Did You Hear About Kitty Karr?, page 34
“Everything looks great.” Giovanni crawled through the window, interrupting her thoughts. She secured her flat-ironed hair into a low bun as the wind started blowing it across her face.
“It always does.”
“She went for the gusto.” Noele straddled the windowsill, gesturing for Elise to open the champagne. She passed a glass to Giovanni to hold for the pour.
“Sounds like you’re happy she did.”
“I’m excited about my costume.” As a kid, Noele would sometimes appear at breakfast dressed as Santa Claus in the middle of July. That year, she and Giovanni coordinated: Giovanni would be Neve Campbell in The Craft, and Noele was a black bird with a ten-foot wingspan. She’d had the wings made with real ravens’ feathers.
Noele eyed Elise’s sweats. “You don’t look close to ready.”
Two weeks ago, Elise had planned to be a lion. Her curly-coily hair displayed the reddish hue that 23andMe attributed to distant Irish blood and was a perfect dupe for a mane. Everyone expected her to win the costume contest for the fifth year running.
Elise didn’t answer her sister as the extended, party version of their mother’s laugh rose to their ears. She was in the center of a crowd, gesturing to her face paint, explaining, Elise figured, how many hours it had taken to create her unicorn costume. Her horn, secured to the top of her head, was twelve inches long and covered in silver glitter. She wore a tight silver sequined floor-length gown to match.
She was in full celebrity mode, touching the hand or arm of each person she spoke to, giving them a split second of intense attention. She had a way of making everyone feel as though they were the most important, interesting person in the world. Some said she stared, but if you knew her, you understood her interest was a compliment—most people she looked right through.
“We should finish getting dressed.” Giovanni adjusted the straps of her black bodysuit. “She’s making her way down for the cake.” Giovanni looked at Elise and spoke with obvious insistence. “You’ll be down once Aaron arrives?”
“He’s here already.” She didn’t point him out, but Aaron had come as Count Dracula, with Maya dressed as Cookie Monster. Both were expertly disguised, but had given sneak peeks of their costumes on Instagram.
“Is Jasper coming?” Giovanni asked with a sly look.
“I hope so. We have a lot to talk about.”
“I bet.”
“The shoot is Friday.”
Noele had seen him but hadn’t met him. “He’s fine.”
“That he is,” Elise said.
“He flew cross-country to talk about the shoot you’re not even shooting here. He likes you. And you like him too.”
She did, but didn’t know what to think of him now. “He came for the photo of Kitty by the pool,” Elise explained, “not for me. I was a ‘side benefit.’”
“Who invited him?” Noele asked.
“His grandfather worked at Telescope.”
“That’s random.”
“Yes, it is.” She tried to keep a neutral face.
“Must be fate,” Giovanni said.
“I thought you liked Aaron,” Elise said.
“I do, but I’m not sure you do…” Giovanni looked at Noele for backup.
“Stop being stubborn and come to the party.”
“I’m in mourning.” Elise would rather plunge off the Perch than be subjected to a barrage of inquiries.
“Mom is going to be pissed. People will talk.”
“They’re already talking. She doesn’t care.”
“What do we say?” Noele asked. “When people inquire about your absence?”
“Jewish people sit shiva for at least seven days. Sometimes a month.”
“We aren’t Jewish.”
“We don’t know who or what we are. Theoretically.” By any chance set of circumstances, Kitty’s story could have been lost forever. Despite their positioning in life now, they were descendants of American slaves, and their ancestors’ records were hard to find and vaguely recorded, the oral histories long gone.
“Clearly you need to have some fun.” Giovanni didn’t know how foreign a concept “fun” sounded to Elise at the moment. The last time she’d had it was seven months ago, with Jasper. Her sisters left her then, to head down for the grand entrance in which she was supposed to partake.
Sarah floated down to the second level, where a Lucite stage covered their pool. Her hair had a few extensions that hung almost to her waist and blew in the wind, upping the drama of her costume. Sarah’s hair had always been long; she never got anything more than a trim because hair, as in most Black families, was a beauty mark. When Sarah wore hers back, her almond-shaped eyes made her look somewhat Asian, causing inquiries about her ethnicity. It says “Negro” on my birth certificate, she’d reply. The inquirer’s discomfort with her use of the word ensured the line always got a laugh.
Alison was behind her, dressed as a sexy lion tamer (to complement Elise’s planned costume), with fishnet stockings and long, fake red nails. James ascended the stage behind them. “Welcome, everyone!” He strutted on stage in his black tux, winking and pointing into the crowd at, Elise knew, no one in particular. He couldn’t see past the glare of the spotlight; his eyesight was failing, which he used as an excuse to smoke more weed. He was the only one who could get away with not wearing a costume; anyone else who arrived in plain clothes or dressed off-theme was turned away. The tux was a private protest of the event itself but, ever loyal to Sarah, publicly said he was the ringmaster.
“How is everyone doing?” he said. “It’s been a rough year, I know, but we’re still here.” He always gave a speech at parties, as if people needed a reminder of who their hosts were. Like her mother, he was his most pleasant self in celebrity.
