Chapter 12
When Richard crept into the bedroom, Catharine closed her eyes. He made his way in the dark to his bathroom, where he took a long time getting ready for bed. She didn't move, and when he slipped under the covers beside her, he stayed on his side of the bed without touching her. Soon she heard his deep regular breathing, with a soft snore at the hook end of every inhalation. Her lip curled in a soundless sneer, and she opened her eyes to look again at the little bedside clock. Ten o'clock. The chiming began in the hall clock at the same moment.
She thought about what she should do. Her heavily tranquilized body could never find the strength now to escape-they had seen to that. Her suitcase was packed, but how could she lift it ... and if she tried to go without it, it would still mean getting herself dressed, calling a taxi, and waiting alone in the dark downstairs, while something stronger than life itself called her, urged her upward, to the attic...
They were idle thoughts. The time was past for that world. She could no longer fight, she had no more desire to fight.
A longing surged through her prone body, more urgent than the drug-induced need to rest. It was a sexual tingling, the anticipatory excitement one should feel on one's wedding night. Catharine's mouth twisted in an ironic smile, a distortion she never would have allowed herself, had she seen it or had there been anyone else to see. It was not the warm and generous smile Catharine Johnston Burgess was famous for. It was not beautiful. It was a silent cry of anguish, of dry tears for something never known. I was a virgin on my wedding night, she thought, but I was never a virgin, really. I knew what it was to be loved, to desire someone ... and now, I have been promised that all my desires will finally be satisfied. I have no choice. It's his fault.
No. It wasn't fair to blame Richard. He was an ordinary man-kind and loving, in his own way. It wasn't his fault that he had no inkling of the terrible tortures of lust that could fill a woman's body. No man, no ordinary man, could satisfy a woman as exceptional as she was. If she could run away from the house now, even if she could ... she would be running back to the life of genteel, polite, civilized frustration that would build into nightmare proportions as age slowly destroyed her only claim to desirability. No one would want her, not even Richard. He had never satisfied her ... soon he would not even try.
And Jennifer, that sweet innocent little girl, what would happen to her? She was damned in any case. She was too like her mother, and her mother's mother before her. Catharine cursed the beauty that was her curse.
Mother, she thought silently in the dark, as the clock hands stole inexorably forward, is this what happened to you? I never loved you enough, I was jealous of you. I wanted Daddy for myself, and it was true-he loved me more than he loved you. I remember that I was glad when you cried on your thirtieth birthday, glad when you began to use heavier makeup and hair coloring to hide your age ... and now, I could cry for you. But I have no tears now. Only this aching, to join you in that place.
But when she thought again of the world beyond the oval mirror, it was with the thrill of sexual tension that drives out all but selfish need. It was not of her mother she thought, but of sensuous emerald green eyes and green-fleshed hands that knew exactly how to touch her. She thought of the feast, when she herself was the centerpiece, with tongues licking her nakedness and voices crooning her praises.
All the ordinary people suddenly turned inside-out, showing their secret desires to be the same as hers, proving that she was special, but not insane. It was the world she had never suspected, but always longed for. Where she was the centerpiece, and all the hidden lust in the world was out in the open, freely indulged, and centered on her.
They all have hungers and needs, but not so rare and special as mine. I am exceptional. My daddy said so. He knows. He is waiting for me. I've waited so long.
The hall clock struck and the little luminous hands near her head touched the hour. She lay still, counting. Eleven o'clock.
Catharine turned her head on the pillow to look at Richard. He slept with his back to her. Her eyes, accustomed to the dark, traced lightly over the outline of his hulking shoulder, the long line of his thighs and legs under the covers. As if he felt her stare, he tossed fitfully in his sleep, throwing the quilt off. She made no move to cover his bare shoulder. His arm was flung out now, toward her.
Catharine slipped out of bed, watching Richard's sleeping form. He turned restlessly, but he did not wake.
