Everlasting Page 18

  “How nice,” Drew said, sipping his wine. “Will you see the Grand Canyon? Mt. Rushmore?”

  “Well, maybe, but mainly we’re aiming for San Francisco. We’ve got it all mapped out. Between the three of us, we’ve got a friend in every state, all along the way. That means plenty of hot food and hot showers, not to mention a little party time with the local girls.”

  “How are your grades this semester?” Catherine asked.

  “What’s it to you?” Shelly asked, his voice rich not with anger, but with amusement. At nineteen he was a golden boy, big, handsome, charming, happy, accustomed to adoration.

  I’m paying for your damned tuition, that’s what it is to me! Catherine retorted silently. Some instinct kept her from saying this to her brother: the knowledge that it would disgrace her father and bring Catherine no praise.

  “I’m just concerned, Shelly. If your grades are as bad as they were your freshman year, you should go to summer school, or you’ll never graduate.”

  “You’re one to talk!” Shelly laughed. “You didn’t even apply to college!”

  “I may not go to college, either,” Ann said so enthusiastically that wild rice flipped from her fork and rained down on the tablecloth. As she blithely picked up the tiny grains, one by one, and nibbled them, she continued, “Probably I’ll get married.” She sighed.

  “Are those the sort of table manners you’re learning at Miss Brill’s?” Marjorie asked, and Catherine was surprised to hear the chill in her mother’s voice. Usually Marjorie dripped honey when talking to Ann.

  Drew shoved back his chair with unusual force. He crossed to the sideboard and poured himself a large glass of Scotch. Obviously his wine was not enough for him.

  “I had a letter from Madeline,” Kathryn said. “You girls remember Elizabeth. She’s getting married. To a very nice man named Tom. He’s an accountant, so he can help with the books, as well as taking over various other chores—chauffeuring, general handyman work, I suppose.”

  “How’s Ned?” Ann and Catherine spoke at the same time.

  “He’s well. He’s working on a book.”

  “A book!” Catherine said, astonished.

  “Is he married yet?” Ann asked.

  “Oh, no. He’s only twenty-five. He won’t marry young. It will have to be the right woman for him.”

  “Mm, I can imagine,” Catherine said. “Someone with money.”

  “That’s not very nice!” Ann snapped.

  “Catherine’s right,” Kathryn said. “Ned will need to marry someone with money. It would be best. It might even be necessary. Madeline told me they make enough running Everly as a guest house to keep them all in food and clothes, but not enough for major repairs on such an old enormous place. It’s a real problem—I do hope they won’t have to sell it.”

  “Sell it!” Catherine and Ann cried out simultaneously, then sat staring at each other in dismay. Although they’d seldom discussed it, they felt quite possessive about the British Everly. It was a refuge and wonderland for them, and they both liked knowing they could return to it one day.

  Ann put her elbows on the table and sighed. Musing aloud, she said, “Then I guess it’s just as well I’m in love with someone else. I’d be no help to Ned—I don’t have any money.”

  “That’s why you should marry someone with money,” Marjorie said.

  “Your mother’s right, you know, Pudding,” Drew said.

  To Catherine’s surprise, Ann’s eyes filled with tears. “You don’t understand!” she said, and rushed out of the dining room.

  “Would you pour me another Scotch, dear?” Marjorie asked Drew, holding out her glass.

  “May I have some more lamb?” Shelly asked.

  “Excuse me,” Catherine said, and rose to go after Ann.

  * * *

  Ann was in her frilly bedroom, sprawled on her stomach across her canopied bed, oblivious of the way she was wrinkling her silk polka-dot dress. Hearing the door open, she looked over her shoulder and, seeing Catherine, said, “Oh. It’s just you.”

  “Whom did you expect it to be?” Catherine asked, sitting next to her sister.

  “Dad. I wanted it to be Dad. Coming in to tell me he’s sorry and that I can date Troy.”

  “Who’s Troy?”

  Ann sat up in one quick burst of movement, grabbing Catherine’s hands. “Oh, Catherine, Troy is the most wonderful man in the world! I’m in love with him! Really in love. And Dad and Mom are being pigs about it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Troy’s poor. He’s a car mechanic. But he’s soooo handsome, Catherine, and he’s soooo …” In spite of her little-girl looks, Ann’s voice held a newly adult resonance.

