Chapter 11
Outside, the rain was gathering strength, beating steadily against the house and whining with the wind to be let in at the windows. But all was securely locked inside, barricaded with New England permanence against the destructive elements of nature.
Catharine lay quietly staring up at the ceiling. The bedside lamps cast a cozy glow around her, and a fire crackled comfortingly in the grate. Shadows flickered across the ceiling, but her eyes were wide and unseeing. The tranquilizer had done its work. She no longer sobbed, no longer fought to save herself. Someone had combed her hair, and even put lipstick on her mouth, while she had lain limp and helpless.
The bedroom door opened tentatively, and Richard poked his head in. When he saw her eyes still staring, emotionless, he tiptoed into the room to stand beside her.
"Catharine...? " he said.
She turned her head slightly on the pillow to look at him. He took this as an encouraging sign, although he was shocked at how gaunt and pale she looked, with lines at her eyes and mouth that looked ... old. It must be the injection the doctor had given her, or a trick of the lamplight. The lipstick made her mouth look like a stab wound in the deadly white pallor of her skin. He tried not to show in his expression the terrible loss he felt at seeing her beauty gone, even temporarily. He smiled brightly. He was carrying a folder of business papers under his arm.
"Catharine, Dr. Matthews says you're going to be fine. You should be able to sleep now, and if you want to, you can leave in the morning as scheduled. He thinks a vacation will do you a world of good."
Catharine nodded her head once, and looked away from him. She did not smile.
Thunder ripped through the sky above them and a flash of lightning seemed to strike very close by. The tree outside the bedroom window lit up for a split-second, its branches shivering in the sudden light to throw weirdly dancing shadows over the two people safe inside.
"It's just your nerves, darling. Now, tomorrow night you'll be in Paris, just think of that-"
Without looking at him, Catharine murmured, "I know where my mother went."
Richard was startled, but immediately assumed that she was half-dreaming, the effects of the sedation. He reached for her hand, found it icy and unresponsive.
"Your mother died, darling, but you mustn't think about that now..."
"Horse crap," Catharine said. She had never spoken such words before, and Richard's stunned silence was his only answer. "I pretended to believe that because he wanted me to. Everybody knows she went away. I'm the only one who knows where."
At least she was talking, after hours of drugged silence. He would humor her, to rouse her from whatever nightmare she was having. He certainly didn't want a replay of that embarrassing scene downstairs, but perhaps he could gentle her back into full consciousness. If she wanted to talk about her mother, he would listen.
"Darling, are you thinking that she might be in Paris? Is that what you're thinking? But you mustn't try to look for her, you know that. It wouldn't be good for you. You see how nervous it makes you, darl-"
She cut him off with a word he couldn't quite make out. He bent close to hear her.
"What, darling? What did you say?"
She stared beyond his head, at the same spot on the ceiling, as she repeated her words.
"You ass-hole."
Richard was horrified. He moved away from the bed with an involuntary backward step, but she didn't seem to notice.
He had to try to reach her. It was important. "Catharine," he said. "Catharine?"
She seemed to be retreating again, with no interest in him or what he was trying to do for her. "Darling," he said firmly, "there's something I need you to do. I need your signature on some financial transfers ... can you understand what I'm saying, Catharine?"
She nodded.
"Good. It's for a new project, dear, very exciting, and all you have to do is sign your name. Feel up to it?"
She nodded again, without looking at him. Richard took a pen from his breast pocket, and opened the folder to the paper he wanted her to sign. When he looked at her again, he was disconcerted to see her wide violet eyes staring straight at him. He handed her the pen and pointed to the dotted line clearly marked with an "X."
The hall clock began to chime, and they listened to it, counting. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight.
Someone tapped at the door just as the last sound died away.
"It's Jennifer," Richard said, with the special tone he always used for that name. "She's rather upset. Would you see her? I told her she could say good night to you. Just for a moment."
Catharine nodded and Richard went to the door.
"All right, honey, come on in. Mommy wants to say good night to you."
Richard and Jennifer came toward the bed hand in hand. The little girl was clinging to her daddy and smiling shyly at her mother with large frightened eyes, as if expecting this strange woman in Mommy's bed to shriek at her or throw something.
Catharine stared at them. She didn't smile.
"Are you feeling better, Mommy?"
Jennifer seemed to hang back, half hiding behind her daddy. Catharine nodded, watching the two of them.
