Promise Me A Rainbow (42 page)

“What do you want to drink?” Joe asked Catherine. “Milk?” he asked when she didn’t say.

“Nothing right now,” she said. “Just the toast. Maybe Later.”

Joe and Catherine were talking with their eyes again, but this time Fritz couldn’t tell what they said.

Catherine ate her toast, and Fritz sat down at the table with her.

“So what have you been doing?” Catherine asked her after a while.

“Oh, nothing much,” Fritz said. She looked at Joe. He was watching Catherine.

“I’m in the Christmas pageant,” Fritz said, remembering Catherine might like to hear about that.

Catherine smiled. “What are you going to be? I was a
T
one time, the
T
in
Christmas
.”

“I have to be a wise person,” Fritz said.

“A wise person?”

“Yeah, we didn’t have enough boys in the class to be Joseph—and the shepherds, and the innkeeper, and
all
the wise men, too—so I have to be one. Only Charlie says I’m not a wise
man
because I’m a girl. Charlie says it’s a very bad case of miscasting, and I should fire my agent. We had to cut Caesar Augustus out.”

“Ah, well,” Catherine said. “I’ll bet it’ll still be nice.”

“Can you come and see me? It’s on Christmas Eve.

“I don’t know about that, Fritz.”

Her heart sank. “It’s all right if you can’t,” Fritz said quickly, trying to keep her disappointment from showing. The church was beautiful at Christmastime—with the tree and the candles and the holly and evergreen branches. She could close her eyes and see it, smell it. All her life she’d wanted to peek out from behind the curtains and see a mother among all those smiling faces in the audience at the Christmas pageant. Catherine was as close to a mother as she would ever get. Catherine was almost one. She knew in her heart of hearts that Catherine was almost one. And she knew what that kind of answer meant. It meant no, only Catherine didn’t want to come out and say it.

Joe and Catherine were looking at each other again. He reached out and took her hand.

“Come on,” he said. “I’ll show you where you can lie down.”

“Joe, this really isn’t such a good idea—”

“Catherine, let’s don’t beat a dead horse, okay. Come on.”

She got up reluctantly from the table, and she stopped trying to say no. Joe thumped Fritz lightly on top of her head, the way he did sometimes when he was close enough and he wanted to get her attention.

“Fritz, if there’s anything on my bed, run and clear it off, will you? We’re going to let Catherine rest here with us for a while. Maybe take a nap if she can.”

Fritz looked up at him. She couldn’t believe it! Catherine was going to stay. Maybe it wouldn’t be for long and maybe she wouldn’t be awake, but it was still great.

She hurried on ahead of them to check Joe’s bed, knowing what she would find—blueprints, blueprints, and more blueprints. He was always studying blueprints after he went to bed. He had more homework than she and Charlie and Della put together.

Fritz suddenly had an idea, a really good idea, but she gathered up the blueprints carefully in spite of her need to implement it. She’d learned before she could walk not to be reckless around her father’s blueprints.

“That’s good, Fritz,” Joe said in the doorway. Then he smiled at Catherine. “Don’t worry. Just sleep for a little while.”

“I don’t think I can,” Catherine said. She sat down on the edge of the bed, as if she didn’t know if she was in the right place or not and someone might come in and tell her to move.

“Just try,” Joe said. “Hand me the quilt, Fritz.”

Fritz got the quilt from the back of the rocking chair in the corner of the room, and Joe carefully spread it over Catherine as she kicked off her shoes and lay down. Then he arranged her pillows for her, as if she were a little girl like Fritz instead of a grown-up woman.

“Catherine—” Joe began, and though Fritz knew better than to interrupt, she couldn’t help it.

“Joe!” she whispered into his ear. “Can I do something for Catherine?”

“What, Fritz?”

“It’s a surprise.”

“Catherine needs to rest, Fritz.”

“I’ll hurry, Joe. Please!”

Fritz could see the no forming on his lips, but for some reason he changed his mind. “How long will it take?”

“That long,” she said, trying to snap her fingers the way he did when he wanted to show her how quickly something would happen—Santa Claus coming, the duration of the shot she might have had to have for her sore throat the other day. It wasn’t much of a snap, but he understood.

“Okay,” he said.

“You have to come and help me.”

“
I
have to help? I thought this was
your
surprise.”

“I don’t want to push my luck.”

He grinned. “Very wise, small daughter. Catherine, excuse us for a minute—maybe not even that long.”

“Don’t go to sleep yet, Catherine,” Fritz said. “I’m going to hurry!”

“We’re going to hurry,” Joe told her, too, as Fritz dragged him off to the kitchen.

Catherine closed her eyes, trying not to cry again. He was being so good to her. She hadn’t planned to tell him about the baby and certainly not to do it in some fit of hysterics in the middle of a hospital lobby.

“
I love you, Catherine”—
that was the best thing he could have said to her, and the worst. She had thought him impetuous at best, hotheaded, yelling and regretting it later. But he wasn’t doing that now. He was giving her what she needed, a little time to relinquish her responsibilities to herself and everyone else—except their baby. It felt so good being here.