  “How did you meet him?”

  “He works in Fairington. One day Molly took a bunch of us from school into town, and her car broke down, and that’s how we met him. Actually we’d all noticed him a million times before when we went into town to the drugstore or post office. Oh, Catherine! It makes me feel all melty just thinking about him!”

  Catherine had to smile. Ann’s happiness made her glow, and Ann was undoubtedly a smashingly beautiful girl. Her eyelashes, wet with tears, glittered around blue eyes as variegated as the depths of an iris flower.

  “And Mom and Dad don’t want you to date him?”

  “They don’t want me to marry him.”

  “Marry! Ann, you’re too young to get married.”

  “I’m almost eighteen! I’m so bored with school. The thought of college and more tests and classes makes me barf. I want to start my life.”

  “Which would mean living in a rented apartment in Fairington and working as a waitress?”

  “Why do you say that? I wouldn’t have to be a waitress. What an awful thing to say.”

  “I don’t think car mechanics make enough money to keep you in the style you’re used to.”

  “Well, I thought Mommy and Daddy could give us the money they were going to give me for college. Then Troy could buy his own gas station.”

  “Oh. I see. Does Troy like this plan?”

  “I haven’t even mentioned it to him! Oh, you just think he wants to marry me for my money! That’s not true! There are plenty of other girls at Miss Brill’s richer than I, and you know it. Troy’s lived in Fairington for years. He’s twenty-six, so if he were just a fortune hunter, he would have snatched someone else up before now. He could have anyone, he’s so handsome! It’s me he loves, Catherine, not my money, and I love him. Oh, Catherine, if only you could see him. If only you could see us together! It’s not just sex, it’s—We have so much fun together. I can be so silly with him. We’re always laughing. He—”

  Catherine kicked off her high heels, curled up against the footboard, and let Ann rave on. Troy rode a Harley-Davidson and wore a black leather jacket. He looked like James Dean, like Elvis Presley. He had a tattoo. He’d served some time in a boys’ reform school when he was younger, but underneath the tough front he was as sweet as sugar, as helpless as a baby. He needed Ann. Ann knew he did. With her help, he would become the man he should be.

  The more Catherine heard, the more guarded she became. She would have preferred to disagree with her parents and side with Ann, but Troy sounded like trouble. Still, listening to her sister made her remember how she had felt with Kit. She had been so alive. So complete. So vivid, like a flower flaring up from its sheath.

  She had been happy then.

  Catherine pulled herself back to the present. Kit was marrying someone else. Her life was in the shop. Happiness … well, that didn’t matter to her now.

  “Look, Ann, I’ll make a pact with you. I think you’ll like college. Try it for just one year. If you still want to marry Troy after a year, I’ll be on your side against Mother and Dad.”

  “But that means waiting for so long!” Ann wailed. “Besides, Mom and Dad will make me go to the Vineyard with them this summer! I won’t get to see Troy for almost three months!”

  “Perhaps he could come visit
you.”

  “Oh, I’m so sure. Dad and Mom would be thrilled to have him as a house guest, right? Can you see them taking him to dinner at the yacht club?”

  “All right, you won’t see him all summer. You’ll survive. He can work hard—and you can get a job and save some money for your married life.”

  Ann’s eyes narrowed in suspicion.

  “Ann, if you marry Troy, Mom and Dad won’t give you much money. You know that. In the first place, they’ll be mad. In the second place, you know they don’t have much money to give. They’re just muddling along as it is. Before you get married, I think you ought to go out and take a good hard look in an appliance store. Do you know how much a washing machine costs? A stove? A refrigerator? Do you know how much a house costs? How are you going to get groceries to cook your love god dinner? Ride on the back of his motorcycle? Do you—”

  “Oh, stop it!” Ann cried, throwing herself back down, stomach first, and burying her head under a pillow. “You’re just ruining it all!”

  “I’m just trying to help you see the practical side,” Catherine said.

