by Pamela Morsi
"Oh, well, it is," she said. "I mean, she is a widow now and he was never particularly close to his father, being illegitimate and all. And Alexandria married his father when she was very young and is actually more the son's age than the father's. But still, it creates a difficult situation when people are in love who aren't expected to ever be together." Gertrude could hear herself, and she sounded as if she were babbling.
"But you'll find a way to work it out for them, won't you?" he asked.
"Certainly I will," she assured him. "Fiction is like that. There are tremendous stumbling blocks that have to be overcome, but ultimately the characters will, in some way, triumph over their situation."
He nodded slowly. 'Triumph over their situation," he repeated. "It sounds like something that we should all strive for."
"Well, I suppose that in our own way, we do," she admitted. "Still, life is not fiction where both the stumbling blocks and the triumphs are easily tailored to fit."
"That is true. But it seems to me that if Weston and Alexandria can find happiness together, then other people, real people, with not nearly their problems, should be able to work things out fairly easily."
She had just stared at him, having no response to that statement at all.
Again and again Gertrude had changed the subject, yet Mikolai continued somehow to bring it around to words that made her uncomfortable. She was trying so hard not to want him, his house, his life. But Mikolai appeared to be actively working against her. It was as if he were begging to hear how truly desperate she was for him. And she was very afraid that any moment she might give him what he wanted and blurt out the awful truth.
Now, sitting next to him on the divan, she feared that once again any attempt at small talk would be hopeless.
"Do you remember the night of the victory dance?" he asked her.
"Of course I remember it," she said. It was the first time he had held her in his arms. The first time she had felt the warmth of his body against her own. "How could I forget?"
"I felt so old that night," he said quietly. "I felt like my life was over." He shook his head and then turned to gaze at her. "I thought that all I had left were memories and regrets."
"Well, I needn't remind you how I felt," she said, her tone rife with self-derision. "I was weeping like a baby over some unkind words being told about me."
"But you felt it, too, didn't you?" he said. "You felt as if everything good was behind you and the road ahead was just one endless procession of meaningless sunrises."
She did remember. She still could feel the sting of regret in her heart. "Yes, you know I felt that way," she admitted.
"But you don't feel like that anymore, do you?"
She looked up at him. For a moment she just stared. Willingly she tried to conjure up that emotion, that quaking uneasiness, that sense of loss. Then slowly, slowly, she began to smile. "No, I don't feel that way anymore," she said.
His gaze was warm and welcoming and centered upon her face. "It's as if we have new lives," he said. "We thought that our lives were over, but they are not at all. It's as if we have started out new, or almost new, once again."
She shook her head, almost disbelieving. "It's true," she said. "I ... I don't feel sad anymore. How silly I was! And you, too." She actually laughed then. It was the best feeling that she had had all day.
Mikolai laughed, too, with joy. "My life is my future," he told her. "A few weeks ago I didn't even understand that my future still existed."
Gertrude continued to chuckle in disbelief. "How strange that we should suffer the same passing fancy."
"Not so strange," he answered. "Especially since we effected the cure together."
"Oh, you mean . . ." She felt the heat in her cheeks as she thought of the intimacies they had shared.
He ran a long finger along the pretty blush of her cheek and raised one busy brow. "Not that," he said, his voice teasing in its scold. "I have heard of things that that can cure, but a middle-of-life melancholia is not one of them."
He let his finger follow the line of her jaw and then raised her chin to look at him.
"I meant," he said, "that falling in love with each other has given us both a new start in life."
Gertrude's mouth formed a surprised little O and she had no words with which to answer. She could only look into his eyes.
"Dance with me, Gertrude," Mikolai said. "I want you to dance with me."
Gertrude was startled by his request. "I don't know if we should."
Her protest went ignored as he stepped across the room to the fancy concert Victrola. After only a moment of leafing through the disk collection, he placed the record on the turnplate and set the needle.
The sounds of a tinny orchestra filled the room as Mikolai returned to the divan and offered his hand.
"It is the only polite and circumspect way that I can hold you in my arms. And I'm afraid that if I wait one more moment to hold you. I won't be able to remain polite and circumspect."
Gertrude didn't question his statement. She felt much the same. She needed his touch. She needed it like air or water. But she feared that once she had taken it, she would have a difficult time doing without it.
She rose to her feet and was swept into his arms. The warmth, the closeness of him, was familiar, pleasurable . . . tempting. With no hesitation they danced, as they had danced that night, as if they were one. So close, so effortless, they had only to glide across the floor. Neither of them had the reputation of a fine dancer, but together their movements were as graceful and synchronous as if they were interlocking parts of the same soft mechanism.
Gertrude felt herself being drawn into his touch, drawn into his eyes. She turned her gaze from him. But she couldn't shut out the sounds of the Emerson Sisters, singing with such perfectly blended harmony, the sweet song from the days of her youth.
