. "What kind of woman are you anyway, Cathy? You returned my kisses--you responded in every way you could-- and now you draw away and pull the virtuous act!"

"Hate me then!"

"Cathy, I could never hate you." He smiled at me bitterly. "There are times when I want to hate you, times when I think you are just the same as our mother, but I don't ever stop loving once I start!" He entered his room and slammed the door, leaving me speechless, staring after him

No! I wasn't like Momma, I wasn't! I'd responded only because I was still seeking my lost identity. Julian stole my reflection and made it his. Julian wanted to steal my strength and call it his own; he wanted me to make all the decisions, so he couldn't be blamed when a mistake was made. I was still trying to prove my worth, so in the end I could disprove the grandmother's condemnation. See, Grandmother, I am not bad or evil. Or else everyone wouldn't love me so much. I was still that selfish, ravenous, demanding attic mouse who had to have it proven time and time again that I was worthy enough to live in the sunlight.

I was thinking about this one day when I was on the back veranda, and Carrie was planting pansies she'd grown from seed, and beside her were little pots with tiny petunia settings. Chris came out from the house and tossed me the evening newspaper. "There's an article in there that might be of some interest to you," he said in an off-hand way. "I thought about not showing it to you, but then I decided I should."

The husband and wife ballet team of Julian Marquet and Catherine Dahl, our own local

celebrities, seems to have parted company. For the first time Julian Marquet will partner a ballerina other than his wife in a major television production of Giselle. It has been rumored about that Miss Dahl is ill, and also rumored that the ballet team are about to split.

There was more to read, including the fact that Yolanda Lange was to replace me! This was our big chance--another of many, to make stars of ourselves, and he was putting Yolanda in my part! Damn him1 Why didn't he grow up? Every chance we had he blew it. He couldn't lift Yolanda easily, not with his bad back.

Chris threw me a strange look before he asked, "What are you going to do about it?" I yelled back, "Nothing!" For a second or two he didn't say anything.

"Cathy, he didn't want you to come to my graduation, did he? And that's why he's put Yolanda in your role. I warned you not to let him be your manager. Madame Zolta would have treated you more fairly."

I got up to pace the porch. Our original contract with Madame Z. had expired two years ago, and all we owed her now was twelve performances a year. The rest of the time Julian and I

were freelance, and could dance with whatever company we chose.

Let Julian have Yolanda. Let him make a fool of himself--I hoped to God he dropped her! Let him have all his teeny-bopper playmates for sex games . . . I didn't care. Then I was running in the house and up to my bedroom where I flung myself face down and bawled.

Everything was made worse by the fact that I had made a secret trip to the gynecologist the day before. Two missed periods didn't really mean anything for a woman like me, who was so irregular. I might not be pregnant; it might be just another false alarm . . . and if it wasn't, I prayed I'd have the strength to go through with an abortion! I didn't need a baby in my life. I knew once I had a child, he or she would become the center of my world, and luv would again spoil a ballerina who could have been the best.

Ballet music was in my head when I drove Chris's car to visit Madame Marisha one hot spring day when all the world seemed sleepy and lazy except for those idiot children being instructed by a shrill little bat wearing black, as always. I sat in the shadows near the far wall of a huge auditorium and watched the large class of boys and girls dance. It was scary to think of how soon those girls would grow up to replace the stars of the present. Then I too would become another Madame Marisha and the years would flow like seconds, until I was Madame Zolta, and all my beauty would be preserved only in old, faded photographs.

"Catherine!" called Madame M. joyfully when she spied me. She came striding swiftly, gracefully my way. "Why do you sit in shadows?" she asked. "How nice to see your lovely face again. And don't think I don't know why you look so sad! You're one big fool to leave Julian! He's a big baby; you know he can't be left alone or he does things to hurt himself, and when he hurts himself, he hurts you too! Why did you let him get control of management? Why did you let him burn up your money as fast as it hits your pockets? I tell you this, in your place, I would never, never have let him put another in my role of Giselle!"

God, what a blabbermouth he was!

"Don't worry about me, Madame," I said coolly. "if my husband doesn't want me for his partner anymore, I'm sure there will be others who will."

She scowled, advanced. She put those bony hands on me and shook me as if to wake me up. Up close, I could see she'd aged terribly since Georges had died. Her ebony hair was almost white now, and streaked with charcoal. She snarled then, baring teeth whiter than they used to be and far more perfect. "You gonna let my son make a fool of you? You let him put another dancer in your place? I gave you credit for having more backbone! Now you hightail it back to New York and push that Yolanda out of his life! Marriage is sacred, and wedding vows are meant to be kept!"

Then she softened and said, "Come now, Catherine," and led me into her small cluttered office. "Now you tell me about this foolishness going on between you and your husband!"

"It is really none of your business!"

She swung another straight chair to where she could straddle it. Leaning forward upon her arms, she stabbed me with her hard penetrating glare. "Anything, and everything concerning my son is my business!" she snapped. "Now you just sit there and keep quiet, and let me tell you what you don't know about your husband." Her voice turned a little kinder. "I was older than Georges when we were married, and even so I dared putting off having a child until I believed the best of my career was behind me, and then I became pregnant. Georges never wanted a child to hold him down, and back, and so, from the beginning Julian had two strikes against him

"I tell myself we didn't force the dance upon our son, but we did keep him with us, so the ballet became part of his world, the most important part." She sighed heavily and wiped a bony hand over her troubled brow. "We were strict with him, I admit that. We did everything we could to make him what was perfect in our eyes, but the more we tried, the more determined he became to be everything we didn't want him to be. We tried to teach him perfect diction, so he ended up mocking us with all kinds of vulgar street language-- gutter talk, Georges called it. You know," she went on with a wistful expression, "only after my husband was dead and buried did I realize that he never spoke to our son unless it was an order not to do something, or an order to improve his dancing technique. I never realized that Georges could have been jealous of his own son, seeing that he was a better dancer and would achieve more fame It wasn't easy for me to become only a ballet mistress, and for Georges to be only an instructor. Many a night we lay on our bed and held to each other, craving the applause, the adulation. . . . It was a hunger that would not be satisfied until we heard the applause for our son."

Again she paused, and birdlike craned her neck to peer at me and see if I was paying full attention. Oh, yes, she had my attention. She was telling me so much I needed to know.

"Julian tried to hurt Georges and Georges got hurt because Julian made light of his father's reputation. One day he called him only a second-class performer. Georges didn't speak to his own son for a whole month! They never got back together after that. Farther and farther they drifted apart . . . until one fine Christmas Day when another prodigy drifted into our lives, and offered herself. You! Julian had flown back to visit us, only because I had pleaded with him to try and make it up with his father . . . and Julian saw you.

"It is our responsibility to pass along our skills of technique to the younger generation, and still I felt some apprehension in taking you on, mostly because I thought you would hurt my son. I don't know why I thought that, but it seemed obvious from the very start, it was that older doctor you loved. Then I thought you had something very rare, a passion for the dance that is seldom seen. You were, in your own way, equal to what Julian was, and the two of you together were so sensational I couldn't believe my eyes. My son felt it too, the rapport between you two. You turned those big, soft, admiring blue eyes on him, so later he came and told me you were a sex kitten who would fall easily under his spell and into his arms. He and I always had a close relationship, and he confessed to me what other boys would have kept secret."