  “Who cares about the practical side! I’m in love. I love Troy and he loves me! Don’t you know about love? When you’re in love, everything works out. When you’re in love, nothing else matters!”

  Catherine waited a few moments for her sister’s tantrum to subside, but Ann was weeping greedily now, enjoying her martyrdom. Catherine rose, slipped back into her shoes, and went out, closing the door behind her. She intended to join the others at the dining room table but was waylaid by her father, who was waiting in the hall for her.

  “Catherine. Could I speak to you? Privately? Just a moment, before dessert and coffee.”

  They went into his den. He paced the floor obviously gathering his thoughts. “You’ve turned out to be the levelheaded one in the family,” he said finally, without preamble. “So perhaps you can come up with something to do to take Ann’s mind off this Troy character.”

  “If we can only get her to try one year of college …”

  “That might be too late. What if he … gets her pregnant? So that she’ll have to marry him? You know that’s exactly what’s on this boy’s mind. He’s a fortune hunter. Ann’s an innocent. She doesn’t have a clue about men like this. She—”

  Catherine listened stoically as her father talked on and on. Ann was her father’s darling, his little girl.

  “I’ll do what I can, Dad,” she said when he had quieted.

  Drew sighed, then said, as if the words were pulled from him, “Catherine, you know I’m grateful for the assistance you’ve given us in sending Shelly and Ann to school.”

  Anger flared inside Catherine. Assistance! I paid for their entire tuition, she thought. She didn’t speak, but her expression said it all.

  “It’s not just a matter of tuition, you know,” Drew said, catching her look. “We have to buy them the right clothes, and pay for all their trips to and from school during holidays.… But I’m getting off the point. Catherine, you’ve already been so generous in helping your sister toward the right kind of life. Surely you’d hate to see all your money—not to mention your sister’s life—go to waste on someone like Troy.”

  That was true. The thought of Ann with a fortune-hunting Romeo made Catherine sick.

  “I’ll think of something, Dad.” She had an inspiration. “Maybe I’ll take her to Everly this summer. The British Everly. She’d like that, I know.”

  “Great. I knew you’d come up with something.” Drew looked at Catherine, an honest, studying look. “You’ve turned into a capable young woman.” Clearly this baffled him. “Well, let’s go have dessert and a little drink.”

  * * *

  Clara, Kathryn’s live-in housekeeper, had hot chocolate and pastries waiting for Kathryn and her granddaughter when they arrived back at Everly that night.

  “You’re a lifesaver, Clara,” Kathryn said as they settled themselves in the living room. To Catherine she said, “Your father always gives me too much alcohol to drink, too much wine. I feel dreadful.”

  Kathryn had slept during the long drive home, but now she was awake and wanted to watch her favorite Sunday night television shows. Catherine joined her in dutiful silence. Her sister’s conversation had left her restless. All that talk of love. And it was spring, that juicy, skittish time when one’s nerves were stirred by perfumed breezes.

  Clara went to her room after serving them their late night snack; she would clear up in the morning. Kathryn went to bed at ten and told her granddaughter she’d see her early in the morning. Kathryn always rose early, around five, and Catherine would, too. She’d have breakfast with her grandmother, then drive back to the city for the start of a new week.

  Clara had prepared one of the second-floor bedrooms for Catherine tonight. Perhaps her grandmother felt she had graduated from the nursery floor, an adult in her own right. It was a nice big bedroom with a fireplace and a high, deeply comfortable bed, but Catherine couldn’t fall asleep. Oh, she was just in a strange and irritable mood.

  She needed to move, to walk. Pulling on her light wrapper, she let herself out of her bedroom and padded down the hall and down the stairs. Her grandmother slept at the other end of the house; she wouldn’t waken.

  Catherine moved through the dark house without turning on any lamps. Silvery light from the full moon slanted through the windows, illuminating the rooms, which were warm, dusty, and slightly stuffy, having been closed all winter. Living room, dining room, library, conservatory, butler’s pantry, maid’s pantry, kitchen; the kitchen belonged to Clara. She’d never invited the children to be her friends, never showed them how to cook a soufflé or called them in to lick the icing bowl. Her rooms were off the kitchen, and Catherine didn’t want to wake her, but she stood for a moment in the kitchen, enjoying a perverse sensation of invading the other woman’s domain. A mud room and potting shed led off the back door. If Catherine had her way, she’d have those slapdash structures rebuilt with a glass roof, turn them into a decent greenhouse.

