Kitty's Saga Chapter Seventeen: Shame Below Circumstance

Seattle had been exactly the escape Kitty needed.

For a few days with Stafford, she almost forgot Florida.

She forgot Gavin.

She forgot the nanny.

She forgot the university campus that had made her feel unwelcome in a place she'd once regarded as salvation.

Seattle became its own little world, separated from everything awaiting them back home.

Stafford never asked her to explain herself too thoroughly.

Kitty never asked him what he planned to tell Marnie.

They ate in restaurants, slept late, wandered unfamiliar streets, and pretended for several days that neither of them belonged to anyone else.

It was irresponsible.

Kitty knew that.

It was also wonderful.

Gavin's platinum card paid for much of it.

Kitty assumed he eventually saw the charges.

Two airline tickets.

Accommodations for two.

Meals for two.

Perhaps he understood.

Perhaps he didn't want to know.

Gavin never mentioned Stafford when Kitty returned.

Instead, he became cold.

Not his ordinary aloofness.

Something harsher.

He treated Kitty like an unwelcome presence in a home that, until recently, they had supposedly shared.

The nanny avoided Kitty altogether.

Kitty assumed Gavin was attempting some newfound loyalty toward her.

Good for him.

Opal stopped dropping by too.

She had chosen a retirement community in Florida and planned to move there during the summer. Until then, Gavin took Guy to visit her apartment a few buildings away.

Everyone seemed to be quietly withdrawing to their respective corners.

By summer, Kitty would have her master's degree.

Opal would be in Florida.

Guy would enter private elementary school in the fall.

Gavin would presumably build whatever life he wanted with the nanny.

The Alton family, as Kitty had known it, was ending.

For a moment, she found herself mourning the years when she and Gavin had been close.

Then she realized they had never been close.

They had simply been together.

There was a difference.

At night, Kitty occasionally allowed herself to remember Seattle.

Stafford's arms around her.

Stafford laughing.

Stafford asleep beside her.

Those memories kept her warm while everything else cooled.

By the time Kitty completed her master's degree that summer, she'd spent months networking with Blair.

It gave her something productive to do while waiting for the remains of her old life to sort themselves out.

Then came the offer.

Management at the Langham.

Kitty read it twice.

Then three times.

Years earlier, she had arrived in Chicago with almost nothing.

Now one of the city's finest hotels wanted her in management.

Kitty told Gavin over dinner.

She couldn't suppress her excitement.

"I'm starting at the Langham."

Gavin barely reacted.

He listened while she explained the position, then managed to find fault with it.

He thought she should pursue a corporate position with a major hotel chain instead.

Of course he did.

Kitty stared at him.

There had never been an achievement he couldn't diminish.

A degree wasn't enough.

A promotion wasn't enough.

A career wasn't prestigious enough.

Kitty had spent years thinking Gavin was simply incapable of enthusiasm.

She understood now that he had become something worse.

Her most consistent critic.

She'd occasionally considered couples counseling.

The idea seemed absurd now.

What would they save?

Kitty had never loved Gavin.

She had never even been attracted to him.

He had been stability.

A respectable man with a respectable career.

Then he had become money.

Housing.

Tuition.

A stepping stone.

The realization should have ashamed her.

Instead, Kitty examined that coldness inside herself and found that she no longer wanted to look away.

She had used Gavin.

There was no kinder phrase for it.

And Gavin had used her.

Perhaps they had deserved one another more than either wanted to admit.

The nanny could have him.

In fact, Kitty found herself privately amused that after spending years criticizing Kitty's education, background, manners, clothing, ambitions, and social standing, Gavin had fallen in love with a youthful, nobody, idiot.

It was petty.

Kitty knew that too.

She enjoyed the thought anyway.

Her only real regret was Guy.

Returning to hotel work was more difficult than Kitty expected.

Management demanded long hours.

There were early mornings and late nights, staffing problems and guest complaints, events that went wrong for reasons no planning could have prevented.

Kitty loved it.

Every challenge reminded her that she was useful.

Capable.

Needed.

But there was a price.

Guy would sometimes frown when she left for work.

Those moments hurt.

Kitty could handle Gavin's contempt.

She could handle Stafford's selfishness.

She could handle Opal's intrusions and society women's sneers.

Guy's disappointment was different.

It followed her into the elevator.

Sometimes all the way to work.

Weekends weren't much easier.

Whenever Kitty was home, Gavin seemed perpetually attached to his phone with the nanny.

Kitty found it rude.

She had always kept Stafford separate from family time.

The hypocrisy of that thought did not entirely escape her.

Apparently, Kitty had developed rules for adultery.

Gavin simply wasn't following them.

Stafford, meanwhile, had returned from Seattle determined to save his marriage.

