by Nancy Thayer
Her father didn’t turn around. His shoulders were slanted forward, but his back was still elegant in the lime blazer. “I’m sorry, too, Catherine,” he said. “I am sorry, too.”
When he had left the room, Catherine crossed to flick off the light switch. She wanted to be alone in the darkness to think.
Shelly was energetic and cocky; he needed a strong hand. He’d been an adventurous, daredevil boy, the type of boy who with the right direction could grow up to be a hero. His father was not the best role model, and if he didn’t continue at prep school and go on to college … Catherine couldn’t imagine what would become of him. And poor Ann, who was only beginning the adolescence she’d been dreaming of, when she could start dating and going to dances and parties …
Catherine knew she had to do something.
But she could not come upon one wise thing to do, although she sat in the den until she was so tired, she simply stretched out on the couch and fell asleep in her clothes.
* * *
The next two days she spent with Ann. They swam and sailed, they played tennis, and Catherine laughed with Ann about her friends. But at every moment her father’s words occupied her thoughts.
“It will come to you.”
Kathryn had said that to her, and now Catherine wondered if that didn’t mean responsibility would come, as well as gifts. She knew she could abandon her parents, but not Ann and Shelly. They mattered. To her. Even if they didn’t realize it, they mattered to her, and that was something for her to hold on to. However mysterious and frustrating her grandmother, brother, and sister were, still their fates were connected with hers.
She was desperate to leave the Vineyard—it was too hard to keep pretending to Ann. Once she was alone, she knew she could come up with a plan. If she gave her parents her savings, would that be enough to pay for Shelly’s tuition or Ann’s? Her savings, her savings … her savings, the money she had pinched and hoarded these past three years while she lived for free at Leslie’s place; her savings, in the face of what her family needed, was nothing. Even if she gave up all she’d worked so hard to accumulate, her family would squander it in the blink of an eye.
Chapter 5
New York
September 1964
The tamarisk shrubs, growing low and close to the brick building, were in bloom today, their feathery spikes of tiny pink flowers trembling fragilely against the evergreen leaves. The doorman nodded at Catherine as he opened the door for her.
“Oh, hi, honey, come on in,” Helen said.
Catherine paused in the doorway. Today the roses had a gift from a Madison Avenue jeweler laced through it, a gold bracelet studded with diamonds. It was a pretty trinket, but not a terribly valuable one, certainly not valuable enough to make up for the bruises on Helen Norton’s face.
“Please,” Helen Norton said.
On this warm September day, Helen was wearing a heavy robe of green plaid flannel, not at all her usual flamboyant style. She huddled inside it as if it were a blanket. Her hair looked strange. As the Exotic Eleena, she had dyed her hair black, but she was really a blonde. Catherine had never seen a brunette with blond roots before.
“Sit down and have some coffee with me,” Helen said.
Catherine hesitated. This was her last delivery of the day. All she had ahead of her was the walk back to Leslie’s apartment, where she would sit worrying about her family. It was funny; she could have confided in any of her old school friends about all sorts of problems—if Shelly were homosexual, or Ann in love with an older man, or either of her parents having affairs with anyone—but she could never speak to any of them about money problems.
“Come on, kid, have a heart, sit down,” Helen said.
“All right,” Catherine replied, and sat.
“Would you rather have a drink?”
“No, coffee’s fine.”
“Iced coffee? How about iced coffee? It’s so hot.”
“Iced coffee would be great. Thanks.”
Catherine looked around the room while Helen Norton clinked and clanked in the kitchenette. The florist’s box of roses lay on the coffee table between them, but Catherine didn’t take them into the kitchen for a vase of water. There wouldn’t be room with Helen making coffee. Catherine would remind Helen to put them in water before she left. Or perhaps she’d tell Helen to open the box right away. The bracelet might cheer her up.
Helen returned with two tall glasses of iced coffee. At Catherine’s suggestion she opened the box, took out the bracelet, and held it up, inspecting it.
