Chapter 2
When Lisa brought the breakfast tray and opened the drapes to the bright sunny morning, Catharine saw a note pinned to her fresh rose.
"Darling, come and have lunch with me today. One o'clock sharp in front of my office. I love you. Richard."
She smiled and settled herself back against the pillows. She loved to wake up in this room, all white and bright with sunshine, just the way it had been every lovely morning of her life. She resolved to put sadness away. She would wear something cheerful and sweet today. Her tall oval mirror in its carved white frame caught a glint of light and smiled back at her.
"Ask Abel to have the car in front of the house at twelve-thirty, will you please, Lisa?"
"Yes, Miss Catharine."
"What's Jennifer doing?"
"She's down at the stables."
"Oh." Catharine opened the morning paper.
"Shall I run your bath now?"
"Mmmmm ... no! No, that's all right, Lisa. Please don't bother. I'll take care of it myself." She suddenly remembered the cold cream jar standing open on the sink, the greasy douche bag thrown down. She had been too exhausted, too relieved, too lazy last night to clean up after herself. "Leave it, Lisa," she repeated. "You may go now."
Lisa nodded and left the room. Guiltily, Catharine slid out from under the breakfast tray balanced on its ivory legs, and slipped into the bathroom. She washed and rinsed the douche bag and nozzle efficiently, with none of the care she had shown for it last night. As she went to put it away, she stopped, arrested by her reflection in the mirrored door. Even in the harsh morning light, my girl, she thought, you're still okay. More than okay. You're beautiful. Twenty-six years old, with a six-year-old child, a husband who worships you, and you're still your daddy's princess ... only daddy is gone now. Her face puckered for an instant, but in the harsh daylight she caught herself quickly. No more tears, you'll freeze that way. That's what her daddy used to tell her. She wouldn't cry any more.
In another minute she was back in her big white bed, gobbling down the eggs and toast with her usual healthy appetite.
Two hours later, Abel pulled the Lincoln alongside the curb in front of the building her daddy had built. Richard was there, waiting impatiently. He opened the rear door before Abel had a chance to do it for him.
"Hello, darling," he smiled. "How beautiful you look today."
Not a word about her being a little late. She was glad she had worn the blue dress. Mourning really didn't become her. She wore no jewels, though, and her hair was twisted into a simple French knot. Its smooth strands gleamed and sparkled, even in the dim interior of the car. She wore no makeup, except for a light foundation base, a dusting of powder and pale lipstick. Her eyes needed no help to look smoldering and sexy, whether she wanted them to or not. Richard took her hand as he slid in to sit beside her.
"The Wharf, please, Abel," he instructed. In a few minutes they were sipping Bloody Marys in the corner table that overlooked the fishing fleet from a secluded vantage point.
"My favorite restaurant," Catharine said. "How thoughtful you are, Richard." In some ways, she thought.
"I want to talk to you. Away from the house."
"Oh? Something not for Jennifer's little ears? I hope?" she grinned mischievously. On the other side of the little alcove where they sat, a mirror was hung, garlanded with fish nets and lobster pots. She could see herself smiling when she looked up at Richard. The mirror was just behind his right shoulder.
"I think it's time you got out of that house," Richard was saying.
Catharine saw her reflection go pale. She looked straight at Richard, wondering if he had gone quite mad. "Out of my house?"
"We never did take that long honeymoon," he said, holding her trembling hand on the table.
"Oh! Oh, you mean a vacation! Oh, well, yes, maybe it would be all right, for a little while. Where would you like to go?"
"Catharine ... darling, a little vacation is not enough, and your promise to take one is not enough. We've been on the verge of leaving a hundred times in the past seven years, and we've never gone anywhere."
"That was when my daddy was alive," she said quietly. She withdrew her hand and put it in her lap.
"You will go, now?"
"Yes, if you want to, Richard."
He smiled, raising his Bloody Mary glass to her, and drained it. She watched him, but didn't touch her own drink. Her hair looked good this way for a change, she was thinking, although she really must get to Eugene for a real styling. It had been ages.
"There's something else."
"What is it, Richard?"
"About the house."
"Yes?"