"After the ball is over,
After the break of morn
After the dancers' leaving;
After the stars are gone;
Many a heart is aching,
If you could read them all;
Many the hopes are vanished
After the ball."
Sentimental tears slipped from the corners of her eyes and she tried to wipe them surreptitiously with the back of her hand.
"You're crying?" he said.
"I'm being silly again. It's just for the song," she assured him. "It's such a sad, sad song."
He nodded. "Anytime pride and mistrust and simple foolish misunderstanding get in the way of love, it is enough to make one cry."
She didn't comment on his words and he offered no more. It was enough just to spin with light grace around the narrow confines of the front parlor in his arms.
When the recording finished, the disk continued to spin and the needle bounced back and forth in the last unending groove. Mikolai hardly hesitated in the dance. He led her past the Victrola and within the midst of one graceful swirl, he plucked the needle from its scratchy conclusion and set it back at the beginning. Once more the orchestra began to play. Once more they danced.
"I love holding you like this," Mikolai told her.
She smiled up at him. "I thought you said this was a substitute for a more risqué embrace."
"I thought it was," he admitted. "I thought that I was forgoing pleasure. But I find that holding you this way, holding you, close and loving and respectful, without hot passion or wild thrill clouding my appreciation, has a pleasure of its own."
"You merely love to dance, Mr. Stefanski," she teased.
His reply was serious. "I had never danced, never really danced, before I danced with you," he said.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
‘TEDDY? TEDDY, ARE you awake?"
The question came from the doorway and the young man in the bed sighed loudly. He wiggled ineffectually, trying to sit up without moving his injured leg.
"And how would I not be? The concert has been going on for hours."
Claire nodded and
entered the room, assuming that his being awake constituted an invitation to enter. She was draped in her wrapper in casual disregard of proprieties. She went to the window and opened the shade. The music had been playing downstairs for hours. Dawn was just on the horizon and there had been no letup in the endless repetition of the lovely old-fashioned waltz.
"At least it's not as loud here as it is in the hallway," she told him.
"I don't care about how loud it is," Teddy complained. "I'm just ready for it to stop altogether."
"It doesn't sound like it will," she told him as she crossed the room and plopped down in the chair next to his bedside. "But at least it didn't keep me awake all night. I sleep the sleep of the guiltless," she said.
Teddy snorted. "More like the sleep of the conscienceless," he said. "What are you trying to do to those two, get them back together and break their hearts?"
"If that's what it takes," she answered. She smiled. It was a serene, rather self-satisfied smile. It raised the hairs on the back of Teddy's neck.
"You've got something in mind," he said accusingly.
"Nothing that you don't already know about," she assured him. "I want Aunt Gertrude and your . . . our father to confess all."
"That is not exactly news," he said.
She didn't respond.
"But now you think you've found a way to make them do that?"
"They are dancing," she said. It wasn't really an answer to his question. "I peeked from the landing and they are just waltzing around in a little circle in the middle of the front parlor."
Teddy shook his head. "Waltzing in the front parlor all night long. Who would ever believe such a thing of a couple that age?"
He shook his head again in disbelief.
"And my father apparently cannot locate another record. 'After the ball. After the ball. After the ball.' How in the world can anyone listen to that sugary sentimentality for hours on end?"
Claire waved away his bad humor. "Old folks love bad music," she explained. "They simply have no sense about it at all. Now I've been thinking, and I have a plan."
Teddy moaned with despair. "I am crippled, exhausted, and in pain. And you have a plan."
"It doesn't involve much for you," she assured him. "Although I do think that it would go over better if you went downstairs."
"If I went downstairs?"
"That's what I said. I can help you. It really won't be so bad with that splint on your leg. You can hold on to the railing on one side and I can be on the other."
"Why do we have to go downstairs? Couldn't we just do whatever it is you want to do up here?"
"Well," she said with a thoughtful sigh, "we can, if we have to. But I'd rather not."
"I'd rather not try to get down those stairs."
"I think that we have to confront them," Claire said. "It's time that we confront them. Force them to tell us the truth. And I don't think there will ever be any better opportunity than now."
Teddy groaned. "Now?"
"Don't you see? They've been up all night, too. And they've been dancing for most of that time. Not lying around in bed like you've been."
"They don't have any broken knees," Teddy pointed out.
"No," she agreed. "But they are still tired and they'll be very vulnerable."
"You sound like you're planning a frontal attack," he said.
"I am," she answered. "Even more than that. We go in there this morning, when they are tired and sleepy and deal them the final blow. They'll be begging us to let them tell us the truth."
Teddy looked at her thoughtfully. "You mean if we catch them now with their guard down, and hit them hard, we can go all the way," he said.
"Yes, that's it exactly."
"Claire, you really should play football. I think that it's your sport."
She grinned and chucked him playfully on the arm. "Yeah, if I was on the squad, we'd be a cinch for the state championship," she said.
"I still don't know why I have to go downstairs," he said.
"Because part of the strategy of a good football team is to get the best position on a good playing field."
