Chapter 61

Jack isn't actually expecting Pulitzer to turn up. Kath's more than filled him in on exactly how many times her father has let her down throughout her life. But, he hopes. Jack's good at hoping, he's lived on hope a long time. Hoping, this time, pays off.

When Jack opens the door on Thursday evening, tieless and with ink-stained fingers, the first thing that happens is that he is hit with an armful of Constance Pulitzer. He's pretty sure it could be categorised as nothing short of throwing herself at him. To his credit, Jack fights down the panic in his chest, breathing in and out through his nose how Katherine helps him to do after a nightmare – which are ever more frequent, these days – and rationalises. It's just Constance. Her touch won't hurt him.

"Constance." Pulitzer snaps, glaring at his youngest daughter for such impropriety. Constance ignores him entirely, which Jack supposes is a natural consequence of barely seeing your children.

It's at that exact moment that Jack realises that what he feels towards Mr. Pulitzer isn't so much hatred as resentment. That this man has been given six beautiful children who he cares nothing for, whilst Jack has nothing. But he fights that down, too, because he doesn't have nothing. He has Katherine, and she's everything.

"Mr. Pulitzer." He nods, over Constance's head, to the older man, before gently prying Constance's arms from around his waist and grinning down at her. "Hey, Constance."

"I missed you, Jack. Father says that Katherine is here? And Edith? I have not seen either of them in an age!" Constance grabs his hand and starts marching them along the hallway, leaving Mr. Pulitzer to let himself in. "Is this yours and Katherine's house? It's smaller than I expected, but I like it, it's pretty."

Jack tries not to let Constance's words smart. But still, he's ashamed. Even renovated, this house is nothing like what Katherine will have grown up expecting. When he'd asked her, the other night, about Edith's feelings towards Henry, she'd said that the girl valued comfort over freedom. And whilst his wife is nothing if not a freedom fighter, he wishes he could make her more comfortable. It's strange, really, as this level of comfort is more than he ever dreamed of.

"Katherine!" Constance screeches upon entering the living room and seeing her older sister curled in the armchair.

Before Jack can even get his mouth open to tell her to be careful, Constance launches herself across the room and throws her arms around Katherine. Jack winces, can see she's hurting, but Katherine hugs back nonetheless. But even that doesn't last long, because then Edith shoves her way past her father in the doorway and lifts Constance off her feet in an enormous bear hug.

Jack turns away. It feels like a moment that isn't meant for him, this intimate reunion. Clearing his throat, he invites Joseph to sit down and goes to fetch drinks and check on dinner. Katherine shoots him an apologetic look, knowing that traditionally he would be the one relaxing in the armchair and her hosting, but they've never been very traditional. They share such things. Besides, it isn't exactly relaxing when she has to stay in one position to avoid pain.

Such an arrangement is clearly, however, not appropriate, when Pulitzer asks, as they sit down to dinner: "This is very nice, Katherine. Did you make it?"

Katherine responds airily: "Oh no, this is all Jack. I clean, he cooks, it works out better that way."

Pulitzer looks even more put out that not only does his daughter not have staff to do the cooking for her, but that she's again failed in her feminine duties. Edith, bless her, covers the moment, declaring: "Yes, because Kath only has to lay an eye on something to burn it and Jack attracts dirt."

Jack pulls a face of mock-indignance and, casting a quick glance at where his wife and her father appear to be having a staring contest, surreptitiously flicks a pea at Edith. She flicks one right back, grinning.

"Edith," Joseph finally tells her, not looking over and so, thank goodness, not seeing the exchange of peas, "don't be rude."

"She's got a point," Jack jokes, "but thank you, Mista Pulitzer."

"Why don't you have a cook, Jack?" Constance pipes up. "Surely that would be easier."

Both Katherine and Jack cringe, though for vastly different reasons. Jack because it's yet another example of his failure to provide for Katherine, something which must be abundantly clear to her father at this juncture. Katherine because she knows what Jack is thinking and how ridiculously untrue it is.

"Constance –" she goes to admonish her little sister, but Jack beats her to it, giving Constance a kind grin, the sort that Katherine thinks makes him look ever so handsome, his eyes crinkling at the corners.

"I enjoy cookin' sweetheart, 's relaxin'. Ain't you never done none'?" Constance shakes her head. Katherine wouldn't be surprised if her little sister had never even set foot inside a kitchen before today. "You's goin' to have to come over an' do some wi' me an' Kath one weekend then, hm? We could get Mrs. Jacobs' biscuit recipe?"

Constance's face lights up like a Christmas tree. "Can we, Katherine?"

