Kat's Nine Lives

by Laina Villeneuve

  “But once the States legalized it…” Sheryl rolled her eyes, but with a smile on her face.

  “No more excuses,” they had said in unison, humor in their voices.

  Wendy wondered whether she was foolish to keep waiting for Kat when she had said she didn’t have to. She didn’t really know what they were waiting for. All Wendy knew was that it wasn’t something concrete like a graduation or a divorce to go through. “I guess we’re waiting for the right time,” she finally answered.

  “Whatever that means,” Cory said.

  Wendy could understand why he’d be puzzled. She could see where it didn’t make sense. Waiting to marry Sheryl hadn’t made sense to Dawn, yet Dawn hadn’t pushed it. She said with or without the label of wife, she was meant to be with Sheryl. Wendy couldn’t use the label of girlfriend, but she felt just as certain that she was meant to be with Kat.

  * * *

  Months later Kat entered through the back door of her parents’ house. She heard the shower and checked her watch. She and Travis were leaving in ten minutes which wouldn’t be enough time for her to get ready, but he wasn’t typically late, so she continued into the kitchen.

  “Hello!” her mother greeted her in a chipper, sing-song voice.

  “Hi.” Kat set her purse on the table and sat down to wait for her boy. “Everyone is adjusting to Travis being back in school?”

  “Your dad misses his help in the yard, but I think Travis is glad to have an excuse at the ready.”

  Kat helped herself to a Madeleine cookie from the container on the table.

  “How are all the brides?”

  “I’ve got a new couple that I just don’t understand. Sometimes I wish the shop offered premarital counseling.”

  “You’d be qualified. How many years did you work at the church?”

  “Too many,” Kat said.

  “What bothers you about the couple?”

  “They haven’t been together that long, and the bride told me the only reason they’re getting married is because her parents found out they’re living together. The father said he’d only pay for the wedding if they took the first date their church had available. They’re getting married on September thirteenth.”

  Her mom glanced at the large wall calendar on the bulletin board. “Friday?”

  “Yep. Friday the thirteenth.”

  “Oh, that’s a riot.” Millie pushed back from the table, grasped her cane and walked to the fridge. “My dad would have done the same thing. Do you want a soda?”

  “Sure.”

  Travis passed by with his towel wrapped around his lean tanned abdomen. “Give me four minutes. I’ll be ready.”

  “Okay,” Kat agreed, but he had already disappeared down the steps. Millie handed Kat a Diet Coke and returned to the fridge for her own. When she settled back in her chair again, she reached for a cookie.

  “Your dad and I went to pre-marital counseling. The minister said that he never advised against weddings, but he said I shouldn’t marry your dad because he was queer.”

  “You never told me that part! Why’d you still marry him if you knew he was gay?”

  “I was young. I thought queer meant quirky.”

  Kat was speechless. Her parents had long told the story of the minister’s warning, but neither had shared that detail with her. “And look at you now, still married after all these years.”

  “Yep. So you never can tell who’s going to make it.”

  “Were you disappointed that Jack and I didn’t make it?”

  “Only because you always had such high expectations for yourself.”

  Kat cursed Travis’s punctuality when, as promised, he emerged from the basement four minutes later. She would have liked to have continued the conversation with her mom.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  “You don’t want to say bye to Gramma?”

  He looked in their direction, having already passed them. “I’m not five.”

  “That’s no reason to be a troll.”

  “See you, Gramma,” he called, walking to the door.

  Millie waved, already focused on her phone.

  “Bye Mom!” Kat kissed her mom on the cheek and followed Travis out to the car.

  “Nice chatting with you!” her mother called after Kat, her thoughts obviously not spinning on their brief conversation.

  Travis now saw more of his dad, so Kat had started taking Travis to band practice whenever she could. On the way, they usually chatted about how school was going which meant Kat asked questions, and Travis replied in as few words as possible. That evening, though, she ruminated on the conversation with Millie, comparing her failed marriage to her parents’ successful one.

