To Have and to Hold

by Fern Michaels

  The packages she’d brought home with her were scattered all over the den floor. She could hardly wait to tell Gus about her day. She heard the machine come on and, disappointed, left her name and the time she called. She frowned when she realized he might be out on a date. He hadn’t actually said he dated, but he was a young, virile man. The thought perturbed her. She tried his number again at eleven-thirty before she crawled into bed. This time she didn’t leave a message. Her face burned when she thought of him in bed with a younger woman whose skin was soft and slick. She had no strings on Gus. He could do as he pleased, just as she could do as she pleased. Only she didn’t please.

  Her dreams were invaded by a handsome pilot spraying bullets into her rainbow garden, which was dormant for the winter. “Run, Gus, run. He wants to kill you!” she shouted. She was running, too, dragging a huge trash bag full of gaily wrapped Christmas presents. The rat-a-tat sound of the bullets slapping into the ground around her running feet woke her. She was breathing hard, her chest heaving with the effort. She fell back against the pillow, her mind in turmoil as she tried to fathom the dream. It was raining out, the fat drops slamming against the window with the force of the wind. Patrick was the pilot, of course. He wanted to kill Gus because she was contemplating something. She’d been trying in the dream to protect Gus. Why? What did that bag of Christmas presents mean? All those gifts from earlier days that she and the girls had wrapped so lovingly and never had a chance to give.

  Kate was awake now. “Damn!” She hadn’t dreamed about Patrick for years, and she rarely thought of him these days. She must have dreamed about him now because of Ellie’s news of Betsy. She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to picture Patrick. She used every trick she knew to conjure up his image, but it wouldn’t surface. Instead, Gus’s crazy features flashed behind her closed lids. He had such a gentle smile, such caring eyes. His touch was gentle, too. Her eyes snapped open when she remembered her last phone call with no answer on the other end of the line. Her hand snaked out from under the covers to snatch the clock. Good Lord, it was nine o’clock! Noon in New York. Gus should have called her by now. Unless he didn’t go back to his apartment last night. In the past he’d always returned her phone calls.

  Kate leaped from the bed. She would not think about this. By the time she showered, dressed, and made coffee, she had fixed in her mind an image of the girl she thought Gus had spent the evening with. She was twenty-six, maybe twenty-eight, a professional, wearing a crisp suit with a crisp white blouse and a single strand of pearls. She wore Bally shoes, had a French manicure, a casual wash-and-wear hairstyle. She was shapely, looked good in anything. She was beautiful and witty. She drove a firecracker-red Porsche, had long, shapely legs, and wore spike-heeled shoes. She carried a briefcase, and was so experienced in bed that men, Gus in particular, became addicted to her charms after only one night. Her name was ... was Gennifer with a G, not a J. G set her above all the other Jennifers in the Big Apple. “Shit!” Kate said succinctly.

  She stomped about the kitchen in search of food. The withered wrinkled apples in the fruit bowl had been sitting there for a month. The bread in the refrigerator had mold on it, as did the cheese. The lone cucumber in the vegetable bin was a slimy mass of yellow, putrid-looking seeds and skin. The bag of Oreo cookies was full of tiny bugs, and so was the box of Ritz crackers. God, how long had she had this stuff? Obviously she had to go to the grocery store, and there was no better time than right now. She would take the day off, too—go to the store, fill her car with groceries, come home, put them away, and then cook. Maybe she’d even bake a pie. Then she would sit down and eat everything. She wasn’t going to call the office, either. And for sure she wasn’t going to answer the phone. Maybe she’d make some fudge, with marshmallow fluff, peanut butter, and real nuts. A banana cream pie. A roast chicken with stuffing. She could eat all week. Maybe a pot of spaghetti. She could freeze everything into portions. She’d eat the whole pie through and most of the fudge. Let Gennifer What’s-her-name eat the bean sprouts and yogurt. She wasn’t trying to trap anyone, she didn’t need to stay needle-thin. She was a real woman, one who liked to eat.

