Kitty's Saga Chapter Eighteen: Frivolities After Substance

Kitty's forty-fifth birthday began with an email.

She read it once.

Then again.

An invitation to interview for a corporate position—the exact sort of job Gavin had once looked down on her for failing to pursue.

Twenty years earlier, Kitty might have interpreted the invitation as salvation.

The right title.

The right salary.

The right employer.

One more accomplishment that might finally make Gavin respect her.

Now she looked at the message and saw only inconvenience.

Longer hours.

More responsibility.

Possibly a move.

A life rearranged around an ambition that had never actually belonged to her.

Kitty politely declined.

Then she closed the email.

That was it.

No agonizing.

No wondering what Gavin would think.

No imagining the person she might become if she accepted.

The dream had been Gavin's.

It had never been hers.

Kitty already worked too many hours. She earned enough. She liked what she did. She loved Chicago and had no desire to relocate for a title she didn't need.

She chuckled at the thought of how inferior she'd once felt beside Gavin.

Age had rearranged her understanding of nearly everything.

When Kitty was young, she believed in the salvation of one thing.

One degree.

One job.

One city.

One man.

One promotion.

One perfect decision that would finally solve the problem of being Kitty.

Middle age had taught her otherwise.

There was no one thing.

Life was maintenance.

Problems came apart piece by piece, if one was lucky. You handled what could be handled. You endured what couldn't. Eventually, the impossible might become manageable.

That was usually the best anyone could hope for.

And middle age, Kitty discovered, wasn't the curse she'd once imagined.

She was still herself.

Only more capable of handling whatever arrived.

Sometimes Kitty wondered whether Gavin had exploited the younger version of her without either of them fully understanding it.

She had looked up to him.

He'd seemed so established.

So educated.

So financially secure.

So certain.

Kitty had mistaken certainty for wisdom.

Now, whenever she encountered Gavin at one of Guy's school or social functions, she saw an ordinary middle-aged man.

His hair had thinned dramatically. A belly had appeared on his otherwise narrow frame. His finances, once seemingly limitless to Kitty, looked much less impressive when she understood how much of his income disappeared into maintaining the lives of the people around him.

Gavin still tried to purchase affection.

He'd even married the nanny.

Kitty tried not to judge.

Mostly.

There had been a time when she believed Gavin's money protected her from uncertainty.

Within a few months of leaving him, she'd become healthier, calmer, and financially stronger.

She stopped spending her salary trying to keep pace with his expectations.

No more clothes she didn't want.

No more lifestyle she didn't need.

No more proving she belonged somewhere she'd never particularly wanted to be.

The money accumulated instead.

If things continued as they were, Kitty could retire early.

Not immediately.

But someday soon enough to imagine it.

She wasn't in any hurry.

Chicago remained the place she'd loved most.

There was only one person missing from it.

Stafford.

Stafford remained attached to Cincinnati like a branch to a tree.

Kitty couldn't imagine returning to Ohio for him.

Not permanently.

Not for a relationship that had always existed in hotel rooms, stolen weekends, arguments, and absences.

Whatever Stafford had been to her, he had never been enough reason to surrender Chicago.

Kitty's real regret was Guy.

He told her the truth when he was in middle school.

"You abandoned me."

The words crushed her.

Kitty wanted to argue.

She wanted to list every reason he was wrong.

She had worked.

She had provided.

She had visited.

She had loved him.

But the longer she listened, the more she understood that Guy wasn't entirely wrong.

Kitty had worked too much.

Some of it was necessity.

Some of it was ambition.

Some of it was escape.

And some of it came from the simple fact that Kitty had no idea what an involved parent was supposed to look like.

She'd never had one.

Kitty had made another mistake too.

Because Guy was so close to Gavin, she assumed he didn't need her as much.

Guy told her otherwise.

Kitty had spent years reacting against Gavin's suffocating parenting style by becoming its opposite.

She gave Guy space.

