by Yvette Clark
“Kitty! What are you doing here? I thought I was going to get busted by one of the teachers.”
“You’re not supposed to be in here,” I say unnecessarily. God, why did I say that? It makes it sound as though I’m on duty patrolling the school, looking for infractions. I sit down clumsily on a beanbag. Even Imogen wouldn’t be able to sit on one of these things gracefully.
“I know. Neither are you.”
“Are you hiding from your dad? I saw him downstairs. He’s the wolf, right?”
Please let me stop saying such stupid things. I say a silent prayer to the god of tween girls who are talking to boys they may or may not like to make me more eloquent, or better still, sound vaguely cool.
“That’s him,” Henry says with bitterness in his voice. “I don’t know why he bothered coming. When I was younger, and I wanted him here, he never showed up, too busy working or whatever he was doing. That costume my dad’s girlfriend is wearing sums up the difference between my mom and every girlfriend my dad has ever had.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean if my parents were still married, mom would have dressed as a cool grandmother, not an X-rated Little Red Riding Hood.”
“My dad came as a pirate. One of the teachers confiscated his cutlass.”
Henry laughs. He still has some fake blood on his chin, but he’s taken out the vampire fangs.
“I like your ears, Kitty,” he says, reaching over to move the one that’s flopping into my eye.
“Thanks,” I say, blushing and jumping up. I trip over the corner of the beanbag in my rush to get to the door.
“Kitty,” says Henry. He’s leaning up on one elbow and looking totally and impossibly cute. “Thanks for cheering me up.”
“You’re welcome.” I race out of the library. As I stumble down the stairs, I can’t suppress my grin. Maybe this costume wasn’t such a terrible idea after all. Perhaps I should even thank Ava.
Chapter Twenty
Color Therapy
My jaw nearly hits my desk on Monday morning when a brown-haired Henry walks into the classroom. His hair isn’t quite Mouse’s Back. More of a London Stone, color number six, which I remember the website described as “effortlessly modern and utterly timeless.” This description stuck with me, as London Stone is the color I tried to convince myself my hair was for a long time.
“What happened to your hair?” asks Ava, staring at Henry. “I haven’t seen it this color since like fifth grade!”
“I felt like a change. Is that okay with you?” Henry says in an uncharacteristically surly voice. He slumps into the desk behind Ava and me. Ava rolls her eyes and mouths “touchy.” I wish Henry sat in front of me so I could examine his hair color. I risk turning around a couple of times to take a look. Both times he has his arms folded on his desk making a pillow for his London Stone head. He’s not even doodling.
Today is my sixth meeting with Dr. Feld. While I’ve grown used to her huge hoop earrings and floaty dresses, I miss Sam with his creased denim shirts and equally creased face. Dr. Feld is remarkably wrinkle-free; maybe she gets a discount at the Zen spa.
“So, Kitty, how has everything been this week?” Dr. Feld asks in her husky voice. She always sounds as if she’s recovering from a sore throat.
“Fine.”
“Did you have a fun Halloween?”
“It was okay.” Wow, this is really not worth two hundred and fifty dollars per hour.
“What did you do?”
“My school had a dance.”
“Ah, yes, the dance that your friend”—she pauses to consult her notes—“Ava’s mom wanted your mom to help with.”
Wow, she’s good. Way to turn the Halloween dance back to the reason I came to therapy in the first place.
“And how has it been since then? You told me that you’d talked to Ava. Do you talk to anyone else about your mom? Apart from your dad and your sister?”
“My gran, my godmother, my friend Jessica, and Sam when I talk to him.” I don’t mention Henry.
“So nobody in New York?”
“No. Why would I? It’s not like I live here or anything.”
“But you do live here, Kitty. Even though you aren’t here for long, I do believe it’s important for you to integrate your mom into your new life. However temporary your time in New York is, your experience of it is part of your narrative.”
My narrative? What’s she talking about?
“My narrative?”
