Possessions Read online

"Not that I'm not crazy about them," she told Katherine earnestly. "I'd do it as a favor, except . . . well, you know, things cost so much ..."

  Katherine knew. She also knew that since Annie lived across the hall, she could be in her own home, at least part of the time, at her own typewriter, listening to her own records, and still be earning money as long as both apartment doors were open. Once they agreed it was a good deal for the two of them, they worked out a schedule of hours and payment for after school and evenings.

  Not that Katherine expected to be going out at night, but just in case something came up, it was good to know Annie was there. Especially for the afternoons. In Vancouver, she'd always been home when Jennifer and Todd arrived from school and the thought of their wandering around on their own while she was trapped at work had frightened her. Now that fright was gone.

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  One more arrangement made, she thought. It takes a lot of running and planning, to belong. But there was still more running ahead. They went sightseeing.

  Katherine splurged and rented a car, and they left early one morning for the Muir Woods. Driving north, they drove through a tunnel with its entrance painted in a huge rainbow. A good omen, Katherine thought as Jennifer laughed with pleasure when she pointed it out, and a little later, when they stood in awestruck silence beneath the cool grandeur of towering redwoods, all of Todd's and Jennifer's grumbling and disparaging comparisons with Vancouver ended, at least for a while.

  The next few days were packed with exploring: museums, parks, an old sailing ship, a chocolate factory converted to a shopping center, a zoo with a Gorilla World and a Zebra Zephyr tour train. But most exciting of all, for Jennifer and Todd, was driving on San Francisco's streets: the weird disembodied feeling that made them screech with delight when Katherine drove up one of the city's steep hills and they saw nothing ahead but sky, nothing of the other side, until the car was at the crest and then precipitously descending, giving them a stomach-clutching view down, down, past a cross street, then down past another, and still down, farther and farther, all the way to the water's edge. Then they would let out a long sigh of relief and pause before demanding, "Where's the next hill?"

  At the end of the week, when school and Katherine's job were both about to begin, they listed the places they'd had to postpone. It takes a lot of running to belong, Katherine thought again, smiling. But what a good start we've made.

  Heath's main store turns a cool marble facade toward Union Square. From four tall windows, haughty mannequins gaze at the comings and goings in the square across the street: couples entwined on the grass, men in tatters sleeping on benches, revival singers and fervent sf)eakers on a stone platform haranguing anyone who pauses to listen, office woricers taking a shortcut on the diagonal walks between flower gardens, clipped hedges, and tall spiky palms. Katherine stood among the mannequins in one of the windows, holding a silk scarf and a handbag, waiting for Gil Lister to ask for them. Heath's window designer for twenty years. Lister ran his little kingdom with entrenched power and a sharp tongue and only reluctantly had

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  accepted Katherine as his assistant. Short and round, with quivering lips and smooth skin, he estabhshed his supremacy the day she arrived.

  "Stand there, my dear, no, a little more to the right; now, when I ask for the scarf you will hold it up, so, and wait until I take it from you. No tossing it at me and no scurrying about so that I don't know where you are. Think of yourself as a surgeon's assistant, always alert for what I need, making sure I expend a minimum of effort in achieving the maximum of my potential. Clear? Not too difficult for you, my dear? Let's try it, then. Stand here—no, a little to the left ..."

  When she was not holding items above her head, her arms aching with the effort of keeping them extended exactly as Lister instructed, she sat at a small desk in a comer of his workroom, copying sketches of window displays, ordering mannequins and sending others out for repair, writing orders for scenery and props, and keeping files on all of Lister's designs and those he copied from designers in other stores. "It doesn't hurt them in the slightest," he told Katherine. "I'm not taking any business from them, and I could put together far more original ideas of my own, but you see how busy I am, my dear, it is appalling the way time rushes past and art suffers first, you'll discover that, art suffers when we have no time to contemplate and create. Still, we don't want competitors to be peeved at seeing their little designs in our windows, so we embellish them to give our customers the prestigious look they expect from Heath's. Hand me that table, my dear, we'll change this from a den to a living room."

