"That's right," Steve said with a heartfelt groan. They sat quietly, deep in private thought for several long minutes. Then Steve shook his head. "I don't want you to renege on the Bazaar."
A wave of relief washed over Mirelle. It wasn't so much that she realized how much she had looked forward to participating in the affair as the fact that Steve was deliberately encouraging her in something they both knew that his mother would detest.
He unfolded the letter again. "She says 'a few days', so I guess that'll include the 12th and 13th." He got to his feet abruptly. "Damn it, Mary Ellen, things have been so much,… much better between us since I got off the road and you started this latest sculpting kick. I mean, like today, with you feeling a good mood over nothing." He leaned over her chair. "You're more like the girl I married than you've been since the kids started coming." He made a fist and gently pushed at her chin. "She's my mother and all, but hell, it's our life and our marriage."
Mirelle reached up to put her arms around his neck and drew his head down so that their foreheads touched.
"Steve, if you'll back me up this time, your mother won't be able to upset us the way she usually does."
Steve flushed and made a move to break her hold. She pulled him back.
"Steve, I've allowed your mother to crucify me and I've watched you standing squarely in the middle, not knowing which way to turn. You know that the only thing I've been able to do is shut up and put up. But I'm warning you, Steve. I'm not going to shut up this time, and I'm not going to put up."
Steve jerked away then.
"My birth may have been irregular," Mirelle went on resolutely, "but at least I spared us both another set of in-laws."
Steve whirled sharply, his mouth opened in angry surprise.
"Which is just as well," she continued calmly, rising from the chair, "because, as I remember my mother, she could outmanage yours any day. And I understand that my father's temper was usually at hurricane force. I really must be a throwback to a mild ancestor."
"You're one surprise after another today," Steve said, wonderingly.
"No, I just came to the conclusion that I've been existing in a vacuum for the last ten years. I'll be damned if I'll pull the hole in over my head again just because your mother's coming."
Steve blinked at her uncertainly. Then his face cleared. He encircled her waist, holding her tightly against him. As he began to kiss her with rough passion, she realized two things: he wasn't thinking of his mother and he wouldn't think about either the coming visit or Mirelle's threat. Only it wasn't a threat: it was a promise. How would Steve handle that? In bed?
That night, the hands came back into her dreams, more clearly, more insistently, with the tugging and clawing, the restless fingers nipping just short of her precarious perch, wherever that was, until one strong hand grabbed her shoulder out of the threateningly vague background. She was shaken and shaken until reality overthrew the miasma of dream and the hand, accompanied by Steve's urgent voice, woke her to the next morning.
CHAPTER TWELVE
THE DEPRESSION evoked by the nightmare stayed with her, intruding with uneasy flashbacks through the business of getting breakfast and shooing the children off to school.
Steve had come down in fine spirits, all set up after the previous night's passion. He called her a sleepyhead, cheerfully leered at her, and failed to notice her subdued mood. He kissed her a lingering goodbye, bopping her jaw tenderly, and left her, emitting an irritatingly gay whistle.
It hadn't been lack of satisfaction in sex last night, Mirelle thought, trying to counteract her depression. Steve had made rather inspired love and she had responded gladly. In fact, Mirelle told herself, she ought to be reassured by his passionate embraces, particularly on a day when he'd heard from his mother. Maybe, and it was just possible, this time he would align himself with his wife.
No, Mirelle decided, her depression stemmed from those damned nightmarish hands. Maybe she ought to get a book on dream interpretations, particularly since she had ones that played back all the time. She sighed and poured herself another cup of coffee.
Why couldn't Steve have been an orphan, too? In the early days of their marriage, before they'd made that disastrous move to Allentown, they'd been so happy and she'd be able to kid with him the way she could with Jamie.
Mirelle smiled to herself, remembering those courting days. She'd been doing display figures, models of Broadway stars for a music store window, advertising record albums of the popular hit shows. Scarcely the sculpting she'd intended to do, but, after Murph had died, there hadn't been any more money for training. She'd taken whatever work she could get, and was at least lucky to be doing some form of sculpting.
Wouldn't Murph have made mincemeat of Mother Martin? Mirelle snickered, imagining such a confrontation. Wow! would the sparks have flown! Mary Murphy, to quote herself, was 'knee high to a whiskey bottle and weaned on one.' She and Mary Margaret LeBoyne had been born and raised in Naas, had loved each other as only kindred souls could. They were as opposite as the supple birch and the hardy gorse, but they understood each other perfectly. When Mary Margaret LeBoyne had been launched in her music career, she'd sent for Mary Murphy to join her. Murph had stayed with Mary until they'd quarreled over Mary's marriage to Edward Barthan-More.
"Your mother made more than one mistake, m'dearie," Murph had once told Mirelle. "But she'd her heart that set on security! She'd seen the desperate mess others made of spending while the money rolled in, and dying in the gutter when the career vanished. Oh, I grant you, Edward was in love with her… like he was with all the things he owned. A greedy man was Edward and desperate greedy for Mary Margaret. He bound her to him in bands of his gold and respectability, you might say.
"Now mind, your mother wasn't the gilded cage sort. I think that's why your own father attracted her so. The free artistic spirit, I believe he would say," and while Murph had not approved of Edward Barthan-More, she was even more opposed to Lajos Neagu. "Still, Lou had that about him would have kept your mother free, and like as not, she'd've been singing till she died. Real singing, not that forced social stuff. The Red Lark of Ireland she was, darlin', and when she was happy, oh, how her voice would soar."
The oasis of calm and contentment with Murph had been shattered by Mary LeBoyne's death in an air raid. The news had come in a very curt note from Barthan-More's secretary, with a request that, as soon as Mary LeBoyne Barthan-More's personal estate had been settled, no further communication would be tolerated between the house of Barthan-More and his wife's irregular relation.
Murph had not been one for hiding from life's more callous blows and she had not shielded the teen-aged Mirelle from this one. Her indignation had been scathing and she had written a scorching reply to Barthan-More, announcing her intention of legally adopting Mary Ellen LeBoyne. A small packet of jewels and a bank draft eventually arrived with no accompanying note. After much deliberation and considerable thought, Murph and Mirelle decided to sell the more valuable pieces of jewelry, using the funds to put Mirelle through a good art school. And, when the war was over, perhaps additional training abroad.
Murph's terminal illness took the remainder of those savings. Mirelle was only sorry that she had spent so carelessly during her school days.
Despite her excellent intentions and repeated promises, Murph never did set in train the legal formalities of adoption. Mirelle was twenty-three when Steve Martin happened down Madison Avenue as she was arranging the display in the windows. He had stood watching her until his interested stare got on her nerves. His expression was a combination of hopeful boyishness and cynical pessimism. As he was a tall, attractive young man, she'd been flattered despite her annoyance. His attempts to attract her attention had also drawn the typical New York crowd of the bored curious.