No, no, no. I clung to him, covering his face with kisses, promising him everything and anything to make him cling to life. "It will work out, Jory, it will! Hang in there. Don't give up and lose the greatest challenge of your life. You have me and you have Chris and sooner or later Melodie will come around and be your wife again."
Bleakly he stared at me, as if I spoke of pipe dreams made of nothing but smoke.
"Go sleep in your own room, Mom. You make me feel more like a child by staying here. I promise not to do anything to make you cry again."
"Darling, be sure and ring for your father or me if you need anything. Neither one of us minds getting up. Don't call for Melodie, for she might trip and fall in the dark now that she's kind of unsteady on her feet. I've always been a light sleeper, and it's easy for me to fall asleep again. Are you listening, Jory?"
"Sure, I'm listening," he said with his eyes blank and remote. "If there's one thing I'm good at now, it's listening."
"And soon the physical therapist will come to start you on the road to recovery."
"Recovery, Mom?" His eyes looked tired, very shadowed and dark. "You mean that back brace I'll be fitted for? Indeed, I am looking forward to using that thing. The leg braces are going to be a real joy to wear.
Isn't it fortunate I won't feel them? And I'm not even going to mention that harness contraption that will make me think of myself as a horse. I'll just think it will keep me from falling . . ." He paused, covered his face with his hands briefly, threw back his head and sighed. "Lord, give me strength to endure--are you punishing me for having too much pride in my legs and body? You've done a damned good job of bringing me low."
His hands came down. Tears shone in his eyes, streaked his cheeks. In a moment he was apologizing. "Sorry about that, Mom. Tears of self-pity aren't very manly, are they? Can't be brave and strong all
the time. Got my moments of weakness just like everyone else. Go back to your room. I'm not going to do anything to cause you and Dad more grief. I'll see this thing through to the end. Good night. Say good night to Melodie for me when she comes in."
I cried in Chris's arms, causing him to ask a thousand questions that I refused to answer. Frustrated and more than a bit angry, he flipped away. "You can't fool me, Catherine. You're holding something back, thinking it will add another burden, when not to know what's going on is the heaviest of all burdens!"
He waited for me to reply. When I didn't, he quickly fell asleep on his side. He had the most irritating habit of being able to sleep when I couldn't. I wanted him awake, forcing me to answer the questions I'd just avoided. But he slept on and on, turning to embrace me in his sleep, burying his face in my hair.
Every hour I was up and checking to see if Bart had brought Melodie home, checking to see if Jory was all right. Jory lay on his bed with his eyes wide open, apparently waiting, as I did, for Melodie to come home.
"Has the phantom pain eased up?"
"Yes, go back to bed. I'm fine."
I met Joel in the hallway outside Bart's room. He flushed to see me in my lacy white negligee. "Joel," I said, "I thought you changed your mind about living under this roof and went back to that small cell over the garage . . ."
"Used to, Catherine, used to," he muttered. "Bart ordered me into the house, saying a Foxworth shouldn't be treated like a servant." His watery eyes reproached me for not objecting when he'd informed us he liked the garage cell better than the nice room in Bart's wing of the house.
"You don't know what it's like to be old and lonely, niece. I've suffered from insomnia for years and years, troubled by bad dreams, with vague aches and pains that kept me from ever reaching that deep sleep I yearn for. So I get up to tire myself, I roam about . . ."
Roam about? Spying, that's what he did! Then, looking at him more closely, I felt ashamed. Standing there in the gloom of the hall, he appeared so frail, so sickly and thin--was I being unfair to Joel? Did I dislike him only because he was Malcolm's son?-- and had that detestable habit of muttering to himself incessant quotes from the Bible to take me back in time to our grandmother, and her insistence that we learn a quote each day from the holy book.
"Good night, Joel," I said with more kindness than usual. Still, as he continued to stand there, as if to win me to his side, I thought of Bart, who had said many a painful thing to me when he was a boy, but not since he'd been an adult. Now he, too, was reading the Bible, using the words written in there to prove some moot point. Had Joel helped bring life back to what I thought was dormant? I stared at the old man, who edged away from me almost fearfully.
"Why do you look like that?" I asked sharply. "Like what, Catherine?"
"Like you're afraid of me."
His smile was thin, pitiful. "You are a fearsome woman, Catherine. Despite all your blond prettiness, you can sometimes act as hard as my mother."
I started, stunned that he could think that. I could not possibly be like that mean old woman.
"You also remind me of your mother," he whispered in his thin, brittle voice, drawing his old bathrobe more tightly about his skinny frame. "And you seem far too young to be in your fifties. My father used to say the wicked always managed to stay young and healthy longer than those who had a place waiting for them in Heaven."
"If your father went on to Heaven, Joel, then I will gladly go in the opposite direction."
He eyed me as if I were a pitiful object who just didn't understand before he ambled away.
Once I was back beside Chris, he woke up long enough for me to spill out the scene between Joel and me. Chris glared at me in the dimness. "Catherine, how rude of you to talk to an old man like that. Of course you can't drive him out. In a way he has more right here than all of us, and it is Bart's home legally, even if we do have lifetime residency privileges."
Anger filled me. "Can't you recognize that Joel has become the father figure Bart has been looking for all his life?" And there I'd gone and hurt him. He stiffened and turned away from me.
"Good night, Catherine. Perhaps you should stay in bed and mind your own business for a rare change. Joel is a lonely old man who is grateful to have a champion like Bart and a place where he can live out the rest of his life. Stop imagining you see Malcolm in every old man you meet, for eventually, if I live long enough. I'll be another old man."