Too much space.

Guy wasn't Kitty.

He wasn't a child who could be thrown into uncertainty and simply decide to survive it.

He was sensitive.

He needed reassurance.

He needed attention.

He needed his mother.

Kitty had assumed Opal or the nanny filled whatever emotional spaces she left empty.

They hadn't.

No surrogate had put in the time Kitty herself should have.

"I'm sorry," Kitty finally told him.

There was no excuse worth giving.

"I wasn't a good mother to you."

Guy stared at her.

Kitty swallowed.

"I don't always know when you need me. You're going to have to tell me. Directly. And I'll listen."

Guy didn't hug her afterward.

He didn't hug her for a long time.

Kitty accepted that.

Some apologies repaired things.

Others merely acknowledged the damage.

Guy had clung so tightly to Gavin partly because he wasn't receiving enough from both parents.

Kitty and Gavin had both misread their son.

By then, Guy lived primarily with his father.

He stayed at Kitty's condominium only when Gavin traveled for work or holidays.

Kitty filled the resulting silence with friends.

Mostly Blair.

By her forty-fifth birthday, Kitty and Blair had become the sort of women who could make an event out of practically anything.

That evening, they planned to attend a screening of the cult classic The Room.

Both carried flasks of Drambuie.

Neither planned to drive.

Kitty wore platform heels, skinny jeans, and a poplin top.

She loved being single.

Blair, a perpetual bachelorette, remained an excellent guide to the pleasures and indignities of unmarried middle age.

Kitty spotted her outside the theater.

Blair's latest cosmetic enhancement made her particularly difficult to miss.

She'd increased her already substantial implants from a DD to an F cup, creating what Kitty privately considered an almost architectural silhouette on Blair's petite frame.

Kitty walked up laughing.

Blair laughed too.

Within minutes, they had mutually concluded that they were a pair of proper tarts.

The movie was terrible.

Perfectly terrible.

The audience shouted at the screen.

Kitty drank.

Blair drank.

Somewhere during the evening, Blair ran into a man she knew through an ex.

A connection was immediately obvious.

"You mind?" Blair asked.

Kitty was pleasantly tipsy by then.

"Go."

Blair went.

Kitty called a cab.

She didn't want to linger outside the theater like she'd been abandoned, and she certainly didn't want to become a third wheel if Blair reappeared with her conquest.

So Kitty walked a short distance and stopped outside a sports bar.

The outdoor seating area was empty.

She sat.

Inside, patrons shouted at some televised game.

Her cab sent an update.

Arriving shortly.

Kitty sighed and removed her flask.

There was one swallow left.

She drank it.

"PUT THAT SHIT DOWN!"

Kitty glanced toward the bar.

Apparently, someone was fighting.

She looked back at her phone.

"HEY!"

The voice was closer.

Kitty turned.

A stocky man in his fifties was storming toward her.

She looked at the flask still in her hand.

Then she understood.

He was the bartender.

As he approached, he began shouting obscenities.

She couldn't drink alcohol outside on his property.

She needed to leave.

Immediately.

"Okay."

Kitty stood.

"I'm leaving."

But the man was no longer interested in simply having her leave.

He wanted confrontation.

Kitty tried to calm him.

Her cab was coming.

She would go.

There was no problem.

She turned.

His hands struck her.

Kitty stumbled backward.

One platform heel twisted beneath her.

Something inside her knee popped.

The sound was unmistakable.

Pain exploded through her leg.

Kitty screamed.

She fell.

The man continued shoving her even after she was down.

"I can't get up!"

People were watching now.

Someone pointed.

Kitty cried for help.

Headlights appeared at the curb.

Her cab.

The driver took one look at her and hurried over.

Kitty couldn't stand.

He helped carry her to the car.

"Hospital," she managed.

At the emergency room, imaging confirmed the damage.

A torn ACL.

Kitty was furious.

Gavin came.

To his credit, he sat with her.