What kind of dreams do you have, Richard, she thought idly as she moved away from him. Boring dreams, about projects and deals and money. Do you ever dream of hands touching you lovingly, mouths caressing and licking and sucking on your flesh ... could you ever let yourself love yourself enough to give over to the sensual life ... no, Richard, not you. I'll never see you on the other side. Good-bye.
He turned on his back and she saw his hand clutch at his genitals. Am I wrong, she thought suddenly, does he dream, too ... but not of me ... who, then?
Suddenly cold, Catharine turned to flee from the room. She was dressed only in her lacy nightgown. Richard moaned softly as she took the blue folder from the desk, but he slept on.
She moved slowly, as if in a trance, down the wide stairs, holding the banister that curved to meet the statue of Pan in the front hall. But no, she remembered, Richard had had the statue removed. The banister was still there, warm and worn under her hand. When she was small, she often slid down, feeling the delicious tickle between her legs as she rode backwards into the lap of the god of youth, ... she reached the bottom of the stairs and the stark abstract modern sculpture that now stood in Pan's place, and withdrew her hand quickly. She turned to go into the dining room.
She turned on the portrait light over her daddy's picture. Then she took her daddy's place at the head of the table and sat quietly looking down the length of the long polished wood and up at him. His eyes stared directly at her. She could hear the ticking of the hall clock.
She sat that way for a long time. But whatever final message she hoped to find in his portrait was not forthcoming. "Daddy..." she whispered once, but the paint and canvas and glossy varnished surface refleeted only the flat reproduction of his virile, youthful features. It was mirrors, not pictures, that held secret worlds where there were reflected images of real life, and dimensions beyond what the ordinary eye could see.
You can't see yourself except in a mirror, she thought. Mirrors have always been my best friends, my reassurance, my comfort and my excitement. What I see in people's eyes I find confirmed a thousand times in the mirror that shows me myself. And my daddy looked at me for the first time, that night, that one time, in the mirror. And now he is waiting for me...
But there were things she had to do first. She got up from the chair and walked slowly past the long table. The storm was still blowing outside, and the heavy dining room drapes seemed to shudder at each blast of rain that hit the windows. Catharine didn't even notice the flashes of light. She was impervious to the cold. Her bare feet made no sound on the smooth oak floor.
Under her daddy's portrait hung a group of water-colors. She stopped in front of a little hunting scene. She reached up to turn the picture around on its hook. There was a small wall-safe behind it.
The ticking of the hall clock and the clicking of the combination lock as she turned the dials seemed louder to her ears than the rumbles of thunder outside. The thick little steel door swung open. She reached in and withdrew a heavy steel box. It, too, had a combination lock. She spun the numbers, right, left, right, left. She opened the lid and looked inside.
She felt a strong surge of excitement as she realized what she was doing. She reached into the velvet-lined box to touch each item, as she always did. The diamonds sparkled in their deep blue bed, the sapphires glistened with the only beauty that surpassed her own, the emeralds reminded her of unknown depths of pleasure that waited for her. She carried the box to the window. Holding it under one arm, she thrust aside the drape and pressed herself against the cold wet glass. It was dark and secret there, between the folds of material and the raging raw night outside. Her whole body tingled with fright and exquisite joy as she unlocked the window and pushed it open.
The lightning struck nearby. Catharine held her face up to the eerie light and the rain that poured over her hair and her face, soaking her through the flimsy nightgown and forming puddles on the floor under her naked feet. She stood in the gusting wind and rain until she thought she would collapse, and then quickly she turned the jewel box upside down, scattering the glittering jewels on the wet black grass below.
One trembling hand reached out in an involuntary gesture after the gleaming valuables, but it was too late. The gems caught the bits of light from the storm, and between flashes from the sky, her jewelry sent up its own inner brightness, like a living thing abandoned in the wanton cruelty of a woman's whim.
