Chapter 32
Jack has made an almighty mistake, he thinks, after Katherine leaves that morning, in proposing marriage to a woman whose purpose in life is, it seems, to torment him.
Jack is used to sharing a bed. Until he moved into this apartment, he's never had his own, unless you count a pile of blankets on the floor. He's huddled three to a bed in the Refuge under one threadbare blanket, and somehow that isn't as bad as sharing a comfortable bed in his own home with Katherine Pulitzer. Because she's a girl. (He's known this for a while, of course.) And girls are soft and delicate and they have curves and long hair and pretty faces, and how the hell is he supposed to deal with waking up next to that and not disgrace them both, honestly? Sure, he's had other girls before, up against alleyway walls or tucked under a thin blanket in a back room, but she seems to have managed to undo him by just lying next to him for a night, chaste as two children. It's not his fault she's so bloody pretty. And then she turns up in his kitchen in a chemise and not much else, her corset half wrapped around her, blushing and asking him to lace her up.
He's whipped as all hell. He wouldn't change it for the world.
…
When Katherine arrives at Miss Morton's boarding house that evening, there's a policeman in the parlour.
Apparently, as Miss Morton tersely informs her after the amused policeman leaves, they were about ready to report her as missing after she hadn't turned up the night before. An explanation is demanded. Katherine holds up her hand, now adorned with a ring. She gets given a fine for rule-breaking and she doesn't even care.
It's harder not to care when she receives a response from her mother.
KATHERINE,
A SHAME – STOP – SPEAK TO YOUR FATHER REGARDING A DOWRY – STOP – DOUBT WE WILL RETURN FOR WEDDING – STOP – CONSTANCE SAYS CONGRATULATIONS – STOP –
MRS. PULITZER
Mrs. Pulitzer. Like she's a stranger.
The man behind the post office counter gives her a look so pitying she can hardly stand it. When she shows Jack, it's even worse. He isn't even surprised, but just goes again to ask her if she wants to do this. She gives him a look of such venom he stops halfway through the sentence and doesn't bring it up again. It only gets worse when a letter from her father comes in the morning post on Saturday.
Dear Katherine,
Your mother has informed me that you have accepted Mr. Kelly's proposal. In regards to a dowry, please find the enclosed cheque; your mother insisted. Neither of us will be attending the wedding.
For Lucy's sake, however, you still have a home with us, if you should come to your senses and break off the engagement.
Your father,
Joseph Pulitzer
She tears the letter to pieces, folding and ripping the thick writing paper into shreds, until she can't feel the lukewarm cocktail of shame and anger swirling in her stomach anymore and the words your mother insisted aren't ringing in her ears. She hasn't seen him since the altercation in his office the day Jack proposed, but she still reads the letter in his voice, his own particular cadence reverberating inside of her skull.
It's funny, really, because his voice is the only part of him that is the same as the father of her childhood. Katherine isn't naïve, she knows that nostalgia is, in and of itself, a pair of rose-tinted glasses. She knows her father wasn't some sort of saint in her childhood who turned villainous with the loss of his child. But Lucy's death did change him; it changed them all. He was softer, somehow, more colourful, before. She remembers him sitting her on his knee late one evening, in his study, and letting her tap out nonsense words on his typewriter. He should have known then that he was in for trouble with her then.
Katherine debates tearing the enclosed cheque up along with the letter, but eventually decides against it. She doesn't want anything to do with her father's money, not anymore, but she has plans for the two hundred dollars. The sum itself makes her feel sick. She knows for a fact that her father discussed a sum of twelve thousand with Arthur Brooks. She'd been furious when she'd overheard their telephone conversation, back, way back before the fire, fists clenched and jaw tight kind of furious. Twelve thousand dollars made her feel like a commodity, something to be bought and sold and bartered over. Two hundred dollars? Now that she can work with.
She goes to the bank and walks out with a wodge of notes in her pocket. Three of the dollar bills go into her purse. The other one hundred and ninety-seven are given out, one by one, to every newsboy in New York. It takes her all day and her feet hurt from walking, but she comes home with empty hands and empty pockets, never having felt better.
Her and Jack, they're just fine without her father's money. They work through their problems, so that they don't have to throw money at them to make them go away. They're fine on their own.
The next Monday, Katherine puts down the three dollars she's saved to place a notice of engagement in The World for the following day. The morning after, she buys two copies from Smalls on her way to work and uses the telephone in her office to leave a message that Hannah ought to read the notices section of the morning newspaper to Mr. Pulitzer.
