Petals on the Wind (Dollanganger 2)

mushrooms and other vegetables had to be sauteed. It was a troublesome dish I wasn't likely to make again.

No sooner was this in the oven than I began another cake from scratch. The first was sunk in the middle and was soggy. I covered up the hollow with thick frosting and gave it to the neighborhood kids. Henny bustled and bumbled around, shaking her head and throwing me critical glances.

I had the last rose squeezed from the pastry tube when Chris dashed in the back door bearing his gift. "Am I late?" he asked breathlessly. "I can't stay longer than nine o'clock; I have to be back at Duke before roll call."

"You're just in time," I said, all flustered and in a flurry to get upstairs and bathe and dress. "You set the table while Henny finishes up with the salad." It was beneath his dignity, of course, to set a table, but for once he obliged without complaint.

I shampooed my hair and set it on large rollers, and polished my nails a glowing, silvery pink, my toenails too. I painted my face with an expertise born of hours of practice and long consultations with Madame Marisha and the beauty assistants in the department stores. When I was done no one would have guessed I was only seventeen. Down the stairs I drifted, borne aloft by the admiration that shone from my brother's eyes and by the envy from Carrie's and a big grin that split Henny's face from ear to ear.

Fussily I arranged the table again, changing around the noise-makers, the snappers and the colorful, ridiculous paper clown hats. Chris blew up a few balloons and suspended them from the chandelier. And then we all sat down to wait for Paul to come and enjoy his "surprise party."

When he didn't show up and the hours passed, I got up to pace the floor as Momma had done on Daddy's thirty-sixth birthday party when he never came home, not ever.

Finally Chris had to leave. Then Carrie began to yawn and complain. We fed her and let her go to bed. She slept in her own room now, especially decorated in purple and red. Next it was only Henny and me watching TV as the Creole casserole kept warming and drying out, and our salad was wilting, and then Henny yawned and left for bed. Now I was left alone to pace and worry, my party ruined.

At ten I heard Paul's car turn into the drive and through the back door he strode, bearing with him the two suitcases he'd taken to Chicago. He tossed me a casual greeting before he noticed my fancy attire. "Hey, . . ." he said, throwing a suspicious glance into the dining room and seeing the party decorations, "have I somehow managed to spoil something you planned?"

He was so damned casual about being three hours late I could have killed him if I hadn't loved him so much. Like those who always try to hide the truth, I lit into him, "Why did you have to go to that medical convention in the first place? You might have guessed we'd have special plans for your birthday! And then you go and call us up and tell us what time to expect you home, and then you're three hours late--"

"My flight was delayed --" he started to explain. "I've been slaving to make you a cake that tastes as good as your mother's," I interrupted, "and then you don't show up!" I brushed past him and pulled the casserole from the oven.

"I'm ravenous," said Paul humbly,

apologetically. "If you haven't eaten, we might as well make the most of what looks like it could have been a very festive and happy occasion. Have mercy on me, Cathy. I don't control the weather."

I nodded stiffly to indicate I was at least a little understanding. He smiled and lightly brushed the back of his hand over my cheek, "You look absolutely exquisite," he breathed softly, "so take the frown off your face and get things ready, and I'll be down in ten minutes."

In ten minutes he had showered and shaved and changed into fresh clothes. By the light of four candles the two of us sat down at the long dining table with me to his left. I had arranged this meal so I wouldn't have to hop up and down to serve him. Everything that was needed was put upon a serving cart. The dishes that had to be served hot were on electrical heating units, and the champagne was cooling in a bucket. "The champagne is from Chris," I explained. "He's developed a liking for it."

He lifted the champagne bottle from the ice and glanced at the label. "It's a good year and must have been expensive; your brother has developed gourmet taste."

We ate slowly and it seemed whenever I lifted my eyes they met with his. He'd come home looking tired, mussy; now he looked completely refreshed. He'd been gone two long, long weeks. Dead weeks that made me miss his presence in the open doorway of my bedroom as I practiced at the barre, doing my warm-up exercises before breakfast to beautiful music that sent my soul soaring.

When our meal was over I dashed into the kitchen, then glided back bearing a gorgeous coconut cake with miniature green candles fitted into red roses made of icing. Across the top I'd written as skillfully as I could with that pastry tube, Happy Birthday to Paul.

"What do you think?" Paul asked after he blew out the candles.

"Think about what?" I questioned back, carefully se

tting down the cake with twenty-six candles, for that was the age he appeared to me, and the age I wanted him to be. I felt very much an adolescent, floundering in the world of adult quicksand. My short, formal gown was flame-colored chiffon, with shoestring straps and lots of cleavage showing. But if my attempts to look sophisticated had succeeded, inside I was in a daze as I tried to play the role of seductress.

"My mustache--surely you've noticed. You've been staring at it for half an hour."

"It's nice," I stammered, blushing as red as my gown. "It becomes you."

"Now ever since you came you've been hinting how much more handsome and appealing I'd be with a mustache. And now that I've taken the trouble to grow one you say it's nice. Nice is such a weak word, Catherine."

"It's because . . . because you do look so handsome," I stumbled, "that I can find only weak words. I fear that Thelma Murkel has already found all the strong words to flatter you."

"How the hell do you know about her?" He fired this at me as he narrowed his beautiful eyes.

Gosh, he should know--gossip--and so I told him this: "I went to that hospital where Thelma Murkel is the head nurse on the third floor. And I sat just beyond the nurses's station and watched her for a couple of hours. In my opinion she's not quite beautiful, but handsome, and she seemed to me terribly bossy. And she flirts with all the doctors, in case you don't know that."

I left him laughing with his eyes lit up. Thelma Murkel was a head nurse in the Clairmont Memorial Hospital and everyone there seemed to know she had her mind set on becoming the second Mrs. Paul Scott Sheffield. But she was only a nurse in a sterile white uniform, miles and miles away, and I was under his nose, with my intoxicating new perfume tickling his senses (as the advertisement had said, a bewitching, beguiling, seductive scent no man could resist). What chance did Thelma Murkel, age twenty-nine, have against the likes of me?

I was giddy from three glasses of Chris's imported champagne and hardly alert at all when Paul began to open the gifts Carrie, Chris and I had saved up to buy for him. I'd embroidered for him a crewel painting of his gingerbread white house with trees showing above the roof and a part of the brick wall to the sides with a little of the flowers showing. Chris had sketched it for me and I'd slaved many hours to make it perfect.

"It's a stunningly beautiful work of art!" he said with impressed awe. I couldn't help but think of the grandmother, and how she'd cruelly rejected our tedious and hopeful gesture to win her friendship. "Thank you very much, Catherine, for thinking so much of me. I'm going to hang it in my office where all my patients can see it."