Separate Beds (16 page)

“Well, you heard her, didn't you?” Catherine's expression was perhaps a little bedeviling.

“And after all her efforts to keep your whereabouts a secret,” he mocked.

“Did you have to sit there smirking all through my conversation?”

“Well, you sat there smirking through mine.” He noted she was still doing so.

“Yes, but guys react differently than girls.”

He arose lazily, sauntered toward Catherine and pressed his palms to the desk top, leaning forward as he teased, “Just getting to know my . . . bride, is all. See how she works under pressure.” His gray eyes sparkled into hers.

He had never called her his bride before. It conjured up intimacy and made secret shivers tiptoe down Catherine's spine. She turned the chair aside, slid to her feet and pressed her blouse against her still-flat stomach, looking down at it. “Give me six months or so and you'll see precisely how I work under pressure.”

Then she gave him one of her first genuine smiles. He thought if she'd be this way more often, the coming months could be enjoyable for both of them.

Catherine's adamant refusal to have her father at the wedding left Angela in a quandary. There was only one way she could think of to see that Herb Anderson was tidily out of the way the day of the wedding. When she tactfully brought it up to Claiborne, he reluctantly admitted the idea had been on his mind too. There was no guarantee it would work. Three weeks was a very short time; there was no assurance the case could be fitted on the docket that soon; there was no guarantee Anderson would be found guilty or be given a sentence.

But just to tip the scales, Claiborne hired the finest criminal lawyer in the twin cities. If Leon Harkness couldn't do the trick, no lawyer could.

Ada Anderson worked the day shift at the Munsingwear plant on Lyndale Avenue on the north side of Minneapolis. She had worked there so long the place and its surrounding area no longer affected her. Its utilitarian setting in a dismal commercial zone, its clattery workrooms and changelessness were what she'd come to expect. But Catherine, getting off the city bus, looking up at the building, was hit by a wave of desolation at the thought of how long her mother had labored there, sewing pockets onto T-shirts and waistbands onto briefs. The factory had always depressed Catherine, but it was the only place she could talk to her mother and be sure she wouldn't run the risk of bumping into the old man.

Ada came scuffing out of the noisy, lint-strewn room with a look of fear on her simple face, put there by the fact that her supervisor had called her away from her machine to see a visitor—something highly unusual in this place. The moment Ada saw Catherine the fear disappeared, to be replaced by a smile with more seams than Ada Anderson had stitched in her sixteen years in this place.

“Why, Catherine,” Ada said in that tired, surprised way.

“Hello, Mom.”

“Why, I thought you was gone someplace out west.”

“No, Mom, I've been in the city all the time. I just didn't want Daddy to know I was here.”

“He's been awful mad about you running off.”

Catherine would have welcomed a hug, but there was none, only her mother's tired acceptance of the way things were.

“Did he . . . has he taken it out on you, Mom?”

“No. Just on the bottle. Hasn't been sober a day since you left.”

“Mom, is there somewhere we can sit down?”

“I don't know, honey, I don't get a break yet for another thirty minutes or so.”

“How about the lunchroom?”

“Well, there's always the girls in there, and they got big ears, if y'know what I mean.”

“Could we at least get away from the noise? Out on the stairway maybe?”

“Just a minute, I'll ask.”

Something cracked in Catherine, some fissure of irritation at her mother's spinelessness. Not even here, after sixteen years, not even given the situation which should mean so much to her, could she simply take command and step away for a while.

“For heaven's sake, Mother. You mean you have to ask for five minutes away from your machine?”

Ada touched her chin in a feeble, troubled way, making Catherine instantly sorry for attacking her for something Ada was perhaps helpless to change in herself. Quickly Catherine touched her mother's arm. “Ask then, go ahead. I'll wait.”

When they were out on the steps and the noise became a muffled clatter behind them, it somehow seemed an appropriate background for this worn woman who looked fifteen years older than she was. Catherine suddenly thought of it as a song of lament for the defeated. A surge of tenderness overtook her.

“Come on, Mom, let's just sit down here, okay? What'd you do to your finger?” There was a bandage on Ada's right index finger.