There's a certain formality to it, seeing it there in bold type: Mr. John Francis Kelly and Miss Katherine Ethel Pulitzer are pleased to announce their engagement. She cuts out the clipping from each paper during her lunch break. One she keeps for herself, secreted away in the pocket of her skirt, the other she slips into an envelope alongside a letter to Edith. The letter itself took longer than it ought to, considering its length, but the words just wouldn't come.
Dearest Edith,
How are you? I expect you have been rather too busy to write to me, what with your new school and all. I hope that you are making friends and working hard.
I have some exciting news; Jack and I are getting married! Mother and Father are, naturally, less than approving. I don't think they shall be attending. Still, if you are willing to defy them, I should like you to be there. I need a bridesmaid, after all. I can cover your train fare back without an issue, if you could come home for the wedding. It shall be sometime in August or September, I should think, though we have yet to fix a date.
Your loving sister,
Katherine
Jack grumbles about it, when he sees her – John Francis, Kath, really? You wantin' the boys to rib me 'bout it? – but when he gets out his wallet to pay for their lunch, the clipping is neatly cut out and tucked inside, so she figures he isn't really that mad about it.
The engagement notice backfires somewhat, however, when, on Wednesday evening, she is accosted by a throng of women as she emerges from the offices of the Sun. Well, she says throng, there's only three of them, but they're making enough noise for thirty. A little hyperbole never hurt anyone.
"Katherine!" Eliza cries.
It isn't a shout – to shout isn't ladylike – but it's loud enough that Katherine can't pretend not to hear her. She shuts her eyes, takes a deep breath, and then turns around to greet them, nodding at each of them in turn. "Eliza, Rose, Cornelia."
"This is a kidnapping;" Rose laughs, rushing over to take her arm, "we're taking you out to dinner."
All Katherine wants is an hour or two with Jack before she goes back to the boarding house for the evening. Is that really so much to ask? "Girls, I-"
"No protests. We have a wedding to discuss."
Katherine has little choice but to let them drag her to a fancy restaurant which she is horribly underdressed for. They are all there in neat matching outfits, while she huddles at the corner of the table with an ink smeared dress and wild hair, praying that the powder she put on this morning masks her scar at least a little.
It is made clear that it doesn't when the waiter comes over and looks down his nose at her as he takes her order. It's the kind of place where the menus don't have prices on them and the titles are written in French. Katherine wonders whether she oughtn't to have saved some of those two hundred dollars sent to her by her father, but immediately, she regrets it. The newsies are starving half the time. She can afford this, still. She has savings. Sure, without her allowance from her parents, she's going to have to tighten the figurative belt a little, at least until she and Jack are married and paying the mortgage together, but that's okay. If she's lucky, once she's married, she won't ever have to go to this kind of restaurant again anyway.
The waiter plucks the menu from her hands, holding it between his thumb and forefinger as if the ink stains on her fingers will rub off onto the heavyweight, textured paper covered in neat calligraphy, and turns to Eliza. Katherine leans back in her chair and examines the restaurant. It's not one she's been to before – that said, despite her family, she doesn't exactly frequent these places. It has block coloured stained glass in the windows and marble floors. Lighting is by chandelier. It's too posh, even, for her to hear the clatter of knives and forks; instead they chime against the china plates in perfect rhythm, an orchestra.
"Let's see it, then." Cornelia says, breaking into her world.
"Hm?" Katherine looks up dumbly.
"The ring, silly!" Eliza practically squeals.
"Oh." Katherine places her hand on the table. Even in her foul mood, it's difficult not to smile at the sight of Jack's ring on her finger. "Here."
"It's very…" Cornelia wrinkles her little button nose, "…pretty." Rose elbows the woman under the table, but Katherine just juts her chin out and agrees. It is pretty, after all. Just because Cornelia decided on a ring which could sink a ship with its weight doesn't mean that Katherine's isn't beautiful. Just because when Cornelia says pretty, she means small.
"Have you fixed a date?" Rose asks, attempting polite conversation as the waiter arrives with their drinks.
Katherine sends up a quick prayer to whoever invented wine. She takes a sip, fortifying herself, then responds. "Not specifically, sometime at the end of August, I should think."
"That long? Why Katherine, that's five months away!" Eliza cries.
Katherine shrugs. "Five months is a perfectly reasonable length of time for an engagement."
"I think what Eliza means to say is that it's a long time off when you're… you know." Cornelia sneers, flicking her eyes pointedly downwards. "You'll be starting to show by then."
"Wait, you think I'm-" Katherine cuts off, lowering her voice and snatching her hand off the table, back into her lap, "-with child?"
"Aren't you?"
"No!"
