Possessions (62 page)

“It's not ideal,” Ross said. “I wanted a larger park, and wider walkways between the townhouses, but that would have meant fewer units to sell, and the developers balked. Next time, if I can get more control, we'll have more air and light,
lower buildings, more parks and fountains—” He caught himself. “Why don't you gag me, or better still, kiss me, when I start lecturing?”

“Because I like listening.”

“Dad!” Jon shouted. “What's this?”

Ross looked and saw nothing. “Where are you?”

“Here!” Four grinning faces peered from behind what looked like a miniature oil rig on a yellow flatbed truck. Drills like huge corkscrews, and long flexible pipes, were strapped to its sides.

“Come down from there,” Ross ordered. “That's not a playground.”

They clambered down. “But what is it?”

“A drilling rig. The foundation engineers use it to drill holes for pumping concrete around building supports.”

“This building?” Todd asked. Contemplating the Macklin Building, Ross nodded. “What for? Doesn't it have concrete under it already?”

“I think it needs more,” Ross said. “I can't vouch for its safety in case of a tremor.”

“Tremor,” Carrie said. “Earthquake?”

“When it's big enough it's called an earthquake.”

Todd ran his hand over one of the drills. “It digs down like a corkscrew?”

“Exactly. Then one of these pipes is fed through the hole—”

“Like a snake,” said Jon.

“Right. And the concrete is pumped through the pipe, under tremendous pressure. It's like an injection, forcing concrete around the footings under the columns that hold up the building, making them bigger and stronger.”

Jennifer and Carrie stood nearby. “Even in an earthquake?” Carrie asked.

“In most earthquakes.”

“Then why wasn't it done that way the first time?”

Ross paused. “We don't know. But it has to be done now, before it's an office building again, or we'll always have it hanging over our heads, like a sword about to fall.”

In a dramatic voice, Todd intoned, “The surgeons are ready to vaccinate the Macklin Building. Will it work? Or will it still come tumbling down, cutting off our heads like a sword?”

“Does it cost a lot to do?” Carrie asked.

“Yes,” Ross replied.

“How much?”

“About a quarter of a million dollars.”

Todd whistled.

Katherine was watching Ross. “Who pays for it?” she asked.

“I do,” he answered. “It's my building.”

“But you weren't the one—” She stopped as he shook his head in warning. “Wouldn't it cost less to tear it down?” she asked instead.

“No. It's almost always cheaper to repair a building. Let me show you what we're doing.”

He led them through a rough opening in the building. “New front door,” he said, then described the arcade that would cut through the building from Mission Street to the shopping mall on the other side: “An atrium going through all ten floors to the roof, with a glass dome on top. The workmen had opened it up through the second floor when we stopped the work. We'll start again after the concrete is pumped in.”

Todd and Jon walked over to a forest of beams shoring up the ceiling and, tilting back their heads, looked through the jagged hole above them. “If you cut out the middle of the floor, what keeps the rest of it from collapsing?”

“These.” Ross pointed to the temporary beams.

“On every floor?”

He nodded.

“Forever?”

Smiling, he said, “Only until the atrium is built. Look, here's how it works.” He squatted down and in loose sand on the floor drew a quick sketch of the building. The four children squatted beside him as he described the problems he and his staff faced, making them sound like puzzles and challenging the children to find solutions. He was enjoying his audience, Katherine saw, and his seriousness as he considered their guesses, and offered his own ideas, held them like a magnet. She looked from one rapt face to another.
I wish Jennifer and Todd had a father.

“So the atrium helps support all ten floors,” Ross finished. “And then we take away the temporary beams.” He stood, stretching the kinks from his muscles. Leaning casually toward Katherine, he whispered, “I love you.” Then he said aloud,
“I'm cooking dinner tonight. And I have a couple of scale models of this building at home, if you want to take them apart and put them together your own way.”

They walked outside and as the children ran ahead to the car, Katherine asked hesitantly, “Ross, shouldn't Derek pay for the work? At least part of it?”

