Separate Beds (5 page)

“We love you, Clay, no matter what,” Angela reminded him.

Claiborne added, “The proof of it may seem curious at this time, but as the saying goes, love is not always kind.” Then, placing his hands once again on Angela's shoulders, he said, “Good night, son.”

Leaving the two of them, Clay knew they would remain allied on whatever stand they took; they always did. He had no wish to play them one against the other, though his mother seemed the far more tractable. Their unity of purpose had created such a great part of Clay's childhood security, anything else would have been out of character now. He could not help but wonder what kind of parenting team he and the volatile Catherine Anderson would make. He shuddered to think of it.

Angela Forrester lay with her stomach nestled tightly against her husband's curled back, one hand under her pillow, the other inside his pajamas.

“Darling?” she whispered.

“Hmm?” he answered, fast enough to tell her he hadn't been asleep either.

The words seemed to stick in Angela's throat. “You don't think that girl will go and have—have an abortion, do you?”

“I've been lying here wondering the same thing, Angela. I don't know.”

“Oh, Claiborne . . . our grandchild,” she whispered, pressing her lips against his naked back, her eyelids sliding shut, her mind filling with comparisons—how it had been when she first fell in love with this man, how elated they'd been when she became pregnant with Clay. Tears sprang to Angela's eyes.

“I know, Angie, I know,” Claiborne soothed, reaching behind to pull her body more securely against his. After a long, thoughtful silence he turned over, taking her in his arms. “I'd pay anyone any amount of money if it meant preventing an abortion, you know that, Angie.”

“I kn . . . I know, darling, I know,” she said against his chest, strengthened by his familiar caress.

“I had to make Clay face up to his responsibilities, though.”

“I know that too.” But the knowing didn't make it less painful.

“Good, then get some sleep.”

“How can I sleep when I—I close my eyes and see that odious man pointing his finger and threatening her. Oh, God, he's ruthless, Claiborne, anyone can see that. He'll never let that girl get away while he thinks she's the key to our money.”

“The money's nothing, Angie, it's nothing,” he said fiercely.

“I know. It's the girl I'm thinking of and the fact that it's Clay's child. Suppose she takes it back home to the same house with that—that vile man. He's violent. He's the kind—”

In the darkness he kissed her and felt her cheeks were wet. “Angie, Angie, don't,” he whispered.

“But it's our grandchild,” she repeated near his ear.

“We have to have some faith in Clay.”

“But the way he talked tonight . . .”

“He's reacting like any man would. In the light of day let's hope he sees his obligations more clearly.”

Angela rolled onto her back, wiped her eyes with the sheet and calmed herself as best she could. After all, this was not some reprobate they were talking about. It was their son.

“He'll do the right thing, darling; he's just like you in so many ways.”

Claiborne kissed his wife's cheek. “I love you, Angie.” Then he rolled her onto her side and backed her up against him again, settling a hand upon her breast. Her hand crept behind to cradle the reassuring warmth inside his pajamas. And thus they drew strength from each other in the long hour before sleep eased their worries.

It took practiced skill to outwit the caginess of Herb Anderson. He had the sixth sense that inexplicably thrives in alcoholics, that uncanny intuition which can make the hazy brain suddenly work with alarming clarity. The next morning Catherine carefully maintained her customary routine, knowing any small change would trigger his suspicion. She was standing at the kitchen sink eating a fresh orange when Herb came shuffling into the room. The fruit quenched some new taste she'd developed lately, but it seemed to amuse him wickedly.

“Suckin' on your oranges again, huh?” he grated from the doorway. “Lotta good that'll do ya. If you wanna suck something, go suck up to old man Forrester and see if you can get something outa him. What the hell's the matter with you anyway? The way you stood there like some goddam lump last night—we won't get nothin' outa Forrester that way!”

“Don't start in on me again. I told you I'd go with you but I won't back your threats. I have to go to school now.”

“You ain't goin' anyplace till you tell me what you got outa lover boy last night!”

“Daddy, don't! Just don't. I don't want to go through it again.”

“Well, we're gonna go through it, soon as I have me a coffee roy-al, so just stand where you are, girlie. Where the hell's your mother? Does a man have to make his own damn coffee around this dump?”

“She's gone to work already. Make your own coffee.”