"Of course." Katherine nods, then shifts her eyes to her father. "You'll have to check with Mother and Father though."

"Father," Constance wheels around, almost toppling off her chair in the process, "can I?"

Mr. Pulitzer presses his lips together. Jack can tell that he wants to say no, but that the weight of his three daughters' gazes is bullying him into something like submission.

"I suppose it wouldn't be entirely inappropriate."

Constance squeals with delight, then carries on eating. The meal continues in much the same manner, straight-backed, neat knives and forks, elbows tucked in. Jack tries his best to copy his wife's table manners, thanking his lucky stars that she hadn't insisted on them having five different types of cutlery when they moved in together. One knife, one fork, and one spoon is quite enough for him, thank you very much. But still, it feels performative, like there's something looming in the middle of the table that none of them is acknowledging.

Edith is the one who breaks it. "Cards?"

"Edie –" Jack winces, eyes flicking to Joseph. He doesn't know the man particularly well, but somehow he doesn't think that letting him know that he taught two of his daughters how to play poker will raise him at all in the man's estimation.

"Yes, let's." Katherine interrupts, a cheeky glint in her eyes that Jack just knows spells trouble. This is both a large part of why he loves her and also the reason that he wants to slither under the table. "Father, will you join us?"

"I will just observe. My eyes are not what they used to be for close work."

"I'll get the matches." Edith declares, hopping up from her seat and tripping over to the mantelpiece above the range, going up on tiptoes to reach the box of matches.

"Matches?" Joseph frowns.

Jack sees his opportunity and snatches it with both hands. "Well, we could play one o'-"

"No, my love, it's perfectly fine." Katherine lays her hand on his knee under the table, smiling at him. Is she trying to give both men at the table heart attacks, seriously? "We all prefer poker anyway."

"Poker?" Pulitzer's voice comes out as a squawk, but Katherine just waves a dismissive hand.

"We only gamble matchsticks, Father, it's not like we're playing with real money."

Eventually, after many, many rounds of cards, Constance delighted with the new game despite not entirely grasping the concept of bluffing, they migrate to the living room, where Constance sits beside Jack on the sofa and promptly falls asleep draped across him, which Edith finds thoroughly amusing. It, therefore, falls to Jack when the time comes for Joseph and Constance to leave, to carry the girl out to the carriage. As Jack, assisted by Edith in the opening and closing of doors, navigates his way out of the house whilst trying not to wake the sleeping girl, Pulitzer pulls Katherine aside.

"You should visit your mother. She would be glad, I think, to see you."

Katherine purses her lips, folding her arms across her chest. "She told me that I should not call as it would distress you."

"It will not distress me." Her father sighs. It's late in the evening, he is undone, vulnerable. "I am distressed because I feel that I have lost another of my daughters."

"I warned you of it."

"And I did not listen." Joseph nods. "I am sorry."

And Katherine has no idea what to do with that. Sorry is never a word that has passed her father's lips, at least addressed to her, before. She wouldn't be surprised if this is the first time he's ever said it in his life.

"I – " she starts, then stops. What is there to say? Sorry doesn't change the way that he's treated her. Sorry doesn't mean that this time he's being genuine. " Where does this leave us?"

"I do not know." He sighs. "Trying again, perhaps, if you will allow me."

She can't bite her tongue at that. "You tried last time."

Joseph Pulitzer flinches, actually visibly flinches, at her words, as if they're bullets that she's pelting him with. "I failed. May I not try again?"

Failed. She didn't even know that was a word in the Pulitzer vocabulary either. Failure was never an option. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps and don't you dare ever stop striving for more, because the second you do that you'll start to fall. Except Katherine doesn't want more, she doesn't need more, she has everything necessary for contentment.

"There will be no more bribery?" She raises a brow.

"None."

"And no more derogatory comments about Jack?"

"No."

Her father shifts uncomfortably, a prisoner waiting for sentence to be passed. He has handed her the gavel. Katherine nods. Strikes it down. "Very well, we will try. You may come for dinner again next week."

He looks at her through milky eyes, surprised, unable to see her expression but his own features making things perfectly plain. "Thank you, Katherine."

…

The following day, Miriam turns up on the doorstep with the most enormous Victoria sponge cake to ever exist. When told she oughtn't to have, she declares that seeing as the walk that she and Katherine had agreed to go on, in a few hastily exchanged notes prior to Christmas, had been temporarily postponed by Katherine's illness, she was 'bringing the party to her'. Between her and Daisy, Katherine feels as though she's doing rather well.