“None of it. I haven't even told him I'm having it done.”

“But—why not? If you think he was the one who didn't build it properly—”

Their steps slowed as they approached the car, and they lowered their voices. At the same moment, their eyes met and Ross felt a rush of love and gratitude. “I'm glad you're here,” he said. Automatically, their hands met, their fingers interlocked—and then they saw the children look their way and quickly pulled apart.

“I'll tell you why I haven't told Derek,” Ross went on. “If I asked him to share the cost, he'd smile and say he didn't know what I was talking about. I can't prove anything and he'd figure out in a few seconds that I've kept quiet because I don't want it to become public knowledge that the Hayward Corporation was involved in bribing an inspector and putting up a substandard building.” He laughed shortly. “Derek's legacy. It's going to be all I can do to handle the cost, but I don't see that I have a choice. Victoria is eighty-two years old; I'd do a lot more than spend some money to keep a scandal from ruining however many years she has left.”

Katherine was silent.

They reached the car and Ross opened the door for her. “Does that sound irrational?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “It sounds loving.”

*  *  *

By the middle of September, they had settled into a pattern, spending three or four evenings a week together, alone or with the children. One night, after dinner at Ross's house, the four children were leafing through Katherine's sketchbook, reliving the month in France through her drawings. “Could I have this one?” Carrie asked, lingering over a vivid watercolor of the cactus gardens at Eze Village.

“Of course,” Katherine said.

“Me too?” asked Jon, holding up a charcoal sketch of a Roman olive mill.

Katherine's face was bright with pleasure as she took both pictures and wrote on them, “With my love, Katherine.”

“I'll hang it up,” Carrie said, holding it at arm's length, admiring it. “Of course not at home,” she added with a shrug. “You know. But—”

“Here,” said Jon. “At Dad's house.”

“Whose house?” Katherine asked.

“Our house,” Jon grinned. “I meant our house.”

Ross met Katherine's eyes with such love she caught her breath in wonder. “Thank you,” he said quietly, “for making us a family.” And looking at the six of them at the table, Katherine thought she had never been so happy.

Some nights they took the children to outdoor concerts in Stern Grove, or for an evening sail, but mostly the two of them were alone, on the boat, going to the theater, driving to the wine country, making love. Katherine remembered when Derek's whirlwind had seemed magical; but she knew now that this was the real magic: the love that grew slowly, steadily, beating within her, inseparable from the beating of her heart. And Ross found it impossible to get through a day without talking to her on the telephone or sending her a flower, a note, a newspaper clipping that had amused him, a magazine article he wanted to share.

Occasionally he called to ask her to lunch, but Katherine was reluctant to take time off during the day. With Jennifer and Todd back in school, she was concentrating on making and selling as many pieces of jewelry as she could, because she was afraid Mettler's story would reach other shops, and no one would do business with her.

“It won't happen,” Leslie assured her. “Only a few shops specialize in copyrighted originals. You don't have to worry.”

Still, each morning, as soon as Katherine sat down and began to sketch and shape bracelets and bar pins, pendants, and earrings, Mettler's voice would echo in her mind, reciting the evidence that inescapably linked her to Craig.

“Divorce him,” Victoria said at dinner. “Then you can sell through the top stores. How else will you make a reputation? You must divorce him. Cake, my dear?”

“Yes, thank you. Divorcing him wouldn't help. I'd still be known as the woman who was his wife when he was charged
with embezzling; who fled Canada, according to Mettler; who gets money from him every month—”

“But it might help you be yourself,” said Tobias, cutting an oversize piece of cake and transferring it to his plate. “Help you get away from the past and look ahead. ‘In the deserts of the heart, let the healing fountain start.'”

The words struck Katherine and she was silent, repeating them to herself. “I don't know,” she said finally. “It seems that the happier I am, the harder it is to . . . drop him. Because I don't believe he's happy; and if he had to run away because he was framed—”

“He could have stayed,” Tobias said. “He could have fought.”