What kind of man are you, Joe?
How many times had she asked herself that?

She opened her eyes, looking around the room as if she might locate some clue, but this neat room, save the stacks of blueprints, told her nothing. The blueprints were the only things in it that might be described as personal. There were no collectibles, no trophies, no pictures of Lisa.

She looked around at a small sound. Joe was standing at the foot of the bed. She moved over so that he could sit down beside her, and he looked so resigned. It was if he presumed nothing, expected nothing from her except pain, the same kind of pain he’d gotten from Lisa.

She wanted to cry again. She didn’t want to hurt him, and there was nothing she could do about it. She looked into his eyes, probing for the truth in all this. Did he love her? Yes, she thought, perhaps he did.

“You know,” he said quietly. “I think I’m getting the hang of it.”

“Of what?”

“Knowing what people mean instead of listening to what they say.”

His hair was mashed down over his ears from wearing a hard hat all day, and she wanted to reach up and run her fingers through it, for no other reason than to have some excuse to touch him. She wanted to put her arms around him so badly. She wanted to hold him and hold him until they both felt better.

“Like now,” he added.

“I meant what I said.”

“I know you did, but when you look at me—” He stopped, taking her hand and sliding his warm, rough fingers between hers instead of saying whatever was on his mind. He sat there looking at her with all the desperation she herself felt.

“What?” she asked.

“When you look at me, I think you . . . care about me. I see it. I feel it. You care and that’s what’s behind the things you say. It makes all the difference in the world in whether or not I can stand it.”

“Joe—”

“I hear Fritz coming,” he said, interrupting her. “I hope you’re up to this. She has her heart set on doing something special for you.”

“What is it?”

“You’ll see.”

Fritz was coming into the bedroom. She carried a red metal lap tray with brass-colored folding legs. The tray had a picture of children riding a merry-go-round on it, and in the center of it sat a thick white mug filled with hot chocolate with a big scoop of vanilla ice cream.

“Just like when you were a little girl,” Fritz said, carrying the tray carefully. “With the ice cream and everything.” Joe helped her put it over Catherine’s knees.

“Fritz, thank you,” Catherine said. “It
is
just like when I was a little girl. The mug is the very same.”

Fritz beamed under Catherine’s approval. “Wait!” she said, taking a carefully folded paper towel off the tray and putting it on Catherine’s chest. “We’re out of napkins.”

“This is fine,” Catherine assured her.

“Are you sure you’re up to this?” Joe asked as she took a sip.

She nodded and drank some more. “Fritz, you did a good job. It’s wonderful.”

“Joe helped me cook the milk in the microwave, so we could do it fast.”

Catherine drank the rest of the hot chocolate with both of them looking on. Fritz to make sure that she drank all of it, and Joe, she supposed, to make a grab for the wastepaper basket in case her nausea reasserted itself.

But she managed without incident.

“Take the tray away, Fritz,” Joe said, handing it to her.

“Wait,” Catherine said. “Let me give you a hug.” She hugged Fritz tightly, savoring her warmth and her little-girl smell. She loved this child. Joe’s child.

“Me, too,” Joe said when Fritz had left with the tray.

Catherine hesitated then wrapped her arms around him the way she’d wanted to do earlier. He gave a soft moan, and she closed her eyes, afraid suddenly that she might never have the opportunity to do this again. He felt so good to her!

“Don’t forget your promise,” he reminded her again. “You’re not going to give up on us.” He leaned back to look at her. “Now try to sleep, just for a little while. Is the hot chocolate going to stay put or not?”

“So far, so good,” she said. She was a bit surprised at the question—until she remembered that he’d been through three other pregnancies. Apparently he was used to these things. Irrationally she felt a stab of jealousy that what was entirely a new experience for her was for him merely routine.

“Well, thank God for that. I’ll be around out here if you want anything. Catherine?”

She looked into his eyes, waiting for him to go on, but he didn’t.

“Ah, nothing,” he said. “It’ll keep.”

He kissed her lightly and gave her one last hug before he stood up. She could feel that he was lingering, that he wanted to talk now rather than later. But he turned off the lamp and went out, leaving the door slightly ajar. Catherine stretched out on the bed and closed her eyes, lying quietly in the soft darkness of the bedroom. She wished she’d made him lie down with her and hold her while she tried to sleep. She was so tired. And though her mind and body felt numb, he mattered to her, he was the only thing in all this that seemed real. He was the reason she was here.

She let herself drift on the edge of sleep, rousing once at some outside sound – the wind, she decided. And she fell asleep wondering if—no, knowing—that if she called out to him, he would come.

She woke up at the sound of voices,
muffled voices that grew louder and louder. She sat up, not knowing at first where she was. The she realized it was Joe’s voice she was hearing. She rubbed her eyes in an effort to wake up.

“ . . . you are the child here. I don’t have to give any kind of account for my behavior to you,” he was saying.

She couldn’t hear the response.

“ . . . if I’d done anything,” he said next. “If I was hiding anything, I wouldn’t have told you Catherine was here.”