Everlasting (11 page)

Catherine put on her smock and tied her thick hair back up off her head. It was already hot inside and out today, and everything was swollen with heat.

Piet came through the opened double doors at the back of the shop, his arms loaded with a heavy cardboard box of flowers. Catherine hurried back to pull open the wooden cooler door for him. A rush of fresh sweet-scented air mixed with the sour, familiar odor of mildewed wood spilled over her, and she inhaled happily. Her eyes fell on the curve of Piet’s back as he bent to put down the box. Already he had taken off his shirt, and his back gleamed bronze and smooth. She wanted to run her hand over his back in the way one instinctively reaches out to stroke a cat. She wanted to slide her fingers along the glistening sweat that slid over his skin.

She was grateful to her body for that, that small rush of lust. It told her she was not totally obsessed with Kit.

“You need to start cutting the roses,” Piet said, straightening up. “And those damned frogs have to be unpacked.”

A new fashion was sweeping the flower industry, a sort of minimalist movement that involved the exact placement of one or two or three flowers in an unusual container. Now the shop had to buy almost as many figurines and containers as flowers. One design that Mr. Vanderveld had come up with to satisfy his customers’ desire for something modern was a piece of bark with a thimble-size container for water and one rose or lily, even a glad or iris with its stem cut off, surrounded by pebbles, stones, moss, shells, and a china frog or bird glued to the surface. Mr. Vanderveld hated these things, but his customers considered them works of art and bought them as fast as he could make them.

Quickly Catherine unpacked the horrid little mushrooms, water creatures, and leprechauns. She tossed the box out the back door into the dumpster. Already the alley reeked. She took up a bundle of long-stemmed roses, laid them on the table, and turned to get the knife to cut and split the stems. Just then Piet tried to pass her, his arms lifted high to protect a sheaf of lilies. They were caught facing each other in the narrow aisle, their hips nearly touching, and although they’d shared this kind of intimate instant many times over the past three years, this time Piet did not ignore it. He stood still, and he looked at Catherine.

With his arms lifted high, she was aware of the thick tufts of dark hair under his arms and the way the veins and tendons ran around the muscles of his arms like vines around a tree trunk. She felt that he was daring her.

“I need a knife,” she said. She was surprised at how low her voice was. “No matter how much I clean and arrange this place, Mr. Vanderveld always manages to mess it up and lose everything.”

Still Piet looked at her, arms high, not moving, but now with a smile beginning on his wide mouth. She could feel the heat of his body.

“Piet,” she said, caught in his heat, and stopped, confused.

“Catherine,” a man said, but it was not Piet who spoke. Catherine looked toward the front to see Kit Bemish standing just inside the curtain.

“Kit!” For a moment Catherine was paralyzed with joy. He was wearing chinos, a pale blue shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and a striped tie, loosened at the collar in concession to the heat. How handsome—how
magnificent
—he was.

“Mrs. Vanderveld said I could come on back. I apologize for interrupting your work, but—”

“No! Oh, don’t worry, it’s fine, it’s all right!” Now the wave of shock had passed, and Catherine could move. She rushed toward Kit, smiling, and threw her arms around him. “I’m so glad to see you! I can’t believe it! Why didn’t you call?”

He didn’t put his arms around her. His reserve surprised her, and then she realized he would never embrace a woman passionately in front of another man. She dropped her arms, drew away. She heard Piet slam the back door.

She said quickly, “Let’s go over to Nini’s for coffee. There’s really no room to talk here.”

At the door she paused long enough to introduce Kit to Mrs. Vanderveld and promised she’d be back in fifteen minutes.

“Too bad I don’t have a little more time,” Catherine said, smiling smugly as they settled into a booth. “My apartment’s so close. If we had even half an hour—”

“Two coffees, please. Is that what you’d like, Catherine?”

Catherine looked at the waitress impatiently. “Yes, fine. Kit. Now! Why didn’t you call? How long can you stay?”

Kit had seated himself across from her. Now he reached out and took her hands in his.

“Catherine.” He looked down and cleared his throat. His face was flushed, and Catherine’s heart cartwheeled inside her.

