I Wish You Happy: A Novel

by Kerry Anne King

  “In a couple of hours. And you’re supposed to be sleeping. You need rest to heal.”

  She shakes her head in denial. “I shouldn’t have opened the door. I don’t know why I did.”

  I stretch and laugh, leaning back against the couch to close my gritty eyes. “It takes a strong woman to say no to Jenny and a batch of motherless kittens. Stronger than I am, anyway. Better sleep while we can. How much are you hurting?”

  “I forgot about it for a few minutes.” She straightens up, tentatively, splinting her side with her hand. When she yawns, it’s followed by a small sigh of pain.

  “Let’s get you to bed. We’ll talk kittens in the morning.”

  “You’ll wake me?” Her lids have fallen half closed over her eyes, and her movements, as I help her up from the couch and into the wheelchair, are slow and clumsy. She means for the next feeding, but I deliberately misinterpret. She needs her rest.

  “I’ll wake you.”

  Given her pain and fatigue, everything takes extra time. A two-minute trip to the bathroom takes fifteen. Getting into the tank top she sleeps in and from there into bed takes ten. By the time I dole out her pain pill and set a glass of water by her bed, I’ve only got an hour before the kittens will need feeding. It’s really not worth going to sleep. I’ll just lie down for a minute, to rest, before I check to see how the weakest of the kittens is doing. If he’s dead, which is highly possible, I don’t want to know. Not. Just. Yet.

  An unidentified sound wakes me from an uneasy dream. Already memory is slipping away, but I think it was about a baby. Kat’s, or mine, here in the house and then gone missing. The sound is persistent enough to drag open a pair of stone-heavy eyelids.

  For a minute I don’t know where I am, and then it all comes back.

  Home. Couch. The sound is the meowing of hungry kittens.

  Groggy and disoriented, I roll off the couch onto my hands and knees as the easiest way of getting my body into an upright position. This puts the heating pad right in front of my nose. One of the kittens is crawling determinedly toward me, drawn by scent or body heat, I’m not sure. In the dark I can’t tell which one until I pick him up and turn on a night-light.

  It’s the once-half-dead tabby, now mewing and butting his blind face against me, seeking milk.

  “Hey, Pipsqueak. You’re tougher than you look.”

  I don’t need lights to make formula and fill a bottle. This time he’s strong enough to suck. I sit down on the floor, cross-legged, my back against the couch, and stroke his tiny head with one finger while he nurses. I’ve learned from experience not to be lulled into false confidence, and he gets a very careful burping and rubdown, before I settle him onto the heating pad. I feed his more stalwart brothers and sisters two at a time, and within half an hour I’m crashed out on the couch, my hand trailing down onto the floor where it rests protectively over a tiny kitten.

  “You look exhausted,” Cole says.

  I can’t imagine what he’s doing here, wherever here is. My eyes jerk open, my neck snaps upright.

  Cole’s attentive face is directly across from me. The chair he’s sitting on is not one of mine, and the space around us is hospital cafeteria. My hand still circles the triple-shot latte I was drinking before I drifted off.

  My morning is such a sleep-deprived fog that it takes a minute to remember how I got here. Tuesday morning. Kat. An appointment. God, I should not be driving.

  “Better talk to management,” Cole says. “They’re leaving the caffeine out of the coffee again.”

  I run a hand through my hair, but it catches on tangles, a problem that brings me awake enough to remember leaving the house in a hurry, no makeup, hair smoothed but not properly brushed. Words are still not forthcoming, and I suck up coffee through the straws to give myself time.

  “Either that, or they’re adding extra tryptophan to the milk.”

  He grins. “Or, in an alternate reality, Rae is not getting enough sleep. How’s Kat?”

  “It’s the kittens that are the problem,” I explain, and then realize it’s no explanation at all. I go for more coffee, hoping it will defuzz my laboring brain.

  “Kat is here for physical therapy. The kittens are at home. A batch of rescued babies. They keep me up at night.”

  “One Kat was not enough for you?” He says it lightly, but that singular intensity of his makes me defensive.

