ay out of my wing?" Yet, in his drunken state, he looked glad to see me.
He wove his way uncertainly to a chair, took careful aim and fell down, closing his darkly shadowed eyes. I got up to massage the back of his neck while he drooped his head forward and held it as if it pained him dreadfully. His hands cupped his face as my hands took away the pain. Then he sighed, leaned back and stared fuzzily up into my eyes. "I should know better than to drink," he murmured in a slurred way, sighing as I stepped back and sat before him. "It always makes me do crazy things, and then I feel sick. Stupid to keep it up when liquor has never done anything for me but add to my problems. Mother, what's wrong with me? I can't even drink myself into a forgetful stupor. I'm always too sensitive. I overheard Jory tell you one day he was building that wonderful clipper ship to give to me, and I was secretly thrilled. No one has ever spent months and months making me a gift--and then it's broken. He did such a great job, taking so many pains to see that everything was exactly right. Now all that work is in the trash pile."
He sounded childlike, vulnerable, easy to reach and I was going to try, try to give him every ounce of love I had. Not mean when he was drunk, not silly but loveable, touching in his humanity. "Darling, Jory will gladly make you another," I volunteered, not sure he would be glad to do all that tedious work a second time.
"No, Mother, I don't want it now. Something would happen to that one, too. That's the way my life goes. Life has a cruel way of taking from me what I want most. There's no happiness or love waiting for me around the bend of tomorrow. No gaining what I want--my heart's desire, as I used to call the impossible dreams of my youth. Wasn't that childish and silly? No wonder you pitied me--I wanted so much. Too much. I was never satisfied. You and that man you love gave me everything I ever said I wanted, and many things I didn't even mention, and still you never gave me happiness. So I've decided not to care about anything anymore. The Christmas ball wouldn't have given me pleasure even if the guests had showed up. I still would have failed to impress them. Inside, all along, I knew my party would prove just another failure, like all the other parties you used to give me. Still I went ahead and hypnotized myself into believing that if tonight was successful it would set a precedent, so to speak, and all my life would then change for the better."
My second son was talking to me as he'd never done before. Liquor was loosening his tongue.
"Stupid, aren't I?" he went on. "Cindy's right when she calls me a jerk and a creep. I look in my mirrors and see a handsome man, very much like my father, whom you say you loved more than any other man. But I don't feel I am handsome inside. I'm uglier than sin inside. Then I wake up, feel the fresh morning mountain air, see the dew sparkling on the roses, see the winter sun shining on the snow, and that tells me maybe life is going to offer me my chance after all. I have hopes of one day finding the real me--the one I can like, and that's why, months ago, I decided to make this the happiest Christmas of all our lives, not only for Jory, who deserves it, but for you and for myself. You think I don't love Jory, but I do."
He bowed his head into his waiting hands and sighed heavily. "Confession time, Mother. I hate Jory, too, I don't deny that. But I hold no love at all for Cindy. She's done nothing but steal from me--and she isn't even one of us. Jory's always had the largest portion of your love, the part you've got left over after giving your brother the best. I've never had the major portion of anyone's love. I thought that Melodie had given me that. Now I know she'd have taken any man just to replace Jory. Any man at all who was available and willing, and that's why I hate her now, just as much as I hate Cindy."
His hands came down to show how bitterly his dark eyes glowed; the reflection from the fire made them like red-hot coals. Those drinks had made his breath reek. My heart almost stopped beating. What would he want? I stood up, moved behind his chair and slid my arms around his neck before my head lowered to rest on top of his disheveled hair. "Bart, you drove away tonight and left me sleepless and waiting for you to come home. Tell me what can I do to help. Nobody here hates you like you think. Not even Cindy. Often you make us angry because you disappoint us, not because we want to reject you."
"Send Chris away," he said tonelessly as if he said this without hope of ever seeing Chris gone from my life. "That will tell me you love me. Only when you break with him can I feel good about myself, and you."
Pain stabbed me. "He'd die without me, Bart," I whispered. "I know you can't understand the way it is between us, and I myself can't explain why he needs me, and why I need him, except we were young and alone and in a terrifying situation, and we had only each other. We created a fantasy dreamlike world when we were locked away and trapped ourselves in so doing, and now that we're both middle-aged we still live in that fantasy. We can't survive without it. To lose him now would destroy not only him, but me as well."
"But Mother!" he cried out passionately, turning to hold me, to press his face between my breasts, "you'd still have me!" He gazed up into my face, his arms around my waist. "I want you to purify your soul before it's too late. What you do with Chris is against the rules of God and society. Let him go, Mother. Please let him go--before someone does something terrible, let go of your brother's love."
I drew away, brushed back a fallen wisp of my hair. Feeling defeated and hopeless, for it was so impossible, what he asked. "Would you hurt me, Bart?"
He bit down on his lip, a childish habit that came back when he was disturbed. "I don't know. Sometimes I want to. More than I want to hurt him. You smile at me with such sweetness, and my heart reaches out, wanting you never to change. Then I go to bed and hear whispers in my head that tell me you are evil and deserve to die. When I think of you dead and in the ground, tears fill my eyes and my heart feels empty and broken, heavier than lead--and I'm undone. I feel so cold, so alone and scared. Mother, am I crazy? Why is it I can't fall in love with confidence that it will last? Why can't I forget about what you do?
