Everlasting (2 page)

That night she had received so much attention from the boys at the dance that Leslie had forced giddy Catherine to admit that
perhaps
, even
probably
, her own mother might be wrong about her daughter. So like sunlight flashing over a dark horizon, the bright light of Leslie vision beckoned at Catherine, urging her toward a new consideration of herself.

What Catherine could not articulate to Leslie or even to herself was the sense that although she wanted her mother to be wrong, she also, just as strongly, wanted her mother to be right. If her mother’s judgment about her looks was wrong, then what else in life could Marjorie be wrong about? If Marjorie’s standards were not the right ones, then whose were? For Marjorie was famous for her beauty, or as famous as any New York socialite could be. With her husband, Drew Eliot, by her side, she was caught in camera flash at the openings of everything her world considered important: operas, ballets, theater, museums, exhibitions, charity galas. Catherine read about her mother in the society section of newspapers and in
WWD
and the women’s magazines, and everything she read confirmed Marjorie’s sense of beauty and style.

But there was something deeper, too, a private sense of indignation Catherine felt at having her mother criticized. She didn’t exactly know why, but Leslie’s criticism of Marjorie wounded not Marjorie, but Catherine.

Yet Catherine knew she couldn’t explain all this to Leslie, who had the least complicated life of anyone they knew. Leslie’s mother was dead, and her father, a charming and brilliant man who dealt in antiques from the Orient, adored Leslie unequivocably. She was his only child, and they were a happy couple in their own way. Leslie’s father let her have everything she needed, and when he was away—and he almost always was—there were friends who welcomed Leslie into their homes for Christmas or summer vacation. For Leslie, family life was simple, two people holding each end of one rope, but for Catherine there were so many people with so many complications that the lines of her family life were in a tangle, like a ball of yarn, and she felt caught in the middle.

Catherine had always longed for her mother’s approval, but she had always been afraid to ask for it.

Yet on this Christmas night, she was asking—demanding. Scrutinizing herself carefully in the full-length mirror, Catherine found herself smiling. She felt something very like triumph. Her mother was right. She did not look like the rest of the family, with their healthy cool Anglo-Saxon faces. Catherine’s skin was pale, but it was tinged with olive. When she was younger, after studying their bodies in detail, she and Shelly had decided that his blood must be blue and hers green. Shelly’s eyes were her father’s green; Ann’s were her mother’s clear blue. But Catherine’s eyes were a changeable hazel. Odd eyes. All this, topped with that dark curly hair, made Catherine look like no one else in the Eliot clan. She looked like a gypsy, or a witch, or some medieval European peasant/queen. Nothing looked more inappropriate on her than the navy plaid pleated skirt, navy V-neck sweater, and white blouse that was the school uniform.

The bold red plaid of the Christmas formal, however, looked good on Catherine. It gave her a Scottish look, and there was Scottish blood in the family. The headband, holding back her hair, tamed that hair a bit, and now she pulled on three-quarter-length white gloves for formality’s sake. Her bosom was more exposed than she had intended, but she didn’t think she looked immodest, only very feminine.

She went to find her brother and sister, in the nursery. “Wow! You look great!” Shelly yelled, surprised, while his friend George grinned and goggled and stared at her breasts.

“Oh, Cathy, you look like a princess, you look
amazing
,” Ann said rapturously.

Even Miss Smith, their reserved governess, expressed her admiration. “You’re turning into quite a beautiful young lady, Catherine,” she said, and Catherine’s face went warm. Someone had called her beautiful—even if it was only unbeautiful Miss Smith.

So perhaps this dress would work a charm.

Catherine descended the stairs with high hopes, Ann and the boisterous boys behind her like an attending court, holding her gown in one hand, the other hand on the banister so she wouldn’t trip, ready to make the entrance of her life.

A majestic Christmas tree, glorious with colored lights and brilliant glass ornaments, towered in the grand entrance hall. Catherine could have leaned over the banister to touch the golden star that topped the tree. For a moment she lost her self-consciousness and let herself be carried away in the beauty of it all. It was Christmas, and Grandmother Kathryn, usually so preoccupied and solitary, had once again transformed her home into a magic palace and thrown it open to her family and friends.