  “She wanted them. Kat did. You know about the injury? They told her she probably can’t have children. So motherless kittens . . .”

  “You can’t fix everything, Rae,” he says. “You’re going to wear yourself out.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Clearly.”

  Something about the way he says this doesn’t feel like criticism. It warms a cold place inside me, and I realize I’m smiling when he smiles back.

  “I’ve got a counseling appointment set up for her. Thursday at eleven. Does that work?”

  “Maybe?” There are too many appointments to keep track of in my head, especially sleep deprived as I am. Physical therapy. Primary care doctor. Surgeon. Orthopedic specialist for her hip. I’ve got it all written out in a planner that I pull out of my purse.

  “Haven’t seen one of those in a while,” Cole says.

  “Yeah, me and electronics aren’t friendly.”

  His eyebrow goes up in a question mark. Something about Cole invites the truth, although I immediately want to snatch it back.

  “I kill them,” I tell him, flipping to Thursday in the planner and frowning at the logistics. “Smartphones. Watches. Laptops. Continual malfunctions, and the batteries are always dead. Thursday she has a doctor’s appointment and physical therapy. She’s free at eleven if I can find somebody to feed the kittens.”

  “Saver of small abandoned creatures, destroyer of all things electronic?”

  “Pretty much.” I shrug, searching his face for the inevitable this woman is weird expression.

  “Let me help,” he says, placing his right hand on the table next to mine. It lies there, palm up, open. It looks like an invitation, one I can’t accept.

  “With the electronics?” I close up the planner and return it to my purse, folding my hands in my lap for safekeeping.

  “I was thinking kittens. Either that or taking Kat to the appointment. Name it. I’m there.”

  “Kat isn’t overly fond of you.”

  He grimaces. “Kittens it is. You’ll have to show me what to do.”

  Up to this point, at least to my knowledge, he doesn’t know where I live. My heart flutters at the thought of Cole in my house, but it’s not like I’ll be alone with him. I can’t think of any good reason to tell him no; I can’t afford to turn down help.

  I glance at my watch, half hoping it’s time to go pick up Kat, half hoping it’s not. Small talk isn’t something I know how to do, and we’ve exhausted kittens and my electronics-killing powers. Or at least I think we have.

  “My grandma’s like that,” Cole says. “With electronics. Can’t wear a watch for more than a day. She swears she blows out light bulbs, and that’s why she still likes to sit and knit by candlelight.”

  “For real?” I’m interested, despite a suspicion he’s making things up. I have a deep fondness for candles, myself. “Are you close with her?”

  “Closer to her than my folks, really. She half raised me. My parents divorced when I was ten. Looking back, I think it messed them both up royally. My mom was always working after that. Dad had a second family. I was horribly jealous of the new siblings.”

  “And your grandma understood things?”

  “Better than I wanted her to. She told me I was acting like an obnoxious little brat.”

  I’m indignant on his behalf. “You were just a child!”

  “Oh, sure. But she was right. Thing is, she could say things like that, and it didn’t make me believe I was a bad kid.”

  Now I’m the one who is jealous. “I never knew my grandparents. They were all dead before I was bo
rn.”

  Cole leans forward, elbows resting on the table, doing that thing with his eyes that makes me feel like the most important being in the universe. It’s a counseling trick, and I know it, but I still want to fall for it. I want to tell him all about my childhood and my failure to grow into the successful poster child for Parenting on Time.

  Instead, I drain my coffee and shove back my chair. “Time to go pick up Kat. They were going to start her with a walker today. She’ll be wiped.”

  He stands up and walks to the door with me. Even when I don’t look at him I can feel him beside me, a pleasant heat, like a campfire.

  “So, an address, then?” he asks, when we get to the cafeteria door.

  I tell him, feeling like I’ve crossed a bridge from somewhere to somewhere, although from where to where I haven’t got a clue.

  “What time should I be there?”

  I calculate the probable kitten-feeding times, how long it will take to teach Cole what to do, the distance to the counseling agency, the time to get Kat in and out of the car, and alarm bells go off in my head.