Kitty didn't believe him.

Or rather, she believed he wanted to save it.

That wasn't the same as believing he could.

No amount of Stafford's devotion could make Marnie stop drinking.

He could climb into the ring every day prepared to fight for her.

Marnie wasn't obligated to climb in with him.

For the first time, Kitty found herself wanting something more from Stafford.

Commitment.

The word embarrassed her.

Why now?

Perhaps because she was finally single.

For years, Stafford had been an escape from Gavin.

Now there was nothing to escape from.

That left Kitty confronting what Stafford actually was.

He was not a prize.

He was abrasive.

Unreliable.

Egotistical.

Argumentative.

Often cruel.

A future with Stafford would not be peaceful.

It would probably consist of pointless arguments followed by stubborn silences and occasional spectacular reconciliations.

Still, Kitty wanted him.

That bothered her.

On some weekends, Kitty drove to see Pam.

She told herself it was sisterly devotion.

It wasn't.

Pam gave Kitty a reason to leave Chicago.

A reason to avoid Gavin.

A destination requiring no explanation.

By the time Kitty finished graduate school, Pam had been released from the halfway house.

Her freedom lasted less than a week.

Pam attempted to buy drugs from an undercover officer.

When police moved to arrest her, she resisted and badly scratched a female officer's face.

Within days, she was back behind bars, now facing the likelihood of a much harsher sentence.

Kitty visited her.

"Why?" she asked.

Pam shrugged.

Then she gestured around the visitation room.

"Maybe I'm better off here."

Kitty stared at her.

Pam explained that prison was familiar.

She knew the rules.

She knew the people.

She knew how days worked.

The outside world demanded things from her she no longer understood how to give.

Kitty didn't try very hard to understand.

Perhaps she couldn't.

But something about Pam's explanation disturbed her.

Pam was living according to her own terms, however incomprehensible those terms seemed to everyone else.

Maybe she really did prefer this.

Kitty found one bleak consolation in it.

Prison might keep Pam alive.

Their parents had died behind a locked bedroom door because no one had been there to stop them.

Pam had spent much of her adulthood walking toward the same ending.

Inside prison, at least someone counted her.

Someone knew whether she woke up in the morning.

Someone would notice if she didn't.

Perhaps Pam understood that too.

Less than a week after Opal departed for Florida, Gavin moved out.

Kitty wasn't even there when it happened.

She'd been traveling.

When she returned to the condominium, something felt wrong immediately.

Too empty.

She walked from room to room.

Gavin's clothes were gone.

His personal belongings were gone.

Everything he'd considered his had disappeared.

Only the furniture he'd owned before Kitty moved in remained.

Guy's bedroom was untouched.

Gavin had purchased a townhouse in Lincoln Park.

He and the nanny were moving in together.

Kitty had been the last to know.

She wondered whether he would marry her.

The thought produced an unexpected sting.

Kitty hadn't wanted to marry Gavin.

Not for years.

But she'd wanted the option.

He had spent their entire relationship explaining why marriage was unnecessary, premature, complicated, transactional, or otherwise unsuitable.

Perhaps those objections had never been about marriage.

Perhaps they'd been about Kitty.

That hurt more than she expected.

Gavin did leave her something.

The condominium.

Naturally, even his final gift wasn't entirely for her.

He wanted Kitty to remain nearby for Guy.

A text message informed her of the decision. A lawyer handled everything else.

Eventually, the deed was placed in Kitty's name.

The irony wasn't lost on her.

For years, she'd felt trapped inside the condominium.

Now it belonged to her.

And she was barely there.

Work consumed most of her life. The condo became somewhere she showered, slept, changed clothes, and occasionally stared at rooms that seemed larger without Gavin occupying them.

Guy increasingly stayed with his father and the nanny.

That hurt too.

When Kitty visited, she began noticing something Opal had pointed out months earlier at the airport.

Guy spoke almost exclusively to Gavin.

The two existed inside a world of their own.

Kitty would ask Guy a question.

He would look at Gavin.

Someone would speak to him.

He would answer his father.

Gavin considered their closeness proof that he was an excellent parent.

Kitty found it unsettling.

She feared Guy was becoming another Gavin.

Or perhaps another Opal.

So attached to one person that the rest of the world became peripheral.

Kitty couldn't force Gavin to see it.

So she went to work.

Work, at least, made sense.

Monday morning promised to be easy.

Few last-minute bookings.

No major events.

The schedule required no modifications.

Kitty entered her office carrying an iced chai from the new coffee shop across the street.

Her desk was mercifully free of notes demanding immediate attention.

Blair had survived two weddings over the weekend.

One was a Midsummer Night's Dream theme for a young couple marrying for the first time.

