Possessions (31 page)

She was pulling on her skirt. “You don't have to take me.” His laughter and his words clanged against the guilt swelling inside her, making her feel sick. She wanted to be alone. “I'll get a cab.”

“You'll go in my car.”

They drove in silence, his low car flying along the Embarcadero to Market Street and then cross town, cutting off other drivers, barely slowing at red lights, until they reached the Sunset, where Katherine's neighbors had long since gone to
sleep and the only light that burned was hers. Braking sharply at her building, he smiled thinly. “Give him my regards.”

Katherine opened the car door, but a sudden reluctance held her back. “Thank you for—” It was lame and feeble; there was nothing she could say. “The party,” she finished, and began to step out.

He stopped her by lifting her hand to his lips. “Katherine, you were magnificent. At the party, at my home, with me.” She shuddered. “And I wish you joy with your husband.”

“I don't know . . .” she said, and stepped onto the sidewalk. As soon as she closed the door, Derek slammed the car into gear and tore away, leaving her to meet Craig.

But when she walked in, she was met with silence. No one saw her come in; no one greeted her. The room was empty. No, not empty; Jennifer and Todd were curled up on the couch, asleep. As if a vise had been released, Katherine's thoughts flew in all directions.
Where is he?
She crossed the room to look into the kitchen. Empty. She felt a premonitory chill. The bedroom. A husband would wait for his wife in bed. Her skirt rustled in the silence as she took three long steps and jerked open the door. But the two beds, neatly made, were empty.

“Jennifer,” Katherine whispered, kneeling beside the couch. “Jennifer.”

“Mommy!” Jennifer sat bolt upright and looked about the room, squinting in the light. “Where's Daddy?”

“He's not here. Jennifer, are you sure he was? You didn't have a dream that seemed so real—?”

“He
is
here! He is! He's been here since midnight! Todd and I were waiting for the New Year and Daddy came and we called you. We called and
called
but nobody answered, and Daddy said he had to leave but finally you answered and he said we should go to sleep 'cause it was so late and he'd sit with us and wait for you. He can't be gone! He said he'd wait!
Why did it take you so long to get here?”

“I was on the other side of town.”

Todd woke, rubbing his eyes. “Dad?”

“He left!” Jennifer cried. “Without even telling us!” She clenched her fist and looked narrowly at Katherine. “Daddy doesn't like Derek, does he?”

They're going to blame it on me.
“Did he say that?” Katherine asked.

“No—but he said he was lonely—he called us in Vancouver in
October
and the phone was disconnected and he asked somebody to get our address from the post office and that's how he knew where to send the money. But then he asked where you were and we said a New Year's party with Derek, and Todd said you went out with Derek all the time, and when you answered the phone at Derek's house that was when Daddy said we should go to sleep.” Her eyes met her mother's with a woman's knowing look. “So he could leave. Just like he did before.”

“Don't imagine things,” Katherine said sharply. “Just tell me what happened. He came here at midnight?”

“He knocked on the door,” Todd answered. “So I looked through the window like you said to when we're alone, after Annie goes across the hall. And there he was! Just the same as ever!”

“Thinner,” Jennifer said. She screwed up her face. “He promised he'd wait for you!”

“He hugged us and hugged us,” said Todd. “And he looked in the kitchen and the bedroom and everywhere. He opened all the closets and drawers and he asked where his big desk was—”

“He asked if we sold it!” Jennifer said loudly. “What does he think we are, anyway? We told him it was waiting for him in Vancouver, in storage, 'cause there's no room for it here.”

“And then?” Katherine asked. She was sitting on the hassock, head bowed, arms around her knees, her children's voices drifted to her as if from far away; she tried to picture them with their father, but instead she saw a stranger poking through her house.

“He looked all over your worktable,” Todd went on. “And picked up his picture and looked at it and then, real careful, put it back and said he knew you wouldn't forget. And then we all sat on the couch and he gave us our Christmas presents. Only—”

“Only what?” Katherine asked.

Todd opened a box and took out an Icelandic sweater. He held it against his shoulders. “It doesn't fit.”