  “Oh, shit!” she muttered as she yanked on her raincoat. “Shit, shit, shit!”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  When Kate returned home from the market with eleven bags of groceries, she could hear the phone ringing. “Ring, damn you, see if I care,” she muttered as she started to put away her groceries. Earlier she’d disconnected the answering machine. She was being silly, stupid. And so very jealous. As she slammed boxes of cereal and rice into the cabinet any old way, she kept muttering over and over, “Gennifer with a G, Gennifer with a G.” The faceless, nameless person was rapidly taking on an identity in her mind, and with each hour she grew more beautiful, more sophisticated, more upscale. Now she was model-thin, incredibly beautiful, with full, pouting lips and a mane of hair that was just curly enough, had just enough body to it, so she could toss her head and have it fly around like a moving nimbus.

  Her groceries tucked away, Kate banged the frying pan on the stove to brown the chopped meat for the spaghetti. Her mind attacked Gus when the phone shrilled. He was with Gennifer with a G, a sappy look on his face. Gennifer with a G would stretch like a cat, the nipples on her breasts taut beneath the thin sheet. “C’mere, love,” she’d purr. “I know what you want. We have time, love.” Yes, yes, she’d call him something stupid like “love.” Gennifer with a G would surely say, “We have time for a little ... nookie. . . .” No, she wouldn’t say that. She’d say, “Oooohhh, make love to me again.” And still wearing the same sappy look, Gustav Stewart would oblige. Twice. But was Gennifer with a G exhausted? Not on your life. She’d get up, stretch, making Gus aware of her high, firm breasts, her perfectly flat belly, her perfectly proportioned rear end. He’d groan and maybe moan, bury his head in the pillow, and say, “Let’s do it again. Soon. Real soon.” Gennifer with a G would toss her mane of hair, wink slyly and say, “It all depends, love, on what you have to offer.” At which point he’d rear up and say, “How does an eight-million-dollar estate in Connecticut and four million in the bank sit with you?” She’d give her tush a seductive wiggle and say, “If you’re telling me the truth, love, just fine. This body, all one-hundred-ten pounds, is yours.”

  “You son of a bitch!” Kate screeched as the onions started to burn. She scraped at them with a vengeance. “You said you were dividing the money up, you said you didn’t want the estate. You bastard! You stinking, lousy bastard!”

  The phone shrilled. Kate shut the stove off. The man hadn’t been born she would trust now. First Patrick and now Gus. “I always harbored a secret fear that at some time in our life Patrick would be unfaithful, but I never thought you would, Gus,” she whimpered. She flung open the refrigerator and reached for one of the bottles of wine she’d put in earlier. Supermarket wine. And she’d sent a whole case of 1924 Mouton Rothschild to him for Christmas. “Well, we’ll just see about that! Gennifer with a G is not going to drink wine I paid for, either.”

  Her purse was still on the kitchen table, filled with all the receipts from yesterday’s shopping. Kate rifled through them until she found the one she wanted. On the verge of tears, she tapped out the phone number, identified herself, gave her order number, and screamed into the phone, “Cancel that order! Credit my account. Buy your own goddamn wine, Miss Gennifer with a G!”

  Kate poured white zinfandel into a water glass and drank greedily. In her life she’d never had a drink of wine at eleven o’clock in the morning. “Well, there’s a first time for everything,” she muttered as she tripped from room to room, removing telephone wires from the jacks.

  At twelve-thirty she finished the wine, went to the bathroom, and was sick. She brushed her teeth, tottered back out to the kitchen, and uncorked a second bottle of zinfandel. At two o’clock she tried to march into the bathroom and was sick before she reached the door. “Oh, shit!” she muttered as she puked. “Now who’s going to clean this
up? Dellllllaaaa! ... Ah, the hell with it.”

  On her way back to the kitchen, she looked over her shoulder at the mess she’d left by the bathroom door. In true Scarlett fashion she said, “I’ll think about that tomorrow. Then again, maybe I won’t. Maybe I’ll never use that bathroom again. Oh, Della, I miss you. I’m drunk, Patrick. You should see me. I puked my guts out. Twice!” she said triumphantly. “Gennifer with a G would never throw up, never lose control. Who give’s a good rat’s ass? Do you hear me, Patrick? I’m using dirty language and I’m drunk. It’s pissifying. I learned these words from Ellie and her friends. What do you think of me now, Patrick?”

