"Never saw anybody older, that's all."
"The Lord has ways of punishing those who show disrespect to their elders." He gritted his teeth. They made the sound of dishes clinking in the sink.
"I'm taller than you are now."
"I'm six feet tall--or I used to be. Boy, that's a height you will never reach unless you always stand on stairs."
I narrowed my eyes and made them mean like Malcolm would. "There will come a day, John Amos, when I'll stand head and shoulders taller than you. And on your knees you will come begging to me, pleading, pleading; sir, sir, you'll say, please let me get rid of those attic mice. And I will say to you, How do I know you are worthy of my trust, and you will say to me, In your footsteps I will follow, even when you lie in your grave."
What I said made him slyly smile.
"Bart, you are learning to be as clever as your great-grandfather, Malcolm. Now, put off whatever you plan to do. Go back to your father, who is with your grandmother this very second. Remember every word you hear, and report back to me."
Like a spy, I crawled through the dumbwaiter, which was hidden behind a pretty Oriental screen. From there I could sneak my way to a hidden place behind the potted palms.
There they were, the two of them, doing the same old thing. Grandmother pleading, Daddy rejecting. Sat down and made myself comfortable before I pulled out my pack of roll-my-owns. Cigarettes helped when life got boring, like now. Nothing to do but listen. Spies never got to say anything, and it was action I needed.
Daddy looked nice in his pale gray suit, like I wanted to look when I grew up--but I wouldn't--I didn't have his kind of good looks. I sighed, wishing I was his real son.
"Mrs. Winslow, you promised to move, but I look around and see you haven't even packed one box. For the sake of Bart's mental health, for the sake of Jory whom you say you love well too, and most of all for Cathy, go away. Move to San Francisco. That's not too far away. I swear I'll visit you when I can. I'll be able to find opportunities to see you and Cathy will never suspect."
Boring. Why couldn't he say something different? Why did he care so much what my momma said about his mother? If ever I was so unlucky as to have a wife, I'd tell her she'd better accept my mother or get out. Get the hell out, as Malcolm would put it.
"Oh, Christopher," she sobbed, pulling out another of those lacy handkerchiefs to wipe at her tears. "I want Cathy to forgive me so I can have a small place in your lives. I stay on because I'm hoping eventually she'll realize I'm not here to harm any of you . . . I'm here only to give what I can."
Daddy smiled bitterly. "I suppose you are talking again about material things, bu
t that's not what a child needs. Cathy and I have done all we can to make Bart feel needed, loved and wanted--but he can't seem to understand his relationship to me. He isn't secure in what he is, who he is, or where he's going. He doesn't have a dance career like Jory to guide him into the future. Now he's grasping, trying to find himself, and you aren't helping. He keeps his innermost self very private, locked up. He adores his mother, he distrusts his mother. He suspects she loves Jory more than she loves him. He knows that Jory is handsome, talented, and most of all, adroit. Bart is not adroit at anything but pretending. If he would confide in us, or his psychiatrist, he could be helped--but he doesn't confide."
I had to wipe a tear from my eye. So hard to hear about myself, and what I was, and worse, what I wasn't--like they knew me inside out, and they didn't. They couldn't.
"Did you hear any of what I just said, Mrs. Winslow?" Daddy shouted. "Bart does not like his image that reflects only weakness--no skills, no grace and no authority. So he borrows from all the books he's read, from all the TV shows he's watched, and sometimes he even borrows from animals, pretending he's a wolf, a dog, a cat."
"Why, why?" she moaned. He was telling all my secrets. And a secret told had no value, none at all.
"Can't you guess why? Jory has thousands of photographs of his father, Bart has none. Not even one."
That made her bolt straight up. She flared with anger. "And why should he have his father's pictures? Is it my fault my second husband didn't give his mistress his photograph?"
I felt stunned. What was this? Sure, John Amos had told me crazy stories, but I'd thought he made them up, just as I made up stories to chase away boredom. Was it all true that my own momma had been the bad woman who had seduced my own grandmother's second husband? Was I really the son of that lawyer-man named Bartholomew Winslow? Oh, Momma, how can I ever stop hating you now?
Daddy was wearing that funny smile again. "Perhaps your beloved Bart thought he didn't need to give her his photograph when she'd have the living man in her own home and in her bed as her lawful husband. She told him before he died that she was expecting his child, and he would have divorced you to be the father of his child, and have Cathy--I don't doubt that in the least."
I was in a tight ball, agonized by all I'd heard. My poor, poor daddy, who died in the fire at Foxworth Hall. John Amos was a true friend, the only one who treated me like an adult and told me the truth. And Daddy Paul, whose picture set in my bedroom on the night table, had been only another stepfather, like Christopher. Was crying inside from losing yet another daddy. My eyes rolled from Daddy to her, trying so hard to know what to feel about him and her--and Momma. It wasn't right for parents to mess up the lives of little babies who weren't even born, mess it up so much I'd never really know who I was.
Hopefully I stared at my grandmother, who seemed to be very hurt by what her son had said. Her white hands fluttered up to her forehead, which was glistening with beads of sweat, touching it as if her head ached. Oh, how easily she could feel pain, why couldn't I?
"All right, Christopher," she said when I thought she might never find the words, "you've had your say, now let me have mine. When it came down to an ultimatum, Cathy and her unborn child, or me and my fortune-- Bart would have stayed with me, his wife. He might have kept her on as his mistress until he tired of her, but then he would have figured out some legal way to take possession of his child-- and then my husband would have bowed out of Cathy's life, holding fast to his son. I know he would have stayed on with me, even as he looked around for the next pretty face and younger body."
My own daddy. My own blood father wouldn't have wanted my Momma after all. Tears stuck to my lashes. My throat hurt, proving I was human after all, not the freak I'd believed. I could feel a different kind of pain. But still I couldn't feel happy; why couldn't I feel happy and real? Then I remembered some of her words . . . my real daddy would have found some "legal way" to take possession of me. Did that mean he would have stolen me away from my own mother? That thought didn't make me happy either.
Grandmother sat on, unmoving. I shriveled even smaller, scared, so scared of what I might hear next.
Daddy, don't let out any more bad secrets and make me take action. John Amos would force me to take action. I glanced behind me, suspecting he might be listening with a glass held to the wall so he could hear better.
"Well," said my father, wound up now. "Bart's psychiatrist shows an incredible interest in you, whom he believes to be my mother only. I wonder why time and again he keeps harping back to you. He seems to think you are the clue to Bart's secret inner life. He thinks you lived a secret inner life too--did you, Mother? When your father made you feel less than human, did you sit alone and plot how to have your own kind of revenge, and make him suffer?"
What was this?