  “Is something wrong?” Travis asked.

  “No. Why?”

  “Because there aren’t any questions tonight. You always have questions.”

  “And you had already crafted your verbose responses?”

  “You’re thinking about Dad?”

  “Not really. I was thinking about Gramma and Grandfather. They’ve been together such a long time.” Who would she have been if her mother had left her father? His leaving her didn’t even enter her mind as a possibility even though his affairs would have made that scenario more logical. Despite their having plenty of reasons to split, Kat could not picture one without the other and, truth be told, their being together had always comforted her. She actually took great pride in sharing that her parents were still married.

  Because life’s a competition? Kat knew Wendy would needle her if she could hear her thoughts. They won because they stayed together?

  “You think you’ll get married again?”

  Kat weighed his question. As both a divorcée and a wedding planner, marriage looked a lot different to her. “That’s kind of hard to answer considering I’m not even dating.”

  “Are you going to date again?”

  “Probably.”

  “Wendy?”

  “I hope so.”

  “Why aren’t you dating now?”

  “It’s not time yet.”

  “For you or for her?”

  “Me. I’ve still got a lot of stuff to figure out.”

  She waited for him to ask what kind of stuff, but he didn’t. Alone in her apartment, she’d been listening to “Crazy for You” and other love songs from the eighties. She’d compiled them in a playlist and imagined what it would be like to slow dance with Wendy. Based on their few kisses, there was a lot she could imagine, but when she thought of giving herself to Wendy, fear always held her back.

  Were the tables turned, she didn’t know if she would have Wendy’s patience. She kept waiting for Wendy to say “Enough!”, but it never happened. They worked well together professionally, and socially they had much to talk about. Every once in a while, there would be a pocket of silence that made Kat hold her breath with worry that Wendy would bring up how long Kat had lived on her own. But then the moment would pass, and Wendy would kick the conversation back into motion. Kat would relax and remind herself to appreciate the moment. She was learning not only to forgive the past but also to embrace the new life in front of her.

  * * *

  Kat’s eyes misted as she watched Penny and Bruce share their first dance as husband and wife. When she had first started working with them, she had thought a wedding so close to Christmas would seem weird, but instead the decorations in the fellowship hall contributed an extra air of magic to the reception.

  The Disney touches didn’t hurt. Sleeping Beauty’s castle topped the cake, and she had heard Bruce’s animator colleagues talking about how they were going to recreate the fireworks when they cut the cake after the first dance.

  “Not the song I would have chosen, but I guess it’s appropriate.”

  Wendy stood close enough to Kat that she half expected her to rest her chin on her shoulder. A shiver ran through her despite the heat from Wendy’s proximity. Or maybe because of it. “Come on. I love Beauty and the Beast.”
>
  “The story is so much better, though. I don’t like how the movie made it seem like she was taming him.”

  “Maybe they like the message of learning to see beauty beneath the surface,” Kat suggested.

  “What’s good about the story is that the enchantment is her own creation. He’s always kind, but she has to learn how to overcome her fear.”

  “But she’s afraid of him because he’s mean.”

  “She’s afraid of him because he’s different. You could just as easily say the beast is a woman, and the unexpected attraction scares her. That’s what I think the story is about.”

  “Oh!” The epiphany struck her so unexpectedly that Kat could not contain the exclamation. Miranda’s words echoed in her mind. Tell me that you are not burning with desire from that kiss, and I won’t say another word about it. Miranda’s kiss had awakened something she wasn’t ready for, and Kat had fallen back asleep. For decades. Until Wendy.

  “What?” Wendy asked.

  How could she explain? The song faded and as if cued by Kat’s memory of sleeping princesses “Once Upon a Dream” began. “Do you waltz?”

  “What?”

  On the dance floor older couples joined the bride and groom floating into the graceful waltz. Kat extended her hand to Wendy.

  “You know how to dance like that?”

