After an hour of soaking in all the charming homes she could see, Catherine dialed KC at her office. It was near the end of the workday.
“KC Silverman,” boomed a voice with a strong flavor of New York.
“KC, it’s Catherine,” she said. “Catherine Anderson.”
“Uh, this is unusual,” said KC, never one to hold back. “Is something wrong? Did you get thrown in jail? Because I’m not that kind of lawyer, you know. I do contracts.”
“No, I just wanted to say hello,” said Catherine.
“Well, that’s lovely,” KC said evenly. “What’s the occasion?”
“I don’t have one,” said Catherine.
“Well, you’ve never once in five years ever talked to me outside of our club meetings,” said KC. “You see Lucie, you go by the shop, obviously you connect up with Dakota and Anita. I bet you even see Darwin. But you’ve never ever phoned me before.”
Catherine paused for a moment, thinking how to play it. She could blame KC, convince her she’d been sending unfriendly signals. Or she could pretend the connection dropped and she lost the call. That would be easiest. But, ultimately, she decided to embrace her inner Catherine and be upfront.
“You’re right,” she admitted. “It’s funny how you can run in a circle of friends and yet still not be close to some people. I didn’t really know you and I haven’t done much to remedy that.”
“Well, it’s not all on you,” said KC, mollified. Her bark was worse than her bite. “I figure you’re kind of a prissy pants anyway.”
“Oh.” Catherine’s hurt tone carried across the ocean, with a slight ten-second delay.
“Now don’t get all bent out of shape,” said KC. “You also have a good sense of fun.”
“Yes, I do, don’t I?” agreed Catherine enthusiastically.
“Catherine, has something happened? To you, I mean, and I’m serious now,” said KC. “This call is so out of the blue. And I just want you to know that you can talk to me, you know.”
“That’s why I’m calling,” said Catherine. “Bad breakup blues. But I wanted to talk as one triumphant single woman to another.”
“Am I triumphant?” asked KC. “I don’t know about that. But I’m mostly content in my own skin. I think that might be even better.”
“I spend a lot of time pretending,” said Catherine. “Do people take me seriously? I wonder.”
“You can be a bit . . . hard to know.”
“KC, you suggested at Darwin’s shower that you and I are alike because we don’t want children,” said Catherine, feeling a bit awkward. But if she was going to share, she might as well embrace it. “But the truth is that I simply don’t have any. Not that I didn’t want any.”
“Well, I’m learning something new,” said KC. “But why are you telling me?”
“I’m telling myself,” said Catherine. “But the last time I talked out loud I got a few strange looks.” She laughed.
“I guess I figured you’d understand,” she added.
“Because it’s past my time and you’re wondering if I have regrets?” asked KC.
“Maybe somewhat,” said Catherine. And then: “Yes.”
“There’s a lot I would change but some people aren’t meant to be mothers and other people don’t need to be mothers,” said KC. “I’m one of those. I don’t feel an absence of children.”
“So everything’s hunky-dory, then?”
“Hardly,” said KC. “I’ve made my mistakes.”
“Like what?”
“What is this? Long-distance Oprah?” KC sighed, then relented. “I poured my whole life into my career when I was an editor. And when I was laid off back in the day, I was completely undone.”
“Like when I left my husband,” said Catherine.
“Similar but different,” said KC. “You made a choice. I had a choice made for me. But in the end, we both had to reinvent. Now I pour most of my energy into myself. My law career is intellectually stimulating but it doesn’t define me.”
“I’m still trying to define myself,” said Catherine. “I embraced my independence but somehow everything is just all about me. I am totally self-focused.”
“We’ve all noticed.”
“Well, I’m tired of it.”
“Necessity is the mother of reinvention. So you see? We’re mothers after all.”
“I’m looking out the window and there’s this stout woman putting wet laundry on a line,” said Catherine. “That seems so wonderful. Sometimes I wish I knew what every day would bring.”