  She should make coffee. She was cooking, wasn’t she? The mess on the stove smelled good. The array of bottles, cans, and packages on the counter confused her. Maybe she should just throw it all away and start over. “Waste not, want not,” she said, giggling. Later, when she felt ... different, she’d figure out what to do with all the stuff. Now she needed coffee. Any fool could make coffee, even Gus.

  She started to cry as she measured coffee into the wire basket, spilling half on the counter and half on the floor. She tried a second and third time before she got enough into the basket. She slopped water all over the package of spaghetti, stared at it for a minute, and then shrugged. “Who cares? I don’t.” She giggled again as she staggered over to one of the oak chairs and sprawled on it in a very unladylike pose. “I’m drunk, I’m drunk, I’m drunk,” she mumbled in a singsong voice. Her stomach heaved threateningly. “I hate you, Patrick, for going off and leaving me. I hate Gus Stewart for being so unfaithful. But I love you, Della,” she cried. “What’s wrong with me that you all left me?” She dropped her head into her hands and cried for her loss. She was wailing, beating her fists on the kitchen table, when the front doorbell rang. “Go away!” she cried. “I didn’t invite you, whoever you are. Leave me alone.” The bell continued to ring, the coffee continued to perk. “Shut up, I have a headache,” she muttered. There was instant silence; the doorbell stopped ringing and the percolator offered up its last plop. “I need a cat!”

  Kate’s eyes focused on the two wine bottles and the mess on the counter. My God, was it five o’clock already? “Who cares what time it is. It’s just another day, another hour,” she said as she poured out coffee into a giant-size cup. Who the hell was going to drink all this coffee? “Guess I am, since there’s no one else here and I don’t have a cat. God, I need a cat,” she said, her eyes welling with tears of self-pity. Maybe Ellie would get her one, a tabby with yellow stripes and big eyes. She’d call it Betsy II.

  She reached behind her to a bank of light switches and flicked on all six. The kitchen blazed with light. The floodlights on the deck and in the yard made her blink. The back doorbell rang. Kate looked at the sliding glass doors and saw two policemen peering in at her. “Go away, I gave at the office!” she shouted. The doorbell rang again.

  “Mrs. Starr, will you open the door? We need to talk to you.”

  “Why?” Kate said craftily.

  “Please, it will only take a minute.”

  “Did I do something wrong?”

  “No, we just need to talk with you. Your phone doesn’t seem to be working.”

  “Well, la-de-da. Since when is that the policeeee’s business?” she said, slurring her words. “Go away.”

  “We’re going to stay here until you open the door.”

  Kate thought about the words. “You will. Even if I go to bed?”

  “Yes.”

  “If I give you a check, will you go away?”

  “If you open the door first to hand it to us.”

  “Oh, no, I’ll slide it under the door. Come back tomorrow.”

  “Mrs. Starr, if you don’t open the door, we’ll break it.”

  “Then you’ll pay for it,” Kate said spiritedly. “That’s ... that’s breaking and entering. This is my castle, you can’t do that.” She turned her back on the policemen and started to drink her coffee.

  The back doorbell rang again. “Ellie sent us,” one of the officers said. “We’re friends. Now will you open the door?”

  “She’s such a sweet child. Did she give you the tickets to bring all the way here?”

  “Mrs. Starr, open the door.”

  “I can’t find the lock. It won’t open. Guess I can’t let you in,” Kate said, sashaying back to the table. “Just leave the tickets on the deck. I’ll call somebody to open the door tomorrow.”

  “Mrs. Starr, go around to the front door and open it. You can open the front door, can’t you?”

  “Do I have to sign for the tickets? This is such a bother.” She staggered to the front door. The moment the door was open, the two officers each reached for one of Kate’s arms and led her backward. “Mrs. Starr, I’m Officer Archer and this is my partner, Officer Enright. Your daughter called us, she was worried about you. Then your office called us, and then a man named Gustav Stewart called us.”

  Kate drew herself up haughtily, shaking off the officers. “You lied, you don’t have the tickets. I don’t care if the President of the United States called you. I don’t want you here. You should be out catching criminals, not bothering people like me. Are you going to call those people?”

  “They’re going to call back. Your daughter was worried about you. Why didn’t you answer the phone, Mrs. Starr? Is it out of order?”

  “I unplugged it. I didn’t feel like going to the office. I wanted to make spaghetti today. That’s not a crime.”

