Oversized white pillar candles sat in the mouth of Kitty’s bedroom fireplace and on the six windowsills. Kitty liked candles lit all the time, even during the day. Elise did so then, waiting for the quick but strong whiff of Kitty’s perfume she was relieved to discover could be conjured by the flicker. When she’d first returned to pack, the first thing she did was light candles. Kitty’s scent had swirled about her body, reminding her of its permanence. Elise closed her eyes then, hoping for the smell.
“Everything’s gone,” Giovanni interrupted, emerging from Kitty’s closet. She was into fashion, made mood boards for her stylist, and attended every show during fashion week. She would have pursued modeling full-time if there had been any hope she was going to be of height. “I assume you claimed everything good already?” Giovanni quipped. Kitty had been petite, too, and her clothes would fit all of them.
“It’s all photographed and cataloged. Rebecca has the book. Make requests before it’s shipped to storage.”
“There’s some jewelry I’d like,” Noele said.
“That’s all of us,” Giovanni retorted.
“I just want this.” Elise ran her palm over the top of the oversized Louis Vuitton trunk at the foot of Kitty’s bed. She’d perched there for the past few months as if it were an extension of the bed. Kitty never minded.
Noele fumbled with the trunk’s brass lock. “Why? What’s in it?”
“It was stale linen.”
“Where are the pictures?” Noele yanked open a drawer in Kitty’s six-drawer dresser. “Oh.” It was stuffed to the brim. Every drawer in the room was the same. The prints were piled atop each other in haphazard fashion, their drugstore print jackets and negatives long gone. Elise had been perplexed as to why Kitty had used her bedroom dresser drawers for photo storage when there was room on the walls among the others displayed.
Noele pointed to the Louis Vuitton trunk. “Would have made sense to keep all of them in there.”
“Kitty did a lot of things I don’t understand.” Elise grabbed a pile of photos. “Help me. Sorting first will make digitization easier.”
Her sisters took her lead and began hauling armfuls from the drawers onto Kitty’s bare mattress.
“Make a pile for pictures of Kitty with us, pictures on set, pictures of her with Nellie.” Elise pointed to spots on the bed. “Be specific.”
Noele’s hand dived into the cluster, producing a photo of Kitty and her only sibling, a sister, Emma. “It must have been hard to be Kitty’s sister.” Kitty had been striking in her youth, prettier than most humans.
“Or friend,” Giovanni said.
“Or the woman behind her at the grocery store,” Elise said.
They exchanged smiles of nostalgia, remembering the one-up game they used to play as children.
“Eventually people find their path—look at you,” Giovanni said, snatching the photo out of Elise’s hands.
Elise nudged Giovanni with her hip, and her sister cried out in pain. “You’re very bony. Are you on one of Mom’s diets?”
“No…” She wasn’t dieting on purpose, but her appetite had waned over the last few weeks.
“The stress. That makes sense.” Giovanni returned to the photo, comparing it to another Noele handed her. “Did Emma have kids?”
“I don’t think so. When she died, it was a week before her body was found.”
Noele mimicked being sick at the thought.
“Their parents died when they were young, right?” Giovanni asked.
“Yes.” It was one of the few things Elise remembered Kitty saying about her childhood.
“How old were they?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Wasn’t their mother a teacher?”
“I’m not sure.”
“For all the time you spent over here, it seems like you’d know more.” Giovanni crossed her arms.
“Gio, she taught her to read when she was barely four, but I don’t know if she was a teacher.”
“These are just the basic life questions no one can answer.” Giovanni was referring to Kitty’s obituary, which read like a résumé. Elise had emailed her draft around, but no one could piece together common facts to pen the usual phrases. Kitty had shared so much about her triumphs and mistakes in life, Elise had never considered what she didn’t know.
“Are you trying to make me feel worse?”
“She’s not, but you seem like you’re lying about something.” Noele entered the conversation, going straight for the punch.
Giovanni tried to smooth things over with the mothering tone she usually reserved for Noele. “Are you all right? Mom and Dad are worried about you.”
“I’m worried about Mom.”
“We’re worried about you. There’s this cryptic undertone in everything you say.”
“I mean, I’m sad,” Elise said.
Noele wore a pensive look, as though she wasn’t sure if she should say what she was thinking.
“Say it.”
“Are you lonely?”
Their mother must have expressed her concerns to them about her and Aaron. “No. Aaron’s been working.”
“He should be here,” Giovanni said. She was the only one in their family who genuinely liked him.
“You’ll see him tonight.”
“Would you tell us if you were lonely?” Giovanni asked.
“Probably not. The last thing I need is more family time.” Pretending to be offended, Giovanni hit her, and Elise pushed back. They play-fought for a second, like children.
“Think of it as a long weekend.”
“A long nightmare, depending on the dreamer,” Elise said. Giovanni’s expression changed as if she was really offended. “We are here for a memorial, is what I meant.”
After an hour, the room was littered with Kitty’s documentation. Elise watched her sisters gorging themselves on the never-before-seen photographs of their mother as a child on set, of themselves during the holidays or on family vacations.
“Aww, look.” Giovanni held up a picture of their mother with their grandma Nellie and Kitty at her high school graduation. Sarah was in the middle, beaming and gripping each woman at their sides.
“I wonder when things changed between them.”
“Probably when Kitty left the life.” Giovanni was horrified by Kitty’s relinquishing of her social position to the same degree Noele resisted her own. “They no longer had things in common.”
“Kitty was still writing and consulting on projects.”
“I know, but how do you give up being one of the most famous women in the world?”
“She said it didn’t mean as much after Nathan died.” Only in his midfifties at the time, he had passed away three decades before Kitty, and since he was gone, she had only dated one man, a doctor who had no Hollywood profile. Elise wouldn’t ever say it aloud, but she hoped to find one man to love her the way two men had loved Kitty. A little knot formed in her stomach, knowing the state her life was in today.
Done reminiscing for the moment, Elise picked up her cell phone to see a dozen missed calls from Rebecca. “Rebecca’s here for the pictures. We’re having some life-sizes made that’ll be set up around the house.”
“That’s creepy,” Noele said.
“I thought it would be cool.”
“It’s creepy,” Giovanni said, following them downstairs.
“And overly sentimental,” Noele said.
CHAPTER 11
Elise
Sunday afternoon, October 29, 2017
Rebecca was calling Elise from the St. Johns’ driveway. She shouted out of her car window upon seeing the sisters emerging from the hedges. “Welcome home!” She flung herself out of her Jeep for a three-way hug before Giovanni and Noele went inside.
“Are you ignoring me?” Rebecca waved her phone at Elise. “I’ve called you so many times.”
“I’m sorry—we were at Kitty’s; my phone was on silent.” Answering Rebecca’s call, no matter the time of day or night, had always been her duty as a best friend and a client. She hadn’t been sending a message by not answering—rather, she was weaning herself from a relationship at its end.
“Did you tell them I’m leaving?” Her boyfriend’s tour was being extended, and Rebecca wanted to join him and take time to “clarify my next career steps.” It was a good cover story, Elise thought.