“You do,” said KC. “It brings more questions. And by the way, I hope you’re not going to go all ‘back to the land, fruit of the earth’ on us, are you?”
“No, it’s just that . . . ” Catherine paused.
“Grass-is-always-greener syndrome knows no international boundaries, apparently,” said KC. “Don’t flatter yourself by assuming yours are the more complex challenges than that woman doing her laundry. You don’t know her story. She doesn’t know yours.”
“You seem different out of context,” said Catherine. “More clever. I’m glad I called.”
“Oh, no you don’t,” said KC.
“Don’t what?”
“Call and pick my brain for good advice and then not offer anything in return,” said KC. “You were heading toward hanging up on me and just said you’re trying not to make everything all about you.”
“Oh,” said Catherine. “Right. Sorry.”
“So I’m fine, thanks for asking,” said KC, before bursting into a series of hacking coughs.
“You don’t sound fine,” said Catherine tentatively.
“I’m not! I can’t seem to stop it with these cigarettes,” said KC. “It seems ridiculous but I started as a lark, something to make me feel young, and now I get edgy if there’s not something in my hands. Anita’s book suggestion didn’t do much to kick my cravings.”
“I have an idea what you could do,” said Catherine.
“I know—so did Anita,” said KC. “I’m on my eighth dishcloth.”
“What? I was going to suggest you get a dog,” said Catherine. “You got a job as a dishwasher?”
“No, I’m knitting, you wingnut,” said KC. “I went to a shop in SoHo to get supplies.”
“You didn’t even go to Walker and Daughter?” Catherine couldn’t help but smile.
“And have Peri know?” KC was gruff. “I’ve spent years cultivating a non-knitting attitude.” She paused.
“Also, she won’t let me in the store without making me go upstairs to her apartment and drop off my coat and my bag and, sometimes, even change into a pair of sweats. She turned into a menace the minute Anita was on that boat,” said KC.
“Peri is only trying to get you to stop smoking,” said Catherine. “And protect her bags.”
“Oh, I know,” said KC. “The problem is that it’s just not working. Any suggestions?”
“Apart from the dog? Knitting? Quitting cold turkey?” asked Catherine. “Yes. Chew that nicotine gum. Take up yoga. Go to Peri and tell her you need her support and not just her list of restrictions.”
“I’ll take it under advisement,” grumbled KC.
“Other than that, I guess all either of us can do is work at it,” said Catherine, before saying her good-byes and tucking into that delicious sandwich. “And then work some more.”
twenty-two
Dakota packed a suit at her father’s request, a linen-blend skirt and jacket, and wore it to her first half-day at the office.
“Hello, Dad,” she said when he came to the suite door. “Or should I call you Mr. Foster?”
“Dad will do just fine,” said James. “As long as you knock off that tone of sarcasm.”
Together they made their way down the hall and to the elevator, riding in silence with a group of travelers who were nattering over their maps of the city. Dakota envied them their work-free schedule.
“I wish I was going sightseeing,” she said.
“Not my fault you slept through an entire day,” said James, playfully putting his arm around her shoulder. “There will be lots of opportunities to noodle around. But for now, I want you to come around and meet the staff of the hotel.”
“So I can ask them how they like their coffee?” Dakota was joking; James had already explained that her days would be spent taking notes at his meetings and other, even more boring, tasks.
“It’s a good way to give you an idea of how the business runs,” he said. “Also how people work together in different environments.” To top it all off, she’d have some thrilling filing to do, and, later on, a report that had yet to be decided.
“You’ll have a project, don’t worry,” said James. “But let’s dive into our work before we get to that point.”
A good enough plan, really. Besides, she only had to work in the office when she wasn’t scheduled to be on Ginger duty. Lucie had this morning free, and when Dakota left the suite, she was doing her best to convince Ginger she’d be able to survive the few hours away from her favorite babysitter. And although not so keen to work with her dad, Dakota was kind of looking forward to a break from the five-year-old. Though there was something strangely neat about the way her father seemed so excited to march her around.
