Kitty's Saga Chapter Nineteen: What Became of Us

There had been a time when starting over thrilled Kitty.

A new city had once meant possibility.

A bus ticket meant escape.

An unfamiliar skyline meant that somewhere beyond the horizon there might be a better version of her life waiting to begin.

Arizona felt different.

Perhaps it was because she'd traded one of America's largest cities for the quiet outskirts of Scottsdale. Perhaps age had finally dulled her appetite for reinvention.

Or perhaps Kitty simply had nothing left to run from.

Whatever the reason, she stayed close to home.

She occasionally consulted for local hotels and bed-and-breakfasts, sometimes filling temporary positions when someone needed an experienced hand. Blair sent business whenever she could and visited whenever work brought her nearby.

Those visits were never frequent enough.

Otherwise, Kitty's life became remarkably uneventful.

She wrote to Pam.

She called Opal.

She called Guy.

She worked on the house.

She walked the dogs.

Stafford remained somewhere on the margins.

He kept mostly to himself, and when he did call, Kitty increasingly found their conversations exhausting. His depression seemed bottomless. Every subject eventually circled back to Marnie.

Kitty repeatedly suggested he speak to someone professionally.

Stafford resisted.

There was an irony in what they'd become.

For years, Kitty had sought Stafford for what Gavin couldn't provide physically.

Now Stafford expected Kitty to provide what he could no longer provide himself emotionally.

Hours of listening.

Reassurance.

Comfort.

Endless conversations about Marnie.

Eventually, Kitty wondered whether this was how Stafford had felt during those years when she'd called unexpectedly from Chicago whenever her own life became unbearable.

Perhaps they had always used each other.

They had simply traded roles.

Still, Arizona slowly became home.

Kitty painted the kitchen.

She retiled the entryway.

She began collecting projects the way other people collected souvenirs.

Her dogs followed her everywhere.

They were tiny creatures with enormous opinions, each possessing a haughty personality wildly disproportionate to its size.

Kitty adored them.

They even had their own room, complete with a separate cooling unit to protect them from the Arizona heat.

"You're spoiled," Kitty told them.

They stared back without remorse.

She loved them more for it.

Once Kitty was settled, Gavin came to visit.

Kitty suspected he wasn't really visiting her.

He was inspecting Arizona.

Perhaps he'd begun imagining his own escape from Chicago.

If so, the desert quickly cured him of the idea.

Gavin looked like a fish stranded on dry land. When the afternoon sun burned through the blinds and turned the outside world white with heat, he retreated deeper into the house.

After a few days, he returned to Chicago.

Then he suggested Kitty return too.

"No."

Her answer came immediately.

Chicago had been her city once.

Maybe it always would be in some way.

But that chapter had ended.

For years, Kitty believed the legal battle and harassment surrounding her injury had driven her away.

With distance, she understood it differently.

Chicago had been her first great escape.

The city had represented everything Cincinnati wasn't.

Education.

Career.

Independence.

Anonymity.

Possibility.

She had clung to Chicago because it proved she had escaped the world she'd been born into.

Eventually, she no longer needed proof.

Gavin seemed disappointed when she refused to return.

He tried to hide it.

Kitty could tell he missed her.

That knowledge no longer gave her satisfaction.

Mostly, she felt sorry for him.

Gavin had spent his adult life believing affection could be secured through money.

Pay enough.

Provide enough.

Give enough.

Surely people would stay.

He had never understood that his method of keeping people was precisely what attracted those willing to leave once the benefits disappeared.

Guy, thankfully, was different.

He didn't chase relationships.

He cultivated them.

Kitty took comfort in that.

Then came the hottest summer Kitty had experienced since moving west.

At nine one morning, the main air-conditioning unit died.

By ten, the house was becoming unbearable.

The repairmen recommended replacing the entire system.

Kitty agreed.

It would take most of the day.

She gathered her mail from the box at the end of the driveway and fled with the dogs to her favorite pet-friendly coffee shop two miles away.

The cold air inside hit her like salvation.

Kitty ordered iced tea and a blueberry muffin.

She sat.

The dogs settled near her feet.

She began sorting through the mail.

Catalog.

Bill.

Junk.

Another catalog.

Then she saw the envelope from the correctional facility.

Pam.

Kitty opened it.

At first, the words made no sense.

She read them again.

Pam had died two days earlier.

Heart attack.

Prison infirmary.

Kitty stopped breathing.

There was a telephone number.

She called it immediately.