"Good. Know what?" the child prattled nervously. "You're going away tomorrow, and you never taught me how to put on my makeup." Jennifer didn't pout. She hardly ever did. She had been told that it would put lines in her pretty face if she did, so she didn't, Catharine was silent, so Richard answered for her. "Your mother's really not up to it now, Jennifer. She's been ... the doctor gave her some pills to make her go to sleep."
Jennifer stepped forward. "But how am I going to look pretty in the play?" she demanded.
"You don't have to worry about that, honey. Right, Catharine?"
Richard hugged Jennifer against him and squeezed her rounded buttocks in his cupped hand, as he always did. When Catharine saw this, she finally spoke. Her voice was deep and resonant, as if coming from a long, long distance.
"Oh, yes. Jennifer is exceptional," she said wearily. She turned her eyes back to the ceiling.
Richard didn't notice. He was concerned about his daughter, who was trembling again. His hand caressed her bottom in reassuring pats. "Say good night now, honey," he said to her. "Mommy's sleepy."
Jennifer tiptoed to the bed. Her daddy stayed right beside her, his arm around her shoulders now. "Good night, Mommy," she whispered.
Catharine didn't respond.
Richard leaned down to pat his wife's hand. Suddenly, almost savagely, she pulled it away from him. She was still clutching the pen in her fist. For a moment, he thought she would stab him with it. Jennifer whimpered and buried her face in her daddy's jacket lining.
Seeing the pen, Richard remembered the signature, and picked up the folder from the chair where he had set it down. With Jennifer still clinging to him, he handed the paper back to Catharine.
"Catharine," he said, "darling, you forgot to sign."
"In the morning." The guttural voice, so unlike her soft sweet alto, must be the side effect of the sedative, he decided. All right, it would have to wait till morning. He carefully slipped the pen from her fingers and put the folder and pen on the writing table.
"Come on, Jennifer," Richard said, "Daddy will put you to bed tonight."
Catharine's face contorted into what might have been a smile ... or a stab of pain. She said nothing, did not even look at them. There would have been no mistaking the delight in Jennifer's grin. She skipped out of the room, her arm around her daddy's waist, without looking back at the pale still figure on the bed.
Richard turned out the bedside lamps from the doorway switch. He closed the door and left her in darkness. Her head turned slowly on the pillow to look at the luminous dial of the clock.
Outside, the rain seemed to intensify, and the thunder rolls came closer and louder. The little fire had died in the bedroom grate; only live glowing coals remained, like little eyes, dying.
Down the hall, Jennifer led the way into her room happily. She shut the door behind her daddy and herself. "You haven't put me to bed for a long time," she said.
"You're getting to be too big a girl to be put to bed," he said.
"Here, Daddy." Jennifer pulled out the little tufted chair from her dressing table as though she were playing tea party and had only one very special guest. "You sit here, sort of in front of the mirror, see, and then you can watch me when I'm in front of you and when I'm behind you, too!"
"Watch you!" he laughed. "What are you going to do, dance for me? I didn't come here to watch you ... I came to see you safely and happily into your little bed. Pronto."
"Don't you want to watch me undress?" she asked him, innocent disappointment on her lovely face.
"Why don't I wait here while you go into the bathroom and get washed and into your nightie in there, and then I'll tell you a story when you come out all ready for bed."
"Oh, Daddy! I'm much too old for stories!"
He stood up, pulling himself with some difficulty out of the low child's chair. "Darling, I think maybe you really are too old for Daddy to put you to bed, too. You go on now, and I'll-"
Her eyes, so much like his own, suddenly overflowed with tears. She ran to him and hid her face against his shirt front.
"Hey, Princess, what's this?"
"I don't want you to go."
Thinking she was upset by her mother's illness and erratic behavior, Richard hugged his daughter to him with a wave of love that was almost physical in its intensity.
"All right, baby. Daddy won't go. Now you hurry up and get ready. I'll wait to tuck you in, I promise."
"Sit down?"
"Sure I will." He sat back down in the frilly little chair, his large frame audibly causing the wood to groan. His knees were bent unnaturally high before him as he squirmed to find a kind of balance.
Jennifer danced toward him and bent to give him a butterfly kiss, rapidly fluttering her long eyelashes against his cheek. It tickled, and her scent was sweet, sweet, sweet in his nostrils. Her moist little mouth hovered close to his as she played her little eyelash game, until finally he took her shoulders firmly in his big hands and made her back away.