Under different circumstances, Kitty might have appreciated it.

She was too angry.

She called the police.

She wanted charges.

The bartender turned out to own the bar.

And he had a different version of events.

Kitty had been trespassing.

Kitty had refused to leave.

Kitty had been extremely intoxicated.

According to him, force had become necessary.

There was one inconvenient detail in his story.

He had never given Kitty a meaningful opportunity to leave before putting his hands on her.

The cab driver supported Kitty's account.

Kitty assumed that would be enough.

It wasn't.

The ordeal lasted two years.

Two years.

The bar owner resisted releasing his security footage until a court ordered him to produce it.

Then, conveniently, the recording had been "accidentally erased."

Gavin helped again.

He had an attorney on retainer and offered the lawyer's services to Kitty.

The lawyer located another nearby business with exterior security cameras.

That footage showed what the bar owner had not wanted anyone to see.

Kitty had been trying to leave.

He had used force anyway.

Eventually, Kitty won.

Winning didn't give her the two years back.

The bar had regulars.

Friends.

Relatives.

People who apparently decided that defending the owner required making Kitty's life miserable.

They discovered where she worked.

They filed bogus complaints with management.

Some followed her home.

Others photographed her.

The injury required surgery.

Recovery was slow.

Kitty could no longer stand comfortably for the hours her job demanded.

She had to give up the spin classes she'd loved for years.

Every ordinary movement became evidence to someone.

If she walked, she was faking.

If she limped, she was performing.

If she worked, she couldn't really be injured.

If she stayed home, she was exaggerating.

The bar owner never apologized.

Not once.

He called her a liar.

A faker.

He hired a private investigator.

His relatives photographed Kitty walking.

Kitty called police repeatedly about the harassment.

Eventually, officers stopped responding with any urgency.

Restraining orders became pieces of paper that required other people to respect them.

Even Gavin reported being followed by members of the owner's family.

Kitty had won in court.

Yet somehow the punishment continued.

The people harassing her seemed incapable of accepting the simplest fact:

The bartender had hurt her.

Whatever embarrassment followed was the consequence of his actions.

Not hers.

The final straw came when Kitty found the last payment toward her hospital expenses attached to her car windshield.

With a nail gun.

She stared at it.

Then called the police.

Again.

They characterized the situation as a personal dispute.

His word against hers.

Kitty struggled to remain calm.

"I have a restraining order."

Nothing came of it.

Standing beside her damaged car, Kitty felt something inside her relationship with Chicago finally break.

She had loved this city.

She had arrived here young and poor and frightened.

Chicago had given her an education.

A career.

Friends.

A child.

A skyline she'd once looked at and understood as proof that life could become enormous.

Now Kitty felt as though the city had turned against her.

Perhaps that wasn't fair.

Cities couldn't betray people.

But Kitty had had enough.

Her knee prevented her from working the way she once had.

Guy was leaving for college.

Retirement remained too far away if she intended to maintain her Chicago lifestyle.

For the first time since arriving decades earlier, Kitty began looking elsewhere.

Greener pastures.

Cheaper ones too.

Midwestern winters had become brutal on her damaged knee. Cold weather sent pain through it with every step.

Opal suggested moving somewhere warm.

Blair suggested Arizona.

That was where Blair had grown up.

She described the sunshine.

The lower cost of living.

The space.

The possibility of beginning again.

The idea took hold.

Kitty could take early retirement.

Rent out the condominium.

Live modestly.

Pam would remain in Ohio, but Kitty could fly to see her instead of driving.

Guy was grown.

Chicago no longer needed Kitty.

Perhaps Kitty no longer needed Chicago.

The going-away party was small because Kitty wanted it that way.

Blair.

Gavin.

Guy.

They gathered for dinner at Gavin's house.

At the end of the evening, Guy hugged her.

Really hugged her.

Kitty closed her eyes.

A tear escaped before she could stop it.

Perhaps not everything between them had been repaired.