"I thought for a while that Melodic and I had it made. She seemed to me so perfect, and then she began to turn fat and ugly. She whined and nagged, and complained about my home. Even Cindy was more appreciative. I took her to the best restaurants, to plays and movies, and tried to take her mind off Jory, but she wouldn't let it go. She kept talking of the ballet and how much it means to her, and that's when I found out I was only a substitute for Jory and she never loved me, never loved me at all. She used me as a way to forget her loss for a while. Now she doesn't even look like the girl I fell in love with. She wants pity and sympathy, not love. She took my love and turned it around, so now I can't stand to look at her."
Sighing, he lowered his eyes and said in such a low voice I could hardly hear him, "I see that kid, Cindy, and realize she must look the way you used to, and a little bit of me knows why Chris fell in love with you. That makes me hate her worse. She teases me, you know. Cindy would like to creep under my skin and make me do something as wicked as what Chris does with you. She strolls around in her bedroom wearing nothing but bikini bra and bottoms. And she knows I check her rooms before I retire. Tonight she had on a nightgown so transparent I could see right through it. She just stood there and let me stare. Joel tells me she's nothing, but a whore."
"Then don't go to her bedroom," I said with control. "Lord knows we don't have to see anyone who lives here if we don't want to--and Joel is a bigoted, narrow-minded fool. All Cindy's generation wears next-to-nothing undergarments. But you're right, she shouldn't parade around in them. I'll speak to her about that in the morning. You're sure she displayed herself deliberately?"
"You must have done the same thing," he said, dully accusing. "All those years locked up with Chris did you show him your body--deliberately?"
How could I tell him how it had been and make him understand? He'd never understand. "We, all tried to be decent, Bart. It's so long ago and I don't like to remember. I try to forget. I want to think that Chris is my husband and not my brother. We can't have children, never could. Doesn't that make it better--a litt
le better?"
Shaking, his head, his eyes darkened. "Go away. You
just give me excuses, and you bring it all back, the sickness I used to feel when I found out about you and him. I was just a kid wanting to feel clean and wholesome. I still want to feel that way. That's why I keep showering, shaving, picking up, ordering the servants to scrub, vacuum, dust and dust, and do it every day. I'm trying to eliminate the dirt you and Chris put in my life--and I can't do it!"
There was no comfort in Chris's arms as I tried to sleep. I drifted into an uneasy dream. Then I bolted awake to hear distant screams. Leaving my bed for the second time in the same night, I raced toward the screams.
Disoriented, I stared down at Melodie on the floor of the long corridor. She seemed to be wearing a white nightgown with ragged red stripes. She crawled along, moaning, causing me to think I was still dreaming. Her long hair was in damp disarray, her brow dripped sweat--and behind her was a trail of blood!
Blindly she stared up at me, imploring. "Cathy, my baby is coming . . ." She screamed, then slowly, slowly, her pleading eyes went blank before she keeled over in a dead faint
I ran for Chris, shaking him awake. "It's Melodie!" I cried as he sat up and rubbed at his tired eyes. "She's in labor. Right now she's fainted, lying face down in the hall with a trail of blood behind her . . ."
"Take it easy," he soothed, leaping out of bed and pulling on his bathrobe. "First babies are notoriously slow in arriving." Nevertheless there was a look of anxiety in his eyes, as if he were mentally calculating just how long Melodie had been in labor. "I've got everything I'll need in my bag," he said as he rushed about gathering up blankets, clean sheets, towels. He still had the same black doctor's bag they'd given him when he graduated from medical school, as if that bag were sacred to him "No time to get her to the hospital if she's hemorrhaging like you say. Now all you have to do is rush down to the kitchen and put on all that hot water all doctors in the movies seem to need."
I yelled impatiently, thinking he just wanted me out of his way. "We're not in the movies, Chris!"
We were in the hall now, and he was bending over Melodie. "I know that--it would help if you did something except run beside me and act hysterical. Now move aside, Catherine," he barked as he leaned to pick Melodie up. In his arms she seemed to weigh no more than a feather, while her middle seemed a mountain high.
In her room he stuffed pillows under her hips, asked for more white towels, sheets, newspapers, even as he glared at me. "Move, Catherine, move! From the position of the baby, its head is down and is already well on its way. RUN! I do have to sterilize a few instruments. Damn her for not speaking up and telling me she'd started her contractions early. While we were opening our gifts, she just sat there and said nothing. What the hell is wrong with everybody in this house? All she had to do was speak up and say something!"
Even before he finished muttering all this, as if to himself more than to me, I fled down the long dim halls, dashed recklessly down the back stairs closest to the kitchen. I drew hot water from the tap, put the kettle on to boil. Anxiously I waited, thinking Melodie enjoyed pity and wanted to punish us, and perhaps even wanted her baby to die so she could go back to New York unencumbered by a crippled husband and a fatherless child.