Possessions

by Judith Michael

  "No," said Katherine. "Good news." She told Victoria the story, from the time Gil Lister fired her to Leslie's description of the executive board meeting that morning. "And there's more. She and Qaude seem to have become very close."

  "But isn't she your age? Claude likes young, wide-eyed maidens."

  'That's what we thought. But perhaps he's changed?"

  "If so, she must be a remarkable young woman."

  "She is. I hope Claude knows it. I want her to be happy and she's been wishing for a family a long time."

  "Ah." From a fluted silver dish, Victoria spooned a small mound of whipped cream and set it floating on her coffee. "I noticed a postcard for you in today's mail."

  P0SSESSI0S8

  Katherine burst out laughing. "Yes. From Ross. Now what could have made you think of thatT'

  "I can't imagine," said Victoria calmly. "You know how an old woman's thoughts skip about. Is he busy?"

  "Busy and happily watching walls being torn out. And collecting postcards for all the children. The one he sent was a picture of a place we had dinner the night before we came here."

  "Postcards for the children," Victoria said ruminatively. "When Craig was a boy, he collected postcards. I remember the first time we took him to Tahoe, he insisted someone had drained the lake because it looked so much smaller than its picture on postcards we'd sent. Hugh roared about the difference between reality and pictures but that only terrified the poor child, so finally they went out in the boat and spent the day motoring around the circumference of the lake. Hugh never sent any postcards after that. I'm not sure what Craig learned firom it all."

  Craig. Katherine looked at the harbor, lit now by floodlights: a tangle of masts and ropes, and sails wrapped in bright canvas shrouds. All that month she'd barely thought of him; no one had spoken his name; his shadow had not followed her. But now it was here. What was he doing now? she wondered. What was he afraid of now?

  "If Ross buys postcards for the children," Victoria was saying, "he should tell them they're not the real thing. Do you miss him?"

  "Yes," said Katherine quietly. She had been avoiding Victoria's questions, but now, in the chill of Craig's shadow, she wanted to talk.

  "And you think about him?"

  **Yes." She smiled. "Enough to interfere with my work."

  "And what is it you think about?"

  "Nothing sp)ecific. Just—about him."

  "What you do with him, or what you would like to do with himT'

  "Are you asking me if we're sleeping together?"

  "No, no, no, I would not ask that! It may be modem to discuss such matters, but in that respect I am nnost emphatically not modem. That is no one's business but your own, and his. I meant, do you think of him as a husbandT'

  POSSESSIONS

  "No." Agitated, Katherine stood, and went to the low stone wall bordering the terrace, holding her face up to the faint breeze. "I don't think of him as a husband because I already have a husband—"

  "Whom you should divorce."

  "—who is also my children's father . . . What? What did you say?"

  "I said you should divorce Craig. Why should that surprise you? He deserted you thirteen months ago and except for some money and one visit, from which he ran away again, you haven't heard a word from him. Do you really call yourself married?"

  "I don't understand. In the past, you've always defended him."

  "So I have. In some circumstances I still might. But I also have you to think of now. And it has become obvious to me that you cannot think clearly about Ross, or indeed any man, or make an unobstnicted future for yourself, until you are free of this shadow that follows you about, clouding your view."

  "I can't do that."

  "Of course you can; it is not at all difficult; Derek has done it three times. I've asked Qaude about it—of course he is the perfect person to help you: discreet, almost a member of the family—and he explained it to me. In the first place, it is not 'divorce' any longer, but 'dissolution,' and all you need do, since you cannot find Craig to serve him the papers in person, is place a legal notice in the Vancouver newspapers, for one month, that you are petitioning for dissolution. If he does not respond in that time, you will go to court, accompanied by Claude, declare that your differences with your husband are irreconcilable, and the judge then issues the order. Claude says it takes about three minutes. And in six months it becomes final."

  "Very simple," Katherine said. "But that isn't what I meant. I can't divorce Craig because he isn't here."

  "I have explained that he doesn't have to be here— "

  "Victoria, you know what I mean."

  "Yes. Of course." Victoria laced her fingers together. "I suppose I was trying to prevent you from talking to me about fidelity. It does not seem applicable."

