Kitty's Saga Chapter Fourteen: A Radiating Chill

Stafford made Kitty an offer.

It was not a good one.

Years earlier, he had bought back Sandy's old house. He and Marnie had renovated the property, modernizing the house and converting the detached garage into a mother-in-law suite that could be rented separately.

Stafford suggested Kitty live there.

Under Sandy's roof again.

This time as Stafford's mistress.

Kitty was appalled.

After all these years, after everything that had happened between them, Stafford had somehow found a way to remain exactly as terrible as she remembered.

What kind of future was that supposed to be?

Marnie asleep—or drunk—in the main house while Kitty lived conveniently across the property, waiting for Stafford to visit whenever he pleased?

She refused.

And then she continued seeing him.

That was the contradiction Kitty couldn't explain even to herself.

She had hated Stafford for so long that he'd become almost mythological in her memory. He was the villain of a hundred old stories, the person she'd expected, somehow, to eventually reveal himself as someone else.

Now Kitty believed she occasionally glimpsed that other person.

There was good in Stafford.

She was sure of it.

He simply buried it beneath arrogance and cruelty because somewhere along the way he'd decided cruelty looked like strength.

At least, that was what Kitty told herself.

Her memories had begun changing too. The farther she traveled from the girl she'd once been, the softer the past became. Old encounters acquired a strange haze around their edges. Things Stafford had done that were indefensible at the time now arrived accompanied by explanations.

He was young.

He was angry.

He didn't know her.

He had changed.

Kitty never mentioned his old cruelties when they were together.

Stafford wouldn't tolerate it.

The past was welcome only when remembered according to Stafford's version of it.

Kitty accepted the rule.

Whatever Stafford was, she preferred him to Gavin.

That realization frightened her more than she admitted.

Stafford had known about the pregnancy from the beginning of their affair. As Kitty's body changed, the absurdity of what they were doing became impossible to ignore.

Still, neither stopped.

By Kitty's ninth month, their affair had developed a schedule.

On weekends, she drove four hours to Ohio.

Four hours there.

Four hours back.

She told Gavin she was visiting her aging grandparents.

Neither of them appeared to believe the lie.

Neither seemed to care enough to confront it.

By then, Kitty privately regarded Gavin as little more than a paycheck.

Gavin seemed to regard Kitty as a useful womb.

Whatever relationship they'd once pretended to have was over.

Gavin's obsession with their unborn son, however, intensified.

He named the baby without consulting Kitty.

Guy.

Kitty hated the name.

When she objected, Gavin dismissed her.

"As if you have a biblical name."

The guest room became a nursery under the direction of an interior designer Gavin hired.

Guy appeared everywhere.

GUY embroidered on blankets.

GUY painted on decorations.

GUY monogrammed onto things the child wouldn't be able to use for years.

Kitty would sometimes stand in the doorway and stare at the room.

Apparently, her son already belonged to someone.

It simply wasn't her.

Gavin enrolled Guy in an elite preschool academy before the child had even been born.

Again, Kitty wasn't consulted.

At meetings with prospective caregivers and even during medical appointments, people occasionally mistook Kitty for a surrogate.

The first time it happened, Kitty laughed.

The second time, she didn't.

She increasingly longed for her old apartment.

Her little high-rise studio had never been glamorous. The furniture had been secondhand. Her pastel-green sofa had been cheap. There had been nights when the silence inside it felt unbearable.

Now Kitty would have given almost anything for that silence.

At least it had belonged to her.

Gavin persuaded her to take her vacation time and begin maternity leave early with what he called a "push present": money.

It sounded generous.

In practice, Kitty stopped working.

Almost immediately, she missed the hotel.

She missed difficult guests.

She missed schedules.

She missed putting on her uniform and becoming someone whose competence mattered.

She missed earning money that belonged to her.

Family life provided none of the comfort she'd once imagined it would.

Gavin still seemed to expect Kitty to behave like a concierge, only now he was the guest.

His age, Kitty reasoned, might explain some of his fixation on the baby. He was older than she was. Perhaps fatherhood seemed more urgent to him.

But there was a difference between loving a child and erasing its mother.

Gavin didn't seem to understand that.

Or perhaps he understood perfectly well.

They spoke less as the weeks passed.

Even Gavin's touch became unwelcome.

Kitty increasingly thought of him as a coworker she disliked but was required to remain professionally cordial toward.

Opal began appearing at the condominium whenever she pleased.

No call.

No warning.

No invitation.

Gavin encouraged it.

