“True.” Catherine put her arm around her mother’s shoulders and gave her a hug.
“Well?”
“I think my time would be better spent job hunting.”
“What? You’re going back to work? When did this come about?”
“Lynda’s therapy is just about over, so she won’t need me to drive her to the hospital three times a week anymore. And she’s going to be back in school in another month, so we’d have to adapt her massages to her new schedule anyway.” If her mother found out job hunting was a necessity, not an outlet for boredom, she’d jump in with advice and help, neither of which Catherine wanted right then. “Even if it’s only part-time, I want to get back to doing something productive with my life. Which is one of the reasons I told Karol I would cochair the rummage sale with her.”
“Did you talk to Rick about it?”
Catherine shook her head in wonder. Even her mother had succumbed to the Rick mystique, believing him to• be all-knowing, all-caring, all-powerful. “No, I haven’t. Believe it or not, there are some decisions I still make all by myself. Besides, we already take more of his time than we should and I don’t know why he would care whether I get a job or what I do in my spare time.”
“I don’t think he sees it that way.”
“Mother—you hardly know the man. What makes you think—”
“I do too know him.”
“How?”
“I met him at the hospital. Several times. And you and Lynda never stop talking about him.”
Catherine’s eyes widened in surprise. “I hardly ever talk about him.”
Now it was Phyllis’s turn to look surprised. “You should stop and listen to yourself sometime. You talk about Rick almost as much as you do Lynda.”
“I may mention him once or twice in the context of the conversation, but—”
Lynda came into the room. “Mention who?”
“No one,” Catherine said.
“Rick Sawyer,” Phyllis said at the same time.
Lynda brightened. “Is Rick coming? I thought you told me that I couldn’t invite him.”
“No,” Catherine said. “Rick is not coming.”
“Then why were you talking about him?”
Phyllis focused on Catherine. “Why didn’t you want to invite him? Is something wrong? Did you two have a fight?”
Catherine looked from her mother to her daughter and then back again. “No, we did not have a fight—and I do not talk about him all the time.” She shifted her gaze back to Lynda. “Yes, I did tell you that I didn’t want to invite him and that I will take phone privileges away from you for the rest of your life if you ever even think about trying to fix us up again.”
“Oh…now I understand what’s going on,” Phyllis said. “You and Rick are—”
Catherine felt the ground slipping away beneath her. “Rick and I are friends.”
Lynda held her hands up and began backing out of the room. “I can see I’m not needed here. I’m going to go outside and wait for Brian. If you should decide I’m worthy company after all, you know where to find me.”
“I’m sorry,” Catherine said. “You don’t have to go.”
“While you’re out there, would you check the mail?” Phyllis said. “Gene said he sent a package a couple of weeks ago and it hasn’t arrived yet.” She opened a drawer and tossed Lynda a stuffed toy lion with a key attached.
When Lynda was gone, Phyllis turned to Catherine, a mischievous smile lighting her eyes. “Okay, now tell me what’s going on with you and Rick.”
Catherine sighed. She could either tell Phyllis outright or put up with a dozen circuitous questions that would get it out of her eventually anyway. “Lynda’s been trying to play matchmaker, and I can’t seem to convince her that it’s a bad idea.”
Phyllis was quiet for several seconds. “I don’t know. Seems like a pretty good idea to me.”
“Oh, Mother, please—not you, too.”
“All right. Tell me what you think is so wrong with dating Rick Sawyer.”
Catherine had purposely avoided this conversation because she knew her position wasn’t one her mother would understand. That didn’t make it any less valid, just harder to defend. “It isn’t Rick, it’s me. I’ve given this a lot of thought, so I want you to promise me you won’t start reasoning with me or try to get me to change my mind.”
“I can’t promise something like that until I know what you’re talking about.”
“I’m through with men. With dating. With all of it. It’s pretty obvious from the choices I’ve made in the past that I can’t tell a good man from a rotten one, and I’m not willing to go through that kind of pain again.”