  Something was nagging at the back of Katherine's mind. 357

  POSSESSIONS

  Something Leslie had said. She sat on the stone wall, staring through the swaying masts at a boat coming toward the harbor, running with the wind. Running. Bruce. Someone thought Bruce would run. They thought he was the type who'd run from problems, which would incriminate him even more. Someone framed Bruce for a crime because he seemed like the type who would nm away.

  They did a nifty job of framing him . . . it almost worked . . . it almost convinced his own sister.

  The boat had come into the harbor; Katherine could see the small figures of the crew pulling down the main sail and furiing the jib. Dizzily she gripped the rough stone. "Katherine," Victoria said sharply. "What is it? Come here, before you fall."

  But Katherine was thinking back, a long way back, remembering someone shouting at Carl Doemer. It was at her party for Leslie, that Friday night when Craig didn't come home. Someone had shouted . . .

  Pretty free with accusations, Doemer! You're known for that, aren't you? Especially false ones —

  Listen you bastard, that was two years ago. And when I found out I was wrong, I paid the costs and it was over.

  "Katherine!" Victoria commanded.

  Obediently, Katherine returned to the table, but she did not sit down. "Would you mind if I go out for a while?" she asked. Her voice was very soft, as if she were afraid of breaking something. "I'd like to take a walk. There are some things I have to think about."

  "Of course, my dear, if you're all right. If I said too much, I apologize— *'

  "No. It was nothing you said." Bending down, she kissed Victoria's soft cheek. "I love you. I won't go far."

  But she had already gone a long way, all the way back to Vancouver, to the day Craig left. The day he ran away. Not necessarily because he'd committed a crime but—perhaps— because he'd been framed for one.

  But Carl said Craig had confessed. Katherine remembered his shaggy presence in her living room as he held out an envelope with what he said was proof. And then later she'd found all those bills, past-due notices, sheets of scribbled numbers . . .

  But still . . . Why hadn't it occurred to her that he might

  POSSESSIONS

  have been framed? For ten years she had known him as a good man; he'd been good to them and she loved him. Why was I so ready to believe my husband was guilty?

  Because he wasn't there. Because he ran.

  Why would he run, if he was innocent?

  Maybe because he didn't know what to do, and had no one to talk to about it.

  I was there, she reflected angrily; he could have talked to me. Whose fault was it that he was better at keeping secrets than sharing?

  His. But maybe I didn't make him feel I really wanted to know them. What was it Leslie had once said? You liked the life you had with him, so you didn't push. I tried to get him to talk, but after a while I stopped, and let him have his secrets. If I'd asked more questions, maybe he would have told me about the Haywards, and about our overspending—and maybe other secrets that I haven't even thought of.

  Walking along the harbor, a silent figure among crowds of vacationers, Katherine knew
it was not an excuse for running. There was no excuse for Craig's deserting them. But if he thought he couldn't talk to her about v/hat happened—whether he was framed or really did steal—didn't she have something to do with that?

  Can you be married for ten years without sharing some responsibility for what happens?

  If I'd been different — would Craig have run?

  Chapter 15

  8.

  OMEHOW Victoria saw to it that everyone was occupied and out of Katherine's way from early the next morning until well after dinner. "I don't know what is bothering your mother," Katherine heard her answer Jennifer's question. "But if she needs a quiet time to think, we can help by leaving her alone."

  They all left her alone. She took the car that Ross had left for her to use and drove into the hills behind Menton, where ancient "eagles' nest" villages clung to the rocky peaks. In Eze Village, she stopped and sat for hours beside an old stone house hundreds of feet above the sea. Below, on the coastal comiche, cars rolled like tiny marbles on a narrow strip between the beach and wooded hills. Behind the houses of Eze, the cactus gardens were in full bloom. But for Katherine, the magic and dreamlike isolation were gone. All the questions that had haunted her before had found her here; she hadn't escaped them after all—she'd only pushed them aside for a brief time.

  She remembered thinking, in Sospel, that she and Ross ought to talk about Derek—but it was Craig they really had

  POSSESSIONS

  to talk about. And when she'd been uncomfortable, at breakfast with Victoria, thinking Ross was becoming a part of her—it was Craig she was uncomfortable about, still with her, shadowing her, part of her life. And it was Craig she had to deal with, no matter how important Ross had become.

