Kitty's Saga Chapter Fifteen: What We Can Not Take

Weeks became months, and before Kitty quite understood where the time had gone, Guy was turning two.

Gavin had returned to work long ago.

Opal, unfortunately, had not found anywhere else to be.

The woman remained a pest, appearing at the condominium with such regularity that Kitty sometimes wondered why Gavin didn't simply give her a key. Then again, Opal had her uses. She was always willing to babysit Guy, and that afforded Kitty opportunities to continue seeing Stafford.

Kitty and Stafford had resumed their affair shortly before Guy's first birthday.

No one seemed to notice.

Or perhaps no one cared.

By then, Kitty and Gavin possessed so little attraction toward one another that they rarely slept together and spoke even less about anything resembling a shared future. They both adored Guy, but the boy would never have a sibling produced by their union. Whatever Kitty and Gavin were, they had ceased pretending they were a real couple.

Stafford remained something else entirely.

His work required frequent travel, sometimes making him inaccessible for weeks at a time. During those absences, Kitty found herself wondering whether he had other mistresses.

The thought bothered her.

She didn't particularly want to examine why.

Somewhere along the way, Kitty had become genuinely fond of Stafford.

Abrasive, selfish, infuriating Stafford.

Meanwhile, Kitty could no longer tolerate lounging around Gavin's condominium indefinitely.

Restlessness had always been dangerous for her.

Eventually, it drove her back toward the job market.

Kitty assumed returning to work would be simple. She had a degree, years of hotel experience, and a respectable employment history.

She was wrong.

Much had changed while she'd been living as a kept woman.

Her former position had been filled. Worse, she discovered that qualifications throughout the industry had shifted while she'd been away. Jobs Kitty once would have been competitive for now attracted applicants with more education, more recent experience, or both.

For the first time, Kitty understood that she'd allowed herself to fall behind.

At dinner one evening, she told Gavin about her difficulties.

Opal was there, naturally.

Guy sat nearby.

Gavin barely looked up from his plate.

"In this market, a bachelor's degree is minimal," he said in his usual monotone. "If you want to be competitive, you'll probably need a master's."

Kitty leaned back in the satin-upholstered host chair.

Normally, Gavin's condescension would have irritated her.

This time, she heard something else.

School.

People.

Classes.

Deadlines.

A reason to leave the condominium every morning.

A world beyond Gavin, Opal, and the carefully managed existence that had swallowed her whole.

"Would you help me pay for it?"

Gavin swallowed a mouthful of steelhead trout roe.

"I think that's an appropriate career choice to pursue."

Kitty almost smiled.

For the first time in years, she was excited about something.

Life with Gavin had never become hers.

She always felt like an outsider inside it.

Gavin and Guy were inseparable. Opal belonged naturally to their little circle. Kitty somehow remained at its edge, despite being Guy's mother.

Nobody asked about her day.

Nobody seemed particularly happy when she entered a room.

Sometimes Kitty would walk in while Gavin and Opal were talking and watch the conversation abruptly stop. Neither invited her into it. They simply waited.

Eventually, Kitty would leave.

Then the conversation resumed.

Graduate school offered something far more valuable than another degree.

Escape.

Even temporary escape was enough.

After dinner, Kitty drove to her private post-office box.

Pam had written.

The letter was already a week old. Pam had finally received approval to move into a halfway house through a work-release program.

Kitty stood there reading the news twice.

She was happy for her.

Whatever Pam had become, Kitty had always wanted her sister to find some path out of the life that had consumed her.

Pam had never recovered from their parents' deaths.

Kitty understood that now.

She had been seven.

Pam had been eleven.

They were living in government-subsidized housing in Ohio when they came home from school one afternoon and found their parents' bedroom door locked.

It had happened before.

Their parents would disappear behind that door after using whatever drugs happened to be circulating at the time. Sometimes they emerged hours later.

Sometimes neighbors had to intervene.

That afternoon, Pam seemed to understand before Kitty did.