“Wasn't nothing much. I ran it under the machine last week. You'd think I'd've had more sense after all this time. They said I had to have a tetanus shot, though, and that was worse than this.”

Catherine wondered if her running away, then, had distracted her mother that much. “I didn't mean to make you worry, Mom. I just didn't know how to keep Daddy off my back. I thought he'd track me down at college and start making trouble for me again and for the Forresters. I thought that if he thought I was gone where he couldn't find me, he'd let it go. But he didn't.”

“I tried to tell him he'd best let up, Catherine. I tried to tell him. 'Herb,' I says, 'you can't go badgerin' people like them Forresters. They ain't gonna put up with it.' But he went there and he beat up that young man and spent the night in jail. He started drinkin' worse than ever after that, and now he walks around whisperin' to himself about how he's gonna get them to pay up. It scares me. You know how he is. I says to him, 'Herb, you're gonna make yourself sick if you keep this up.'“

“Mom, he is sick. Don't you understand that by now?”

“Don't say that, honey . . . don't say things like that.” The fear was back in Ada's eyes. She glanced skittishly away. “He's bound to slack off pretty soon.”

“Pretty soon? Mom, you've been saying that for as long as I can remember. Why do you put up with it?”

“There's nothing else I can do.”

“You could leave,” Catherine said softly.

Again Ada's eyes did what Catherine expected. They grew fearful and twitchy. “Why, where would I go, honey? He wouldn't let me go nowheres.”

“I'll help you any way I can. I told you I'd find out what needs to be done to get help for him. There are places, Mom, right here in the city, that could help him.”

“No, no,” Ada insisted in her pathetically fierce way, “that wouldn't do any good. He'd just come out and be worse than ever. I know Herb.”

Catherine thought of the Johnson Institute right at their fingertips, where help could be had for a phone call. But she gave up the argument which was, by now, as shopworn as Ada herself, defeated once again by her mother's self-inflicted blindness.

“Listen, Mom, I have some good news.”

“Some good news?” Even when her eyes registered hope they looked sad.

“I'm not exactly sure how it happened, but I'm going to marry Clay Forrester.”

Catherine held both of her mother's hands, rubbing her thumbs across the shiny surfaces where the skin seemed so thin the veins looked exposed. The expression on Ada's face visibly brightened.

“You're going to marry him, honey?”

Catherine nodded her head. Her mother at last squeezed her hands.

“Marry that handsome young man who said he didn't know you? How can that be?”

“I've been seeing him, Mom, and I've been back to his house several times and have talked with his parents and they're really quite nice. They've been very understanding and helpful. Can you believe it, Mom? I'm going to have a real wedding in that beautiful house of theirs.”

“A real wedding?” Ada touched Catherine's cheek while her own eyes turned glossy. “Why, honey . . .” Again she squeezed Catherine's hand. “So that's where you run off to, to that young man of yours. Well, isn't that something.”

“No, Mom, I've been living out near the campus, and I've made lots of new friends, and I've seen Bobbi, and she's been letting me know how you've been all along.”

“You don't have to worry about me, honey. You know I always end up on my feet. But you, look at you, ain't you something. A real wedding.” Ada reached into her pocket and found a tissue and dabbed at her rheumy eyes. “Listen, honey, I got a little money saved, not much, but—”

“Shh, Mom. You don't have to worry about paying for anything. It's all taken care of.”

“But you're my baby, my own little girl. It should be me that—”

“Mother, the Forresters want to take care of it, honest. I could have eloped if I'd wanted to, but Mrs. Forrester . . . well, she's really on our side, Mom. I've never met anyone like her.”

“Oh, she's a fine lady all right.”

“Mom, I want you there at the wedding.”

Startled eyes were raised to meet Catherine's. “Oh, no, honey, why, I would never fit in that place. I couldn't.”

“Listen, Mom. Steve's coming.”

Surprise held Ada's tongue a moment before she repeated disbelievingly, “Steve?” Her eyes turned alight with that inextinguishable flicker of mother-love. “You talked to Steve?”

“Yes, and he's going to try to come home.”

“Come home?”