Catharine turned away from the window without bothering to pull it shut. The wet stain on the lining of the drape widened and spread, finally soaking through to the velvet itself, which fluttered in the strong gales despite its weight. But Catharine had left the dining room, and only her daddy's portrait was there to see, with painted eyes that saw nothing.
She went into the study, and lit the logs that had been laid over dry tinder in the fireplace. Soon the fire crackled and caught. Its light reminded her painfully that this was a changed room now. She drew up a chair and curled herself into a small ball, close to the warming flames, and gazed into the fire as she had done so often when she was a child. As her hair began to dry and become soft again, and her wet clinging gown loosed its grip on her skin, and the flesh began to warm to its natural glow again, Catharine thought about what she must do next. It was the hardest part.
Jennifer was her dear, her angel, her only child, her hope for a better world. Jennifer was the possibility of purity and goodness and innocence. Jennifer was Catharine's own chance to create a better person than she privately knew herself to be. Jennifer was herself again, untouched and unburdened with obsessions and vile dreams and desires. Jennifer was beauty without imperfections. Jennifer was perfection. Catharine loved her very much.
But there was no way to save her. Not from her own perfection, and not from her daddy's love, and not from Catharine herself.
The fire burned low, the stufdy log eaten away by the licking flames until only an outer shell remained. When it snapped and fell with leaping sparks into the ashes, Catharine unwound herself from the chair and walked out of the study. She went upstairs, dragging her feet reluctantly in the thick carpeting of the stairs. But the thing that goaded her mocked the maternal side of her nature with a quickening of physical desire as she moved upward in the house.
She opened the door to Jennifer's room. The dim night light from the hall outlined the figure of a strange apparition with flying wild yellow hair and a wrinkled shroud wrapped around her body. The dark mouth in the eerie face looked like a black empty hole. A hand flew up to cover it. It was her own reflection in Jennifer's vanity mirror.
Her heart seemed to stop beating as she moved toward the wraith, but as she neared it she saw the true image of herself and she gasped aloud in relief. It was a trick of the light, the sudden glare behind her as she stepped into the dark room where the looking glass caught her unaware. Leaning into it, close to it, Catharine reassured herself. The fine line of her cheekbones took on a patrician look in the shadowy dim light, airy and delicate against the halo of shining hair that fell to her shoulders. She ran her hand along the lines of her gown, smoothing out the wrinkles and tracing with her open palm the firm curves and flats of her body. She stared into her own clear luminous eyes. She was-truly!-lovely. Soon she would go where her beauty would be appreciated.
Catharine turned toward her daughter's bed. Jennifer had kicked off the downy comforter. Her long liquid legs and the little swell of her babyish behind sprawled in sleep. Her mouth twitched, as if she were dreaming of a frantic game, in which she must run and call out. A bolt of light flashed through the room, but the child slept on, deep in her own private little-girl world.
Catharine moved to pull the comforter up around the naked little body-goodness, where was her nightie, since when had Jennifer taken to sleeping nude?-but instead of covering the child, she ran her hand over the satiny flesh of the exposed thigh.
Jennifer started in her sleep, and then opened her eyes. "Mommy?" she murmured, confused.
"Yes, darling," Catharine whispered. "You were having a bad dream."
As toasty-warm and cuddly from sleep as an infant, Jennifer reached out to cling to her mother. Her arms went around Catharine's thighs. She pressed her sleepy face against her mother's stomach. Her eyelids fluttered closed again as she hugged and took comfort from her mother's good smell and loving touch.
Catharine could not help but press the beautiful child's head harder against her own soft flesh.
"It was about Daddy," Jennifer said, more than half-asleep and nuzzling with little sucking noises against her mommy. "I think ... but it's gone now." She yawned. Her breath felt hot against the thin material that covered Catharine's belly.
"What about Daddy?" Catharine asked, pulling away from the child's yielding arms.
"I don't remember now," was the drowsy reply.