She sent Kitty outside.

"Go to the playground."

Kitty went.

Pam knocked on neighbors' doors.

Adults forced open the bedroom.

Their parents had been dead since sometime the previous night.

Kitty spent most of her life trying not to remember what came afterward.

Pam spent hers remembering.

Again.

And again.

And again.

Until Kitty began to see something terrible in her sister's addiction.

Pam hadn't merely mourned their parents.

She had begun reenacting them.

As though some part of her had been trapped forever outside that locked bedroom door, trying to reach the people on the other side.

Kitty wanted to help her.

Pam had never made helping easy.

Still, the halfway house was something.

It was movement.

Kitty wrote back, wishing her well and mentioning that she might eventually return to Cincinnati herself.

She told Pam nothing about Guy.

Nothing about Gavin.

Nothing about the strange, gilded life she'd fallen into.

Gavin knew very little about Kitty's childhood, and Kitty suspected he preferred it that way.

He avoided questions about her past with the careful determination of a child who refuses to ask whether Santa Claus is real.

The truth might ruin something for him.

So Kitty allowed him his illusion.

Maintaining the illusion of their relationship, however, exhausted her.

Her days followed a sterile routine.

Mornings belonged to Guy.

Around lunchtime, Opal usually collected him.

Kitty went to the gym.

For an hour, a maid service moved through the condominium, cleaning surfaces that were already clean and rearranging Kitty's belongings just enough to make her feel that strangers had rummaged through her life.

She hated being home while they worked.

So she found errands.

The gym.

A class.

The spa.

Shopping.

Anything.

Her life was beautiful in the way a furniture catalog was beautiful.

Everything matched.

Everything gleamed.

Everything was arranged precisely where someone had decided it belonged.

Nothing felt alive.

Kitty missed watching television late at night.

She missed sleeping until noon on a day off.

She missed laughing too loudly.

She missed saying something stupid without wondering whether Gavin would correct her.

She missed telling friends what she actually thought.

More than anything, she missed having friends.

Perhaps that was why Stafford increasingly appealed to her.

Stafford had no polish.

No restraint.

No interest in appearing pleasant.

He was rude because he was rude, not because he'd found some socially acceptable way to disguise it.

Kitty could become furious with him.

She could tell him to go to hell.

Stafford might tell her to go there first.

But he wouldn't look at her as though she'd committed some unforgivable breach of etiquette.

With Stafford, Kitty could be angry.

She could be crude.

She could be herself.

Being a concierge had taught Kitty how to perform refinement.

Gavin had mistaken the performance for the woman.

Worse, he preferred the performance.

At least once a month, Gavin required Kitty to accompany him to a professional function.

Beforehand, he dictated what she should wear and how she should behave.

Kitty understood the rules.

Smile.

Offer bland greetings.

Don't monopolize anyone's attention.

Don't say anything controversial.

Preferably, don't say much at all.

She found the entire ritual degrading.

The other wives rarely helped.

Kitty wasn't married to Gavin, which relegated her to a peculiar social category. She was temporary. A girlfriend. The mother of his child, certainly, but apparently not permanent enough to be treated as a proper member of their world.

At events, Gavin usually abandoned her within minutes.

Kitty would sit alone, pretending not to look alone.

Occasionally, one of the women spoke to her.

Those interactions were often worse.

Several of their husbands had openly flirted with Kitty over the years, which somehow became Kitty's offense.

Whenever she complained afterward, Gavin blamed her.

Her upbringing.

Her manners.

Her clothes.

Her inability to "read the room."

Another etiquette course would follow.

Or a stylist.

Or some other humiliating attempt to improve her.

Kitty survived those evenings only because she'd spent years in hospitality.

Grin and bear it.

That had become her unofficial philosophy.

Increasingly, however, Kitty wondered exactly how much of her life she intended to bear.

At least graduate school began in the fall.

Unfortunately, it was only spring.

