Possessions (30 page)

“Now,” Victoria said. “The children have had their turn and I am anxious to see what Katherine has brought me.” She unwrapped the small round package and held up a jar, tied with a red bow, labeled “Preserved Ginger.” “My dear,” she said after a moment. “Did you make this?”

Katherine nodded, unable to speak. She had known her preserves and jams and jellies would be outshone, but there was nothing else she could afford for the whole family. She had thought of making jewelry, but rejected it. Not until she was established with Mettler's, or somewhere else. And when she had arrayed the colorful jars on her coffee table at home and tied them with gaily colored ribbons, they looked so bright and festive she thought they would be all right.

But when Victoria held one in her hand and Katherine saw how tiny and plain it looked, she knew with a sinking heart that this family would find her gifts stingily small. She'd been dreaming when she thought she might fit in with people who had enough money to buy anything they wanted.

But Victoria came to Katherine, laid a gentle hand along her cheek, and kissed her. “How did you know preserved ginger is my favorite?” She spoke loudly enough for all of them to hear. “Others have bought it for me but no one ever took the trouble to make it. And Tobias recently found a superb recipe for chicken with preserved ginger. You will come to dinner and the three of us will be quite gluttonous and share it with no one. Thank you so much, my dear. Now please open your gift.”

Katherine would rather have waited, but Tobias took her hand and led her to a stack of boxes. “But which one?” she asked.

“All!” he announced, his face bright with anticipation. “From
all of us—Victoria, Ross, Ann, Jason, and me. Open, open, open!”

Not Derek, Katherine thought. Not Melanie. Self-consciously, she knelt and opened the first box. Lying before her, in symmetrical order, was a complete set of American and Swedish files for use on metals—oval, square taper, knife edge, lozenge, cant, pippin, barette, and crochet—in different lengths and seven degrees of fineness. Beside them lay a set of handles. Almost fearfully, Katherine touched the gleaming rows.

“They won't break, you know!” said Tobias, almost dancing in delight. “And now the other boxes!”

She could guess what they contained. Quickly she pulled off all the wrappings until she was surrounded by open boxes of pliers, dapping die blocks, chasing tools, sanding materials, a saw and set of blades, and two small motorized wheels for buffing and polishing. She stood up, then, in the midst of a collection of jeweler's tools she had not been able to buy for herself, and looked at the family
—my family—
with a face so radiant that Derek drew in his breath and Victoria and Tobias came to put their arms around her.

“You haven't opened my gift,” said Derek, handing her a narrow box. Katherine unwrapped it and took out a strip of gold, one inch wide by ten inches long. Wonderingly, she met his watchful eyes. “Mettler likes gold,” he said casually.

“Gold—!” Melanie exclaimed. “Why, that must have cost—”

“I'd guess about a thousand,” said Curt approvingly.

“Vulgar commentaries have no place at Christmas,” Victoria declared. “Or any time. Derek? Will you move the gift-giving along?”

“But I haven't thanked you,” Katherine said. She held the cool strip of gold, and stood beside the shining tools on the carpet. “You've given me the freedom to work. I don't have to borrow; I can work in my own home, in the daytime or at night; I can try different techniques and styles because I have the tools for them. Do you know what this means to me?” Tears filled her eyes. “It's as if you've given me a life. The tools to shape a life. I can't really say it—”

“You've said it quite well,” Melanie commented sweetly. She was standing beside Derek. “You like your freedom. I
wonder if we ever heard the real story of why Craig disappeared.”

In the shocked silence, Tobias was the first to recover. Drawing himself up, he roared, “'Farewell, farewell, you old rhinoceros! I'll stare at something less prepocerous!'”

The four children, huddled around the computer, burst into laughter. Jason, Ann, and Curt laughed with them. Victoria's lips twitched, Ross chuckled, then grew quiet, and Derek smiled, watching Katherine. But she had turned away, embarrassed, because she had laughed and then seen the helpless fury in Melanie's eyes. The children rocked back and forth, repeating “prepocerous rhinoceros!” until Victoria, holding her lips tight, signaled the butler to help them carry their gifts to the library.

