Without conscious thought, Catherine lifted a manicured fingertip and touched the hollow of her right cheek, the hollow she'd never been aware of before. Her own sober eyes stared back at her approvingly, but with a new worry in them.
My God, she thought, what will Clay Forrester think?
Behind her the girls observed the telling movement of her fingers upon her own cheek, the hand that rested briefly upon her pulsing heart as if to say, “Can it be?” And while the silent group stared, a frowsy, brown-haired fifteen-year-old with tortoiseshell glasses came forward. In the mirror, Catherine saw her coming and fought to control emotions that bubbled up and threatened. She did not want to be their hope. She did not want Clay Forrester to think she'd done all this for him. But while the hopelessly plain Francie came forward, Catherine knew that for this one evening she was doomed to play the role these girls so desperately needed her to play.
Francie, who had never spoken a word to Catherine before, came forward, bearing a bottle of Charlie perfume.
“Here,” she said, “I stole this from you.”
Catherine turned to take the bottle, smiling into Francie's eyes, which held no more sparkle than cold dishwater. “I have a couple of different kinds. Why don't you keep it?” But as Francie extended the bottle, Catherine could see the girl's hand tremble.
“But this one must be your favorite. It's the most used up.”
Francie's eyes impaled her, wavering neither right nor left. Then Catherine smiled and took the bottle and sprayed herself lightly behind her ears and upon her wrists. When she finished she said, “You're right, Francie, it is my favorite, but why don't you put it on your dresser and when I want it, I'll just come in and take a squirt.”
“Really?” Had Catherine been a movie star who suddenly stepped off the screen to materialize before Francie in flesh and blood, the girl could not have been more awed.
This is ridiculous, thought Catherine. I'm not Cinderella. I'm not what they want me to be. But something stung her eyelids as she pushed the bottle of perfume more firmly into Francie's hands, undone by the look in the younger girl's eyes.
Marie, still standing on the bed, broke the tension by quipping, “I think this is what's called a pregnant silence.”
So Catherine was saved from tears, and Francie was saved from shame, and everyone laughed and began drifting from the room until Catherine was left alone with Marie. Impulsively she gave the shorter girl a hug.
“Mutt and Jeff, aren't we?” Marie joked.
“I don't know what to say. I misjudged all of you earlier. I'm sorry.”
“Hey,” Marie reached to fix a certain curl at the side of Catherine's cheek, “we laid it on a little heavy. We understand.”
“So do I . . . now.”
“You're going for all of us, Cath.”
“I know, I know.”
“Just hear him out, okay?”
“But he's not coming to ask me to marry him. We already—”
“Just hear him out, that's all. Give the girls a little something to hope for. Pretend for them that it's real. Promise? Just for one night?”
“Okay, Marie,” Catherine agreed, “for all of you. But what happens to their hopes when it doesn't come to anything?”
“You don't seem to realize that this is a first for them. Just give them something to talk about when he comes to the door. Be nice. Make them dream a little bit tonight.”
Marie wondered how any man could resist a woman as beautiful as Catherine. Being short herself she naturally admired Catherine's height. Being dark, she admired her blondness. Being bubbly, she admired her reserve. Being round-faced, she admired the long elegance of Catherine's face. Catherine was everything that Marie was not. Perhaps that's why they felt so strangely drawn to each other.
“Hey, Cath,” Marie said, “you're a knockout.”
“No, I'm not. You just want me to be.”
“This guy must be something to have a girl like you.”
But just then someone hollered from downstairs, “Hey, what kind of car has he got?”
Knowing before she answered that her response was certain to raise a hullabaloo, Catherine mentally grimaced, then called, “A silver Corvette.”
Marie looked like she'd swallowed a live crayfish. “A what!”
“You heard right.”
“And you're resisting him! No wonder you look pained.”
I do not look pained! thought Catherine. I do not.
From downstairs issued a noisy mingling of catcalls, wolf howls, whistles, and out-and-out girlish squeals, followed by violent shushing.
“Too bad you have to miss the talk after you leave,” Marie giggled, smirking. “It'll be something tonight. Come on, Cleopatra, your barge has arrived.”
Standing at the top of the stairs Catherine told herself this was not Cleopatra's barge nor high school prom nor Cinderella's ball. But as she clutched her knotted stomach, a little ache of expectation created a quiver there. A damning rush of blood crept up the V of exposed skin behind the blue collar. She could feel it as it rose and heated her cheeks.
This is insane, she told herself. The girls put ridiculous fancies in your head with all their giddy teenage fussing. So your nails are cinnamon and your hair is terrific and you're powdered and perfumed. But none of it is your doing, none of it is because a silver Corvette is coming to pick you up with Clay Forrester behind the wheel. So close your glistening lips, Catherine Anderson, and act like you're breathing normally and don't make more of an ass of yourself than you're already going to seem when he walks in that door and sees you!
Suddenly all the commotion stopped downstairs. Then footsteps ran in every direction and the silence that followed was ridiculous! Somebody, thankfully, got to the stereo and turned it on just as the doorbell rang.
