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Giggling, I say, “And . . . sexually?” I simply ca
“Ew!” she screams. “You’re depraved!”
“I’m just joking!”
“I’m hanging up on you right now.”
“No, don’t. If Ms. Rothschild isn’t the one, I was thinking he should try online dating. I’ve found a dating site for him and everything. He’s a handsome guy, you know. And at Thanksgiving, Grandma was bugging him about dating more. She says it’s not good for a man to be alone.”
“He’s perfectly happy.” She pauses. “Isn’t he?”
“I think he’s perfectly . . . content? But that’s not the same thing as happy, is it? Gogo, I hate to think of him being lonely . . . and the way Kitty’s so bent on setting him up with Ms. Rothschild, it makes me think she’s longing for a mother figure.”
Margot sighs and takes a sip of tea. “Okay, work on his profile and send me the login info so I can weigh in on everything. We’ll handpick a few and present him with a really curated selection so he doesn’t get overwhelmed.”
Impulsively I say, “Why don’t we hold off until we see how this thing with Ms. Rothschild plays out? We should at least give her a chance, don’t you think? For Kitty’s sake.”
Margot sighs again. “How old do you think she is?”
“Like, thirty-nine? Forty?”
“Well, she dresses much younger.”
“You shouldn’t hold that against her,” I say, though I will admit to feeling slight discomfort when she said we shop at the same places. Does that mean she dresses too young or I dress too old? Chris has called my style “gra
“I’ll keep my eyes open for you,” she promises. “Maybe I can find matching for the three of us. Actually, the four of us. It can be next year’s Christmas card.”
I snort. “Daddy in a kilt!”
“You never know, he might be into it. He’s always talking up his one-quarter Scottish heritage. He can put his money where his mouth is.” She wraps both hands around her mug and takes a sip of tea. “Guess what. I met a cute boy. His name is Samuel, and he’s in my British pop culture class.”
“Ooh. Does he have a posh accent?”
“Indubitably,” she says in a posh English accent. We both giggle. “We’re meeting up at a pub tonight. Wish me luck.”
“Luck!” I shout.
I like seeing Margot like this, so light and happy and unserious. I think it must mean she’s really and truly over Josh.
20
“DON’T STAND IN FRONT OF the tv,” Kitty snaps.
I’m dusting the bookshelves with a new feather duster that I ordered online. I don’t know the last time anybody dusted in here. I whirl around and say, “Why are you being such a mean little crab apple today?”
“I’m just in a mood,” she mutters, stretching her string-bean legs out in front of her. “Shanae was supposed to come over today and now she isn’t.”
“Well, don’t take it out on me.”
Kitty scratches her knee. “Hey, what would you think about me sending Ms. Rothschild a valentine on Daddy’s behalf?”
“Don’t you dare!” I shake my feather duster at her. “You’ve got to stop with this meddling habit of yours, Katherine. It’s not cute.”
Kitty gives me a deep eye roll. “Ugh, I never should have told you.”
“Too late now. Look, if two people are meant to be, they’ll find their way to each other.”
“Would you and Peter have ‘found your way to each other’ if I hadn’t sent those letters?” she challenges.
Point one for Kitty. “Probably not,” I admit.
“No, definitely not. You needed my little push.”
“Don’t act like sending my letters was some altruistic act on your part. You know you did it out of spite.”
Kitty sails right past that and asks, “What does ‘altruistic’ mean?”
“Selfless, charitable, generous of spirit . . . a.k.a. the opposite of you.” Kitty shrieks and lunges at me, and we struggle briefly, both of us breathless and giggling and bumping into the shelves. I used to be able to disarm her with not much effort, but she’s gaining on me. Her legs are strong, and she’s good at wriggling out of my grasp like a worm. I finally get both her arms behind her back, and she yells, “I give, I give!” As soon as I release her, she jumps up and attacks me again, tickling under my arms and going for my neck.
“Not the neck, not the neck!” I shriek. The neck is my weak spot, which everyone in my family knows. I fall to my knees, laughing so hard it hurts. “Stop, stop! Please!”
Kitty stops tickling. “And that’s me being altru . . . altruistic,” she says. “That’s my altruicity.”
“Altruism,” I pant.
“I think ‘altruicity’ works too.”
If Kitty hadn’t sent those letters, would Peter and I still have found our way to each other? My first impulse is to say no, but maybe we would have kept going down different paths and converged at some other fork in the road. Or maybe not, but either way, we’re here now.
21
“TELL ME MORE ABOUT YOUR young man,” Stormy says. We’re sitting cross-legged on her floor, setting aside pictures and mementos for her scrapbook. She was the only one to show up for Scrapbooking to the Oldies today, so we moved it over to her apartment. I’d worried Janette would notice the low attendance, but since I started volunteering, she hasn’t so much as popped her head in. All the better.
“What do you want to know about him?
“Does he play any sports?”
“He plays lacrosse.”
“Lacrosse?” she repeats. “Not football or baseball or basketball?”
“Well, he’s very good. He’s being recruited by colleges.”
“Can I see a picture of him?”
I get my phone out and pull up a picture of the two of us in his car. He’s wearing a hunter green sweater that I think he looks particularly handsome in. I like him in sweaters. I get the urge to cuddle and pet him like a stuffed animal.
Stormy looks at it closely. “Huh,” she says. “Yes, he is very handsome. I don’t know if he’s as handsome as my grandson, though. My grandson looks like a young Robert Redford.”
Whoa.
“I’ll show you if you don’t believe me,” she says, getting up and rooting around for a picture. She’s opening drawers, moving papers around. Any other grandmother at Belleview would already have a picture of her beloved grandson on display. Framed, above the TV or on the mantel. Not Stormy. The only pictures she has framed are pictures of herself. There’s a huge black-and-white bridal portrait in the entryway that takes up nearly the whole wall. Though I suppose if I was once that beautiful, I would want to show it off too. “Huh. I can’t find a picture.”
“You can show me next time,” I say, and Stormy lowers herself back down on the couch.
She puts her legs up on the ottoman. “Where do young people go these days for a little alone time? Is there no ‘Lookout Point’ type of place?” She’s digging, she’s definitely digging for information. Stormy’s a bloodhound when it comes to sniffing out juicy goods, but I’m not giving up a thing. Not that I even have much juice to offer her.
“Um, I don’t know . . . I don’t think so.” I busy myself with cleaning up a pile of scraps.
She starts to cut up some trimmings. “I remember the first boy I ever went parking with. Ken Newbery. He drove a Chevy Impala. God, the thrill of a boy putting his hands on you for the first time. There’s nothing quite like it, is there, dear?”
“Mm-hmm. Where’s that stack of old Broadway playbills you had? We should do something with those, too.”
“They might be in my hope chest.”
The thrill of a boy putting his hands on you for the first time.
I get a shivery feeling in my stomach. I do know that thrill. I remember it perfectly, and I would even if it hadn’t been caught on camera. It’s nice to think of it again as its own memory, separate from the video and everything that followed.