  “You’ve met my father…” Kat took Wendy’s hand. “Come on. I’ll teach you, and we can talk about princesses that have been asleep too long.”

  It took a moment for Kat to rearrange the waltz in her mind, to take Wendy’s right hand with her left, to lead with her left foot instead of follow with her right, but once they moved, her blood rushed through her veins, and she was awakened once more.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  “Wendy Archer—so glad to meet you,” Wendy said, shaking hands with both attractive women who had called to set up their menu. She’d spoken to Ngozi who introduced herself and her wife-to-be Dinandrea.

  “We’re so excited that you were free!” Ngozi said. “Kat said she’s worked with you a lot and that the food is always amazing.”

  “How did you find Kat?” Wendy asked. With Kat coordinating weddings full-time, more and more of Wendy’s referrals were matrimonial.

  “Our minister suggested her. We go to the Unitarian church here in Pasadena,” Dinandrea said. “Kat’s like me,” she continued. “It wasn’t easy for me to come out of the closet. I was really struggling. And then this one…” She wove her arms through Ngozi’s. “She held the door open for me. Our eyes met, and we connected.”

  “I didn’t even know your name, but I knew you were important to me.” Ngozi’s broad smile revealed a gap between her front teeth.

  “But we didn’t meet then,” Dinandrea said. “I was late to my meeting. I was so anal about being on time to everything back then.”

  “We got each other’s numbers on one of those dating sites,” Ngozi said. “Only I was having trouble with my personal phone and had to call her from work.”

  “And when I saw the clinic’s name, I said oh, my god! It’s the beautiful woman who opened the door for me!”

  “But we had met even before that,” Ngozi said.

  “Stop! We didn’t come to share our life story,” Dinandrea said. “We came to see if you can make Caribbean food. Ngozi is Jamaican American, and I’m Cuban American, so we’d like to bring the flavor of the Caribbean to our reception.”

  “Something like Ackee’n sal’fish,” Ngozi said.

  Dinandrea pushed Ngozi’s shoulder lightly. “You already got your black rum cake.” Her food requests came fast and interspersed with Spanish. Wendy caught the lists of spices, garlic and onion and ropa vieja and plantains. “But no fish.” She slowed down to deliver this idea, her delicate chin directed first to Ngozi and then to Wendy. “This is going to be vegan all the way.”

  “All right! All right! You win. We’ll go vegan,” Ngozi said. “Anything to make you happy.”

  “You’re in luck! I have experience with Caribbean food. This is going to be fun,” Wendy said.

  When the couple was satisfied with their choices, they stood.

  “Thank you for all of this. Hiring only lesbians was the best choice we’ve made,” Dinandrea said.

  “Yeah. You don’t happen to know a lesbian baker, do you? So far, we’ve come up empty, and it’s looking like my mom is going to have to make the cake,” Ngozi said.

  “You’re only hiring lesbians?” Wendy wasn’t sure she had heard Dinandrea correctly.

  “That’s… not a problem is it?” Dinandrea shot a questioning look at Ngozi. “I thought you would have mentioned that on the phone.”

  Ngozi looked from Dinandrea to Wendy. “Kat said you were family.”

  “Oh, I am.” To this, both women looked relieved. “I’m sorry. You just caught me off guard.”

  After they left, Wendy sat back down at the table with her notes. She turned the pencil tip to eraser, tip to eraser, lost in thought. Kat was identifying as lesbian now and hadn’t said anything to her? There had been no promises made between them, but now Wendy was even more uncertain about what she meant to Kat.

  “Ready to order?” Cory stood at the table.

  “Nothing you have.”

  “Ouch!” Cory put his hand over his heart and pulled out a chair. “Is that couple going to be difficult?”

  “No. They are lovely, just like all the couples Kat sends our way. But they said something about Kat that keeps spinning around in my head.”

  Cory stretched out his legs, ready to listen. “Out with it.”

  “What if Kat’s into women but not into me?”

  “They said Kat’s into women?”