Upstairs, Catherine felt a trembling begin somewhere down low in her groin and silently cursed every girl in this place for what they were forcing her to do. Down below she heard his voice and she closed her eyes, steadying herself.
“Is Catherine Anderson here?”
Suddenly Catherine wished she were a snail and could crawl inside her shell. Vicky's voice—utterly innocent, utterly faky—came clearly. “Just a minute, I'll see.”
I'll see? thought Catherine, rolling her eyes behind closed lids. Oh, Lord!
“Catherine?” Vicky called up the stairs.
Behind her Marie whispered, “A silver Corvette, huh? Git going,” and gave her a nudge.
The stairs came up to meet her high heels, and the clicks sounded like gunshots in her ears. In a last panic she thought, I should have washed off the perfume and blotted that glossy lipstick. Damn you, damn you, damn you! What am I doing?
The town idiot would not have been fooled by the obvious lack of activity downstairs. The staged poses, the casually lounging bodies, strategically placed so that each girl could see into the hall from their vantage points in the living room, the Scrabble board on the dining room table with not a wooden letter on it, and every eye in the place trained on Clay Forrester who stood by the colonnade as if framed for display and purchase.
It might not have been so bad if he hadn't dressed up, too, but he had. He was wearing a gray Continental-cut suit that made him look like an ad for some high-priced Canadian whiskey. Catherine set her eyes on the top of his wine-colored tie; it was knotted so perfectly that it stood away from his neck like a crisp, new hangman's noose. She let her gaze move up to the pale blue collar that cinched him just below the Adam's apple, where the bronze tan began.
“Hello,” he said as casually as possible, considering that the change in her that made him feel like her old man's goon had only now smashed him in the stomach.
Oh, Christ! thought Clay Forrester. Oh, sweet Christ!
“Hello,” she returned, trying to make the word as cool as a cucumber sandwich. But it came out wilted by the scorching heat of her face.
Her eyes were different, he thought, and her hair, and she was wearing an un
derstated dress worthy of a travel ad in The New Yorker. Looking at her face again he saw that she was blushing. Blushing.
Catherine saw Clay's Adam's apple move like it was trying to dislodge a fishbone stuck in his throat. She bravely looked him in the face, knowing full well that her own was scarlet, silently warning him not to give away any hint of either surprise or approval. Please! But one glance told her it was too late. He, too, was red to the collar. To his credit, he acted as refined as his grooming, all except for one quick glance down at her stomach, followed by a quicker one at the crowd of gawking faces in the living room and dining room.
“Do you have a coat?”
Oh, God, she thought, October and I leave my coat upstairs!
“I left it up—”
But of all the girls, Marie finally did the right thing. She came down at an ungainly half-gallop, bringing the coat. “Here it is.” And without any sign of ill ease, thrust out a hand toward Clay. “Hi, I'm Marie. Don't keep her out too late, okay?”
“Hi. I'm Clay and I won't.” He smiled for the first time, shaking her hand firmly.
Jumping Jehoshaphat! thought Marie, he looks good enough to eat! And that smile. Look at that smile!
So when Catherine reached for her coat, Marie handed it instead to Clay. Correctly trained young swain that he was, he did the proper thing, and Catherine gratefully faced the door as he slipped the coat over her shoulders.
“Have a good time,” Marie said.
“Good night,” Catherine wished them all.
Like a kindergarten class, they all said in unison, “Good night.”
Wanting to disappear into thin air, she reached for the doorknob, but Clay's hand shot around her, forcing her to allow him to open it for her or contest his gallantry before the girls. Catherine dropped her hand and moved out into the blessedly cool October night that touched her scorching skin in sweet relief. But still from behind them, Clay and Catherine could feel the eyes that peered out of every front window of the house.
Following her to the car, Clay caught the smell of a pleasant scent threading from her, heard the tap of high heels on the sidewalk, saw in the beam from the porch light the back of her artfully arranged hair. And although he hadn't intended to, he walked first to her side of the car and opened her door, conscious yet of all those curious eyes, his mind half on them, half on the long legs Catherine pulled into the car.
Indoors, a chorus of giddy sighs went swooning.
Within the car, the atmosphere was so tense and silent even the low rumble of the engine was welcome as Clay turned the key. Carefully, Catherine kept her eyes off him—something about a man and his car and the things he does when he gets into it, moving to start it, touching things on the dash, folding himself into the seat, the way the shoulder of a suit coat ridges high as he reaches for the mirror, disarming things that are too peculiarly masculine for comfort. She kept her eyes straight ahead.
“Where do you want to go?”
She looked at him at last. “Listen, I'm sorry about that in there. They . . . well, they . . .”
“It's all right. Where do you want to go?”
“It's not all right. I don't want you to get the wrong impression.”
“I think the windows still have eyes.” There was a touch of amusement in his tone as he waited, seemingly at ease now with his hands on the familiar wheel.