  Alternately amused by his tricks to impress others and furious with his tyranny over her, Katherine could not wait to get away at five thirty each day, and by the end of her first week at work, she was worn out. Still, getting off the bus on Friday, she realized that for a whole week she hadn't anguished over Craig; she'd been too busy, too tired. Is that good or bad? she wondered. I mustn't let him seem too far away; too much depends on him. And if he were here, she reflected, he'd remember that today is my birthday and I wouldn't feel so low about it.

  She turned the comer, leaving behind the noisy congestion of Irving Street with its traffic, stores and restaurants from a dozen countries. Walking home, she began to feel better. It

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  was a quiet, pleasant street of identical tiny houses, each with a garage and a bay window above it, a small patch of lawn in front, with miniature gardens and small trees or bushes, almost like a small village.

  Beyond another, identical block was Golden Gate Park, its border of tangled bushes hiding museums and gardens, windmills and lakes, fields, woods, restaurants, and numberless paths to explore. Katherine saw Jennifer and Todd on the edge of the park, with Annie, waving at her, waiting to cross Lincoln Way. When they ran up to her she thought they looked conspiratorial.

  "The paint finally came," said Todd as Annie went in to do her homework. "White and yellow. Pretty dull."

  'Those are the colors I asked for," Katherine said. "Do I get a greeting?"

  They gave her a perfunctory kiss. "When do we eat?"

  "For heaven's ssice!" she exclaimed. "Can I have a few minutes to be me before I become the cook?"

  "Mom!" Todd stepped back and squinted at her. "You never osed to talk like that."

  Damn, Katherine thought, and bent to kiss them. "I'm sorry. It hasn't been the best week, you know." She saw them exchange a look. "All right, let's get dinner. Did you look in those bags to see if we got paint brushes and rollers?"

  They talked about school and painting the apartment, and as they were finishing dinner, Katherine said, "You haven't told me what you did after school."

  They gave each other a quick, secretive glance and shrugged. "Walked around with Annie."

  "Wherer'

  "The park. Irving Street. You know."

  "Just walkingr'

  "Not exactly ..."

  "Then what?" Katherine asked in frustration.

  'This!" Todd shouted, and from beneath his chair whipped out a small wrapped package. "Happy birthday!" he shouted again.

  Jennifer jumped up to give Katherine a loud kiss. "Daddy always took us shopping for your birthday so we weren't sure what to get but we hope you like it." Tears filled Katherine's eyes and Jennifer put her arms tightly around her. "We love

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  you, Mommy. And next birthday we'll shop with Daddy again, so everything will be all right."

  Katherine tried to smile. All day she had been remembering the ten festive birthdays that had gone before, celebrated with Craig's flowers, lavish gifts, a decorated cake from one of Vancouver's elite bakeries, and a rousing off-key "Happy Birthday" sung by Craig, Todd, and Jennifer. Now, as Jennifer and Todd put before her a plate of glazed doughnuts bristling with candles, it was all she could do to keep her tears from overflowing. "Happy birthday," they sang—and all of them thought what a thin chorus it was without Craig. Then Katherine blew o
ut the candles and, with Todd and Jennifer eageriy watching, opened her present.

  '*Oh," she said blankly, then recovered. "Oh, how lovely; and I've been needing a new one; how did you know?"

  They beamed. "It was Jennifer's idea," Todd said. "I never even heard of a blusher."

  Katherine turned the small plastic square in her hand, opened it to reveal the mirror, pressed powder and small brush, then closed it and ran her finger over the tortoiseshell surface. "I'll use it all the time," she said, hugging them. "Thank you— and thank you for remembering." But she wondered, as they washed the dishes, if Jennifer had thought of a compact as a way of telling her to pay more attention to herself. She felt embarrassed, and pressured, because she couldn't rouse herself to care about her looks. Each morning, dressing for work, she knew she should try, but a wave of lassitude would sweep over her and she would give up. I'm clean and neat, she told herself; that's enough. Someday I'll do more. If— when Craig comes back, I'll want to. Until then— She slipped the small compact into her purse. Just as she and the children were waiting for Craig, it would, too.