Catherine’s grandfather, Drew Eliot, had built this house in the early 1920s, when he was famous and when his new British bride was homesick for her country estate. Back then, houses like this—replicas of English “country houses”—were still being built. Drew and Kathryn had named their home Everly, after Kathryn’s British home, and they had spent a few good years in it before their divorce. Since then, Kathryn had lived in the enormous place alone, except for the occasional visit from her son when he was on school holiday. In those early years she had been thought eccentric, a single woman living in that vast house in East Hampton all year round, but in fact Kathryn
was
eccentric and didn’t care what others thought. She was a devoted gardener, happy working in her garden when the weather was right, happy reading and planning her garden during the winter months. Now she was a grandmother, and her son and his wife and their children spent every Christmas at Everly, and each year they held a gala dinner and dance on Christmas night.

Kathryn didn’t mind all this fuss and bother. After all, it happened only once a year. In her best moods she said it was good for the old house to get opened up and really used now and then; it reminded her of her British childhood. In her worst moods she said—to anyone in the family who’d listen—that perhaps all this folderol would satisfy her son and his family enough to make them leave her alone for a year. It wasn’t such a bad trade. Her son, Andrew, and his wife, Marjorie, came out from Manhattan, and the three children came to Everly from their boarding schools, often bringing friends, and the adult Eliots invited their guests to stay the night, because the party always lasted until morning. Every room in the house was full of guests. Kathryn brought in extra help from the town to cook and serve. Children raced through the house, adults danced and quarreled and met for secret love affairs, everyone feasted and celebrated. Kathryn was satisfied that a year’s worth of life went on in her house during those twenty-four hours.

And tonight even Kathryn, who tended to be absentminded and uninterested in people, actually had guests of her own, P. J. and Evienne Willington. It had just been announced that the Willingtons were bequeathing their staggeringly expansive East Hampton residence, a Gothic mansion and one hundred acres of gardens, to the state of New York, to become a museum and public garden upon their death. Their children didn’t mind, the Willingtons confessed, for they would be receiving all the money and wouldn’t have to be burdened with the upkeep of the estate. And the Willingtons were young, only sixty, so they had many years ahead in which to luxuriate in the gratitude of the state.

Catherine, Ann, Shelly, George, and Miss Smith stood at the door to the library, gazing at the beautiful room, the shining people. Grandmother Kathryn had had this room and the dining room splendidly decorated, with laurel roping looped over all the oil paintings and mistletoe tied with red ribbon to the chandeliers. Crystal bowls of hard red and green candies were set on every surface. The room was fragrant with evergreen and expensive perfume. The guests were gathering here for predinner cocktails.

The Willingtons were seated with Kathryn, sipping sherry, discussing the newest breeds of Dutch tulips. Marjorie and Drew Eliot were laughing in the center of a group of friends, the men elegant in tuxes, the women’s gowns swaying, as colorful as a field of flowers.

Tonight, as on other Christmas nights, Marjorie had adorned her gown with a bit of the same material used for her children’s clothing. Her dress was full-skirted and full-sleeved, made of a vibrant rich gold satin that made the accompanying gold lights in her high-swept hair glisten. Around her waist was the matching red plaid material, tied in an enormous plump bow in the back. Her earrings were dangling, heavy and ornate, unusual for Marjorie, who usually preferred more sedate jewelry.

Catherine knew her mother looked magnificent. She could tell by the lift of her mother’s head that Marjorie knew it and was glowing from the compliments of others. But she knew she looked beautiful, too.

It seemed to Catherine that all eyes in the room turned on the four of them as they entered. She saw her father’s eyes widen as he looked at her. He excused himself from his group and approached Catherine and the others, his face beaming with happiness.

“Merry Christmas, darlings,” Drew said to his children, approaching them and kissing the girls formally on each cheek, then shaking hands with his son and his son’s friend. “You all look wonderful. Come in and join us. Tonight, a special occasion, you can all have champagne. George, I don’t think your parents will object, do you? Catherine, how grown-up you look. It’s too bad there aren’t some young men here for you to dazzle.”

