Kezia slept late on Saturday morning. It was a gorgeous day when she woke up. The weather was getting warmer and she poured herself a cup of coffee from the Nespresso machine the realtor had left her, along with a few basics, some plates, cups and glasses, cutlery, a frying pan, and a saucepan from IKEA. She walked out onto her terrace and sat down on one of the deck chairs. It felt almost like flying, being that high up. She closed her eyes in the sun for a minute, still in her nightgown. It was hard to imagine that this was home now. It felt more like a summer adventure, probably because none of her things had arrived, so there were no familiar objects to ground her and relate to. Everything around her was new, and the apartment was empty. The rooms were so large that the minimal amount of furniture she had rented looked lost in the open spaces. With no art on the long white walls, the apartment looked even bigger. She knew the place would seem to shrink at least a little once all her things were in it.
She showered and put on faded jeans and sandals and a starched white shirt from one of her suitcases, sped down to the lobby in her private elevator, and headed east to Second Avenue, where she knew there were grocery stores and a hardware store with some of the things she needed. Shopping kept her busy for two hours, and she had everything delivered. Then she walked back to Madison and wandered uptown to look at all the fancy designer stores, and when she got to Seventy-ninth Street, she headed to the park. It was crowded on a Saturday. Children were playing ball, couples were lying on blankets on the grass, people were riding bicycles and skateboarding. New York always had a feeling of celebration to her. It was the weekend before the Fourth of July, which would officially be the launch of the summer season. Memorial Day had gotten things started a month before, but now the weather was fully cooperating. Kezia could easily imagine that the beaches were already crowded. It was going to be a hot summer, and Felicity was going to enjoy her house in Southampton when she got back from Paris.
Kezia sat down on a bench and observed the action for a while, smiling at the sight of the children crowding around an ice cream truck. It reminded her of when Felicity was little and Kate was a teenager and took such pride in her. Kate hadn’t gotten jealous of Felicity until later, but once she did, it had never gone away. She resented every lucky break her younger sister got, and there had been many. In recent years, Felicity’s success made Kate feel even worse about the book she wasn’t writing and kept promising to. Felicity just forged ahead, and opportunities rained down on her. She always seemed to meet one great man after another, while Kate got stuck with the bad ones, and then stayed with them. Felicity’s positive outlook on life and her unabashed youth seemed to attract blessings in her life. People couldn’t wait to shower her with golden opportunities. Kate always felt like the uninvited dark fairy at Sleeping Beauty’s christening, the one who put a spell on the infant princess. Kate hadn’t resorted to spells yet, but she was harshly and very vocally critical of her younger sister, which never bothered Felicity. She just went on to the next victory, magazine cover, and handsome boyfriend. And remarkably, she never held Kate’s criticism against her. She was extremely tolerant of her older sister, and good-natured about it.
After she had watched the action around her for an hour, and enjoyed sitting in the sun, Kezia walked slowly down through Central Park toward her apartment, so she’d get there in time for her groceries to be delivered.
Kezia enjoyed looking in the store windows as she made her way down Fifth Avenue, and got home just before the delivery arrived. She put everything away neatly in the cupboards, and sat on her terrace for the rest of the afternoon. She thought she heard some activity on the other side of the hedge that bordered her half of the terrace. She heard some watering going on with the hose and decided it must be the gardener. She had no idea whether or not her famous actor neighbor was in residence and wondered if she’d ever see him.
She watched a movie and went to bed early that night. It was an old favorite. She didn’t feel lonely in the apartment. Everything was so fresh and clean and new. The walls had been painted exactly the colors she wanted, a creamy warm ivory in the living room and the palest sunny butter yellow in her bedroom. She thought that would be cheerful on dark winter days. She had put a lot of thought into the apartment once she’d decided to make the leap and move.
Kate woke her up early on Sunday morning. Kezia squinted as she looked at the clock, and saw that it was a few minutes after eight when the phone rang. Kate was an early riser and thought the rest of the world should be too.
“Are you awake?” she said into the phone, sounding busy and energetic, as Kezia rolled over on her back and looked at the ceiling, holding the phone.
“I am now. How was your workshop?” Kezia wondered how many she’d taken by now. Surely dozens, maybe hundreds.
“Great. We have the closing breakfast this morning, and then we’re coming back to the city. I should be back in town around six.”
