Backing toward the door, I was filled with pity for him--and for her. Gently I eased out but left the door ajar just enough to hear and see what went on. I was so afraid Melodie would take this chance to leave, or else she'd do something to kill his desire to live . . . and if I could, I would do anything to stop her.
One by one Melodie picked up the fallen roses. She threw old, dying flowers into the trash basket, filled the vase with water in the small adjacent bath, then carefully arranged the red roses, so carefully, taking so long, as if just by doing something she could hold off destroying him When she'd done that, she turned again to the bed and picked up the three gifts. "Don't you want to open them?" she asked weakly.
"I don't need anything," he said flatly, again staring at the wall so she saw only the back of his curly head.
From somewhere she drew courage. "I think you'll like what's inside. I've heard you say many a time what you wanted . . ."
"All I ever wanted was to dance until I was forty," he choked'out. "Now that is over, and I don't need a wife or a dance partner, I don't need or want anything."
She put the gifts on the bed and stood there wringing her pale, thin hands, her silent tears beginning to fall. "I love you, Jory," she choked. "I want to do everything right, but I'm not brave like your mother and father, and that's why I didn't visit before. Your mother wanted me to say I was sick, unable to come, but I could have come. I stayed in that house and cried, hoping I could find the strength I needed to smile when I did eventually come. I'm coming apart with shame for being weak, for not doing all I should for you when you need me . . . and the longer I stayed away, the harder it became for me to show up. I feared you wouldn't talk to me, wouldn't look at me, and I'd do something stupid to make you hate me. I don't want a divorce, Jory. I'm still your wife. Chris took me to an obstetrician yesterday, and our baby is progressing normally."
Pausing, she tentatively reached to touch his arm, He jerked spasmodically, as if her hand burned, but he didn't snatch his arm away--she snatched hers.
From where I stood in the hallway, I could see enough of Jory's face to know he was crying and trying hard not to let Melodie know that. Tears were in my eyes, too, as I cringed there, feeling a sneaky intruder who had no right to watch and listen. Even so I couldn't move away, when I'd moved from Julian's side only to find him dead the next time I looked. Like father, like son, like father like son beat the unhappy tattoo of the drums of fear in my head.
Again she reached to touch him, this time his hair. "Don't turn your face away, Jory. Look at me. Let me see that you don't hate me for failing you when you needed me most. Shout at me, hit me, but don't stop. communicating. I'm tied up in knots. I can't sleep at night, feeling I should have done something to keep you from dancing that role. I've always hated that particular ballet and didn't want to tell you when you choreographed it and made it your signature." She wiped at her tears, then sank to her knees by his bed and bowed her head onto his hand, which she'd managed to seize.
Her low voice barely reached my ears. "We can make a life together. You can teach me how. Wherever you lead, Jory, I'll follow . . . just tell me that you want me to stay."
Maybe because she was hiding her face now, with her tears wetting his hand beneath her cheek, he turned his head and looked at her with such
tormented, tragic eyes. He cleared his throat before he spoke and dried his tears with the edge of the sheet.
"I don't want you to stay if living with me is going to be a burden. You can always go back to New York and dance with other partners. Because I'm crippled doesn't mean you have to be crippled, too. You have your career, and all those years of dedicated work. So go, Mel, with my blessings . . . I don't need you now."
My heart cried out, knowing differently.
She looked up, her makeup ruined from so many tears. "How could I live with myself, Jory? I'll stay. I'll do my best to make you a good wife." She paused while I thought her timing was so wrong, so damned wrong. She gave him time to think that he didn't need a wife, only a nurse and companion, and a substitute mother for his child.
I closed my eyes and began to pray. God, let her find the right words. Why isn't she telling him the ballet meant nothing without him? Why didn't she say his happiness counted more than anything else? Melodie, Melodie, say something to make him believe his handicap doesn't matter, it's the man he'll always be that you love. But she said nothing like this.
She only opened his gifts for him, showed them to him, while he studied her face with bleaker and bleaker eyes.