Together they counted back six years.

“Yes, Mom. And he said to tell you he'll take you to the wedding with him. That's what I came to tell you.”

“Steve . . . coming home?” But at the thought Ada raised those tentative fingers to her lips again. “Oh, but there'll be trouble. Herb and Steve . . .” Her eyes dropped down to her lap.

“Daddy's never going to know. Steve and you are coming to the wedding, but not Daddy.” Determinedly Catherine squeezed her mother's hands.

“But I don't see how.”

“Please, Mom, please listen. You can tell him you're going to play Saturday bingo like you do sometimes. I want you at my wedding, but you can see that if he came too, it would only mean trouble, can't you?”

“But he'll know, honey, he'll guess. You know how he is.”

“He won't know if you don't tell him, not if you just walk out like you're meeting Mrs. Murphy for bingo like you've done a hundred Saturdays before.”

“But he's got that sixth sense. He's always had it.”

“Mama, Steve's not coming to the house, you know that, don't you? He swore when he left that he'd never set foot in it again, and he hasn't changed his mind. If you want to see Steve, you'll have to see him at my wedding.”

“Is he all right?”

“He's just fine. He sounded really happy and asked how you are and said to give you his love.”

“Steve's twenty-two now.” Ada's mind seemed to drift away into the racket of the machines from the workroom. The rhythmic clack and thump accompanied her lost thoughts while she hovered on the steps with her knees almost touching her daughter's. The lines of fatigue on her face could not be smoothed, but as she reached back in time, thoughts of her son placed some new determination in the network of wrinkles about her lips. When she raised her eyes to Catherine again, she said, “Twyla's got a bolt of blue knit in the remnant room'd make me a pretty nice dress. I get it at employee's discount, you know.”

“Oh, do you mean it, Mom?” Catherine smiled.

“I want to see Steve, and I want to see my little girl's wedding. Why, stitching up a dress ain't nothing to me after all the years I put in here.”

“Thank you.” Impulsively Catherine leaned forward to hug her mother briefly around the thin shoulders.

“I'd best get back now, or my daily quota will be low.”

Catherine nodded.

“I won't say a word to Herb this time, you'll see.”

“Good. And I'll let you know if Steve calls again.”

Ada braced hands to knees as she creaked to her feet. “I'm glad you come, honey. I didn't like to think of you off across the country someplace like Steve.” She climbed two stairs, then turned around, looking down at Catherine.

“Is it gonna be the kind with flowers and cake and a white dress for you?”

“Yes, Mom, it is.”

“Well, feature that,” Ada said thoughtfully. Then she stopped to do so, with the expression of wonder growing grander by the minute upon her time-worn features. “Just feature that,” she repeated, as if to herself.

And for the first time, Catherine was fully, totally, one hundred percent happy that she'd gone along with all of Angela Forrester's wishes.

The invitations were ice-blue, embossed with rich, ivory letters of finest English Roundhand that pirouetted across the marbled parchment like the steps of a dancer. As she lifted a card from the box, it crackled like the dancer's crinoline beneath Catherine's fingers. She touched a raised character, ran her fingertips lightly along a line, as the blind read braille. The ascenders and descenders formed graceful swirls that rose up to meet her searching touch.

You can feel these words, Catherine thought, you can feel them.

Awe-filled, she studied the invitation, not quite accustomed yet to everything that was happening so fast. The words read in that formal lexicon peculiar to occasions that mark the steppingstones of life:

Catherine Marie Anderson
and
Clay Elgin Forrester
invite you to share in their joy
as they celebrate
the solemnization of their marriage vows
at seven P.M. on November fifteenth
at the home of Claiborne and Angela Forrester
Number Seventy Nine
Highview Place
Edina, Minnesota

Again, Catherine grazed the words with her fingertips. But with a woeful sense of yearning she thought, yes, the words can be felt, but it is not enough to feel only with the fingertips.

By now Catherine and Clay could meet in the front hall of Horizons and display a friendly familiarity that lacked the edginess of those first couple of meetings. Catherine invariably found herself scanning his clothing, invariably, too, found herself pleased by what greeted her. Likewise, Clay found himself approving of her appearance. Her clothes were neat, if unostentatious, and she wore them well. He watched for a first sign of roundness on her, but so far none was showing.

