Toes wrapped up, Cathy heads back to her apartment with the help of Chris, only to discover that it’s been totally torn apart. Art ruined, clothing cut up…they even smashed the ring Paul had given her. Chris promises to give Cathy bigger and better things, but she really just wants to sleep. Understandable. Chris wants her to leave with him, but she wants to defend what good she believes is in Julian. Aw Cathy no. Of all people.
Look, I get that Georges was a terrible father, but Julian is a terrible person and I hate him. There it is, I said it.
Chris starts kissing Cathy while she’s asleep (nope) and she thinks it’s Julian at first but demands that Chris stop when she realizes who it is. Does Chris stop, you might ask? No, he does not (damn it, Christopher), stopping only when Cathy tells him that she’s pregnant with Julian’s child. I hate everyone but Cathy.
Chris wants Cathy to let him raise the baby with her, but she tells him that she loves Julian and thinks that being a father will save him. And that if she’s a better wife he’ll stop cheating on her with teenagers, which…
I.
Hate.
Julian.
Chris storms out and Cathy falls asleep and has a TROUBLING dream about Bart Winslow, from which she is awakened by the telephone. And who is calling at this hour? The hospital, telling her that Julian has been in a car accident and she needs to get there ASAP. Chris had come back to the apartment while she was sleeping and the two of them head out.
Julian comes out of surgery and is put in traction, having broken several bones and his neck (Yolanda was killed in the accident). Madame Marisha comes up and she and Cathy comfort each other, both saying over and over that Julian will recover and dance again. Julian wakes up and he and Cathy have it out–he’d rather be dead then as he is, and wants her to leave and never come back, she’s furious that he trashed their apartment and is saying he wants to die. He tells her that he’s glad he never had children, and that she and he are just living in a fantasy, dancing fools unable to handle the real world. This is exactly what Cathy doesn’t want to hear, since she never wants to be unable to cope like her mother was, and she tells Julian that she loves him and that she’s having his child. He tells her to have an abortion, since the fourteenth dancer in his family won’t be any luckier than the thirteenth.
Cathy goes to visit him early the next morning only to find the night nurse asleep and Julian dead–he’d stolen the nurse’s embroidery scissors and cut his IV. He’s buried next to Georges, and in the car back from the cemetery Paul asks Cathy to move back home at least until she has the baby. Madame M is delighted–another dancer just like Julian! A son exactly like him!
H E A L T H Y. Those sorts of expectations did Julian so well!
Oh and Julian’s stone, as written by Cathy, reads:
Julian Marquet Rosencoff, beloved husband of Catherine, and thirteenth in a long line of Russian male ballet stars
Cathy, you are my jewel, but that is incredibly extra.
That night at Paul’s house he leans in a little hard on Cathy, and so does Chris, truth be told, but her focus is on her baby and what she needs to do to make sure that they’re healthy and loved, and how the baby will be the center of her universe and will never feel lost or abandoned. Again, understandable, but let’s all ease up a bit. Oh and Corrine is also to blame for Julian’s death, because if they’d never been locked in the attic, then maybe Cathy could have met Julian anyway, before what happened with Chris, before what happened with Paul, and she and Julian could have been happy together if only she’d been pure and more able to love him. HACHI MACHI.
Cathy’s pregnancy proceeds and she writes again to her mother, telling her about Julian’s death and her pregnancy and how she’d never do what Corrine did, no matter what happened, but after Cathy mails the letter she sees in the paper that Corrine is in Japan. I’m sure she still got her mail at some point. Paul and Chris are vying to replace Julian but Cathy’s concerns are for her baby and for Carrie, who is now 16 and has never had a date, and seems resigned never to have any sort of relationship. Cathy tries to convince her otherwise, but it’s clear that Carrie doesn’t believe her.
Paul tells Cathy he’s still in love with her, and they make out a little but are interrupted by Chris, who snaps at them and leaves. Paul is like, we gotta do something about Chris, seeing as how he is your brother and wants to marry you and doesn’t seem to understand why this is a problem, and Cathy admits that she knows that she needs to tell him it’s never going to happen but she can’t seem to. She tells herself (and us) that she doesn’t really want Chris to find anyone else, that she wants him by her all the time because she only truly feels safe and confident when he’s around. She denies that it’s anything more than that, and she blames Corrine for everything that’s going ill.
She goes into labor on Valentine’s Day, what would have been she and Julian’s sixth anniversary, and three hours later Julian Janus Marquet is born. When she tells Paul and Chris his name, she also tells them that she plans to call the baby Jory. Paul questions the nickname and Cathy, too tired to answer, knows that Chris understands and will fill Paul in: if her son had been blond, then she would have named him Cory, but since he has dark hair like his father, then the “J will stand for Julian, and the rest for Cory”.
And so we reach Part Four.
Coming up: some more about Carrie, Cathy meets Bart Winslow (again), and the Dollanganger Girls Move to Virginia
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