He thanked her for the best-selling novel she'd brought (chosen by me); thanked her for the traveling shaving kit with the sterling silver razors--straight edged, electric and a third kind, dual edged--with a silver-handled lathering brush and a round mirror that could be attached to anything with a suction cup guaranteed to work. There was also a fancy silver mug with soap, cologne and after-shave lotion. Then finally she was opening the best gift, a huge mahogany box full of watercolors, a hobby that Chris enjoyed. He planned to teach Jory the technique of using watercolors as soon as he came home. Jory stared at the paintbox for the longest time without interest before he looked away. "You have good taste, Mel."
Bowing her head, she nodded. "Is there anything else you need?"
"No. Just leave. I'm sleepy. It's nice to see you again, but I'm tired."
She backed off hesitatingly, while my heart cried for them both. So much in love before his accident, and all that passion had been washed away in the deluge of her shock and his humiliation.
I stepped into the room.
"I hope I'm not interrupting anything, but I think Jory is tired, Melodie." I smiled at both brightly. "You just wait until you see what we're planning for your return home. If painting doesn't interest you now, it will later on. At home we've got other treasures waiting for you. You're going to be thrilled, but I can't tell you anything. It's all supposed to be a huge welcome-back surprise." I hurried to embrace him, which wasn't easy to do when his body was so bulky and hard with the cast. I kissed his cheek, ruffled his hair and squeezed his fingers. "It's going to be all right, darling," I whispered. "She has to learn to accept just like you do. She's trying hard, and if she doesn't say the words you want to hear, it's because she's too much in shock to think straight."
Ironically he smiled. "Sure, Mom, sure. She loves me just as much as she did when I could walk and dance. Nothing has changed. Nothing important."
Melodie was already out of his room and standing in the hall waiting, so she didn't hear any of this. Over and over again she repeated on our way home, with Chris following in his car, "Oh, my God, my God .. . oh, my God . . . what are we going to do?"
"You did fine, Melodie, just fine. The next time you'll do even better," said I, brightly.
A week passed and Melodic did do better on her second visit, and even better on her third. Now she didn't resist when I told her where she had to go. She knew it wouldn't do her any good to resist.
Another day I sat in my dressing room before the long mirror, carefully applying mascara. Chris stepped into view with a look of pleasure on his face.
"I've got something great to tell you," he started. "Last week I went to visit the university scientific staff and filled out an application for their cancer research team. They realize there, of course, that I've only been an amateur biochemist in my spare time. Nevertheless, for some reason, some of my answers seemed to please them, and they have asked me to join their staff of scientists. Cathy, I'm thrilled to have something to do. Bart has agreed to allow us to stay on here as long as we like, or until he marries. I've talked to Jory, and he wants to be near us. His apartment in New York is so small. Here hell have wide halls and large rooms that will accommodate his wheelchair. Right now he says he'll never use one, but he will change his mind when that cast comes off."
Chris's enthusiasm for the new job was contagious. I wanted to see him happy, with something to do to take his mind off Jory's problems. I stood to he
ad for the closet, but he pulled me down on his lap to polish off his story. Some of what he said I didn't understand, for every so often he'd forgetfully slip into medical jargon, which was still Greek to me.
"Will you be happy, Chris? It's important for you to do what you want with your life. Jory's happiness is important as well, but I don't want you staying on here if Bart is going to be insufferable. Be honest . . . can you tolerate Bart just to give Jory a wonderful place to live?"
"Catherine, my love, as long as you are here, then of course I'll be happy. As for Bart, I've put up with him all these years, and I can take it for as long as need be. I know who is seeing Jory through this traumatic period. I may help a little, but it's you who brings more sunshine with your gossipy chatter, your lilting manner, your armloads of gifts and your consistent reassurances that Melodie will change. He considers every word you say as if it comes straight from God."
"But you'll be coming and going, and we won't see much of you," I moaned.