“Do you want to come see the apartment?” Kezia smiled at the prospect. Although Kate wasn’t an easy person, she was still her daughter and Kezia loved her, and she hadn’t seen her in over a month, since her last trip to New York to see her decorator.
“That’s why I’m calling,” Kate said tartly.
“Great, come by whenever you get to the city. I’ll be here. Will Jack be with you?”
“Actually, no. He’s going to drop me off. He’s working on a short story he started here, and he wants to finish it while the comments from the class are fresh in his mind. I’ll take an Uber home.”
“Come whenever you want. I’m not going anywhere today.” It was another glorious sunny day, and Kezia wanted to lie on her terrace and get a tan. She had arrived pale from San Francisco, due to the cold weather and summer fog.
“See you later, Mom.”
Kezia puttered around the apartment, setting up minor things, like a magnifying mirror in her bathroom. There was one being built into the dressing table she was having made, but she had two months ahead without one. She had bought some more minor kitchen equipment the day before. A blender, a toaster, some kitchen cutlery, a simple set of white plates, and glasses. There was a built-in microwave. And she had bought no-slip mats for the shower and bathtub, and silly things she didn’t have in the brand-new apartment.
She had a late lunch and fell asleep reading in the sun. She was wearing pink denim shorts and a T-shirt when the doorman called her at six-thirty to tell her that a Miss Kate Hobson was there to see her, and she had him send her up. Kate rang the doorbell even before her mother could get there. Kezia opened the door with a big smile and put her arms around her daughter to hug her. Kate was always a little stiff, unlike Felicity, who was like hugging a big puppy and always squeezed her mother tight. Kate disentangled herself quickly from her mother’s arms and looked around. She had long straight dark brown hair, and her brown eyes took in every detail of the entrance hall and then the vast living room. You could see the view of the city as soon as they walked into the room.
“Wow, dizzying,” she said. “That’s quite a view, Mom. It’s a good thing Jack didn’t come with me. He has vertigo and he’s afraid of heights.” Jack had a lot of neurotic quirks which Kezia found irritating and Kate found endearing. She was surprisingly tolerant, though less so with her family.
“It’s more like being in a plane than at the top of a building,” Kezia commented, and offered Kate a glass of wine, which she accepted, and took a tour of the apartment with her mother, while Kezia explained what she had planned for every room. It was obvious how excited she was about it.
“Well, you certainly didn’t hold back, did you? Do you really want all this space?” Kate looked mildly disapproving. She was always careful about what she spent, and critical of others who weren’t, although she could afford a great deal more. She lived in jeans, old NYU sweatshirts, and army surplus, and felt virtuous about it. Her loft in the West Village was in a slightly shabby unrenovated building.
“It was a rare opportunity,” Kezia echoed the realtor. “And I love it. I feel like I’m up in the sky. Come look at the terrace.” Kate followed her outside, and they sat on the deck chairs to drink their wine.
“It’s very pretty,” Kate conceded as she sipped hers.
She didn’t say anything for a few minutes, and looked into her glass of wine and then at her mother when she spoke. Kezia noticed that she was wearing the expression she usually used when she was about to do battle. But there was nothing to argue about. It was just a casual Sunday night visit to see her mother’s new apartment. “I’m glad I saw it. I wanted to come and see you before I left. I’m leaving on Tuesday.”
“I’m glad you came too. Are you going back to Vermont? Another workshop?” They were back-to-back all during the summer months, most of them in New England. They were like summer camps for adults, or would-be writers, most of whom, like Kate and Jack, never wrote anything of consequence, or published.
“No,” Kate said with a belligerent tone her mother still didn’t understand. “I’m going to Africa.”
“Africa?” Kezia was surprised. “For a writing workshop there, or just a trip?” Kate wasn’t usually a big traveler, she hated to fly, and that was a long trip for her to be making. Felicity flew around the world all the time for work. Kate didn’t.
“Jack has a cousin in Johannesburg. He wants to see him, and then we’re going to one of the more remote areas on kind of a special mission.”
It was so unlike her that Kezia was even more intrigued. “Do you have friends there?” Kate shook her head and didn’t speak for a minute.
