Separate Beds (24 page)

“You must be,” she laughed, and flung the bag at him, nearly doubling him over.

That night they were sitting on the davenport studying with a bowl between them when Catherine suddenly dropped a handful of popcorn back into the bowl. Her eyes grew startled and the book fell from her fingers.

“Clay!” she whispered.

He sat forward, alarmed. “What's the matter?”

“Oh, God . . .” she whispered, clutching her stomach.

“What's the matter, Catherine?” He eased nearer, concern etched across his eyebrows.

She closed her eyes. “Ohhh . . .” she breathed while he wondered if she had written the doctor's number down where he could find it fast.

“For God's sake, what is it?”

“Something . . . something . . .” Her eyes remained closed while sweat suddenly broke out across his chest. Her eyes opened and a tremulous smile played at the corners of her mouth. “Something moved in there.”

His eyes shot down to her stomach. Catherine held it like she was getting ready to try a two-hand set shot with it. Now he held his breath.

“There it goes again,” she reported, her eyes closing as if in ecstasy. “Once more . . . once more . . . please,” she whispered invocatively.

“Is it still moving?” he whispered.

“Yes . . . no! . . . wait!”

“Can I feel?”

“I don't know. Wait, there it is again—no, it's gone.”

His hand advanced and retreated several times through all this.

“There it is again.”

She made room for one of his hands on the gentle mound beside her own. They sat there mesmerized for a long, long time. Nothing happened. Her eyes drifted up to his. The warmth of his hand seeped through to her flesh, but the flutter within remained stilled.

“I can't feel anything.” He felt cheated.

“It's all done, I think.”

“There, what was that?”

“No, that wasn't it, that was probably only my own heartbeat.”

“Oh.” But he didn't take his hand away. It lay there warmly next to hers while he asked, “What did it feel like?”

“I don't know. Like—like when you're holding a kitten and you can feel it purr through its fur, only it lasted just a moment each time.”

Clay's face felt hot. His scalp prickled. He still cupped her stomach with a hand which stubbornly wasn't going to move away without feeling
some
thing!

It's good to touch her, he thought.

“Clay, nothing's going to happen anymore, I don't think.”

“Oh.” Disappointed, he slid his hand from her. But where it had been, there were five buttery smudges on her green cotton blouse.

“You've marked me,” she joked, stretching out the shirt by its hem, suddenly too aware of how good his hand had felt.

He caught a glimpse of a zipper that wasn't completely zipped, a snap which wasn't snapped.

“Yes, for life,” he said on a light note, but he had the sudden urge to kiss her, she looked so expectant and crestfallen at the brevity of the sensation. “Promise me you'll let me feel it next time it happens?”

But she didn't promise. Instead, she moved a safe distance away, then muttered something about getting the butter out before it set permanently and headed in the direction of the laundry.

When she returned, she was wearing a pink duster and fuzzy booties, and he had great trouble concentrating on his studying after she resumed her place on the other side of the popcorn bowl.

By now Catherine well knew how Clay enjoyed his morning coffee at the counter. He was there at his usual place, reading the morning paper a few days later when she appeared from upstairs. He blew on his coffee, took a sip, looked up over his paper, and his lips fell from the rim of the cup which hovered, forgotten, in midair.

“Well, well, well . . . lookit here,” he crooned.

She pinkened, got suddenly very busy plopping a piece of bread in the toaster with her back to him.

“Turn around so I can see.”

“It's just a maternity top,” she said to the toaster, looking at her reflection in it.

“Then why so shy?”

“I'm not shy, for heaven's sake!” She swung around. “I just feel conspicuous, that's all.”

“Why? You look cute in it.”

“Cute,” she muttered disparagingly, “like Dumbo the elephant.”

“Well, it's got to be more comfortable than going around with your zippers open and your snaps flapping.” Again she colored. “Well, I couldn't help but notice the other night when I was feeling your tummy.”

“I kept thinking of facing your grandmother in maternity clothes and putting it off as long as possible.”

He put down his paper and came around the peninsula to pour another cup of coffee. “Nature will have its way, and not even Elizabeth Forrester can stop it. Don't frown so, Catherine.”

She turned to butter her toast. “I don't want to think about facing her for the first time wearing these.”

On an impulse he moved close behind her and touched his lips to the back of her hair, his cup still in his hand. “That probably won't be until Christmas, so stop worrying.”

Facing the cabinets, she was unsure of what it was she'd felt on the back of her head, and then, without warning, he slipped an arm around her middle and spread his fingers wide on her stomach.

“Is there any more activity going on in there?” he asked.

From behind, he saw her jaws stop moving. She swallowed a mouthful of toast as though it were having some difficulty going down.