And they actually look shocked. They aren't teasing her. They actually think that she's that loose, that Jack isn't even enough of a gentleman to wait for their wedding night. It's the implication about Jack, not herself, that does her in.
"Then why are you getting married?" Cornelia hisses.
"I don't know, Cornelia, why are you getting married to Darcy?" Katherine rolls her eyes. "Because I love him, obviously."
Cornelia looks as though Katherine just reached across the table and slapped her across the face. Eliza and Rose look on as though that just happened as well. Flushing, Katherine looks down into her lap where her hands are wrung together. It's been a long time since she was in the company of these women. It's difficult, sometimes, to remember the rules of who she used to be. The appropriate jokes, the right tone of voice, the acceptable topics of conversation. No sarcasm, not under any circumstances, which reduces most of her humour to dust. She's used to the newsies now, Davey and Race and Crutchie, and their singular brand of affection that revolves mostly around playful jibes and insults.
"Sorry, Katherine, dear. We shouldn't have assumed." Rose reaches over and pats her on the shoulder, consoling, pacifying. As if she thinks Katherine might explode into a raging pit-bull if she isn't petted like a lapdog.
Katherine takes another sip of her wine. "No, you shouldn't."
"So," Rose smiles, tight and strained, "you'll be having it at Trinity, then?"
Her parish church. Would her father allow it? Surely he would be shamed by it, to have the congregation know that his daughter was making a match that he disapproved of, even if the news only circulated in whispers after the Sunday services. Katherine feels a sudden and burning desire to have her wedding there and only there. It's petty and vindictive, she knows, but she's pretty sure that both her and Jack deserve at least that much.
"I imagine so, unless my father decides to put a spanner in the works." She shrugs. "I don't see why he should though. He won't be attending, so it hardly affects him."
"He isn't attending?"
"No, he's made it very clear that he disapproves. Sent me a cheque for two hundred dollars and left me to deal with it myself. Mother isn't even returning from France for the wedding."
"Oh Katherine." Eliza simpers, patting Katherine's arm like a two hundred dollar dowry is the worst news she's heard all year. "But who is going to give you away?"
"I don't actually know." Katherine says, realising it at the same time as the words spill out of her mouth. It bothers her in a way that it probably shouldn't – she's not property, after all, to be handed from her father to Jack. She shrugs again, feigning indifference and retracting her hand from where it rests on the table, the diamond set into her ring refracting the glow of the overhead lights. "Perhaps nobody. It hardly matters, does it?"
At the end of the dinner, which, in Katherine's opinion, could not come soon enough, she finds herself walking in the opposite direction to Miss Morton's boarding house.
…
Medda Larkin used to think that, by never having children of her own, she would escape any and all parental responsibility. She was abruptly disabused of that notion four years ago when she caught fifteen-year old Jack Kelly trying to sneak in the back door of the theatre. When she'd caught him, she hadn't expected the scrawny newsboy to have much of an excuse for anything, but he'd quickly and surely changed that. That night, she discovered two things about Jack Kelly. First, that he can talk his way out of pretty much anything. And second, that he was going to become her best set painter.
Four years on and the only thing that has changed is quite how important he's become to her. And, really, how is she supposed just to leave him to his own devices? The boy is a wonder, but he's also completely and utterly hopeless.
She'd been working herself up to the whole you're overworking yourself and not eating enough and since when don't you know your numbers conversation for a month and she was pretty sure she had got a good script together when Jack turned up to paint a set for the new farce she's staging and told her that he'd proposed to Katherine. And, well, that derailed everything. He could hardly hide his grin when he told her, ruffling his hair with his hand and shifting his weight from one foot to another.
Medda had predicted it would be a week before Katherine turned up to ask for her help. It only took six days.
"So." Katherine finishes, rather lamely, fingers curled, white-knuckled, around her coffee mug.
For a girl whose article about the Vaudeville show is framed in the front window of the theatre (as Jack never fails to point out to her, wide-eyed and grinning and mock-clamouring for her autograph – she usually gives him a kiss, instead), she doesn't seem to have very many words to end on.
"So, the only problem is that you don' have nobody to give you away?" Medda asks, one eyebrow raised, from beside her on the worn loveseat in box C.
"No. Yes. Sort of. I don't know." Katherine lets her head flop backwards onto the back of the loveseat, staring up at the peeling cornices of the ceiling.
"You seem nervous, baby."
"I don't want Jack to be disappointed." Katherine keeps her eyes closed, not wanting to look at Medda, to see the judgement in her eyes – poor little rich girl, never learned how to do chores. "I'm terrified about letting him down – I can't cook, I can't clean-"
"Jack don' care 'bout none of that." Medda nudges her, forcing Katherine to meet her eyes. "The only thing you needs to do is show him that you love him. An' that he deserves to be loved."
