The year of the Lucy

"It's all right, Jamie."

"Now what settled you on 'Jamie'?"

"You don't like it?"

"Indeed I do but 'Jim' is the logical nickname."

"Who said I was logical? And you're just not a Jim or Jimmy," she said as she slid into the passenger's seat.

Tonia was just descending from her bus as Mirelle and Jamie drove up. The child's eyes widened at the sight of the Thunderbird. She behaved creditably during the introduction and then went obediently to change out of her school clothes.

"You have a calming effect on my daughter," Mirelle said with a laugh as Jamie followed her into the studio.

"She doesn't resemble you at all."

"No, she takes very definitely after her father's mother. A bit of astute genetic foresight on my part, I assure you."

Tonia bounced promptly back into the studio and right out again.

"Mr. Howell is here about the commission he asked me to do, so this is business, not social. Food, which is your current order of business," Mirelle said firmly, "is located in the kitchen. Do not, I repeat, do not, eat the icing without eating all the cake underneath it."

Jamie chuckled when the child had left.

"If I don't make the instructions explicit, the next thing I know the damage is done and I get the wide-eyed stares of outraged innocence and 'But you didn't say not to, Mother'." Jamie laughed outright at her mimicry. "Then there was the time," Mirelle went on, grinning over the incident, "when Steve came down late one Sunday morning and found Roman and Nick playing football with the breakfast honeydew melon. Only it was very ripe and did not drop-kick well."

Jamie roared.

"I'm not the avuncular type and your children sound more than this semi-bachelor can take in one afternoon. I'm in town for a while, so if you have any ideas, may I come over and watch you work? Or do observers make you nervous?"

"Hardly," Mirelle said, waving a hand in Tonia's direction, "the kids have even charged admission to watch the real live sculptor at work."

She waited at the door until he had driven out of sight and then turned thoughtfully back to the studio. Tasso was on his windowsill, old now and very grey about the muzzle. She stroked him, smiling over his violent purring response.

It had been such a shock to see a picture of her father. She hadn't thought of Lajos Neagu for years. Not since the terrible bitter battle with Steve and his parents over her bastardy. When they were first engaged, she had told Steve because she felt that he deserved to know the truth. He had been a little taken aback but had laughed it off. He had assumed that both her parents were dead. It hadn't occurred to him until then that her surname and her mother's stage name were the same. (Mirelle had stopped using Barthan-More when she was sent to the States in 1940 to escape the bombing of Britain. By then, Mirelle had known the full story, and had refused even the legal fiction of her mother's husband's name.)

Mirelle had seen her natural father only once, at a distance, when he'd been attending an exhibition of some of his portraits, donated by their owners for this charity showing. Mirelle had been intensely surprised, therefore, to benefit under his will along with his legal heirs. It had been that reference to her legacy in the newspapers which had touched off the nightmarish scenes with Steve's parents and, later, with Steve.

Roman had just been born so the inheritance ought to have been very welcome. Steve refused to touch a cent of it. He tried to make her refuse the bequest. He'd accused her of ruining his chances of success with the Company with the publicity of the announcement accompanying the will. He had requested a transfer from Allentown to escape what he termed the unwelcome notoriety and what he was certain was derision from friends and neighbors. It had been a cowardly and silly act on his part but his parents had made him feel unbearably ashamed of his choice of wife.

It had taken Mirelle nearly a year to recover from the shock and hurt. She had felt so betrayed by Steve's inexplicable disloyalty. If only Mother Martin had not made so much of it… If only Steve had stuck up for her … To prove to him, his parents and herself, that she was not at all like her mother, Mirelle had redoubled her efforts to be a perfect wife and exceptional mother and, to achieve those ends, turned into a cleaning shrew and an inflexible disciplinarian.

They had moved from Allentown to Ashland and there Nick had been born. She'd never told Steve how much Nick resembled her infamous father, but Mirelle regarded that as a bit of compensatory justice and had treasured Nick all the more.

Then Mirelle had met Lucy, and Lucy had helped mend the breach between them. And then kindly bullied Mirelle back to sculpting. When Steve saw how much Fred and Lucy Farnoll evidently admired and respected Mirelle, he began to forget the bar sinister. The stone of social ostracism dropped in the small puddle of Allentown had sent out very few ripples, despite what Mother Martin had shrilly asserted. No one in Ashland, had they noticed the small newspaper item, ever connected the infamous Lajos Neagu with that nice Mrs. Martin who did creche figures for the church.