“It’s not much, is it?” she said dejectedly to Catherine. She let the bracelet fall back among the red flowers.
“Well,” Catherine said, “I think it’s very pretty.…”
“Yeah, well, do you think this is pretty?” Helen pointed to her swollen cheekbone and bruised jaw. The green plaid of her robe made her skin look especially sallow.
“I was wondering about those,” Catherine admitted.
“He hit me. The old bugger.” Anger flared in the woman’s eyes so intensely that for a moment Catherine seemed to be looking at the Exotic Eleena instead. She could see how the woman’s fiery disposition would appeal to men.
“That’s awful,” Catherine said. “What did you do?”
“Hah! What did I do? More like what I didn’t do. Or won’t.” She sighed, sipped her coffee, lay back among the sofa cushions. “I’ll tell you, honey, I’ve gotta get out of this, and soon. I thought he was just a harmless old gent, but I should have known better. Men are men. They’re all alike. No, rich men are worse. Take it from me. Rich men think they can buy anything they want. They think they deserve it.”
Catherine was quiet. She wasn’t sure she wanted to hear any more.
“He’s getting kinky,” Helen Norton said. “I should have seen it coming. God, am I blind or what? He wants to watch me do it with an animal. A dog. Can you believe that? Jesus H. Christ. I said I wasn’t that kind of woman. He said, in that ice-up-the-asshole voice of his, ‘I think we both know exactly what kind of woman you are.’ The prick. So I called him a name. So he hit me. So I tried to kick him out. So he reminded me just whose apartment I was trying to kick him out of. So we compromised. No animals—yet. But I said he could bring in another woman.”
Catherine’s head hurt. She had to work hard to understand exactly what Helen Norton was talking about. It all sounded so tawdry.
Suddenly Helen Norton set her coffee on the table and put her face in her hands. Her shoulders were shaking.
“Sometimes you just think it’s no use,” she said. “Sometimes you think you’ve got a chance, you’re gonna make it, after all, this is America, the land of the free and the home of the brave. Then something like this happens and you know you’re nothing. Men like that have everything, and you’ll never have anything no matter how hard you work.”
Catherine set her coffee down on the table, too. Helen Norton’s words moved her greatly, partly because Catherine realized that Helen could be speaking for Catherine as well. Catherine had no chance, no chance in hell, of getting her family out of the fix it was in. No matter how hard she had worked and saved over the past three years, it amounted to nothing compared with what her family needed. It was nothing compared with what she would need to buy her own flower shop. She had nothing. Helen Norton had nothing.
But P. J. Willington had more money than he could count—money he had inherited from grandparents and in-laws, more money than he could ever use in his lifetime.
“Helen,” Catherine said, “I have an idea.”
Helen raised her head and looked at Catherine.
“Listen,” Catherine said. “I think I know a way for the two of us to get some money.”
* * *
When Catherine finally left Helen’s, it was evening, time for dinner, but she was not hungry. She wanted to walk. She needed to move. It was early September, so night closed down faster on the city, and the subtle fading of the sky, the luminous streaks of col
or as the sun sank low, were blocked and blurred here by all the skyscrapers. Already there was the false daylight from storefronts, marquees, and headlights. It was neither dark nor day. People rushed instead of strolling, even though the air was mild.
Catherine was remembering her conversation with Ned.
“Perhaps you’ll come to the States someday and visit the American Everly,” Catherine had said to him as they lay together, naked in each other’s arms.
“Perhaps. Probably not.”
“Why not?”
“We don’t have money for traveling. Everly looks grand, but only because the four of us slave for it and put all our money into it.”
“Do you resent that?”
“No. Not at all. On the contrary, I’m rather proud to be part of such a place, such a family. I’m the man of the house, you know. Everyone relies on me. It’s up to me to take care of my sisters and my mother, and this house.”
“That doesn’t make you feel trapped?”
“Trapped? Oh, you Americans! Always ready to move. No. I feel that I’m exactly where I belong, and lucky to be here.”
“What will happen when you fall in love?”
