Everlasting (15 page)

“Dad. What’s wrong?”

“Well. To be blunt, I’ve had a bit of … a financial setback. Quite a bit, actually. I made some bad investments. To be brief, we don’t have any money.” He sighed. He looked older with each word he spoke. “I’ll be the first to admit I didn’t always give significant attention to my portfolio. It’s my fault, there’s no doubt about it. But assigning fault doesn’t help. We’re going to have to sell the Park Avenue apartment.”

“Daddy!”

Drew held up his hand to stop her. “There’s no money for Shelly to finish at his prep school or for college. Nor for Ann at Miss Brill’s. We’ve decided to remain on the Vineyard. There’s a decent public high school here for Ann, and it seems more—whimsical—than anything else we could do. At least Shelly and Ann feel at home here.”

“Can’t Grandmother help?”

“She has helped. Is helping. She’s tiding us over until the apartment sells. But she doesn’t really have all that much free money, you know. What she does have will have to last her and a cook-housekeeper and a gardener for the rest of her life. She would never leave Everly. She should never have to leave Everly. But she can’t keep it up by herself. She’s not as strong as she used to be. Hell, none of us is.”

Catherine shook her head, trying to imagine it all. “Shelly has to go to college, Dad,” she said. “Shelly can’t
not
go to college!”

Her father laughed. “This from you, my dear, who insisted on not going to college?”

“That was different. Shelly needs discipline. Oh, Dad, what are you going to do?”

“What am I going to do? Me, specifically? Well, I’m not without plans.” Drew smiled and pulled himself up. “I’m going to do what one does when he looks and speaks well and has a lot of friends. I’m going to get my broker’s license. I’m going to sell real estate.”

They sat drinking in silence for a few minutes while Catherine tried to take it in.

“Poor Mother,” she said at last. “No wonder she looks so awful.”

“Yes,” Drew agreed. “It’s hard on your mother. We’ve had to sell a lot of her nicest jewelry. And some of the oils in the apartment.”

“Oh, Dad. Oh, what will poor Annie do? Does she know?”

“No. Not yet. She knows we don’t have the money we used to, but so far she’s only found it an inconvenience. I haven’t told her yet that she’s not going back to Miss Brill’s. I suppose I should tell her soon. We’re getting on toward the end of the summer. I just keep putting it off.”

Drew tossed back his head and downed his drink. He set the glass on the coffee table. He leaned forward and said quietly to Catherine, “We’re going to have to let Genene go. We’ve kept her on, just for the summer, till our friends leave. Then it’ll be just the four of us in the house. Imagine.” He laughed, shaking his head, his eyes tearing up, his nose and cheeks turning red as the twiggy blood veins brightened.

“Well, I just thought you should know. You’re still part of the family. I know you’ll be a comfort to Ann.”

“Yes. I’ll try.”

“At least you got to go to Miss Brill’s. So you shouldn’t feel so mistreated by your mother and myself after all.”

“Oh, Dad. I—”

“I believe I’ll go on to bed now,” he said, rising. “I find I get tireder than I used to. No wonder, I suppose.”

“Daddy,” Catherine said, standing. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Her father didn’t turn around. His shoulders were slanted forward, but his back was still elegant in the lime blazer. “I’m sorry, too, Catherine,” he said. “I am sorry, too.”

When he had left the room, Catherine crossed to flick off the light switch. She wanted to be alone in the darkness to think.

Shelly was energetic and cocky; he needed a strong hand. He’d been an adventurous, daredevil boy, the type of boy who with the right direction could grow up to be a hero. His father was not the best role model, and if he didn’t continue at prep school and go on to college … Catherine couldn’t imagine what would become of him. And poor Ann, who was only beginning the adolescence she’d been dreaming of, when she could start dating and going to dances and parties …

Catherine knew she had to
do
something.

But she could not come upon one wise thing to do, although she sat in the den until she was so tired, she simply stretched out on the couch and fell asleep in her clothes.

* * *

T
he next two days she spent with Ann. They swam and sailed, they played tennis, and Catherine laughed with Ann about her friends. But at every moment her father’s words occupied her thoughts.

“It will come to you.”