Her hands shook so badly she nearly dropped the phone.

Kitty hurried outside, hiding her face as tears streamed down her cheeks.

Someone answered.

Kitty identified herself.

The woman on the other end spoke with the practiced detachment of someone reading from a file.

Pam had complained of fatigue.

Shortness of breath.

She'd been taken to the infirmary.

Medication stabilized her condition.

After the required observation period, she'd appeared sufficiently recovered to return to her cell.

By morning, she was dead.

She'd passed in her sleep.

The report suggested that years of drug abuse had likely compromised her cardiovascular health.

Kitty thanked the woman.

She didn't remember ending the call.

She sat inside her parked car.

And sat.

And sat.

The Arizona heat eventually forced her back into awareness.

The steering wheel was becoming hot beneath her hands.

Pam was dead.

The person Kitty called next surprised her only after she'd already done it.

Gavin.

He answered.

Kitty barely managed the words.

"Pam died."

There was no lecture.

No awkwardness.

No questions Kitty couldn't answer.

Gavin simply began helping.

He arranged for Pam's cremated remains to be transported to a funeral home in Arizona.

He helped organize a small service.

Kitty.

Gavin.

Guy.

No one else.

Kitty would be damned before she allowed her sister to disappear into a prison cemetery as though she'd belonged to no one.

Gavin understood.

For once, Kitty didn't have to explain herself to him.

The service was small.

It was enough.

Then life reclaimed everyone.

Guy was establishing his career after college.

Gavin had obligations in Chicago.

Both offered to let Kitty stay with them.

She declined.

They had lives.

Kitty didn't want grief to become another way of holding someone too tightly.

She saw them off at the airport.

Gavin returned to Illinois.

Guy flew home to Connecticut.

Kitty returned to the ranch house alone.

That night, she couldn't sleep.

She clutched a pillow and cried while the dogs pressed themselves against her.

By dawn, grief had become self-pity.

Kitty hated that.

So she called the one person she knew who had made an entire existence out of grief.

Stafford.

Surely Stafford, of all people, would know what to say.

He didn't.

He agreed to come.

He drove to Arizona.

Kitty tried to explain what losing Pam felt like.

Stafford listened badly.

Eventually, he said the thing Kitty couldn't forgive.

"You barely knew Pam as an adult. What do you care if she died?"

Kitty stared at him.

Pam had been difficult.

Addicted.

Self-destructive.

Infuriating.

Absent.

Pam had also been the eleven-year-old girl who sent her seven-year-old sister to the playground so Kitty wouldn't see what was behind their parents' locked bedroom door.

Pam had been the closest thing Kitty had to a mother.

Love did not require admiration.

It didn't even require understanding.

Kitty loved her sister.

That was enough.

Stafford couldn't understand.

By the end of the day, Kitty asked him to leave.

He didn't argue.

They were both relieved when he did.

In time, Kitty found greater comfort in Guy.

As an adult, her son had become someone she genuinely admired.

Kind.

Intelligent.

Thoughtful.

The failures of his parents had not ruined him.

Guy had not become Gavin's clone.

Nor had he become Kitty.

He had become himself.

One evening, during a phone call, Guy said something that startled her.

"I hope I have what you and Dad had someday."

Kitty almost interrupted him.

What she and Gavin had?

Had Guy been living in the same house?

Kitty remembered years of silence.

Separate lives.

Resentment.

Her affair.

Gavin's affair.

The cold dissolution of whatever relationship had once existed between them.

But Guy had been a child.

He'd seen something different.

Perhaps two parents who remained present in one another's lives.

Perhaps familiarity.

Perhaps endurance.

Kitty didn't want to destroy his optimism.

But neither did she want him romanticizing something that had never existed.

"Don't fall in love with the story of a relationship," she told him gently. "Pay attention to the person you're actually with."

Guy was quiet.

"People change. You change. They change. Just make sure you keep knowing each other instead of assuming you do."

There was another silence.

Then Guy laughed nervously.

"Well..."

Kitty waited.

"I'm planning to ask Erica to marry me."

"Oh."

Wonderful, Kitty thought.

Her son had called to announce his intention to propose, and she'd responded with a warning about romantic disillusionment.

"Guy, I'm sorry."

He laughed.

"No, it's okay."

"No, it isn't. Congratulations."

Erica was a computer programmer.

Kitty had met her several times.

They'd been college sweethearts and had already spent years together.

Kitty liked her.

She simply hadn't realized Guy was ready for marriage.

They ended the call planning to see one another at Christmas.