“Hi,” he said now, while his eyes performed that first perusal which she'd come to expect. “How are you holding up?”

She struck a pose. “How does it look like I'm holding up?”

He glanced once again over the plum wool dress, loosebelted, trimmed with top-stitched pockets at hip and chest.

“Looks like you're doing fine. Nice dress.”

She dropped her pose, wondering if she'd done that on purpose to wrest a compliment from him. She found his approval pleasing. But since that night she'd fallen asleep on the way home, they had each made a conscious effort to be nicer to each other.

“Thank you.”

“You're going to meet my grandparents tonight.”

By now she could manage to be less alarmed at such announcements. Still, this one made her slightly apprehensive.

“Do I have to?”

“They come with the package, I'm afraid.”

Her eyes moved down his length. “The package, as usual, is wrapped to perfection.” And so it was, in bone colored pleated trousers and a complementary Harris Tweed sportcoat with suede elbow patches.

It was the first compliment she'd ever paid him. He smiled, suddenly warm inside.

“Thanks, glad you approve. Now let's hope my grandparents do.”

“The way you put that sounds forbidding.”

“No, not really. But then, I've known them all my life. My Grandmother Forrester is a crusty old gal though. You'll see what I mean.”

Just then Little Bit came downstairs, stopped and hung over the banister halfway down. “Hi, Clay!”

“Hi, Little Bit. Is it okay if I take her for a while?” he asked, teasingly.

“Why don't you take me instead tonight?” Little Bit swooned farther over the railing. The girls had given up trying to hide their fascination with Clay.

But at that minute Marie came down the steps. “Who's taking you where? Oh, hi, Clay.”

“Do something with that child, will you, before she drops on her head and gives birth to a dimwit?”

Marie laughed and slapped Little Bit lightly on the rump as she passed behind her. They both came the rest of the way downstairs.

“Where you off to tonight?” Marie asked, eyeing them appreciatively.

“To my house.”

“Yeah? What's the occasion this time?”

“Another one of the seven tortures. Grandparents, I'm afraid.”

Marie raised an eyebrow, took Little Bit's hand to tug her off toward the kitchen while giving Catherine one last conspiratorial glance over the shoulder. “Lucky thing you decided to wear your newest creation, huh, Cath?”

Clay looked the dress over a second time, with greater interest.

“We do have nimble fingers, don't we?” he asked, and without winking, gave the impression he had.

“Yes, we do. Of necessity.” And Catherine laid a hand lightly upon her stomach. Smiling with Clay, she felt a little happy, a little venturesome.

Something had changed between them. The lurking sense of anger and entrapment had begun to wane. They treated each other civilly, and occasional spurts of repartee such as this were becoming more frequent.

By the time Clay turned into his parents' driveway full dark had fallen. The headlights picked out the herringbone design of red bricks while upon them the tires hummed the note that by now Catherine unconsciously listened for.

The yard was dressed for winter. Leaves were but memories, while tree trunks were swathed in white leggings. The shrubs had hunched their shoulders and pulled mulch-quilts up beneath their chins. An occasional pyramidal bush was laced into winter bindings like an Indian papoose.

The house was lit from within and without. Catherine glanced at the twin carriage lanterns on either side of the front door, then down at the tips of her high heels as she approached the house. Her pocketed hands hugged her coat close as she tried to keep her growing apprehension from getting the best of her. Without warning, from behind, Clay's fingers circled her neck, closing lightly in a warm grip.

“Hey, wait, I have to talk to you before we go in.”

At his touch, she instantly turned, surprised. He left both hands on her shoulders with his thumbs pressing her coat collar against each side of her windpipe. Catherine needn't say it for him to be reminded that she'd rather not be touched this way.

“Sorry,” he said, immediately raising his palms.

“What is it?”

“Just a technicality.” Gingerly he inserted a single index finger into her coat sleeve, tugging until the hand came out of her coat pocket. “There's no ring on this.” Her bare hand dangled out of the sleeve. While he looked at it, the fingers suddenly clenched protectively, shutting the thumb inside.

