Dad bowed his head. "Did you have to do that?"
"Yes," she said. "I wanted you to see what I did so I would no longer look like Cathy." She gestured to her wooden rocker. "See that chair? I have one in every room in this house." She indicated all the comfortable chairs with fluffy soft cushions. "I sit in hard wooden chairs to punish myself. I wear the same black rags every day. I keep mirrors on the walls so I can see how ugly and old I am now. I want to suffer for the sins I committed against my children. I despise this veil, but I wear it. I can't see well through the veil, but I deserve that too. I do what I can to make the same kind of hell for myself as I made for my own flesh and blood, and I keep on believing that there will come a time when you and Cathy will recognize how I am trying to atone for my sins so that you can forgive me and return to me, and we can be a whole family again. And when you and Cathy can do that, I can go peacefully into my grave. When I meet your father again, perhaps he won't judge me too harshly."
"Oh," I cried out spontaneously, "I forgive you for whatever you did! I'm sorry you have to wear black all the time, with that veil over your face!" I turned to Dad and tugged on his arm. "Say you forgive her, Dad. Please don't make her suffer more! She is your mother, and I could always forgive my mother, no matter what she did."
He spoke to my grandmother as if he hadn't even heard me. "You were always good at persuading us to do what you wanted." I'd never heard him speak so coolly. "But I'm not a boy anymore," he went on. "Now I know how to resist your appeal, for I have a woman who has never let me down in any important way. She has taught me not to be as gullible as I once was. You want Bart because you think he should have been yours. But you cannot have Bart. Bart belongs to us. I used to think Cathy did wrong when she sought revenge and stole Bart Winslow from you. But she didn't do wrong--she did what she had to do. And so we have two sons instead of one."
"Christopher," she cried, looking desperate, "you don't want the world to know of your
indiscretion, surely you don't."
"Yours too," he responded coldly. "If you expose us, you expose yourself as well. And remember, we were only children. Who do you think a judge and jury would favor--you or us?"
"For your own sakes!" she called as we stepped from her parlor and headed toward the double front doors (he had to push me ahead of him, for I was holding back, pitying her), "love me again, Christopher! Let me redeem myself, please!"
Dad whirled about, furious and red-faced. "I cannot forgive you! You think only of yourself. As you have always thought only of yourself. I don't know you, Mrs. Winslow. I wish to God I had never known you!"
Oh, Dad, I thought, you're going to be sorry. Forgive her, please.
"Christopher," she called once more, her voice so weak and thin it sounded old and brittle, "when you and Cathy can love me again, you'll find better lives for yourselves and for your children. There is so much I could do to help if only you would let me."
"Money?" he asked with scorn. "Are you going to use blackmail? We have enough money. We have enough happiness. We have managed to survive, and managed to love, and we have not killed anyone to achieve what we have."
Killed? Had she killed?
Dad pulled me by my hand as he stalked to the door. I said to him on the way home from her mansion, "Dad, it seemed I could smell Bart in that room. He might have been hiding and listening. He was there, I'm sure of it."
"All right," he answered in a tired way. "You go back and look for him."
"Dad, why don't you forgive her? I believe she's truly sorry for whatever she did to make you hate her--and she is your mother." I smiled and tugged on his arm, wanting him to go back with me and say he loved her. "Wouldn't it be nice to have both my grandmothers here for Christmas?"
He shook his head, and strode away, leaving me to race back to the big house. He'd taken only a few steps before he turned. "Jory, promise not to tell your mother anything about tonight."
I promised, but I was unhappy about it, unhappy about everything I'd heard. I didn't know if I had heard the full truth about my dad and his mother, or only part of a long, secret story never told to me. I wanted to run after Dad and ask why he hated his mother so much, but I knew from his expression that he wouldn't tell me. In some odd way, I was glad not to know more.
"If Bart is over there, you bring him home and sneak him into his room, Jory. Please, for God's sake, don't mention anything to your mother about the woman next door again. I'll take care of her. She'll go away, and it will be just as it was before she came."
Being what I was, I believed, though I felt sorry for his mother. I didn't owe her the loyalty I owed him, but I couldn't keep the most important question from my tongue. "Dad, what did your mother do that makes you hate her so much? And if you hate her; why did you always insist upon going to visit her, when Mom wouldn't?"
He stared off into space, and, as if from a far distance, his voice came to me. "Jory, I fear you will know all of the truth soon enough. Give me time to find the right words, the true explanation that will satisfy your need to know. But believe this: your mother and I always intended to tell you. We were only waiting for you and Bart to grow up enough, and when you hear our story, I think you will understand how I can both love and hate my moth
er. It's sad to say, but there are many children who feel ambiguous about their mothers or fathers."
I hugged him, even if it was unmanly. I loved him, and if that was unmanly too, then darn if being manly was so great. "Don't you worry about Bart, Dad," I said. "I'll bring him home safely."
I managed to squeeze between the gates just in the nick of time. Softly they clanked behind me. Then . . . silence. If there was a more silent place in the world than those spacious grounds, I've never been there.
I jumped and quickly dodged behind a tree. John Amos Jackson had Bart by the hand, and he was leading him away from the house.
"Now you know what you have to do, don't you?" "Yes, sir," intoned Bart, as if in a stupor.
"You know what will happen if you don't do as I say, don't you?"
"Yes, sir. Bad things will happen to everyone, even me."
"Yessss, bad thingsss, thingssss you will regret." "Bad things I will regret," he repeated flatly. "From woman man is born into sin . . ."
"From woman man is born into sin."