Everlasting (43 page)

“Grandmother, you’ll be up and around in a few days.”

“I haven’t been up and around for months. Don’t be a fool. I’m dying.”

Clara came into the room. “Would you like me to stay with her a while so you can go down and have a cup of coffee and a chat with Dr. Holdgarten?”

“No,” Catherine said. “I think I’ll stay here. I can talk to the doctor later.”

“She knows what he’s going to tell her anyway,” Kathryn said, laughing wryly, then choking on her laughter.

Catherine sat with her grandmother. She held her hand. Now it was her turn to talk, and Catherine spoke of what she knew her grandmother loved best. Flowers, gardens, their time together at the British Everly. Mazes, walks, arbors. Shrubs, trees, bushes. Annuals, perennials, everlastings.

What is everlasting? Catherine mused as she sat in silence, holding her sleeping grandmother’s hand. The everlasting flowers, sea lavender, immortelle, passionflower, and feverfew, kept their color as they dried but lost their softness, moistness, and flexibility. The swamp cypress tree growing in the southeastern United States was so unusually resistant to decay that it had earned from the lumber trade the name “wood everlasting.” Its cousin,
Cypress funebris
, or mourning cypress, was a symbol in Mediterranean cultures of death and immortality.

An interesting combination, that: of death and immortality, Catherine thought, watching her grandmother.

But although Kathryn opened her eyes now and then, she said only, “Still here? Good girl,” before falling instantly back into a deep sleep.

Dr. Holdgarten came into the room to listen to the old woman’s chest and check her pulse. “I’ll be back later on.”

“Wait,” Catherine whispered. She pulled the doctor out of the room into the hallway and in a low voice asked, “Why does she think she’s dying now?”

“She’s been ill for a long time. She’s had a series of small heart attacks. The Lord only knows what else ails her because she won’t come into the hospital or even into my office for a decent checkup.”

“If we made her go to a hospital—”

“Then you’d probably make her die in a hospital. She’s old, Catherine. Her body’s tired and worn out. It’s shutting down on her. She can’t breathe. Her lungs are filling with water. She’s got congestive heart failure. If you’d like, I could give her a shot to make her more comfortable, but she’s not complaining about any pain. The shot would also make her less clearheaded. I think she’d hate that.”

“Is there anything I can do?”

“Only what she asked. Be with her.”

“How long—”

“I can’t say. But old people often know when the time has come for them to die. It might be a day. It might not be that long.”

“She doesn’t seem to be afraid of dying.”

“She’s much too tired to be afraid.”

* * *

C
atherine sat with Kathryn. Her own body was tired, her own spirit weary and strained. But she was not too tired to be afraid, and she was not too tired to be greedy for all the pleasures she knew life could still hold for her.

By early afternoon Catherine was stiff from sitting. Her grandmother was fast asleep. Catherine rose and hurried downstairs. Old Clara slept on a recliner in the same room, snoring loudly.

Kit was in the library, reading legal briefs. He rose when she entered and held her against him.

“How is she?”

“Asleep. Fading. But not in pain.”

“How are you?”

“She’s leaving me Everly. Kit, so much has happened, and now this. I can’t take it all in.”

“Have you eaten anything?”

“I’m not hungry. She wants me near her. I can hardly sit there chewing, dropping crumbs on the sheets.” Catherine giggled giddily.

“You need something. Wait here.”

Catherine sank onto a chair and simply stared into space, not even thinking, until Kit returned with some coffee, juice, and toast covered with jam.

“I’ll go up and sit with her while you eat,” he said. “If she wakes up, I’ll come get you.”

“Kit, what would I do without you?” she asked. He touched her hair softly in reply before leaving the room.

Catherine ate quickly, each bite reviving her. Perhaps, she thought as she finished her meal, perhaps Kathryn wouldn’t die today after all. Perhaps she would recover. If she did, Catherine would force her to accept some household help. Clara couldn’t do anything but look after the two of them and had let the rest of the house fall into disrepair. Dust coated every surface, and cobwebs laced through the chandeliers and curtains. If Kathryn lived, Catherine resolved to spend one day and one night every week out here.