“Did you tell Lynda this?”
“How could I? It just so happens one of those rotten men I’m talking about is her father.”
“Rick is nothing like Jack.”
“That’s what I thought about Tom, too. I didn’t go into that relationship blindly. Or at least I thought I didn’t. I looked for someone who believed what I did, who liked the same kinds of things I did, who had the same goals and dreams and ambitions, and you can see what happened. I couldn’t have wound up with anyone worse if I’d thrown a dart at the telephone book.”
She pulled out a chair from the kitchen table, sat down, and started folding napkins. “I don’t know. Maybe someday I’ll have enough confidence in myself that I’ll be willing to get involved with someone again, but first I need time to get over what I almost did with Tom.”
Phyllis sat next to Catherine and picked up one of the napkins. “Tom fooled us all. He’s charming and thoughtful and as phony as the smiles on the faces of the losers at the Academy Awards.”
“The only answer I can come up with is that I was so caught up in the idea of not being alone anymore that I refused to see anything bad about him. Now I can see it all. Especially the way he listened to my dreams and turned them into his promises. He was so good, Mom. When he talked me into quitting my job, I didn’t hesitate for a second. Here was someone who wanted to take care of me in every way possible. How could I not see how dependent that would make me? Tell me, how dumb is that?”
“Well, I can see you’ve got a ways to go before you stop beating yourself up and hit your emotional bottom. I’m just afraid that when you do and you’re ready to start climbing out of that hole, Rick’s going to be long gone. What a shame he came into your life when you can’t appreciate him.”
“It doesn’t matter when Rick came into my life, we would be wrong for each other.” The instant it was out she knew she’d made a mistake. Instead of letting the subject die, she’d added fuel.
“Why is that?”
“We have nothing in common.” Nothing that counted anyway. Family trees studded with fruits and nuts made for good conversation, but did little to build a foundation for a long-term relationship. “We come from different social backgrounds.” She wasn’t explaining it very well. “If you invited his friends and my friends to a party, they would have nothing to say to each other. I know it sounds petty, but in the long run, things like that matter.”
“You may not have friends in common, but you have Lynda. That’s a lot more than you could say for Tom.”
“Lynda is his job, Mom. As soon as his year with her is up he’ll move on to someone new.”
“Well,” she said, and sighed. “At least you’ve considered your options.”
A stray thought hit Catherine and she laughed unexpectedly. “Can you imagine how horrified Rick would be if he could hear us dissecting him this way?”
“Poor guy, we’ve all but put him in a box and tied it up with a bow.” Phyllis stood and gave Catherine a meaningful look. “It would have been nice if you had at least looked inside before you stamped it ‘return to sender’.”
“We’re friends.” It was turning into a mantra. “As a matter of fact, I consider Rick one of the best friends I have right now.” When she thought about it, she was a little hurt by how most of her
long-time friends had drifted away that summer. A couple of them still called, but it had been weeks since she’d received any of the invitations to dinners or parties that she’d told Tom were her prerogative. If not for Karol, she would have felt completely forgotten. “He even laughs at my jokes. And the last time—” She frowned, brought up short by what she was about to say. What would her mother think if she told her that the last time she was with Rick, she’d been struck by how much her father would have liked him.
“Yes?”
The front door opened. “Brian must be here,” Catherine said when she heard voices. “We can talk about this later.”
“You think I’m going to forget, but I’m not,” Phyllis said.
Catherine smiled. She had no doubt her mother would remember, but it was more likely to be in the middle of the night when Catherine was safely home in bed.
24
CATHERINE STOOD AT THE BACK DOOR AND watched Brian and Lynda as they walked across the lawn hand in hand. They’d said they were going outside to work off dinner and make room for cake and ice cream, but it was plain their real interest was in being alone.
“He’s such a nice boy,” Phyllis said, coming up beside her.
“Remember how wild his father was at his age?”