Rose knows, of course, she must do, her husband was the one to deal with it all, at the end of the day. But Katherine hasn't heard so much as a peep from her. Not even when she was absent from church the prior Sunday for the funeral. In a sick sort of way, Katherine is kind of glad. She doesn't think she could stand seeing another woman glowing and excited when her own womb is empty. For a child that had scared her so terribly when she discovered her presence, Lucy had quickly become what Katherine wanted most in the world. It's terrible, sinful jealousy, but she can't help it. And yet, despite all that, Katherine wishes Rose would call round. Just so that she knew the woman cared.

Daisy and Miriam, on the other hand, have been wonderful. She's honestly starting to think that they're all in collusion, because there's always somebody around to distract her, if she needs it – Medda or Daisy or Miriam or Edith or any one of an endless supply of newsies.

So, Katherine cuts two wodges of cake, setting the rest in a tin on the side to make Jack's day when he gets home from work, and sits down with Miriam to regale her with the tale of her father's awkward dinner with them.

When Katherine finishes, Miriam, brushing the cake crumbs off her fingers, smiles a bit. "Suddenly David's relationship with my father seems wonderful."

"Oh, yes, he met your parents last night, didn't he?" Katherine exclaims, setting her own empty plate on the little table beside the armchair. "How did it go?"

"My mother loves him, my father hates him, and he turned up wearing a kippah in case my parents were more Orthodox than his." Miriam deadpans.

Katherine can't stifle a snort. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't laugh."

"Oh, believe me, I laughed." Miriam rolls her eyes. "Ima thought he was wonderful because he was his wonderful self." Katherine can't help but smile at that. The two of them are too sweet, honestly. "He helped wash the dishes and set the table and said the berakhah and was painfully nice, but Aba still didn't like him. Apparently not being able to fish is clearly a great failing in a potential husband, even when one does not live in rural Virginia."

Miriam's family, Katherine has gathered, are solidly middle-class. Miriam didn't have a governess, but she did finish school, hence her place at law school. They don't have round-the-clock staff, but they do keep a part-time maid. Her father works in a banking office, but can afford to take them on holiday once every other year to visit family upstate and go fishing. Fishing, apparently, is his big passion, but despite his best efforts neither Miriam nor her brother have taken up the interest.

"I wouldn't mind, but David tried to sound interested," Miriam continues, then drops her voice in a poor imitation of Davey, her imitation of him being at least two octaves lower than his actual speaking voice, "no, sir, but I'd love to learn how to fish, and that still wasn't good enough!"

"You're his only daughter, Miriam." Katherine laughs. "He's bound to be protective. Surely your father couldn't find anything else bad to say?"

"Apparently he's too quiet." Miriam frowns, as if she'd never considered that being too quiet was something a person could be. "I pointed out that I talk quite enough for the both of us, though, and that seemed to shut him up."

To be fair, that isn't something that Katherine can argue with. Davey and Miriam are incredibly similar in that regard, extremely quiet around strangers (though Miriam is substantially less socially awkward) and incapable of shutting up when around people they like. Instead, she says:

"See? They can't have too many complaints – he's a kosher law student who helps your mother wash the dishes. He's every parent's dream."

"Fair." Miriam inclines her head. "How are you doing? You go back to work soon, don't you?"

Katherine is pretty sure that if somebody laid a stethoscope to her chest at that moment, they would hear her heart sigh. "Next Thursday. I'm dreading it."

"I'm sure people will be sensitive." Miriam grimaces.

"People might be, if they knew." She sighs. "They just think I've been ill. I'd be fired the second they found out I had a pregnancy, never mind a miscarriage."

Miriam's mouth drops open. "But surely now you're no longer pregnant-"

"It's not fair, but it's the truth." Katherine shrugs.

Miriam sits in her armchair, sips at her tea. "Not to pry, but do you and Jack need the money?" She edges. "Surely you could quit and look for something elsewhere?"

And no, Katherine supposes that her and Jack don't need her wage. It's a pitiful amount anyway, and it isn't as if she wouldn't be working ever again. Jack makes enough to support them both, and is very proud of the fact. He'd back her up, she knows, if she floated the idea. There's no question of that.

"Perhaps. I've been working on the first draft of a novel for some time now, just in the spare moments and I've found that since –" her voice cracks, she coughs, continues, "- since Lucy passed, I've been spending more and more time on it. But it'd never be good enough to publish."

"I don't believe that for a moment. Lots of publishers are open to female novelists, Katherine. You should write, enquire. It can't hurt."

And, well, that's something to think about.