She stood up to go, smearing her tears with her balled handkerchief, tugging down her tight white skirt and trying to smile. "If you want me to quit so you can hire a new nurse for Jory and his children, I'll do that."
"No, Toni, stay on," I answered quickly, afraid she'd go anyway. I didn't want her to leave now that I knew without a doubt that she didn't love Bart anymore, and Jory had finally given up hope of Melodie returning to him. And with the final hope dead, Jory had at last turned his eyes on the woman he believed was his brother's mistress.
As soon as possible I was going to inform him differently. But . . . even as Toni left the room, I sat on and on, thinking of Bart and how sad it was that he couldn't hold on to love once he had it. Did he deliberately destroy love, afraid it would enslave him as he often accused me of having enslaved Chris, my own brother?
The endless days crept by. No longer did Toni's eyes follow Bart with wistful yearning, pleading mutely with him to love her again as he had in the beginning. I began to admire the way she could keep her poise regardless of some of the insulting innuendoes Bart made during meal times. He took her former love for him and turned it against her, making it seem she was loose, depraved, immoral and he'd been wrongfully seduced.
Dinner after dinner, sitting there and watching the two drift further and further apart, driven there by all the ugly words Bart found so easy to say.
Toni took my place and played the games I used to entertain Jory with . . . only she could do so much more to light up his eyes and make him feel a man again.
Bit by bit the days began to mellow, the brown grass showed spikes of fresh green, the crocus came up in the woods, the daffodils blossomed, the tulips fired into flame and the Grecian windflowers that Jory and I had planted everywhere the grass didn't grow turned the hills into paint-smeared pallets. Chris and I stood again on the balcony watching the geese return north as we stared up at our old friend and sometimes enemy, the moon. I couldn't take my eyes from the winged skein as they disappeared beyond the hills
Life grew 'better with the coming of summer, when the snow couldn't keep Chris away during the weekends. Tensions eased now that we had the great outdoors to escape to.
In June the twins were one year and six months old and able to run freely anywhere we would permit. We had swings from which they couldn't fall hung from tree limbs, and how happy they were to be swung high . . . or what they considered high enough to be dangerous. They pulled the blossoms off the best of my flowers, but I didn't care--we had thousands blooming, enough to fill all the rooms with daily fresh bouquets.
Now Bart was insisting that not only the twins should attend church services but Chris and I and Jory and Toni as well. It seemed a small enough thing to do. Each Sunday we sat in our front row pews and stared up at the beautiful stained-glass window behind the pulpit. The twins always sat between Jory and me. Joel would don a black robe as he preached fire-andbrimstone sermons. Bart sat beside me, holding my hand in such a tight grip I had to listen or have my bones broken. Next to Toni, deliberately separated from me by my second son, was Chris. I knew those sermons were meant for us, to save us from eternal hellfires. The twins were restless, like all children their age, and didn't like the pew, the confinement, the dullness of the overlong services. Only when we stood up to sing hymns did they stare up at us and seem enchanted.
"Sing, sing," encouraged Bart, leaning to pinch tiny arms or tug on golden locks.
"Take your hands off my children!" snapped Jory. "They will sing or not sing, as is their choice."
It was on again, the war between brothers.
Autumn again, then Halloween when Chris and I took the twins by their small hands and led them to the one neighbor we considered "safe" enough not to recriminate us or our children. Our little goblins timidly accepted their first Halloween trick-or-treat candy, then screamed all the way home with the thrill of having two Hershey bars and two packs of chewing gum of their very own.
Winter came, and Christmas and the New Year started without anything special happening, for this year Cindy didn't fly home. She was too busy with her budding career to do more than call long distance or write short but informative letters.
Bart and Toni now moved in different universes.
Perhaps I was not the only one who guessed that Jory had fallen deeply in love with Toni, now that all attempts at restoring a brotherly relationship with Bart had failed. I couldn't blame Jory, not when Bart had taken Melodic and driven her away and was even now trying to hold fast to Toni just because he could detect Jory's growing interest. To keep Jory from having her, he was turning again toward Toni . . .
Loving Toni gave Jory new reasons for living. It was written in his eyes, written on his new zeal for getting up early and beginning all those difficult exercises, standing for the first time, using parallel bars we'd had put in his room. As soon as the water was warm enough, he swam the length of our large swimming pool three times in early mornings and late evenings.
Maybe Toni was still waiting for Bart to make her his wife, though she often denied this. "No, Cathy, I don't love him now. I only pity him for not knowing who or what he is and, more importantly, what he wants for himself but money and more money." It occurred to me that, inexplicably, Toni was as rooted here as any one of us.
The Sunday church services made me nervous and tired. The strong words shouted from the weak lungs of an old man brought back terrifying memories of another old man I'd seen but once. Devil's issue. Devil's spawn. Evil seed planted in the wrong soil. Even wicked thoughts were judged the same as wicked deeds--and what wasn't sinful to Joel? Nothing. Nothing at all.
"We're not going to attend anymore," I stated firmly to Chris, "and we were fools to even try to please Bart. I don't .like the kind of ideas Joel is planting in the twin's impressionable young heads." True to Chris's agreement, he and I refused to attend "church" services or allow the twins to hear all that shouting about Hell and its punishments.
Joel came to the play area in the gardens, under the trees where there were a sandbox, swings, a slide and a spin-a-round that the twins loved to play on. It was a fine sunny day in July, and he looked rather touching and sweet as he sat between the twins and began to teach them how to do cat cradles, twining the string and intriguing the curious twins. They abandoned the sand- pile with the pretty awning overhead and sat beside him, looking up at him in bright anticipation of making a new friend out of an old enemy.
"An old man knows many little skills to entertain small children. Do you know I can make airplanes and boats out of paper? And the boats will sail on the water."
Their round eyes of amazement didn't please me. I frowned. Anyone could do that.
"Save your energies for writing new sermons, Joel," I sai
d, meeting his meek, watery eyes. "I grew tired of the old ones. Where is the New Testament in your sermons? Teach Bart about that. Christ was born. He did deliver his Sermon on the Mount. Deliver to him that particular sermon, Uncle. Speak to us of forgiveness, of doing unto others as you would have done onto you. Tell us of the bread cast upon the waters of forgiveness returning to us tenfold."
"Forgive me if I have been neglectful of our Lord's one truly begotten son," he said humbly.
"Come, Cory, Carrie," I called, getting up to leave. "Let's go see what Daddy is doing."
Joel's lowered head jerked upright. His faded blue eyes took on heaven's deeper blue. I bit down on my tongue to observe the twisted smile that Joel displayed. He nodded sagely. "Yes, I know. To you they are the 'other twins'--those born of evil seed planted in the wrong soil."
"How dare you say that to me!" I flared.