It was night. Kit was furious. He was pacing the living room.
"I can"t believe you"re serious about this. How do you think I"ll feel, knowing your old lover is around you all the time?"
"I don"t love him anymore, Kit." Catherine spoke as honestly as she could, confident that she could keep any fleeting desire for Piet under control. What she felt for Piet was undeniable, but Kit was necessary to her life, and she would never betray him. "Kit. I love you. I told you, he was just-a temporary thing. I haven"t even seen him for over a year! Isn"t that proof that we weren"t seriously involved? I shouldn"t have told you we were lovers, but I wanted no secrets between us. Look. Piet won"t be around me all the time. He won"t be around me at all. He"ll be in Holland."
"And what about our new life? Our marriage? Why do you want to take on a new time-consuming, ambitious project like this just when we"re beginning our life together?"
"That"s not fair. I"m not asking you to give up practicing law in order to give all your time to me."
"Women"s lib."
"No. I"ve never been part of a herd, and you know it. Look, Kit, you have to understand what Blooms means to me."
"I do understand. I"ve never suggested that you give it up, or sell it, or even stop managing it. What I don"t understand is your desire to take on more. Importing and wholesaling flowers is a major undertaking, Catherine. You"ll need more employees, accountants, truckers-it"s like starting a whole new business. I"m not asking you to give up what you have. I"m only asking you not to take on more at this point in your life. In our lives."
"I promise you I won"t spend any more time at Blooms than I already do. I"ll delegate more. I"ve got Jason, Carla, Sandra, and now Sh.e.l.ly, all of whom are completely reliable and who can run Blooms without me. I"ll give them new positions, more responsibility, larger salaries, and they"ll be motivated to work harder. Kit, I really want to do this."
"Why? Is it money?"
"Partly," she admitted. "I like having money. I want to make more money, for us, for our children. So they never have to go through what I went through-that feeling of the bottom of the earth falling out from beneath their feet."
"You can"t trust me to provide for that?"
"Kit, be realistic. Haley is getting everything you have in the divorce settlement."
Catherine was silent then, but her thoughts lay unspoken between them. It was Catherine"s money from Blooms that they"d used for the down payment on the Connecticut house. When Kit"s parents died, he would inherit the Maine house, the Boston house, and a great deal of money. Until then, in all likelihood, Catherine would have more money from Blooms than he did from his legal practice. Catherine had been proud of him for not letting money come between them. It was a potentially more sensitive and more destructive matter than anything else.
"Kit. I"ve loved you ever since I met you. I"ve never stopped loving you. I never want to hurt you or make you unhappy. But I need you to understand how I feel about Blooms. It"s like-like a child to me, in a way. I love it. It"s mine. It"s not enough for me to let it just remain as it is. The business world is always changing. If you remain the same in business, you fall behind. If I didn"t do this for Blooms, it would be, oh, like not sending a child to college. Or not getting it proper medical care. Or not feeding it. It needs to grow."
Kit didn"t reply. He stood at the window, looking out at the night. His back was tense.
Catherine went up and wrapped her arms around him. "I wish you knew how much I love you. How much I"ve always loved you. I"ve never been happier in my life."
Still Kit remained tense, silent.
She nuzzled her head into his back. "Do you mean you"ll be happy only if I don"t go into the importing business with Piet? Is that what you want?"
She felt Kit"s muscles loosen.
"No," he said. "I wouldn"t ask that much of you."
Kit turned to face Catherine. He looked at her, then pulled her against him. Holding her tightly, he kissed the top of her head.
"I know you love me. I love you. I want you to be happy. I want you to be the way you are. So-go ahead. Do it."
"With your blessing?"
"With my blessing."
Catherine sighed and leaned against him. She had just taken a terrifying risk. If Kit had wanted her to, she really would have given up the idea of importing flowers with Piet. She loved Kit enough to do that for him. But G.o.d how glad she was not to have to make that choice!
In June Catherine and Kit were married in the garden at Everly.