Early the next morning, Kitty's phone rang again.

Stafford.

He was inconsolable.

Milly was dying.

His mother had developed complications from inoperable ovarian cancer. She was in

hospice. Doctors believed she had only days left.

Stafford was devastated.

His father had died years earlier.

Marnie was gone.

He had no children.

Now Milly—the last member of his immediate family—was leaving too.

Kitty tried to understand.

She told him about Pam.

Not because the losses were identical.

They weren't.

But because grief had taught Kitty something.

Pam had been a wayward mother to her.

Kitty hadn't respected many of her choices.

She had spent years frustrated with her.

She loved her anyway.

Stafford became angry.

"You don't understand."

"I'm trying to."

"You still have Gavin. You have Guy."

Kitty went quiet.

"You don't know what it's like to have nobody."

Something in her finally broke.

Maybe it was bad timing.

Maybe there was never going to be good timing.

"Nobody?"

Stafford stopped.

"I have been here."

He said nothing.

"I have been here for years, Stafford."

Kitty's voice rose.

"Every time you called. Every time you were miserable. Every time you wanted to talk about Marnie. Every time you wanted someone to listen to how terrible your life was. I've been here."

"That's not what I mean."

"No. It never is."

Years of frustration poured out at once.

"You keep saying nobody cares about you while attacking everyone who tries. You had your mother. You had Marnie. You had me. And somehow you've convinced yourself you've always been alone."

Stafford went silent.

Kitty knew anger better than tenderness with him.

For decades, anger had been the only language Stafford consistently seemed to hear.

She waited.

Perhaps this time he would understand.

The line went dead.

Stafford had hung up.

Kitty stared at the phone.

She didn't call back.

For once, she didn't care whether he ever called again.

Whatever Kitty and Stafford had once shared had never been healthy.

Not really.

They had distracted each other from other problems.

Gavin.

Marnie.

Loneliness.

Anger.

Fear.

Stafford had spent years transforming himself into the martyr of his own story, resenting people for failing to save him while refusing every hand extended in his direction.

Kitty couldn't fix that.

More importantly, she no longer wanted to.

Life continued.

The house needed repairs.

Repairs required money.

Kitty took occasional work as a substitute teacher at a local high school.

Most days were wonderfully dull.

Attendance.

Worksheets.

The occasional History Channel documentary when the lesson plan permitted.

She also volunteered at the animal shelter.

One afternoon, Kitty stood on her back patio installing a wall-mounted spice garden.

She wore a kaftan and wooden clogs.

Her dogs were causing some minor catastrophe in the yard.

Kitty caught sight of herself reflected in the patio door.

She laughed.

There she was.

The goofy older woman.

The sort of woman Kitty at twenty-five might have looked at and assumed had stopped living.

Kitty couldn't remember ever feeling more alive.

For years, she'd wondered about the paths not taken.

What if she'd accepted the corporate job?

What if she had stayed in Chicago?

What if she'd never gone to the sports bar that night?

Would her knee still work?

Would she still have her career?

What if she'd married Gavin?

What if Stafford had chosen her?

What if Pam had gotten clean?

What if?

What if?

What if?

Kitty sat on the patio with a cup of tea.

The dogs settled nearby.

A newspaper rested across her lap.

The desert afternoon stretched around her.

And suddenly the questions seemed very small.

The other lives had never happened.

This one had.

Kitty was where she was.

And for once, she didn't need to leave.

She thought about Pam.

She hoped that somewhere near the end, Pam had found something similar.

Peace.

Acceptance.

Some moment in which the endless fight between what life was and what it should have been finally became quiet.

Kitty had found balance.

Not perfection.

Balance.

She was no longer living on autopilot.

No longer grinning and bearing it.

No longer waiting for some future version of herself to begin living.

She was present.

And she was content.

Her greatest fear when she'd become a mother had been turning into Opal.

She hadn't.

She hadn't become Pam either.

She hadn't repeated her parents' lives.

She hadn't become Gavin's bitter ex.

Somehow, impossibly, Gavin had become her friend.

Kitty had made mistakes.

Large ones.

She had hurt people.

Failed people.

Used people.

She had sometimes been selfish, dishonest, reckless, and cruel.

She had also survived.

Learned.

Apologized when apologies were possible.

Changed when change was possible.

Kitty had become herself.

Not the woman Gavin tried to construct.

Not the woman Stafford wanted when he was lonely.

Not Pam.

Not Opal.

Not Blair.

Kitty.

