I wasn't good at overlooking faults. I'd always seen Momma's when Chris never had. I always flipped over the brightest coin and looked for the tarnish. Funny Paul's tarnish had seemed all Julia's fault until Amanda came with her horror story. Another reason to hate Momma, making me doubt my instinct!
Long after Julian returned to bed I sat by the windows and contemplated myself, my eyes fixed on the long shiverlets of ice striking the glass. The weather was only telling me what lay ahead. Spring was back there in the garden with Paul . . . and I'd done it myself. I didn't have to believe Amanda. God help me if I turned out to be like Momma inside, as well as out!
Our weeks in London were busy, exciting and exhausting--but I dreaded the time when we returned to New York. How long could I keep putting off telling Paul? Not forever. Sooner or later he had to know.
Shortly before the first day of spring, we flew back to Clairmont, and we taxied to Paul's house. It was the place of our deliverance, and it seemed nothing there had changed. Only I had, for I was coming to devastate a man who didn't need to be hurt again.
I stared at the boxwoods neatly clipped into cones and spheres, and the wisteria trees that were blooming; azaleas rioted colorfully everywhere, and the big magnolias were ripe and soon to flower, and over everything emerald draped the dangling gray Spanish moss, misting and fogging, to create shreds of living lace. I sighed. If at twilight there was anything more beautiful and somehow romantically, sadly mystical than a live oak dripping with Spanish moss that would in the end kill its host, I'd yet to see it. Love that clung and killed.
I thought I could take Julian inside, then tell Paul our news--but I couldn't. "Would you mind waiting on the veranda until I tell Paul?" I asked. For some reason he only nodded. I'd expected an argument. Agreeably, for a change, he sat in a white wicker rocker, the same one Paul had been in when first we found him dozing on that Sunday afternoon, after the bus put us off. He'd been forty then. He was now forty-three.
Quivering a little, I went on alone to open the front door with my own key. I could have telephoned or sent a cable. But I had to see his face and watch his eyes, and try to read his thoughts. I needed to know if I'd really injured his heart, or only wounded his pride and ego.
No one heard me open the door. No one heard my footsteps on the hard parquet of the foyer. Paul ,was sprawled in his favorite chair before the color television and the fireplace, dozing. His long legs were stretched to rest on the matching ottoman, his ankles crossed and his shoes off. Carrie was sitting crosslegged on the floor near his chair, as needing as always to be near someone who loved her. She was deeply engrossed in her play with the small porcelain dolls. She wore a white sweater banded at the neck and wrists with purple, and over this her red corduroy jumper. She looked like a pretty little doll.
My eyes went again to Paul. In his light dozing sleep he had the expression of someone anxiously waiting. Even his feet moved often to cross and uncross, while his fingers flexed into fists, then unflexed. His head was thrown back to rest on the high back of his chair, but that too kept moving from side to side . . . dreaming, I thought, maybe of me. Then his face turned in my direction. Did lie sense my presence even in his sleep?
Ever so slowly his eyelids fluttered open. He yawned and lifted a hand to cover his mouth . . . then stared at me fuzzily. As if I were merely an apparition. "Catherine," he murmured, "is that you?"
Carrie heard his question, jumped up and came flying to me, crying out my name as I caught her and swung her high. I lavished on her small face a dozen or so kisses, and hugged her so tight she cried out, "Ouch, that hurts!" She looked so pretty, so fresh and well fed. "Oh, Cathy, why did you stay away so long? We wait every day for you to come home, and you never do. We make plans for your wedding, but when you don't write, Dr. Paul says we should wait. Why did you send only postcards? Didn't you have time to write long letters? Chris said you must be awfully busy." She had pulled out of my arms and was back on the floor near Paul's chair, and staring at me reproachfully. "Cathy . . . you forgot all about us, didn't you? All you care about is dancing. You don't need no family when you dance."
"Yes, I do need a family, Carrie," I said absently, with my eyes fixed on Paul, trying to read what he was thinking.
Paul got up and came toward me, his eyes locked with mine We embraced and Carrie sat quietly on the floor and watched, as if studying the way a woman should act with the man she loved. His lips only brushed over mine Yet his touch shivered me as Julian's never did. "You look different," he said to me in his slow, soft way. "You've lost weight. You look tired too. Why didn't you telephone or telegraph to let me know you were on the way? I would have met you at the airport."
"You look thinner too," I said in a hoarse whisper. His weight loss was far more becoming than mine His mustache seemed darker, thicker. I touched it tentatively, longingly, knowing it wasn't mine to feel now-- and he had grown it just to please me.
"It hurt when you stopped writing to me every day. Did you stop when your schedule became too crowded?"
"Something like that. It's tiring to dance every day, and try to see as much as possible at the same time. . . . I got so busy, I never had enough time."
"I subscribe to Variety now."
"Oh . . ." was all I could say, praying they didn't write about my marriage to Julian. "I've nominated myself as your clipping service, though Chris is keeping a scrapbook too. Whenever he's home, we compare clippings; if one of us has something the other doesn't, we have it photocopied." He paused as if puzzled by my expression, my demeanor, something. "They are all rave reviews, Catherine, why do you look so . . so . . . emotionless?"
"Tired, like you said." I hung my head not knowing what to say, or how to meet his eyes. "And how've you been?"
"Catherine, is something the matter? You act strange." Carrie was staring at me . . . as if Paul had expressed her thoughts too. I gazed around the big room filled with the beauty of all that Paul had collected. Sunlight through the ivory sheers shone on the miniatures in his tall etagere with the glass shelves, the black, gold-veined mirror behind them, and lit from the top and bottom. How easy to hide away in looking around, pretending everything was all right, when everything was all wrong.
"Catherine, speak to me!" Paul cried. "There is something wrong!"
I sat down, knees weak, my throat tight. Why couldn't I ever do anything right? How could he have lied to me, deceived me, when he knew I'd had enough of lying and deceit? And how could he look so trustworthy still?
"When will Chris be home?"
"Friday, for Easter vacation." His long look was reflective, as if he thought it strange when usually Chris and I kept in constant communication. Then there was Henny to greet and hug and kiss . . . and I could put it off no longer . . . though I found a way. "Paul, I brought Julian home with me. . . . He's out on the veranda waiting. Is that all right?"
He gave me the strangest look, and then nodded. "Of course. Ask him in. " Then he turned to Henny. "Set two more places, Henny."
Julian came in, and, as I'd cautioned him, he didn't say a word to let anyone know we were married. Both of us had taken off our wedding rings and had them in our pockets. It was the strangest of quiet meals, and even when Julian and I handed out the gifts the stiffness grew, and Carrie only glanced at her bracelet of rubies and amethysts, though Henny beamed a broad smile when she put on her solid gold bracelet.
"Thank you for the lovely figurine of yourself, Cathy," said Paul, putting it carefully aside on the closest table. "Julian, would you please excuse Cathy and me for a while? I'd like to have a private talk with her." He said this as a doctor requesting a private interview with the responsible family member of a critically ill patient. Julian nodded and smiled at Carrie. She glared back at him.
"I'm going to bed," stated Carrie defiantly. "Good night, Mr. Marquet. I don't know why you had to help Cathy buy me that bracelet, but thank you anyway."
Julian was left in the living room to stare at the TV as Paul and I took off for a stroll in his
magnificent gardens. Already his fruit trees were in bloom, and climbing red, pink and white roses made a brilliant display on the white trellises.