"Now that your father is gone, I think it's high time that you and I made it more of our own home. We live with all of his things, and of course they are beautiful, and valuable, but ... I appreciate them, I do, and I appreciate what they mean to you, darling. But ... well, I want you to completely redecorate the house, in any style you like. Would you do that for me?"
"I like the style it is now, Richard," she said, puzzled.
"It's the past, darling. Your past, I know, but still ... I want the future to belong to us, and to Jennifer. Please. I think it's important."
"I don't want to change anything," she said in a small voice.
"It's time," Richard insisted firmly.
Catharine was an obedient girl. Richard was the only man in her family now. She had always done everything she could to please her daddy, and now she had to please her husband. Resolutely, she determined to do as Richard asked, but the unthinkable fear of putting her whole life behind her made her shudder involuntarily.
"All right, Richard," she said, trying to smile bravely. The woman in the mirror smiled back. That's my girl.
"That's my good girl," Richard said, patting her hand. "We can get a fine price for everything, and..."
"No!" Her vehemence surprised them both.
"Darling, what is it?"
"I won't sell anything to strangers. There's room in the attic ... plenty of room, for everything. Please, Richard, please. I won't ... I ... I can't. Don't you see?"
The waiter came over, and they looked down as if studying the menu. Richard signaled that they were not ready to order yet, and the waiter left. When he looked at his wife again, Richard saw that tears were threatening the shimmering violets.
"All right, darling," he said. "It doesn't matter, really. If you want to keep all that old dark furniture in the attic, of course we can. Okay?"
He was rewarded with a grateful smile. Her lips, even when trembling, were deliciously suggestive of secret delights to be shared. Suggested, he thought, but somehow never fully realized. Was it his fault? Every man in town envied him the possession of this magnificent creature, yet ... oh, well, the sex was never what you thought it would be when you were a dreamy kid. Everybody knew that. But sitting in a public restaurant with his sensuously beautiful wife, he felt a stirring in his crotch. He shifted his position on the chair and looked away from her mouth that couldn't help promising more than this earth held for any mortal man.
Catharine glanced at her own tremulous smile in the mirror opposite her, and saw her husband squirm imperceptibly and she knew she could have anything she wanted. But she was fair. She had promised to take all of her daddy's things and put them away, to furnish her daddy's house with new things, Richard's things. She would do it. She could go up to the attic any time she wanted to, to revisit her childhood. She could arrange it all the way she wanted, any way at all, with her daddy's things right next to her own. After all, she was a grown-up woman, and it was time to put away her childhood. She would do whatever Richard wanted. She was a generous person. Knowing that she could always have her own way, it was easy to give in. It was the knowing that was important.
It might be fun at that, she was thinking, to have her own secret place with all her daddy's things and her own hidden away from other people's eyes and hands.
"Can we go to Boston and New York to shop for new things?" she asked, pretending eagerness.
Richard was visibly relieved. "Of course, darling. Any place you want. Paris, if you like."
"Oh, no. Let's not travel after all, Richard. Let's spend our time fixing up the house."
"I can't get you away from there, can I?" he said, amused.
"Everything I want in the world is right there," she said, simply. She looked down at the menu so that her eyelashes made a natural, lacy fan across her elegant cheekbones. "I think I'd like the soft-shelled clams," she murmured.
They furnished the house in large stark modern pieces, mostly. It was Richard's taste, and Catharine didn't really care. She dutifully shopped for the finest in glass and Lucite and teak and rosewood and imported rugs and statues you could see through. She bowed to her husband's judgment in all her decisions except one. Her daddy's portrait, showing him in riding boots and field jacket, remained on the dining room wall. Tom Johnston looked just as much at ease with the stainless steel and glass as he had with the French Provincial. But then he had always dominated his surroundings.
Designers and decorators and artists and artisans and workmen and measurers and movers and cabinetmakers and painters were in and out of the house constantly for nearly a year, but Catharine didn't mind. As the old things were assembled up in the attic, she spent more and more time there, arranging them and just plain daydreaming.
