“DON’T STAND IN FRONT OF the TV,” Kitty snaps.
I’m dusting the bookshelves with a new feather duster that I ordered online. I don’t know the last time anybody dusted in here. I whirl around and say, “Why are you being such a mean little crab apple today?”
“I’m just in a mood,” she mutters, stretching her string-bean legs out in front of her. “Shanae was supposed to come over today and now she isn’t.”
“Well, don’t take it out on me.”
Kitty scratches her knee. “Hey, what would you think about me sending Ms. Rothschild a valentine on Daddy’s behalf?”
“Don’t you dare!” I shake my feather duster at her. “You’ve got to stop with this meddling habit of yours, Katherine. It’s not cute.”
Kitty gives me a deep eye roll. “Ugh, I never should have told you.”
“Too late now. Look, if two people are meant to be, they’ll find their way to each other.”
“Would you and Peter have ‘found your way to each other’ if I hadn’t sent those letters?” she challenges.
Point one for Kitty. “Probably not,” I admit.
“No, definitely not. You needed my little push.”
“Don’t act like sending my letters was some altruistic act on your part. You know you did it out of spite.”
Kitty sails right past that and asks, “What does ‘altruistic’ mean?”
“Selfless, charitable, generous of spirit… a.k.a. the opposite of you.” Kitty shrieks and lunges at me, and we struggle briefly, both of us breathless and giggling and bumping into the shelves. I used to be able to disarm her with not much effort, but she’s gaining on me. Her legs are strong, and she’s good at wriggling out of my grasp like a worm. I finally get both her arms behind her back, and she yells, “I give, I give!” As soon as I release her, she jumps up and attacks me again, tickling under my arms and going for my neck.
“Not the neck, not the neck!” I shriek. The neck is my weak spot, which everyone in my family knows. I fall to my knees, laughing so hard it hurts. “Stop, stop! Please!”
Kitty stops tickling. “And that’s me being altru… altruistic,” she says. “That’s my altruicity.”
“Altruism,” I pant.
“I think ‘altruicity’ works too.”
If Kitty hadn’t sent those letters, would Peter and I still have found our way to each other? My first impulse is to say no, but maybe we would have kept going down different paths and converged at some other fork in the road. Or maybe not, but either way, we’re here now.
