Chapter 18 #2
I remember Kitty setting her cards on the table and staring at Mrs. Hail.
“I don’t know about you, but I chose my life, darling.
I did exactly what I wanted when I wanted to do it.
If opportunities weren’t there, I simply created them.
” Mrs. Hail waved her off. I did, too, at the time, but now it makes me think about how Old Lady Me would see her life.
She’d probably stare out her window for a moment at the same view of the lake she’d looked at since she was a girl and say something perfectly practical like, “It’s not settling to be content with the hand life has dealt you. ”
Except, as I dwell on the thought for another heartbeat, I realize that’s exactly what settling is.
While I have been having an existential crisis on the steps, Kitty has continued to the hotel door without me.
I run after her, reaching her just as the doorman pulls it open.
He’s so immersed in watching her that he fails to see me coming.
Once she’s inside, he lets it go, and the door starts to close with a slow, even swing, forcing me to sprint the last few steps and maneuver my body sideways to slip in behind her.
I’m so preoccupied with not getting hit by the door that I nearly knock Kitty over as she stands just inside, mouth agape, looking up.
“What’s wrong?” I ask, curious as to the reason for the sudden stop.
Her only response is a small, soundless gasp.
I follow her gaze, tracing the high mahogany ceilings with their intricate moldings to the large crystal chandeliers glittering above, then down to the plush velvet sofas on the intricately patterned marble floors.
“That there. Dotty,” she finally says, “that’s your answer. Look at this place. Everything about this hotel feels like it earns the word opulent. ” She reaches for my hand, tearing her gaze from the ceiling to meet my eyes.
“I want so badly for this to be my world,” she says, squeezing my fingers so hard I almost yelp.
“I want to wake up every morning and put on a pair of heels and a smart outfit. And I want to know all about interesting things and dress in the best fashions, and when people see me coming, I want them to say, ‘Here comes Kitty, gosh, isn’t she just the most fabulously fascinating girl you’ve ever met? ’?”
“But, Kitty, don’t you think—” I begin to argue, but Kitty cuts me off, her eyes shifting to something over my shoulder.
“Them!” She points at two women walking through the middle of the hotel lobby. “Would you look at them, Dotty? They are so beautifully glamorous I’m absolutely positive they must live fascinating lives.”
I turn to watch the women in question cross the lobby floor.
It’s true. They have that air of pulled-togetherness that I have often aspired to but never come close to achieving.
The taller of the two wears a light knee-length pencil skirt and fitted blouse accessorized with pearls, white gloves, and a matching handbag.
Her shorter friend is in a lavender day dress with a cinched waist and a full A-line skirt.
They laugh as they walk, their tall pump heels clacking on the marble floors, unaware of Kitty, who watches them wistfully.
“If only I could be exactly like them,” she whispers, more to herself than to me.
“But you are,” I tell her, unable to separate this Kitty in front of me from the one I knew not that long ago. The Kitty who once, during arts and crafts hour, pointed at the television and a young Mikhail Baryshnikov as he wooed Carrie Bradshaw in an old Sex and the City rerun.
“I danced with that man once,” she had said with the same easy tone she used to describe the weather.
“I was at Studio 54, celebrating my dear friend Estelle’s birthday, and this man came up and began doing the Hustle with me.
He was a marvelous dancer and quite charming as well.
He invited me back to his hotel. I had to decline, of course, because I was a married woman.
I had given birth to three children by then!
But imagine my shock when I returned to Toronto and he was on the front page of the paper’s entertainment section—dancing in Giselle.
” She went back to painting her birdhouse or whatever craft we were working on that day while the rest of us stared and gaped.
Kitty St. Clair was fabulous.
Or at least she becomes fabulous.
Right now, I am at a loss on how to explain this to the Kitty beside me, who is still a girl. The one who stares wide-eyed at the beautiful women and shakes her head. “No, Dotty, I am not like them. Not yet, anyway. But mark my words, one day, I will be.”
Once the women leave, we find the concierge, who takes the paper with Beau’s number and calls it to let him know we’ve arrived. About twenty minutes later, Beau picks us up in a shiny black Cadillac, driving us north, away from all the looming downtown buildings and into a more suburban area.
“My cousin Eleanor is looking forward to hosting you,” Beau says as he turns onto a street with large bricked estates and sprawling lawns.