Richard insisted that they must now share the same bedroom and sitting room, although of course they would have separate baths and dressing rooms. Catharine acquiesced solemnly. But when the day came for her little four-poster bed to be moved out of the room she had slept in all her life, she had to run up to the attic to hide her tears. The movers followed her, and reassembled her bed exactly as it had been, in a little corner space near a window. Then they brought up the rest of her things, her private things: her dressing table, her old wardrobe still holding her lovely handmade little-girl clothes, her dear old oval mirror that had watched her grow more beautiful every day. The mirror was her special friend, the one to whom she had fled for reassurance when things went wrong.
She had them set it carefully between her bed and her doll house. She stood for a while alone in the attic, staring into the familiar glass. She saw the little girl she had been at Jennifer's age. She saw the teenager she had been, the only girl in town who never had a pimple or. braces on her teeth. She saw herself beginning to blossom, with small breasts swelling gently until they were full and rosy-tipped. Long legs mysteriously shaping into firmly curved womanhood, a slender waist defining itself, dimpled buttocks rounding magnificently into perfection. This mirror had never failed her. She stood looking at the woman she had become, and was pleased again.
But there was a glimpse, only a shadow, really, of something else that had happened before that mirror. Catharine flushed deeply, remembering, and turned away quickly, before the desperate longing could begin.
The busy days of refurnishing the house went quickly. Richard's take-over of the Johnston empire was thriving, and Catharine's friends frequently dropped in to see how things were progressing. Jennifer had a marvelous time, bouncing on the new furniture and pretending to be mistress of the house. She imitated Catharine in every way she could, going through stages of growing up that enchanted everyone who saw her. Catharine, more than anyone, loved to see her daughter just as she herself had been, and she encouraged the little girl to play dress-up and make-believe. Jennifer would come in from her riding lesson or from school and go directly to the first mirror at hand and say, in a mimic of her mother's voice, "Goodness, there's a smudge of dirt on my chin!" and rush upstairs to have a bath. Catharine laughed, but Lisa clucked disapprovingly.
"She's going to be vain, that child," Lisa would say.
"Oh, Lisa, she's just a baby. She's so like I was. Do you think I'm vain?" Catharine would say.
"You're fishing," Lisa answered, inevitably, as she had since Catharine was small.
"Am I, Lisa?"
"Fishing for compliments, that's what you always do," Lisa said.
"Lisa, tell me the truth. I can count on you, you've always been honest with me. Tell."
"All right, Miss Catharine," the stocky older woman would sigh. "You're not vain, not that anybody can see. But you're a miracle, you are. God alone knows how you keep your head from gettin' big as a balloon from all the flattery. You're beautiful. You're the most beautiful thing in this town, that's for sure. And no, you're not vain. Is that what you had to hear?"
Catharine kissed Lisa's dry cheek impulsively. "Thanks, Lisa. I mean it."
"Well, I don't know how you do it, but you ought not to encourage little Jennifer to love herself so much. She's not you, pretty as she is. She doesn't have your daddy, God rest his soul, to keep her in line the way he did you."
"She has her own daddy," Catharine said. As she said the words, something lurking just beyond them threatened to envelope her. She felt suddenly dizzy and nauseous. She clutched the first solid thing her hands could touch, to keep from falling. As her head cleared, she found herself clinging to Lisa with tense knuckles.
"Miss Catharine! Are you all right? What is it, then?" Lisa asked' helping her to a chair.
"I ... I don't know. I suddenly felt so dizzy. I'm all right now."
Lisa's eyes twinkled knowingly. "Another baby is it? About time, with Jennifer almost ten years old."
Catharine shook her head. "No, it's not that."
"Sure?"
"Positive."
"Pity," Lisa observed. "It's probably you've been workin' too hard, so much to do in the house."
"Yes ... that's it."
"Why don't you go down to the beauty parlor and get your fine hair done in a nice new style? That always cheers you up, doesn't it?"
Catharine smiled gratefully at the dear old face that still worried down over her. "Yes," she said, meek as a child.
"Go on, then," Lisa said. "Sure you're feelin' okay now?"
Catharine stood up. What on earth had come over her? She had never fainted in her life. "Yes, I feel fine, honestly."
She never understood about the abyss of blackness and unnamed fear that had opened up around her that day, and it didn't happen again until two years later.