Chapter 26
Life in Reverse
Kate
Growing up, Kate’s father had an irrational hatred for the Kennedys. That’s what her mother always called it, “Your father’s irrational hatred.” Kate never understood what it was that drove his ire, but it had the opposite effect than intended. Kate was secretly obsessed with Jackie Kennedy, Jackie O. She kept a scrapbook of images of her between her mattress and the box spring. Read the books she edited. Took the French option at school. When she was seventeen, she entered a contest run by Vogue to spend a year in their Paris office as an intern. Feeling petulant, Kate wrote her essay about her father. How his anger had taught her to look again. To look more closely. To see the flaws and the good parts, too. What it must’ve been like to be Jackie, starting out in the world. Full of ambition. Full of limits.
Kate sent off her manila envelope with no hope of winning anything. But she did win. She convinced her parents to let her postpone her entrance to college. She waved goodbye to them at the airport and landed a bad night’s sleep later in the early morning of Paris.
How free she felt. How naive she’d been.
“What’s that doggie, Aunt Kwait?” Willie asked as he climbed onto Kate’s lap on the morning of October twenty-ninth. A few small flakes were waving down outside. The forecast was calling for a couple inches.
“It’s a greyhound.”
“Is that a real doggie?” Willie pointed to the image of a dog that scampered across his fleecy pajamas. “Like this one?”
“Well, not that one. That’s a drawing. But yes, there are real greyhounds. Here, look.” Kate opened a new browser window and Googled “images of greyhounds.” “See?”
“That’s a big doggie.”
“It is. Sometimes they race them.”
“Like horses?”
“No, not exactly. No one rides the dogs.”
“I like riding doggies.”
“Whose dog have you ridden?”
“Stu.”
“Who’s Stu?”
“He lives across the street! You know.”
The door from the garage opened and closed.
“Mommy, Mommy, guess what?”
“What’s up, Willie?”
“Aunt Kwait is going to ride a greyhound!”
“She is! That sounds fun.”
Kate quickly closed the browsers and shut the iPad. There was no need for Andrea to see that she was looking up bus rides to Chicago.
“I think he misunderstood, didn’t you, muffin?” Kate ruffled Willie’s hair and put him down on the floor. “Aunt Kate is much too big to ride a greyhound.”
“Clearly,” Andrea said. She was sucking on a straw that was stuck into a plastic cup full of green goo. She turned on the TV. More all news, all the time.
“Did you see this?” she asked, nodding to the screen, which was reporting on a story that Vogue had broken. “What a crazy story.”
Kate looked away. It was all anyone was talking about online that morning. The news wasn’t going to tell her anything she didn’t already know. It was the reason she was looking at Greyhound trips. Figuring out the logistics. Counting up her money and preparing herself to say goodbye to the only two people she cared about in this new life.
What she hadn’t figured out yet was what she was going to do once she got there.
Was there a way for Kate to convince anyone that what she’d done was forgivable? Was there a cover story that could make her acceptable in her old life?
What would convince you?
If she told you Joshua was abusive? That it had started six months into their relationship. Just words, in the beginning. He didn’t like her going out. He didn’t like it when he didn’t know where she was or who she was with. That it felt romantic at first. Then something she pushed against until, one day, he pushed back. But they were already engaged by then, everyone had been told, and the thought of telling them that he’d . . . What? Gotten a bit out of control during an argument, lost his temper after being provoked? Well, that happened. And he’d apologized so thoroughly that . . .
She’d tried that story out on IKnowWhatYouDidLastSummer.com. And while it had been satisfying to get anonymous encouragement for her decision, it was crap. Joshua wasn’t abusive. He was cold sometimes. They didn’t, in the end, see eye to eye on many things. A fundamental lack of compatibility that seemed exciting when she was twenty-four but wasn’t good in the long run. And he hadn’t understood what the postpartum depression was or the more general depression she’d had before that. How it alienated her from her children. How she never felt about them as she should’ve. But he was a good man. A good father. That most of all. Why else would she have left her children with him? Who else could she trust?
The truth was that there wasn’t any reason Kate could offer up that could explain her behavior to anyone, even herself. Make it acceptable, wipe away what she’d done. And what was the point of trying anyway? If she went back, it wasn’t going to be for her. It was going to be for the girls, for Joshua. She had to leave herself out of the equation.
But why was she even thinking about going back?
That had everything to do with Franny Maycombe.