He pulled his wife close and began to sing “Happy Birthday” in her ear. Sarah closed her eyes, nestling her face against his. To the world that would see the pictures later, they looked in love, suggesting that their rumored troubles were over.
The crowd joined in as waiters carried a three-tiered lemon cake with lemon cream cheese frosting, as it was every year, to the stage. Elise’s sisters trailed them like a parade.
Sarah blew out what appeared to be a hundred candles, to the crowd’s uproar. To avoid conversations about age, the cakes were always exorbitantly lit but never had numbers.
Elise took a picture and captioned it HBD MOM on Instagram, to document her presence. Framed through the leaves, her mother looked angelic with her hands clasped at her chin. The post got more than a million likes in a minute. A refresh of her feed showed Aaron’s repost of her post as a story. He was still on his phone at the edge of the dance floor, presumably texting Maya, who was at the bar. Elise had seen them separate just before the cake. He still hadn’t texted her.
The traditional birthday song morphed into Stevie Wonder’s version, and the whole backyard started clapping and singing along as if they were at a concert. Elise scanned the crowd for the real singers, waiting for them to take over, craving peer attention.
Billie stood out under the pole light on the left side of the stage, with her round face painted bronze like a penny. She was the circus admittance token. When Elise was growing up, Billie was always the first one at the piano, ready for a duet of one of her hit songs with the singer who’d recorded it. She had a great voice too. Billie wasn’t clapping or singing that night. Her beady eyes were on Sarah as she twirled about.
Elise wondered what secrets Kitty had left her friends with. Her scan for Lucy and Maude was soon interrupted by a text from Jasper: I’M HERE. WHERE ARE YOU?
She texted back without a second’s delay: MEET ME ON THE PATIO.
Elise hoisted herself through the window and ran to her closet, where she threw on a black dress and wrangled her unstyled coils back into a bun. To avoid being recognized, she put on the peacock-feathered masquerade mask tacked to her bulletin board that she’d worn some years before.
Expecting her to approach from the party, Jasper stood with his back to the patio doors. Prince was blaring, and she was able to get right up next to him before he noticed. He wore a werewolf mask.
“A mythical choice.”
“Your mom is a unicorn, so I’m on theme. You, however—” He gestured to her mask and plain dress.
“Come on.” They went down the stairs, past the bar stand and clusters of the animal kingdom.
“Is your boyfriend—excuse me, fiancé—here?” Jasper asked.
“He’s not either.”
“But is he here?”
“He was earlier, with his girlfriend.”
“You know Vogue is pulling wedding dresses for your cover.”
She stopped walking. “Is that what you flew for five hours to tell me?”
“You know why I’m here.” Jasper pulled the back of her dress as they approached the border of their yard. “Where are we going?”
She gently pushed a cluster of vines aside to reveal the third opening through the hedges. “To get your photograph.”
He didn’t let go even after they’d turned onto Kitty’s dirt path, lit every six feet or so by a staked bulb.
“Your mother looks like a fairy tonight. A unicorn fairy.”
Elise chuckled. “That’s Tinker Bell, always sparkling and floating about.”
Jasper questioned her sarcasm. “Sore subject?”
“I don’t think we should be partying, is all.”
“I can see that.”
“But no one can tell my mother anything.”
“Well, she is Sarah St. John.”
Elise smiled. “I’m aware.”
“Are you close?”
“Close enough, but we were raised by our grandma.” Stern and chocolate-skinned, Nellie had tempered the decadence of their environment with the heavy hand of Black Southern rearing. “My parents worked a lot.”
“Your dad’s mom?”
“My mother’s. She kept our heads screwed on straight.”
Nellie gave them chores, forbidding the house staff to do anything for them but cook. Straight As were expected, and they were kept busy with extracurricular activities, as if it were possible to skip over the part where they realized their hierarchal position in the world. Nellie raised her granddaughters sensibly—fairy tales weren’t real, and neither was Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy.
Elise mimicked her voice. “You may be fortunate, but you’re still Black.” Now Elise revered her as a saint for stepping in the way she did. While limiting, her rigidity was her way of loving, of protecting the girls from any confusion or wishful thinking about their classification in the world. She did her best to save their mother.
Jasper sounded surprised. “Sounds like my grandma.”
“Yeah, Kitty was a nice break.”
Nellie had reared them with good manners and sensibilities, but Kitty sprinkled their lives with magic. She let them eat ice cream for dinner, baked them elaborate, tiered cakes for their birthdays, and bought them too many presents to count. Now Elise mimicked Kitty. “The world could use more little spoiled Negro girls.”
“She said ‘Negro’?”
“She didn’t mean anything by it; it’s just the word she was used to using.”
“I guess she did live through a lot of history.”
“Existed right in the center of it.” Elise kicked a rock. “Until cancer took her too.”
“Too?”
“My mom’s mom died of cancer when I was twelve.”
Jasper paused and then, “I’m sorry to bring up bad memories.”
She opened Kitty’s front door, where his photograph sat against the wall.
“That’s what nine thousand dollars gets me? A spot on the floor?”
“You left your nine thousand dollars here.”
She gave him a look. “Tell me about the photo, Jasper.”
