Separate Beds (32 page)

Angela called and asked his permission to plan a little Sunday brunch on the weekend following his graduation. When she said she'd already received Catherine's approval, Clay snapped into the phone, “Since the two of you already have the whole thing planned, why are you bothering to ask me!”

Then he had to do some fancy skirting to get around his mother's demand to know what on earth was eating him.

Clay graduated from the University of Minnesota law school with honors when Melissa was two months old. Now he held a degree, but he had never held his daughter.

The day of the brunch would have been well-suited to a June wedding. The sprawling backyard of the Forresters was at its finest. The view over the flaming chafing dishes on the semicircular terrace was lush with color. The terrace itself was delineated by carefully pruned global arborvitae, which in turn were edged with alternating clumps of marigold and ageratum, the purple and gold contrast creating a stunning effect. The yard stretched in falling terraces to the far reaches of the property where a file of blue spruce marked its boundaries. The rose gardens of phalanx symmetry were in full bloom, in full scent. Shapely maples and lindens dotted the grass with vast splashes of shade. It was like a pastoral scene from an impressionist's brush: ladies in filmy dresses drifting from the terrace across the lawn, men sitting on the parapet of the terrace, everyone nibbling on melon and berries.

Catherine was sitting on the grass when a shadow fell over her and she glanced sunward, blinded at first and unable to make out who stood above her.

“All by yourself?” It was Jill Magnusson's rich, lazy voice. “May I join you?”

Catherine held up a forearm to shade her eyes. “Of course, have a chair.”

Dropping to the grass, Jill doubled up her Thoroughbred legs and folded them elegantly to the side—like a ballerina in a swan scene, thought Catherine. Jill tossed back her thick mane and smiled directly at Catherine.

“I guess I should apologize for not sending a gift when the baby was born, but you know how it is.”

“Do I?” Catherine replied sweetly—a little too sweetly.

Jill's gaze drifted over Catherine before she smiled archly. “Well . . . don't you?”

“I don't know what you're getting at.”

“You know precisely what I'm getting at, and I won't be a hypocrite about it. I'm completely jealous of that baby of yours and Clay's. Not that I'd want one, you understand, but it should have been mine.”

Catherine controlled the urge to slap her. “Should have been yours? Why, how gauche of you to say so.”

“Gauche maybe, but we both know it's true. I've been damning myself ever since last October, but I've finally decided to lay my cards on the table. I want Clay; it's as simple as that.”

Some stirring of pride made Catherine answer, “I'm afraid he's already taken.”

“Taken for a fool maybe. He's told me what kind of relationship you two have. Why do you want to hold a man you don't love and who doesn't love you?”

“Maybe to give our daughter a father.”

“Not the healthiest reason, you'll have to admit.”

“I don't have to admit anything to you, Jill.”

“Very well—don't. But ask yourself why Clay asked me to wait for him until he could get this mess straightened out.” Then Jill's voice became quite purring. “Oh, I see this is news to you, isn't it? You didn't know that Clay asked me to marry him right after he found out you were pregnant? Well, he did. But my silly pride was shattered and I was totally wrong in turning him down. But now I've changed my mind.”

“And what does he have to say about it?”

“Actions speak louder than words. Surely you know that while you turned a cold shoulder on him all last winter he knew where to find a warm one.”

Catherine's stomach was aquiver. “What do you want from me?” she demanded coldly.

“I want you to do the right thing, turn Clay free before he falls in love with his daughter and stays for the wrong reason.”

“He chose me over you. That's hard for you to swallow, isn't it?”

Jill tossed her hair behind a shoulder. “Kiddo, you didn't fool me with that trumped-up wedding of yours. This is Jill you're talking to. I was
there
that night and it's no hallucination that Clay kissed me far more intimately than grooms are supposed to kiss other women.” Jill paused for dramatic effect, then finished, “And he told me he still loved me. Strange for a man on his wedding night, huh?”

The memory of that night came back to Catherine, but she hid her chagrin behind a mask of indifference. She turned now to see Clay sitting on the terrace, deep in conversation with Jill's father.

