“Mamaaaaaa . . .” she wailed pitifully into the dark, “Mamaaaaa . . .”
“Please, Cat, please,” Clay begged, running his hand down her arm to find her hands fiercely knotted between her knees.
“Mama,” she wailed again.
He felt her body quaking and sought to calm her by cradling her as best he could with one arm along her thigh, cupping a knee and pulling her back against him.
“Darling, it's Clay. Please don't do this. Let me help you . . . let me hold you, please. Turn around, Cat, just turn around. I'm here.”
“Mama, I didn't mean to,” she quailed in that same childlike voice that frightened Clay so terribly. He stroked her hair, her shoulder, braced up and rested his cheek on the back of her head, waiting for some sign that she understood.
“Please, Catherine . . . I . . . don't shut me out.”
He felt the first soundless spasm, the first sob that was not yet a sob, and gently, gently, pulled at her shoulder, turning her toward him until, like a broken spring, she unwound all at once and burrowed into his arms, while painful sobs wrenched from her throat.
“Hold me, Clay, hold me, hold me,” she begged, clinging like a drowning person while her hot tears scalded his neck. Her grip was like iron while she quaked wretchedly and cried into him.
“Catherine, oh, God, I'm so sorry,” he said throatily into her hair.
“Mama, mama, it's all my fault.”
“No, Cat, no,” he murmured, clasping her to him all the more closely, as if to pull her within his very body that he might absorb her pain. “It's not your fault,” he soothed, kissing the top of her head while she babbled and cried and blamed herself. All the pent-up tears that Catherine had so long refused to shed for herself came rushing out for her mother while she clung to Clay with arms and hands that could not hold tightly enough. He cradled the back of her head, pulling her cheek against the silken hair of his chest, rocking at times, lost in pity, aching with the feeling of her heaving stomach pressed at last to his, but for the wrong reason. She muttered unintelligible sounds, broken by sobs which Clay welcomed, knowing they were the cure of her.
“It's all my f-fault, all my faul . . .”
He forced her mouth hard against his chest to stop the words. He swallowed convulsively before he could speak.
“No, Cat, you can't blame yourself. I won't let you.”
“B-but it's t-true. It's because I'm pre-pregnant. I should've kn-known he wa-wanted the money . . . ba-bad enough. I hate him, I h-hate him. Why did he do it . . . Hold me, Clay . . . I had to get away fr-from him. I had to, but to get a-away I had to b-be those things he c-called me, but I d-didn't care, I didn't care. You're so warm . . . They never hugged m-me, never k-kissed me. I was good, I was al-w-ways good, just that one t-time with you, but he sh-shouldn't take it out on her.”
Clay's heart thundered at her pitiful outpouring. She babbled on, almost mindlessly.
“I shouldn't have le-left her. I should have stayed, b-but it was s-so awful there when St-Steve left. He was the only one who ever—”
A deep sob broke from Catherine and she clung more desperately to Clay. Now he softly encouraged her, knowing she must say these things.
“Who ever what?”
“Who ever l-loved me. Not even M-Mama could, but I n-never understood wh-why. They never took me pl-places or bought me th-things like other kids got, or played with m-me. Uncle Fr-Frank used to kiss me and I'd pretend he w-was Daddy. Steve loved me, but af-after he was gone there was nobody and I used to pr-pretend I had a baby who'd love me. I thought if only I had a b-baby I'd never be lonely.”
She stopped then, having discovered this truth at last.