And she no longer hated herself for being her.

Blair, meanwhile, was approaching her own reckoning with work.

For decades, she'd built nearly everything around her career.

Now corporate downsizing increasingly targeted senior staff.

Blair called Kitty, frightened about the future.

Kitty understood.

Once, losing her career would have terrified her too.

Now she was grateful she'd stepped away when she had.

A few months later came Christmas.

Kitty flew back to Chicago.

Driving a rental car through the city, she watched snow fall between the buildings.

She had forgotten how beautiful Chicago could be during the holidays.

She had also forgotten the traffic.

Within minutes, the slow desert seemed impossibly distant.

Cars crowded the roads.

Tires hissed over wet pavement.

Kitty gripped the steering wheel as she navigated patches of ice.

Some things she did not miss.

When Kitty reached Gavin's townhouse, Opal opened the door.

Kitty hugged her.

There had been a time when the sound of Opal knocking made Kitty want to hide.

Now she was genuinely happy to see her.

Age had caught up with Opal.

Kitty could see it immediately.

But the old woman remained unmistakably herself.

Gavin had gone to the airport to collect Guy and Erica, leaving Kitty and Opal alone over coffee.

Opal talked about Florida.

The retirement community.

Her friends.

Her flirtations with male residents.

Kitty laughed.

She finally understood something she'd been too resentful to appreciate when Guy was young.

Opal had loved him.

Whatever mistakes she'd made, she'd been a devoted grandmother.

Kitty told her about Arizona.

The house.

The heat.

The dogs.

The substitute teaching.

Opal promised to visit.

Kitty smiled.

"Anytime."

They both understood it probably wouldn't happen.

Travel had become difficult for Opal.

The promise mattered anyway.

Gavin refused to let Kitty stay at a hotel.

"The guest room is empty."

"I can afford a hotel."

"I know."

"Gavin."

"Guy and Erica aren't even staying here. The house is lonely enough."

Kitty gave in.

That evening, they went to the restaurant where Kitty and Gavin had first met.

Even the restaurant had changed.

It was entirely plant-based now.

Kitty looked around, amused.

Time had gotten to everything.

Guy and Erica sat close together.

Young.

Comfortable.

Excited about the future.

Kitty watched them with a strange tenderness.

She remembered believing adulthood meant eventually arriving somewhere.

Now she knew better.

There was no arrival.

Only movement.

Still, that night felt almost like the old days.

Only better.

There was no tension beneath the table.

No resentment hidden inside polite conversation.

No one pretending to be something they weren't.

For the first time, the Altons resembled a family precisely because nobody was forcing them to be one.

After dinner, Guy and Erica returned to their hotel.

Gavin drove Opal and Kitty back to the townhouse.

Opal went straight to bed.

Kitty and Gavin remained downstairs.

They watched old Doris Day movies.

Eventually, the conversation turned toward loneliness.

"Are you happy out there by yourself?" Gavin asked.

Kitty considered the question.

"Yes."

"Really?"

"Happier than I've ever been."

She meant it.

Blair planned to retire to Arizona soon to help care for her parents.

Kitty had friends.

Her dogs.

Her projects.

Work when she wanted it.

Guy.

Gavin.

Opal.

There was no empty space inside her waiting for someone else to fill it.

Gavin admitted he was single again.

He had no plans to retire.

"I'd go crazy."

"Why?"

He shrugged.

"My parents slowed down and got isolated. I don't want that."

Kitty heard the invitation beneath the conversation.

Perhaps Gavin hoped she'd come back.

Not necessarily as his lover.

Perhaps as companionship.

Someone familiar.

Someone who already understood his habits.

Once, Kitty might have accepted.

Gavin could provide endless financial security.

But he had never been able to provide the kind of support Kitty needed in return.

"I've moved past that part of my life," she said.

Gavin looked at her.

Then nodded.

"You're doing well."

"I am."

And that was enough.

Gavin went upstairs.

Kitty remained on the sofa for a while.

She thought about how little he'd changed.

Same city.

Same career.

Same habits.

Gavin's relationship with Kitty had perhaps been the most spontaneous thing he'd ever done.

Kitty was the opposite.

Her life had been a chain of departures.

Cincinnati.

Chicago.

Arizona.

Schools.

Jobs.

Men.

Homes.

She used to think she and Gavin had been some cosmic mistake.

Two incompatible people thrown together by bad timing.

Now even that interpretation seemed unnecessarily grand.

They had met.

They had stayed together for a while.