  “Nine a.m. ought to do it.”

  “I’ll be there.” He flashes me that smile, the one that is a slice of pure, uncomplicated joy, and strides away, leaving me to stare at his retreating back and appreciate the fit of his T-shirt across broad shoulders, the way his jeans ride low, but not too low, on lean hips.

  This man, who sets my heart to thumping and my knees to shaking for reasons I haven’t begun to sort out yet, will be coming to my house on Thursday morning. Kat and kittens aside, I am in a whole lot of trouble.

  If I live that long, which my current level of fatigue is leading me to doubt.

  Wednesday night I take the carrier full of kittens to work with me. Kat protests that she can manage them while I’m gone, but exhaustion and pain have etched lines around her eyes that should not be there, and her cheekbones look sharp enough to cut.

  She’d hoped to come home from physical therapy with crutches. What they’ve given her is a walker.

  “The ribs,” she explains. “They were worried about the ribs.”

  I wince, just thinking about the pressure crutches would exert on her rib cage. “Well, at least you’re up and moving. Better than sitting in that chair.”

  “Maybe. I feel like my old granny. Buy me a cotton dress and a kerchief and call me Babushka.”

  “You’re Russian?”

  “Oh, you have no idea how Russian.” She gives me the ghost of a smile. “I’m still offering to do kitten duty.”

  “Go to bed. Maybe tomorrow.”

  I can see she wants to argue, but she shuffles off to bed. From behind, she does look a bit like an elderly woman, her shoulders slumped, her feet encased in hospital slippers, shoving the walker along. But she’s up. She’s moving. And this is a good thing for both of us.

  It doesn’t take me long to pack up the kittens. I have a whole mobile nursery unit ready to roll. The heating pad goes in the cat carrier. I’ll plug it into a socket in the staff room. I’ve got a diaper bag for formula and bottles, cleaning rags and cotton balls.

  “Oh,” Corinne coos when I stagger in, cat carrier in one hand, backpack weighing me down from behind, diaper bag slung on the other shoulder. “They are adorable.”

  She opens the carrier and takes the whole nest of them into her lap. “Have you named them yet? This big one looks like a Henry. I had a cat named Henry once. He was the hugest tom you ever saw. Oh, you could name one Oscar! Maybe Oscar the Second, just to keep things straight. This white one would be perfect.”

  The tiny kitten hisses at her when she picks him up.

  “Oscar the Grouch would be more like it. Let’s get through report, Cor. They’re going to all be hungry in a minute.”

  But she insists on handling every one of them, stroking them while she talks. I’ll admit that they’re adorable, but the attention wakes them up and makes them hungry so that they’re all crying by the time Corinne is packing up to leave and I have work to do.

  “Want me to stay and help?” She would, I know, but she’s tired and has things to do at home.

  “I’ve got a plan.”

  “Of course you do.” She draws me into a warm hug, but I’m forewarned and able to keep my face clear of her breasts.

  Once she’s gone I take the kittens straight to Nancy. She needs something other than the Oscar Event to look forward to. She can start by feeding kittens.

  To my surprise, her response to them is horror. She backs away, climbing up onto her bed.

  “What are those, rats?”

  “No, they’re kittens. They’ve lost their mama, and you get to feed them while I do rounds.”

  “I’m allergic.”

  “Doesn’t say anything about allergies in your chart.”

  She pulls her legs up into the bed, much in the way that Bernie tried to get away from Oscar. “I’m allergic to responsibility. Why are they making that noise?”

  “Because they’re hungry.”

  “How did you know? Did he tell you? Why would he do that?”

  For the first time since I’ve known her, Nancy looks her age. The sparkle has died out of her eyes, and her body looks frail and tired.

  “I’m not sure what you’re talking about, Nance. Are you feeling okay?” I set down the kittens and walk over to check her pulse and blood pressure. When old people have a sudden cognitive change, it’s often because they’re ill.