“I have a new shrink,” she said, looking pensively into her glass again, and then back at her mother. “She thinks I need to meet my father, since I never had closure with him.” She couldn’t have had closure. He had relinquished his parental rights when she was a month old. And Andrew had adopted her when she was twelve. Reed Phillips, her natural father, had never been part of her life, by his own choice. “She thinks it will either open a door for me, or finally give me the release I need to move on.” He had given her up thirty-seven years before. It sounded a little crazy to Kezia, but she didn’t say it. She knew that Kate had been tormented by her history and the specter of her father since she was twenty-one, when Kezia told her about him. “She thinks my writing will stay blocked until I see him and ask him myself what I need to know.”
“Do you know where he is?” Kezia looked stunned. She wouldn’t have had any idea where to find him, nor did she want to. But Kate had always wondered about him, and why he had given her up. She had never found her mother’s explanation adequate, and she was sure there was more to it than that, some dark secret Kezia was keeping from her. Her father’s reasoning had actually been very straightforward. He didn’t want to be tied down to a woman or a child at that time in his life. And he didn’t want to get married. He wanted to pursue his dreams at any price. And he had. Kate would have been too much baggage and was precisely what he didn’t want, a child he’d have to think about, and a woman he’d have to alter his plans for.
Kate nodded in answer to her question. “I found him through Doctors Without Borders. It was easy. He owns and runs a small hospital in a remote area of Mozambique. I can drive there from Johannesburg.” Kezia was stunned.
“Did you contact him?” Kezia’s voice sounded chillier than she intended, but the mention of Kate’s father was an unwelcome surprise. She never thought about him anymore. She had no reason to. And it upset her that Kate did.
“I sent him an email and he answered me right away. I said I wanted to meet him and talk to him. He invited us to come and stay. I’m not going to stay long. I just want to talk to him face to face, not on Skype or FaceTime. I want to sit across from him and say what I have to say and hear what he responds. His email was very nice. He’s married to a South African doctor who works at the hospital with him, and they have a son. He’s in medical school in England, so I won’t get to meet him. If everything goes okay, I might stop and see my half brother on the way back.” It sounded like a family reunion, and Kezia wasn’t pleased to hear her refer to a “half brother”. Kate’s curiosity about her father had always seemed disloyal to Kezia, after everything Andrew had done for her, and how kind he was. She had been able not to have a job and to indulge her writing passion for fifteen years now, ever since she’d finished college at Columbia. Andrew had always been supportive and encouraging, and after he died, and Kate received the first part of her inheritance, she’d been able to continue writing without having to get a job. She had only had minor part-time jobs until then.
Reed had never done a thing for his daughter, not even send her a birthday or Christmas card, which wasn’t surprising, since he had given up his right to her. But he hadn’t even been curious enough about Kate to reach out to her and meet her. She had never given up the fantasy of him. Now she was going halfway around the world to see him.
“How long will you be gone?” Kezia asked her without editorial comment, but Kate knew how Kezia felt about Reed. She wanted nothing to do with him. But Kate did. She at least wanted to meet him face to face once. If he was a jerk, she didn’t have to see him again. If it was a disaster, she could leave. Her shrink had reminded her of that when Kate said she was going. Her shrink had also said she was proud of her for taking action and not procrastinating, which was what she usually did, faced with any big decision. This was a first. She’d waited a long time for this, and once she made the decision, she didn’t want to put it off. She had asked Jack to go with her. She was paying for the trip. He made a little money selling his short stories and essays, and he had the money he made tutoring, but he barely made enough to live on, and Kate made up the difference. He certainly couldn’t pay for trips. Kezia didn’t ask. She could guess the answer, and Kate was old enough to handle her money however she wanted. Kezia just thought it was a shame that she was wasting years with such a deadbeat, and she was sure Andrew wouldn’t have approved. He had worked hard for his success. Jack seemed to contribute absolutely nothing that improved Kate’s life, from what Kezia could see. She had never been able to understand his charm. He was bright, but without any real ambition. He talked about the book he was going to write one day, just as Kate did, but neither of them seemed to be doing anything about it, except going to writing workshops and wasting their time. It was a sensitive subject between Kate and her mother, and her birth father was another one. He wasn’t a deadbeat, but he hadn’t been a father to her either. At least he had followed his dreams and gone to Africa as he’d planned. Kezia wondered if he had any regrets about giving up a child, which was what Kate wanted to find out, once and for all. Going to see him would be the bravest thing she’d ever done. She wanted to know from him why he’d given her up.