“Grandmothers tend to become suspicious when they don't see what they expect to see,” he noted wryly.

“And what do they expect to see?”

“This.”

Still holding her coat sleeve, he lifted his other hand to reveal a jeweled ring riding the first knuckle of his little finger. In the meager light from the carriage lanterns it wasn't at first evident exactly what it looked like. Clay wiggled the finger a little and the gems glittered. Catherine's eyes were drawn to it as if he were a hypnotist using it to mesmerize her. Her mouth went dry.

It's so big! she thought, horrified. “Do I have to?”

He commanded her hand, sliding the ring onto the proper finger. “I'm afraid so. It's family tradition. You'll be the fourth generation to wear it.”

With the ring not quite on, she gripped his fingers, stopping them, feeling the ring cut into her.

“This game is going too far,” she whispered.

“The significance of a ring is in the mind of its wearer, Catherine, not in the fact that it's on a hand.”

“But how can I wear this with three generations behind it?”

“Just pretend you got it in a box of Cracker Jacks,” he said unconcernedly, completing the adornment of her third finger, pushing the ring all the way on. Then he dropped her cold fingers.

“Clay, this ring is worth thousands of dollars. You know it and I know it, and it is not right that I'm wearing it.”

“But you'll have to anyway. If it helps to relieve your mind, remember that the Forrester side of the family made a business of gems before my father broke the tradition and went into law. Grandmother Forrester still owns a thriving business, which she refused to relinquish when Grandfather died. There are hundreds more where this came from.”

“But not with this one's significance.”

“So, humor an old lady.” Clay smiled and shrugged.

She had no choice. Neither did she have a choice when, in the entry after he'd taken her coat, Clay returned and laced his hand half around her neck in that careless way of his. That was how they entered the living room, with him affectionately herding her along and Catherine doing her best to keep resilient under his touch.

They approached first a withered little pair of people who were dressed formally and sat side by side on a velveteen sofa. The man wore a black suit and looked like an aged orchestra conductor. The woman, in mauve lace, wore a little twinkling smile that looked as if she'd donned it seventy years ago and hadn't taken it off since. Approaching the pair, Catherine felt Clay's hand slide down her back, linger at her waist, then depart as he bent to take the woman's cheeks in both hands and plop a direct, noisy kiss on her mouth.

“Hi, sweetheart,” he said irreverently. Catherine could have sworn the old girl actually blushed as she looked up at Clay. Then she twinkled as she shook a crooked, arthritic finger at him—her only greeting.

“Hello, sonny,” the grandfather greeted him. “You get your grandma more excited with that word than I can anymore.” Clay's hearty laugh swept the two.

“So, Granddad, are you jealous?” He put an arm around the shoulders of the bald man who might have been stepping up to a podium with his aging slump. To Catherine's surprise, the two embraced unabashedly, chuckling together.

“I want you both to meet Catherine.” Clay turned back, reached out a palm and drew her forward. “Catherine, this is Grandma and Grandpa Elgin, better known around here as Sophie and Granddad.”

“Hello,” Catherine said, smiling easily, squeezing each parchment hand in turn. Sophie's and Granddad's smiles were so alike it was like seeing double.

Then Clay captured her elbow, turning her toward a woman who sat with a matriarchal air in a high-backed chair that need not be a throne to bespeak the woman's regal mien. The feeling was there. It permeated the very air about her. It was evident in her bearing, her facial expression, the faultless blue-white waves that crested her head, the shrewd eyes, the glitter flashing from her fingers and the glacial assessment she gave Catherine.

Before Clay could speak, the woman pierced him with an arch, amused look.

“Don't try those flirtatious tactics with me, young man. I'm not the blushing fool your Grandmother Sophie might be.”

“Never, Grandmother,” assured Clay, wearing a devilish grin as he lifted one of her bejeweled hands and bent over it quite correctly. He made as if to kiss its blue-veined back, but at the last minute, turned it over and kissed the base of her thumb.