It was not a fairy-tale wedding. The best that could be said for it was that it made their union public and official.
They were married in the garden by the lily pond. The weather was perfect. A flawless blue sky blazed with light. The air was warm but not yet heavy with the humidity that would come in late summer. Kathryn"s garden was a lush rainbow of roses, lilies, iris, peonies, foxglove, mock orange, and lilacs.
Catherine wore a dress of ivory peau de soie that fell from pleats at the shoulders and a floppy brimmed hat with the band trimmed in Maiden"s Blush roses. The wedding bouquet, which Jason had designed especially for her, was a ma.s.s of tiny pink roses, white roses, and gardenias and slipped with ivory ribbons onto her grandmother Kathryn"s white leather prayer book. Ann was Catherine"s only bridesmaid. She had flown back from the British Everly, where she was working, just for the wedding. Kathryn acknowledged the importance of the occasion by wearing her valuable diamond necklace with a silk dress; at the last moment she popped on her floppy straw gardening hat to protect her face from the sun. Catherine"s father, looking marvelously handsome-for this was the sort of occasion he excelled at-gave Catherine away. While the minister led Catherine and Kit through the vows, Marjorie Eliot squirmed, fanning away, exasperated, at nonexistent bugs.
Jason wore a lavender silk suit that probably cost more than Catherine"s wedding dress, and when Catherine said, "I do," he cried more than anyone else at the ceremony. Catherine"s mother didn"t cry at all. Sandra and her husband had brought Carla out for the wedding. Sh.e.l.ly was there, of course, and Catherine"s beloved Mr. Giles. Kit"s parents had steadfastly refused to attend, but his friend Don and his perceptive wife, Janie, were there, and the law partners, Mr. Woodrow and Mr. Spiegel, were there with their wives.
When the ceremony was over, a champagne dinner was served in the dining room, with the doors thrown open to the gardens. It was a beautiful, elegant day, but not what Catherine had thought it would be like. She did not feel swept away on clouds of love. She had come out to Everly the night before with Ann. And all through the wedding Catherine couldn"t stop noticing how rundown Everly was. It needed painting. It needed another full-time gardener. Catherine made a mental note to see if she could convince her grandmother to let her help out, but still she could not dismiss the foreboding she felt.
Also, she didn"t feel well. For several days she"d vomited every morning. Nerves, perhaps, though she"d never been the nervous type. It was more likely, since her period was three weeks late, that she was pregnant.
Chapter 10.
New York, 1976 The January 1976 issue of Vogue ran a photoarticle about Catherine Eliot Bemish in their series "Women We Admire." The largest picture was of Catherine holding her son, Drew, three years old, and her daughter, Lily, nine months old. Catherine was wearing a voluptuous crimson, lavender, and gold silk caftan. Gypsyish gold hoops hung at her ears. Drew was wearing a blue plaid bathrobe. Baby Lily was naked except for a pink bow in her blond whale spout, but the billowing sleeves of Catherine"s caftan covered much of Lily"s tiny body, leaving only her legs, arms, and shoulder exposed in their rosy plumpness.
Supposedly Catherine had just finished bathing her children, but in fact it had taken them three hours to get this casual-seeming setup ready. And certainly Catherine could never have worn the caftan to bathe her babies. The winged sleeves would have drooped in the tub and become waterlogged and heavy, the silk ruined. Catherine really wore jeans and a sweats.h.i.+rt to bathe her babies, or sometimes even got into the tub with them. Afterward she would put on a comfortable, often washed terrycloth bathrobe that she wore for the rest of the evening. But for the photo, she wore the caftan. She sat where the photographer posed her, on her dressing room sofa, where the rich chintz flowers gleamed against the apple green wall of Catherine"s dressing room at her White River home, instead of in the children"s bedrooms, which were always littered with toys.