“Wasn’t he the Winslow brother who wound up in jail?”
“Yes, but that came a little later. I was thinking about the summer he and his brothers stole that big plastic chicken from the restaurant in Tahoe City and glued it on top of the sheriff’s car.”
Phyllis laughed. “I’d forgotten about that.”
“Now he’s doing the most remarkable thing. Brian and Lynda have decided Ray should stay in Sacramento. They think he’ll do better here with them than somewhere where he doesn’t know anyone. Brian asked his parents if Ray could stay with them—and they said yes. Can you imagine?”
“Ray wants to stay here? Considering he lost everyone in his immediate family I would have thought being with his aunt would be more important than being with friends.”
“They haven’t said anything to him yet, but they know he doesn’t want to live with his aunt. Brian’s father talked them into waiting until his lawyer could investigate the legal end of having Ray live with them. He didn’t want Ray to get his hopes up and then find out it couldn’t be done.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Ray is going to need ongoing medical care for a long time. He’ll still be going to Shriner’s, so there’s no financial problem, but since he’s still a minor, the Winslows would have to be his legal guardians to get him the care he needs until he’s of age.”
“It would be like adopting him.”
“Almost.”
“They’re willing to do this just because Brian asked them?”
“Pretty amazing, huh?”
Phyllis looked at Catherine. “And these are the people Tom wanted to sue.”
Lynda saw them standing at the door and waved. “Time to open presents?”
Catherine couldn’t remember Lynda ever being as excited about a gift she’d bought. She’d been bubbling with enthusiasm for days, demanding Catherine try to guess what was inside the large box she’d put in the middle of the dining room table and then laughing with pleasure when she guessed wrong.
Catherine opened Gene’s first. It was a full-length black evening coat made out of raw silk. Elegant in its simplicity and cut, it all but shouted money. Catherine did some quick mental calculations and figured she could cover the gas and electric bill for three months on what she estimated the coat had cost.
“Obviously Uncle Gene didn’t have to follow the new rules on presents,” Lynda said. “Or was that rule just for me?”
“I forgot to tell him,” Catherine admitted.
“What new rule?” Phyllis asked.
Catherine looked at Lynda. “Okay, this time it was just for you, but from now on, it’s for everyone.”
“I don’t care,” Lynda said. “Open mine next.”
She’d wrapped the box in the comics section of the Sunday paper, topping it with a bow made out of a roll of hospital gauze. “Very creative,” Catherine said.
“And cheap,” Brian added with a grin.
“I didn’t know whether the wrapping counted and I didn’t want to take any chances.” Lynda leaned forward in anticipation.
“Go on, open it.”
When Catherine saw the illustration on the box, she didn’t make the connection that it was a picture of what was inside. After all, she’d never expressed any interest in birds or in feeding them. But then she saw that it was indeed as advertised—a hummingbird feeder.
“I know you’re not into the nature thing,” Lynda said. “But just wait. You’re going to love it, Mom. The hummingbirds are so cool the way they hover and dive around the feeders. I figured we could put it on the deck outside the family room window. That way you can see it from the kitchen.”
“It’s the most incredible feeling when they buzz by your head,” Brian said. “They sound like some giant bumblebee that’s about to have a piece of you for lunch.”
“We asked Sandra about the best kind to buy and she said it had to be one that could be taken apart to be cleaned. I was going to get you one of those long skinny brushes, but then I remembered we already had one.”
Catherine examined the feeder, doing her best to look interested. “When did you talk to Sandra?”
“The other day when we went to Rick’s house.”
“You saw Rick? At his house? Why didn’t you tell me?” She could feel Phyllis looking at her. So much for ending the discussion about Rick.
“He called and said he had a present for you and wanted to know when would be a good time to drop it off. We were on our way to see Ray, so Brian offered to stop by and pick it up. I didn’t know I wasn’t supposed to go to his house.”