“Don't touch me, Clay,” she warned, low, intense, fierce, not moving a muscle. His hand stiffened, the room seemed to crackle.

“Why? You're my w—”

“I can't stand it!” she snapped, slapping the toast down on the counter. “I can't stand it!”

He felt the blood surge to his head, stung by her unexpected outburst.

“Well, I beg your goddam puritanical pardon!”

He clapped his cup down vehemently, and stormed out of the room, out of the house, without so much as a good-bye.

When the door slammed, Catherine leaned over, braced her elbows on the countertop and buried her face in both hands. She wanted to call, Come back, come back! Don't believe me, Clay. I need touching so badly. Come back and make me let you touch me, even if I argue. Smile at me and wish me your sweet-tempered good-bye like always. I need you so badly, Clay. Coddle me, comfort me, touch me, touch me, touch me. Only, make it all mean something, Clay.

She had a miserable day that day.

She made supper and waited. And waited. And waited. But he didn't come. She finally ate alone, staring at his empty stool beside her, the food like cardboard in her mouth. She ate very little.

She put on one of his favorite tapes, just for some racket in the place, but that was worse. She felt more miserable than ever, for it only brought back the memory of his slamming out the door as he had. She put on one of her favorites, but naturally, it soon rolled around to the same old song which always reminded her of him: “You're Just Too Good To Be True.” That made her more miserable than ever, so she chose to wait in silence. At eleven o'clock she gave up and went to bed.

She woke up at two A.M. and crept down the dark hall and checked the living room. In the blackness it was hard to see. She felt her way to the davenport with her feet, reached out a careful hand only to find that there was no bedding there, no Clay.

Finally, at five she fell asleep only to be awakened an hour and a half later by the alarm. Catherine knew before she went downstairs that he wouldn't be there.

School was an exercise in futility that day. Catherine sat through her classes like a zombie, seeing little, hearing less. All she saw was Clay's hand on her stomach the night when they'd been eating popcorn. All she heard was his voice, “Can I feel?” She remembered his eyes, those eyes she'd grown to know so well, with a brand new look, wide-gray, excited. “I can't feel anything, Catherine. What did it feel like?”

Her insides trembled at the thought of his staying away all night. She'd have to call his parents if he wasn't home when she got there. Sick at the thought that he might not come home tonight either, she delayed going there herself. She stopped at Horizons after classes for a visit with the girls. Only, she learned that Marie had gone into labor around ten o'clock that morning and they were all waiting for news from the hospital. Without a second thought, Catherine drove to Metro Medical Center and obtained permission to wait in the father's waiting room. By the time news came, it was nine o'clock. She was not allowed to see Marie, for they had taken her directly to the recovery room, so Catherine finally headed for home.

When she got there, the living room light was on. At the sight of it she felt her heartbeat go wild and racy. Catherine opened the door to silence. Slowly she hung up her coat, and even more slowly ascended the stairs. Just inside the living room Clay was standing like an outraged samurai. His shirt hung open and wrinkled, his beard was a smudge across his cheeks, his hair was unkempt and his face bore the ravages of a sleepless night.

“Where the hell were you!” he roared.

“At the hospital.”

His anger swooshed away, leaving him with that gut-hollow feeling as after an elevator drops too fast. He looked at her stomach.

“Is something wrong?”

“Marie just had a six-and-a-half-pound baby girl.” She turned on her heel, heading upstairs, but found herself swung around roughly by an elbow.

Madder than ever at having been duped into thinking something was wrong with Catherine, he barked, “Well, you could have called, you know!”

“Me!” she yelled back. “I could have called! What about you!”

“I'm the one that got thrown out, remember?”

“I did not throw you out!”

“Well, you sure as hell didn't make me feel anxious to come back.”

“The choice was yours, Mister Forrester, and I'm sure you didn't suffer out in the cold.”

“No, I sure as hell didn't.”

“Did she let you paw her nice flat stomach all night long?”

“What's it to you? You gave me permission to paw anything I want of hers, didn't you?”

“That's right,” she hissed, “anything you want!”

“Catherine, let's not get into it, okay? I'm beat and I—”

“Oh, you're beat! Poor baby. I didn't get two hours sleep last night worrying that you drove it out of your system until you cracked up the Corvette someplace and all the while you were with her and now you come home crying that you're tired? Spare me.”

“I never said I was with her. You assumed that.”

“I don't give a tinker's damn if you were with her or not. If it'll keep you off my back, fine! Spend all the time you want with Jill Magnusson. Only do me the courtesy of reminding me not to cook supper for you on your nights out, all right?”

“And who do you think cooked supper for you tonight?”