Another photograph showed Catherine seated behind her desk at Blooms, talking on the phone, pen in hand. She was wearing a designer suit in a navy wool pinstripe, a mock man"s suit complete with white s.h.i.+rt and English rep striped tie. In another shot, Catherine and Kit were caught in a camera flash at a charity ball at the Met. Kit was in his tux, Catherine in a full-skirted emerald evening gown. Behind them towered a ma.s.sive arrangement of flowers, done for the gala, of course, by Blooms.
"My secret?" Catherine was quoted. "Organization. A superb staff both at work and at home. I learned the hard way, by trial and error, in my business, to structure, delegate, and categorize. I just apply the same principles to my home life."
"What a pack of lies," Catherine said, reading the article. "But I"m the modern woman, I couldn"t say I owe it all to my delicious husband."
"That would be a lie," Kit said. "You are organized. You do delegate. You do have a good staff."
"But if I didn"t have you, and time alone with you, I"d lose my mind," Catherine said. "Oh, Kit, sometimes I feel like one of those poor criminals tied to four different horses, being pulled bodily in four different directions."
"Roll over. I"ll give you a back rub," Kit said.
It was a cold January Sunday. Before their children were born, Catherine and Kit had agreed that they would bring up their children themselves and not leave them solely to the care of governesses and nannies and maids. Sundays would be family time, they decided, but after Lily was born they changed their minds. Sunday mornings would be family time. Sunday afternoons would be reserved for the two of them to be alone, a luxury they sorely needed.
This morning they had been awakened by Andrew, who raced into their room and crawled into bed with them for tickles and hugs. Catherine had gotten Lily from her crib and changed her, and the four had gone down to the kitchen for a leisurely breakfast of pancakes and bacon. Then they"d all dressed and gone out to play in the snow. Kit and Catherine pushed the children on sleds down the slight incline at the side of the house. Kit and Andrew built a fort while Catherine watched Lily eat snow. The pony Santa had given Andrew for Christmas had whinnied and pranced back and forth in the ring, begging for attention. Kit and Catherine brought their children back into the house, gave them hot baths and warm lunches, then settled them into their rooms for quiet time.
Now it was early afternoon, and their nanny, Mary, who loved having Sunday mornings to sleep late, was on duty with the children, and Kit and Catherine were secluded together in their bedroom. They lay together, looking at the article about Catherine in Vogue.
Catherine rose to slip off her clothes, then stretched out naked on the bed. She was still nursing Lily, but Lily was also getting solid food, so her long large b.r.e.a.s.t.s were not uncomfortably full. She raised herself up on a pillow to keep from crus.h.i.+ng her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, which were sensitive. She was so very tired. A back rub was just what she needed. As Kit moved his hands over her shoulders and back, she took deep breaths, relaxing, trying with each exhalation to breathe away thoughts of the world outside this bedroom.
Deep breath: first, their children. Lily was over her cold, and the antibiotics had cured the ear infection that had caused the little girl to wake screaming a few nights ago. As Catherine rocked Lily, she"d remembered the nurse who had been with her during her labor with Andrew. It had been a long hard labor. When the doctors and Kit had gone out into the hall to discuss whether to give Catherine a spinal or a C-section, Catherine had cried to the nurse, "It"s really not the pain I mind. It"s the lack of control. I hate not being in control." The nurse had smoothed Catherine"s wet hair off her forehead and smiled down at her. "Oh, honey," she"d said, "this is the easy part."
Catherine had thought the nurse was nuts. Now she understood. Here at their White River home, she and Kit had a full staff: a housekeeper/cook and caretaker, Mr. and Mrs. Bunt, who lived in a suite on the first floor off the kitchen, and Mary, the nanny, who lived on the third floor. They"d hired a maid, Angela, to run the apartment in the city. Kit had told Woodrow and Spiegel that although he"d accept a partners.h.i.+p, he didn"t want the toughest cases, because he wanted time for his family, and Catherine had delegated more and more work at Blooms to Sh.e.l.ly, Sandra, Jason, and Carla.