But something had survived.

Even Gavin no longer inspired the resentment he once had.

Mostly, Kitty pitied him.

His marriage to the nanny had ended while Guy was in high school.

According to Guy, Gavin now frequented bars and dated younger women with almost ritualistic persistence.

Kitty couldn't help seeing something familiar in it.

That was how he'd met her.

For years, Kitty had believed Gavin never truly cared about what they'd had.

His behavior suggested otherwise.

Perhaps he was searching for another Kitty.

Not Kitty herself.

The younger version.

The woman he'd met before everything between them hardened.

Oddly, that gave Kitty something Gavin had never managed to give her when they were together.

Validation.

Maybe she had mattered.

Unfortunately, Gavin's search wasn't going particularly well.

The younger women he dated tended to enjoy his money and then disappear.

And there was considerably less money now.

The nanny had done very well in the divorce.

Gavin had once given Kitty the condominium and his paid-off Mercedes willingly.

His second separation cost considerably more.

Retirement funds.

The townhouse.

His newer car.

Alimony.

All following a wedding that had cost more than a hundred thousand dollars.

A younger Kitty would have enjoyed saying something cruel.

That's what you get.

She never did.

Kitty had cheated more extensively than Gavin ever had.

She possessed no moral high ground worth standing on.

When the party ended, Kitty returned to the condominium alone.

One last night.

She walked through the rooms slowly.

Then she cried.

Not because she was afraid of Arizona.

Not entirely.

She cried because time was cruel in a way distance wasn't.

You could return to a city.

You could return to a house.

You could even return to another person.

You couldn't return to a moment.

There had been good years here.

Good nights.

Guy as a baby.

Blair laughing.

Promotions.

Snow against the windows.

Bad television on the sofa.

Even Gavin, occasionally.

All gone.

Not tragically.

Simply irretrievably.

Kitty pulled herself together.

Her belongings had already been shipped.

The Mercedes was already in Arizona.

Everything had been arranged.

All that remained was leaving.

Again.

Kitty traveled to the airport alone.

On the flight west, anxiety came in waves.

Am I doing the right thing?

Will I be happy?

Am I running away?

Am I too old to start again?

The questions followed her across the country.

Her new home was a modest ranch-style house outside Scottsdale.

Dry.

Quiet.

Still.

That first evening, Kitty stood inside listening to an unfamiliar silence.

She was too nervous to explore.

Arizona would require acclimation.

Like lowering herself slowly into cold water.

One inch at a time.

She stopped herself from calling Guy every hour.

He had his own life now.

He was young.

Free.

Going somewhere.

Kitty remembered what that felt like.

Within weeks, boxes disappeared.

Roads became familiar.

The grocery store became her grocery store.

The strange house became less strange.

But she missed Guy.

She missed Blair.

She missed work.

The silence remained unbearable.

So Kitty went to an animal shelter.

She intended to adopt one dog.

She came home with two.

Small.

Happy.

Noisy.

Exactly what she needed.

Their barking filled the house.

For the first time since arriving, Kitty laughed without forcing herself.

Winter nights in the desert could still turn surprisingly cold.

On those nights, Kitty sometimes remembered Stafford.

The way he used to hold her.

The warmth of another person in bed.

She hadn't spoken to him in years.

Eventually, nostalgia overcame better judgment.

Kitty looked him up online.

She found his profile.

Private.

His photograph showed him on a boat, probably somewhere on Lake Erie.

He looked older.

Of course he did.

Kitty stared at the image longer than she intended.

Then she sent a message.

She expected nothing.

That night, her old phone number received a text.

She had kept the number primarily so Guy could always reach her.

Kitty this you?

She smiled.

Then called.

There was too much history for text messages.

Stafford answered.

They began talking.

Years collapsed awkwardly between them.

Stafford had moved into his mother's co-op after dementia forced Milly into residential care.

He rented Sandy's old house for income.

He'd lost his job around the time of Marnie's injury.