Coming out of winter, Gavin's bank hosted a Mardi Gras fundraiser for charity at the Langham, one of Chicago's posh hotels.

Gavin was invited.

Therefore, Kitty was attending.

Guy would remain home with a nanny who had become increasingly useful to the Alton household.

The nanny was in her twenties, pretty, and sufficiently interested in Gavin that even Kitty noticed.

Gavin flirted with her too.

Badly.

Kitty watched their exchanges with secondhand embarrassment.

She didn't care if Gavin slept with other women. She only wanted him to possess enough dignity not to court them while she was standing in the room.

The nanny appeared to be maneuvering for Kitty's position.

Kitty quietly wished her luck.

Anyone who voluntarily wanted Gavin could have him.

Sometimes Kitty amused herself with the thought that the nanny might actually be perfect for him.

Gavin was already accustomed to paying for her time.

Kitty wanted only to be freed from the arrangement.

Anything that broke the stagnation would be welcome.

On the evening of the fundraiser, Kitty wore a crimson silk gown that followed every line of her body.

Gavin wore an overly fitted tuxedo that only emphasized his slouching frame.

They arrived far too early.

Kitty refused to sit because she was afraid of wrinkling the gown.

Gavin abandoned her the moment one of his colleagues appeared.

Kitty stood alone.

Again.

She knew playing on her phone would look rude, so eventually she slipped toward the kitchen under the pretense of checking on Guy and the nanny.

There, unexpectedly, she found someone from another life.

"Kitty?"

Kitty turned.

Blair.

For a moment, Kitty simply stared.

Blair looked remarkably similar to the business-marketing student Kitty remembered from university, aside from some conspicuous cosmetic enhancements she'd apparently acquired along the way.

"Blair?"

They laughed.

Blair was now an event manager at the hotel.

They caught up quickly between interruptions from staff members requiring Blair's attention. The conversation lasted only a few minutes before Blair had to hurry away.

It didn't matter.

Kitty walked back into the ballroom smiling.

She had spoken to someone who knew her from before Gavin.

Someone who remembered Kitty when she was simply Kitty.

The feeling lasted until she returned to her table.

The other women greeted her with the familiar chill.

Kitty resumed her assigned place in the hierarchy.

She smiled.

She sat.

She endured.

After dinner came the speeches.

And more speeches.

By the middle of what felt like the hundredth speech, Kitty allowed her attention to wander around the ballroom before sheer boredom rendered her unconscious.

Then she saw him.

Stafford.

Her broad-shouldered, brooding, thoroughly inappropriate secret sat several tables away.

His tuxedo was obviously rented.

Kitty couldn't have cared less.

She hadn't spent a weekend with him since before Christmas.

For a moment, she considered getting his attention.

Then she saw Marnie.

Stafford was trying to coax a drink out of her hand.

Kitty watched them.

Something strange occurred to her.

What felt like a lifetime ago, when she'd lived with Sandy, Stafford had seemed wealthy to Kitty.

Established.

Important.

He'd belonged to a social world she could barely imagine entering.

Now, surrounded by bankers, executives, expensive gowns, and people whose watches probably cost more than Kitty's first year of college, Stafford looked almost rough.

Middle class.

Ordinary.

Gavin belonged here.

Stafford didn't.

Kitty stared at the two men from across the ballroom and suddenly understood something she should have learned years ago.

It didn't matter.

None of it mattered.

Gavin had more money than Stafford.

A better address.

More expensive clothes.

More impressive connections.

And Kitty didn't love him.

She enjoyed Stafford far more, despite everything wrong with him.

Money hadn't solved the equation.

Kitty had once imagined that rich people existed above the problems that consumed everyone beneath them.

Now she lived among them.

They lied.

They cheated.

They drank.

They hated their spouses.

They feared humiliation.

They went home lonely.

They simply did it surrounded by more expensive furniture.

By one in the morning, most of the remaining guests had migrated from the ballroom or gone home.

Kitty sat in the lobby mentally counting bricks to keep herself occupied.