But still every day was crowded, rushed, sometimes nerve-racking, always exhausting. Children were such mysteries, so fragile and dependent on the adults in their lives, and their health went through such dramatic changes: croup, colds, rashes, sudden pains, and even when they were in perfect health, Mary wanted to put Andrew on his pony, or Kit wanted to teach the children to swim. Suddenly to Catherine the world seemed a maze of dangers: ponies could kick, water could drown, on the most peaceful summer day a bee could sting.... Since Andrew"s birth, Catherine often felt she"d never been at rest except at night, when she knew both children were tucked away in bed, healthy, asleep.
But now they were safe and healthy. Vaguely, through the walls, she could hear their shrill laughter and thumps: they were building a house of blocks with Mary. They were safe.
Deep breath: Blooms. There had been all kinds of snags setting up GardenAir, the wholesale flower importing business, but now after three years most of the problems had been worked out and the profits were finally beginning to roll in and promised to increase dramatically in the coming months. Piet was always in Amsterdam, except for the executive meetings twice a year, so Kit had no reason to be jealous, and Catherine had no reason to feel guilty. She was too busy, too much in love with her children and her husband, to even remember how she had once felt for Piet.
Also, Kit was becoming increasingly involved with Blooms and GardenAir. At first she had only talked over specific problems and plans with him as they sat at dinner or during the drive from White River to New York for a play or an opera. He"d responded with such a fresh point of view, such sound and logical advice, that they were now in the habit of spending one night a week at the Blooms office together. Kit"s involvement with the inner workings of her company as they sat alone in the darkened building deepened the intimate connection between them, drew them even closer together.
But Catherine did feel guilty about the others at Blooms. The family atmosphere there had dissolved. It was her fault, she knew. She no longer had time for giddy dinners with Jason, and the attention she gave to Sandra or Carla"s personal gossip was all too brief. Sandra, who had grown daughters, understood and went her own calm way, but Carla had often complained of feeling left out. The entire staff had pointed out that Blooms, while holding its own in the compet.i.tive floral trade, was no longer the hottest shop in New York, and in response to their grumblings, Catherine had agreed to do the Vogue article. The publicity would boost sales and status for a while and keep her employees too busy to complain.
Sh.e.l.ly was a more serious problem. He worked hard as always, but in the past three years he had started to play hard, too. More nights than not he was out drinking, dancing, partying, always with the "right" people, always insisting when Catherine questioned him that it was all good for business. Just before Lily"s birth, Catherine, swollen, restless, unable to sleep, had gone in to Blooms at dawn, something she hadn"t done for months, to discover that Carla was off buying the flowers. Charming Sh.e.l.ly, often too drunk or too tired, had persuaded her to take over this early morning task so he could go home to sleep. Catherine had reproached Sh.e.l.ly, but he"d responded with accusations of his own. He"d told Catherine she was ignoring her business, and Catherine knew he was right-with poor Carla, weeping and martyred, trying to take all the blame herself. Catherine had settled it all by hiring a new florist, a quiet man named Leonard, who didn"t have the flair for arranging that Jason did but knew how to judge the quality and freshness of flowers and was willing to make the early morning runs. Sh.e.l.ly was now free to sleep late, and accordingly, he gave more time to the importing business. It was working out. Sh.e.l.ly was a grown man. He"d be all right. Eventually he"d get married and settle down.
Deep breath: finally, Everly. Kathryn was seventy-nine and becoming more reclusive and eccentric with each pa.s.sing year. She"d refused to fly to England the past few years to visit the Boxworthys and Ann, who had graduated from college and was working full-time at the British Everly. The international travel was too difficult for her, Kathryn claimed, and her family understood. But in the past few months she"d refused to leave her house even for day trips. She"d declined to come in to the city for Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner at the Eliots". When they"d said, very well, they"d come out to see her, she"d said flatly, "No. Don"t come. It"s too much bother. I don"t want any presents, I don"t want to give any presents, and the day means nothing to me. Don"t clutter up my life."