He rubbed the side of his coarse hand across the corner of a lip. Catherine could hear the rasp of whiskers clear across the room.

“Got a little uppity since you talked to lover boy, huh?” He chuckled. She no longer tried to stop him from using the term lover boy. It pleased him immensely when she did. He came to the sink and started slamming parts of an aluminum coffeepot around, dumping the grounds out, leaving them to stain the sink, wiping his hands on his stretched-out T-shirt. She stepped back as the stream of water hit the grounds and some came flying her way. He chuckled again. She leaned over the sink sideways, continuing to eat the pieces of quartered orange. But, at close range, he smelled. It made her stomach lurch.

“Well, you gonna spit it out or you gonna stand there suckin' those oranges all morning? What'd lover boy have to say for himself?”

She crossed to the garbage can beside the ancient, chipped porcelain stove, ostensibly to throw away the orange peel; actually she could not stand being so near the man.

“He doesn't want to marry me any more than I want to marry him. I told you he wouldn't.”

“You
told
me! Hah! You
told
me nothin', slut! I had to search my own goddam house for any fact I wanted! If I wouldn't've had enough brains to go lookin' I still wouldn't know who your lover boy is! And if you think I'm gonna let him get off scot-free, well, sister, you better think again!” Then he fell to mumbling in the repetitive way she'd learned to despise. “Told me . . . she told me, ha! She told me goddam nothin' . . .”

“I'm going to school,” she said resignedly, turning toward the doorway.

“You just keep your smart little ass where it is!”

She stopped with her back to him, sighed, waited for him to finish his tirade so she could pretend to go to classes and he'd leave the house in his usual, aimless way.

“Now I wanna know what the hell he means to do about this mess he got you in!” She heard the exaggerated slam as the coffeepot hit the stove burner.

“Daddy, I have to go to school.”

Whining, mimicking, he repeated,
“Daddy, I have to go to school,”
and finished by roaring, “You wanna go to school, you answer me first! What's he intend to do about gettin' you knocked up!”

“He offered me money,” she answered, truthfully enough.

“Well, that's more like it! How much?”

How much, how much, how much! she thought frantically, pulling a figure out of the air. “Five thousand dollars.”

“Five thousand dollars!” he exploded. “He'll have to do better than that to see the end of me! My ship just come in and he wants to pay me off with a measly five thousand bucks? One o' them diamonds in the old lady's rings was worth ten times as much.”

Slowly Catherine turned to face him. “Cash,” she said, pleased with the greedy light that responded in his eyes, promising herself to remember it and laugh when she was gone. He pondered, scratching his stomach.

“What'd you tell him?” His face wore that sly weasel's expression she despised. It meant the wheels were turning; he was scheming again about the best way to get something for nothing.

“I told him you'd probably be calling his father.”

“Now that's the first smart thing you said since I come in here!”

“You'll call him anyway, so why should I have lied to him? But I haven't changed my mind. You can try bleeding him all you want, but I won't have any part of it, just remember that.” This too was her long-taken stand. Should she suddenly veer from it he would undoubtedly become wary.

“Sister, you ain't got the brains God gave a damn chicken!” he blasted, yanking a dirty towel off the cabinet top, then slapping the edge of the sink with it. But she'd long grown inured to his insults; she stood resignedly in the face of them, letting his spate run its course. “You not only ain't got enough brains to keep yourself from gettin' knocked up, you don't know when your ship's come in! Ain't I told you it's come in here?”

The term sickened her, she'd heard it so often, for it was part of his grand self-delusion. “Yes, Daddy, you've told me . . . a thousand times,” she said sarcastically before adding firmly, “But I don't want his money. I'm making plans. I can get along without it.”

“Plans,” he scoffed, “what kind of plans? Don't think you're gonna sponge offa me and raise that little bastard around here 'cause I ain't raisin' his brat! I ain't made outa money, you know!”

“Don't worry, I won't ask you for a thing.”

“You bet your boots you won't, sister, because you're gonna call up lover boy there and tell him to fork over!” He pointed a finger at her nose.

“To whom? You or me?”

“Just don't get smart with me, sister! I been waiting for my ship to come in one helluva long time!” She almost cringed again at the hated expression. He'd built his pipedreams upon it for so long that he was no longer aware of how often he used the term, nor the shallowness of character it only served to emphasize.

