"Not now. Later. I need time."
Slowly I ascended the hack stairs, thinking of the baby in my womb, how I had to be careful and not eat junk food; I had to drink plenty of milk, take vitamins, and think happy thoughts . . not vengeful ones. Every day from now on I would play ballet music. Inside me my baby would hear, and even before he or she was born a small living soul would be indoctrinated to the dance. I smiled, thinking of all the pretty tutus I could buy for my little girl. I smiled even more to think of a boy like his father with a wild tumble of dark curls. Julian Janus Marquet would be his name. Janus for looking both ways, ahead and behind.
I passed Chris who was ready to come down the stairs. He touched me. I shivered, knowing what he wanted. He didn't have to say the words. I knew them backward and forward, inside and out, upside down, or right side up; I knew them . . . as I knew him.
Though I tried diligently to think only of the innocent child growing within me, still my thoughts would steal to my mother, filling me with hate, filling me with unwanted plans for revenge. For somehow she had caused Julian's death too. If we'd never been locked away in the first place and needed to escape and run, then I would never have loved Chris, or Paul, and perhaps Julian and I would have met inevitably in New York. Then I could have loved him as he needed and wanted to be loved. I could have gone to him "virgin pure, brand new."
And would that have made any difference, I asked over and over. . . . Yes! Yes! I convinced myself it would have made all the difference!
Interlude for Three
. As my baby grew within me, I began to find the identity I had lost, for the ballet kept the real me always in an embryo state, enclosed by my desire to dance and succeed. I was now standing firmly on the ground with the fantasy of glamorous life pushed to the background. Not that I didn't still crave the stage and the applause now and then. Oh, I had my sorrowful moments--but I had one sure way to shut them out. I turned my thoughts on my mother, on what she'd done to us. Another death on your record, Momma!
Dear Mrs. Winslow,
Are you still running away from me? Don't you know yet you can never run fast enough or far enough? Someday I will catch up, and we will meet again. Perhaps this time you will suffer as you made me suffer, and, hopefully, thrice the amount.
My husband has just died as the result of a car accident, just as your husband died many years ago. I am expecting his baby, but I won't do anything as desperate as you did. I will find a way to support him or her, even if I have triplets--or quadruplets!
I mailed that letter off, addressed to her home in Greenglenna, but the newspapers later informed me she was in Japan. Japan! Wow, she did get about.
I was turning into a woman I'd never seen before. Mirrors showed I wasn't slim and supple anymore. That terrified me. I saw my breasts become rounder, fuller, as my middle swelled outward. I hated to move less than gracefully, but my hands loved to caress the swell of my baby's small rump
One day I realized I was luckier than most widows, I had two men needing me. Men who let me know in subtle ways they were ready to take Julian's place. And I had Carrie, Carrie who considered me a model by which she could mold her own life. Dear, sweet little Carrie who was now sixteen, and had never had a date, or a boyfriend, or been to a prom. Not that she couldn't have, if she'd forget her smallness. Chris persuaded his friends to date a younger sister who was dying on the vine for want of romance. She complained to me: "Chris doesn't have to make dates for you! That college student, he doesn't want me. He just comes to worm in closer to you." I laughed at how ridiculous that was. Nobody would want me in the condition I was, pregnant, a widow, and too old for a college boy.
Carrie heard this, but sulked near the window. "Since you came back, Dr. Paul doesn't take me out to the movies and to dinner like he used to." "I used to pretend he wasn't my guardian, but my sweetheart, and that made me feel good inside, because all the ladies look at him, Cathy. He is handsome, even if he is old."
I sighed, for to me Paul would never be old. He was wonderfully young looking for his age of fortyeight. I took Carrie in my arms and consoled her, saying love was waiting for her just around the corner. "He'll be young too, Carrie, near your own age. And once he sees you, and really knows what you are, he won't have to be coerced, he'll be more than willing to love you." Quietly she got up and entered her own room, not convinced by anything I'd said.
Madame Marisha came often to check on my condition, and filled me with authoritative advice. "Now you keep up your practicing; play the ballet music to fill Julian's baby with love for beauty before he is born; inside you he'll know the dance is waiting for him." She glanced down at my feet that had finally healed. "How do those toes feel now?"
"Fine," I answered dully, though they ached when it rained.
Henny was there to wait on me hand and foot when Carrie wasn't around. She was growing old amazingly fast. I worried about her. She diligently tried to keep to the rigid diet both her "doctor-sons" insisted on, but she ate what she wanted to, never counting calories or cholesterol.
The long days of grief sped by more quickly because I had Julian's baby, part of him to keep with me. Soon Christmas was upon us, and I was so large I didn't feel I should show myself. Chris insisted, along with Paul, that it would be good therapy to go shopping.
I bought an antique gold locket to send to Madame Zolta, and inside I put two small photos of Julian and I, in our Romeo and Juliet costumes.
Shortly after Christmas her thank-you note arrived.
Dear Catherine, my own luv,
Yours is the best gift of all. I grieve for your beautiful dancing husband. I grieve for you most of all if you decide not to dance again just because you are to become mother! Long ago you would have been a prima ballerina if your husband had shown less arrogance and mo
re respect for those in authority. Keep in shape, do exercises, bring your baby with you and we will all live together in my place until you find new danseur to luv. Life offers many chances, not just one. Come back.
Her note put a wistful smile on my face. She even spelled love "luv." "What is it that makes you smile like that?" asked Paul, laying aside the medical journal that must have held only a part of his interest. Awkwardly I leaned forward to hand the note to him. He read it, then held out his arms, inviting me to come and cuddle on his lap and in his arms. Eagerly I accepted his invitation, I was hungry for affection. Life seemed to me nothing without a man.
"You could go on with your career," he said softly. "Though I pray to God you won't go back to New York and leave me again."
"Once upon a time," I began, "there was a beautiful set of blond parents who gave life to four children who should never have been. And they adored them beyond reason. Then one day the father was killed, and the mother changed, and forgot all about the love, affection and attention those four children so desperately needed. So, now that another beautiful husband is dead, I will not have my child feel neglected, or fatherless, or unwanted and unnecessary. When my child cries, I'll be there. I'll be there always to make my child feel secure, and very loved, and I'll read to him, and sing to him, and he'll never feel left out, or betrayed--as Chris felt betrayed by the one he loved most. '
"He? You sound as if you know." His iridescent eyes looked sad. "And are you going to be both mother and father to this child? Are you going to close the gates to any man who might want to share your life? Catherine, I hope you're not going to be one of those women who lets herself go sour because life doesn't always fulfill her wishes."
I leaned my head backward to stare into his eyes. "You don't still love me, do you?"
"Don't I?"