“. . . and this is my daughter, Dakota,” he said, for the zillionth time, as they made their way through various departments and finally to a low floor in the hotel that seemed to be made up of many offices.
“We’ll be working here,” said James, showing her to a spacious office with two desks.
“In the same room?” asked Dakota. Then, practicing a more professional tone: “How nice.”
James lit up at her comment. “It is great, isn’t it?” he said. “We haven’t spent time together like this since before you moved into the dorm. Some days we could even meet for breakfast beforehand.” He seemed so pleased that Dakota didn’t want to remind him that she was only going to be working with him once or twice a week at most.
“Breakfast sounds good, Dad,” she said now.
James snapped his fingers. “I know just the thing,” he said. “The greatest perk of having a hotel at your disposal. Let’s go grab some cappuccino and biscotti directly from the chef.”
Of all the fun places Dakota had now seen—the outside of the Colosseum, Edinburgh Castle, her Gran’s cottage in Thornhill, her grandmother Lillian’s house in Baltimore, her grandparents’ farm in Pennsylvania—nothing compared at all with her desire to go inside an honest-to-goodness working restaurant kitchen. To, maybe, even meet a genuine pastry chef, mixing batters and folding cream. Asking them to stay and observe, or maybe even to fetch a spoon and taste!
“Do I look all right?” she asked as her father looked at her quizzically.
“Same as you did five minutes ago,” he said. “And I told you that you looked very nice then.”
“Right,” said Dakota. “Thanks, Dad.”
They were just about out the door and on their way, too, when a staffer knocked on the open door and asked her father to look at some papers. She could see the way the employee fidgeted, clearly nervous around James. Maybe what Catherine said was right: Her father was a big deal around here.
“We’ll go later, Dakota,” he said, sitting at his desk, papers in hand. “Why don’t you sit down and play around with the computer, get yourself acclimated, and then you can come with me to the planning meeting at eleven?”
“Okay, Dad,” she said, watching her tone for any sign of disappointment or attitude. It was easy to be annoyed by him, that was true, but it was difficult when he seemed so excited to have her around. You could always say one thing about her dad: He was genuinely thrilled to spend time with her. Too bad she couldn’t bottle up a little of that enthusiasm about herself and sneak-feed it to Andrew Doyle back at NYU.
The train arrived in Rome by early afternoon, though Catherine had snoozed for the last hour, lulled into unconsciousness by the constant and steady motion. She had only a few small pieces of luggage with her, having sent some of her belongings directly to Rome, and the laptop bag she’d purchased from Peri. She’d found enough energy, on the train, to eke out another few pages of Dead Men Don’t ReMarry, adding in a new character named Nathan, who also met an untimely end. Much better, she thought, growing alert as the train came to a stop. She closed her laptop, tucked it away, and gathered her bags, strolling away from the platform and into the high-ceilinged Termini Station. A sea of taxicabs waited just outside the glass-fronted building, and Catherine marched out toward them confidently.
“No go,” said a driver as she approached.
“I’m sorry?”
“No work,” he said. “Off.”
Confused, she tried the taxi next to him; maybe she’d have better luck, she reasoned.
This man held up his arms. “Sciopero,” he said.
“Could you repeat that?” asked Catherine, when the young back-packers whose tickets she’d bought sauntered by.
“Strike,” said the guy. “The cabbies aren’t driving today.”
“Oh,” said Catherine, uncertain as to how she was going to make her way to the V. She could call James, she supposed, and get the hotel to send a car. Or she could hoof it, toting her luggage with her. She took a few preliminary steps, trying to visualize what it would feel like to cover a distance of some number of miles in her sling heels. Not so good, she guessed.
She scanned the area around the station until her eyes fell on the row of scooters, some with riders getting on and off, others sitting alone and awaiting the return of their owners. Dakota’s comment about riding a Vespa, even just once, rang in her memory.
“Scusi,” she said to one helmeted driver standing at a red Vespa, clearly getting ready to take off. She waved a fifty-euro bill and mimed herself climbing aboard.
