Four Seasons of Romance Read Online Free PDF Page B

seeing
Waldo, her parents assumed she had abandoned any hope of a future with Leo.
    In truth, Catherine saw Leo as much as possible, stealing
away in the early morning and sometimes late at night. But between Leo’s job at
the mill and Catherine’s studies—and the agonizing hours she had to log with
Waldo, strolling through town and eating unbearably boring meals—they did not
see as much of each other as they would have liked.
    Ellis drank more and more. Though Leo could easily hold his
liquor, he hated the sloppy, harsh manner his father adopted while drunk, so,
Leo tried to stay away from home as much as possible. To fill the long lonely
hours, Leo took up odd jobs as a welder and stonemason, trying to channel his
thwarted artistic ambitions into work that paid. Sometimes, he raced his car on
dirt roads in the country, driving for hours and hours, often with a six-pack
in the empty seat where Catherine should have been.
    What would happen when Catherine was no longer in school?
Would she leave Woodsville and go to college? They rarely spoke of it, but it
ate at Leo day and night, the drinking helping to dull the nagging question.
Still, he could never silence that voice, wondering about their future.
    Catherine found herself asking the same thing. Waldo Ayers
was a convenient cover, but how long could the situation continue? How long
could she lie to her family and herself? As they soon found, the deception
could not continue much longer.
     
    *
     
    It was June of 1943, and Catherine was graduating from high
school. She had discarded her cap and gown and was sitting on her front porch
with Waldo in a pretty in a pale-yellow dress the color of daffodils, drinking
ice-cold lemonade. Waldo looked stiff as ever in a suit at least one size too
small.
    “I’ll be eighteen next month,” Catherine said, speaking her
thoughts aloud. “Old enough to live on my own. Old enough to vote.”
    “Old enough to marry,” Waldo said. And suddenly, before she
could object, he dropped on one knee. “Catherine,” he said, “you are a good
woman. I believe you will make a fine wife and mother. I’d like to make you a
proposition… to marry me.”
    Make me a proposition? Catherine thought. He’s not
selling me a car!
    She watched with great sympathy as he struggled with
something in his back pocket, but the poor chap couldn’t get the damned ring
box out because his pants were too tight.
    “Hold on just a minute,” Waldo mumbled. “Just one more
minute… ”
    Catherine wished they could laugh at the humor of the
situation, but Waldo was never one for a good laugh. By the time the ring was
extracted from the box, he had broken into a sweat.
    “I’m touched and honored,” she said, as gently as she could,
“and I promise you I’ll think about it.”
    Waldo stumbled over himself for several more excruciating
minutes before he finally bid her adieu. The minute he was gone, she flew to
her bedroom window and placed a red flag against the pane—Leo’s and her sign
for distress or emergency. In half an hour, she and Leo were in each other’s
arms in the woods.
    “I won’t let you do it,” Leo told her.
    “I have no intention to.” She shook her head. “I don’t mean
to make fun of him—he’s very dear. But never in a million years would I marry
him.”
    “How about me?”
    Leo held her at arm’s length and looked in her eyes. “Elope
with me, Catherine. We could leave this place forever. Go and see the world.”
    She laughed, but then, she saw that he was serious. “Leo,”
she whispered, “you know I can’t do that. My father would disown me.”
    “So what if he does?” Leo kicked at the stump.
    “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m not ready to burn that bridge.”
    “What if I am?” he asked.
    She looked at him sternly. “It’s not your bridge to burn.”
    He stifled his anger as Catherine picked her way through the
trees back to the house.
    The next day, she declined Waldo’s offer of marriage,