Promise Me A Rainbow (33 page)

“Don’t, Pat. It’s not true and you know it.”

“Don’t? You’re right! Don’t! The trouble is, Catherine, I remember. I remember what he was like in his snappy little military uniform—when he was young and decent—before he started hating me.” She sighed. “God,” she said in a whisper, her eyes welling up. She looked away, and Catherine stood up to leave.

“Catherine,” Pat said. “I can’t wash my hair.”

“What?”

Pat looked at her. “I said I can’t wash my hair. If I do, it’ll all come out.”

“Yes,” Catherine said, because at this stage of Pat’s treatment that was very likely.

“You want to go with me this afternoon to buy a wig? If I’ve got to deal with Don, I don’t want to do it bald.”

Catherine smiled. “Sure.”

“Catherine?”

“What, Pat?”

“I think you ought to call Joe. Even if life screws you, the good times can be worth it. Will you call him?”

“Maybe. I don’t know. He knows where I am.”

“You’re not so easy to catch up with, either, you know.”

“I am if he wants to.”

“Catherine, the days of playing hard to get are long since past.”

“I’m not playing hard to get. I just said he can find me if he wants to.”

Apparently, he didn’t want to, at least not badly enough to wait ten minutes until she got out of a meeting or to pick up the telephone.

But she didn’t have time to think about that now. The class was waiting – or should have been. She’d left them things to do while she was in the budget meeting, and they were all still practicing giving an infant a bath—except Maria. Maria was sitting in the classroom alone when Catherine came in.

“Where is everybody?” Catherine asked.

Maria had been very quiet of late, and she was quiet now. Quiet and seemingly bored. “Across the hall washing a doll,” she said.

“Why aren’t you with them?”

“Because I already know how to do that.”

“Maybe you could go watch and give them some hints,” Catherine suggested.

Maria looked up at her. “Maybe
you
could—” She didn’t finish the sentence, getting up noisily from her desk.

“Maria,” Catherine said when she’d reached the door. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, Ms. Holben. Everything’s just great.”

“Is there anything you want to talk about?”

“Not with you.”

Catherine ignored the sarcasm. Her friendship with Pat Bauer had made her very adept at doing that. “I’m here, if you change your mind. I know you’re upset about Sasha.”

“It’s not Sasha!” she said vehemently.

“All right! It’s not Sasha. I just want you to know that I’ve been known to help on occasion. If you want to talk, I’ll listen.”

“You get
paid
to do it,” Maria accused her.

“Right. And since I have to eat, you can be sure my heart’s in it. It’s not just a whim. I meant what I said. If you need help with something, I’ll try to help you. If I can’t, then I’ll try to find somebody who can—paid or not.”

They stared at each other, and for a moment Catherine though Maria was about to relent. She did want to talk, so much so that she couldn’t hide it, not when she dared to look Catherine in the eye.

“Maria . . .”

But the others returned and the moment passed. Cherry was carrying a very clean, very nude, plastic infant-size doll.

“Ms. Holben! We’re going to have to get a life jacket for this baby if you’re going to let Abby wash it,” she said, holding the doll up for her to see.

“My hands were slippery,” Abby said in her own defense.

“Yeah, and the baby’s head was under the water.”

The others laughed, and Abby gave a sheepish grin.

“I guess I just won’t wash my baby.”

“Lucky baby,” Cherry assured her.

“Okay,” Catherine intervened. “Let’s review . . .”

The day ended. She tried to catch some of the Friday afternoon weekend enthusiasm her class had, but she couldn’t do it. She didn’t feel enthusiastic about anything and she was annoyed with herself for it.

She went with Pat to purchase a wig, and they found one in the third place they looked that was both affordable and becoming. The day had accomplished something; Pat was in better spirits, at least.

Catherine heard nothing else from Joe. All that evening, after she’d gotten home, she toyed with the idea of calling, but she didn’t. She stayed up late, just in case, finally giving up around midnight. She slept reasonably well for her state of mind, and she woke up early, dreaming she’d heard the telephone.

“You have got to get yourself together, lady,” she said aloud.

She tried to stay busy with her usual Saturday morning cleaning chores. She had a life of her own—such as it was—and she was going to live it. She went out early to do her grocery shopping, then out again for a late lunch with Pat in her new wig, both of them deciding on the German restaurant at the Cotton Exchange neither of them could afford.

“Where else would someone named Bauer want to go?” Pat said lightly, in a better mood regardless of the fact that Don Bauer had given her that name in matrimony, and now he wanted it back again.

Pat looked so much better today. She was wearing makeup and a new-looking peach-colored dress that warmed her sallow skin. They had kraut dumplings and onion tarts and topped them off with chocolate-covered
Baumkuchen
, laughing as they ate, neither of them mentioning the men in their lives.