“I’ll be back in about a week, Mom,” Kate said quietly. “We’re going to see Jack’s cousin in Johannesburg on the way there and stay with the Phillipses for as long as seems right. It’s nice of Jack to come with me, I’m kind of nervous about it.” She looked young and vulnerable when she said it, and Kezia felt sorry for her, and wondered if it was a good idea. What if he rejected her again, or was mean to her, or his wife resented her showing up? Kezia knew better than anyone that under Kate’s prickly exterior, she was sensitive and easily wounded, which was why she attacked first, so she could hurt others before they could hurt her. It didn’t make her easier to be with, but at least it explained it. Her barbs weren’t as random as they appeared. They were immature self-defense.
“Was this your idea or the shrink’s?” her mother asked her.
“What difference does it make?” Kate asked, with a quick hostile glance that was typical of her.
“I’m just curious. Has it really bothered you that much for all these years?” It seemed so sad to Kezia, and such a waste of time, for Kate to go halfway around the world to see a man who had cut her out of his life nearly forty years before. Even if he regretted it now, so what? What good would it do her? It wouldn’t give them back the years they’d missed or make him into a father now.
“Sometimes it does bother me,” Kate admitted. “Not always. I don’t think about him all the time. I just want to see him, even if only once. You know who your father was, what kind of man. I don’t.” Put that way, it made some kind of sense, even to Kezia, but not enough. Maybe if he lived in Pittsburgh or Chicago, but not Africa. It was a hell of a long way to go on a quest about his motives thirty-seven years before. He had stated them clearly then, and apparently he’d followed through on his plans to practice medicine in Africa. He would be sixty-three now, and a very different man than he’d been when Kate was born. He had an entire life behind him now, a history, a wife, and a son. Kate had a half brother. It all seemed so remote to Kezia, and very unreal.
“My writing has been blocked lately, more than usual, and my shrink thinks that’s what’s bothering me, unresolved issues from my past. I know what I want to write, I can hear it in my head, but I can’t get it down on the page. Jack thinks it’s a good idea too.” He would. He had nothing else to do and it was a free trip.
“I hope it gives you the answers you’re looking for,” Kezia said quietly.
“I know you think I’m crazy to do it, and that Andrew should have been enough for me. I loved him, but he wasn’t my father, no matter how much money he left me. I feel guilty spending it, because I wasn’t his daughter. Felicity is. I was just an add-on, and he probably did it for you.”
“He did it because he loved you,” Kezia said. “Why can’t you accept that?”
“I don’t know. That’s what I want to find out.”
“Then maybe you have to do it,” Kezia said with a sigh. Kate always had to take the difficult road, to punish herself and others. She couldn’t just embrace who she was and what she had. Kezia wondered if perhaps after she’d met Reed, she’d stop wasting her time with men like Jack Turner. In that case, it might actually be worthwhile.
Kate stayed for another half hour, and then she left, having told her mother what she was going to do. That was why she had come, not to see the apartment.
“I was hoping you’d come to dinner on the Fourth of July and watch the fireworks with me, if you were in town,” Kezia said before Kate left.
“I bet they’ll be fantastic from here. Sorry to miss it.” Kate had more important things to do, and Felicity was going to be in Paris after the shows and at the Hotel du Cap for the weekend with Blake and some of his jet-set friends. Felicity definitely led a golden life. The two sisters couldn’t be more different. Kezia hugged Kate when she left and thought about the trip she was about to embark on. It was a pilgrimage of sorts, and all Kezia could do was hope that she found what she was looking for, not just for her writing, but for her life. If she did, she might enjoy it more, and allow herself to find a man who was worthy of her, which Jack didn’t seem to be, nor had any of the men who came before him. They were always losers of one sort or another, which was how Kate saw herself too.
Felicity called her from Paris on Monday morning, and Kezia was happy to hear from her. She told her about Kate’s trip.
“That’s weird,” Felicity said, with all the insight of her twenty-three years.
“It is, but it’s always bothered her that her father gave her up and she’s never met him. The rejection of a parent is a big deal.”
“She had Dad, once you married him,” Felicity said.