Their father was leading them into the room when Marjorie came sweeping toward them, glittering but, Catherine realized with a cold shock of dismay, smiling her public smile. Marjorie’s blue eyes were cold. Fear caught in Catherine’s throat like a hard thing she could not swallow.

“Hello, everyone,” Marjorie said smoothly. “Shelly, dear, take George over and get him something to drink. Drew”—this was to her husband, and as she spoke she touched each person lightly on the shoulder, directing—“take Ann in and show her to your mother and the Willingtons. They’ll be pleased to see such a pretty,
innocent
girl.” Marjorie took her younger daughter’s chin in her hand a moment and tilted Ann’s face so that Ann could see the affectionate approval in her mother’s eyes.

Now Catherine hoped for one dreamy instant that Marjorie, having dismissed the others, would link arms with her in the smug, snug way Marjorie had of making one feel chosen, and the two of them would walk into the room, two beautiful Eliot women together.

Marjorie bent close to Catherine and spoke directly into her face so that Catherine had to read her mother’s lips as much as hear her words.

“Catherine,” Marjorie said, “what have you done to that dress? You look like a
fool
. Go to your room and stay there. I don’t want to see you again tonight.”

Marjorie turned her back on Catherine then and swept regally back into the crowded room.

Catherine stood for a moment, stupefied with shame. But no one else was looking at her. She turned and, with what dignity she had left, slowly walked back through the entrance hall, past the towering, glittering Christmas tree, and up the wide curving stairway, away from the party, to the solitary third floor.

She shut herself in her room. Stunned, she sat on her bed, looking at her hands, waiting for her heart to stop thudding. It was lonely on the third floor, for even Miss Smith was down in the library. It was quiet, for the huge old house was well insulated by the thickness of its walls and floors; the party might have been a thousand miles away.

She hugged herself; she tried to keep from crying, but the painful sobs broke forth, hurting her chest. It had happened again. It always happened. She should not have pretended she could change it. She did not belong here, she was wrong here, always wrong. Catherine wept, hating herself and her family and her life.

She knew she had to escape, change, leave—but she didn’t know where to go, or how.

If she didn’t belong with the family she had been born to, then where did she belong?

* * *

The next day her father summoned her to the library. It was a little after noon, and the adults were just rising. Even Shelly, George, and Ann were still asleep. The Christmas night revelry had lasted late into the night, as had Catherine’s tears.

This morning Catherine thought her father looked old and tired, but handsome as always. He had a Bloody Mary, his typical morning drink, in his hand. He sat on a leather chair near the fireplace, but there was no fire lit this morning, only dead ashes as deep as the grate. Perhaps the worst and most British quality about Everly was that some rooms were impossible to heat. Catherine, in wool slacks and sweater, shivered.

“So, Pudding, sorry you couldn’t be with us last night,” her father said casually.

Catherine shrugged. She and her brother and sister knew that their father loved their mother with a slavish devotion that would prevent him from ever crossing her in the smallest thing. He would not protect his children, if it meant defying his wife.

“Your mother’s been a bit miffed with you lately, Cathy,” he went on. “This college thing, you know. You’re really going to have to do something.”

Catherine stared at her father. Many times she had heard her mother say to her father that he had inherited all of his famous father’s charm and good looks but none of his intelligence or common sense, and Catherine knew her mother was right about this, as she was about so many other things. Now she knew that her father would have nothing helpful or surprising to say about the matter of her college applications—or rather, her lack of them. She was not planning to apply to college. In fact, she was not planning to go to college. If she didn’t go, she’d be the only Miss Brill’s girl in the history of that school not to attend college. The school guidance counselor and the headmistress were furious with Catherine.

It was not from rebelliousness that Catherine was not looking at colleges, but rather from apathy. As each year of her life progressed, she had less enthusiasm for it and its routines. Studying and taking tests bored her. She wanted action.