  “I was fine until you brought this elaborate vengeance into my room.” She yanks her hand away from me. “My pulse is fine. Take those creatures away and . . .” Her gaze shifts from me to the doorway and her lips compress into a thin line. “Speak of the devil and who shows up?”

  Mason, cheeks flushed, tie off-kilter, leans against the doorjamb, as if he needs the support.

  “Feeling guilty, Mother?” His words are not quite slurred, but the consonants run together, and the vowels are a little too relaxed.

  “Go away,” she says, but her voice lacks the energy of command.

  “You,” Mason says, looking at me. “Mother’s been talking about the nurse with the dead rat. Would never have guessed.”

  “Always the charmer,” Nancy says. “How many drinks was it tonight?”

  “When I was ten,” Mason says, entering the room carefully, as if the floor is quicksand and the placement of each step is important, “we had a mama cat. I called her Star. Such an imaginative name, wasn’t it? I lacked the family flair for drama. Star had kittens. Mother was outraged that any cat of ours would dare to inflict such a burden upon her time and resources.”

  “Go away,” Nancy says again. “I’m not well.” She lies down on the bed and rolls away from us. “Take those kittens with you.”

  Mason lowers himself into the visitor’s chair. “There was no shelter in Chicago that was interested in a whole family of cats. At least not the first shelter she called. So she killed them. Simple solution to a simple problem. I didn’t know you worked here,” he says again, shifting his attention to me.

  “You’re the son,” I say. “The wonderful son who has just come to town.”

  Nancy makes a rude noise from the bed, and Mason’s eyebrows go up like a theater curtain on opening night.

  “She’s been telling me all week how wonderful you are and how excited she is that you’re here.”

  “Huh.” He looks genuinely confused by this. Nancy’s cheeks redden, and she pulls a pillow over her head.

  “How’s Kat?” Mason asks. “I went to visit, but she’d been discharged.”

  “Doing well, I believe.” I’m not going to tell him where she is. The last thing in the world Kat needs is to have Mason come visiting. A dark worm of doubt twists inside me, insinuating that my reasons are not so clear, not so pure, but I squash it.

  “These kittens,” I say, tamping down my emotional reaction to this ugly little tale of kitten murder, “are very much alive and in need of feeding. I have work to do. Here’s your chance
to make restitution.”

  “Everybody killed kittens back then,” Nancy protests, her back still to us. “It’s not like I flattened them with a sledgehammer.”

  “No, just tied them into a sack and dropped them in the lake. On the way to dropping your son off for school.”

  The emotional weather in this room has progressed from squall to tornado warning and threatens to blow me away. Before either one of them can add to the storm, I pull out a kitten and hand him to Mason, along with a bottle and formula. “Feed this one first.”

  His eyes, imperfectly focused, come up to rest on my face. “You want me to feed it?”

  “That would be why I’m giving you this bottle. Yes.”

  Despite Mason’s intoxication and Nancy’s protests, the staff is all busy, and these two are my best bets as kitten feeders. Mason has already proved his protective instincts, and Nancy is radiating curiosity at full-volume intensity, her dramatic posturing all an elaborate cover-up. At least that’s what my instincts tell me, much as my brain balks in hesitation.

  The kitten is not interested in waiting for me to make a decision. He smells milk and is already hunting the nipple. Mason makes a small sound of surprise as the kitten latches on. A short moment later, his free hand comes to rest on the kitten’s back.

  “Sit up,” I say to the old sinner still curled on her side in the bed. “Since we’re not killing these kitties, the only way to hush them is to get them fed.” I set the carrier on the bed by her feet and wave the other bottle in front of her nose.

  With a gusty, martyred sigh, she rolls over and uses the bed controls to bring herself up to sitting. She eyes the kitten I’m holding like it’s a stick of dynamite about to blow up. Spreading a towel on her lap, I set the kitten down and get it started on the bottle.

  A softness gentles the sharp lines of her face. “It’s almost cute.”

  “Kittens have been called that, on occasion. When it’s done eating, burp it.”

  “Like a baby? What if it spits up all over me?”