Back in her grandmother’s bedroom, Catherine and Kit talked softly. Yes, he had called Blooms to tell them she wouldn’t be in today. Yes, he’d called his office. Should he call Catherine’s father? Drew Eliot was, after all, Kathryn’s son. Still, she had not asked to see him. Better to wait. Catherine would ask her grandmother the next time she awoke.

Kit sat with Catherine for a while, then went back downstairs to his reading. Catherine pulled back one heavy, dusty drape and looked out. It had turned into a glorious autumn day, brilliant with colors. All the gardens, even the purple-and-white one, were a tangle of overgrown grasses and flowers shriveled by frosts. Bumpy apples and pears lay at the base of the neglected fruit trees for the birds and bugs to pick at. Orange, yellow, and wine-hued mums blazed along one wall. The climbing roses were still there, too, blossoming with frilly, summery, pale pink roses.

Catherine opened the window just a little, so that fresh air could sweep into the overheated, stuffy room. The rush of cool air with its tang of salt braced her. She shut the window and went back to sit with her grandmother.

At some point in the late afternoon, Catherine pulled her chair close to the bed and laid her head down. Gently she rested one hand on her grandmother’s so that they were touching, skin to skin. Then she fell asleep. When she awoke, it was almost eleven o’clock at night, and her grandmother’s hand was cold.

Kathryn Patterson Paxton Eliot was dead.

* * *

C
atherine had been expecting this moment for so long that she went through the necessary motions almost as if she’d done them before many times.

She called Dr. Holdgarten first, and when he said he was on his way, she called her father.

“Dad. I’m sorry if I woke you. But I’m out at Everly, and … Grandmother just died.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, Dad. I’m with her now. I’ve been with her all day. She called me very early this morning and asked me to come out.”

“But why did she ask you to come be with her?” Drew asked. “Why didn’t she call me? I’m her son!”

“Probably because Kathryn knew if you came out, I’d come out, too,” Marjorie said from the extension in their bedroom. “She never did like me.”

“Would you like me to take care of the funeral arrangements?” Catherine asked. “Or would you rather do it?”

Drew sighed deeply. “I’ll do it.”

“Would you also tell Shelly? I don’t know when I’ll be seeing him again. I don’t know if he told you, but—”

“He did,” Marjorie broke in. “We’re all very disappointed with your attitude.”

“I’ll call Ann if you’d like, Father,” Catherine said, pointedly ignoring her mother’s remark.

“I’d appreciate that,” Drew said. He sighed again. “We’ll get dressed and be out there as soon as we can.”

When Catherine hung up, Kit crossed the room and came to rub Catherine’s shoulders.

“That sounded relatively painless,” he said.

“I didn’t mention the will,” Catherine replied.

* * *

“
A
ll flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field.”

Catherine sat in the front of the church with Kit and Andrew and Lily, whom they’d brought home from school for the funeral. She was aware of the minister’s words and of the occasional sob or sniffle from Ann or Clara.

“The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: because the spirit of the Lord bloweth upon it; surely the people is grass.”

Drew and Marjorie sat in the first row, with Shelly between them. The past few days had exhausted them all. When Catherine told them about the will, they’d been enraged, then changed tactics and tried with great sweetness to get Catherine to give Everly up, then raged again when she said she wouldn’t. Earlier today as they had gathered at Everly in their black garments, preparing for the funeral, they had been civil to Catherine and Kit, but cold. Shelly looked tired and preoccupied.

Ned had flown over from England with Ann, and so had Madeline, but they hadn’t taken their two children out of school; after all, they had never known Kathryn. Over the past few years Ann and Catherine had forgotten their enmity in the name of family; once again, they’d taken to sending Christmas and birthday presents, exchanging letters, sharing their lives long-distance. Ann, Ned, and Madeline were staying in the city with Drew and Marjorie, so Catherine assumed Ann had received their version of Shelly and Catherine’s quarrel. But the Boxworthys had arrived only the night before, and Catherine had had only a brief moment alone with Ann this morning as they were waiting for the limousines.

“I’d like to talk to you privately sometime before you go back,” Catherine had said quietly.

“I’d like that, too,” Ann said, and then someone else had entered the room.

Now the Boxworthys sat on their own pew across from the Eliots.