  "What time do you expect Ross tomorrow?" Victoria asked after dinner.

  "He said sometime in the morning."

  Victoria nodded and returned to her book and in a moment Katherine returned to hers. They were sitting opposite each other in deep, soft armchairs, and now and then they glanced up and smiled, happy with each other. But Katherine was restless and just before midnight, when Victoria kissed her goodnight and went to bed, she went to her own rooms. The housekeeper had turned down the bed and left small lamps on, casting a soft glow over the sage green and ivory furnishings. Unbuttoning her shirt, Kathering walked from the sitting room to the bedroom and back, thinking of Jennifer and Todd asleep in their own rooms just off the playroom. She pictured the three-room apartment awaiting them in San Francisco and thought rueftilly that they'd have to get used to it all over again, as they had the year before.

  She paced restlessly, then, pulling on a robe, went back along the corridor to the darkened living room where she had left her book. As she reached for it, a key turned in the front door and Ross walked in, a suitcase in one hand, a bunch of packages in the other, dangling like balloons from a loop of string.

  "Hitched a ride," he said, as casually as if he had not been gone at all. He dropped the suitcase and packages and strode across the room to take Katherine in his arms. "I missed you. I woke up missing you and went to sleep missing you. Did you get my postcard?"

  "Yes—"

  "I wrote twenty. The other nineteen are in my suitcase. I didn't want you to think I was overdoing it." And as she laughed, he kissed her.

  Enfolded in his arms, Katherine held him in her own, her lips opening with his in a long breathless kiss and then small, murmuring ones. Their arms seemed like a charmed circle, she thought, with no secrets or doubts. Ross untied her robe and

  POSSESSIONS

  pushed it open. The buttons of his sport jacket had left faint impressions on the smooth skin of her breast and stomach and he kissed each one, lingeringiy, before Katherine took his hand— not thinking, not planning, dizzily wanting him—and they walked down the corridor to her rooms.

  But once inside, when he had shut the door, they moved apart. Katherine saw the sombemess of his dark eyes, intent on her face. "All the way back from Paris," he said, "I wanted you. And I knew we'd have to wait. We have too much to talk about."

  No charmed circle after all, Katherine thought. She nodded. "I spent hours yesterday at Eze Village, wondering where we'd begin."

  "Could we begin with some food? I flew down with a friend who was in a hurry to leave, so we didn't take time for dinner."

  "Of course," Katherine said. And added softly, 'Thank you," knowing he would understand that she was grateful to him for giving her something to do, giving them both something to do, until their bodies cooled and they could talk. And then she thought how rare it was to find someone she could trust to understand her. We can tell each other the truth, she reflected. Remembering Craig, nothing seemed more important.

  In the lower half of an olive-wood cabinet in her sitting room was a small refrigerator. Katherine knelt in front of it. "I'm not sure what's here. We may have to go to the kitchen."

  "My wants are simple," said Ross beside her, then laughed— "and what could be simpler than this?" —as he pulled out three kinds of cheese, sliced Westphalian ham, locally grown Clementines and dates, and a crusty loaf of French bread. He piled everything on a platter and from the upper shelves of the cabinet chose a bottle of Cotes du Rhone, and they carried it all to the terrace, returning to the cabinet for plates and wine glasses, cheese knives and napkins. "Who could resist a woman who provides such a midnight snack?" he murmured.

  "Her name is Sylvie," said Katherine. "She's run the villa for Victoria for fifteen years, and seems content, but she might consider an offer if you wanted to make one."

  He chuckled and kissed the top of her head, then sat beside her at the round cypress table. "I don't think I'll steal Sylvie from my grandmother. Though if she has a sister, I could use

  POSSESSIONS

  her in Berkeley; I'm ashamed of how little I know about keeping house. How do women know these things? Their mothers can't possibly prepare them for every crisis that crops up."

  "I think they got the message a few thousand years ago," Katherine said dryly, "that if they didn't pay close attention and learn on the job, they'd be out of a job."

  "You mean out of a marriage."

  "Probably. But it's mainly attention and practice. You'll learn very quickly."

  "Of course. I've already begun."

  "And how are you getting along?"