“I know,” she commented dryly, but again he missed the sarcasm.

“And this here is it!” He jammed a dirty finger at the floor as if a pot of gold were there on the cracked, green linoleum.

“Your coffee is going to boil over. Turn the burner down.”

He studied the pot unseeingly while the lid lifted with each perk and the man remained unaware of the hiss and smell of burnt grounds. The girl who looked on felt a sudden despair at the changelessness of the man and her situation in this household. Almost as if he'd forgotten her, he now conspired with the coffeepot, leaning the heels of his hands upon the edge of the stove, mumbling the litany Herb Anderson repeated with increasing fervor as the years crept up on him. “Yessir . . . a long time, and I deserve it, by God.”

“I'm going. I have to catch my bus.”

He came out of his reverie, looked over his shoulder with a sour expression. “Yeah, go. But just be ready to put the screws to old Forrester again tonight. Five thousand ain't a piss in a hurricane to a rich son-of-a-bitch like him.”

When she was gone, Herb leaned over the sink and took up whispering to himself. He often whispered to himself. He told Herb that the world was out to get Herb, and Herb deserved better, by God, and Herb was gonna get it! And no uppity little slut was gonna ace him out of his rightful due! She had her mother's whorish blood, that one did. Didn't he always say so? And didn't she prove him right at last, getting knocked up that way? Just goes to show, things come out even in the end. Yessir. Catherine owed him—Ada owed him—hell, the whole damn country owed him, if it come down to that.

He poured himself another coffee royal to stop the shakes.

Goddam shakes, he thought, they're Ada's fault too! But after his third drink he was as still as a frog eyeing a fly. He held out his hand to verify the fact. Feeling better, he chuckled to think how clever he was, making sure old man Forrester wouldn't want any Andersons tied to his highfalutin' bloodlines! By the end of the week Forrester'd pay, and pay good to see no wedding took place between his high-class son and no knocked-up Catherine Anderson from the wrong side of the tracks.

It took Herb until nearly noon to get his fill of coffee royals and amble from the house in search of his imminent ship.

From the corner grocery store Catherine watched her father leave, hurriedly called her cousin, Bobbi Schumaker, then returned to the house to pack. Like Catherine, Bobbi was in her first year at the University of Minnesota, but she loved living with her family. Her home, so different from Catherine's, had been a haven for Catherine during her growing-up years, for the two girls had been best friends and allies since infancy. They kept no secrets from each other.

Bumping along an hour later in Bobbi's little yellow Beetle, Catherine felt relieved to have escaped the house at last.

“So, how'd it go?” Bobbi glanced askance through oversize tortoiseshell glasses.

“Last night or this morning?”

“Both.”

“Don't ask.” Catherine rested her head back tiredly and shut her eyes.

“That bad, huh?”

“I don't think the Forresters could believe it when the old man barged in there. God, you should have seen that house; it was really something.”

“Did they offer to pay the bills?”

“Clay did,” Catherine admitted.

“I told you he would.”

“And I told you I'd refuse.”

Bobbi's mouth puckered. “Why do you have to be so almighty stubborn? It's his baby too!”

“I told you, I don't want him to have any kind of hold on me whatsoever. If he pays, he might think he has some say in things.”

“But the economics of it doesn't make sense! You can use every cent you can get. How do you think you're going to pay for second semester?”

“Just like I'm paying for the first.” Catherine's lips took on that determined look Bobbi knew so well. “I've still got the typewriter and sewing machine.”

“And he's got his father's millions,” Bobbi retorted dryly.

“Oh, come on, Bobbi, they're not quite that rich, and you know it.”

“Stu says they're rolling in it. They have enough that a few measly thousands wouldn't tip the scales.”

Catherine sat up straighter, her chin stubbornly thrust out. “Bobbi, I don't want to argue. I've had enough of it this morning as it is.”

“Sweet old Uncle Herb on the warpath again, huh?” Bobbi questioned, with saccharine dislike. Catherine nodded. “Well, this is it; you won't have to put up with it after this.” When Catherine remained despondent, Bobbi's voice brightened. “I know what you're thinking, Cath, but don't! Your mother made her choices years ago, and it's her problem to live with them or solve them.”