“Yes, Kitty, your narrative. Now, let’s do an exercise about the future. This one is from my new book—Life After Loss: Love Is the Answer.” Dr. Feld hands me a large piece of paper and a pen. “Most people think that therapy is about the past, but it’s actually all about the future. What do you want your next chapter to be, Kitty?”
She really does come up with the worst titles for her books. I sit, pen in hand, staring stupidly at the blank sheet of paper on the coffee table in front of me. Dr. Feld looks at me expectantly, so I write Kitty Wentworth and the date and then underline the words twice. She nods encouragingly, bouncing her earrings around, as if now that I’ve put pen to paper, the words will magically flood out. They don’t. I watch as she stops nodding and her hoop earrings become still.
“I don’t know what to write,” I say eventually. “What on earth am I supposed to write?”
“It’s your story, Kitty. Only you can know.”
“Well, I don’t know, okay?”
“Interesting, why do you think that might be?”
Dr. Feld’s dumb question makes me want to throw the pen at her.
“Kitty?”
“I don’t want my story. I hate it. I want the story I had before. This isn’t what my life is supposed to be. I want to rip out all the pages from the last year and go back to having my mum.”
I’m crying now. Not gentle, therapeutic cleansing tears but great big sloppy, snotty gulping sobs. Dr. Feld pushes the tissues toward me, but I ignore them and continue through the mucus.
“I need a story where my mum gets better, where we stay in London, where I’m not sitting in this office having to talk to you with this stupid piece of paper in front of me.”
Dr. Feld sits quietly for a long time until I’ve stopped sobbing and blown my nose with a loud honking noise. It takes about seven tissues to clear the snot. That crying fit probably cost my dad a hundred dollars, but to my surprise, I do feel better, lighter, as if a stone in my throat that was preventing me from swallowing has dislodged. I haven’t cried like this in a really long time.
“I still haven’t written anything,” I say eventually, holding up the paper. Several tears have splashed onto my name, causing the black ink of the letters to merge.
“I think you’ve achieved a lot today, Kitty. Without writing a word you put some important chapter headings for your future: headings like Love, Resilience, and Courage. Let’s leave it there for this week.”
Dr. Feld closes her notebook with a snap and guides me to the door.
“Very well done, Kitty. Remember, grief is a multitasking emotion.”
When I walk out of Dr. Feld’s office, Henry is leaning against the wall next to the elevator, his brown hair covered in a baseball cap.
“Hi,” I say, sniffing and stuffing the handful of soggy tissues and blank piece of paper into my coat pocket. If Henry notices my red, puffy eyes, he doesn’t mention them.
“Want to walk to the subway together?”
“Sure,” I say, but I’m not sure. I hope nobody from school sees us. They might think we’re on a date. Ava says quite a few kids in my grade are dating, and she knows everything that is going on in seventh grade. I blush at the thought of her seeing Henry and me together. We climb into the old elevator, which for once is empty. Henry sighs as he jabs the button for the lobby.
“I did it to piss my dad off. My hair, I mean. We had a big argument after the Halloween dance about him and his girlfriend turning up in their stupid costumes. When your hair’s been
six colors in the last two years, going back to brown seemed the best way to wind him up. It worked; he hates it. Dad says it makes me look like the son of an accountant. I wish my dad was an accountant instead of a dumb movie star. My therapist says me changing my hair is a healthy expression of rage. It does seem like a pretty lame way to rebel. I need to think of something more dramatic.” Henry turns to look at me, a wry smile on his face. “What do you think?”
“I think the color protest is very eloquent, and it won’t fry your brain, well, unless you’re using some kind of toxic hair coloring. I like your natural hair color, by the way. It’s London Stone. You’re lucky. My hair is Mouse’s Back.”
“What are you talking about, Kitty?” Henry asks, looking baffled by my mention of rodents.
“My hair color is Mouse’s Back.” Henry still looks confused, so I decide to explain as best I can. “I’m really into these paints by an English company called Farrow & Ball. They make the most gorgeous colors and give them the best names. They’re called things like Arsenic, Elephant’s Breath, and Dead Salmon.”