Catharine turned on the little lamp next to Jennifer's bed. The child sat up, rubbing her eyes with two curled fists. Catharine moved to the dressing table and watched Jennifer come awake. The bright expectant brown eyes caught her mother's reflection in the mirror, and Jennifer smiled, wide-awake in the sudden way that children have.
"I'm glad you're feeling better, Mommy. I'm glad you woke me up to see. You're so pretty, Mommy."
Catharine smiled, looking at Jennifer's almost automatic preening as she sat straight up in the bed and smoothed her hair back from her face.
"Your grandfather would be so proud of you, Jennifer," she said.
"You really think so?" It pleased Jennifer, and she showed her delight in a dimpled grin directed at her own image in the mirror.
"Stand up, Jennifer," Catharine said.
Jennifer scrambled from the bed and stood next to her mother before the dressing table. Catharine pressed her child close to herself, and they stood looking at their two reflections for a long moment.
The child, already ripening into a rich beauty; the mother, with the first traces of age already marring her perfection.
Somewhere deep inside, Jennifer understood. Her smile was almost cruel as she whispered, "I'm growing up, aren't I, Mother?"
Catharine's glance fell away from the mirror. She sat down in the little yellow tufted chair and said to her daughter, "All of a sudden you wake up one day and..."
"And what, Mommy?"
"And you can never go back," Catharine finished, although that was not what she had intended to say.
"Who'd want to go back anyway? I can't wait to grow up!" The naked little girl stretched and posed in front of the mirror. Her tiny breasts stood straight up and their button nipples hardened in the cold air of the bedroom.
"Where's your nightgown," Catharine asked. "Since when do you sleep naked?"
"Oh, it's here ... there." Jennifer pointed to the little heap of white cloth on the carpet near the bed. "It was hot so I took it off."
"Nonsense. It's not hot in here. There's a storm outside and it's very chilly. Put your nightie on, honey, and I'll tell you what I came in here and woke you up to tell."
"A secret?"
"Yes."
"Oh, goodie," said the little girl, scampering to pick up the gown and slip it over her head. In a moment, she was covered, and as sweetly smiling as an advertisement for soap that was nine hundred and ninetynine one-thousandths percent pure. She skipped back to lean against Catharine, her arms around her mother's shoulders and her child-woman breasts pressing her mother's arm.
"Jennifer, I think you're old enough now to have the hairbrush set, the silver one that Grandpapa gave me. It's always been in the family."
The little girl caught her breath in delight. "Oh, Mommy! I love them so much." She kissed her mother's cheek. "But I thought you wanted to take them..."
"They're back up in the attic. You may go there from now on, as much as you want to."
Jennifer stepped back, looking at Catharine's face as if she suspected a trick. She could hardly believe what she was hearing. "Really, Mother?"
"Yes. But you must promise to tell no one, not a soul. It's our secret, Jennifer-just yours and mine. You know where the key is." Catharine felt Jennifer's excitement along with her own. They were both embarking on great adventures. Jennifer was very happy.
"I promise, Mommy."
Her brown eyes were remembering attic pleasures, forbidden until now, and the prospect of being allowed to spend hours and hours alone up there made Jennifer tingle all over with anticipation. She could play dress-up all she liked, and experiment with Mommy's makeup, and pretend-oh, all sorts of things more exciting than any of her friends could offer.
Catharine returned the grateful hug, and looked over the child's golden head straight into the mirror again. "And my makeup," she said, as if she had just thought of it, "it's yours now."
Jennifer pulled back to stare at her mother's serene face. Catharine, avoiding her eyes, turned the little girl so that she, too, would be facing the vanity. Jennifer's expression had changed to one of surprise, verging on dismay.
"You really sound like you're going away, Mommy," she said in a worried voice.
"I am," Catharine answered calmly.