“Anywhere . . . I don't care. I thought we'd just go ride and sit somewhere in the car and talk like we did the other time.”
The car moved away from the curb and she felt his quick assessing glance and knew he was adding up the dress, the hair, the makeup, the high heels. She wanted to die all over again. Go for a ride, indeed, she could hear him thinking.
“Do you drink?” he asked, taking his eyes back to the street.
She shot him a look, remembering last summer and that wine. “I can take it or leave it. Most of the time I leave it.”
He thought of her father and thought he knew why.
“I know of a quiet place where the music doesn't start up till nine. It should be uncrowded this early and we can have a drink there while we talk, okay?”
“Fine,” she agreed.
He pulled out onto Washington Avenue, heading toward downtown, across the Mississippi River. The silence grew uncomfortable so he reached, found a tape, engaged it in the deck, all without taking his eyes from the road. It was the same kind of music as before, too pulsing for her taste, too lacking in subtlety and musicality. Just a bunch of noise, she thought disparagingly. Once again she reached over and turned the volume down.
“You don't like disco?”
“No.”
“Then you never tried dancing it?”
“No. If I danced anything it would be ballet, but I never had the chance to take lessons. But people used to say I'd make a good ballet dancer.” She realized she was rambling on to hide her nervousness.
He sensed it, too, and replied simply, “They were probably right.” He recalled where the level of her hair had matched his eyebrows.
She considered telling him that her father's beer and whiskey had sopped up all the spare money that might have meant ballet lessons, but it was too personal a comment. She wanted to avoid delving into personalities at all costs.
“Are all those girls back there pregnant?” he asked.
“Yes.”
They stopped for a red light and Clay's face took on an unearthly tint as he looked at her. “But they're all so young.”
“I'm the oldest one there.”
She could sense his amazement, and suddenly she was chattering as fast as if this were a debate she wanted to win. “Listen, they won't believe this isn't a date. They want it to be a date. They want it so badly they did all of this to me. We were at supper and . . .” And the whole story came tumbling out, all about how they messed her up, then fixed her up as if she were a high priestess. “And I couldn't make them understand they were wrong,” Catherine ended. “And it was awful . . . and wonderful . . . and pathetic.”
So that's why, he thought. “Don't worry about it, okay? I understand.”
“No! No! I don't think you do. I don't think you possibly can! They're making me their—their emissary!” She threw her palms up hopelessly, and related the tale about Francie and the perfume and how she was forced to put it on.
“So you smell terrific and you don't want to?”
“Don't be funny. You know what I'm trying to say. What could I do besides use the perfume, with a kleptomaniac looking at me with big eyes, begging me to make something in her life okay?”
“You did the right thing.”
“I did what I had to do. But I wanted you to know it was out of my hands. When you arrived I wanted to die because I thought you'd think I—I had designs on you.”
By now they'd pulled into a parking lot where a neon sign identified the place as The Mullion. Clay killed the motor, turned to her and said, “All right, I admit it was pretty uncomfortable there for a minute, but just so their efforts won't have been for nothing, you can tell them I said you looked fantastic.”
“That's not what I was fishing for, don't you understand!”
“Yes, I do. But if you make anything more of it by being so insistent, I'll think you really do have designs on me.” Already Clay knew the signs warning of her approaching anger. So, quickly he got out, slammed the door and came to open hers.
And though she simmered from his last comment, she couldn't help wondering, as they crossed the parking lot, why he'd worn that expensive suit.
Chapter 8
The Mullion took its name from the series of leaded bay windows facing east across the river. Clay touched Catherine's elbow, leading her to a table placed within a deepset bay which afforded semi-privacy, surrounded on three sides as it was by leaded glass and the night beyond. He reached for her coat, but she held it on like armor, sitting down before he could pull her chair out for her.
He sat down opposite, asking, “What will you have
to drink?” He noticed how she now removed her coat by herself and let it fall back over the chair.
“Something soft.”
“Wine?” he suggested. “White?” It was disconcerting that he remembered she preferred white to red. But then, in the early part of the evening on their one and only date, they'd been quite sober, sober enough for him to remember such a thing.
“No, softer. Orange juice—unadulterated.”
He let his gaze drift to her stomach momentarily before looking back up to find her expression unreadable.
“They encourage the drinking of fruit juice there,” she said, enlightening him.
Their eyes met, his rather sheepish, she thought, and she quickly looked away at the lights of automobiles threading their way across the Washington Avenue bridge, creating bleeding, golden shimmers in the water's reflection. Clay surprised Catherine by ordering two unadulterated orange juices. She braved a glance at him, but quickly shifted her eyes away. She couldn't help wondering if the baby would look like him.
“I want to know your plans,” he began, then added pointedly, “first.”
“First?” She met his eyes. “First before what?”
“Before I tell you why I brought you here.”
“My plans should be obvious. I'm living in a home for unwed mothers.”
“Don't be obtuse, Catherine. Don't make me eke every answer out of you again. You know what I'm asking. I want to know what you're planning to do with the baby after it's born.”