“Well, I’ll have to fall in love with a woman who’s willing to live here and get along with the rest of the family, won’t I?”
“What if you fall in love with someone who doesn’t want to live here?”
Ned had shrugged. “I won’t.”
For Ned, Catherine thought, it was all so clear. Family first. And he would be able to pull it off, she thought. Ned would be able to break off with a woman he loved if she wouldn’t move to Everly, or not get involved with such a woman in the first place. Look at what Kit had done, breaking off with her in order to marry the woman his family had chosen.
It would be nice, Catherine thought as she strode down Park Avenue, the hard pavement hitting against her feet like a hammer pounding sense into her body, if she had an older brother. An older, protective brother, like Ned, who would take care of her. But she was the oldest in her family, and though she didn’t even want to be part of that damned family, she didn’t know how to escape. She could turn her back on her parents, but not on her brother, and especially not on Ann.
Catherine had always known her life would not be normal or easy. Her life hadn’t come to her in a gentle unfolding of years, like the gradually opening petals of a rose. Her life came at her in waves. So much had happened this summer—meeting Kit and falling in love with him. Going to Everly. Sleeping with Ned. And now discovering that her family was on the edge of financial ruin.
For years the waves of life had just rolled in easily, then all at once they’d arisen, pounding down on her with a great and unfair blow. She had to fight against them, stand up to them, or surrender and be swept away.
Well, she would fight. She would always choose to fight.
* * *
The next morning Catherine spent a few minutes showing Mrs. V the pictures she’d taken of Everly’s gardens. Then she went to look for Piet; she found him in the basement, unpacking a shipment of containers. It was cool down there, dim and cluttered. Scrolled wrought-iron pedestal stands lay on their sides among chicken wire and discarded boxes. Sweat from the summer humidity beaded and dripped from the overhead exposed pipes. The air smelled sour. An appropriate place, Catherine thought, for this particular conversation.
Piet was bent over a cardboard box with his switchblade in his hand.
“Piet. Could we talk for a moment?”
“Sure.” Piet stood up, hitching up his jeans, which had slipped down his narrow hips.
Catherine moved closer to him, wanting him, and only him, to hear. She could feel the warmth of his body.
“There’s something I’d like to discuss with you,” she said. “But before I tell you what, I’d like you to promise that you won’t tell anyone else. What I’m going to say has to be a secret, whether you agree to it or not.”
“Such mystery.” Piet smiled, but his black tulip eyes remained impenetrable.
“Will you promise?”
“I promise.”
His solemnity was intense, and wasn’t that what she wanted? Catherine shivered as she looked at Piet, as if she were the hunted with the hunter closing in. His black eyes, his leaf-dense skin, his smell of musky sweat, flowers, and some spice she couldn’t quite place, all seemed to wrap around her like the cloak of a vampire or an angel. This was not a man ever to take lightly.
“It’s about making some money. Quite a lot of money. Piet, it’s illegal, it’s immoral, but it’s foolproof. My friend and I have it all planned out, but I need your help. For which, of course, you’d be paid.” Her voice was quiet and blunt.
“Catherine.” Piet grinned. “You surprise me.”
His grin broke the spell. She moved away from him, toward the soapstone sinks. “To be honest, I surprise myself.” Suddenly she felt ill-at-ease. “Look. I can’t talk about the details here, when the Vandervelds could interrupt us at any moment. Can you meet me at the bar on the corner after work? If you’re interested, that is.”
“Oh, I’m interested.”
* * *
The bar was crowded at six o’clock; Catherine was glad, because the laughter and chatter of the patrons made her certain no one could overhear them.
“What I want you to do is this,” Catherine said, and explained her plan. He would get one-third of the money.
Piet smiled slowly as she spoke. And then he said yes. It didn’t surprise her. What did surprise her was that he asked so few questions. For instance, “Why would a nice girl like you get herself involved in blackmail?”