  “Did you make it?”

  “What?”

  “The spaghetti?”

  “No.” Kate sighed. “I drank wine instead. I drank too much and got sick. I made coffee, though,” she said brightly. “You won’t tell that to Gus, will you?” She started to cry and then to babble about Patrick, about Betsy, about being alone. “I can’t possibly compete with Gennifer with a G. I’m almost fifty years old. She’s got this flyaway hair and ... she calls people ‘love.’ He fell for it, too.”

  The officers looked at one another before they led Kate back to the kitchen. Officer Archer poured fresh coffee for her before he settled her on the chair. “Tell me what to say to your daughter. She’s worried about you. Think about that for a minute while I plug the phone in.”

  “If it rings, don’t answer it! This is my house.”

  Archer held up his hand. “I hear you, Mrs. Starr, we won’t answer the phone.” He eyed the two wine bottles. “Did you drink both bottles, Mrs. Starr?”

  “Yes, I did,” Kate said stiffly. “I’m in my own house and can do whatever I damn well please. I can swear if I want to, too.”

  “What should we tell your daughter?”

  “Tell her ... tell her I screwed up. Tell her I’m sorry if she was worried. She can call the office. Don’t . . . Tell her not to call Gus. What are you going to tell him if he calls you back?” Kate asked suspiciously. “Tell him the truth, tell him I wouldn’t open the door.”

  “That’s only half the truth,” Archer said, not unkindly.

  “He doesn’t deserve the whole truth. I’m going to be embarrassed if I see you in town or on the street.”

  “Don’t be, Mrs. Starr. We all have days when things crowd in on us. Alcohol doesn’t make things better, but I think you already know that. Look, why don’t we call your daughter from here, tell her you’re all right. You’re going to leave all the lights on and you’re going to sleep this off. We’ll check back later, come around back to make sure things are okay. We’d like it if you’d sleep on that couch over there so we’ll be able to see you from the sliding doors. Will you do that, Mrs. Starr? Do you want the answering machine on?”

  “Yes, and no to the answering machine. Turn the phone low.”

  “All right,” Archer’s partner said, leading her to the couch. “Does your front door lock automatically?”

  “Yes.” Kate leaned back on the pillows the officer placed behind her head. She listened to the officer’s voice as he spoke on the phone.
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  “Your mother is fine, Miss Starr. She’s a little under the weather right now and is about to go to sleep. She had a bad day.... No, I don’t think you should make the drive up here. We’re going to look in on her later. She said you should call the office for her. She doesn’t want anything said to the gentleman who called the station. The one you said called you also. She’s quite adamant about that.”

  Kate fought the blanket of sleep that was about to engulf her. She had to remember what the officer was saying to Ellie. It was important because it was about Gus. She surrendered to sleep with Gus’s name on her lips and in her thoughts.

  Archer checked out the sliding door. “No wonder she couldn’t open it, there’s a rod in the track. It might be a good idea for us to take the key, return it tomorrow. She could sleep for hours or for twenty minutes. She looked pretty upset to me. You know who she is, don’t you, Enright? Her husband is the one who was shot down over Vietnam and has never come back. She raised her girls on her own, started up a business, again, on her own. She got fed up with the government and the Air Force and buried her husband’s things. It was in the paper a few years ago. If this is all she’s ever done that wasn’t on the straight and narrow, I don’t think we should judge her. This Gus person sounds like he’s at the root of whatever it was that set her off today.”

  Enright grinned. “She’s going to have one hell of a hangover tomorrow.”

  “Yeah, I don’t think the lady ever had one before. Maybe we should leave her a note. ‘Tomato juice with a squirt of Tabasco sauce. Drink this and it won’t be so bad. Add three aspirins if the headache is unbearable.’ ”

  Enright scrawled the note and propped it up against one of the wine bottles, then the two officers let themselves out of the house. They checked on Kate twice during the evening. She was sleeping peacefully at eleven o’clock when they went off duty. Their replacements checked on her at two in the morning and again at five-thirty. Their report to Archer and Enright was, “The lady is sleeping peacefully.” By mutual consent the report they filed read, “Mrs. Starr’s phone was disconnected. She was making spaghetti when we arrived. Mrs. Starr was fine when we left the house and said she would call her daughter to tell her she was all right.”