The other was a Cinderella-princess affair for a middle-aged woman marrying for the third time.

Kitty laughed quietly to herself.

Only Blair could spend an entire weekend coordinating events that tacky and arrive Monday morning still believing in matrimony.

Kitty was still smiling when someone knocked.

The concierge stood outside her office.

Behind him were two strangers.

A detective.

And a uniformed police officer.

Kitty's smile disappeared.

Her first thought was professional.

Please don't let someone have died in the hotel.

She had no desire to become the face of a public-relations disaster.

"How can I help you?"

The detective introduced himself.

Then he said a name Kitty hadn't heard used formally in years.

Marmara Gunderson.

Marnie.

"There was an accident over the weekend."

Kitty put down her drink.

The detective continued.

"We're aware you've had an ongoing sexual relationship with Mr. Gunderson for some time."

Kitty stopped breathing.

The uniformed officer folded his arms.

Whether the gesture actually conveyed judgment or Kitty merely imagined it, she couldn't tell.

The detective watched her carefully.

"We need to know whether you had any reason to believe Mrs. Gunderson's injury might have been suspicious."

Thoughts collided inside Kitty's head.

Am I being accused?

Is Stafford?

What happened to Marnie?

Did Stafford hurt her?

Kitty forced herself to speak.

"I only know what you've just told me."

Her voice sounded distant.

"I talk to Stafford a few times a month at most."

That wasn't entirely accurate.

She continued before she could reconsider.

"I know he loves Marnie more than anyone. He wouldn't hurt her."

The detective said nothing.

Kitty suddenly became aware of how much she had already said.

"If Stafford or I are being accused of anything, I'm going to speak with a lawyer before answering any more questions."

The sentence sounded terrible the instant it left her mouth.

Guilty.

Defensive.

Damning.

The detective simply nodded.

He respected her decision.

They left.

Kitty remained behind her desk.

The iced chai sat untouched.

Ten minutes earlier, she'd been laughing about Cinderella weddings.

Now she couldn't make herself stand.

Everything she knew about Marnie's accident came secondhand over the following months.

Eventually, Stafford's mother, Milly, wrote to Kitty.

Stafford had come home from work and found Marnie at the bottom of the stairs.

She wasn't breathing.

No one knew how long she'd been there.

Given Marnie's drinking and the combination of medications she'd begun mixing with alcohol, Kitty could imagine a dozen explanations.

A fall.

An overdose.

Both.

The result was the same.

Marnie survived.

But survival was almost the only word that applied.

Her prognosis was an indefinite vegetative state.

Kitty read Milly's letter several times.

Then she put it down.

She had never wanted this.

Kitty had wanted Stafford to leave Marnie.

She had wanted their marriage to end.

She had resented Marnie.

Betrayed her.

Slept with her husband.

Judged her.

Pitied her.

Envied her.

But she had never wanted Marnie harmed.

Once, they had been friends.

Real friends.

Stafford took Marnie's condition worse than anyone expected.

Kitty understood why.

For years, he'd fought an enemy he couldn't touch.

Alcohol.

Pills.

Despair.

Whatever drove Marnie to keep reaching for oblivion.

Stafford could take bottles from her hands.

He could check her pulse at night.

He could argue.

Threaten.

Beg.

He could remain married to her out of guilt, love, fear, habit, or all four.

But he could never make Marnie choose him over the thing destroying her.

Now there was nothing left to fight.

Kitty thought about the girl she'd once known.

Marnie laughing beside her in music class.

Marnie playing instruments.

Marnie dreaming about stages and touring bands.

Marnie young enough to believe the future would wait indefinitely for her to decide what to do with it.

It hadn't.

That frightened Kitty more than anything.

Somewhere along the way, Kitty and the people around her had stopped being young people preparing for life.

They were living it.

And life was beginning to collect its debts.

Pam had returned to prison.

Gavin had cut her out of the family.

Guy was growing away from her.

Opal had gone south to grow old beneath the Florida sun.

Marnie lay somewhere unable to wake.

Stafford sat beside a wife he'd once wished would leave him.

And Kitty went to work.

She had spent her youth believing age meant becoming safer.

More established.

More certain.

Instead, age seemed to mean watching choices harden into consequences.

Some people recovered.

Some didn't.

Some doors closed quietly.

Others slammed hard enough to shake everyone nearby.

Kitty sat alone in her office and looked out across Chicago.

The city was the same city she'd fallen in love with years earlier.

The buildings still rose into the sky.

Trains still moved between them.

People still hurried along sidewalks toward lives Kitty knew nothing about.

Once, that endless motion had promised her that she could become anyone.

Now she understood the other half of the bargain.

There was only so much time to become them.

Old age was not promised.

Neither was tomorrow.