  “They said they will only work with lesbians.”

  “Ouch!” he said again. “What’s wrong with me?”

  “It’s not about you! It’s about not wanting anyone there who would see two women getting married as a curiosity. And stop making this about you when it’s about me.”

  “I thought it was about Kat.”

  “Now you’re just being difficult.”

  “You two kissed. You’re a woman. I don’t see how her liking women is news to you.”

  “Kissing women is not an identity. If she’s told them she’s a lesbian, that’s different.”

  “But she hasn’t asked you out.”

  “Right.”

  “Hmm.” They sat in silence for a few minutes. “I can’t help with that, but I can give you a job to do.”

  “You’re my assistant. Shouldn’t I be giving you a job?”

  “You would be if you weren’t sitting out here moping.”

  “Point taken,” Wendy said following him back into the kitchen.

  She would try her best to stop questioning whether the label Kat used changed anything between them, but it wouldn’t be easy.

  * * *

  How was it, Kat wondered, that she still felt nervous calling Wendy? After more than a year of always having the excuse of their overlapping careers, she still experienced a little flutter when she pulled up Wendy’s name on her screen.

  Maybe because this was far from business. This was personal.

  “Hey there, sunshine!” Wendy picked up, and Kat couldn’t keep from smiling.

  “Have time for a personal call?”

  “I always have time for you,” Wendy responded.

  Kat hadn’t thought her smile could get any bigger, but Wendy’s words stretched it even wider. “I finally found the perfect thing to hang on the wall by my couch, but I need another set of hands.”

  “I’ve got a functional set you could borrow. Do you want me to swing by after work?”

  “That would be fantastic.” Kat’s stomach tightened as the words she wanted to say next skittered around.

  “Do you need any tools?”

  “I borrowed what I need from my dad, so all I need now is you.” The last words sent another anticipatory shiver through her. She felt like a teenager figurin
g everything out for the first time.

  “Sounds good,” Wendy said.

  “Wendy?” Kat said, so she didn’t lose her.

  “Yeah?”

  “Do you want to stay for dinner?” There. It was out there. She’d said it. Since her first night in her little house, they had spent no time there together, alone. If Wendy picked her up, she didn’t even stay long enough to set down her keys. Kat had been by Wendy’s but only when she had other friends over, guaranteeing their interactions would remain social instead of drifting to something romantic. She had been so tempted to give herself over to what she felt when she kissed Wendy, but as much as she had wanted that, she knew that she’d moved into her own place for a reason.

  “I’d like that,” Wendy said. A pause extended between them, convincing Kat that Wendy had picked up on the importance of the invitation. “Do I need to bring anything?”

  “Just yourself,” Kat replied.

  Immediately after their goodbyes, Kat tipped her head back and closed her eyes. The Cure’s “Close to Me” started to play in her mind and continued on loop until she heard the scrape of the gate announce Wendy’s arrival.

  * * *

  Wendy couldn’t go empty-handed, so on her way out of the restaurant, she cut a generous slice of the restaurant’s chocolate cake.

  “You think you earned that cake?” José asked as she passed him at the bar. His thick black hair was styled off his face with gel. His outfit was a direct contrast to his grooming: baggy black cargo pants and scuffed rubber clogs.

  “No, I know I did. I worked my tail off today.”

  “Not so hard that you’re too tired to play?” He motioned to her outfit. Instead of leaving in work clothes, she’d changed into form-fitting jeans and a soft jade-green three-quarter-sleeved tee.

  “I’m helping a friend out.”

  “I’m sure you are. Have a good one.”

  January had yet to bring any rain, and Wendy was not surprised to find Kat’s door open to let in the afternoon warmth.

  “Knock knock,” she called at the door, inhaling the aroma of cooked onions.

  Kat emerged from the bedroom in a blue cotton top with a deliciously low-cut neckline. “Oh, you brought chocolate!” She took the plate and set it on the counter before she wrapped her arms around Wendy.