Musingly, he said, "So that's the way women feel about love and sex. I always wondered. It's not a man's kind of feeling, I do know that . . . still, what you said is interesting."
He turned away before he went on. "Truthfully, I don't know just what I want out of life but more money. They tell me I'll make an excellent attorney because I know how to debate. Yet I can't decide what branch of law I want. I don't want to be a criminal lawyer like my father was, for I'd often have to defend those I know were guilty. I couldn't do that. I think corporate law would be a bore. I've thought about politics, and this is the area I find most exciting, but I've got my damned psychological background to mar my record . . . so how can I go into politics?"
Rising from behind his desk, he stepped close enough to catch my hand in his. "I like what you're telling me. Tell me more about your loves, about which man you loved best. Was it Julian, your first husband? Or was it that wonderful doctor named Paul? I think I would have loved him if I could remember him. He married you to give me his name. I wish I could see him in my memory, like Jory can, but I can't. Jory remembers him well. He even remembers seeing my father." His manner turned very intense as he leaned to lock his eyes with mine. "Tell me that you loved my father best. Say he was the one and only man who really seized your heart. Don't tell me you only used him for your revenge against your mother! Don't tell me that you used his love to escape from the love of your own brother."
I couldn't speak.
His brooding, morose, dark eyes studied me. "Don't you realize yet that you and your brother have always managed with your incestuous relationship to ruin and contaminate my life? I used to hope and pray someday you'd leave him, but it never happens. I've adjusted to the fact that the two of you are obsessed with one another and perhaps enjoy your relationship more because it is against the will of God."
Snared again! I rose to my feet, knowing he'd used his sweet voice to beguile me into his trap.
"Yes, I loved your father, Bart, don't you ever doubt that. I admit I wanted revenge for all that our mother had done to us, so I went after my stepfather. Then, when I had him, and I knew I loved him, and he loved me, I felt I'd trapped myself as well as him. He couldn't marry me. He loved me in one way--and my mother in another way. He was torn between us. I decided to end his indecision by becoming pregnant. Even then he was undecided. Only on the night when he believed my story of being imprisoned by his own wife did he turn against her and say he'd marry me. I thought her money would bind him to her forever, but he would have married me."
I rose to leave. Not a word did Bart say to give me a hint as to his thoughts. At the door I turned to look back at him. He was seated again in his desk chair, his elbows on the blotter, his hands cradling his bowed head. "Do you think anyone will ever love me for myself and not for my money, Mother?"
My heart skipped a beat.
"Yes, Bart. But you won't find a girl around here who doesn't know you're very wealthy. Why don't you go away? Settle in the Northeast or in the West. Then when you find a girl she won't know you are rich, especially if you work as an ordinary lawyer . . ."
He looked up then. "I've already had my surname changed legally, Mother."
Dread filled me, and I didn't really need to ask, "What is your last name now?"
"Foxworth," he said, confirming my suspicion. "After all, I can't be a Winslow when my father was not your husband. And to keep Sheffield is deceitful. Paul wasn't my father, nor was your brother, thank God."
I shivered and turned icy with apprehension. This was the first step . . . turning himself into another Malcolm, what I'd feared most. "I wish you'd chosen Winslow for your surname, Bart. That would have pleased your dead father."
"Yes, I'm sure," he said dryly. "And I did consider that seriously. But in choosing Winslow, I would forfeit my legitimate right to the Foxworth name. It's a good name, Mother, a name respected by everyone except those villagers, who don't count anyway. I feel Foxworth Hall truly belongs to me without contamination, without guilt." His eyes took on a brilliant, happy glow. "You see, and Uncle Joel agrees, not everyone hates me and thinks I am less than Jory." He paused to watch my reaction. I tried to show nothing. He seemed disappointed. "Leave, Mother. I've got a long day of work ahead of me."
I risked his anger by lingering long enough to say, "While you're shut away in this office, Bart, I want you to keep remembering your family loves you very much, and all of us want what's best for you. If more money will make you feel better about yourself, then make yourself the richest man in the world. Just find happiness, that's all we want for you. Find your niche, just where you fit, that's the most important thing."
Closing his office door behind me, I was headed for the stairs when I almost bumped into Joel. A guilty look flashed momentarily through the blue of his watery eyes. I guessed he'd been listening to Bart and me. But hadn't I done the same thing
inadvertently? "I'm sorry I didn't see you in the shadows, Joel."
"I didn't mean to eavesdrop," he said with a peculiar look. "Those who expect to hear evil will not be disappointed," and away he scurried like an old church mouse, lean from lack of enough fuel to feed his appetite for making trouble. He made me feel guilty, ashamed. Suspicious, always so damned suspicious of anyone named Foxworth.
Not that I didn't have just cause.
My First Son
. Six days before the party, Jory and Melodie flew into a local airport. Chris and I were there to meet them with the kind of enthusiasm you saved for those you hadn't seen for years, and we'd parted less than ten days ago. Jory was immediately chagrined because Bart hadn't come along to welcome them to his fabulous new home.
"He's busy in the gardens, Jory, Melodie, and asked us to give you his apologies" (although he hadn't). Both looked at me as if they knew differently. Quickly I went into details of how Bart was
supervising hordes of workmen come to change our lawns into paradise, or something as near that as possible.
Jory smiled to hear of such an ostentatious party; he preferred small, intimate parties where everyone knew each other. He said pleasantly enough, "Nothing new under the sun. Bart's always too busy when it comes to me and my wife."
I stared up into his face so like that of my adolescent first husband, Julian, who had also been my dancing partner. The husband whose memory still hurt and filled me with that same old tormenting guilt. Guilt that I tried to erase by loving his son best. "Every time I see you you look more like your father."
We were seated side by side, as Melodie sat beside Chris, and occasionally said a few words to him. Jory laughed and put his arms about me, inclining his dark, handsome head to brush my cheek with his warm lips. "Mom . . . you say that each and every time you see me. When am I going to reach the zenith of being my father?"
Laughing, too, I released him and settled back to cross my legs and stare out at the beautiful countryside. The rolling hills, the misty mountains with the tops hidden in the clouds. Near Heaven, I kept thinking. I had to force my attention back to Jory, who had so many virtues Julian had never possessed, could never have possessed. Jory was more like Chris in personality than like Julian, although that, too, filled me with guilt, with shame, for it could have been different between Julian and I--but for Chris.
At the age of twenty-nine, Jory was a wonderfully handsome man, with long, strong, beautiful legs and firm, round buttocks that made all the women stare when he danced onto stage wearing tights. His thick hair was blue-black and curly, but not frizzy; his lips exceptionally red and sensuously shaped, his note a perfect slope with nostrils that could flare wide with anger or passion. He had a hot temper h
e'd learned to control a long time ago, mostly because of all the control it took for him to tolerate Bart. Jory's inner beauty radiated from him with an electric force, a joie de vivre. His beauty was more than mere handsomeness; he had the added strength of a certain spiritual quality and was like Chris in his cheerful, optimism, his faith that all that happened in his life had to be for the best.