Jill went on. “There's no doubt in my mind that if this . . . mistake”—Jill's pause seemed to denigrate the word further—”hadn't happened between you, Clay and I would be planning our wedding right now. It was always implicitly understood that Clay and I would eventually marry. Why, we've been intimate since the days when our mothers plunked us naked together into our little plastic backyard pools. In October when he asked me to marry him, he admitted you were nothing more than a tragic mistake to him. Why not do him a favor and bow out of the picture?”

It was clear that Jill Magnusson was used to getting what she wanted, by fair means or foul. The woman's manner was insolent and rude. There was no note of appeal in her attitude, only brazen self-assurance.

Oh, she was as cool as Inella's tomato aspic up there on its bed of crushed ice, thought Catherine. But Catherine disliked tomato aspic too.

“You assume a lot, Jill,” Catherine said now with a little ice of her own.

“I assume nothing. I know. I know because Clay has confided in me. I know that you've thrown him out of his own bed, that you've encouraged him to live a life of his own, to keep his old friends, his old pursuits. The baby's born now, she has a name, and Clay is financially responsible for her for life. You got what you wanted out of him, so why don't you free him?”

Catherine rose, brushed off her skirt and pointedly raised an arm to wave at Clay, who waved back. Without looking again at Jill, she said, “He's a big boy. If he wants to be free, don't you think he'd ask?”

Catherine headed in the direction of the terrace, but before she could get away, Jill threw one last parting shot, and this one hit its mark: “Where do you think he was while you were in the hospital having his baby?”

Insane thoughts came to Catherine, childlike in their vindictiveness. She wished that Inella's superb tomato aspic was made with Jill's blood. She wanted to shave Jill's head, roll her naked in poison ivy, feed her chocolate laced with laxative. These thoughts didn't strike Catherine as immature. She felt hurt and degraded; she wanted revenge and could think of no way to get it.

And Clay! She felt like taking a handful of melon balls and firing them at him like artillery. Like overturning the chafing dishes, getting everyone's attention, telling everyone here what a liar and a libertine he was! How could he! How could he! It wasn't bad enough that he'd continued his sexual relationship with Jill, but the thought of him confiding the intimate truths about their marriage cut deeper than Catherine ever thought possible. Painful memories came back, bolder than ever: New Year's Eve and Clay kissing Jill with his little finger under her spaghetti strap; the night he hadn't come home at all while she'd fixed supper and waited; and worst of all—four nights while she lay in a maternity ward . . .

It was several days after the brunch.

Catherine had submerged her anger until it lay at the base of her tongue like bile, waiting to be spewed. He'd known for days that she was seething and would soon erupt. What he didn't know was what would trigger it.

All he was doing was standing beside the crib watching Melissa sleep. Suddenly, behind him, Catherine hissed, “What are you doing! Get away from her!”

His hands came halfway out of his pockets and he turned, surprised by her vehemence. “I didn't wake her up,” he whispered.

“I know what you're thinking, standing there staring at her all the time, and you can just get it off your mind, Clay Forrester, because it won't work! I'll fight you till my dying day before I let you take her from me!”

With a quick glance to make sure the baby hadn't been disturbed, he moved toward the hall.

“Catherine, you're imagining things. I told you I—”

“You told me a lot of things you wouldn't do, like keep your affair going with Jill Magnusson, but she certainly set me straight about that! Well, if you want her, what's holding you up?”

“What did Jill say to you Sunday anyway?”

“Enough that I know I want to see you gone from this house, and the sooner the better.”

“What did she say?”

“Do I need to repeat it? Do you want to rub my nose in it? All right!” Catherine marched into the master bedroom, slammed a hand against the light switch and paraded to his chest of drawers, flinging clothes out to punctuate her words. “You've been sleeping with her all the time you lied to me and said you weren't, so why not move in with her permanently? Do you think everybody doesn't know what's been going on between you when you stood at your own wedding reception and French-kissed her in front of everybody there? Did you tell your mother you'd stepped out for air when you disappeared with Jill on New Year's Eve? How dumb do you think I am, Clay? And why are you hanging around here like a stray dog? I'm not going to take you in and feed you and ask you if you'd like to live with me, because I want this farce to be over. I don't want your phony condescension or your two-bit psychoanalysis about my being emotionally crippled! I don't want you coming in here fawning over
my
daughter—the one I had while you were staying nights at Jill's house. All I want is what you agreed to give me. Child support for Melissa and my college education paid for. And I want you out of here—out!—so I can get on with my life!”

