He stared at me in the strangest way, as if something I'd said had triggered thoughts in his head. As always he had places to go and patients to see, but this time he called his hospital and told them he had an emergency at home. And he did, you bet he did!
I often looked at my mother's third husband and wished he were my own blood father, but at that moment when he canceled his appointments to save Bart--and Mom--I ktew in all the ways that counted that he was my true father.
That evening, shortly after dinner, Mom went to her room to work on her book. Cindy was in bed and Bart was out in the yard when Dad and I donned warm sweaters and slipped out the front door.
It was murky with fog, cold with damp as we strod
e side by side toward the huge shadowy mansion with its impressive black iron gates. "Dr. Christopher Sheffield," said Dad into the black box attached to the side of the gates. "I want to see the lady of the house." As the gates swung silently open, he asked why I'd never learned the woman's name. I shrugged, as if she didn't have a name, and as far as I was concerned, didn't need one. Bart had never called her anything but Grandmother.
At the front door Dad banged the brass knocker. Finally we heard shuffling noises in the hall, and John Amos Jackson admitted us.
"Our lady tires easily," said John Amos Jackson, his thin, long face hollow-cheeked, gaunteyed, his hands trembling, his narrow back bent. "Don't say anything to upset her."
I stared at the way Dad looked at him, frowning and perplexed as the bald-headed man shuffled away, leaving us to enter a room whose door he'd opened.
The lady in black was seated in her rocking chair.
"I'm sorry to interrupt," said Dad, staring at her intensely. "My name is Dr. Christopher Sheffield and I live next door. This is my eldest son, Jory, whom you have met before."
She seemed excited and nervous as she gestured us in and indicated the chairs we were to use. We perched tentatively, not intending to stay very long. Seconds stretched by that seemed like hours before Dad leaned forward to speak: "You have a lovely home." He glanced around again at all the elaborate chairs and other fine furnishings, and he stared at the paintings too. "I have the strangest sense of deja vu," he murmured almost to himself.
Her black-veiled head bowed low. Her hands spread expansively, supplicating, it seemed, for his understanding for her lack of words. I knew she spoke English perfectly well. Why was she faking?
Except for those aristocratic hands with all the glittering rings she sat so still, but her hands fluttered, knotted the pearls I knew she wore beneath her black dress. His eyes shot her way, and quickly she sat on her hands.
"You don't speak English?" Dad asked in a tight voice.
Vigorously she nodded, indicating she could understand English. His brows knitted. Puzzledlooking again. "Well, to get to the point of our visit, my son Jory has told me you and my youngest son Bart are very familiar. Jory says you give Bart expensive gifts and feed him sweets between meals. I'm sorry, Mrs. . . . Mrs? He paused, waiting for her to give her name. When she didn't, he went on: "When Bart comes again I want you to send him home unrewarded. He's done a number of ugly things that deserve punishment. His mother and I cannot have a stranger coming between Bart and our authority. When you indulge him here we face the consequences." All this time he was doing his darndest to see her hands--as she did her best to keep them hidden.
What was this all about? Why did Dad want to see her hands? Was it all those fabulous rings that held his fascination? I'd never guessed he liked things like that, since Mom had an aversion for jewelry of any kind but earrings.
And then, when Dad seemed to be looking toward another of her original oil paintings, her hands came into view and fluttered up near her throat to the magnet of her hidden pearls.
His head jerked around. Dad spoke then out of context, startling me, startling her. "Those rings you wear--I've seen those very rings before!"
When she too obviously shoved her hands inside her full sleeves, Dad jumped to his feet as if thunderstruck. He stared at her, spun around once more to survey the sumptuous room and once more nailed her with his eyes. She cringed.
"The . . . best . . . that . . . money . . . can . . . buy," Dad said slowly, separating each word. I caught his bitterness, though I didn't understand. It seemed lately I never understood anything.
"Nothing too good for the elegant and aristocratic Mrs. Bartholomew Winslow." he said. "Those rings, Mrs. Winslow--why didn't you have the good sense to hide them away? Then your disguise might have worked, though I doubt it. I know your voice, and your gestures too well. You wear black rags but your fingers sparkle with your status symbols. Do you forget what those symbols did to us? Do you think I've forgotten those endless days of suffering from the cold or heat, from the loneliness-- all our pain symbolized by a string of pearls and those rings on your fingers?"
I was shocked and bewildered. Never before had I seen Dad so upset. He wasn't easily provoked-- and who was this woman he knew and I didn't? Why had he called her Mrs. Bartholomew Winslow--the very name of my half brother? Could it be true she really was Bart's grandmother--and Bart might not be the son of Daddy Paul?
Dad railed on. "Why, Mrs. Winslow, why? Did you think you could hide here and we wouldn't find out? How can you fool anyone when even the way you sit and hold your head betrays your true identity? Haven't you done enough to hurt me and Cathy? Do you have to return to do more? I should have guessed that you were behind Bart's confusion--behind his weird behavior. What have you been doing to our son?"
"Our son?" she asked. "Don't you mean, more correctly, her son?"
"Mother!" he raged before he looked at me guiltily.
Looking from one to the other of them, I thought, how wonderful and how strange. At last his mother was free from the loony bin and she really was Bart's grandmother after all. But why did he call her Mrs. Winslow? If she was his mother and Dr. Paul's mother, then she'd have to be Mrs. Sheffield-- wouldn't she?
I was thinking all of this even as she said, "Sir, my rings are not that exceptional. Bart has told me you're not his real father, so please leave my home. I promise never to admit Bart again. I didn't come to harm him--or anyone." It seemed she gave my father a warning look. I guessed she was giving him a road out on account of me.
"My dear mother, the game is up." She sobbed, then covered her veiled face with her hands. He shot out with no regard for her tears, "When did your doctors release you?"
"Last summer," she whispered. Her hands lowered so she could use her voice better for pleading. "Even before I moved here I had my lawyers do what they could to help you and Cathy buy whatever piece of land you selected. I ordered them to keep me anonymous, knowing you wouldn't want my help."
Dad fell into a chair, bent over to rest his elbows heavily on his knees.