“Catherine. I came here because I have to tell you something I couldn’t tell you on the phone. Catherine—what happened in Paris … I didn’t mean for it to happen. It shouldn’t have happened. I’m almost engaged to someone else. Haley Hilton. I’ve had, this, um, understanding with her for two or three years now, that we’ll get engaged and married when I’ve finished law school.”

Catherine pulled her hands away.

The waitress put two white porcelain mugs on the table between them. Kit waited until she had scribbled the bill, dropped it next to his spoon, and left before speaking again. Then he kept his voice low.

“I’ve been going crazy the past few days, Catherine. What I had with you in France, what I felt for you … Catherine, I think I was falling in love with you.”

“Then fall in love with me! Forget Haley Hilton,” Catherine said, puzzled.

“It’s not that easy. I mean, it’s easy enough to fall in love with you, Jesus, Catherine, that’s pretty obvious. But this thing with Haley goes back a long way. It’s what our parents want.”

“What your parents want? But what do
you
want, Kit?”

“Catherine, that hardly matters—I’m an only child. My mother almost died giving birth to me. I owe my parents a lot.” He paused. “I want to be honest. I chose Haley, too. I thought I loved her. Until I met you.” He smiled ruefully. “Catherine, what you and I had together in Paris was so—extreme. I’m not sure it would make a good marriage.”

“I think it’s exactly what marriage is all about,” Catherine said quietly.

“Believe me, Catherine, I’ve agonized over this.”

Catherine reached out her hand to take Kit’s. When their palms touched, warm, naked, solid, she knew he felt the electricity between them—as strong as a shock.

Kit pulled his hand away. Glaring, he said, “It wasn’t just that between us, Catherine. I don’t want you to think it was. I like you. You made me laugh. I felt at home with you. If I could, I’d marry you, but I can’t. That’s what I came to say.” He rose, tossed some money on the table, and turned to leave.

“Kit,” Catherine said, rising, grabbing his arm. “Don’t leave!”

“I shouldn’t have come in the first place. I should have phoned.” Kit looked at her. “Catherine, I’ve got to leave. Let go.”

Catherine took her hand away and let him walk out the door. If she’d had any doubts about how they belonged together, how they were meant for each other, all those doubts had faded now. Kit loved her. It was plain on his face, in his voice, in his touch. “It will come to you,” Kathryn had said three years ago, and Catherine repeated those words to herself now. Kit had come to her; he would come back. In spite of what he had just told her, she knew he would come back.

She waited at the table for half an hour. When he hadn’t returned, she went back to the shop and worked furiously, ignoring Mrs. V’s questioning looks. She was glad to work. It made time blur.

That night she waited by the phone. All the next week she waited for his call. She checked her mailbox as soon as she got home from work.

The shop was busy. She worked hard, doggedly. The end of June passed. July came. Slowly the days crawled by.

One night in the middle of July Catherine began to cry. She forced herself to face reality. Kit had told her he had to leave her, and he had. He had told her he was marrying a woman named Haley Hilton, and he would. And now her world of work, which once had been all-consuming, appeared drab, leached of color, and of life.

Chapter 4

New York and England

August 1964

A
ugust was Vanderveld Flowers’ slowest month. The normal business and restaurant orders still came in, but society was out of town. People had escaped from the city’s heat to Long Island or Maine or the Cape. The Vandervelds knew it happened every year, but they were short-tempered and grumbly anyway.

Catherine was miserable. She hadn’t heard from Kit, and now she was trying to give up the hope that she ever would. She hated him for not wanting her, but she hated herself more for loving him so much, so easily. She had
known
he was the one for her, the love of her life. And she had been wrong. The realization that she’d erred instinctively about love made her doubt every decision she’d ever made and every new one she faced.

She was making the last delivery of the day, one only a few blocks from the shop. She climbed the steps of the gracious old building on Sixty-second Street, took the elevator to the third floor, knocked listlessly on the door.

“Oh, it’s you, honey, hi, come on in,” Helen Norton said.

Catherine had no choice but to obey, since Helen had turned to walk back into her living room, leaving the door wide open. Catherine wasn’t in the mood to socialize. Still, she knew she couldn’t afford to insult Helen, whose “friend” was one of the shop’s most regular and best-paying customers.