His voice remained surprisingly cheerful until the conversation drifted toward the years afterward.

Then something changed.

Marnie had died.

Stafford had never recovered.

He had fought her prognosis long after doctors had stopped offering hope.

He had spent everything.

Then borrowed more.

He had bankrupted himself trying to keep her alive.

Eventually, there had been no more fighting reality.

Kitty never said Marnie's name.

She didn't need to.

Marnie sat silently between every sentence.

When the call ended, Kitty realized she felt worse than before she'd made it.

Somewhere in Ohio, Stafford was alone.

Somewhere in Arizona, so was she.

Eventually, Stafford agreed to visit in the summer.

When he knocked on Kitty's door, she almost expected the years to disappear.

They didn't.

She showed him the little ranch house.

Stafford looked around and smiled.

"This is you."

Kitty raised an eyebrow.

"What does that mean?"

"This."

He gestured around the house.

"This is what I always pictured. Not whatever Gavin was trying to turn you into."

Kitty decided to take it as a compliment.

Stafford had changed.

The temper that once seemed permanently coiled inside him had cooled.

Kitty discovered over the following hours that while she'd spent years working, dating, socializing, and rebuilding herself in Chicago, Stafford had withdrawn from nearly everyone.

Marnie's death had broken something in him.

He believed people blamed him.

Maybe some did.

He blamed himself more than anyone.

There was another strange realization.

Kitty and Stafford had known each other for decades.

They'd been lovers for years.

Yet they had almost never shared an ordinary home.

Their relationship belonged to hotels.

Rooms rented for a night.

Suitcases.

Parking lots.

Departures before breakfast.

Now Stafford sat across from her in her own dining room.

And he barely touched her.

Not even a handshake.

Over dinner, he finally explained why he'd stayed away.

"Seattle."

Kitty waited.

"I shouldn't have gone."

"Why?"

Stafford stared at the table.

"Because I think that's when I doomed her."

Kitty felt something inside her sink.

The logic made no sense.

Stafford hadn't caused Marnie's addiction by flying to Seattle.

Kitty knew that.

Perhaps Stafford knew it too.

Guilt didn't require logic.

Kitty had secretly hoped that his visit would resurrect them.

That they'd fall into bed.

That Stafford would become Stafford again.

That Kitty could become Kitty again.

Instead, she realized she was sitting across from someone who no longer existed in quite the same form.

Perhaps neither of them did.

Stafford had planned to stay four days.

He left after one.

Kitty didn't protest.

There was no dramatic argument.

No final seduction.

No cruel farewell.

Nothing like the endings they'd given each other when they were younger.

They simply understood.

Too much had happened.

Too much blood had dried beneath the bridge.

Whatever had once drawn them together had not survived intact.

Kitty stood at the door as Stafford prepared to leave.

For most of her life, Stafford's departures had made her angry.

She'd wanted him to stay.

Or choose her.

Or come back.

This time, watching him walk away, Kitty felt something she had rarely felt for him.

Concern.

Not desire.

Not resentment.

Not jealousy.

She worried about him.

Stafford got into his car.

Kitty raised a hand.

He raised his.

Then he drove away.

She remained outside long after the car disappeared.

One of the dogs barked impatiently from inside the house.

Kitty turned toward the sound.

For decades, she had believed some people were destined to remain unfinished business.

Stafford had been hers.

A question she'd carried from girlhood into middle age.

A man she'd hated, desired, abandoned, returned to, betrayed with, dreamed about, and blamed.

Now, for the first time, Kitty wondered whether unfinished things sometimes ended without ever being resolved.

Perhaps there was no grand conclusion waiting for them.

No final romance.

No punishment.

No vindication.

Only two people who had once meant something enormous to one another becoming older people who no longer knew how to occupy the same room.

Kitty went back inside.

The dogs rushed toward her.

She closed the door behind her.

And this time, she didn't wait for Stafford to come back.