"Grandmother, why is it all grandmothers like to wear black?"
"Ridiculous!" she snapped. "Not all do!" Her jet eyes were like stones of black fire.
"But I've never seen you wear any color but black."
"You will never see me wear another color."
"I don't understand. I've heard my mother say you wore black before my grandfather died, before my father died. Are you in perpetual mourning?"
She sneered scornfully. "Ah, I see. You feel uncomfortable around black clothes, yah? Makes you feel sad, yah? Makes me feel glad. It makes me different. Anyone can wear pretty colors. Takes someone special to be pleased with only black clothes--and besides, it saves money."
I laughed and drew away farther. I was sure it was more the money she saved than anything else.
"What other grandmother you know who wears black?" she asked, her eyes very narrow and suspicious.
I smiled and backed away more; she frowned and drew closer. My face took on a broader smile as I neared the door. "It's great having you here, Grandmother Madame. Be especially nice to Melodie Richarme. I'm going to marry her someday."
"Jory!" she yelled. "You come back here! Do you think I flew halfway around the world just to replace your mother? I came for one reason only. I am here to see that Julian's son dances in New York, in every major city in the world, and achieves all the fame and glory that was due his father. Because of Catherine he was robbed, robbed!"
She made me angry, she made me want to hurt her as her words hurt me, when only a moment ago I'd loved her. "Will my fame and glory help a father who lies dead in his grave?" I shouted back. I wasn't putty for her to mold--I was already a great dancer and my mother had done that for me. I didn't need her to teach me more about dancing--I needed her to teach me more about learning to love someone hateful, old and bitter. "I know how to dance already, Madame, my mother has taught me well."
Her look of contempt made me blanch, but she surprised me when she got up to drop to her knees and put her hands in prayer position beneath her chin. She tilted her thin face backward and seemed to stare God straight in his face.
"Julian," she cried passionately, "if you are up there looking down, he
ar the arrogance of your fourteen-year-old son. I make a pact with you today. Before I die I will see your son is the most acclaimed dancer in the world. I will make of him what you could have been if you hadn't cared so damned much for cars and women, to say nothing of your other vices. Your son, Julian-- through him you will live to dance again!"
I stared as she fell exhausted into the swivel desk- chair again, sprawling her powerful legs before her. "Damn Catherine for marrying a doctor years and years older. Where was her common sense?--where was his? Though to give credit where credit is due, he was handsome years ago and appealing enough, but she should have known he'd be old before she even reached her sexual maturity. She should have married a man nearer her own age."
I stood before her, baffled, trembling, beginning to feel closet doors in my mind opening-- creakily opening, reluctantly. No, no, my mind kept saying, keep quiet Madame. I watched her jerk upright, her dark stabbing eyes riveting me to one spot so I was unable to leave when what I wanted most was to run, and run fast.
"Why do you tremble?" she asked. "Why do you look so strange?"
"Do I look strange?"
"Don't answer questions with questions," she barked. "Tell me about Paul, your stepfather, how he fares, what he does. He was twenty-five years older than your mother, and she's thirty-seven now. Doesn't that make him sixty-two?"
I swallowed over an aching lump that came to clog my throat. "Sixty-two is not so old," I said meekly, thinking she should know that; she was in her seventies.
"For a man it is old; for a woman life is only beginning to stretch out."
"That is cruel," I said, beginning to dislike her again.
"Life is cruel, Jory, very cruel. You snatch from life what you can while you are young, for if you wait for better times to come tomorrow, you wait in vain. I told Julian that time and again, to live his life and forget Catherine, who loved that older man, but he refused to believe any girl could prefer a middle-aged man to someone as handsome and vibrant as he was, and now he lies dead in his grave, as you just said. Dr. Paul Sheffield enjoys the love that rightly belonged to my son, to your father.
I was crying tears she couldn't see. Hot scalding tears of disbelief. Had my mother lied to Madame and made her believe Daddy Paul was still alive? Why would she lie? What was wrong about marrying Dr. Paul's younger brother Christopher?
"You look ill, Jory. Why?"
"I feel fine, Madame."
"Don't lie to me, Jory. I can smell a lie a mile away, see a lie from across three thousand miles. Why is it Paul Sheffield never accompanies his family to his own home town? Why is it your mother always brings only her children and that brother,
Christopher?"
My heart was pounding. Sweat glued my shirt to my skin. "Madame, have you never met Daddy Paul's younger brother?"
"Younger brother? What's that you say?" She leaned forward and peered into my eyes. "Never heard of any brother even during that awful time when Paul's first wife drowned their son. That was spread all over the newspapers, and no younger brother was mentioned. Paul Sheffield had only one sister--no brother, younger or older.."