Victoria shook her head. “We never forced him to learn that.”

“Then I don't think,” Katherine said gently, “that you're the ones to tell me to divorce him.”

But the urgings from everyone stayed with her. And so did her memories, appearing unexpectedly, bringing back the best parts of Craig and their marriage as well as his brooding silences, the spaces that kept them apart. Derek's exasperated voice stayed with her, too:
Must you always feel guilty?
And Mettler's accusing voice, tying her to Craig. And Ross's, deep and warm:
Dearest Katherine, I love you.

“I can't make the decision for you,” he said as they lay in bed the night after her dinner with Victoria and Tobias. They had eaten on the deck of his house, and made love on the wide chaise beneath the stars, and then, in the white light of a full moon, slipped naked into the Jacuzzi, letting the jets of hot water massage their muscles into almost total collapse before they climbed out and ran through the chill air into the warmth of Ross's bed.

“How can anyone make a decision after that?” Katherine asked languidly, her head on his shoulder. She didn't want to move. “I have no energy for decisions.”

“Did you know,” Ross murmured, “that Todd asked me today if I'm trying to make him and Jennifer forget Craig?”

Her lethargy vanished. “What did you tell him?”

“That I wanted them to remember their father, and their love for him, but that was separate from the fact that he isn't here and we have no expectation that he will be here again;
that I love him and Jennifer and would like to take care of them; and that I am deeply in love with you and would very much like to marry you.”

Katherine lay still. “Todd didn't tell me any of that.”

“I asked him not to. A man ought to do his own proposing.”

She laughed slightly. “Was that a proposal?”

“No.” He pulled away to look at her. “You'll recognize it when it comes. I'm waiting for you to make up your mind about Craig. With him or without him.”

“With him,” Katherine said. “I can't do it without him. Not yet, anyway. Can't I make you see that I want to do this decently, that I want to end our marriage as equals? We began that way; I want to end that way.”

Ross thought of Elissa, and Katherine's loyalty, and his own responsibility. I should tell her, he reflected; she should know all of it. But she'd been hurt enough by Craig's lies and pretenses. Knowing about Elissa would change nothing; she already has plenty of reasons to divorce him. “Treating him as an equal is more than he's done for you,” he said at last.

“Maybe that's why I want to do it.” Turning up her face, Katherine kissed Ross with small, leisurely kisses. “I love you. I might even propose to you someday. But not now. Not yet.” After a moment, she sighed. “What I have to do now is go home.”

“It's early.”

“What time is it?”

“A little after midnight.”

“How much after?”

He laughed reluctantly. “About an hour and a half after. All right. Get dressed, my lovely one; I'll drive you back.”

Later, in the car, he said, “I hope you noticed that I didn't say I would drive you home. Home is wherever the two of us are together. Do you believe that?”

“Yes,” she said simply. And they drove across the bridge and into the city in silence, content with each other, and in silence kissed goodnight in front of her door.

But it's not enough, Ross thought, making the return trip. Contentment isn't enough. Even love isn't enough. We have to build something together and we can't do that when we date like teenagers, jumping apart when our children find us close together, making love almost furtively, driving home at one
thirty in the morning so the children won't know we've been in bed.

At home, pulling off his clothes for the second time that night, looking at the empty bed, wanting Katherine there, her eyes dark with passion, her body opening to his, he thought how ridiculous they were. The children knew exactly what they were doing. One of these days, the sooner the better, they'd all sit down together and have an honest—The telephone rang and he lunged for it. Katherine had found something wrong at home—

“Yes,” he said loudly. “What happened?”

“Ross?” said a familiar voice. “Can I talk to you? It's Craig.”

T
HE
years fell away. Craig's voice had not changed and for a moment Ross felt as if they were boys again and he had called to make plans for the day, saying, “Ross? Can I talk to you?”