“Nathan and Kitty.” He showed her a black-and-white photograph on his phone of a couple kissing in a parking lot. He gestured for her to swipe. “My grandfather took these, and in exchange for them, Nathan offered my grandfather a job taking photographs of Telescope stars that he would then sell to the papers. When he discovered Kitty was Black, he had to decide whether to tell Nathan or not.”
He paused as if he’d been practicing for her reaction. She ignored his cliff-hanger and kept scrolling as directed. All the photos were shot in the long-lens style, like the ones inside the dated envelopes Kitty left, but these were ones she’d never seen before.
One was of a very pregnant Kitty, being pushed in a wheelchair around the neighborhood by her grandma Nellie. The two shot through a window in Kitty’s old house showed her cooing over an infant. Finally, there was one of Nellie and a baby, wrapped in a blanket, leaving Kitty’s with a tall Black man; Elise recognized him as her grandma Nellie’s estranged husband. Her mother hadn’t seen him since she was in the second grade.
Elise pretended to be unimpressed. “What do these prove?” The photos were in black and white, so Kitty’s true color was invisible, as it was in real life, and the baby was mostly covered by cotton. Kitty could have been giving her child up to an adoption agency.
“In isolation, nothing. However”—he pointed to the ground—“this color photograph is the other half of a photo I have that shows your mother at age two or three with Kitty. It was the photograph my grandfather showed to Nathan as proof that your mother was his child. Nathan cut it in half, not knowing my grandfather had a second copy.” Elise’s pulse thudded in her ears and chest, panicked by this complication. “My book is about my grandfather, but it’s about you and your family too. He kept copies of everything.”
“Pictures never tell the whole story.”
“My grandfather’s do. He followed Kitty all the time and saw it all with his own eyes, took photographs of every moment. He kept her secret for four years, knowing what telling could mean for her life. But then he had to consider what it would mean for him if Nathan found out he knew and didn’t tell him. He had to think of his family and his livelihood.”
“And what about me and mine? I can’t let you tell this story. I’ll understand if you want to pull out of Vogue.”
“Elise, you’ve misunderstood. This isn’t just Kitty’s story. It’s my grandfather’s too. I have a legal right to it. My grandfather owned his photographs, and I own his estate.”
“All your pictures show is my grandma Nellie bringing her baby, my mother, to meet her best friend. That’s all.”
“You know I can disprove that. I’m offering you the chance to tell Kitty’s side of it. If not, it’ll be told through my grandfather’s lens, which—I’ll be honest—doesn’t paint the most favorable picture.”
“And why is that? Because he never got his chance with her?”
“He wasn’t ever convinced Kitty was sorry for what she’d done.”
“Sorry for what? She didn’t have a choice.”
“We always have a choice; we only say we don’t to soothe our conscience from what we’re capable of.”
“You don’t understand what she did. What it means. She didn’t purposely hurt people.”
“You’ve never considered how Kitty’s decision hurt you? How it hurt your mother?”
“It’s all I’ve been able to think about. She left everything for me to find after she died.”
Jasper’s eyes crossed and skittered around. “Wait—you just found out? Why won’t you talk about it?”
“Have you ever stopped to consider that perhaps Kitty doesn’t want her story told?”
“Then why would she leave it to you like she did?”
“She wanted us to know our history.”
“Then you owe it to her to tell her truth.”
“It’s still the truth if no one knows.”
He tucked the photograph under his arm. “Except in my truth, it looks like she took the easy way out by passing.”
She choked on his simple but common opinion, hacking as though she was going to regurgitate a hair ball. Alarmed, Jasper hit the center of her back with his palm. “Bitter pill?”
She pushed his arm as he went to do it again.
“You know this is what your grandmother wanted.”
“What? To have her story distorted? To be judged by people who don’t know what she went through? She hurt so much, and she triumphed anyway. I can’t let you destroy her legacy.”
“Then help me tell her story.” He moved to the door. “I’ll see you Thursday.”
“Wait.”
He looked back.
“Who else knows about this?”
“My family.”
“Not your publisher?”
“I wanted to talk to you first.”
“So, you did want my permission.”
“No, I want your help. Your support.”
Elise felt even more conflicted. Why had Kitty kept this secret for so long? It couldn’t just be because she was really Black. Even twenty years ago, Kitty’s story might have been celebrated. In the fifties, the sixties, and even the seventies, Elise understood her choices, but after leaving the business, there was no life-or-death reason for Kitty to continue the façade. Unless there was.
CHAPTER 41
Elise
Wednesday early morning, November 1, 2017
Sarah was eating alone at the kitchen island, still in her costume. Though it was after three, she was unruffled; even her lipstick had crisp lines and was still a rich burgundy. She reminded Elise of Kitty then, even though they didn’t really look alike. They had the same oval face and slightly-larger-than-normal ears, but there was no glaring marker of their relation. Vanity was their genetic link.
She didn’t look up as Elise sat down. Sarah never ate while hosting, preferring to reminisce about the night over a meal. She normally would have asked Elise if she was hungry, inviting her to recap the night, but she was still angry. Elise could see her cheek twitching between bites of pulled chicken and hummus from her saucer-sized plate.