"Come on, Princess," he said in a hoarse voice, "no more nonsense. It's past your bedtime."
Jennifer laughed, and pirouetted around him to her dresser. She opened a drawer and took out her best nightgown. You could almost see through it, almost. It was thin cotton chambray, not exactly grownup, but as soft and fine as any fabric in her mother's collection. She laid it carefully on the starched bedspread, smoothing its folds slowly and arranging it to' lie in its full, short glory until she was ready for it.
Her daddy was watching her in the mirror. She blew a kiss to him as she crossed the room to get her hairbrush. She stood directly behind him as she brushed her hair, slowly and languidly, as she had watched her mother do a thousand or more times. Her daddy sat so low in the little chair that the top of his head came up just to her breasts, or where her breasts would be someday. They were starting already. She could hardly wait to show him. It would be a surprise.
"How many strokes, Princess?" her daddy asked. "A hundred, every night," she answered. "How many so far."
"Only twenty-two."
"How about making it thirty strokes tonight, just this once, since we're running a little late? Okay, Princess? Daddy's kind of tired, and it's been a long day."
"It's very important to brush my hair right," the little girl explained earnestly, still counting to herself as she stroked the brush through her hair. The fine full ends responded with lively sparks and sprays of curling gold as she carefully drew the brush down and away.
"Princess, I absolutely promise you that not one iota of your lovely hair will be spoiled if you cut the brushing short just this once. Come on, now, for Daddy."
She laughed at him in the mirror. "You want me to hurry up and get undressed."
"That's right," he nodded.
Jennifer skipped to the dressing table and laid the brush down. She turned to face her daddy who sat directly opposite the vanity; she would have kissed him again but for the faint hint of impatience she saw in his eyes. He's worrying about Mommy, she thought. I wish I could make him forget his worries. I wish I knew how.
She sat on the edge of her bed to remove her shoes. She untied them, took them off and placed them neatly, side by side, beneath the bed. As she bent over to do so, her miniskirt rode up. It seemed to take her a very long time to place the shoes exactly where she wanted them.
"Jennifer, you wouldn't be stalling, would you?" he said, peering around from the uncomfortable little chair to look behind him at the bed.
"No, Daddy," she answered promptly. She stood up, her face flushed from bending, and flashed him a smile so enchanting and innocent that he felt ashamed for his impatience. He wanted to be a good father. This adorable creature was more precious to him than anything in the world, even the project that was preoccupying his thoughts.
Jennifer hoisted her little rump back onto the bed and began to unroll her knee socks, one at a time, until each perfectly arched little foot was bare. She wiggled her toes, one foot at a time, and then both 'feet, stretched out on the bed before her. The look of pleasure on her face was so endearing that Richard had to keep himself from laughing out loud.
Finally, she slid off the bed, carrying her socks to the wicker hamper near the bathroom door. She patted the straw elephant's head and lifted it by its trunk, dropping the socks one by one into the basket. She replaced the top and danced barefooted across the deep tufted carpet toward him.
"Will you unbutton me, Daddy?" she asked sweetly, turning her back to him. She held her long hair in one hand, exposing the soft smooth nape of her little neck.
Richard reached up and touched her skin there with one finger. It was as soft as when she was a baby. He sighed and began on the tiny buttons. There were only three. But his large fingers took a while to open them.
In a moment, as soon as he had finished, she had her dress up over her head and off. She waltzed with it to the hamper, lifted the elephant's nose again and dropped the little dress inside. She turned to her daddy, bare now except for her pink panties. She stood absolutely still so he could see.
"Beautiful," he breathed, without meaning to. His voice was hoarse. He cleared his throat and spoke more sharply than he meant to. "You are growing up, Jennifer. You're going to be a very beautiful woman someday. Now hurry up and put on your nightgown, before you catch a chill."
As if to underline his concern, the lightning cracked almost over their heads, with an instantaneous roar of thunder that seemed to shake the huge old house. Jennifer ran directly into her daddy's arms.
"Now, now," he said, holding her nakedness against his rough tweed jacket, feeling the beating of her heart through his shirt, and the small rounds of her new breasts, and feeling the smoothness of her bare back under his hands. "Surely you're not afraid of the thunder? A big girl like you?"
"Yes," she nuzzled into his ear.