  Not for the first time, Catherine wondered who would inherit Everly. No doubt her father; he was the proper heir. And if he managed to keep it, he would pass it on to Shelly. But probably he’d sell it immediately. God knows they needed the money. Besides, Marjorie hated Everly, hated gardening, found it boring and dirty.

  And Drew would do what Marjorie wanted, Catherine thought, leaving the kitchen and wandering back down the long passageway to the wide front hall, because he lived to please Marjorie. Catherine hated to admit it, but she knew that Kathryn was somehow at fault here. Kathryn had never loved Drew, not completely, unreservedly, the way children needed to be loved; his mother had left him damaged. Her father was like a tree, Catherine thought, that had had a limb lopped off and to keep its balance, to survive, had grown twisted in another direction, searching for its life.

  Marjorie had grown up in Baltimore, the only child of wealthy parents who placed great importance on beauty. No doubt she’d suffered when she’d presented her parents with her first child, a squalling creature with curly dark hair and hazel eyes. Catherine was happy with her looks these days, but she could understand what not having a perfectly beautiful, blond, blue-eyed baby had cost her mother. Marjorie’s parents were dead now. She and Drew clung to each other like two orphans united against the world. With a whiskey bottle as their mascot, Catherine thought wryly, entering the library.

  There was brandy in the cut-glass decanter, and Catherine poured herself some. She seldom drank, but a little brandy seemed appropriate in this dark room in the middle of the night. She stretched out on a leather sofa, reaching down to pull her wrapper over her bare feet, and looked out through the glass French doors at the silver gardens.

  Who would inherit Everly? It would be a neat irony if her father inherited and passed it on to Shelly, who would most certainly sell it in order to play away the profits, just as his great-uncle Clifford had done with the British Everly.

  Or was Cath
erine being too harsh? Certain characteristics were inherited, she believed, certain propensities and qualities and abilities, just as much as the color of eyes or hair. She could quite easily believe she’d inherited Kathryn’s inability to love people; look at her, she was twenty-five, unmarried, not in love, not even seeing anyone. Her letters to Leslie were always about Blooms, with side notes about her family. Leslie’s letters to her were about her love affairs, and in the past five years Leslie had had more than she could remember. And they were really love affairs. Every time Leslie wrote of a new man, she wrote about him in tender, exalted language, emotions Catherine had felt only once, with Kit.

  Sexual desire was something else. Certainly she’d felt that, strongly, for Piet, but that was not love, and the craving was so physical, from such a depth, that she often felt it was shameful. Shame. Funny, Catherine was not ashamed of the blackmail she had committed. The blackmail had two sides, like the moon. She had blackmailed in order to help her family—so from whom had she inherited the crushing responsibility to help her amazingly frustrating family? Not from her father, or mother, or even Kathryn. Hers had seemed a glorious sort of crime, justified by cause and mitigated by the victim’s own sins. But she was ashamed of what it said about her. She was capable of vice, and furthermore, so was Piet. Desiring him had a darkness to it, a taint of corruption, because of what they’d done together.

  Agitated by her thoughts, Catherine set aside the untouched brandy glass and flung herself from the sofa. She paced the room. She was only twenty-five! Why did her father expect her to save Ann? Well, because she had allowed him to grow accustomed to her help, of course. But why had she become responsible for any of her family at all?

  Her irritation with Shelly’s terrible grades was not simply born from concern about his life, she knew that. She was jealous of him. His darling choirboy looks let him get away with everything, and this summer he’d be driving across the continent, laughing and singing with friends. Catherine would be slaving away at Blooms, except for the time she’d probably take off to take her sister to Everly and out of Troy’s clutches. A part of her would like nothing better than to be laughing and singing and driving across the continent in a convertible. She’d meet strange men with western accents and rough hands and make irresponsible love with them.