He said his mother's unexpected visits were "healthy" because they kept Kitty "on a schedule."

Kitty wanted to know whose schedule.

Apparently, Gavin and Opal had also diagnosed her.

Pregnancy-induced depression.

Perhaps they were right.

Kitty certainly didn't feel like herself.

She barely recognized the woman in the mirror anymore.

Her naturally brunette hair was bleached blonde and worn longer than she preferred because Gavin liked it that way. Kitty preferred her hair brown and cropped around her shoulders.

Her body had swollen around a child whose father she could barely tolerate.

Her clothes had been chosen for her.

Her meals arrived according to someone else's specifications.

Her days unfolded according to other people's decisions.

Gavin rarely said our baby.

He said my son.

Kitty increasingly felt like a husk carrying something Gavin was waiting to collect.

Yet for all his fixation on family, Gavin made no long-term commitment to Kitty.

He wouldn't propose.

He wouldn't combine finances.

He wouldn't even put her on a joint account because, according to him, he didn't want their relationship to become "transactional."

Kitty nearly laughed the first time he said it.

Everything between them was transactional.

Gavin paid for things.

But only things Gavin wanted Kitty to have.

The distinction became increasingly important to her.

Money could buy the blonde hair Gavin preferred.

Money could buy the food Gavin wanted her eating.

Money could buy doctors, clothes, decorators, maids, laundry services, and a nursery emblazoned with a name Kitty hadn't chosen.

It apparently couldn't buy Kitty the right to make decisions about herself.

She particularly resented the obstetrician Gavin had selected because his insurance was better.

During appointments, the doctor spoke primarily to Gavin.

Kitty would sit on the examination table, increasingly furious, while two men discussed her pregnancy as though she were furniture in the room.

Eventually, Gavin and the doctor decided she should have a holistic birth assisted by a doula.

Kitty objected.

Both men assured her that their plan was "best for the baby."

Kitty sat there seething.

She wanted to scream:

I am the baby’s mother.

Instead, she said nothing.

Silence had become the easiest way to survive Gavin.

There was still one part of Kitty's life he knew nothing about.

Pam.

Kitty continued writing to her secretly.

Pam's letters now went to a private post-office box Gavin didn't know existed.

Kitty cherished that little key.

It represented something Gavin hadn't purchased, arranged, improved, scheduled, or approved.

Pam belonged entirely outside his world.

But Pam's world was changing too.

After years in prison, she finally wanted out badly enough to pursue it seriously. She had petitioned for transfer to a halfway house and was waiting for the parole board's decision.

Kitty wrote back wishing her luck.

She also told Pam that she might soon return to Cincinnati.

She didn't mention the pregnancy.

Kitty still wasn't certain what she would do after the baby was born.

There were moments when she imagined leaving Guy with Gavin.

The thought horrified her.

So did the thought of remaining tied to Gavin indefinitely.

Kitty loved her unborn child.

She simply hated the life surrounding him.

Years earlier, she had envied women married to wealthy men. They'd seemed protected from everything Kitty feared.

Bills.

Eviction.

Bad neighborhoods.

Uncertainty.

They seemed cared for.

Now Kitty understood that money could create another kind of vulnerability when only one person controlled it.

Everything Gavin gave her increasingly resembled a chain.

His condominium.

His car.

His doctor.

His money.

His clothes.

His plans.

Kitty wanted her own paycheck again.

The thought of asking Gavin for money—even for something trivial—made her stomach turn.

She had spent her entire adulthood learning to support herself.

Now, on the brink of motherhood, she had somehow surrendered that independence.

Stafford complicated everything.

His feelings about the pregnancy changed depending on the day.

Sometimes, lying beside Kitty in a hotel bed, he would put a hand against her stomach and say he wished the baby were his.

Other times, he admitted that he wished Kitty weren't pregnant at all.

Neither sentiment was particularly noble.

Kitty kept returning anyway.

By then, their routine had become almost domestic in its indecency.

Kitty arrived in Ohio.

Marnie would already be passed out at home.

Stafford would leave her there.

He and Kitty would meet at a hotel.

They would make love.

Then sleep wrapped around each other until morning.

Those mornings were always the worst.

Kitty would wake to Stafford dressing.

He would leave.

He would return to his wife.

And Kitty would remain in bed as sunlight crept across the room.

Sometimes she imagined simply refusing to go back to Chicago.

She could stay.

She could accept the humiliating little house Stafford had offered her and become his mistress indefinitely.

The fantasy usually progressed to Gavin.

Kitty imagined fighting him in court.