Jennifer shivered under her nightgown. "I know," she shrugged nervously, "but-"
Catharine stopped her question by drawing one long slim finger across the line of the child's cheekbone. Instantly, Jennifer's attention was diverted to her own face in the mirror. She watched her mother gently outlining the highlights and curves of her temples, her chin, her mouth, and her eyes. With devout concentration, they both studied the tracing of the loveliness that was soon to be there.
"Use the pastel blue liner," Catharine murmured. "Just a bit at the end of your pinky. Your eyes are so lovely...."
"Like yours, Mommy, only brown."
"Yes, like mine."
"Only brown, like Daddy's."
Catharine's own violet eyes narrowed as she stared intently at her daughter's mouth in the mirror. "Never use much makeup, only to highlight what you have, never cover up your natural beauty. Your lips are like the inside of a seashell, just lovely ... keep them pink, just a hint of gloss, a hint..."
"The inside of a seashell," Jennifer repeated with a wondrous sigh. "How beautiful, Mommy!"
"Someone once said that to me," Catharine smiled. "Now it is your turn."
"Who was it? Who said that?"
Catharine shrugged. "I don't remember, some boy."
"Daddy?"
Catharine laughed aloud. There was something about the way she laughed that sent a scared shiver down Jennifer's spine.
"No," Catharine said, "certainly not your daddy. I honestly don't remember, baby, and you'll hear so many compliments that you won't remember one from the other, either. Really."
Jennifer laughed delightedly, her fears vanished as quickly as they had come.
"Like the inside of a seashell," she whispered to herself in the looking glass, posing with her lips open, then tightly closed, and turning to her mother again in a spasm of delight. Her lips were formed in a small half-kiss, and Catharine brushed them impulsively with her own.
" ... like mine," she whispered.
The two froze for a moment, a breath away from each other. Then Catharine ran her long tapered hands over the budding outline of Jennifer's body, hidden beneath the little thin gown.
"You are growing up," she repeated. Her voice was low, throaty, and almost coarse. "Soon you'll be able to do what you want to do," she said huskily.
"Do what, Mommy?" Jennifer squirmed in her mother's arms.
"Your body is changing, isn't it, Jennifer?"
Shyly, the little girl looked away. "Yes," she answered.
"You mustn't be shy, or ashamed, not ever. You must be proud. Take pleasure in your body, Jennifer. Pleasure."
Jennifer looked her mother in the eye. There was a hint of understanding, a small bite from the Tree of
Knowledge, something not so innocent after all ... Catharine laughed.
"Soon your body will be like mine," she said, her laugh half-growl with its strange new deep throaty quality.
Jennifer understood. Her eyes closed as she felt an incredible warmth well up inside herself. Her mother watched, and was well satisfied.
"Time to go back to sleep now," Catharine said. She pulled her daughter away from the dressing table and moved with her to the bed. Jennifer slipped under the sheet with a languid slow movement, instead of the usual yelp and leap and bounce. Catharine covered her with the downy quilt. She bent over her child and their arms locked around each other for a moment, until the two seemed to melt and blend into one person, and Catharine felt her resolve leaking from her even as the rich vision of her daughter's future triumphs passed through her mind. She pulled herself away abruptly, and reached to turn put the light.
"Remember our secret," she whispered in the darkness.
"Yes, Mommy," Jennifer promised solemnly.
At the door, framed in the hall light, Catharine stopped. She looked back at her little girl. Jennifer could not make out her mother's features in the dark. She did not see the awful sadness that crossed her mother's beautiful face like a dark storm cloud. But she sensed something and she called out.
"Mommy! What is it, Mommy? What's wrong? I'm scared!"
The deep raspy tone was gone from Catharine's voice when she answered. "Nothing's wrong, baby. It's just that I'm going away and ... good night..."
" 'Night," Jennifer said, burrowing down in the pillow with her head full of delicious new pleasures to anticipate.
There was no sound in the house now except for the ticking of the clock. Catharine made her way to the door that led to the attic steps.