Kathryn had said that to her, and now Catherine wondered if that didn’t mean responsibility would come, as well as gifts. She knew she could abandon her parents, but not Ann and Shelly. They mattered. To her. Even if they didn’t realize it, they mattered to her, and that was something for her to hold on to. However mysterious and frustrating her grandmother, brother, and sister were, still their fates were connected with hers.

She was desperate to leave the Vineyard—it was too hard to keep pretending to Ann. Once she was alone, she knew she could come up with a plan. If she gave her parents her savings, would that be enough to pay for Shelly’s tuition or Ann’s? Her savings, her savings … her savings, the money she had pinched and hoarded these past three years while she lived for free at Leslie’s place; her savings, in the face of what her family needed, was nothing. Even if she gave up all she’d worked so hard to accumulate, her family would squander it in the blink of an eye.

Chapter 5

New York

September 1964

T
he tamarisk shrubs, growing low and close to the brick building, were in bloom today, their feathery spikes of tiny pink flowers trembling fragilely against the evergreen leaves. The doorman nodded at Catherine as he opened the door for her.

“Oh, hi, honey, come on in,” Helen said.

Catherine paused in the doorway. Today the roses had a gift from a Madison Avenue jeweler laced through it, a gold bracelet studded with diamonds. It was a pretty trinket, but not a terribly valuable one, certainly not valuable enough to make up for the bruises on Helen Norton’s face.

“Please,” Helen Norton said.

On this warm September day, Helen was wearing a heavy robe of green plaid flannel, not at all her usual flamboyant style. She huddled inside it as if it were a blanket. Her hair looked strange. As the Exotic Eleena, she had dyed her hair black, but she was really a blonde. Catherine had never seen a brunette with blond roots before.

“Sit down and have some coffee with me,” Helen said.

Catherine hesitated. This was her last delivery of the day. All she had ahead of her was the walk back to Leslie’s apartment, where she would sit worrying about her family. It was funny; she could have confided in any of her old school friends about all sorts of problems—if Shelly were homosexual, or Ann in love with an older man, or either of her parents having affairs with anyone—but she could never speak to any of them about money problems.

“Come on, kid, have a heart, sit down,” Helen said.

“All right,” Catherine replied, and sat.

“Would you rather have a drink?”

“No, coffee’s fine.”

“Iced coffee? How about iced coffee? It’s so hot.”

“Iced coffee would be great. Thanks.”

Catherine looked around the room while Helen Norton clinked and clanked in the kitchenette. The florist’s box of roses lay on the coffee table between them, but Catherine didn’t take them into the kitchen for a vase of water. There wouldn’t be room with Helen making coffee. Catherine would remind Helen to put them in water before she left. Or perhaps she’d tell Helen to open the box right away. The bracelet might cheer her up.

Helen returned with two tall glasses of iced coffee. At Catherine’s suggestion she opened the box, took out the bracelet, and held it up, inspecting it.

“It’s not much, is it?” she said dejectedly to Catherine. She let the bracelet fall back among the red flowers.

“Well,” Catherine said, “I think it’s very pretty.…”

“Yeah, well, do you think this is pretty?” Helen pointed to her swollen cheekbone and bruised jaw. The green plaid of her robe made her skin look especially sallow.

“I was wondering about those,” Catherine admitted.

“He hit me. The old bugger.” Anger flared in the woman’s eyes so intensely that for a moment Catherine seemed to be looking at the Exotic Eleena instead. She could see how the woman’s fiery disposition would appeal to men.

“That’s awful,” Catherine said. “What did you do?”

“Hah! What did I do? More like what I didn’t do. Or won’t.” She sighed, sipped her coffee, lay back among the sofa cushions. “I’ll tell you, honey, I’ve gotta get out of this, and soon. I thought he was just a harmless old gent, but I should have known better. Men are men. They’re all alike. No, rich men are worse. Take it from me. Rich men think they can buy anything they want. They think they deserve it.”

Catherine was quiet. She wasn’t sure she wanted to hear any more.

