Page 25

"Jory, Jory," I cried, falling upon my knees by his side, seeing Cindy through my tears, crying, too. He should be rising by this time. He lay sprawled . . . and bloody. The "fake" blood I felt was sticky, warm. It smelled like real blood. "Jory . . . you're not really hurt . . . Jory . .. ?"

Nothing. Not a sound, not

a movement.

In my peripheral vision I saw Melodie as through the wrong end of a telescope, hurrying our way, her face so pale she and her black gown seemed darker than the night. "He's hurt. Really hurt." Somebody said that. Me?

"No! Don't move him. Call for an ambulance."

"Someone already has--his father, I think."

"Jory, Jory . . . you can't be hurt." Melodie's cry as she ran forward. Bart tried to hold her back. She began to scream when she saw the blood. "Jory, don't die, please don't die!" she sobbed over and over again.

I knew how she felt. As soon as the curtain was down, every dancer after "dying" on stage jumped up immediately . . . and Jory wasn't doing that.

Cries came from everywhere. The scent of blood was all around us. And I was staring at Bart, who had wanted this particular opera to be made into a ballet. Why this role for Jory? Why, Bart, why? Had he planned for the accident weeks ago?

How had Bart staged it? I picked up a handful of sand and found it wet. I glared at Bart, who stared down at Jory's sprawled body, wet from sweat, sticky from blood, gritty from sand. Bart had eyes only for Jory as two attendants from the ambulance lifted him carefully upon a stretcher and placed him in the back of the white ambulance.

Running forward, I shoved my way to where I could look inside the ambulance. "Will he live?" I asked the young doctor who was feeling Jory's pulse. Chris was nowhere in sight.

The doctor smiled. "Yes, he'll live. He's young and he's strong, but it's my calculated guess it will be a long time before he dances again."

And Jory had said ten million times that he couldn't live without dancing.

When the Party Is Over

.I crowded into the ambulance beside Jory, and soon Chris was at my side, both of us crouching over Jory's still form strapped to the stretcher. He was unconscious, one side of his face very badly bruised and battered, and blood ran from many small wounds. I couldn't bear to look at his injuries, which overwhelmed me, much less concentrate on those horrible marks I'd seen on his back .. .

Closing my eyes, I turned my head to see the bright lights of Foxworth Hall like fireflies on the mountain. Later I was to hear from Cindy that at first all the guests had been appalled, not knowing what to do or how to act, but Bart had rushed in to tell them Jory was only slightly injured and would be fully recovered in a few days.

Up front, seated with the driver and an attendant, was Melodie in her black formal, glancing back from time to time and asking if Jory had come around yet. "Chris, will he live?" she asked in a voice thin with anxiety.

"Of course he'll live," said Chris, feverishly working over Jory, ruining his new tux with the blood. "He's not bleeding now, I've stopped that." He turned to the intern and asked for more dressings.

The screaming of the siren rattled my nerves, made me afraid soon all of us would be dead. How could I have deceived myself into believing Foxworth Hall would ever offer us anything but grief? I began to pray, closing my eyes and saying the same words over and over again. Don't let Jory die, God, please don't take him. He's too young, he hasn't lived long enough. His unborn child needs him. Only after I'd kept this up for several miles did I remember that I'd said almost the same prayers for Julian--and Julian had died.

By this time Melodie was hysterical. The intern started to inject her with some drug, but quickly I stopped him "No! She's pregnant and that would harm her child." I leaned forward and hissed at Melodie, "Stop screaming! You're not helping Jory, or your baby." She screamed louder, turning to beat at me with small but strong fists.

"I wish we'd never come . . . I told him it was a mistake, coming to that house, the worst mistake of our lives, and now he's paying, paying, paying . . ." On and on saying that until finally her voice went, and Jory was opening his eyes and grinning at us.

"Hi," he said weakly. "Seems Samson didn't die after all."

I sobbed in relief. Chris smiled and bathed Jory's head cuts with some solution. "You're going to be fine, son, just fine. Just hold on to that."

Jory closed his eyes before he murmured in a weak way, `Was the performance good?"

"Cathy, you tell him what you think," Chris suggested in the calmest voice.

"You were incredible, darling," I said, leaning to kiss his pale face smeared with makeup.

"Tell Mel not to worry," he whispered as if he heard her crying; then he drifted into sleep from the sedative Chris injected into his arm.

We paced the hospital waiting room outside of the operating theater. Melodie was by this time a limp rag, sagging from fear, her eyes wide and staring. "Same as his father . . . same as his father," repeating the same words over so much I thought she was drilling that notion into her head--and into mine. I, too, could have screamed from the agony of believing Jory might die. More to keep her quiet than anything else, I took her into my arms and smothered her face against my breasts, soothing her with motherly words of assurance when I didn't feel confident about anything. We were, again, caught in the merciless clutches of Foxworths. How could I have been so happy earlier in the day? Where had my intuition fled? Bart had come into his own, and in so doing he had taken from Jory what belonged to him, the most valuable possession he had--his good health and his strong, agile body.

Hours later, five surgeons wearing green brought out my firstborn son from the operating theater. Jory was covered to his chin with blankets. All his summer tan had disappeared, leaving him as pale as his father had liked to keep his complexion. His dark curly hair seemed wet. Bruises were under his closed eyes.

"He'll be all right now, won't he?" asked Melodie, jumping up to hurry after the stretcher rolling fast toward an elevator. "He will recover and be as good as new, won't he?"