Catherine found herself amused at these cat-and-mouse goings-on. The old lady's mouth pursed to keep from smiling outright.

“I've brought Catherine to meet you,” Clay said, dropping the hand, but not the half-smile. Again he urged Catherine near with a slight touch on her elbow. “Catherine, this is my Grandmother Forrester. I never call her by her first name for some reason.”

“Mrs. Forrester,” Catherine repeated, while her hand disappeared within all those flashing gems.

“My grandson is a precocious young upstart. You'd do well to watch your
p
's and
q
's around him, young lady.”

“I intend to, Ma'am,” Catherine rejoined, wondering what the old lady would think if she knew the extent to which
p
's and
q
's would need to be watched in the months ahead.

Mrs. Forrester raised an ivory-headed cane and tapped Catherine's shoulder lightly, perusing her with gray irises from beneath one straight eyebrow and one that was cocked in an aristocratic arc.

“I like that. I might have answered in just that way myself.” She rested the cane on the floor again, crossed her hands upon the ivory elephant with its sapphire eyes, and angled a bemused expression again at her grandson, asking, “Where did you find this perceptive young lady?”

Clay moved a hand lingeringly up and down the inner side of Catherine's elbow while he searched her face and answered his grandmother. “I didn't. She found me.” Then his hand trailed down, enclosing hers. Elizabeth Forrester's eyes followed it and registered the way the girl's fingers failed to clasp Clay's. The pair turned toward Claiborne and Angela who were pouring port and making room on a marble-topped table for the silver tray of canapés which Inella carried in at that moment.

Clay had a greeting for Inella too. He dropped a hand on her shoulder as she leaned to set down the tray. “And what kind of epicurean delights have you dreamed up tonight, Inella? Don't you know Father's been concerned about his waistline?”

Everyone laughed.

“Epicurean delights,” scoffed the pleased maid. “Where do you dream up such stuff?” She left, smiling. There followed a full-fledged hug between Clay and his mother and a clasp of hands with his father.

Catherine had never seen so much touching in her life. Nor had she seen Clay in this element before, warm, humorous, obviously loved and loving everyone in the place. The scene gripped her with something akin to envy, yet deep in some part of her, Catherine was slightly intimidated. But she could not pull away as the next warm touch fell her way and Angela's cheek pressed against her own while Claiborne—thankfully—only smiled on, and gave her a friendly verbal greeting.

“Young woman, sit here,” ordered Elizabeth Forrester imperiously.

Catherine could do nothing but perch on a loveseat at a right angle to Elizabeth Forrester's chair. She was actually grateful when Clay sat down beside her. His presence somehow made her feel fortified. Elizabeth Forrester's shrewd eagle-eyes assessed Catherine, probing like a laser while she made what appeared on the surface to be inconsequential conversation.

“Catherine . . .” she mused, “what a quaint and lovely name. Not clever and will-o-the-wisp like so many of today's insubstantial titles. I dare say there are many I'd be thoroughly ashamed to be plagued with. You and I, however, have each been preceded in name by an English queen, you know. My given name is Elizabeth.”

Catherine wondered if she were being given permission to use the name or being tested to see if she were so presumptuous. Assuming the latter, Catherine consciously used the more formal mode of address.

“I believe, Mrs. Forrester, that the name Elizabeth means 'consecrated to God.'“

The regal eyebrow raised a notch. The girl is astute, thought Elizabeth Forrester. “Ah, so it does, so it does. Catherine . . . is that with a
C
or a
K?”

“With a
C.”

“From the Greek then, meaning 'pure.'“

Catherine's stomach did somersaults. Does she
know
or does she
want
to know, Catherine wondered, making a great effort to appear unruffled.

The matriarch observed, “So, you are the one who will carry the Forrester name forward.”

Catherine's stomach tightened further. But Clay, whom she didn't know whether to damn or to thank, nestled closely beside her with his thigh against the length of her own, meeting his grandmother's probe directly.

“Yes, she is. But not without some persuasion. I think Catherine was a little put off by me at first. Something to do with our having different stations in life, which I had trouble convincing her didn't matter one damn bit.”