Catherine crossed the room behind Helen and set the long narrow box filled with a dozen red roses down on the coffee table.

Helen snatched the lid off.

“Any extra little goodies today?” she said. She shuffled through the flowers, then dropped the lid back in disappointment.

Sometimes Helen’s admirer brought in a bauble from Tiffany’s or Cartier’s for Mrs. Vanderveld to arrange artistically in the sheaf of flowers, but today he had sent only the usual dozen luscious, fragrant, exquisitely tapered long-stems, which Helen treated like a snarl of poison ivy. This drove Catherine crazy.

“Shall I put these in water for you?” Catherine asked.

“Oh, would you do that for me, honey? You know where the vases are,” Helen said. “And when you come back, I’ve got a treat for you.”

Helen, wearing a skimpy fluttering ruffled robe, was preoccupied with about eighteen evening gowns draped over the backs of the chairs, the sofas, every piece of furniture in the room. Catherine carried the roses into the tiny kitchen, filled a glass vase with water, cut the stems, and arranged the flowers. It always surprised her how little Helen cared about the flowers she received. But then many things were surprising about Helen.

One day about four months ago, an elegant older man had entered the flower shop, requested that a dozen roses be sent to Mrs. Helen Norton, with a card enclosed, and insisted on paying in cash. Catherine had carried out his instructions with the bored face she had learned to wear while serving the upper-crust patrons of Vanderveld Flowers.

But as soon as the man walked out the door, Catherine had grabbed Mrs. V.

“I know who that is! That’s P. J. Willington! I’ve seen him at my parents’ parties! He’s married. And his wife is certainly
not
named Helen Norton.”

“Now, dear, why get so excited? You’re old enough to understand this sort of thing,” Mrs. Vanderveld had said. “This isn’t the first time it’s happened, and it won’t be the last, and if you want us to keep the gentleman’s business, you’ll continue to act with the discretion I just saw. You were very good, Catherine.”

But even Mrs. Vanderveld smiled when they found out that “Mrs. Helen Norton,” who lived in an elegant apartment house off Park Avenue, a bastion of respectability, had only months before been “the Exotic Eleena Mourzekian, Belly Dancer to Kings.”

Catherine and Piet had been at the back of the shop one morning, unpacking a box of glads from Long Island. The long-stalked blooms were packed with newspapers to absorb the melting ice, and smiling up at her from a crumpled page of an old
Daily News
was the woman P. J. Willington sent flowers to, dressed in a belly-dancing costume that showed off her considerable charms. The advertisement said that she was appearing nightly at the Sheiks’ Club, off Eighth Avenue between Twenty-seventh and Twenty-eighth streets. The newspaper was several months old. When Catherine checked the day’s paper, she found the Exotic Eleena had been replaced by the Magnificent Mona. It was obvious to Catherine that P. J. Willington, scion of one of New York’s finest families, had relocated the Exotic Eleena to a location more suited to one of his station.

Catherine liked Helen, who was not only about ten years older than she was, but much wiser in the ways of the world. Helen seemed tough and vulnerable at once and was always so solicitous of Catherine’s attentions that it would have been rude for Catherine not to come into the apartment now and then.

In fact, the first time that Catherine knocked on the door with a narrow box of roses in her arms, Helen had opened the door, reached out, and actually pulled Catherine into the apartment.

“Thank God you’re a girl, honey. Put that thing down and zip me up, would you?” Helen had said.

That day, Helen was wearing a silver lamé sheath, clearly an off-the-rack garment that hadn’t been cut for true hourglass proportions like Helen’s. Catherine came in, set the flowers on the coffee table, then struggled with the zipper. When she finally succeeded, Helen’s full white breasts bulged over the top of the low-cut silver dress like meringues. She gave Catherine a huge tip and offered her some coffee, which Catherine refused.

As the months passed and Catherine continued to deliver the flowers, she grew fond of this enterprising young woman who had enough brains to realize she didn’t have enough brains to get very far without using the gifts of the extraordinary body she’d been given. Helen’s plans were to keep any of the jewelry and money P. J. Willington gave her until she had enough to go back to New Jersey and start her own beauty shop. Until then, she said, the old man was nice enough, even kind of touching in a way.