Clay squeezed his eyes shut hard. Her heart was hammering against his, her arms clinging tenaciously to his neck. Pity and compassion and the overwhelming need to heal her welled high in Clay. He was deluged by the desire to protect, fulfill, calm her, and to provide the missing years of love that could never be made up for. He fought against tears, holding her long and hard against his body, unable to hold her long enough, hard enough, pressing her so fiercely that at last he opened his legs to let one of hers in, high against him. And hers opened and his knee found shelter against her too. They clung that way, sharing a new bond of warmth and comfort until, pressed between them, the baby objected to all that crowding and moved restlessly within Catherine. A wild exhilaration lifted Clay's stomach, as if he'd just reached the downhill slope of a roller coaster. And everything—the horror Catherine had suffered this day, the first feel of his child's movement in her belly, her own desperate cry for love—made his motions somehow right as his hands skimmed over her body, up her back, down her side, down her warm buttock and leg that lay over his hip. And even as Catherine cried against his chest, Clay found the hollow behind her knee and pulled her more securely into her nestling place. He ran his hand again up her hip, up her side, finding her breast and cradling it, and the side of her stomach with his forearm. She was warm and reaching and unresisting against him, and he whispered raspily against her ear, “Cat, oh, Cat, why did you wait so long? Why did it take all this?”
With a hand, he commanded the back of her head and lowered his mouth into her salt-kiss. Her mouth opened wide and took him in, and it ceased to matter that it was only in desperation she turned to him. It ceased to matter that she might later feel he took advantage of her in her weakness. His hand, warm and soft and seeking, trailed, unchecked, from her full breast to the hard, taut stomach that protruded because of him. He fondled it searchingly, awed by its solidness, by the thought of the life it carried. And as if the baby heard its father's pleas, it moved within. Clay lay stock-still then, stunned, with his palm conforming to the shape of Catherine's flesh, willing the child to move once more. And when it had, and he'd again known the feel of it, Clay reached unhesitatingly to pull Catherine's wide gown up and run his hands over the bare, firm skin beneath. He skimmed his palm again and again over the warm curve of her belly, discovering things that his body had caused in hers: the protruding navel, the engorged breasts, the widened, enlarged nipples, and—yet again—the fluttery motion of life beneath his hand. How often he had wondered. How often he had thought it his right to explore these changes of his making. How often she, too, had longed to share them but had steeled herself against him, shielded in an armor of assumed remoteness.
But what had started out as a journey of pity and compassion became one of sensuality as Clay's caressing hand moved lower, touching the crisp hair that couched the spot where Catherine's burden thrust itself sharply outward from her body. Wordlessly he slipped his hand between her thighs, covering her, swollen there, with the length of his long, closed fingers, pressing gently upward, feeling her pulse throbbing there, learning her. Thoughts of her sexuality, her pregnancy, what he knew he could not do, made him curiously callow in his exploration of her. He moved his hand once more to her stomach.
“Oh, Cat,” he whispered, “your stomach's so hard. Does it hurt?”
She moved her head to answer no, amazed by his naíveté.
“I felt the baby move,” he whispered almost reverently, yet his breath was warm and labored on her skin. “It moved right there under my hand.” He spread his fingers over her stomach again, as if in invitation, but when nothing happened his hand again sought the intimate world between her legs.
And Catherine closed her eyes and let him . . . let him . . . let him, drifting in a myriad of emotions she'd held at bay so long, thinking to her child, It's your father.
And the father's hand filled itself with the mother's body that readied itself for their baby's birth.
“It's too late, Clay,” she murmured once.
“I know.” But he kissed the hard, warm orb of her stomach anyway, then lay his face in the juncture of her legs as if he must, unable to solace himself and her any other way. The child kicked against his ear.
Catherine was drawn painfully back to reality from the secure place in which she'd allowed her
self to drift. The thrum of her heart in odd spots in her body told her she had let Clay go too far to pull away from him unhurt when the time came.
“Stop, Clay,” she said in a loving whisper.
“I'm only touching, that's all.”
“Stop, it's not right.”
“I won't go any further. Just let me touch you,” he murmured.
“No, stop,” she insisted, stiffening.
“Don't pull away . . . come here.”
But now she resisted even more, having come fully to her senses.
He moved and tried to take her in his arms, then asked, “Why do you pull away all of a sudden?”
“Because it doesn't seem right with my mother lying in that hospital.”
“I don't believe you. A minute ago you had forgotten all about your mother, hadn't you? Why did you really turn away?”
She didn't know.