Okay. Love him. She can do that. Hell, she's already pretty expert at that one. The other one, reminding him that he deserves to be loved, that's a bit harder. Mainly because he's too pig-headed stubborn to believe her when she tells him. But, still. If that's the information that she has to nag him with during the first year of marriage, then so be it.
"Now," Medda smiles, reaching over to squeeze her hand, "you started thinkin' 'bout your dress yet?"
"I'd always thought I'd wear my mother's, but…"
"But?"
Katherine laughs, but there isn't any humour in it. "She isn't coming to the wedding, so I highly doubt she's going to let me wear her dress."
Medda's eyebrows make a break for her hairline. "Well then, we must sort you somethin' out."
Katherine winces. "Oh, Miss Medda, I wouldn't want to put you to any trouble-"
"Nonsense. We's gon' get you a dress together." She says, like it's nothing, then calls down into the half-lit auditorium to one of the showgirls, who has a bag slung over one shoulder and dance shoes over the other, as she picks her through the seats toward the exit. "Hey, Daisy."
The girl in question squints upwards, then raises a hand in greeting. "Hey, Miss Medda."
"Daisy, this is Katherine. She's just got engaged to Jack Kelly."
"No way!" Daisy's face breaks into a wide smile. She has dimples and bright white teeth. Katherine reminds herself that she doesn't need to be jealous about Jack spending time with showgirls. Showgirls who don't have burn scars marring their pretty faces. "So you's the girl he talks our ears off about when he's paintin'."
"That's me."
Honestly, Katherine's still kind of stuck on the idea of wedding dress shopping. It's never been something that's crossed her mind. She's always just assumed that she'll wear her mother's. When they were nine and eleven, respectively, Kate Pulitzer had unlocked her trousseau, a fine oak chest that stood at the end of her bed, and told her and Lucy that they were allowed to look through it, so long as they didn't tear anything.
The number of outfits, even for girls like themselves who had no shortage of fine clothing, had astounded them, all linens and cottons and silks. But the best item, by far, was the beautiful white dress that lay delicately folded at the bottom. One day, when their mother was out and they had managed to evade the clutches of their governess, the two of them had snuck back in and Lucy had fitted Katherine into the too-big dress like how she used to dress her dolls. Katherine remembers standing on a chair in front of the mirror as Lucy fiddled about with clothes pegs on the back of the dress to make it come a little closer to fitting. It looked awful, she knows now, a mess of chiffon on a too-small body, but at the time, she'd never felt more beautiful. Katherine would quite like to feel that way again.
"Let's see the ring, then." Daisy calls up, and Katherine waves a hand over the balcony, laughing at the absurdity of it. The showgirl whistles under her breath. "I didn' expect him to have such good taste – he's a keeper fer sure."
"Yeah," Katherine smiles, "he is."
"Daisy," Medda calls, "why don' you come with us weddin' dress shopping? Katherine's mom an' sisters are in France, so she could do wi' some support."
"O' course!" Daisy looks delighted at the prospect. At least somebody's excited. "I love a good weddin'. My sister got hitched last year, too, so I's got all the marriage advice you need."
And that, well, that surprises her. Katherine didn't think people like Daisy were the kind of women who could get married. Of course, perhaps her sister is more… morally refined, but still. Sister of a whore, likely a whore herself, getting married? It's a world away from Katherine's experience. Though, perhaps that's what men like. Experience. Katherine really, really hopes that Jack isn't expecting experience.
"Oh, congratulations!" Katherine laughs, light and airy in a way that she decidedly doesn't feel. Daisy seems nice. Be polite. "And any marriage advice would be greatly appreciated."
"Well, my sister always says there's only two things you needs to do to keep a man happy." Daisy calls up to them, cocking her head to one side. Only two things, now? Medda said one. Oblivious, Daisy continues, nodding sagely. "Keep his belly full an' his balls empty."
Katherine chokes on air.
…
Author's note: Firstly, I'm not just being mean to Daisy. Showgirls of any sort (including actresses) were, at this time, assumed to be, if not sex workers, then at least women of easy virtue. So, yeah, Katherine assuming that she's a prostitute is not out of the ordinary.
Secondly, I hope you enjoyed my wine pun.
Finally, Daisy's rather salacious line was delivered to me by my aunt the time she figured out I had started dating a guy. Despite having never tried said advice out, I would recommend listening to neither Daisy, nor my aunt. Listen to Medda. Medda knows best. (If you didn't read that to the tune of the Tangled song, I'm disappointed in you.)