“That’s what I always tell her, but she never feels she had a right to him. She feels like you were his real daughter, and she’s the fake. It’s complicated,” Kezia said. Felicity rarely looked below the surface. “How was Saint-Tropez?”
“A lot of fun. We both knew a lot of people there. We’re going to Cap d’Antibes after the shows. Are you sure you don’t want to use the house I rented in Southampton this weekend?” she offered again.
“I’m going to watch the fireworks from my terrace in the city. I’d love to go out there with you when you get home,” Kezia said. She didn’t want to use her daughter’s space without her. She was respectful of them as adults.
They talked for a few more minutes and then Felicity had to go. She was walking in the Dior show that evening, and she had to be there in half an hour for makeup and hair, and a final run-through before the show. She took it all in stride and was a real pro. Kezia loved watching her in the fashion shows. She was so self-confident and in control. Kezia wished that Kate had some of that confidence. Maybe she would after she went to Africa and met Reed Phillips. Who knows, maybe her shrink was right, and meeting him was what she needed to allow her to put old ghosts to rest. She hoped so. To Kate, the glass was always half empty, and to Felicity, half full. She always found something to be happy about. She enjoyed her life, and was in the right career lane for now, although she couldn’t model forever. But she was at the peak of her career for the moment, and she and Blake White seemed well suited, despite the considerable difference in their age. At twenty-three, sixteen years was a big difference.
Kezia worried about both her children, although they were adults now. But Felicity gave her a lot less to worry about. She had been an easy, happy child, and had carried her optimism and joie de vivre into adulthood.
Kezia spoke to Kate again that evening, the night before she left for her trip on Tuesday. She was busy getting ready, and had to buy some things for the time she’d spend in Mozambique. She hadn’t had time to come uptown again to see her mother, and said she was too busy for Kezia to come downtown to visit her. Kezia suspected that Kate was avoiding her but didn’t make an issue of it. And she was only leaving for a week.
Kate sent her a text on her way to the airport. She was excited about going to Africa and was sure she was going to unlock the doors of the mysteries in her life so far. She wasn’t sure what she wanted from Reed Phillips when she met him, some form of acknowledgment, an apology maybe, an admission that he had made a terrible mistake abandoning her as a baby and had regretted it all his life. That was at the outside range of what she hoped for. And on a more human scale, she hoped he was a nice person, and that she would be happy to have met him, and glad to be his daughter. He had sounded warm and welcoming in their emails, and he said he was eager to show her around his hospital. If she was impressed by what he was doing for the locals, she thought she might make a donation when she left and could make a difference. If nothing else, if the trip went well, maybe it would unblock her writing, and she could write the book she had struggled with for so long. She hoped her shrink was right and that meeting her birth father was what she needed to turn her life around and get moving forward.
Jack was telling Kate about his cousin Chad in Johannesburg as the plane took off, and how much she was going to like him. He worked at a bank and was supposedly a great guy and a lot of fun, even if he did like his single malt whiskey a bit too much. He was two years older than Jack and, at forty-four, he had never married, and was currently between girlfriends.
The whole trip sounded like a big adventure, and as she turned to look at Jack, she wondered if he’d ever ask her to marry him. He always said that he couldn’t marry her, or anyone, until he could afford to support a wife and children, which had begun to seem less and less likely. They had their writing in common, and he was company when she was feeling unsure of her ability to ever write a book. He kept the demons of loneliness away, which always seemed like enough for now. She didn’t like to look far into the future. It was enough to get through each day without anything really bad happening.
As New York shrank beneath them, Kate closed her eyes and tried to envision what it would be like to meet her father. She had seen a photograph of him on the internet. He was a tall, pleasant-looking man with thinning white hair, and a small white-haired woman beside him. She couldn’t imagine her mother with him, but that didn’t matter now. This wasn’t about her mother or her sister. They were so much alike, and she was always the outsider. Maybe she would find that she was like her father. At thirty-seven, Kate wanted to find a person she had something in common with, someone who was like her, even with all her fears and insecurities. She always felt different when she was with her sister or her mother. All she wanted now was to find her father, and maybe be like him. After that, she would write the book she had always hoped to write. Jack was still talking about his cousin, with a glass of wine in his hand, when she drifted off to sleep, dreaming of her long-lost father.