Kitty's Saga Chapter Ten: Finishes and Openings

Kitty was on schedule to finish community college the following year.

As the months passed, she saw Stafford occasionally, though she became increasingly skilled at escaping him. A sudden appointment. A study group. A professor she absolutely had to speak with. Kitty discovered that adulthood came with an unexpected advantage: people were much easier to avoid when you had somewhere else you could plausibly claim to be.

During her final semester, her course load lightened enough that she decided to join the theater production group.

The first time she walked back into the theater, Kitty stopped and looked around.

It seemed smaller.

Shabbier.

Almost ordinary.

Years earlier, when she had first entered it as a frightened ward of the state, the place had seemed enormous. The stage had possessed an almost sacred grandeur. The students had looked sophisticated and confident. The faculty had seemed like gatekeepers to some glittering adult world Kitty could observe but never enter.

Now she knew better.

Half the students did not particularly want to be there.

The curtains were fraying.

The seats squeaked.

The backstage walls desperately needed paint.

The faculty had their favorites and their scandals, and Kitty had become cynical enough to notice that certain instructors seemed considerably more attentive to attractive students willing to flirt their way toward better treatment.

The great mysterious world had become merely another building filled with ordinary, imperfect people.

Kitty found this comforting.

She was assigned to paint sets.

Marnie, naturally, played in the band.

Some high school students from surrounding schools were invited to audition for smaller parts. Kitty watched them stumble through lines, miss cues, sing off-key, and occasionally forget where they were supposed to stand.

They were terrible.

Kitty loved them for it.

Once, she would have watched people like them and assumed every awkward movement proved she did not belong among them.

Now she understood.

Everyone was awkward.

Everyone was pretending to know more than they did.

Kitty had never been a freak of nature.

She had simply been young.

Stafford appeared during Thanksgiving break.

Uninvited, naturally.

Kitty knew immediately that whatever woman Stafford had recently been pursuing must have finally blocked him on Myspace. Otherwise, she could not imagine him making the effort to visit.

His arrival announced itself before he did.

Techno music rattled through the windows as his car pulled up outside.

Marnie glanced toward the sound.

"Is that Stafford?"

Kitty groaned.

Marnie smiled.

Then, in a singsong voice, she asked, "Would you be mad if I went on a date with him?"

Kitty stared at her.

"Marn."

"What?"

"I really don't think you want to do that."

"Why?"

Kitty lowered her voice.

"That guy got rough with me in a grocery store once. Grabbed me by the hair. And I'm pretty sure he's hit a woman before."

Marnie's expression changed, but not in the way Kitty expected.

"Are you sure you weren't being a little too sensitive?"

Kitty blinked.

"He grabbed my hair."

"I know, but..." Marnie hesitated. "He seems so nice. Maybe he's bossy. I'll give you that. But I don't see him as some woman beater."

Kitty's face hardened.

"He's not the guy you think he is."

Marnie shrugged.

"Then why does he keep coming here to check on you?"

Kitty actually laughed.

"He's not checking on me."

She nodded toward the hallway.

"He's here because there are women in this building. I think I saw him try to grab Mitzy once. He's no good for anyone, Marn. Especially women."

Marnie did not answer.

Kitty recognized the silence.

Marnie had already made up her mind.

Whatever happened next, no warning from Kitty was going to stop it.

School ended a few weeks later.

Technically, Kitty had already walked in the summer graduation ceremony, but now the last pieces were finished.

She had a degree.

What she did not have was a plan.

Kitty had ignored her counselor's recommendation that she transfer to the sister school and enter its hospitality program.

She simply could not accept hospitality as her place in the world.

Kitty knew she was being stubborn.

Perhaps even foolish.

But the aptitude result had become something larger in her mind than a career recommendation. It felt like a brand burned onto her person.

This is what you are.

She could not make herself obey it.

Leaving campus was difficult nevertheless.

The place had taken Kitty in when she possessed almost nothing. It had fed her, housed her, educated her, and introduced her to people who expected more from her than survival.

But she had outgrown it.

For the first time in her life, leaving somewhere did not mean she had failed there.

It meant she had finished.

Kitty arranged to sublet a studio loft from another student, Jeremy Myers, who was leaving the country to study abroad.

She knew Jeremy from an Introduction to French course she had taken to satisfy her foreign-language requirement.

He was friendly and somewhat eccentric, and he had occasionally invited Kitty to French film nights in the library media room. Kitty attended mostly because it gave her an excuse to escape the dorm, which Marnie occupied less and less as graduation approached.

The loft was temporary, but Kitty considered it a tremendous step upward.

To pay her bills, she found work as a salesgirl at a luxury fabric shop within walking distance.

Marnie planned to remain nearby too. She had begun working steadily as a gigging musician, mostly at a jazz club whose clientele consisted largely of senior citizens.

On Kitty's final night in the dorm, she lay awake thinking about Chicago.

Why had she rejected the hospitality program so completely?

Was it really because she hated the field?

Or because Chicago was far away?

Cleveland was familiar.

Kitty knew its buses. Its neighborhoods. Its winters. Its rhythms.