The day was bright and cold but not unbearably so, and afterward they strolled around the shops and through the inner courtyard in the Exchange. Catherine was enjoying herself—until she saw the missing stained-glass transom over one of the passageway doors.

Ah, Joe!

She felt the way she had when she was a teenager—unsure of herself, miserable, abandoned. But she was supposedly a big girl now. She knew the ways of the world; she certainly knew about the fickleness of men. She even made her living trying to help pick up the pieces of relationships gone awry. She just didn’t know what Joe D’Amaro wanted from her. Perhaps he hadn’t wanted anything but sex. Perhaps she was no different from Beatrice or Abby or any of them, regardless of her so-called experience. Like them, she’d given in to that terrible need women had to be close to someone and, like them, she believed that
her
experience had meant something, that she and Joe had been as close physically and emotionally as it was possible for a man and woman to be. In the face of his seeming indifference now, it was impossible not to have regrets. She simply didn’t know how to care about someone and still be unattached; she’d told him that. She didn’t want to learn. Whatever was happening with him now, she was determined not to let it get her down. Probably nothing was happening with him. She could imagine him happily going about his business with no thought of making the effort to nurture a relationship that was so fragile and new. Why should he? She had certainly proved willing enough. He had no reason to concern himself about their brief affair.

For all her foreknowledge she’d behaved no more wisely than her students. She’d participated in a short-lived affair between two people who needed to relieve their sexual tensions. Nothing more, nothing less—except that she had the growing realization that she was indeed getting over Jonathan. Her involvement with Joe wasn’t a complete loss if she could come away with that. She hardly thought about Jonathan at all, unless it was in some comparison to Joe D’Amaro. She wondered idly how Jonathan’s new marriage was going. She still believed that his new wife was already pregnant.

“There goes the face again,” Pat said. “Stop brooding. I’m the one dying of cancer.”

“I wish you’d stop saying things like that!”

“I know you do. That’s why I say them. So what’s on your mind?”

“Nothing worth the effort.”

“Aha! Joe D’Amaro.”

“I was not thinking about Joe D’Amaro.”

“Bullshit. So tell me. Is he a good lover or not?”

Pat’s question was loud enough for the two elderly women who were sitting on one of the inner-court benches to turn around and stare.

“Pat, will you hush?”

“No. I don’t have a sex life, so I have to share yours. I want to know if he’s a good lover or not. They do, too,” she said gesturing to the old ladies. Both of them giggled.

“Is he?” she persisted.

“Yes!” Catherine said to the three of them. “He is!”

“I knew it! It’s something about those buns of his, Catherine. I mean, the man has
great
buns—you should see them,” she added to the little old ladies. She cupped her hands, fingers spread wide, and demonstrated vividly in the air her approximation of that particular part of Joe’s anatomy.

“Let’s go,” Catherine said, laughing. “Honestly! You’re worse than Sasha and Cherry.”

But it felt good to laugh. She hated having her sense of well-being depend so much on someone else’s whims. On Joe D’Amaro’s whims. He had wanted her when he wanted her. When he didn’t, he didn’t know she was alive.

Her telephone was ringing.
She climbed the last flight of stairs on the run, but it had stopped by the time she got the door unlocked.

It rang again almost immediately.

“Hello?” she said, still breathless from the climb.

“Catherine,” Joe said, and she closed her eyes, unsettled by the rush of feeling the sound of his voice gave her. She was in over her head with this, way over her head.

“It’s Joe.”

“Yes, I recognize the voice,” she said, smiling.

“You sound like you’ve been running.”

“I was downstairs when the phone rang.”

“So are you busy this evening?”

Yes, she thought. She wasn’t at his beck and call. Tell him yes.

But she didn’t want to lie because her feelings were hurt. “No. I’m not busy.”

“I was wondering if I could bring Fritz by to see the gnomes.”

“What time?”

“Well, now, if you can do it.”

“Yes, that’s all right.”

“Catherine, I can’t . . .” He trailed off into silence in much the same way he had the last time they’d talked. She waited.

“Catherine,” he said again. Something was the matter. She could hear it in his voice. Her hand tightened on the receiver. She didn’t have the nerve to ask him what it was.

He gave a soft sigh. “I’ll bring Fritz by in a little while.”

“I’ll be here.”

He didn’t say good-bye. There was only the click of his ending the call.

“A little while” was nearly an hour. She had almost given up by the time she heard footsteps coming up the stairs. One set of footsteps. She waited for the knock, and when she opened the door, Fritz stood in the hallway alone.

“Hello, Fritz,” Catherine said. “Come in. Are you feeling better?”

Fritz didn’t answer her question. She didn’t want to say—unless Catherine just meant the ear infection and the sore throat and the upset stomach. That must be what she meant, Fritz decided. Catherine didn’t know about anything else.