"And the 'best position on a good playing field,'" he said, "is downstairs."
"Right. That means you have to get down the stairs."
Teddy sighed. "Claire, I hate it when you are right," he said.
"Teddy, trust me. I'm always right."
He set his chin with feigned bravery. "I imagine it will be easier getting down than it will be getting back up," he said. "That's the spirit. Now where's your pants?" she asked him.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
"WE NEED TO talk to you, both of you." Claire's voice broke the sweet spell in the front parlor.
Guiltily Gertrude jumped away from Mikolai's arms. They both stood staring with disbelief at the two young people in the doorway.
'Teddy? How did you get down the stairs?" Mikolai asked of the pale-looking young man who was dressed and leaning heavily on Claire.
"She helped me," he answered simply.
"We didn't hear you," Mikolai admitted.
"How could you with the music playing?" was the young man's reply.
Immediately Mikolai hurried to the Victrola and set the needle to the side and turned it off.
"Sit, sit, Teddy, before you fall down," his father ordered. "You look quite faint."
"This is probably something I should stand up for," he said firmly. But he eased himself into the nearest chair just the same. He looked up at Claire. He nodded slightly, giving her free rein to do whatever she thought best.
"Perhaps we should all sit down," she said. Her tone was downright haughty, but Gertrude and Mikolai, both suddenly aware of exactly how tired they were, followed her directive.
When everyone was sitting, Claire firmly took the initiative.
"While you two have been dancing the night away, Teddy and I have been talking."
Gertrude's eyes widened. She looked horrified. "We kept you awake?"
She glanced over at Mikolai guiltily. He, too, looked surprised and disconcerted. Neither had given a thought to the young people upstairs.
"We don't mind missing a little sleep," Claire assured her. "And it's given us some time to sort out things between us."
"That's good," Gertrude said. "That's very good."
Claire ignored her. "Now we think that it is high time that we four sort out the things that are between us."
Mikolai and Gertrude gave each other puzzled glances as Claire nodded to Teddy, giving him the floor.
"Claire and I have said many times that we want to be ... to be married," he said, choking only slightly on the last word. "Although you haven't forbidden us, we can both tell that you don't like the idea. Now we want to know why."
The two young people were stone-faced and staring intently at the adults who were momentarily disconcerted.
"Well, I . . ." Gertrude began but couldn't quite get her feelings into words. She looked over helplessly at Mikolai.
"We are not against your marriage," Mikolai said evenly. "We just worry."
"What do you worry about?" Claire asked pointedly.
"Why, the things parents worry about," he answered. "Will you be happy? Are you truly a good match for each other? Whether you are really in love. You are both so young."
"That's it?" Claire asked skeptically.
Gertrude tried to explain further. "Mr. Stefanski and I have seen . . . well, we've seen a lot in our lives and we know that mistakes can be made. Everyone makes mistakes, but when you are young it's easier to make them. And a mistake in who one marries can be the very biggest mistake of all."
"So all you are worried about is our youth and whether we will make a mistake?" Claire said.
"Yes," Gertrude answered. She looked over at Mikolai and he nodded in agreement.
Their answer didn't seem to suit Claire a bit and she turned to Teddy in an expression of hopelessness.
"So you really have no objections to our being married," Teddy cl
arified. "No real, certain, absolute objections."
Mikolai shrugged. "No, no, I don't guess that we do."
"So you are going to let us get married?" Teddy asked.
His father was slow to answer, but finally nodded. "If this is what the both of you want. Then I think it will be a fine thing. If you are asking my permission," he said, "then you have it. You have my blessing, too."
"Yes, and mine," Gertrude added with a warm smile to the two young people she loved so much. Claire and Teddy turned to look at each other in disbelief before the same word exploded from their mouths.
"What!"
The exclamation was shouted in unison and with such fury, both Gertrude and Mikolai were taken aback.
"You are going to let us get married?" Claire asked, horrified. "You are actually going to let us go through with it?"
"If that's what you want," Gertrude answered. "We just want what you want."
"My God!" Claire rubbed her arms as if a cold chill had spread across her skin. "Have neither of you any morals at all?"
"Morals?"
"What are you talking about?"
"We know all about you," Claire announced furiously. "We know all about your little scandal and you should be ashamed."
Mikolai and Gertrude just stared at the two young people as the words penetrated their understanding.
"Oh!" Gertrude cried out in horror and covered her mouth as she realized at last what was being said.
"We know everything, everything," Claire continued. "Everything. And we've given you chance after chance to confess the truth. But this . . . this permission . . . it's beyond understanding."
"How did you find out?" Mikolai's voice was curt and he directed his question to Teddy.
"We just did," he answered. He was not feeling nearly as confident as Claire and was very unhappy with the look of pure anger upon his father's face.
"You haven't told anyone?" he asked.
"Of course not," Claire answered. "Do you think that I would tell?"
"We didn't breathe a word to anyone," Teddy assured him. "We didn't even hint."