For someone who had spent much of her childhood being dragged through instability, familiarity possessed enormous power.

Then another possibility occurred to her.

Perhaps she was not afraid of hospitality.

Perhaps she was afraid of serving people.

Sandy had wounded something in her that Kitty had never properly named.

Kitty had loved her.

Naively, perhaps, but sincerely.

She had begun to think of Sandy as something approaching a maternal figure. Then Stafford arrived, and Sandy's silence taught Kitty an ugly lesson: affection could disappear the moment somebody with greater standing entered the room.

Stafford was family.

Kitty was help.

And help could be replaced.

Kitty had spent years trying to escape that feeling.

Perhaps that was why hospitality frightened her so much.

She imagined an entire career spent smiling at people who could humiliate her while she was expected to remain gracious.

A lifetime of Stafford Gundersons.

Kitty rolled onto her side.

She did not want to be anyone's servant again.

In the morning, Kitty said goodbye to campus.

Marnie drove her to Jeremy's loft but did not stay long.

"I have to practice for an audition."

Kitty hugged her goodbye.

Then she was alone.

Jeremy had excellent taste.

The loft was warm and cozy, precisely the sort of place Kitty could imagine hiding from the world during a bitter Cleveland winter.

There was, however, one condition attached to the sublease.

Victoria Truffle.

Jeremy's spoiled Persian cat regarded Kitty from atop the sofa with the expression of an aristocrat discovering that the household staff had been replaced without consultation.

Jeremy adored her.

Kitty would later receive postcards addressed to the cat. Occasionally Jeremy called from abroad and asked Kitty to put the telephone beside Victoria Truffle's ear so he could speak to her.

Kitty complied.

Victoria Truffle never seemed particularly impressed.

Unpacking took almost no time.

Everything Kitty owned fit inside one large suitcase and a book bag.

That evening, she made dinner from whatever Jeremy had left in the refrigerator, reasoning that it would spoil long before he returned anyway.

Then she settled onto the couch.

Victoria Truffle climbed into her lap.

Kitty put on an old DVD of Mad About You.

The cat purred.

Outside, winter pressed against the windows.

Kitty looked around the little loft.

It was not hers.

But for the moment, it was home.

The fabric shop proved surprisingly pleasant.

Most days consisted of taking orders from interior decorators or cutting smaller lengths of expensive fabric for customers working on personal projects.

Occasionally, someone became difficult.

An irate designer once arrived furious over an order and directed the full force of her indignation at Kitty.

Kitty listened calmly.

She apologized where appropriate.

She found the problem.

She fixed it.

Afterward, her boss, Mrs. North, stared at her.

"How did you stay so calm?"

Kitty almost laughed.

The woman had been unpleasant, certainly.

But compared with Stafford?

An amateur.

Stafford had inadvertently trained Kitty for customer service better than any employee handbook possibly could.

Mrs. North began trusting her with more responsibility. Before long, Kitty was opening and closing the store alone.

Occasionally, after work, she visited Marnie at the club. They drank together and talked about their lives after college.

For a while, Kitty believed she had found a sustainable existence.

Then she noticed how little it moved.

Kitty liked her routine.

That was the problem.

It was comfortable enough to remain in forever and insufficient enough to build a future upon.

The loft was lovely, but it belonged to Jeremy.

He paid most of the expenses from abroad.

Eventually, he would come home.

The fabric shop paid Kitty enough to survive under the present arrangement, but not enough to reproduce it independently.

For the first time, Kitty confronted adulthood without the romanticism of merely having escaped somewhere worse.

Freedom cost money.

So did housing.

So did food.

So did every version of the future Kitty wanted.

The fabric shop was not an ending.

It was a middle.

That spring, after considerable soul-searching and an equally considerable dose of humility, Kitty reopened the information about the hospitality program in Chicago.

She stared at the application.

She still hated what it represented in her mind.

But she had also begun to understand something she had resisted before.

An aptitude was not a sentence.

Being good at serving people did not mean she had been born to serve them.

Managing a hotel was not the same as being Sandy's unpaid maid.

Hospitality could be a profession.

A profession could mean money.

Money could mean choices.

Choices could mean never again depending upon the goodwill of someone like Sandy Brown.

Kitty filled out the application.

When she mailed it that spring, she felt neither triumphant nor defeated.

Only older.

As summer approached, Kitty saw less and less of Marnie.

At first, she assumed Marnie was busy.

Then Marnie canceled plans.

Once.

Twice.

Four weeks in a row.

Eventually, Kitty accepted what seemed obvious.

Their friendship had meant more to her than it had to Marnie.

It hurt, but Kitty had survived worse losses.

Then, in July, Marnie sent her an email.

She needed help with an outdoor production of Shakespeare's The Tempest.

Kitty would soon be leaving for Chicago. She decided helping with the production might provide a pleasant ending to a friendship that seemed to be fading naturally.

Several familiar faces from community college were involved.

Kitty enjoyed seeing them again.

It still amazed her that she never encountered anyone from her old high school or group home.