Eventually, Gavin appeared.

They returned to the condominium.

Kitty waited.

Gavin fell asleep.

She reached for her phone.

Stafford answered.

He picked her up.

Kitty was irritated that he hadn't approached her at the fundraiser.

She went with him anyway.

They returned to the Langham.

Stafford booked another room, separate from the one he shared with Marnie.

For a few hours, Kitty stopped thinking about Gavin.

Afterward, she left Stafford to return to his wife.

But before they separated, Stafford told her something that drained much of the pleasure from their reunion.

Marnie was getting worse.

Alcohol was no longer enough.

Stafford had begun finding bottles of pills in her hands.

Antidepressants.

She had discovered that her tolerance for alcohol could be overcome by mixing medication into it.

Every night before Stafford went to sleep, he checked Marnie's pulse.

Every morning when he woke, he checked again.

Sometimes he watched her breathe.

Kitty listened without knowing what to say.

That morning, Stafford returned to Marnie's room.

He checked her pulse.

She was alive.

He collapsed onto the couch across from the bed.

He told Kitty that he wished Marnie would leave him.

But he was terrified of being alone.

He knew she needed treatment.

He also believed Marnie would never forgive him if he forced her into rehab.

So he did nothing.

He watched her slowly destroy herself and called his inaction loyalty.

Kitty understood more than she wanted to.

Stafford was selfish.

So was she.

They were having an affair while Marnie drank herself unconscious in another room.

Whatever tenderness existed between Kitty and Stafford did not make what they were doing noble.

It merely made it easier for them to continue doing it.

Kitty slipped through the hotel lobby the following morning in the same crimson dress she'd worn the night before.

She hoped no one would notice.

Someone did.

"Kitty."

Kitty stopped.

Blair waved her over.

She looked exhausted. Judging from her appearance, she'd worked through most of the night.

Blair looked Kitty up and down.

The gown.

The morning hour.

The unmistakable walk of shame.

A knowing smile appeared.

"I see you haven't changed since college."

Kitty nearly choked.

Apparently, the hotel staff knew considerably more about Stafford and Kitty's extracurricular arrangements than she'd hoped.

She changed the subject immediately.

"The fundraiser turned out beautifully. You did an amazing job."

Blair smiled.

"Thank you."

Then she asked the question Kitty dreaded.

"Where are you working now?"

Kitty could have lied.

With Gavin, she lied constantly.

With Marnie, she lied.

With Stafford, she avoided truths.

For some reason, standing there with Blair, Kitty didn't want to.

"I'm not."

She explained that she'd taken too much time away after having Guy. Her old position was gone. The industry had moved on. Now she was planning to attend graduate school so she could become competitive again.

Kitty waited for Blair to laugh.

She didn't.

Instead, Blair looked sympathetic.

Before Kitty left to catch a cab, Blair reached into her purse and handed her a business card.

"When you're finished with school, call me."

Kitty stared at it.

Blair was offering her a job at the Langham.

Or perhaps she was only being polite.

Kitty couldn't tell anymore.

She thanked her and slipped the card into her clutch.

Hours later, back inside Gavin's immaculate condominium, Kitty took it out again.

She studied Blair's name.

Then her phone buzzed.

A friend request.

Blair.

There was a message attached.

The offer was real.

Kitty sat down.

For years, she had been waiting for someone else to change her life.

For Gavin to become warmer.

For Stafford to leave Marnie.

For Marnie to stop drinking.

For Pam to get out.

For the right moment to leave.

For some door to open.

Now, unexpectedly, one had.

Not because of Gavin's money.

Not because Stafford wanted her.

Not because anyone had rescued her.

Someone remembered the woman Kitty had been before all of this and believed that woman might still be useful.

Kitty looked around the condominium.

Everything surrounding her was expensive.

Almost none of it belonged to her.

She looked down at Blair's business card.

It was only a rectangle of paper.

Yet in Kitty's hand, it felt like the most valuable thing in the room.