Worst of all, Kathryn wouldn"t see a doctor. Clara, her maid, who was almost as old as Kathryn, a.s.sured Catherine and Drew and Marjorie that Kathryn was in good health and, in her idiosyncratic way, in good spirits. She just preferred to be alone with her house, her plants, her books.
During the past summer, Kathryn had agreed to let Catherine sow an unused field at Everly with wildflowers for Blooms, but she"d refused to enter into any contractual or written agreement. "If you"ll let me lease s.p.a.ce from you, Grandmother, I can write off certain expenses," Catherine said. "We could hire more gardeners. Perhaps even have some work done on the house."
"It"s my house, my garden," Kathryn had said testily. "I"m happy with it as it is."
Catherine worried that her grandmother might forget their agreement, might suddenly snap and tell her she couldn"t use the field or pick the wildflowers. More than that, she worried about what would happen to Everly if someone didn"t start attending to it soon. Deep down, of course, she worried about who would inherit Everly-but that was a subject she didn"t dare broach with her cantankerous grandmother. She didn"t want to offend her. Even more, she didn"t want to hurt her. When they worked together on a sunny day among the flowers and the weeds, she loved her grandmother more than ever. During those moments, the rest of the world, even Andrew and Lily and Kit, faded, and the brown spots on Kathryn"s hands blended with the freckles on the lilies and the dots on the back of the jolly ladybugs, until Catherine felt she was part of something blurred and timeless.
Deep breath: Kit. Here he was, rubbing her shoulders and back so that she was warm and relaxed. Outside, the fierce wind howled and frosted the windows white. Inside, on their wide warm bed, she felt like spring, like summer, blooming with fragrance and beauty and hope. All that they had first guessed from touching had come true: they were right for each other. She was speed, pa.s.sion, color, light; he was stability, endurance, depth, safety.
Now she rolled over to face him. She"d gained weight after having the children, and her body was silvered here and there with stretch marks, yet she felt completely lovely and unabashed.
"I"m so happy," she said. "I wish this could last forever."
In August Catherine received a note from Ann, who was in England, living and working at Everly.
Dearest Catherine, Excuse this scribbled mess, but I never have time to write a proper letter, we"re all so busy. I just wanted to tell you I"m thinking of you a lot these days. The gardens are flouris.h.i.+ng and so many wonderful things are happening, I wish you were here to share them. Will you ever come over again?
Love, Ann Catherine sat holding the note, thinking.
With Andrew"s birth, Kit"s parents had at last let go of their anger and welcomed Catherine and their grandson into their home and lives. Every summer of their marriage, Catherine and Kit had gone, first with baby Andrew, then with Andrew and Lily, to Maine, to spend two weeks of August at the Bemishes" summer home. For Kit, this was heaven. He sailed around the familiar islands and coves, played tennis with old friends, and showed his children the tree house where he had played as a child.
For Catherine, these visits were tedious and dull. She hated sailing, especially with the children on board, even if they did have life jackets on. She couldn"t understand why anyone would go to so much work to have fun. She hated tennis, she hated trying to swim in the frigid water, she hated being dutifully civil to her in-laws. No matter what she did, it seemed Joan Bemish always reproached her in her gentle Puritan voice: if Catherine fed Andrew carrots, was she sure she was giving him enough protein; if she fed him hamburgers, was she giving him enough roughage? She knew Joan meant well, and she surely loved her grandchildren. Her own parents wouldn"t notice or complain if she gave her children gin and tonics. And really, Catherine didn"t mind letting Joan nurture her only grandchildren, she only minded having to stand aside politely while Joan did it.
At the beginning of this summer, she summoned up her courage to tell Kit how she felt about going to Maine. Kit was baffled. "Well, Catherine, I don"t want to force you to do anything you don"t like, but ... if you don"t like to sail, or play tennis, or sunbathe-well, what do you like to do?"