“We owe Katherine an apology,” she said, but Katherine vigorously shook her head. “Then we shall finish with the gifts and go in to dinner. Ross, I thought you and Derek were managing this. Where have you been while Tobias clowned?”

“Applauding him,” said Ross quietly, and knelt to distribute the remaining gifts.

Christmas was the one time Victoria allowed the children to eat with the adults. Everyone sat at the long table decorated with berries and chrysanthemums twined among white candles in crystal holders, and ate goose and duck, fresh cranberries with orange rind, and the largest
bûche de Noël
Katherine had ever seen. When coffee was served, the children and Tobias slipped out, to the library. Soon after Victoria and Katherine followed. By the light of a dancing fire, Tobias was reading
A Christmas Carol,
abridging it since they had begun so late. Standing, squatting, hopping, and prancing about the room, he acted all the parts in a dozen different voices. Glancing at her children, Katherine saw tears streaming down their rapt faces, and her own tears well up as memories of Craig's voice mingled with Tobias', reading those same words at their small family celebrations in Vancouver.
You had no right to leave,
she told him fiercely. She moved back into the shadows to let her tears come, and saw Ross sitting quietly near the door. An hour later, when Tobias ended with Tiny Tim's “God bless us, everyone!” she looked again, but he was gone.

*  *  *

“Melanie has many virtues,” Derek said on the telephone. “But common sense, perception and discretion are not among
them. Craig has nothing to do with my wanting to be with you.”

“Nothing?”

“Even if it were true, what difference would it make? When we met, you were intriguing; now I find you irresistible. And you are too intelligent to take Melanie seriously. We have plans to see the New Year in together. Nine o'clock?”

“Yes.”

A month before, in his apartment, she had known she wanted him, and she knew it when he walked through her door on New Year's Eve, reminding Jennifer that he was coming for her mother in a proper manner, nodding when Todd told him something about the computer, but never taking his eyes off Katherine. She watched him watching her, as if they were playing a game: Katherine telling him with her eyes that she wanted him, and Derek's eyes appraising and caressing the exquisite vision in black and white, lace and taffeta, and the strong yet delicate lines of her face that at last, freed of despair and a sense of inferiority, glowed with an arresting beauty. He took a long breath. “I think I will not make love to you in front of your children,” he murmured, and swept her out the door.

They kissed in his car. Katherine felt the rush of her body's demands before they pulled apart and Derek started the car. She rested her head against the back of the seat as they sped up steep Christmas-wrapped streets to a white mansion ablaze with candles and technicolor lights.

The three floors had been transformed into a carnival. Crowds of guests tried their skill at sharpshooting and baseball-pitching booths, darts, bowling, and fishing in a tub for sterling silver dolphins; others watched a striptease show in a tent on the third floor, acrobats in another tent, and, in a third, trained dogs doing mathematical calculations and barking rhythmically to Christmas carols played on a trumpet by a foot-tapping clown.

“Slightly overdone,” Derek commented dryly. “But they were afraid of being anonymous among the rich.”

“They've made everyone else anonymous,” Katherine said, as they made their way through the rooms.

“Good God, Derek!” exclaimed a thin, mustached young man. “How have you discovered this beauty before me? I thought I was always a step ahead of you.”

“No one is ever ahead of Derek,” said a dark, burly man.
He bent over Katharine's hand. “Brock Galvez. A pleasure. Derek—” They shook hands. “Have you been upstairs? Some madman has taught dogs to bark ‘The First Noël.'”

Derek looked at Katherine. “Shall we avoid them? Or would you like to go up there and work our way down?”

“After the dogs,” Katherine said. “Perhaps one can only go up.”

Galvez laughed. “What would you prefer?” Derek asked.

“Whatever you like.” Swaying toward him, her eyes meeting his, Katherine was strung as tight as a fine wire. The sensuous play of taffeta and lace against her skin, the open admiration on all sides, the deafening chatter and music, left her open to the wild fantasies of the carnival and the dreamlike evening. There were no responsibilities, no restrictions—and no Craig. She was alone with Derek.