  "Carrie gives me advice." They laughed, and then were silent.

  The soft air was fragrant with roses and pines, and an elusive breeze brought whispers of the sea. The terrace was deeply shadowed, lit only by the glow from the sitting room and bedroom, and when Ross leaned forward to fill Katherine's glass, her face filled his vision—pale, faintly flushed, with dark hollows: as fme as a delicate etching. "You are so lovely," he murmured, then let out his breath in a long sigh. "Do you know, the whole time we've been together, with everything we've talked about, we've managed to avoid talking about Craig—and Derek."

  "We talked about us," Katherine replied. "About our feelings. As if no one else were real." She looked at him gravely. "What do you want to know?"

  "I want to know you. What you were before I met you, what you were with Craig, what you were with Derek." He paused. When he spoke again it was as if the words were wrenched from him. "I have no right to ask about Derek. But from what I do know about you, it makes no sense . . . that you stayed with him as long as you did." He waited, but Katherine said nothing. "I know what he offered you, and I know how much you needed it. But I don't understand how it lasted, why the glamour didn't fade when you got to know him, how he uses people—"

  "He didn't use me."

  "Derek uses everyone; he sets up power plays and maneuvers people through them. He always has, even in our family."

  "Jennifer," Katherine murmured. "Melanie. Myself."

  POSSESSIOSS

  "What? What does that mean?"

  "Once I asked Derek why he pursued women who were close to you and Craig."

  "How did you know about Jenn
ifer? What made you think he was ever involved with Melanie?"

  'Tobias told me about Jennifer. I saw him with Melanie one night, and guessed."

  As if struck, Ross sat back in his chair. Phrases, looks, small details from his marriage ran through his mind and he knew it could be true. He'd never suspected, because Melanie talked about Derek so much—too much, one would have thought, for a woman burdened with the guilt of an affair. But why should he assume that Melanie had any guilt?

  A flash of rage tore through him, then, surprisingly, faded, and he realized how little importance Melanie had for him now—even when his brother was involved. Once, that might have crushed him; now, sitting beside Katherine, he found his thoughts moving beyond Melanie and Derek to something even more surprising. "You said that to Derek and he took it? I've seen him destroy reputations for less."

  "I didn't stay to give him a chance."

  "But you'd stayed a long time."

  "Ross, you said you understood what he offered me: glamour, excitement, a chance to be with people who controlled events instead of being jostled by them . . . And you must know how charming he can be, and how clever. I needed all of that; I enjoyed myself with him." Seeing his dark frown, she sighed. "You want to know if I slept with him." When he was silent, she said slowly, "You think I did."

  Ross refilled their glasses. "I told you I have no right to ask. But I spent a lot of time in Paris thinking about you, about being in love with you and wanting more than picnics and swimming holes. So I had two choices. I could say the past is unimportant, that you and I begin from our time in Paris; or I could say it's more important than ever that I understand the past, because it means understanding you. I decided I had to understand. That was why I came back early. I couldn't wait."

  His words were like heartbeats beneath Katherine's thoughts. In love with you. "I didn't sleep with Derek." But then she knew that wasn't enough. If we don't have the truth, she thought,

  POSSESSIONS

  we don't have anything. Taking a deep breath, she said, "But I wanted to."

  Quickly, looking beyond him, at the harbor, she said, "Craig had been gone for almost seven months. Derek was the only man I was seeing, and he hadn't pressured me. I suppose he thought he wouldn't have to. Instead he took me into his world and made me feel beautiful and desirable, instead of like a housewife who'd been deserted. And there was something else." She gave a small, embarrassed laugh. "He had none of Craig's virtues. He wasn't gentle or kind or loving or anxious to please ... I never knew exactly what he expected of me. He was like the dark side of my husband and somehow that was so exciting—^I felt like a child, sneaking cookies from the cupboard. And I think Derek knew that; he encouraged that feeling of something forbidden ..." Again she paused. "I didn't love him, but he was hard to resist. Then, last New Year's Eve, he invited a crowd back to his place after a party and I became his hostess. It was as if all my fantasies had become real. By the time everyone left, there was only one thing I didn't have, and hadn't had for months. But then . . . Jennifer called. Telling me to come home. Craig was there."