What Catherine liked to do, she realized, was to sit by herself at the British Everly, looking at flowers and waiting for cream tea. It had been years since she"d had that luxury, and as she told Kit about it, she realized it all would be changed, destroyed, even, if Kit and Andrew and Lily were there, pulling on her, needing her attention. Drew would run down the hedgerow screaming like an Indian. Lily would eat the dirt and probably the flowers. Kit would be bored to tears.
"Why not go over by yourself?" Kit suggested, breaking into Catherine"s maudlin reverie.
"Oh, I couldn"t."
"Why not? Mother would love to have the kids to herself, and Mary can take over whenever necessary."
"Well ... I haven"t really seen Ann for years now. It would be lovely to see her there, and to see Everly again."
"Then go. Really, Catherine, go."
"It just seems so-wicked! To leave my little children!"
"Think of yourself. Think how tired you are, how much time you"ve spent with the children, how refreshed you"ll be, and more energetic with them after a break."
"You mean it, don"t you? Oh, Kit, I"d be so grateful! If you"re sure ... I think I"ll go."
Of course she didn"t tell him that Ned would be there. Or rather, though Kit knew that Ned Boxworthy lived at Everly, he certainly didn"t know Ned had once been Catherine"s lover. And of course she didn"t intend to sleep with Ned ever again, she"d always be faithful to darling Kit-but ...
But it would be part of the pleasure of visiting Everly to see Ned, to enter his particular electromagnetic field and experience those old s.e.xual sparks. Her body had belonged to her children for over three years now, in pregnancy and birth and nursing; it would be fun to see if it could, this old stretched and wearied body of hers, still incite Ned to desire.
In August Kit took the children to Maine, and Catherine boarded a plane for London. The flight was rough, due to a summer storm, and then the plane circled above Heathrow for over an hour. The customs lines were crowded, and when the driver met her and handed her into the Everly car, it was pouring rain. An American couple was also going to Everly, and the wife talked at Catherine incessantly for the entire hour"s drive.
When she finally arrived, Catherine hoped she could retreat to a room for a nap before saying h.e.l.lo to anyone. She was jet-lagged and suddenly in that state of surrender to exhaustion that, for Catherine, only happened when someone else was taking care of the children and the business. But Ann was waiting. She greeted Catherine with a warm hug.
"Catherine, I"ve got so much to tell you!"
"I want to hear everything, Annie, but please let me catch a nap first. I"m too tired to think straight."
Ann showed her to her room. Catherine promised she"d be down for tea, but to her amazement she awoke to find she"d slept the day and night through. She threw back her covers, pulled on a bright cotton dress and sandals, splashed her face with water, and hurried down to the dining room.
"Catherine! At last!" Madeline Boxworthy was seated at the long table. She held out her arms, and Catherine bent to hug the older woman. "I didn"t know whether to wake you or not. But now here you are. You look marvelous. Tell me everything. Did you bring pictures of your children? Oh, but I"m being selfish. I know you want to see Ann. She"s already out in the gardens with Hortense. Do you want to go on out?"
"Not until I"ve had a nice big breakfast!" Catherine said, laughing. She rose and helped herself at the buffet, heaping her plate high. "I looked at the gardens from my window. They look wonderful."
"Well, it helps to have Ann with us. And Tom, you know, is such a good worker. Elizabeth is pregnant again, and I shouldn"t tell you, because Hortense wanted to, but Hortense is getting married!"
"When? What"s he like?"
Madeline clapped her hands. "Perfection! He"s an architect! He loves Everly, and wants to renovate it himself, put everything in tiptop shape!"
"Mother! You promised you"d let me tell! h.e.l.lo, Catherine. G.o.d, it"s good to see you. Don"t mind the dirt, it"s clean." Hortense entered the dining room, a basket of roses over her arm, and embraced Catherine with her arms, holding her dirty hands away.
"Catherine! You"re up!" Ann rushed over like a child, grabbing Catherine in a big, greedy hug.