She was met with a shrug. “Okay,” said the driver. It was a woman. Catherine smiled. See? She didn’t need some man to rescue her, she thought, as she put her bag on the luggage rack. She was going to clamber aboard, laptop in hand, and ride girl power all the way to her destination.
The V hotel was large, but not out of place in its surroundings, with a lot of glass and many floors rising into the sky. Catherine popped off the scooter, paid the ersatz chauffeur, and strolled into the lobby feeling better than she had in a very long while. But then a quick blip through the streets of Rome—a smidge grubby, it was true, but then people had been making their homes here for eons—and Catherine was absorbing the energy and vitality of the city. She’d been before, of course, but it had never felt quite so rich with possibility. She felt as though the city itself was nourishing her as she scooted past Trajan’s Column and the domed Santa Maria di Loreto, a compact little church that was one of those places where she enjoyed sitting and thinking after a long afternoon of walking. For some reason, it seemed far easier to make her way around Rome in heels, like all the women here in their stilettos, than it was to do the same at home. And now she was here. Repaired. Rested. Ready to see her friends.
Her room was set, just as she anticipated, and there was a huge gift basket filled with fruit and chocolates and what looked to be several bottles of wine waiting on a marble table just inside the doorway. The space was large, done in creams and golds, with a nice seating area and a bedroom off to her right. She could see there was a large bouquet of flowers on the nightstand. And, for a city known for its tiny hotel bathrooms, a quick peek let her know that she wouldn’t be missing her typical American comforts, with a large tub and even a separate shower. Clearly, V hotels—with thoughtful design by James Foster—made the living easy. As soon as she could peel free of her skirt and blouse, Catherine was standing under the hot streaming water, sampling the complimentary shampoo because she hadn’t even bothered to look into her bag before stepping in. The urge to sing was powerful, but she restrained herself until she had a better idea if the hotel walls were thin. No use in tormenting her neighbors, she thought as she unwrapped a bar of soap.
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br /> She wasn’t entirely cured, she knew. The sense that she had to keep going, to stay up lest she become morose and fall into a vat of Nathan-induced self-pity, was palpable. Catherine could feel her emotions gnawing at her elbow. But she just wasn’t going to give in. She was tougher than that. She knew it.
Ninety minutes later, dressed in a crumple-resistant black sleeveless dress she always brought in her carry-on, her hair dry and her makeup reapplied, although very lightly, and Catherine was ready for a glass of wine and a reunion with her friends. Maybe this, too, was a sign, she thought, realizing she had only been away from Dakota for a short period, and already she was missing her presence. No one had sent her a text message in days. She was even looking forward to seeing little Ginger. Perhaps the external reading she’d always been searching for to let her know if she fit in was actually something quite internal: not so much how her friends felt about her as how she felt about them.
Catherine snuck a peek into her gift basket, unwrapping a single chocolate and letting it melt in her mouth as she searched for the card. The flowers in her bedroom were from James and Dakota, along with a note about drinks in Lucie’s suite at eight p.m. So who could have sent her this bounty? she wondered.
Welcome to Roma! Compliments of Cara Mia Vineyard. Marco Toscano.
Marco! Of course. Her favorite wine exporter: he of the smooth voice and playful phone chitchats. Although Catherine had initially intended to make a trip out to see the vineyard, the fact of the matter was that she was already committed to selling the wine. There was no need to make the journey. Clearly, though, Marco was worried that her lack of desire to see his family’s operations signified something else. A crisis of confidence, perhaps. Well, on that scale he’d been right, thought Catherine, but it wasn’t related to work. Scooping up a handful of chocolates and tucking two bottles of wine under her arm, she headed out to the elevator to make her way to Lucie’s suite.
“Oh my God,” mouthed Dakota when she answered the door and saw Catherine, before slipping out to the hallway. “Isabella is here! You know, the singer?” She kept her voice low and looked this way and that, as though conducting a spy mission.