“It's too small,” said Jennifer scornfully. “So's mine.” She dangled another sweater by a sleeve, trying to turn disappointment into anger. “Doesn't he know we've grown up? He didn't
think about that! He just pretended everything was exactly the same as when he left!”

“He didn't know,” Katherine said. Clasping the soft wool sweaters between her hands, she buried her face in them, tears burning her eyes. “But he tried.”

“He said Christmas was awful.” Todd's voice was somber. “Awful lonesome, and he missed our house and he missed us . . .”

“What else did he say?”

“He told us about Alaska—he's working there—he didn't say doing what. Maybe the pipeline. Or something else. He wasn't real definite.”

“Not about anything.” Jennifer looked at her mother again with that same woman's look: a child growing up too quickly. “He was hard to talk to. It was like he had all these secrets and the more we asked, the more he closed up. He kept changing the subject the way you do when you don't want to talk about something. He'd ask about school and stuff. Or you. Mainly you.”

“What about me?”

“Everything—”

“Boy, was he surprised!” Todd broke in. “We were talking about Christmas and we showed him the computer and your jewelry tools and we told him about Carrie and Jon's train and the Atari games in the library and he kept saying, but who? Like an owl.” He laughed, then hiccupped, and his eyes filled with tears. “Mom, he looked so sad.”

He crawled into Katherine's lap, crushing the two sweaters, and she held him tightly in her arms. “Jennifer,” she said. “What did you tell him?”

“He didn't know we knew the Haywards. He didn't even know we knew about them being family. You know that story about the man who slept for twenty years—Rip Van Winkle—and then woke up and didn't understand why everything was different? Daddy didn't understand either. He looked all confused and he kept shaking his head. We told him how we sold the house and moved here, and Leslie helped you get this job at Heath's, and about your jewelry order that's going to make you famous, and Todd said you looked all different, like a princess, and started talking about dinner at Great-Grandmother's—”

“And Daddy said, in a loud voice, ‘WHO?'” interrupted Todd. “And I said Great-Grandmother Victoria, of course—”

“And Daddy shook his head real hard and we said that was what she told us to call her, and she is our great-grandmother, isn't she? And Todd told about Tobias and the prepocerous rhinoceros and—”

“And Derek.”

“Sure. Everybody. Then when you answered the phone at Derek's house, Daddy said something real quiet, we couldn't hear it, and he said we should go to sleep while he waited for you. I didn't want to go to sleep, Mommy, but I was awful tired. And it took you so long to get here.”

“He brought you a present, too,” said Todd, picking up a small box from the floor. “Oh, here's a letter. I didn't see it before.”

Slowly, Katherine opened the box. Wrapped in cotton lay an ivory bracelet, delicately carved with flocks of birds. Inscribed on the inside were the words “I love you.”

“Oh, beautiful,” Jennifer breathed.

“Well, you shall wear it,” said Katherine. “Since your sweater didn't fit. Here. Try it on.”

“Too big.” Jennifer turned it on her narrow wrist.

“No, it's perfect; it's not supposed to be tight. You keep it, for special occasions.”

Jennifer looked at her shrewdly. “When will you wear it?”

“Someday. I'm busy making my own jewelry right now, remember?”

Todd had opened the envelope. “It says ‘Dearest Todd and Jennifer,' but I can't read it.” He handed it to Jennifer.

“‘I'm sorry,'” Jennifer read. “'I can't—can't wait for—'” She shook her head. “It's hard to read.” She gave it to Katherine. “You can read it. It's probably really for you, anyway.”

“Dearest Todd and Jennifer,” Katherine read aloud, making out Craig's hurried scrawl.

“I'm sorry I can't wait for your mother after all; it's late and I have to leave. But I promise someday we'll all be together again, for good, the way we used to be. Remember what I told you: sometimes things happen to us that we can't help, and then we have to go away. I love you and I love your mother and I didn't want to go
away but I had to. Please believe me. Maybe I can make you understand when I come back—as soon as I get everything straightened out. That's what I'm trying to do now. Tell your mother that, she'll believe it because she believes in me and she loves me and as long as I know she's waiting for me, I know I can work everything out and we'll be happy again. I'll see you as soon as I can get back. Take care of your mother, tell her I love her. And I love you, and miss you all. Dad.”

Craig's letter lay on the worktable for a week, while Katherine tried to make out the words he had crossed out. The first was “Derek.” The others had been marked out so heavily the paper was torn.
Take care of your mother, tell her Derek—
what? Tell her Derek does not like her husband? Derek already told her. Tell her Derek will want to take her to bed? She knows that—and she wanted it, too. Tell her Derek holds the power in the family? She knows it. Tell her Derek has a streak of cruelty? She knows it. Tell her Derek quarreled with Craig on a sailboat fifteen years ago? She knows it; she knows it; she knows it.
Tell your mother—
what?

Each night, after Jennifer and Todd were in bed, she stared at the letter until she could no longer sit still; then, asking Annie to keep her door open for a while, she walked the short distance to the ocean. Beneath the steady beat and whoosh of breaking and receding waves, her fury grew.
He was still keeping secrets from her.
The blackened space in his letter was just like the spaces in their marriage.

But he did say he'd be back, she told herself, and help us understand what happened. He'll tell us what he's been through, what he's been thinking—

How can he, if he couldn't even face me, or write down what was in his mind?

He might have been able to, a small voice responded cuttingly, if you hadn't been with Derek.

I don't know that for sure, she thought angrily. I don't know why he left. I don't know why he crossed out what he started to write.

Her tears mingled with the salty mist from the ocean. How could she ever know what he was thinking if he kept shutting
her out? I'll never know who he is, she thought despairingly, if he keeps running away.
Tell your mother—

Damn it, tell me yourself!

There was no one she could talk to. Victoria and Tobias were in Italy for a month; Leslie knew the family only through Katherine's eyes; Ross didn't seem to have time to talk to her; and Derek—how could she ask Derek what he thought Craig might have written? Besides, Derek had not called.

“So call him,” Leslie said a week after New Year's Eve. “Times have changed, you know; we no longer languish beside the telephone, faint and frail, waiting for our master's voice.”

Katherine shook her head. She was twisting a soft piece of wire around her wrist, imagining it in gold. “I don't want to call him. I'm not proud of myself. I don't think I like either of us very much right now.”

Leslie sat back on the couch. “Don't you think you're making too much of it? You only wanted a simple screw, not something that—OK, I'm sorry, don't look at me as if I'd suggested roast thumbs for dinner. You don't mind not seeing him? Or having him around?”

“No.”

“My, my,” Leslie drawled with a grin. “What a change from the early days.”

Katherine took off the wire bracelet, and laid it gently besides a sketch of a matching ring. “Sometimes I think so . . . and sometimes I don't. Last summer I was terrified at having to make my way without Craig. In some ways I still am, because I don't understand myself. What kind of woman lives with a man for ten years and doesn't see through him? I feel like a blank slate, starting from scratch. Not even a name. Fraser isn't Craig's name, so it isn't mine either.”

“You've used it for ten years; it's yours. And about seeing through a man—I don't know. We see what we want to see. You knew he had secrets, but you liked what you had with him, so you didn't push. I don't think you'd be that way if you met him now. You're more demanding. Not so anxious to be protected. If you hadn't changed, you'd be calling Derek.”

Katherine laughed slightly and picked up the strip of gold. “Do you think his gold would make a good substitute?”

“You could try. I know a lot of men who love it more than sex.”

They laughed, but in fact it was Derek's gold that Katherine thought most about in the next two weeks. She had been afraid that Jennifer and Todd would slip back to their early sullenness after Craig left a second time, but instead they were strangely cheerful and, after Christmas vacation, very busy at school. When Katherine talked to them about Craig, they answered politely, but she saw they were uncomfortable with what they had discovered: their father was alive and had come to see them; he said he loved them and loved their mother; he sent them money. But he would not stay with them.