“It’s my fault,” Brian said. “I’m the one who—”
Catherine stopped him. “You didn’t do anything wrong. I was just surprised that you and Lynda went to see Rick and didn’t mention it.”
“Well?” Lynda prompted. “Do you like it?”
“Yes—I do.” She smiled. “This very well may be the best present you’ve ever given me.”
“Now you have to open Brian’s.” She was grinning again.
“You really shouldn’t have gotten me anything, Brian. I told Lynda not to let you.”
“Don’t worry, it’s not anything—”
Lynda put her hand over his mouth. “You’ll give it away.”
Catherine could hardly lift the package to put it on her lap. She tore through the wrapping, popped the tape on the box with her fingernail, and looked inside. When she saw the thirty pounds of sugar, she laughed out loud. “I assume this is for the hummingbirds and not a hint that you’d like another batch of brownies.”
“Brownies? It didn’t even cross my mind,” Brian said innocently. “But now that you mention it, I suppose there’s enough sugar to take care of me and the birds.”
“And the whole thing came to less than forty-nine dollars,” Lynda chimed in. “I saved the receipts. Want to see them?”
“I believe you.” She shifted the sugar off her lap.
“Now Rick’s,” Lynda said, and handed her mother a beautifully wrapped package a little longer than a shoebox but not as wide.
“Do you know what it is?” Catherine asked her.
“He wouldn’t tell me.”
She glanced at her mother and saw that Phyllis was still watching, this time with one of her cat-in-the-cream smiles. “I wonder how he knew it was my birthday?”
“Maybe it was in the papers you filled out at the hospital,” Brian suggested.
She fingered the bow and looked at Lynda. “This makes me very uncomfortable. I really wish he hadn’t bought me a present.”
“I’ll bet now you’re sorry you wouldn’t let me invite him,” Lynda said.
Catherine started to put the box aside. “Maybe I should wait
until—”
“Oh, just open the damn thing,” Phyllis interjected. “I’m ready for cake and ice cream.”
Catherine removed the iridescent bow and set it aside. It seemed a shame to destroy the matching paper, but it was taped so securely, there was no other way to get to the box.
Feigning a casualness she didn’t feel, she looked inside and found a bottle of Randle’s Roost Reserve merlot nestled in a bed of pink tissue paper. “Oh…” She sighed. “How perfect.”
“What is it?” Lynda asked.
“A bottle of wine,” Phyllis answered, plainly confused at Catherine’s misty reaction.
“Wine?” Lynda said. “You got all sloppy on us over a bottle of wine?”
“It happens to be a very good wine,” Catherine protested.
“Yeah, maybe,” Lynda said. “But it’s not nearly as impressive as the flowers Dad sent.”
Phyllis whipped around to face Catherine. “Jack sent you flowers?”
“Thirty-nine roses.” Any hope for a personal touch was lost, however, when the flowers came with Jack’s business card. She’d spotted handwriting on the back and turned it over to find instructions to Jack’s assistant on which florist to use and the price range to stay within.
“White ones,” Lynda said. “They’re my favorite, not Mom’s. Dad must have gotten us mixed up.”
Catherine surreptitiously dug through the tissue looking for a note from Rick and was disappointed when she didn’t find one. She glanced up at her mother and smiled nonchalantly. “Cake, anyone?”
Brian stood and offered his hand to Lynda. Catherine put the wine on the coffee table and moved to follow.
Phyllis caught up with her, leaned in close, and said softly, “Just friends, my ass.”
25
CATHERINE LOOKED UP FROM THE SUNDAY NEWS-paper when she heard Lynda coming down the stairs. “Ready?”
“I couldn’t find my Tweety Bird beach towel.” She brought her canvas sports bag into the kitchen and dropped it by the back door. Dressed in navy blue shorts, a long-sleeved white blouse, red cap, and tennis shoes, she looked crisp and nautical and, until you looked closer, perfectly normal. Only the pressure garment peeking out at the top of her blouse gave her away.
Disguised Blessing Page 20