Very gently he said, “Catherine, I'm not your father. I won't call you names and make you feel guilty afterward. It's not because of your mother that you turn away, it's because of your father, isn't it?”
She only shivered.
“If you keep pulling away now, he'll have beaten you just as surely as he beat her, only the marks he leaves on you won't go away like hers will, don't you see that?”
“It's my fault he beat her up, because once before I gave in to you. And now here I am again . . . I . . . you . . .” But she stopped, confused, afraid.
“He's making an emotional cripple out of you. Can't you see it, Catherine?”
“I'm not! I'm not! I feel things, I want things, I need things, just like everybody else!”
“Then why don't you let yourself show it?”
“I j-just did.”
“But look what it took,” he said in a pained whisper.
“Get your hands off me,” she quavered. She was crying again but he would not allow her to roll away from him. “Why? What are you afraid of, Catherine?”
“I'm not afraid!” But her voice caught in her throat even as she said it.
He held her flat on her back, silently willing her to admit what it was that had held her emotionally sterile for too long, afraid that what he was doing might backfire and hurt her more.
“Of those names?”
He held her prisoner while her mind raced backward to ugly, unwanted memories which would not set her free. Clay's breath on her face brought her careening back to the present, to this man whom she loved and was so afraid of loving, of losing.
“I-I'm not,” she choked, while Clay felt her pulse pounding against him in places where he held her down. The muscles in her forearms tensed beneath his hands as she repeated, “I'm not, I'm not—”
He eased his hold, prompting softly, “What aren't you? Say it, say it, and be free of it. What?” She ceased struggling against him, and when he had freed her arms she flung one across her eyes and sobbed behind it. With infinite tenderness he touched her breasts, her stomach, the swollen world between her legs again, whispering urgently, “What aren't you, Catherine? Say it, say it.”
“I'm not—” she tried again, but choked to a halt.
“No, you're not, you're not. Believe me. Say it, Catherine. You're not what?”
It came out in a rush, tumblewords finding voice at last as she covered her face with both hands.
“I'm not bad I'm not a slut I'm not a whore I'm not I'm not I'm not!”
He enfolded her protectively against him, pinching his eyes shut while she flung her arms around his neck and clung. He felt a shudder possess her body and spoke into her hair.
“No, you never were, no matter how many times he said it. You never were any of those things.”
“Then why did he say them, Clay, why?”
“I don't know . . . Shh . . . The important thing is that you don't believe him, that you don't let him hurt you anymore.”
They rested at last against each other, exhausted, silent. Before she slept, Catherine again pictured her mother and realized she herself had just escaped becoming the same kind of self-contained, undemonstrative being.
And for the first time ever, she felt she had beaten Herb Anderson instead of the other way around.
Chapter 26
Ada opened her eye. It looked like a soft-poached egg. Her mouth tried to wince but couldn't.
“Mom?” Cathy whispered.
“Caffy?” Ada's lips were still grotesquely swollen.
“You've been asleep a long time.”
“Have I?”
“Shh, don't move. Try to rest. You have a cracked rib and if you move it'll hurt.”
“I'm so tired,” the old woman breathed, succumbing, letting her eye slide shut again. But even in her bleary state she'd observed something that startled her eye open again.
“You've veen crying.” She couldn't pronounce her b's.
“A little. Don't worry about me, just worry about—” But tears stung her eyes again, burning the swollen lids. Ada saw and fluttered a hand. Catherine took it, feeling the small sparrow-bones and how little strength her mother had. The same helplessness which Clay had felt the night before, now assaulted Catherine.
“I ain't seen you cry since you was a little girl,” Ada whispered, trying her hardest to squeeze her daughter's hand.
“I gave it up long ago, Mom, or I would've been doing it all the time.”
“It ain't a good fing to give up.”
“No—no it isn't.” Catherine swallowed. “Mom, you don't have to talk.”
“Funny fing, you sayin' I don't hafta talk, me sayin' you don't hafta cry—least not for each other. Vut I guess we gotta do it for ourselves.”