Her eyes slid to the kitchen. Sure enough, there was evidence of a neglected meal all over the place. Catherine didn't know what to say.

He raged on. “Just what do you suppose I thought when you didn't show up to eat it?”

“I know what you didn't think—that I was out someplace with an old boyfriend!”

He ran a hand through his hair, as if searching for control, then turned away.

“You'd better call your mother; she's worried sick.”

“My mother? How did she get into this?”

“I couldn't think of anyplace else you'd be, so I called her place.”

“Oh, fine, just fine! I didn't call
your
mother to check up on you!”

“Well, maybe you should have 'cause I was there.”

He stomped across the living room and plunked down on the davenport. “Lord,” he said to the windows, “I don't know what got into you yesterday morning. All I did was touch you, Cat. That's all I did. Was that so bad? I mean, what do you think it makes a man feel like to be treated that way?” He got to his feet and started pacing back and forth. “I mean, I've been living like a goddam monk! Don't look! Don't touch! Watch what you say! Sleeping on this davenport like some eunuch! This setup just isn't natural!”

“Whose idea was it in the first place?”

“All right, granted, it was mine, but be reasonable, huh?”

Her voice grew taunting. “What am I to you, Clay? Another conquest? Is that what you're after? Another notch on your”—she glanced insolently at his crotch—”whatever it is you notch? I should think you could do better than one banged-up, big bellied loser like me. Listen, I plan to come out of this marriage with fewer scars than I had going in, and to do that I need to keep you away from me, do you understand? Just stay away!”

Suddenly Clay stormed across the room, grabbed one of her wrists and, in his fury, flung his other hand wide, exclaiming, “Damnit, Catherine, I'm your husband!”

Instinctively she yanked free of him, covering her head with both hands, hunkering down, waiting for the blow to fall.

At the sight of her, dropped low in that crouch, the anger fell from him to be replaced by pity, which hurt—hurt worse than the thought that she could not stand being touched by him.

He dropped to one knee beside her.

“Cat,” he said hoarsely, “God, Cat, I wasn't going to hit you.”

But still she cowered on her knees, sunken in some fear too big for him to fully comprehend. He reached out a hand to soothe her hair. “Hey, come on, honey, it's Clay. I'd never hit you, don't you know that?” He thought she was crying, for her body quivered terribly. She needs to cry, he thought, she needed it weeks ago. He watched her knotted fists dig into the nape of her neck. He touched her arms. “Come on, Cat.” He gentled, saying, “It's only a silly fight, and it's over, huh?” He brushed back a strand of hair that fell like a golden waterfall covering her face. He leaned down to try to see around it, but she clutched her head and bounced on her haunches as if demented. Fear tore through his gut. His heart felt swollen to twice its size.

“Cat, I'm sorry. Come on, don't . . . Nobody's going to hurt you, Cat. Please, honey, I'm sorry . . .” Sobs collected in his throat. “Let me help you to bed, okay?” Something switched her back to reality. She raised her head at last, just enough to see him with one eye around that veil of gold. With infinite tenderness he promised, “I won't touch you. I just want to help you to bed; come on.” The tears he expected to see were not there. She unfolded herself finally, tossed back her hair and eyed him suspiciously. Her face wore a protective mask of expressionlessness.

“I can do it.” Her voice was too controlled. “I don't need your help.”

With measured movements, she rose and left the room, left him kneeling there in the middle of it with a knot of emptiness inside him.

After that Catherine spent her evenings in the spare room. She either sewed maternity clothes or did typing jobs on a card table she'd set up in there. When she had studying to do, it, too, was done in the spare bedroom. Like a hermit crab, she crawled off into her shell.

After several nights of her incessant typing, Clay came to the bedroom doorway, stood there studying her back, wondering how to approach her.

“You're doing a lot of typing lately. Your professors laying on a heavy load or something?”

She didn't even turn around. “I got a couple of jobs typing term papers.”

“If you needed money, why didn't you say so?” he asked impatiently.

“I want my typing to stay good.”

“But you've got enough to do keeping up with your classes and things around the house without taking on more.”

At last she looked over her shoulder. “I thought we agreed not to interfere with each other's private lives.”

His mouth drew into a straight, hard line, then she turned back to her work.

The following evening when she was again seated at the typewriter, she heard the door slam. Her fingers fell still, hovering over the keys while she listened. Finally she got up and checked the living room and kitchen to find him gone. She sighed and returned to the spare room.

But there was undeniably a lonely feeling about the place, knowing he wasn't out there.

He got home around ten, offering no explanation of where he'd been, getting no questions from Catherine. After that, he would leave occasionally that way, preferring not to face her indifference, or the isolation of the living room with the sound of the clattering typewriter or sewing machine coming from upstairs.