"Hey, take that look off your face. I'll drive home every night and try to reach here before dark." He went on to explain that he didn't have to reach the university lab until ten, and that would give us plenty of time to breakfast together. There wouldn't be emergency calls to take him away at night; he'd have every weekend off, a month off with pay, not that money mattered to us. We'd take trips to conventions where I'd meet people with innovative ideas, the kind of creative people I enjoyed best.
On and on he extolled the virtues of his new enterprise, making me accept something he seemed to want very much. Still, I slept in his arms that night, fretting, wishing we'd never come to this house that held so many terrible memories and had caused so many tragedies.
Around midnight, unable to sleep, I got up to sit in our private sitting room that adjoined our bedroom, knitting what was supposed to end up a fluffy white baby bonnet. I almost felt like my mother as I furiously knitted on and on with such intensity I couldn't put it down. Like her I could never let anything alone until it was finished.
A soft rapping sounded on the door, soon followed by Melodie's request to come in. Delighted to have her visit, I answered, "Of course, come in. I'm glad you saw the light under my door. I was thinking about you and Jory while I knitted, and darn if I know how to stop once I start a project."
Falteringly she came to perch on the love seat next to me; her very uncertainty immediately put me on guard. She glanced at my knitting, looked away. "I need someone to talk to, Cathy, someone wise, like you."
How pitiful and young she sounded, even younger than Cindy. I put down my knitting to turn and embrace her. "Cry, Melodie, go on. You have enough to cry about. I've been harsh with you, and I know that.
Her head bowed down on my shoulder as she let go and sobbed with abandon.
"Help me, Cathy, please help me. I don't know what to do. I keep thinking of Jory and how terrible he must feel. I think about me and how inadequate / feel. I'm glad you made me go to see him, though I hated you for doing that at the time. Today when I went alone, he smiled as if that proved something to him. I know I've been childish and weak. Yet each time I have to force myself to enter his room. I hate seeing him lying so still on that bed, moving nothing but his arms and head. I kiss him, hold his hand, but once I start to talk about important things, he turns his head toward the wall and refuses to respond. Cathy . .. you may think he's learning to accept his disability, but I think he's willing himself to die--and it's my fault, my fault!"
Astonishment widened my eyes. "Your fault? It was an accident, you can't blame yourself."
In a breathless gush her words spilled forth. "You don't understand why I feel as I do! It's been troubling me so much I feel haunted with guilt. It's because we're here, in this cursed house! Jory didn't want to have a baby until years from now. He made me promise before we married that until we'd been on the top for at least ten years, we wouldn't start a family--but I deliberately broke my word and stopped taking the pill. I wanted to have my first baby before I was thirty. I reasoned that after the baby was conceived he wouldn't want me to have an abortion. When I told him he blew! He stormed at me--and demanded I have an abortion."
"Oh, no . . ." I was shocked, thinking I didn't know Jory nearly as well as I'd thought.
"Don't blame him; it was my own doing. Dancing was his world," Melodie continued in a gasping way, as if she'd been running uphill for weeks. "I shouldn't have done what I did. I told him I'd just forgotten. I knew on our wedding day that dancing came first with him, and I was second. He never lied or told me differently, though he loved me. Then, because I was pregnant, we abandoned our tour, came here . . . and look what happened! It's not fair, Cathy, not fair! On this very day we'd be in London but for the baby. He'd be on stage, bowing, accepting the applause, the bouquets, doing what he was born for. I tricked him, and in so doing, I brought about his accident, and what's he going to do now? How can I make up for what I've stolen from him?"
She trembled all over as I held her. What could I say? I bit down on my lip, hurting for her, for Jory. We were so much alike in some ways, for I'd caused Julian's death by deserting him, leaving him in Spain--and that had led to his end. Never deliberately harming, just coincidently doing what I felt was right, as Melodie did what she considered right.
Who ever counted the flowers that died when we pulled up the weeds? I shook my head, pulling myself out of the abyss of yesterdays and turned my full concentration on the moment.