Occasionally, Mrs. Wells, her former social worker, called and asked whether Kitty would mentor another young person in the system. Kitty tried, though she rarely felt successful. Most of the children were too withdrawn or demoralized to care much about the advice of a stranger telling them life might eventually improve.

Kitty understood them too well to resent it.

Otherwise, her former life had disappeared.

Pam.

The group home.

High school.

Those worlds seemed to exist somewhere behind a wall.

Kitty missed most of The Tempest because Mrs. North needed her to help catalog the shop's annual inventory.

She had helped set up the production the day before, however, and made it to the wrap party afterward.

It was held at Marnie's dinner club.

Kitty walked inside expecting familiar faces.

She found one she had not expected.

Stafford.

Kitty stopped.

She had not seen him in quite some time.

He looked slightly heavier than she remembered, and his hair seemed thinner, although Kitty admitted her general displeasure at his existence might have distorted her powers of observation.

Other women still described Stafford as handsome.

Some even called him charming.

Kitty considered this evidence that otherwise intelligent women could suffer catastrophic failures of judgment.

She ordered her usual Colorado Bulldog.

Marnie was drinking a triple Grey Goose Le Citron over ice.

Kitty watched her.

Once, Marnie had been the shy asthmatic who sat beside Kitty mocking campus parties.

Now she knocked back hard liquor like a sailor on shore leave.

That was not the only change.

Marnie had begun using expressions Kitty recognized.

"Full-on knob."

Stafford said that.

Then Marnie clapped her hands sharply to get someone's attention.

Stafford did that too.

Kitty felt an uneasiness she could not yet explain.

As the night wore on, speeches gave way to drunken declarations and increasingly sentimental embraces.

Kitty sat somewhat apart from everyone else.

She felt ignored.

That disappointed her more than she wanted to admit.

She had imagined this night as a final hurrah with old friends before leaving Ohio and beginning again in Chicago.

Instead, she felt like a guest at someone else's reunion.

Eventually, Kitty decided to preserve what remained of her dignity.

She approached Marnie.

"I'm gonna call it a night."

Marnie nodded vaguely.

Kitty noticed how intoxicated she was.

"Do you want me to call you a cab?"

"No, Kitty."

The answer came from Stafford.

Kitty turned.

"No one needs you and your dramatics."

She stared at him.

She had not even realized he was standing close enough to hear.

Marnie waved a hand.

"Don't worry, Kitty. Stafford's taking me home."

Kitty's stomach tightened.

"I think you should go home with someone you know."

Stafford laughed.

"How dumb are you?"

Kitty ignored him.

"Marnie—"

"I think she knows her boyfriend better than you do."

Kitty went still.

Stafford continued, enjoying himself now.

"Stop acting like a super dyke. Jesus Christ, Kitty. It's creepy."

But Kitty barely heard the insult.

One word had swallowed everything else.

Boyfriend.

She looked at Marnie.

"Marn."

Marnie would not quite meet her eyes.

"Is he your boyfriend?"

A pause.

"Yeah."

The room seemed to recede around Kitty.

Suddenly the canceled plans made sense.

The evasiveness.

The changed expressions.

Stafford appearing at the club.

Everything.

"It's okay," Marnie mumbled. "I was planning to go home with him."

Kitty stared at her friend.

She should have said something.

She would think of a hundred things later.

She should have reminded Marnie about the grocery store.

She should have told her again about Sandy's house.

She should have said that Stafford had spent years humiliating her because he believed she was consuming an inheritance that did not even exist.

Maybe none of it would have mattered.

In that moment, Kitty could not find the words.

She simply left.

Later, she would regret leaving so abruptly.

The following day, Kitty sat in the loft with Victoria Truffle curled against her.

She cried.

Not because Stafford had insulted her.

Stafford's insults had lost most of their power years ago.

She cried because Marnie had known.

Kitty had warned her.

Marnie had heard what Stafford had done and decided Kitty must have been too sensitive.

Then she had quietly begun dating him anyway.

Stafford had gotten into Kitty's life again.

It seemed impossible.

No matter how far Kitty traveled, the man somehow circled back.

But the deepest wound was not Stafford.

It was Marnie.

Sandy had once taught Kitty what it felt like to care for someone who would tolerate Stafford's cruelty toward her.

Now Marnie had done the same.

Kitty knew, somewhere beneath the anger, that loving or dating Stafford did not literally make Marnie responsible for everything he had done.

Pain did not care much for distinctions.

To Kitty, it felt like choosing sides.

And Marnie had chosen his.

Kitty wiped her face.

Victoria Truffle purred against her stomach, magnificently indifferent to human betrayal.

Kitty stroked the cat's fur.

She was leaving for Chicago soon.

Another state.

Another school.

Another beginning.

Marnie could have Stafford.

Stafford could have Marnie.

Kitty was finished with both of them.

Once she crossed the state line, there would be nothing connecting Stafford Gunderson to her anymore.

No Sandy.

No shared house.

No campus.

No Marnie.

Nothing.

For the first time all day, Kitty felt some measure of peace.

Chicago was waiting.

Stafford would remain behind.

Kitty believed she had finally reached the end of him.

She was wrong.