I felt sick, ready to throw up. Ready to cry out and run and do something wild and painful to myself, like Bart did when he was hurt and disturbed. Bart-- for the first time I was feeling what it was to be like Bart. I stood on unsteady ground, afraid everything might crumble if I dared to move.
Through my mind kept running the steady stream of age, years and years of age difference, and Dad wasn't that much older than Mom, only two years and a few months. She was born in April, he was born in November. And they were so much alike in coloring, in background, they spoke without even saying a word, just a glance and they understood.
Madame was sitting coiled, ready, so it seemed, to spring upon me--or Mom? Deeper lines etched around her narrowed eyes, her grim-thin lips. She pursed her lips and reached into some hidden pocket of her drab outfit for her pack of cigarettes. "Now," she said as if to herself, seemingly forgetting I was still there, "what was it Catherine gave as an excuse the last time Paul didn't come? Let's see, she called first, long distance, explaining Chris would come with her because Paul was too ill with his heart trouble to travel. She was leaving him in the care of his nurse. Thought that odd at the time, that she'd leave him when he needed a nurse, and travel with Chris." She bit down on her lower lip, chewed it unconsciously. "And last summer no visit because Bart hated ole graves and ole ladies--and I suspect, me in particular. Spoiled brat. This summer they don't come again because Bart has driven a rusty nail into his knee and develops blood-poisoning or something similar. Damn kid is more trouble than he's worth--serves her right to for playing around so soon after my son's death. And Paul has heart trouble, on and on he has heart trouble, yet he never has a fatal attack. Every summer she gives me that same worn excuse. Paul can't travel because of his heart--but Chris, he can always travel, heart or no heart."
Abruptly she stopped talking, for I had moved to leave. I tried to make my eyes blank and erase all the milling suspicions I didn't want her to see. Never had I felt more afraid than I did at that moment, just watching her scheming eyes, the wheels churning, planning something I knew.
At that moment she jumped to her feet with great agility. "Put on your coat. I'm going home with you to have a long chat with your mother."
The Terrible Truth
.
"Jory," began Madame when we were in her ratty old car and driving homeward. "Your parents don't confide in you much about their past, do they?"
"They tell us enough," I said stiffly, resenting the way she kept prying, when it didn't matter, it didn't. "They are very good listeners, and everyone says they make the best kind of conversationlists."
She snorted. "Being a good listener is the perfect way to avoid answering questions you'd rather ignore."
"Now you look here, Grandmother. My parents like their privacy. They have asked both Bart and me not to talk about our home life to our friends, and after all, it does make good sense for a family to stick together."
"Really . . . ?"
"Yes!" I shouted, "I like my privacy too!"
"You are of an age to need privacy; they are not." "Madame, my mother was a celebrity of sorts, and Dad is a doctor, and Mom has been married three times. I don't think she wants her former sister-in-law, Amanda, to know where we live."
"Why not?"
"My aunt Amanda is not a very nice person, that's all."
"Jory, do you trust me?"
"Yes," I said, but I didn't.
"Then tell me all you know about Paul. Tell me if he's as sick as she says, or if he is alive at all. Tell me why Christopher lives in your home, and is the one who acts like the father of you and Bart."
Oh, I didn't know what to say, and I was trying hard to be a good listener so she'd keep on talking and I'd be able to put the pieces of the puzzle together. Certainly I didn't want her to get the picture before I did.
A long silence grew, and finally she spoke. "You know, after Julian died, your mother lived with you in Paul's home, then she took you and her younger sister, Carrie, to the mountains of Virginia. Her mother lived there in a fine home. It seems Catherine was determined to ruin her mother's second marriage. The husband of your mother's mother was named Bartholomew Winslow."
That cursed darn lump came back in my throat and ached there. I wasn't going to tell her that Bart was the son of anyone but Daddy Paul, I wasn't!
"Grandmother, if you want me to keep on loving you, please do not tell me ugly things about my mother."
Her skinny hand reached to squeeze mine. "All right, I admire you for being so loyal. I just want you to know the facts." About that time she almost careened off the road into another ditch.
"Grandmother, I know how to drive. If you are tired and can't see the road signs very well, I can take over, and you could sit back and relax."
"Let a fourteen-year-old kid drive me around? Are you crazy? Are you saying you don't feel safe
with me at the wheel? All my life I've been driven around, first in hay wagons, then carriages, then taxis or limousines, but three weeks before I came here, soon after your letter came telling about your mother's accident, I took driver's lessons at the age of seventyfour . . . and you see now how well I learned."
Finally, after four near misses, we made the turn into our circular drive. And there out front was Bart stalking some invisible animal with his pocketknife held like a dagger, ready to thrust and kill.
Madame ignored him as she pulled to a stop. Briskly I jumped out and raced to open her door, but she was out before I got there, and just behind her Bart was stabbing into the air with his knife. "Death to the enemy! Death to all old ladies who wear black raggedy- clothes! Death, death, death!"
Calmly, as if she didn't hear and didn't see, Madame strode on. I shoved Bart aside and