“He’s getting kinky,” Helen Norton said. “I should have seen it coming. God, am I blind or what? He wants to watch me do it with an animal. A dog. Can you believe that? Jesus H. Christ. I said I wasn’t that kind of woman. He said, in that ice-up-the-asshole voice of his, ‘I think we both know exactly what kind of woman you are.’ The prick. So I called him a name. So he hit me. So I tried to kick him out. So he reminded me just whose apartment I was trying to kick him out of. So we compromised. No animals—yet. But I said he could bring in another woman.”

Catherine’s head hurt. She had to work hard to understand exactly what Helen Norton was talking about. It all sounded so tawdry.

Suddenly Helen Norton set her coffee on the table and put her face in her hands. Her shoulders were shaking.

“Sometimes you just think it’s no use,” she said. “Sometimes you think you’ve got a chance, you’re gonna make it, after all, this is America, the land of the free and the home of the brave. Then something like this happens and you know you’re nothing. Men like that have everything, and you’ll never have anything no matter how hard you work.”

Catherine set her coffee down on the table, too. Helen Norton’s words moved her greatly, partly because Catherine realized that Helen could be speaking for Catherine as well. Catherine had no chance, no chance in hell, of getting her family out of the fix it was in. No matter how hard she had worked and saved over the past three years, it amounted to
nothing
compared with what her family needed. It was nothing compared with what she would need to buy her own flower shop. She had nothing. Helen Norton had nothing.

But P. J. Willington had more money than he could count—money he had inherited from grandparents and in-laws, more money than he could ever use in his lifetime.

“Helen,” Catherine said, “I have an idea.”

Helen raised her head and looked at Catherine.

“Listen,” Catherine said. “I think I know a way for the two of us to get some money.”

* * *

W
hen Catherine finally left Helen’s, it was evening, time for dinner, but she was not hungry. She wanted to walk. She needed to move. It was early September, so night closed down faster on the city, and the subtle fading of the sky, the luminous streaks of color as the sun sank low, were blocked and blurred here by all the skyscrapers. Already there was the false daylight from storefronts, marquees, and headlights. It was neither dark nor day. People rushed instead of strolling, even though the air was mild.

Catherine was remembering her conversation with Ned.

“Perhaps you’ll come to the States someday and visit the American Everly,” Catherine had said to him as they lay together, naked in each other’s arms.

“Perhaps. Probably not.”

“Why not?”

“We don’t have money for traveling. Everly looks grand, but only because the four of us slave for it and put all our money into it.”

“Do you resent that?”

“No. Not at all. On the contrary, I’m rather proud to be part of such a place, such a family. I’m the man of the house, you know. Everyone relies on me. It’s up to me to take care of my sisters and my mother, and this house.”

“That doesn’t make you feel trapped?”

“Trapped? Oh, you Americans! Always ready to move. No. I feel that I’m exactly where I belong, and lucky to be here.”

“What will happen when you fall in love?”

“Well, I’ll have to fall in love with a woman who’s willing to live here and get along with the rest of the family, won’t I?”

“What if you fall in love with someone who doesn’t want to live here?”

Ned had shrugged. “I won’t.”

For Ned, Catherine thought, it was all so clear. Family first. And he would be able to pull it off, she thought. Ned would be able to break off with a woman he loved if she wouldn’t move to Everly, or not get involved with such a woman in the first place. Look at what Kit had done, breaking off with her in order to marry the woman his family had chosen.

It would be nice, Catherine thought as she strode down Park Avenue, the hard pavement hitting against her feet like a hammer pounding sense into her body, if she had an older brother. An older, protective brother, like Ned, who would take care of her. But she was the oldest in her family, and though she didn’t even want to be part of that damned family, she didn’t know how to escape. She could turn her back on her parents, but not on her brother, and especially not on Ann.

Catherine had always known her life would not be normal or easy. Her life hadn’t come to her in a gentle unfolding of years, like the gradually opening petals of a rose. Her life came at her in waves. So much had happened this summer—meeting Kit and falling in love with him. Going to Everly. Sleeping with Ned. And now discovering that her family was on the edge of financial ruin.

For years the waves of life had just rolled in easily, then all at once they’d arisen, pounding down on her with a great and unfair blow. She had to fight against them, stand up to them, or surrender and be swept away.