"A wheelchair?" Stunned looking, she said that like it was an electric chair! "What's really wrong? You're not telling me everything. You're trying to protect me!"
"When your doctors are sure, you will know. But one thing is certain, you can never dance again. And they have told me, too, that you cannot even demonstrate to your pupils. No dancing whatsoever, not even waltzing." He said it so firmly, but compassion and pain were in his eyes.
She looked stunned, not believing that such a small fall could have done so much harm. "No dancing . . . ? None at all?"
"None at all," he repeated. "I'm sorry, Cathy, but I warned you. Think back and count the times you have fallen and hurt that knee. How much damage do you think it can take? Even walking won't be as effortless as it used to be. So cry your heart out now. Get it out of your system."
She cried in his arms, and I sat in a chair and sobbed inwardly, feeling as bereft as if it had been me who had lost the use of my legs for dancing.
"It's all right, Jory," she said when she had dried her tears and put on a faltering smile. "If I can't dance, I'll find something better to do--though Lord knows what it will be."
Another Grandmother
. In a few days Mom was feeling much better, and that's when Dad brought to the hospital a portable typewriter, a thick stack of yellow legal pads and other writing utensils. He stacked everything on the table that rolled over Mom's bed and gave her one of his big, charming smiles. "This is a fine time to finish that book you began so long ago," he said. "Look at your old journals, and let it all loose--and be damned to those you might hurt! Hurt them as you've been hurt, as I've been hurt. Stab a few times for Cory and Carrie too. And while you're at it, throw in a few blows for me, Jory and Bart, for they too are affected."
What was he talking about?
They looked at each other for long moments, then unhappily she took an old memorandum book from his hands and opened it so I could see her large girlish handwriting. "I don't know if I should," she murmured with a strange look in her eyes. "It would be like living it all over again. All the pain would come back."
Dad shook his head. "Cathy, do what you think you must. There must have been a good reason for you to have started those books in the first place. Who knows, perhaps you'll be on your way to a new career more satisfying than the last."
It didn't seem possible to me that writing could ever replace dancing, but when I visited her in the hospital the next day, she was scribbling away like crazy. On her face I saw a strange intense look, and in a way, I felt envious.
"How much longer?" she asked Dad, who had driven me to see her.
We were all there waiting, Emma with Cindy in her arms, and me holding fast to Bart's hand. Dad lifted Mom out of the front seat and put her in the folding chair he'd rented. Bart stared at that rolling chair with repulsion, while Cindy called out
"Mommy, Mommy!" She didn't care how Mom came home, as long as she did, but Bart hung back and eyed Mom up and down, as if he were looking at a stranger he didn't like.
Next Bart turned and headed for the house. He hadn't even said hello. An expression of hurt passed over Mom's face before she called, "Bart! Don't go away before I've had a chance to say hello to you. Aren't you glad to see me? You just don't know how much I've missed you. I know you don't like hospitals, but I wish you had come just the same. I know, too, that you don't like this chair, but I won't be using it forever. A lady in the physical therapy class showed me how much can be done while sitting in this kind of chair . . ." She faltered because his dark, ugly look didn't encourage her to go on.
"You look funny sitting in that chair," he said with his brows knitted together. "Don't like you in that chair!"
Nervously Mom laughed. "Well, to be honest, it's not my favorite throne either, but remember it's not a permanent part of my life, only until my knee heals. Come, Bart, be friendly to your mother. I forgive you for not visiting me in the hospital, but I won't forgive you if you can't show me a little affection."
Still frowning, he backed away as she wheeled forward. "No! Don't touch me!" he cried out in a loud voice. "You didn't have to dance and fall! You fell because you didn't want to come home and see me again! You hate me now for cutting off Cindy's hair! And now you want to punish me by sitting in that chair when you don't need to!"
Wheeling around, he raced for the backyard, using the stepping stones. He'd covered two when he tripped and fell. Picking himself up, he ran on again, bumping into a tree and crying out. I could see his nose was bleeding. Boy, talk about awkward!
Dad made light of Bart's rebellion as he pushed Mom into the house, with Cindy delighted to ride on her lap. "Don't worry about Bart . . . he'll come back and be contrite . . he's missed you very much, Cathy. I've heard him crying in the night. And his new psychiatrist, Dr. Hermes, thinks he's getting better, working out some of his hostility."
She didn't say anything, just kept running her hand over the smooth cap of Cindy's short-short hair. She looked more like a boy in her coveralls, though Emma had tried to tie a ribbon in a short tuft of her hair. I guessed Dad had told Mom what Bart had done to Cindy, for she didn't ask questions.
Later on in the evening when Bart was in bed, I ran for a book I'd left in the family room and heard Mom's voice coming from "her" room. "Chris, what am I going to do about Bart? I tried to show love and affection for him, and he rejected me. Look what he did to Cindy, a helpless child who trusts that no one will hurt her. Did you spank him? Did you do anything to punish him? Does he show respect to any of us? A few weeks in the attic might teach him a thing or two about obedience."
Hearing Mom talk like this made me feel depressed. So sad I had to hurry away and hurl myself onto my bed and stare at the walls with the posters of Julian Marquet dancing with Catherine Dahl. This wasn't the first time I'd wondered what my real father had been like. Had he loved my mother very much? Had she loved him? Would my life have been happier if he hadn't died before I was born?
Then there was Daddy Paul, who came after that tall man with the dark hair and eyes. Was Bart really Dr. Paul's son--or was he . . . ? I couldn't even finish the question, it made me feel so disloyal for doubting.
I closed my eyes, feeling in the air around me a dreadful tension, as if an invisible sword were held, ready to hack all of us down.
Early the next evening, I cornered Dad in his study and burst out with all I'd held back until now.
"Dad, you've just got to do something about Bart. He frightens me. I don't see how we can go on living with him in the house, when it seems he is going mad--if he isn't already there."
My dad bowed his head into his hands. "Jory, I don't know what to do. It would kill your mother if we had to send Bart away. You don't know all she's been through. I don't think she can take too much more . . another child gone would destroy her."
"We'll save her!" I cried passionately. "But we have to prevent Bart from going to visit those people next door who tell him lies. He goes over there all the time, Dad, and that old lady holds him on her lap and tells him stories that make him come home acting queer, like he's old, like he hates women. It's all her fault, Dad, that old woman in black. When she leaves Bart alone he'll go back to where he was before she came."