In the morning, he kissed her forehead just as normal. She flinched, but he didn’t seem to notice. He wanted sex again that evening, and his tenderness made her question what she remembered happening. Still, it hurt. She took another bath until the stinging stopped. She gave him the benefit of the doubt after talking to Lucy, who said that sometimes “they just need to do it like that.”
Weeks later, in February, nausea sent her running to the bathroom before daybreak. She knew instantly that she was pregnant. Their family doctor confirmed it with a jovial smile. “Maybe two months, very early.” His right hand went to his balding head, and he bowed almost, as if to say that being a father was the single most important job of his life. Kitty vomited all over his white coat.
* * *
Kitty started packing as soon as she got home, knowing her husband’s desire for a baby was stronger than his interest in her happiness.
She put her bags in the trunk of the old dark-blue Mercedes she used for errands. She had only the essentials: the leather pouch her mother sent her off with, her writing notebook, some cash, and photographs. For clothes she packed only the items Nathan wouldn’t notice were gone: the pairs of underwear reserved for her monthly, the trousers and shirts he hated, and her mother’s earrings.
She called Nathan at his office to report an Emma emergency. “I’ll probably have to stay a night or two.” By the time he called to check, she’d be in Kansas, almost home.
* * *
She never made it more than a mile. She never backed out of the driveway. Leaving her husband, giving up her career, it was too hasty a decision to make in an afternoon. She loved her husband and her life. And if the baby were born passable, she would have thrown away her mother’s sacrifice for nothing. Besides, she wasn’t due for another seven or eight months. Anything could happen before then. It could even slip away, as Lucy said all of hers had. Deciding to ignore any circumstance or outcome not in her favor, she reasoned that her cover was her good luck charm. Kitty Karr had given her a reality comprised of many people’s fantasies. With this thought came the delusion that everything was going to be fine.
After seeing what Emma had gone through to heal, convincing Kitty to get the operation was futile. Lucy returned with a potion from the old doctor who had done Emma’s operation. “It’ll be like having a bad monthly.”
Kitty wouldn’t drink it. Emma tried again, then Laurie, Maude, Billie and, finally, Cora. Kitty refused each time, and when morning sickness hit her badly one morning, she told Nathan and made her decision final. Her Blackness slid off easily, like a coat, but she couldn’t spare another slice, handle another loss, especially between mother and child. A part of her wanted to be able to send her momma a picture of her baby.
“Take this time off,” Nathan suggested. “We should keep your pregnancy private.”
“You think I’m going to look that bad?” Relieved, she played along.
“No, darling, but real life distracts from the fantasy. You’re a movie star. The world shouldn’t see you looking normal, and pregnancy is as normal as you can get.” Always thinking about how to leverage the press, he imagined her at his side in filmable condition, holding their baby, when he announced her new film.
Her days became occupied with the remodeling of their third floor, currently their attic, into a nursery. Weekends were spent combing through design books. Kitty’s job was to identify the pages she liked in the stacks of magazines.
Nathan held up a card of yellow paint swatches. “Which?”
Kitty picked the one closest to her skin tone. “Pale Butter works for a girl or boy.”
Nathan wanted to name the baby after his father’s parents: Solomon for a boy, or Sarah for a girl. A pro at feigning it, Kitty worked to match his excitement about their growing family, but when she was alone, she resented him for her being pregnant in the first place.
A nagging discomfort in her lower back came during her fourth month. The doctor said the baby was growing and pushing on a nerve, but Kitty convinced herself that the pain foreshadowed the suffering ahead. The baby’s color was going to give her away, and her bodily discomfort served as a constant reminder. Unable to get comfortable, she couldn’t sleep for longer than a few hours anymore. She became delirious and short-tempered, and Nathan’s efforts to care for her were met with contempt and verbal assaults. Helpless and dismayed by her moods, Nathan insisted on hiring help.
Kitty couldn’t stand the thought, especially being in pain as she was. She didn’t trust her ability to conceal her parts in such close quarters. Despite Kitty’s protests, Nathan hired a midwife to live in until the baby came.
Lucy told her to thank her lucky stars. “She’s your last chance for an ally.”
CHAPTER 31
Elise
Sunday night, October 29, 2017
After the auction, guests were ushered out with cookies for their rides home and the inner circle moved to the kitchen for more drinks. Elise used the transition to disappear into the jungle, across the dirt path, and through the hedges to her parents’ house. She predicted it would be hours before anyone went looking for her, especially since Aaron had also left. He couldn’t wait to leave and Elise couldn’t wait to see him go.
The backyard motion lights came on every twenty feet as she rounded down the driveway to their ten-car covered parking lot. She pulled a brown banker box from underneath the beach blanket she always kept in the trunk of her forest-green Land Rover. Though the contents were heavy, she walked fast, more concerned about being seen.
Truthfully, Elise had thought Kitty’s recorded instruction about the organization of her belongings was as ridiculous as her mother said. Kitty had nailed down every detail: where her houseplants should go, how to wrap her furs, the exact mothballs to purchase before storing her sweaters. Her gowns had gone into different piles based on when and where they were worn.
Elise had started two days after Kitty’s passing and, five days later, hours before her sisters’ arrival, she had finished the last recording and realized that Kitty hadn’t made any mention of the Louis Vuitton trunk. Impossible to miss, it took up a lot of the bedroom floor space.
Elise unlatched it to find underneath the stale linen, arranged in careful order, the things that changed everything.
1. A handwritten letter:
Dearest Elise,
I chose you to handle my affairs because I knew you’d follow my directions. Your mother would have hired people, and your sisters—well, who knows when they might have gotten around to it.
Life is about timing; you know that much by now. Years ago, I told your mother what I’m about to write. You all may end up hating me, as she did, but I stand by my decisions and I don’t regret them one bit. I lost some things but I gained a lot too. That’s how everyone’s life goes.
Your grandma Nellie begged me to tell you girls when you were younger. Maybe she was right, but I was unable to see what good it would do. All I knew was I couldn’t count on my daughter to do it.
It took me years to summon the courage to tell your mother, and when I did, it came out all wrong, at the wrong time. She missed the most important parts, the parts that might have stopped her from hating me.
Elise, my name is Mary Magdalene Ledbetter and I am your grandmother. Born in North Carolina to a Black mother, I came to Los Angeles when I was eighteen years old and became a White woman named Kitty Lane Karr. When I gave birth to your mother, it became clear that I couldn’t raise her as my own without jeopardizing not only the life I had built but the lives of others I knew. My fame had become bigger than my White identity at that point. I owe your grandmother Nellie my whole life for agreeing to raise your mother. She gave me the best of both worlds—freedom and family. Knowing your mother, you, and your sisters has been the greatest pleasure of my life.
In my memoirs is everything I never got the chance to tell your mother. It’ll all make sense after you read.
All my love,
Kitty
2. Scores of eight-by-ten-inch envelopes dated from 1963 to 1969, containing paparazzi-like photographs of Kitty.