At midnight they toasted the New Year, kissing lightly, and ate dinner with some of Derek's friends who were in the state legislature. At one thirty, when they left, Katherine discovered that a crowd was coming with them to Derek's apartment. “Tired of the dogs,” said a redhead. “You can't have a romantic New Year's Eve with a bunch of dogs barking Christmas carols. Pretty fucking unromantic, in fact.”

They all settled themselves in the leather and chrome and glass of Derek's living room. The doors to the Victorian room were closed. “Katherine,” said a woman whose long black braids were wrapped about her throat like a scarf. “Could I have a gin and tonic?”

Katherine looked for Derek but he was in the den, putting on a tape of music. So she became his hostess, moving through the rooms, showing guests to the bathrooms, and helping them fix their drinks. When the telephone rang she started to answer it, but stopped. After all, it wasn't her house. But by three thirty, when Derek had smoothly urged the last guest out, she felt almost as if she did live there.

“Well done,” he said. “You were magnificent.”

She raised her head higher. “Was that a test?”

“Not after the first five minutes. Come with me.”

He opened the doors to the Victorian room and she followed him to the red velvet couch. “Derek,” she said, “do you turn everything into a drama?”

“Only for those who can play it out. Do you want a drink?”

“No.”

She leaned toward him, then paused, fearful of the surge of her passion, but Derek held her, his mouth on hers, forcing her back against the arm of the couch. Katherine opened her mouth and kissed him, her arms tightening around his shoulders as his hand coveted her breast.

But she felt suddenly that she could not breathe, and pulled her mouth free. “Wait,” she whispered. “I don't—”

“Oh, yes you do. You want this, you've missed it, and you've known all evening you would lie under me tonight. My God you were superb—it's not often I'm taken by surprise but you—” He kissed her again, his tongue possessing her mouth. “My exquisite creature,” he murmured.

Like a pause in a storm, Katherine's passion was arrested in its night. Derek's words echoed starkly. My creature. My possession. No, she thought. But the fantastic carnival still throbbed within her, and when Derek slid down the zipper on her blouse and it lay like a black lace cloud about her waist, her thoughts fled; she knew only that for six months she had been starving, and now held in her arms a feast.

Slipping off her camisole, Derek held her breasts in his hands and bent over them, his tongue playing slowly on one nipple and then the other. Katherine gave a low sigh as the long surf that was like his voice swept through her.

“My God,” he said, and something in his voice told her he did not usually wait so long for a woman.

“Why—?” she murmured but he was leading her to the bedroom, and the question drifted away. He lay her on the bed and bent over her, his mouth opening hers, his tongue deep against hers, as he pulled off her skirt. The sounds from outside grew faint, carried away like pebbles in the windstorm that roared in Katherine's ears.

And then, cutting through it, the telephone rang. Derek did not move. “Derek,” she said against his mouth.

“Ignore it.”

“No, wait.” She struggled to sit up. She had heard the telephone earlier and ignored it. Now it shattered the last spell of the carnival and stilled the roaring in her ears. “Please answer it.”

“I will not answer it; are you mad?”

“Then I will.”

Expressionless, he contemplated her.

“I should have answered it earlier. I left this number with Annie. Something may be wrong at home.”

Without a word, he reached down to the lower shelf of the nightstand and handed her the telephone. She picked it up at the start of another ring. “Yes?” the word was a whisper. She cleared her throat. “Yes?”

“Mommy!” Jennifer cried. The words reverberated through Katherine's head. “Come home in a hurry! Daddy's here!”

P
AST
all the revelers weaving homeward, Derek drove in silence, his face a mask. Occasionally, disconcertingly, he chuckled.

He had begun in his bedroom, when Jennifer's piercing voice reached him. In one swift motion he was off the bed and across the room, chuckling, then laughing aloud. “Did it again, by God! Fifteen years and he's still cutting me off, that son of a bitch. Still doing it, as if he never left. It's almost comforting, knowing how little the world changes. Come on; I'm sure you're in a hurry to get back to hearth and home.”