“Well, we are looking forward to meeting her as well. She seems like a…” Kitty leaves the thought unfinished, her mouth gaping in another soundless gasp as Beau pulls the car onto a long paved driveway and stops in front of a large Tudor-style home.
“Well, this is it,” he says, ignoring or not noticing Kitty’s half-open mouth.
She manages to close it before Beau comes around to open her door. Still, when he leans to open mine, I catch her wide eyes over his turned shoulder as she silently mouths to me what looks like Oh my heck!
We stare at the large two-story stone house with its big glass windows and steeply pitched roofs, then at the manicured gardens and three-car garage. At the same time, Beau jumps the front steps two at a time to ring the front bell.
“Good grief! It looks like a castle,” Kitty whispers to me when Beau is out of earshot.
I glance around and find that this time, I can’t argue with her.
Beau takes us inside, where he introduces us to his cousin Eleanor, then leaves with a promise to return in two hours to take us to dinner. Eleanor escorts us up the wide swirling staircase to the east wing on the second floor.
Six bedrooms, Kitty mouths when Eleanor gives us a quick tour.
“And this one is yours,” Eleanor says, turning around just as Kitty schools her face back into a cordial smile.
Eleanor pushes open the heavy oak door. “I assumed you two would want to share, but let Henrietta know if you prefer your own rooms.”
She waits outside while Kitty and I step in and stare at a large four-poster bed that looks big enough for the two of us to do synchronized snow angels and never touch fingertips.
“I think we will be just fine,” Kitty answers.
“I’ve left a few of my old dresses in there”—from the hallway, Eleanor points to a large wooden wardrobe in the corner of the room—“in case you don’t have anything suitable. We are going to the club tonight.”
Kitty nods as if she knew this was the plan all along. “Thank you, Eleanor, and thank you for inviting us to stay.”
“It’s nothing,” Eleanor says with a polite half smile before leaving and closing the door behind her.
“ Did she invite us?” I ask Kitty, who rolls her eyes in response.
“Beau invited us. When I told him I’d never been to Toronto, he insisted on hosting us, but you know how my mother gets. She didn’t feel it was appropriate, and I would rather die than have her act as my chaperone, so staying with Eleanor was a happy compromise.”
Kitty hoists her canvas suitcase onto the chest at the end of the bed, unclicks the fasteners, and lifts the lid.
“I brought my dancing dress to wear tonight, but I wonder…” She shuts the lid of her suitcase and moves toward the wardrobe Eleanor pointed to a moment ago. “We should probably take a look.”
She opens one of the doors, which hides her from my view. A moment later, I hear an “Oh my heavens” before Kitty’s arm—and only her arm—juts out from behind the door, holding a pale pink chiffon dress.
“Dotty, you have to come and see these with your own eyes. I’ve never seen such beautiful gowns in my entire life.”
The rest of her body emerges from behind the door, holding a second dress up to her body, this one a pale blue made of some sort of silk or satin.
“Here.” She hands me the pink dress. “Try it on. You look so lovely in pink.”
Turns out I actually do.
Kitty fixes my hair. It’s the very same curled style from the first dream. When she finally deems us ready, we stand in front of a full-length mirror where I’m forced to admit that if being pulled together and sophisticated was our aim, we’ve come pretty darn close.
She wraps her arm around my waist, laying her head on my shoulder, her eyes still fixed on her reflection. “I’ll bet you anything Eleanor looks like this every single day. Not just on special occasions. Can you imagine?”
The question remains rhetorical because we’re interrupted by a knock on the door.
Eleanor’s housekeeper, Henrietta, informs us that Beau is here and waiting for us downstairs.
We’re ushered outside toward another fancy black car. This one is a little bigger than the one Beau picked us up in earlier.
He steps out, as does the driver, an older gentleman wearing a long black coat and matching black patent driving cap.
Beau reaches us first, extending his hand to Kitty with a “You look beautiful tonight.”
Kitty takes it and then dips underneath, twirling in a slow circle. Beau watches her with a look Zoe would describe as smitten kitten as he presses the back of her palm to his lips, dissolving Kitty into a fit of giggles.
Eleanor emerges from the house a moment later in a silvery gown even more beautiful than the ones Kitty and I are wearing. Kitty doesn’t say anything but watches Eleanor for longer than a beat before turning her attention to the car with a “Shall we?”
The four of us climb into the car, where another of Beau’s friends is waiting.