"Melodie, Jory's just as scared as you are, much more so, and with good reason. You aren't to blame for anything. He's happy about the baby now that it's on its way. Many men protest when wives want babies, but when they see the child they helped create, they're won over. He lies there on his bed, as you lie on yours, wondering how his marriage is going to work out now that he can't dance. He's the one who is crippled. He's the one who has to face up to everyday life, knowing he'll be unable to sit when he wants to; knowing he can't sit in a regular chair and get up and down when he feels like it; nor can he walk in the rain, or run on the grass, or even go to the bathroom in a normal way.
"All the simple normal everyday things he took for granted will now be very difficult for him. And think of what he was. This is a terrible blow to his pride. He wasn't even going to try and cope for fear he'd burden you too much. But listen to this. This afternoon when I was with him, he said he was going to make a big effort to cheer up and lift himself out of his depression. And he will. He'll make it, and a lot of it will be because you've helped by just visiting and sitting there with him. Each time you go you convince him you still love him."
Why did she draw from my arms and turn her face away? I watched her brush the tears from her face impatiently; then she blew her nose and tried to stop crying.
With effort she spoke again. "I don't know what it is, but I keep having scary dreams. I wake up frightened, thinking something even more dreadful is going to happen. There's something weird about this house. Something strange and frightening. When everyone is gone, and-Bart is in his office, and Joel is praying in that ugly, bare room, I lie on my bed and seem to hear the house whispering. It seems to call to me. I hear the wind blow as if it's trying to tell me something. I hear the floor squeak outside my door so I jump up and race to throw open the door--and no one is there, no one is ever there. I suspect it's only my imagination, but I hear, as you've said you do sometimes, so much of what isn't real. Am I losing my mind, Cathy? Am I?"
"Oh, Melodie," I murmured, trying to draw her close again, but she put me off by moving to the far end . of the sofa.
"Cathy, why is this house different?"
"Different from what?" I asked uneasily.
"From all other houses." She glanced fearfully toward the door to the hall. "Don't you feel it? Can't you hear it? Do you sense this house is breathing, like it has a life of its own?"
My eyes widened as a chill stole the comfort from my pretty sitting room. In the bedroom I could faintly hear Chris's regular, heavy breath
ing.
Melodie, usually too reticent to talk, gushed onward breathlessly. "This house wants to use the people inside as a way to keep it living on forever. It's like a vampire, sucking our lifeblood from all of us. I wish it hadn't been restored. It's not a new house. It's been here for centuries. Only the wallpaper and the paint and the furniture are new, but those stairs in the foyer I never climb up or descend without seeing the ghosts of others .. ."
A kind of paralyzing numbness gripped me.
Every word she said was only too frighteningly true. I could hear it breathe! I tried to pull myself back to reality. "Listen, Melodie. Bart was only a little boy when my mother ordered it reconstructed on the foundations of the old manor home. Before she died it was up, but not completely finished inside. When her will was read, and she left this house to Bart, with Chris as trustee to manage until he came of age, we decided it was a waste not to have it completed. Chris and our attorney contacted the architects and contractors, and the job went forward until it was finished, only the inside needed furbishing. That had to wait until Bart came here in his college days and ordered the interior decorators to style it as it had been in the old days. And you're right. I, too, wish this house had been left in ashes . . ."
"Maybe your mother knew this house was what Bart would want most to give him confidence. It's so imposing. Haven't you noticed how much he's changed? He's not like the little boy who used to hide away in the shadows and lurk behind trees. He's the master here, like a baron overseeing his domain. Or maybe I should say king of the mountain, for he's so rich, so terribly rich . . ."
Not yet . . . not yet, I kept thinking.
Nevertheless, her frail, whispering voice disturbed me. I didn't want to think Bart was as overbearing as a medieval lord. But she went on. "Bart's happy, Cathy, extraordinarily happy. He tells me he's sorry about Jory. Then he telephones those attorneys and wants to know why they keep postponing the rereading of his grandmother's will. They've told him they can't read it unless everyone mentioned in the will is here to hear the reading, and so they put it off until the day when Jory comes home from the hospital. They will read the will in Bart's office."
Seeds of Yesterday Page 15