The pile of clothes lay in disarray between them. The air seemed thick, as if her shouting had actually raised dust.

“She told you a pack of lies, Catherine.”

Catherine closed her eyes, but the lids quivered. She raised both palms up to Clay.

“Don't . . . just don't. Don't make it worse than it already is.” Her voice shook.

“If she said I've been sleeping with her, it's a goddam lie. I've seen her, yes, but I told you I wouldn't sleep with her and I haven't.”

“Why are we arguing? This is only what we knew was coming all along. Do you want me to go so you can stay? Okay—” she grew obstinate—”okay, fine.” She started dumping armfuls of his things back in the drawers. “Fine, I'll go. I can easily go back home now that Herb is gone.” She headed for her own dresser and yanked the drawers open.

“Catherine, you're acting childish. Will you stop it! I don't want you to go! Do you think I'd toss you and Melissa out?”

“Oh, then you want to go.”

She marched back to the bureau and stubbornly began to empty it again. He caught her by an arm and swung her around none too gently.

“You're an adult now. Will you start acting like one?”

“I . . . want . . . this . . . over!” she said with emphatic pauses. “I want your parents to know the truth so I don't have to listen to your dad babbling about us leaving Melissa at their house. I'm sick of your mother giving her Polly Flinders dresses that cost forty dollars apiece and making me feel guilty as Judas! I'm sick of you standing over her crib plotting how you can get her away from me! Jill doesn't want her. Don't you understand that, Clay? All she wants is you! And since you want her, too, why don't we cut through all the crap and give little Jill what she wants?”

Something inside Catherine cringed at her rudeness, her gutter language so like her father's, but she couldn't stop it. The need to hurt Clay like he'd hurt her was too strong.

“I can see Jill really did a number on you. She's very good with words, but did she ever actually say I slept with her, or did she
imply
it? I have no doubt she made me sound totally conniving and guilty.”

“You told her!” Catherine raged. “You told her I threw you out of your bed when it was you who chose to sleep on that davenport. You picked out that . . . that damn long davenport, I didn't! And you had no right to tell her such private things about us!”

“I told her we were having problems; she must have guessed the rest.”

“It doesn't take much guessing, does it? Not when a man sleeps with one woman while another is in the hospital having his baby!”

Clay's eyebrows lowered ominously. He ran a hand through his hair. “Goddam that Jill.” Then he swung around with a palm up entreatingly. “Catherine, it's not true. I saw her the second night you were in the hospital. She was waiting outside in her car when I came home, and she followed me in.”

“You had her
here?”
Catherine's voice cracked into a high falsetto. “Here in
my
house?”

“I didn't
have her here,
not the way you put it. I said she followed me in. She said she had to talk to me. We didn't do anything.”

But Catherine was done arguing. “If you're leaving, leave. If not, I'm going to start my own packing. Which will it be?”

In the moments during which she stood confronting Clay, waiting for him to make the move, some bereft voice seemed to be calling from within her, beating on the inside of her stomach with tiny fists, “Why are you doing this? Why are you treating him this way when you love him? Why can't you be forgiving? Why can't you reach out and beg him to start over with you? Is that pain in his face? If you don't risk finding out, he'll be gone, and you'll be left to wonder. But then it will be too late.” She stood before him, aching for him to love her, knowing she was making herself unlovable again because she loved him so much that the idea of having him—truly having him—as a husband, then losing him, would annihilate her in the end.

“I'll need to know where you'll be so my lawyer can serve the divorce papers” was all he said. Then he went to the closet to get his luggage.

Catherine hid in the kitchen while Clay packed, listening to him making trips out to the car. Her stomach felt queasy. It lifted nauseatingly until she pressed it firmly against the edge of the kitchen counter. She sensed when Clay went in to look at Melissa for the last time. In the silence she pictured him, his blond head bent over the crib, gazing down at the baby's head—blond, too—and she felt heartless and sick with herself. She swallowed back tears, pressing against the counter until her hipbones hurt. The awful need to cry made her throat ache unbearably. It felt like she'd swallowed a tennis ball.

He came quietly to the kitchen doorway, found her standing in the lightless room.