  Saturday morning Leslie appeared as Katherine was opening the first can of paint. "I don't beheve it," Katherine said. "What good timing. Too good, in fact. How come you're here?"

  Leslie sighed deeply. "Do not look a gift horse—"

  "Leslie. Why are you here?"

  "Long story. I stopped by this morning when you were grocery shopping and your kids were telling Annie you yelled at them last night, and worrying that you must be sick. They

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  also told me you were painting the place today, and I decided to make it a party. Are you sick?"

  "Of course not. They told Annie? They must have been more upset than I realized. I guess we all were. I didn't understand that they were in a hurry to eat so they could give me my present—"

  "Prcsentr

  "Yesterday was my birthday."

  "Damn it, lady, why didn't you tell me? We could have had a party. Thirty-five?"

  "Yes."

  "A depressing age to reach alone. Why didn't you tell me?**

  "I guess I didn't want a party." Katherine began to stir the paint. "And I had no idea Jennifer and Todd even remembered."

  "Good kids," Leslie said casually. "Which reminds me— where are they?"

  "At the hardware store. We needed extra brushes. Leslie, you don't have to help paint— "

  "I know I don't. That's why I'm doing it. Don't argue. Four painters cut the work in half and double the fun."

  And they did. With Jennifer and Todd, they gathered brushes, rags, rollers, and paint, arguing vociferously over the best way to stack furniture and divide the work, a^ soon the small apartment rang with banter and laughter. They worked steadily, stopping only for a sandwich at noon and by three they were almost finished.

  "How are you getting along with Gil Lister?" Leslie asked from the top of a ladder.

  "As long as I'm his obedient puppy, we get along fine."

  "I'm sorry about that. I told you he was an ass, but I thought with your artistic eye you'd like doing the windows."

  "I would."

  "But Gil doesn't want your ideas? Pity you aren't a charming young boy with a taste for rotund queers."

  "What's a rotund queer?" Jennifer asked, coming in from the bedroom.

  "An overweight eccentric," Leslie said hastily. "I don't suppose you've met any."

  "I don't suppose that's really what it means, either," said Jennifer shrewdly. "I'll ask my mother later; she doesn't think my education should be censored."

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  "My God,** Leslie breathed. "I've been put in my place."

  "Jennifer!" Todd yelled from the bedroom. "I think I spilled something!"

  "Don't you know?" she called back in exasperation. "Wait a minute; I'll come and help."

  When she left, Leslie grinned at Katherine. "I feel humbled. Is she always so damned bright and grown up?"

  "Only often enough to conftise me."

  "It would scare the hell out of me. Whenever I think it's about time I had one of my own, I meet one of these kid geniuses and decide I couldn't possibly cope."

  "Jennifer seems pretty nonnal to me. What do you mean, have one of your own? Are you secretly married?"

  "No. And no prospects in sight. But is that a requirement?"

  Katherine cocked an eyebrow. "It's at least a convenience."

  "Not always." Leslie waved her brush. "Not even necessarily. How many women shed unsatisfactory husbands long before the offspring are even half grown? How many men walk out and leave their wives stuck with bringing up—oh, shit, Katherine, I'm sorry. I am a full-fledged ass. I got carried away with speechmaking and forgot present company."

  "It's all right," said Katherine absently. She had stopped painting the baseboard and was looking around, trying to figure out why she suddenly felt uneasy. From her place on the floor, she could see all three rooms at once, looking bigger and brighter in their glistening new colors. Her apartment.

  How extraordinary. Her apartment, her home. Filled with her possessions, her children, and companionship. But something was wrong.

  The bright rooms had the look of a doll's house: a small bedroom for Jennifer and Todd, two narrow closets, a hving room with a sofa bed for Katherine, a kitchen just big enough for their oak table and captain's chairs. And then Katherine knew what was wrong.

  There was no room for Craig. They had made a home for a family without Craig.