She imagined standing before a judge and explaining everything.

She imagined taking Guy and disappearing into a new life.

Then reality returned.

Gavin had money.

Money bought lawyers.

Money bought experts.

Money bought time.

Kitty imagined herself walking into court against Gavin's resources and losing her son.

Stafford was no solution.

Deep down, Kitty knew that.

Stafford was lust.

Stafford was anger.

Stafford was rebellion.

Stafford was every unresolved thing inside her given the shape of a man.

She wanted Stafford to want her.

She did not want to become his wife.

One morning, after lying in bed constructing elaborate speeches in which she finally told Gavin exactly what she thought of him, Kitty pushed herself upright.

She swung her feet toward the floor.

The room shifted.

Kitty sat back down.

A strange wooziness passed through her.

Then came the first cramp.

She waited.

Another followed.

Stronger.

Kitty stared at the wall.

It took several minutes before she accepted what was happening.

Labor.

She told no one.

Not Stafford.

Certainly not Gavin.

Kitty drove herself to the hospital.

For months, Gavin had planned every detail of this day.

The obstetrician.

The doula.

The birth plan.

Even a photographer.

Kitty discarded all of it.

For once, Gavin would not be in the room.

No one would speak over her.

No one would decide what was best while she sat silently nearby.

Kitty had her baby without him.

And when the nurse finally placed the infant into her arms, everything else disappeared.

Gavin.

Stafford.

Marnie.

Opal.

The hotel.

The money.

The arguments.

Kitty looked down at the tiny face pressed against her.

Love came over her with such force that it frightened her.

This was Guy.

Not Gavin's son.

Not an heir.

Not an achievement.

Not a bargaining chip between two people who despised one another.

Her baby.

Kitty held him closer.

For an entire day, she told no one.

Then she called Gavin.

He arrived at the hospital, frantic to see the baby.

Mostly the baby.

Kitty watched him and felt the old anger returning.

She wanted him to ask how she was.

She wanted him to look at her.

She wanted him to understand what she'd just endured.

Instead, Gavin stared at Guy.

Watching him, Kitty suddenly understood part of Stafford's appeal.

Stafford was everything Gavin wasn't.

Where Gavin was cold, Stafford burned.

Where Gavin controlled, Stafford acted recklessly.

Where Gavin made Kitty feel invisible, Stafford made her feel intensely, dangerously seen.

And somewhere inside Kitty existed one more ugly satisfaction she didn't particularly want to examine.

If Gavin ever discovered the affair, it would destroy his pride.

Perhaps part of her wanted that too.

Returning to the condominium destroyed whatever temporary peace the hospital had given her.

Gavin was furious.

"Why didn't you call me?"

Kitty held Guy against her.

"It happened too fast."

"You had time to drive to a hospital."

"I was busy making sure the baby was okay."

Gavin paced.

He had planned everything.

The doula.

The doctor.

The photographer.

That last detail particularly appalled Kitty.

She couldn't imagine anything she wanted less during childbirth than Gavin commissioning photographic evidence of it.

His voice rose.

"Don't yell in front of the baby."

Gavin stopped.

Kitty looked down at Guy.

Interesting.

She had finally discovered something capable of silencing him.

Unfortunately, Gavin took twelve weeks of paternity leave.

Kitty could think of nothing worse.

For three months, they would occupy the same condominium while Gavin attempted to establish himself as the central figure in Guy's life.

He encouraged Kitty to pump constantly so he could bottle-feed the baby without her.

Opal effectively moved in without officially doing so.

Kitty felt herself being crowded out again.

Except now there was something different.

She was no longer pregnant.

She could leave.

Stafford received only a brief message explaining that their meetings would have to stop for a while.

His response was indifferent.

Exactly as Kitty expected.

That should have hurt more than it did.

Instead, Kitty sat in the nursery late one night with Guy asleep against her chest.

His name surrounded them.

On the wall.

On the blankets.

On the clothes.

Everywhere Gavin had paid to put it.

Kitty looked around at the expensive room.

Once, she would have thought this was what security looked like.

A wealthy man.

A beautiful condominium.

A perfectly decorated nursery.

A healthy baby sleeping safely in her arms.

She understood now that security and freedom were not the same thing.

Kitty lowered her face and kissed Guy's head.

For years, every time her life became unbearable, she had survived by leaving.

Ohio.

Pam.

Sandy's house.

Community college.

People.

Places.

Versions of herself.

She had always been good at leaving.

But this time she couldn't simply pack a backpack and board a bus.

This time, she had someone to carry with her.