Suddenly, Richard felt something horrible happening to him. Something so vile, so obscene, that it threatened to overpower him. He was as firmly erect as he had ever been in his life. His cock was protruding against the folds of his underwear and forcing a hard, pulsating insistence, rubbing painfully against the zipper of his trousers. The blood in his veins was rushing of its own accord down into his crotch, leaving him unable to feel anything except that swelling monster. Lust and self-loathing coursed through him as his heart beat faster to feed the engorging penis. In another moment, it would burst forward with a life of its own, to destroy his innocent little girl and make a mindless, heinous criminal out of him. For an instant, he wrestled between his cock and his conscience, but only for the bestial instant that lurks, waiting, in each of us ... then Richard thrust his child away from him, stood on shaking legs, with his hands jammed deep into his pockets, and strode from the room. Behind him, as he closed her door, he heard Jennifer's tears starting. She would never understand why her daddy had left her alone. A stroke of lightning, accompanied by its loud clap of thunder, illuminated the hallway.
Richard walked uncomfortably, his cock still huge in front of him, down the circular stairs. As he started toward his study, to pour himself a drink, Jennifer's head popped over the banister to look down at him.
"Daddy?" she queried in a small voice.
"I'm sorry, Jennifer," he said gruffly, "but it's quite late and Daddy has a lot of work to do."
"You're not mad at me, because I was scared of the lightning and thunder?"
"No, angel, Daddy could never be mad at you. You go to sleep now."
Did she notice, could she see the enormous protrusion from above? He tried to bend, slightly, so his head would be between his daughter's face and his embarrassing predicament. But she was just a baby, she wouldn't realize...
Jennifer smiled down at him, and blew him a kiss. "Good night, Daddy."
"Good night, Jennifer. Pleasant dreams."
He went into the study feeling that nothing would ever be the same again. But, thank God, he had protected his golden daughter's purity from his animal self. At least for now...
He shook the low rumblings from his brain and poured himself a double Scotch, straight. He sat in his big leather chair to sip it slowly, to clear his thinking. But the hard-on refused to go away. Finally, in desperation, alone in the dark cold study with the fire laid but unlit, with the storm beating against the windows, he opened his pants and began to touch the offending organ, catching the almost instant juices in a fine monogrammed linen handkerchief from Brooks Brothers.
Jennifer didn't go to bed. She picked up her hairbrush and threw it at the mirror. She remembered her mother smashing the big mirror in her daddy's study with the telephone, but her mirror did not break. She walked up to it and made a childish face. She stuck out her tongue and then she spit.
Then she ran to her window and peered out at the teeming rain. The light was on in the window above the garage. Quickly, Jennifer took her rain slicker out of the closet and put it on. It felt cold and slimy against her bare skin. She reached up under it and tore off her panties, letting them fall to the floor. She buttoned up the slicker and set its matching hat on her head, and then left her room stealthily and crept down the back stairs to the pantry.
The rain hardly came into the areaway, protected as it was by the crisscross arbors and thick ivy, but Jennifer's bare feet splashed in the puddles as she ran. At the stairs leading up the side of the garage, she turned and went into the yard. A bolt of lightning lit the house and grounds for an instant, and she hesitated, then made straight for the climbing rose trellis that led to Abel's bedroom window.
Sure-footed, she climbed the wet ladder of the trellis with her naked toes curling around each step, until she was settled in her usual spot just under the uncurtained window. The rain made it a little difficult to see, but her intently peering eyes quickly focused, and she saw that she was in time. She could make out Abel's hulking shape, lying on his back on the narrow iron bed, and Lisa bending over him, her hands massaging ever so slowly, her mouth round as she placed wet kisses on her brother's hairy chest and belly and huge purple prick. It wiggled and throbbed visibly as Lisa cooed and murmured and kissed and licked it. When the wind died down between gusts, Jennifer could hear clearly Lisa's familiar crooning.
"You're thinking about her, you watch her and you want her, you want to touch her, yes, Lisa knows. But she wouldn't do this for you, and this, and this. I know what kind of woman she is. Stop thinkin' about her, think about what Lisa can do for you, how does that feel, you like that, Lisa knows what to do for you. There's no one gonna take care of you like I do, no one would do this, and this, and this, ooohhhh, I'm always here, Lisa will take care of you, that's good, that's good, isn't it. Lisa knows what to do. You stop thinkin' about her, that way is trouble. You let Lisa take care of you, there, there, there!"
Outside the second story window, hanging onto the bower, the little girl watched, with her thumb in her mouth and the fingers of her other hand deep inside herself under the yellow raincoat.