Clara had chosen to sit with Catherine, Kit, and their children.

“The grass withereth, the flower fadeth; but the word of our God shall stand for ever.”

Catherine didn’t think for a minute her grandmother believed what the minister was saying. If Kathryn thought anything lasted forever, it was not words, but plants, flowers, trees, shrubs. But since Kathryn never went to church, Catherine thought it was thoughtful of the minister to remember Kathryn’s particular love. She thanked him afterward, at the quiet reception at Everly.

The burial service had been brief, because it was pouring rain and the wind was blowing off the Sound, driving the rain sideways like needles. A large tent had been erected over the gravesite; nevertheless, those gathered around the casket were quickly soaked. The minister’s robes flapped like wet sheets in the wind, and his voice was drowned out by the weather’s roar. Yet it was a satisfying ceremony, Catherine thought, dramatic in its own way, as if the elements themselves were mourning, wind and rain, salt and sky, reminding the mortals gathered there that Kathryn had preferred the natural world in all its guises to the human one.

Back at Everly, the local women Drew had hired set out a cold buffet in the dining room. Kathryn had kept to herself so much of recent years, and so many of her oldest friends had already died, that there were few guests other than the immediate family, and they quickly took their leave. Catherine spoke to Dr. Holdgarten, to the minister, and to Clara’s grandchildren, who had come to collect her and her things after the funeral. Kathryn had left her friend and servant a generous bequest that would take care of Clara for the rest of her life, whether she spent it on cruise ships or in a first-class rest home, and her grandchildren were grateful. Clara was grateful, too, but in a state of shock: Catherine recognized the look, the wide blank eyes, the bland expression, the slow movements. It was a state much like Catherine’s own, her emotions frozen beneath a mask that was vague, polite.

By four o’clock it was dark. The November sky was so black that even the fleet of clouds that rushed across it were hidden. Catherine settled Andrew and Lily in the den with trays of sandwiches, sodas, and cookies and turned them loose with the VCR. They were watching something exceptionally stupid, she realized, taking advantage of the fact that today of all days she wouldn’t monitor their choice. For a long moment she stood in the doorway of the den, watching them, listening to them joke and laugh. Her children. They were so healthy, so happy, so relaxed with her. They argued with her, Lily especially, and Catherine always marveled at this. They didn’t have a clue how lucky they were, her children, how secure they felt in her love and in Kit’s. If she had accomplished one good thing in her life, it was raising these children, who loved themselves and knew they deserved love.

“Catherine, we’re leaving now.”

Ann appeared at her side. It was stranger for Catherine to recognize Ann in her thirties than it was to see her own face in the mirror. In her mind Ann was forever young, and lovely in her youth. In reality, Ann’s golden light had dimmed. Her hair already had strands of gray in it, not shining white, but dull gray, and her face was much more lined than Catherine’s—the result, no doubt, of working outside all the time. But then Ann had taken on the Boxworthy women’s disdain of cosmetics. And instead of a fashionable cut, Ann simply pulled her hair straight back into an untidy bun. Catherine wondered if Ann ever used face cream at night. Should she suggest it to her? No—Marjorie would do that.

But Ann’s blue eyes were bright, and her movements were graceful, the movements of a woman who walked through life being loved and useful. For the few brief seconds that Catherine had been able to see Ned face-to-face, she had noticed that at forty-five he looked as marvelous as ever. His dark hair was streaked with a silver so bright, it made his entire face seem radiant. And when he and Ann looked at each other, it was abundantly clear they were happy in their marriage.

“Ann, do you think you could come out tomorrow? We could go through the house and see if there are any pieces of furniture or china, whatever, that you’d like to have at your Everly.”

“God, Catherine.” Ann grinned. “If I have one more precious heirloom to watch over, I think I’ll lose my mind. Do you know what I dream of? An A-frame in Colorado, everything white, walls of windows, and a futon on the floor.”

Catherine laughed. “I used to have dreams like that, too, especially when the children were little. Well, you can always come back and have your pick here, you know.”

“I’ll come out anyway tomorrow. Right after lunch. I’d like to talk to you. Without Mother and Dad around. They can show Ned the city. Will you have time for a nice long talk?”