“Why don't you wait till you're feeling stronger.”
“Veen waiting nineteen years to get stronger.”
“Mom, please . . .”
A gentle pressure on Catherine's hand silenced her. Ada spoke with an effort.
“Time it was said. Just listen. I'm a weak woman, always have veen, vut mayve now I faid my dues. Got to tell you. Herv, he was good to me once, when I was first married to him. When Steve was a vavy you shoulda seen Herv with Steve, why you wouldn'ta known him.” She closed her eyes, rested momentarily before continuing. “And then all that vusiness started in the Gulf of Tonkin and Herv, he was in the reserves. When his unit got called to active duty, I figured he'd ve vack in no time. Vut it was worse'n we thought, and he was gone two years. He saw a mighty lot in them two years. He saw so much that he come home liking the liquor too much. The drinking he mighta got over, but what he never got over was findin' me expectin' a vavy when he got home.”
Catherine wondered if she had understood Ada's distorted words correctly.
“A—a baby?”
The room was still. Ada's single, open eye stared at the ceiling.
“Yes, a vavy. That was you, o' course.”
“Me?”
“I told you I was a weak woman.” Ada's eye teared.
“I'm not his?”
The bruised head moved back and forth weakly on the pillow while a rippling sense of freedom seeped into Catherine.
“So you see, it wasn't all his fault, Caffy. I done that to him, and he could never forgive me, nor you either.”
“I never understood till now.”
“I was always so scared to tell you.”
“But, why didn't you?” Catherine leaned nearer so her mother could see her face better. “Mom, please, I'm not blaming you, I just need to know, that's all. Why didn't you ever stand up for me? I thought you didn't—” Catherine stopped, her eyes flickered away from her mother's.
“Love you? I know that's what you was gonna say. It's no excuse at all, vut Herv, he was just waiting for me to show you some favoritism. Why, he'd use any excuse to vlow up. I was scared of him, Caffy, I was always scared after that.”
“Then why didn't you leave him?”
“I figured I owed him to stay. Vesides, where would I go?”
“Where are you going to go now? Surely you are
n't going to go back to him?”
“No, I don't need to now that you know. Vesides, it's different now. You and Steve all grown up, all I have to worry avout is myself. Steve, he's made a good life for himself in the service and you got Clay. I don't need to worry avout you no more.”
A prickle of guilt traced through Catherine's veins. She rubbed the back of her mother's hand absently, then sat forward to study Ada's face.
“Who was he, Mom?” she asked wistfully.
A contorted smile tried to find its way through the swollen lips.
“It don't matter who, just what. He was a fine man. He was the vest thing that ever happened to me. I'd go through all the years of hell with Herv again if I could live those days once more with your father.”
“Then you loved him?”
“I did . . . oh, how I did.”
“Then why didn't you leave Da—Herb, and marry him?”
“He was already married.”
Hearing all this, Catherine realized that within her mother dwelled an Ada she would never know, except for the glint of remembrance in the bloodshot eye.
“Is he still alive?” Catherine asked, suddenly wanting to know everything about him.
“Lives right here in the city. That's why it's best if I don't tell you who he is.”
“Will you tell me someday?”
“I can't make that fromise. See, he went flaces. He's something now. You'd never have to ve ashamed of having a father like him. My—my mouth is a little dry. Do you think I could have some water?”
Catherine helped her mother drink, listened to her weary sigh as she sank back again.
“Mom, I have a confession to make too.”
“You, Caffy?” The surprised way her mother said it made Catherine wonder if Ada might not have always thought her above wrong, only she herself had been too busy looking for outward shows of affection to see the deeper, intrinsic feeling.
“Mom, I did it on purpose—got pregnant, I mean. At least, I think I did. I wanted to get even with Herb for all the times he'd called me names, and I wanted to get away from both of you, from that house where there was never anything but fighting and his drunkenness. I guess subconsciously I believed a baby would get me out and provide me with love. I didn't think he'd take it out on you, but I feel somehow it is part of the reason he beat you, wasn't it?”