They had a son.

They hurt each other.

They separated.

They became friends.

There didn't have to be destiny behind it.

There didn't have to be a lesson.

Some things simply happened.

The next day was Christmas Eve.

Kitty and Gavin went shopping for a few last-minute gifts.

Gavin paid.

Some habits deserved to survive.

They met Guy and Erica for lunch.

Kitty listened while the young couple talked about Connecticut.

Their apartment.

Their work.

Their plans.

They wanted the same things.

Not everything.

Enough.

Guy was thriving professionally.

Erica was excited about her future.

Kitty liked her.

Erica was kind without being weak.

Confident without needing to dominate anyone.

She complimented Guy.

After lunch, the young couple left to go ice-skating.

Kitty and Gavin declined.

They were getting older, not stupid.

In the car, Kitty looked out at Chicago.

"This year was hard."

Gavin glanced at her.

"I know."

"But I'm glad everyone is okay."

"So am I."

They reached the townhouse.

Gavin parked.

Neither immediately got out.

Then he turned toward her.

"I'm sorry I never proposed to you."

Kitty stared at him.

Of all the things she expected Gavin to say, that wasn't one.

"I should have."

He looked down.

"I married her. And I never even asked the mother of my child."

For years, Kitty had wanted those words.

Now they arrived when she no longer needed them.

Strangely, that made them easier to accept.

"I'm sorry too."

Gavin looked at her.

"I made it difficult."

"You did."

Kitty laughed softly.

"So did you."

"Probably."

"I resented you because I felt inferior to you. I didn't understand that then."

Gavin listened.

"I kept rejecting things before you could reject me. It made me feel like I had some control."

She paused.

"And sometimes I blamed you for things I'd helped create."

Gavin reached across the console.

He took her hand.

No romance remained in the gesture.

Something better did.

Understanding.

They sat like that for a moment.

Then Kitty squeezed his hand once.

"Come on. We have stockings."

Inside, the house was warm.

Dinner was ordered in.

Everyone wore thick knitted sweaters.

Christmas music played.

Opal laughed.

Erica told stories about her family and their little goat farm in Indiana.

Guy proudly explained that they produced artisan cheese.

Gavin grinned.

"Send me pictures."

Kitty watched him smile.

She hadn't seen enough of that smile during the years they'd been together.

She was glad to see it now.

Kitty entertained everyone with stories about her dogs and complained theatrically about how terribly she missed her "babies" waiting with the pet sitter in Arizona.

Erica laughed.

Guy kept glancing toward the fireplace.

Kitty noticed.

She said nothing.

Eventually, he stood.

Erica looked up.

Guy crossed the room.

Then he dropped to one knee.

Erica's hands flew to her mouth.

Opal gasped.

Guy began speaking.

Kitty barely heard the words.

She watched her son.

The little boy she'd once feared would become Gavin.

The little boy she'd failed in ways she couldn't undo.

The little boy who had grown into a man without becoming either of his parents.

Guy held out the ring.

Erica screamed.

"Yes!"

Everyone erupted.

Opal wiped tears from her eyes.

Gavin clapped Guy on the back.

Kitty reached for her son's hand and held it tightly.

Erica hugged everyone before rushing away to call her family.

For a moment, the room became wonderfully chaotic.

Then Kitty found herself standing beside Gavin.

They looked at one another.

Once, Kitty had thought success meant escaping where she'd come from.

Then she'd thought it meant education.

Money.

A career.

A respectable partner.

A beautiful home.

Later, she'd thought happiness might be Stafford.

Then freedom.

Then solitude.

She had spent most of her life trying to discover the one thing that would finally make everything right.

There had never been one.

There had only been all of it.

Pam sending her to the playground.

The bus out of Ohio.

Sandy's house.

Marnie's friendship.

Stafford's cruelty.

Chicago.

College.

Loneliness.

Gavin.

Guy.

The hotels.

The affairs.

The mistakes.

The departures.

The desert.

Every life Kitty might have lived had disappeared somewhere behind her.

This was the one that remained.

It was imperfect.

So was she.

Across the room, Guy was laughing while Erica spoke excitedly to her family.

Kitty looked at Gavin.

He looked older.

So did she.

That was all right.

They had not managed to give their son an example of perfect love.

Perhaps no one could.

But somehow, through all their failures, Guy had learned enough to recognize love when it came to him.

Kitty smiled.

Outside, snow fell across Chicago.

Inside, the house was warm.

For once, there was nowhere else Kitty wanted to be.