If There Be Thorns (Dollanganger 3)

Closed the book and yawned.

Madame M

. Another letter had come from my grandmother Marisha to announce that she was on her way to take over my mother's ballet class. "And I'll have the chance to see my grandson more often, and give him the benefit of my experience."

Mom was none too happy, since she and Madame M. did not have a close or warm

relationship, and this had always bothered me. I loved them both, and wanted them to love each other.

We were all waiting for Madame to show up, all starving because already she was an hour late. She'd telephoned to say she didn't want anyone to meet her, as she was independent and not accustomed to being waited on. Nevertheless, Mom had helped Emma prepare a gourmet meal, and now it was growing cold.

"Lord, but that woman can be inconsiderate," complained Dad after looking at his watch for the tenth time. "If she had allowed me to meet her at the airport, she'd be here by now."

"Isn't it strange," asked Mom with a mocking smile, "when she always insisted that her students be punctual."

Finally, an hour after Dad ate alone and hurried off to do his hospital rounds, Mom retired to her bedroom to work on her book until my grandmother arrived.

"Bart," I called, "come on and play some game with me. Checkers?"

"No!" he bellowed, keeping to his dark corner, his eyes black and mean as he crouched there, almost unblinking. "I'm wishing for that ole lady to fall from the s

ky."

"That's mean, Bart. Why do you always say such hateful things?"

He refused to answer, just sat on staring at me. The doorbell rang. I jumped up and ran to open the door.

My grandmother stood there smiling and rather disheveled looking.

She was at least seventy-four, I knew that, crinkled, old and gray. Sometimes her hair was jet black, and sometimes it had two inches of white near the roots. Bart said it made her look like a skunk or an old black seal. He thought her hair was so slick she kept it oiled. But I thought she looked wonderful when she threw her arms about me and hugged me close, tears streaking her rouged cheeks. She didn't even give Bart a glance.

"Jory, Jory, how handsome you are," she said. Her bun of hair was so huge I guessed it might be false.

"Can I call you Grandmother when we're not in class?"

"Sure, yah," she agreed, nodding like a bird. "But only when nobody else is around, you hear?"

"There's Bart," I said to remind her to be polite-- which she seldom was. She didn't like Bart, and he didn't like her. She gave Bart a brief nod, then casually dismissed him as if he didn't exist.

"I'm so glad to have a few moments alone with you,"

Madame gushed, hugging me again. She pulled me to the family room sofa, and together we sat while Bart stayed in his dim corner. "I tell you, Jory, when you wrote and said you weren't coming again this summer, I felt ill, really ill. I made up my mind then and there that I'd had enough of this once-a-year grandson, and I was selling my own dance studio and coming out here to help your mother. Of course I knew she wouldn't want me, but so what? I cannot endure two long years of longing to see my only grandchild.

"The flight here was ghastly," she went on. "Turbulence all the way. They searched me too before I boarded, like some criminal. Then we had to circle round and round the airport, waiting our turn to land. It made me sick enough to vomit. Finally, just before our plane ran out of fuel, we landed--bumpiest landing, I thought my neck would break. Great God in heaven, you should have heard what that man wanted for his rented car. He must have thought I was made of money. Since I've come to stay, I decided then and there I'd buy a car of my own. Not a new one, but a nice old one that Julian would have loved. Have I told you before your father loved to tinker around with old cars and fix them up so they'd run?"

Boy had she told me that before.

"So, I paid those crooks the exhorbitant price of eight hundred dollars, and stepped into my new red car and took off for your place, reading a map as my car choked and chugged along. I felt so happy to be on my way to you, my beloved grandson, George's only heir. Why, it was just like it used to be when your father was an adolescent, and he'd rush home so proud to take me for a spin in his new car made out of old junk he salvaged from the city dump."

Her sparkling jet eyes seemed young, and she won me again with her affection, her praise. ". . . and like old ladies everywhere, you have to understand once I get started thinking backward all sorts of memories are triggered. Your grandfather felt so happy the day Julian was born. I held your father in my arms and stared up at my husband who was so handsome, like Julian, like you, and I could have burst with the pride I felt to give birth at my age for the first time with so little difficulty. And such a perfect baby your father was, so wonderful from his very beginning."

I wanted to dare and ask how old she was when my father was born--but I didn't have the nerve. Somehow the question must have shown in my eyes. "None of your damn business how old I am," she snapped, then leaned to kiss me again. "My, but you are even better looking than your father was at your age, and I didn't think that possible. I always told Julian he would have looked better with a healthy suntan, but he'd do anything to defy me, anything-- even keep himself unnaturally pale." Sadness clouded her eyes. To my surprise she glanced then at Bart, who was listening too--and another surprise, he seemed interested.

She still wore the same black dress that seemed stiff with age, and over that she wore a ratty old leopard- skin bolero that had seen better days. "No one really knew your father, Jory, just as no one really possessed him That is, no one but your mother."

She sighed, then went on as if she had to say it all before my mother appeared. "So, I've determined I have to know my Julian's son better than I knew him. I've decided too you have to love me, because I was never sure Julian ever did. I keep telling myself that the son born of the union between my son and your mother would have to make the most wonderful dancer, with none of Julian's hang-ups. Your mother is very dear to me, Jory, very dear, though she refuses to believe that. I admit I used to be nasty to her sometimes. She took that as my true feeling, but I was only angry because she never seemed to appreciate my son."

Uncomfortable with this sort of talk, I shifted away from her; my first loyalty was to my mother, not to her. She noticed my attitude but went on regardless: