Everlasting (24 page)

There was brandy in the cut-glass decanter, and Catherine poured herself some. She seldom drank, but a little brandy seemed appropriate in this dark room in the middle of the night. She stretched out on a leather sofa, reaching down to pull her wrapper over her bare feet, and looked out through the glass French doors at the silver gardens.

Who would inherit Everly? It would be a neat irony if her father inherited and passed it on to Shelly, who would most certainly sell it in order to play away the profits, just as his great-uncle Clifford had done with the British Everly.

Or was Catherine being too harsh? Certain characteristics were inherited, she believed, certain propensities and qualities and abilities, just as much as the color of eyes or hair. She could quite easily believe she’d inherited Kathryn’s inability to love people; look at her, she was twenty-five, unmarried, not in love, not even seeing anyone. Her letters to Leslie were always about Blooms, with side notes about her family. Leslie’s letters to her were about her love affairs, and in the past five years Leslie had had more than she could remember. And they were really
love
affairs. Every time Leslie wrote of a new man, she wrote about him in tender, exalted language, emotions Catherine had felt only once, with Kit.

Sexual desire was something else. Certainly she’d felt that, strongly, for Piet, but that was not love, and the craving was so physical, from such a depth, that she often felt it was shameful. Shame. Funny, Catherine was not ashamed of the blackmail she had committed. The blackmail had two sides, like the moon. She had blackmailed in order to help her family—so from whom had she inherited the crushing responsibility to help her amazingly frustrating family? Not from her father, or mother, or even Kathryn. Hers had seemed a glorious sort of crime, justified by cause and mitigated by the victim’s own sins. But she
was
ashamed of what it said about her. She was capable of vice, and furthermore, so was Piet. Desiring him had a darkness to it, a taint of corruption, because of what they’d done together.

Agitated by her thoughts, Catherine set aside the untouched brandy glass and flung herself from the sofa. She paced the room. She was only twenty-five! Why did her father expect her to save Ann? Well, because she had allowed him to grow accustomed to her help, of course. But why had she become responsible for any of her family at all?

Her irritation with Shelly’s terrible grades was not simply born from concern about his life, she knew that. She was jealous of him. His darling choirboy looks let him get away with everything, and this summer he’d be driving across the continent, laughing and singing with friends. Catherine would be slaving away at Blooms, except for the time she’d probably take off to take her sister to Everly and out of Troy’s clutches. A part of her would like nothing better than to be laughing and singing and driving across the continent in a convertible. She’d meet strange men with western accents and rough hands and make irresponsible love with them.

No. She’d work at Blooms, because without her there it would lose its edge of success. Shelly would drive across the country, and Ann would float on oceans of love, and when Drew inherited Everly, he’d likely leave it to those two impractical, lovable children. Catherine could just hear his sensible reasoning now: “Well, Catherine, you have Blooms, after all. You have money and a livelihood. Shelly and Ann are the ones who need my help.”

Catherine found her brandy snifter in the dark room and took a large drink. Immediately her stomach burned and her face flushed with heat. She crossed the room and leaned against the French doors. Outside in the moonlight, the apple trees, swollen with white blossoms, hung lush and luminous in the night. Daffodils shivered in the light breeze. Oh, her sister was a flower, her brother was a tree, and what was she, only the damned peasant gardener, hunched over a wheelbarrow, unloved but useful.

She was tired now. The brandy had finally made her sleepy. Catherine went quietly through the dark house, up the stairs to her adult room, and fell asleep at once.

* * *

D
uring the next few weeks, Catherine couldn’t sleep. She broke into tears for no reason at odd times, even at work in front of her employees. She was exhausted half the time, manic half the time, irritable all the time.

“I think you’ve got spring fever,” Jason told her.

“Catherine, when was the last time you had a medical checkup?” asked Sandra.

Piet said nothing. But he looked at her.

She started walking over to Central Park for her lunch breaks. The air was sweet, the grass and trees that surprising tender green of spring-time, and the apple blossoms hung in snowy clusters, bursting from the branches. She longed for Everly. She longed to be little again, running through her grandmother’s gardens or lying on a brick path looking up at the way sun shone down through the flowers, making the petals expand and shimmer into clouds of color.

One morning she and Jason were together when Piet and Jesus brought in the first shipment of iris of the spring. They all crowded around the flowers, touching the delicate petals. It was like dipping their fingers into rainbows, for there were irises of every color ranging from deep violet to swan white.

“I’ve always identified with the iris,” Jason said, his voice serious for once. “It’s the perfect flower. Complete. I mean sexually. The sword-shaped leaves surrounding the curved flower. The three upright, erect, masculine petals, inside the three opened, falling, surrendering feminine petals. Male and female combined. See what I mean?”

Catherine didn’t reply. She was lightly running her fingers over the sweetly tickling fur of the beard of a dark iris. Jason’s words and the sticky silk in the throat of the flower made her shiver with desire. Jason went quiet. She could feel Piet watching her.

“I’ve got work to do,” she said brusquely, and hurried to the refuge of her office. Slamming the door shut, she leaned against it and surrendered to memory: Kit’s body, Ned’s breath, her own heat and ecstasy. The luxuriance of love—would it ever be hers again?

A knock sounded behind her; gathering herself, she opened the door.

“Yes?” she said, all business.

Piet stood there, holding two dozen luscious iris in his arms.

“I bought these. For you.”

“Piet—”

He thrust the bundle into her arms. She felt the chill of the flowers, the heat of his hands.

“You wanted them. You should have them,” Piet said.

Catherine stared at him, almost crushing the flowers against her breasts.

“Piet,” Sandra called. “Telephone!”

“Coming,” Piet yelled back, and went off, but not before nodding at Catherine, as if to confirm an agreement they had silently just now made.

* * *

S
uch self-indulgent moments were rare for her. Blooms was busy, which was good, but Catherine was overworked, restless, irritable. There were no more moments alone with Piet. The thought of England refreshed her, and in May she told Ann she wanted to take her to Everly as a graduation present.

“Oh, Catherine, that’s fabulous!” Ann cried, hugging her sister. Then her face fell. “But it means being away from Troy.”

“We’ll only be gone twelve days, Ann. I can’t leave Blooms for longer than that.”

Ann looked conflicted, but she smiled in spite of herself. “I know I’ll miss Troy—but I want to go! Oh, thank you, Catherine!”

Being with her sister was a pure pleasure that spring, and Catherine often spent Sunday driving in the Blooms van up to Fairington, where she’d pick Ann up and take her out to dinner at the local inn or to a movie.

One Sunday in May as they were driving through Fairington, Catherine met Troy. “There’s Troy!” Ann squealed. “Stop, Catherine, oh, stop, just let me say hello.
Hello
!”

Catherine pulled the van over to the curb next to Troy’s motorcycle. Troy stuck his head in the window on Ann’s side, nodding abruptly at Catherine as Ann introduced them. He was certainly handsome. He wore his sexuality like a second skin; it was almost as visible as the spots on a dalmatian or long hair on a Himalayan cat. His dark, blatant, intense attractiveness was much like Piet’s, and like Piet’s it held a hint, a hue the eye could almost see, of danger.

They drove away. Ann was flushed and animated, yet at the same time serene; she licked her lips slowly and smiled to herself. Which of us is the wiser? Catherine wondered. Ann, who was so completely lost in perilous love, who would someday weep in anguish at her loss, or Catherine, gripping the steering wheel, fighting to remain in some kind of control?

* * *

B
y the time the end of June came, Catherine was exhausted. Blooms seemed to have been chosen to do the flowers for every June wedding in New York City, and while she was of course pleased by that, she had gone into a state of overdrive that kept her from feeling pleasure, from tasting the food she ate or resting while she slept.

Piet would be in charge of Blooms while she was gone.

“Don’t you worry about this shop while you’re in jolly ol’ England,” Jason told her. “You just have yourself a jolly ol’ time.”

“I’ll probably be bored to tears,” Catherine replied, slamming desk drawers open and shut, trying to discover anything she’d forgotten. “I’m only going because I have to take my sister. It’ll probably rain the entire time, and I’ll come back with pneumonia.”

During the flight Catherine was wretchedly uncomfortable. When she finally fell asleep, she was awakened after a few minutes by a stewardess offering breakfast just two hours after they’d had dinner.

Ned met them at Heathrow. Beautiful, dazzling Ned. In the past four years he’d taken on a firmness, an adult solidity; beneath his gray tweed jacket his shoulders were broader, and his movements as he greeted them and handed them into the old Bentley were polished and assured.

“My God! You both look gorgeous! Wait till you see Hortense, she’s turned out rather nicely, too. The old house is packed, and Hortense is slaving away in the gardens like crazy today so she’ll be able to have some free time to spend with you. How are you? How’s your grandmother?”

His eyes were the color of violets. He’d let his black hair grow romantically long, curling down over his shirt collar. He looked like a poet. Catherine looked sideways at Ann’s face. Her eyes were shining. Catherine got in the back of the car and let Ann sit next to Ned. Suddenly she was overcome with drowsiness. She slept all the way to Everly, and when she arrived she excused herself after greeting everyone and went up to her room, where she fell asleep the moment her head touched the pillow. Ann couldn’t get her to wake up for tea or for supper, and she slept on, coma-deep, until late the next afternoon.

* * *

“
W
here have you been? I thought you’d died!” Ann cried, leaping up from the garden path. She was wearing a blue shirt and white shorts. Her knees were crisscrossed from kneeling on the white pebbles next to Hortense.

“I had the most marvelous sleep! I couldn’t wake up!” Catherine said, stretching, yawning.

“You missed breakfast!” Ann scolded. “And lunch.”

Hortense rose, pulling off her gardening gloves and dropping them in the basket. She’d been working on the roses, inspecting, spraying, feeding. She hugged Catherine and kissed her.

“We’ll find some tea for you. And biscuits. Or would you rather have coffee? Proper tea’s only about an hour away.”

“Are you okay? I couldn’t get you to wake up last night. It was scary!” Ann said.

“Jet lag, that’s all. And I’m very tired, Ann, I’ve told you that. My shop was so busy recently, I haven’t had time to scratch my nose. It’s lovely to be lazy. Tea would be fine, Hortense, but don’t go to any trouble. I can find something—”

“Nonsense. Go sit on that bench and smell the roses. Come on, Ann, you can help.”

Hortense had become a beauty, Catherine thought as she followed the path to a marble bench next to the brick wall almost hidden by tumbling wisteria. The air was sweet and hot as honey. Catherine put her feet up on the bench, tossed the skirt of her sundress over her legs, and wrapped her arms around her knees. She leaned her head back, throat exposed to the heat of the sun. Closing her eyes, she inhaled the perfume of hundreds of roses.

“Tea, ducks,” Hortense said.

“Did you fall asleep again?” Ann asked.

“I’m just relaxing. It’s heaven here.”

“Come on, Ann. Help me with the watering. Let your sister have some peace.”

Hortense set a tray on the bench next to Catherine, then the girls went chattering off together. Catherine smiled. Hortense didn’t seem to realize how lovely she’d become. She must have gotten contact lenses, for she no longer wore glasses. But her glossy dark hair was pulled back in one lop-sided unruly braid, she wore no makeup, and her clothes were disheveled. It was not just that she was working, for Catherine remembered Hortense looking much the same the previous night when she’d briefly said hello to everyone. She’d met everyone again last night, she’d even met Elizabeth’s fiancé, Tom. But she had been so exhausted that now they blurred in her memory.

The tea was hot and smoky, the cream thick, the crumbly biscuit topped with sweet jam. She licked her fingers. Birds chirped from trees and bushes. The girls must have gone to a completely different part of the garden, for she couldn’t hear their voices anymore. Bees droned. Catherine felt the pace of her heart slow inside her. She set the tray on the ground and stretched her legs out on the bench. The marble arm behind her was not soft, but it was strong, and she leaned against it. There was something to be said for having an ocean between you and your business, she thought. Between you and your real life. If she were at Kathryn’s Everly, her mind wouldn’t rest; she’d be mentally listing all the things that needed doing, all the improvements that could be made. Here none of it was her responsibility, and there was something reassuring, even optimistic, in knowing that a young woman like Hortense, energetic, serene, capable, was in charge of the gardens.