Epilogue
August 21st, 1910
Joseph Pulitzer can't deal with noise anymore. His migraines are worse, his eyes sightless. His wife stays on the mainland, whilst he lives almost exclusively on his yacht. It is therefore beyond him why three months ago he had agreed to host the party for the release of Katherine's latest novel. Especially when it involves this many people invading his personal floating sanctuary.
There are at least thirty men, from what he can tell, men whose guffaws and the scuffles of their rough-housing hurt his ears, men whose wary eyes he can feel on him. There are his own family, his younger sons and daughters, the ones he hasn't lost to time or marriage or death. There are people entirely inappropriate for his family's society, former showgirls, a theatre owner, that Jewish family who, though now rather more comfortable, came from the tenements. And then there are the Kellys.
Katherine, he knows, will be holding a baby in her arms, a bottle pressed against the child's lips. Her husband, seated across the little draped table on the ship's deck, will have another two, a little boy of five and a little girl of three, the little boy hanging off one arm as the little girl dozes against his shoulder. Joseph has never quite managed to bring himself to love them the same way he loves his other grandchildren, like little Ralph Jr. They aren't his, after all, his blood doesn't flow through their veins. These children are adopted. He'd almost pushed Katherine away again, when she'd mentioned it, but she was not to be deterred. Her and Jack had decided, they wanted children, and they were going to adopt. So, they'd taken them, first little Daniel, then Charlotte, then Alfred. All from some downtown orphanage in the slums. Children of whores and dockyard workers, the lot of them, no doubt. But then again, their father was nothing more than that, and he'd turned out alright, in the end. Joseph no longer has to cringe when introducing him at society events, at least, given that he's a renowned illustration artist now. People know Jack Kelly's name more often than they know Pulitzer's own, with the paper on its knees as it is. And Katherine Kelly – well, nobody knows her name, not until you switch out the latter half with Plumber and then they all fall to their knees to worship the ground she walks on, the breakout novelist whose first novel has been praised as the most important portrayal of grief and loss in the American canon. At least, that's what the review published in the New York World said.
And yet, neither of them seems to relish it, the fame or fortune. They still live in a little house in the bad part of the city, though it's a slightly bigger one than the one he first visited. They still have one or other of these men sleeping on their couch every night. That Jewish family still turn up at their house for dinner every now and again. Theatre workers still frequent their living room. Pulitzer had asked Jack, once, when he'd been persuaded over for dinner and Katherine had slipped upstairs to tuck the children in, where all the money went, all the income from their successful careers. Jack had looked at him, long and level, and said in a bank account. For the children was there, but it remained unspoken. It wasn't something that needed saying. They are good parents, Pulitzer has to give them that, both present and committed in a way he's never seen. They tag-team meals and bathtime and bedtime and still, even a decade on, sit, intertwined in an armchair once the children are settled, reading and drawing respectively, or talking quietly. More often than not, Joseph retires to his own home earlier than he really ought. As much as Katherine enjoys having him there, or says she does, he doesn't miss the way she tugs Jack towards their bedroom before the door even closes behind him.
He wonders what it's like, to be loved like that, to be loved and to love in a way where extra hours at work and long nights of comfort are a regular part of life, something to be offered up to the other person and given as gifts. He doesn't suppose he'll ever know, now at least, though they open up their home to him consistently and he can feel the weight of it, the love there, as soon as he walks through their door, like stepping out of a cool cabin into the tropical heat.
He wonders, too, if Jack got what he wanted, in the end, with Katherine and their little family and his art. All those years ago, he had seemed so set on that train ticket to Santa Fe. One night, perhaps a year ago, Jack had told him that he always wanted a big life in a small town, as a kid, growing up in nothing. It's something that Pulitzer will never know, having travelled to America for a big life in a big city. He doesn't understand how Jack can be so content with what he has, this small life.
But then, he knows, even now he's blind, that Jack will be smiling up at Katherine like she hung the moon, cradling their three children between them, laughing and cracking jokes. He knows that those former newsboys will be huddling around them, ruffling the children's hair and landing playful punches on Jack's shoulders. Perhaps contentment isn't so far-fetched after all.
A small life. No, maybe that doesn't sound so bad.