Promise Me A Rainbow (47 page)

“Yeah, and they
still
might not let me keep it.”

“Exactly. But they certainly won’t if everything is just the same as it was the last time. If you want your baby, you have to try, Maria. You have to quit looking for somebody to blame and work on this yourself. Even if you lose, you’ll know it wasn’t because you rolled over and just let it happen. You know what you have to do. If you want a chance, do it.”

“I
hate
talking to you,” Maria said, sniffing loudly. “You
always
telling people what to do.”

Catherine smiled. “I know. And that’s why you came in here.”

Incredibly, Maria smiled back. The smile was weak at best, but it was genuine. She stood up to go.

“Hey,” Catherine said when she reached the door. “Tell the rest of them I said to stay off your case.”

The phone was ringing
when Catherine got home from work—Fritz asking to come and see the gnomes. For the first time, Catherine hesitated. She didn’t want to end up in another argument with Joe.

“Mrs. Webber will bring me,” Fritz said, as if she’d been coached to give Catherine that reassurance.

“That’ll be fine,” Catherine said. “You can help me decorate my tree.”

She had the tree in a stand but hadn’t decorated it. She passed the time waiting for Fritz to arrive by trying to locate her Christmas decorations. If Fritz found the tree in any way odd, she was polite enough not to say.

They had hot chocolate—Catherine’s mostly milk—and Catherine told Fritz another of her childhood stories, this one about the grove of red cedars that used to grow near her house, where she would go in the heat of summer and stand in the middle of it—not for the shade but for the cedar smell—and she would close her eyes and pretend it was Christmas.

While they were decorating the tree Catherine noticed that Fritz had a small tablet with her and that she kept writing in it.

“What are you doing, Fritz?” Catherine asked, completely puzzled.

“Do I have to say?”

“No, you don’t have to say. I was just wondering.”

Fritz looked so relieved, Catherine didn’t press it. Later, when the tree was done, Fritz sat quietly on the couch, holding the gnomes and watching Catherine closely, the notepad close at hand.

“Fritz, let’s put on our coats and go downstairs and see what the tree looks like from the outside.”

“Okay,” she said, but she picked up the notepad again and began writing.

“How do you spell ‘outside’?” she asked after a moment.

“O-u-t-s-i-d-e.”

“Oh, I see. Like ‘out’ and ‘side’ only it’s one word.”

“That’s right,” Catherine told her.

“I didn’t know if they did that thing they do,” she said, still laboring with the pencil.

“What thing?”

“You know. Sometimes they sneak extra letters or straight marks or stuff like that in on you.”

Catherine smiled. “Not this time. So are you ready to go?”

“Yes, but don’t say anything while we’re out there, okay?”

“Why not?”

“Because I can’t see to write in the dark.”

“Well, Fritz, you don’t have to write, do you?”

“Yes, Catherine,” she said, as if that should have been obvious by now.

“Is this something for school?” ‘How I Spent My Afternoon’ or something like that?”

Fritz sighed. “It’s not for school. It’s for . . . Joe.”

“For Joe?”

“Well, he said he shot off his big mouth and now he can’t talk to you. But he’s worrying and worrying. So I’m trying to write down stuff about you for him, but you do things so fast.” She sighed again. “I don’t want him to worry, Catherine.”

“Well, neither do I. From now on, I’ll do things slow.”

“Can you help me spell? I can spell, but you don’t do things in the words I know.”

“Yes, that, too. Now run get your coat.”

She watched Fritz put her coat on and carefully button each button. She waited, surrounded by the scent of cedar and the ghosts of all her other Christmases.

Oh, Joe . . .

“Hmmpf,” the little old lady said. The corners of her mouth were turned down, and she looked him up and down as if she’d expected the worst and had gotten it.

Who
is
this person? he thought.

“Joseph D’Amaro,” he said to her, offering her his hand. She stiffened, and he thought for a moment she was going to hit it with the big black pocketbook she was carrying.

He took his hand back. “Okay,” he said to the group at large. “Okay, what is it? What’s going on?”

“How come you get our Ms. Holben pregnant and then you don’t stand by her?” Sasha wanted to know, and Joe prayed the wind wasn’t carrying the sound up.

“Yeah!” the group said in unison, except for the little old lady, who still looked as if she wanted to hit him with something.

“Sasha, I don’t—”

“We expect this kind of crap from Sweet Eddie Aikens,” Sasha said, interrupting. “But we thought you were a
gentleman
. Ms. Holben’s going around thinking she’s like us, but she ain’t like us. We all got somebody to help us. I got my grandmamma…”

Joe glanced at the little old lady. Grandmamma, he decided.

“ . . . we all got somebody to stand by us, but Ms. Holben, she don’t. She got herself all tangled up with a sweet-talking devil like you—and we know you’re sweet-talking, ’cause Ms. Holben wouldn’t be in this fix unless you were smart enough to fool her. I told you myself, she don’t know nothing about men, and you went right out and took advantage of it.”

“Sasha—” Joe said in exasperation.
He
wasn’t the one who wouldn’t talk marriage.

“We want to know what you’re going to do about it, sucker,” Maria put in.

“Yeah!” the group said again.

“Could I say one thing here?” Joe asked.

“You make it good, boy,” Grandmamma said, and Joe tried not to grin. He’d heard of irate fathers and brothers coming to see an errant father-to-be, but never a pregnant class and a grandmother.

“Look,” he said. “I appreciate your concern. But I’m doing the best I can here.”

“What does that mean?” Sasha demanded.

“It means I’m working on it. I am. If there’s any way to get Ms. Holben to the altar, I’m trying to find it. And if I make it, you’re all invited to the wedding. Okay?” He frowned. “Who the devil is Sweet Eddie Aikens?”

“Just you never mind,” Grandmamma said. “We’re going now, and I got one piece of advice for you, boy.”

“What?” Joe said, not at all sure he wanted to know.

“You do right—or you live hard, you got that?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said politely. “I got it.”

“Good. You can get back to work.”

“Oh, thank you.”

He stood and watched as Catherine’s supporters fitted themselves back into the Volkswagen. They must do that a lot, he thought, because they got themselves repacked without a hitch.

He didn’t dare look up, but it didn’t do him any good. Michael was coming down.

“What the hell was all
that
about?” he wanted to know.

“Shotgun committee,” Joe said as he walked away. “They want me to make an honest woman out of Catherine.”

“Well, if I was you, I’d do it!” Michael called after him. “I wouldn’t tangle with the one in the hat!”

“You look good,”
Fritz said. “Really good.”

He grinned down at her and straightened his tie. “Thanks.”

“How come you look so good?”

“I’m going to see Catherine.”

“You want to look good to see Catherine?” she asked incredulously.

“Yes, I want to look good to see Catherine,” he said, mimicking her tone, and she giggled.

“Can I go?”

“No way.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m going courting, and you don’t take your kids with you when you go courting. See?”

“No.”

“Well, ask Mrs. Webber when she comes. She’ll explain it to you. She’s been married three times, and she knows all about it.”

“She doesn’t have a husband now. What happened to all Mrs. Webber’s husbands?”

He hesitated. He didn’t want to get Fritz started thinking everything was her fault again—he was worried now that she might think she was the reason things weren’t working out with Catherine. But he didn’t want to shield her from things, either. “They . . . died,” he said, but the news didn’t particularly seem to concern her.