The next day after work, she took a bus down to Forty-seventh Street. At a cutrate shop on Forty-seventh and Sixth, she spent some of her savings on a small black Leica 35-millimeter camera, which, the salesman promised her, had the softest shutter in the business, and several rolls of 400 speed film. She took a bus back uptown and hurried to Vanderveld Flowers. It was after seven now, and the older Vandervelds had gone home. The shop was dark. She went to the back door off the alley, where Piet was waiting. Once inside, she gave him the loaded camera.
“Good luck,” she said.
“See you tomorrow,” he replied. They left the shop together but parted at the cross street.
All Catherine could do now was wait. She sat in Leslie’s apartment, a plate of fruit and cheese in front of her, a glass of wine in her hand. She drank the wine, and then another glass, but she was too nervous to eat. Helen had promised to call when it was over. Until then all Catherine could do was to imagine what was happening now, at Helen’s place.
When he left Catherine, Piet would have headed to Helen’s apartment, and Helen would have hidden him inside her bedroom closet. She had showed Catherine how easy it would be for someone to hide there; the closet was stuffed with filmy evening gowns, and the sliding doors were louvered.
Helen was planning to wear a flamboyant red-and-black negligee with see-through net and lots of makeup. Puritanical old P. J. Willington’s cold blood always got hot with “Malaguena” and “Bolero” playing on the stereo. And the music would mask any sounds the camera shutter made. Fortunately P. J. liked the lights on, the better to see Helen.
Helen told Catherine that P. J. always arrived between nine and ten. At nine-thirty Catherine let herself imagine the next step. The old man would enter. He would drink some whiskey. Helen would put on music, then lead P. J. into the bedroom as she had so many times before. And all the while, Piet would be hidden away taking pictures that would cost Willington a fortune.
Helen had promised to call Catherine when it was all over. By ten-thirty the phone still hadn’t rung. By eleven Catherine picked up the receiver to be sure the phone wasn’t broken. When, at eleven-thirty, it rang, Catherine almost screamed.
“Hi, honey,” Helen said. “It’s all over. It went off perfectly.”
Catherine began to shake. She couldn’t speak.
“Your friend said he’l
l give you the camera tomorrow, and you’ll take care of the rest. I’m going to start packing. The day you call him, I’m leaving this place. How long do you think it will take to get the photos developed?”
“Oh, just a few days,” she said, hoping it was true. “I’ll call you as soon as I’ve got them.”
* * *
After that, oddly enough, she didn’t worry. She went through her routines at work with impeccable, robotlike efficiency. At night she walked the streets of the Lower East Side, looking for the sleaziest photography store she could find. But even here the smirks and knowing eyes of the men seemed to penetrate the layers of anonymity the city afforded, until finally, on her day off, she went down to Chinatown. There, in a tiny shop that advertised passport photos done quickly, she had her precious film developed. The passive Chinese clerk took her film. A few hours later he handed back the roll of negatives and a manila envelope with ten glossy black-and-white eight-by-tens. Catherine couldn’t wait. She opened the envelope and looked at the top photograph. It was perfect. She realized she was smiling.
“That’s my husband,” she said. “I want a divorce. He’s been—with another woman.”
“Twenty dollar, please,” the Chinese man said, his face expressionless.
That evening Catherine phoned Helen Norton. “I’ve got the pictures. I’m doing it next week on my day off. You’d better get ready to leave.”
One of the useful bits of information Helen had given Catherine was that P. J. Willington liked to have lunch every day at “21,” to which P. J. had never taken Helen, no matter how much she pleaded with him. He knew too many people there, he said.
On Wednesday, her day off, Catherine hung around 21 West Fifty-second until she saw the old man enter. She waited, then she knocked on the door and handed the doorman a manila envelope addressed to Mr. Willington. She asked the man to see that it was hand-delivered and pressed a five-dollar bill into his hand.
She walked over to Saks and found a bank of phone booths on the first floor. She took a deep breath, then phoned “21” and asked for Mr. Willington. When he answered, she could tell he was downstairs in the club bar. She’d gone there often with her father.