  Melanie Hayward always asked for Wilma in the Empire Room of Heath's: the only saleswoman, she said, who understood her and always found clothes that were her. It was true that Wilma gossiped about the divorces and affairs and marital

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  tiffs of her customers, but a word from Melanie and she was silent. And Melanie always gave the word, as soon as she learned something new about her cu-cle.

  "—taken up with Ivan something," Wilma chattered as she helped Melanie into a silk sheath with a chiffon scarf. "Mack-lin, I think, Ivan Macklin; they've been seen together at Carmel and Las Vegas and her husband told her to drop him or get out. *rm not running no motel,' he says. 'Either you—'"

  "I hardly think," Melanie cut in, "that those were his words."

  "No'm, maybe not," Wilma agreed cheerfully. "Now you can either loop this scarf around your neck or wear it around your shoulders ..."

  By the end of the afternoon, Melanie had spent just under six thousand dollars on five outfits for the winter season, had learned three new items about her friends, and had instructed Wilma to watch for something special for an April gala she was planning at the Fairmont. Hununing, she browsed casually along the main floor, then stopped abruptly near the Union Square exit. Through an open door in the wail, she had caught sight of two people dressing a mannequin in a velvet evening gown. "Hand me the sash, my dear," the man said testily as Melanie watched, and the woman stretched her arm out for him to take a sash from her hand. What the hell, Melanie thought, remembering tfie last time she had seen the woman— pale, wearing a wrinkled suit, and ready to flee Victoria's dining room. What the hell is she doing here? Ross never said a word.

  She watched as they put a champagne glass in the mannequin's hand and moved on to dress another in satin and lace. Not as pale, Melanie thought, and the haunted look was gone. But there was something forlorn about her as she stood waiting for the little man's orders, obediendy handing him clothing and props and, once, glancing furtively at her watch. Serves her right, Melanie thought, for trying to worm her way in.

  But why was she working at Heath's? Driving home across the Golden Gate Bridge, Melanie seethed over it. What was she doing in San Francisco? How long would she wait to call the family and announce that she was ready to become a Hay-ward and share the Hayward wealth?

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  Maybe she already had. Maybe they knew and hadn't told her about it. Forced to slow down in the heavy traffic, Melanie clenched the wheel. Of course little
Katherine would call Ross the minute she arrived. And he kept it a secret. She swung the wheel at the Tiburon exit and a mile farther, at the base of their hill, put the car in low gear and took the steep road a little too fast all the way to the top. She wondered if he'd told Derek. Or Victoria. Or all of them. Why the hell, she demanded silently, am I the last to know?

  "I saw your mousy little friend today," she told Ross at dinner. "Working at Heath's."

  He looked up from contemplating a bottle of wine. "Who?**

  "You know perfectly well. Your dowdy Canadian protegee, the one who told us off at Victoria's."

  "Katherine? In San Francisco?"

  "Don't put on an act with me. Do you think I don*t know you're behind it?"

  "At Heath's, you said? By God, that took courage. As a sales clerk?"

  "I said, don't put on an act. You know damn well she's not a sales cleric. You probably got her the job. And a place to live. Without once mentioning it to me. Who did you mention it to? Victoria? Derek?"

  "I didn't know about it." They sat across from each other. Carrie and Jon had eaten earlier, as usual, in the kitchen with the maid and the cook, and, as usual, he and Melanie faced each other with no one to break the silences between them or moderate their taut exchanges. "I haven't spoken to Katherine in weeks."

  "You didn't know she was moving to San Francisco?"

  "No. We did talk about it once; in fact, I suggested it, but she didn't—"

  "Suggested it!"

  "She grew up here; she has a close friend—in fact if anyone is helping her, that's probably who it is. And she has us."

  "She doesn't 'have' us. She has nothing to do with us. If you didn't keep dragging her in—"

  "I didn't drag her this time. She made up her mind by herself and didn't tell me about it. What was she doing at Heath's?"

  "Window dressing. Helping a nasty little man who treated

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  her like dirt." The maid came in to clear their plates. "What did you do today?" Melanie asked brightly.

  He sat back. "As a matter of fact, this was a red-letter day. I was waiting to tell you about it."