“Geez, Dead Salmon!” Who would paint a room with that?”
“Lots of people. My godmother, Kate, is an interior designer, and she uses it all the time, especially in dining rooms. By candlelight, it’s very flattering. She tells her older clients it will take twenty years off them, and that her services are much cheaper than a face lift.”
“She sounds funny.”
“She is. She was my mum’s best friend.”
The elevator arrives in the lobby, and a group of serene-looking spa-goers/therapy patients stands aside while we exit. As we walk into the chilly November evening, we fall into a companionable silence.
“Henry,” I say after half a block, “does your therapist say weird things?”
“God, all the time,” he groans. “He mostly talks like Yoda. ‘If no mistakes you have made, but losing you are, a different game you should play.’”
I snort with laughter.
“He did not say that!”
“Something like that. I don’t listen half the time.”
“Dr. Feld says I need to create my own narrative.”
“You need to do what now?”
“Exactly. She says I need to write it with resilience and bravery and that grief is a multitasking emotion.”
“Where do they get this stuff from?” Henry says, shaking his head. “Anyway, I think you’re brave.”
“I’m not. I had an awful thing happen to me, that’s all.”
“Exactly, something really terrible happened, and here you are, on the other side of the world, getting on with your life. I’m just here because my dad can’t stop dating girls half his age, and my mom can’t stop drinking.” Henry pauses, embarrassed. “I didn’t mean to say that about my mom. It’s been tough for her. Mom’s great, though. Not so great when she’s been drinking, but mostly great.”
“It’s okay. I won’t tell anyone,” I say.
We get to the subway station, and suddenly I don’t care if anyone sees us together anymore. I give Henry an awkward smile.
“I think you’re brave, too. If you ever want to talk about parent stuff, I’m happy to listen,” I tell him.
“I feel bad complaining about my pathetic problems after what happened with your mom,” Henry says, shuffling his feet.
“Don’t feel bad. I want to talk about normal stuff—like people’s parents being annoying.”
“There’s nothing normal about my family,” Henry laughs. “Thanks, Kitty. You’re a cool girl.”
“Thanks,” I say and give him a half wave as we go down different staircases to our platforms. Imogen would fall over in amazement if she knew a film star’s son thinks I’m a cool girl. Imogen would fall over in amazement if she knew anyone at all thinks I’m a cool girl.
Chapter Twenty-One
Turkey Day
Gran, who has been planning her visit to spend Thanksgiving in New York since we left London, unexpectedly announces a week before she is due to arrive that Mrs. Allison will be accompanying her.
“I didn’t realize they are friends now,” Dad says.
“Well, they do go to Pilates together once a week and are in a club called Aging with Attitude—whatever that is,” I tell him.
“I dread to think.”
When the duo walks into the arrivals area at JFK, they look like the most unlikely traveling companions. Mrs. Allison is sporting athleisure wear and wheeling a gigantic giraffe-print suitcase trimmed with fuchsia. No chance of picking up the wrong bag from the carousel with that luggage. Gran has a sensible small navy-blue bag.
“Is Mrs. Allison wearing leggings?” asks Dad weakly.
“She appears to be, but don’t worry, Gran is in her usual wrinkle-free travel trousers,” I tell him.
“Thank goodness for that.”
Dad orders an Uber for the journey into Manhattan, and while we wait for it to arrive, Mrs. Allison tells us the plot lines of the two movies she watched on the flight.
“Did you watch a film, Gran?” I ask.
“Absolutely not,” she says. “I stood for much of the flight. You read about people my age suffering from deep vein thrombosis, but there’s no blood pooling here.” Gran lifts one leg of her sensible traveling trousers and flicks the top of a tight-fitting skin-colored sock, which comes up to her knee. “That and drinking plenty of water are key to healthy air travel.”
“Sexy socks, Gran!” says Imogen. “Are you hoping for a holiday romance?”
Gran ignores her.