One evening he surprised her by returning home earlier than usual, coming into her hideout with his jacket still on. He dropped a checkbook on the cardtable and she glanced up questioningly. He leaned from one hip a little, hands in his jacket pockets, only his eyes and hair picking up a faint reflection from the gooseneck lamp pointed down at the table.

“What's that?” she asked.

He eyed her from the shadows. “I ran out of blank checks and had to have some new ones printed.”

She looked down at the black plastic folder, opened it and found her name imprinted beside his on the top check.

“We had a deal,” said Clay. “I'd support you.”

She stared at the paired names on the blue rectangle, reminded of their wedding invitations, for some reason. She looked up but his features were inscrutable above her.

“But not forever,” she said. “I'll need money next summer and recommendations from satisfied customers. I want to take these jobs.”

He shifted feet, leaned on the opposite hip. His voice was slightly hard. “And I want you back out in that living room in the evenings.”

“I've got work to do, Clay.” And she turned back to her typewriter, making the keys fly. He left the checkbook where it was and strode angrily from the room.

After he was gone, she leaned her elbows on the machine and rested her face in her palms, confused by him, afraid—so afraid—of allowing her feelings for him to sway her. She thought of the coming summer, the separation that was inevitable, and sternly began typing again.

The spare bedroom soon became cluttered with her things: piles of blank paper and manuscripts lying in heaps on the floor beside patterns and fabric scraps. Textbooks, a tote bag, her schoolwork.

Christmas break arrived and she spent most of it holed up, typing, while he spent most of his time in the law library at the university, which was open seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day.

He arrived home one evening just before supper, tired of the austere law library and its dry books and rigid silence. He hung up his coat while cocking an ear toward the spare room. But everything was silent; the clack of the typewriter was disturbingly absent. He wandered upstairs, glanced into the cluttered room only to find it dark. He hurried downstairs again, to find a note.

“Bad news this time. Grover's baby born early. Going to Horizons. Back late.” It was signed simply “C.”

The house seemed like a tomb, silent and lifeless without her. He made himself a sandwich and wandered to the sliding glass doors to stand looking out at the snow while eating. He wished they'd have a Christmas tree, but she expressed no desire to buy one. She said they had no ornaments anyway. He thought about her cold withdrawal from him, wondered how a person could insulate herself from feeling as she did, and why. He was used to living in an environment where people conversed at the end of the day, sat and shared some talk with their dinner, sometimes watched television or read books in the same room, companionable even in silence. He missed his mother and father's house very much, picturing the enormous Christmas tree that was an annual fixture, the fires, the aunts and uncles dropping in, the gifts, the decorations which his mother lavished upon the house. For the first time ever, he wished Christmas would hurry up and get past.

He took his sandwich and wandered idly upstairs to change into a jogging suit to lounge around in. He stopped at the doorway of the dark workroom, took another bite of the sandwich, wandered in and snapped on the gooseneck lamp. He touched the keys of the typewriter, read a few words from the paper she'd left in the platen and glanced over the papers that covered the top of the crowded table.

Suddenly he stopped chewing, arrested by the dark corner of a book that was peeking from beneath a stack of papers. He licked off his fingers, slid the book out to reveal a half-filled page of Catherine's handwriting.

“Clay went out again tonight . . .” it began. He pushed the book back and hid it as it had been, took another healthy bite of tuna salad and stared at the corner of the book. It lured him, peeking out that way. Slowly he set his plate down, licked some mayonnaise from a finger again, drawn by that volume. Finally he gave in and laid the diary across the typewriter platen.

“Clay went out again tonight but didn't stay out quite as late as last time. I try not to wonder where he goes, but somehow I do. It always seems lonesome here without him but it's best not to get used to having him around. Today he mentioned buying a Christmas tree, but no matter how bad I want one, too, what's the use? It's just another tradition to break next year. He wore his brown corduroy jacket today, the one he wore the time—”

There she had stopped.

He dropped down into her chair, still staring at the words, feeling great guilt at having read them, but rereading them just the same. He pictured her sitting here, holed up in this room away from him, writing her secret feelings instead of talking about them with him. Again and again he read the words, “He wore his brown corduroy jacket today, the one he wore the time—” and wondered what she'd have written had she completed the thought. She never mentioned anything about his clothes. He'd never thought before that she even was aware of what he wore. Yet this . . .

He closed his eyes, remembering how she had said she couldn't stand to have him touch her. He opened them again and read, “He wore his brown corduroy jacket today, the one he wore the time—” Was it a pleasant memory she attached to the brown jacket? He remembered the fight they'd had over Jill. He reread, “It always seems so lonesome here without him.”