“Well, I wiggled my toes while I watched the films,” says Mrs. Allison. “And I had plenty to drink during the flight.”
“White wine doesn’t count, Elizabeth. Alcoholic drinks actually have a dehydrating effect on the system,” Gran says.
“I don’t see how. I needed to go to the toilet every half hour, so it must have been going through my system!”
Our apartment is too small for Gran and Mrs. Allison to stay with us, so Dad has booked them into a hotel a few blocks away. It’s one of those bland business hotels that could be anywhere in the world, but, as Dad says, they’ll only really be sleeping there. For the first three days of their visit, Imogen and I are at school and Dad has to work, so Gran and Mrs. Allison do all the usual sightseeing things together. Gran has been to New York before, but it’s Mrs. Allison’s first visit to the Big Apple, and it’s love at first bite. She adores all the dogs in their little quilted jackets, although she says they make her miss Sir Lancelot, who is staying with her sister in Essex.
Jen has invited all five of us to her house for Thanksgiving. I haven’t seen her since the Halloween dance, although I often see Dash at school marching along in the junior kindergarten caterpillar formation. He’s usually talking nonstop to whichever unfortunate child he has been partnered with that day. If Dash notices me, he stops dead, causing a pileup of four-year-olds behind him, and shouts hello, waving manically until I wave back.
“Why would Jen invite us for Thanksgiving?” I asked Dad when he told me. “Isn’t it supposed to be a family holiday? We hardly know her.”
“She’s being nice, Kitty. She thought it would be fun for us to experience an all-American Thanksgiving. I’m really looking forward to it.”
“Why isn’t she celebrating with her family?”
Dad sighed. “Her parents are visiting her brother and his wife in Seattle, so she invited us, and I’ve accepted her kind offer.”
I don’t think Gran is going to be thrilled about spending Thanksgiving with a random woman.
“Have you told Gran where we’re going?”
“Yes, Kitty. I’ve told Eleanor we’re going to a friend’s house for Thanksgiving.”
“Did you tell her it’s a female friend?”
“I think she probably guessed that when I said the friend’s name is Jennifer.”
I raised an eyebrow. This is going to be interesting. Not much gets past Gran.
Jen and Dashiell liv
e in a townhouse on West Tenth Street. The house is tall and thin, like its owner, and when Jen welcomes us inside, I’m not surprised to see that the walls are painted in shades of white, cream, taupe, and gray—all very tasteful and very bland. The only injections of color come from four huge canvases of fluorescent splatters, taller than me, that hang in the hallway and stick out like sore thumbs.
Jen is dressed from head to toe in neutrals like her home. She’s wearing cream corduroy trousers, and a soft-looking silk shirt in palest peach. Her makeup is barely visible, just a hint of shimmer on her cheekbones and a glossy nude lip shade that I know Imogen will be coveting. She greets us all warmly and, ignoring my frosty vibes and Gran’s outstretched hand, hugs us both. Mrs. Allison, who doesn’t have any of Gran’s physical boundaries or my animosity, embraces Jen vigorously and is delighted when Dashiell flings his arms around her legs. Dashiell is an explosion of color to rival the abstract paintings. He’s dressed in purple trousers and an apple-green T-shirt, that reads “Far Out, Brussels Sprout!” in white letters. He leaps around in excitement like a badly trained puppy, which other people seem to find charming, but I find obnoxious. I’m pretty sure Gran feels the same way.
We follow Jen downstairs to an enormous kitchen, which, despite the clinical stainless steel appliances and glossy white marble surfaces, feels friendlier than the rooms upstairs. The cavernous fridge has Dash’s artwork taped to it, and the large wooden table is candlelit and decorated with miniature pumpkins and turkey place settings. Jen notices me looking at them in surprise and laughs.
“Holiday-themed tables are my guilty pleasure, Kitty,” she says. “You should see my Fourth of July picnic set—all stars and stripes. Jonathan, my husband, used to hide the holiday editions of home decor magazines to keep me from buying anything else!”