by Lorrie Moore
He says no, but he probably should have. “You’re turning into a cat mom. Cats, Trudy, are the worst sort of surrogates.”
Tell him you’ve always wanted to run off and join the surrogates.
Tell him you love him.
Tell him you know he didn’t have rehearsal tonight.
“We decided to hold rehearsal at the Montessori school, what are you now, my mother?”
In the dark, discern the fine hook of his nose. Smooth the hair off his forehead. Say: “I love you Moss are you having an affair with a sheep?” You saw a movie once where a man was having an affair with a sheep, and acted, with his girlfriend, the way Moss now acts with you: exhausted.
Moss’s eyes close. “I’m a king, not a shepherd, remember? You’re acting like my ex-wife.”
His ex-wife is now an anchorwoman in Missouri.
“Are you having a regular affair? Like with a person?”
“Trudy,” he sighs, turns away from you, taking more than his share of blanket. “You’ve got to stop this.” Know you are being silly. Any second now he will turn and press against you, reassure you with kisses, tell you oh how much he loves you. “How on earth, Trudy,” is what he finally says, “would I ever have the time for an affair?”
12/2. Your cat is growing, eats huge and sloppy as a racehorse. Bob named her Stardust Sweetheart, a bit much even for Bob, so you and Moss think up other names for her: Pudge, Pudgemuffin, Pooch, Poopster, Secretariat, Stephanie, Emily. Call her all of them. “She has to learn how to deal with confusion,” says Moss. “And we’ve gotta start letting her outside.”
Say: “No. She’s still too little. Something could happen.” Pick her up and away from Moss. Bring her into the bathroom with you. Hold her up to the mirror. Say: “Whossat? Whossat pretty kitty?” Wonder if you could turn into Bob.
12/3. Sometimes Moss has to rehearse in the living room. King Kaspar has a large black jewelry box about which he must sing to the young, enthralled Amahl. He must open drawers and haul out beads, licorice, magic stones. The drawers, however, keep jamming when they’re not supposed to. Moss finally tears off his fake beard and screams, “I can’t do this shit! I can’t sing about money and gewgaws. I’m the tenor of love!” Last year they’d done La Bohème and Moss had been Rodolfo.
This is the sort of thing he needs you for: to help him with his box. Kneel down beside him. Show him how one of the drawers is off its runner. Show him how to pull it out just so far. He smiles and thanks you in his berserk King Kaspar voice: “Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you!” He begins his aria again: “ ‘This is my box. This is my box. I never travel without my box.’ ”
All singing is, says Moss, is sculpted howling.
Say, “Bye.” Wheel the TV into the kitchen. Watch MacNeil-Lehrer. Worry about Congress.
Listen to the goose-call of trains, all night, trundling by your house.
12/4. Sometimes the phone rings, but then the caller hangs up.
12/5. Your cat now sticks her paws right in the water dish while she drinks, then steps out from her short wade and licks them, washes her face with them, repeatedly, over the ears and down, like an itch. Take to observing her. On her feet the gray and pink configurations of pads and fur look like tiny baboon faces. She sees you watching, freezes, blinks at you, then busies herself again, her face in her belly, one leg up at a time, an intent ballerina in a hairy body stocking. And yet she’s growing so quickly, she’s clumsy. She’ll walk along and suddenly her hip will fly out of whack and she’ll stop and look at it, not comprehending. Or her feet will stumble, or it’s difficult for her to move her new bulk along the edges of furniture, her body pushing itself out into the world before she’s really ready. It puts a dent in her confidence. She looks at you inquiringly: What is happening to me? She rubs against your ankles and bleats. You pick her up, tuck her under your chin, your teeth clenched in love, your voice cooey, gooey with maternity, you say things like, “How’s my little dirt-nose, my little fuzz-face, my little honey-head?”
“Jesus, Trudy,” Moss yells from the next room. “Listen to how you talk to that cat.”
12/6. Though the Christmas shopping season is under way, the store you work at downtown, Owonta Flair, is not doing well. “The malls,” groans Morgan, your boss. “Every Christmas the malls! We’re doomed. These candy cane slippers. What am I gonna do with these?”
Tell her to put one slipper from each pair in the window along with a mammoth sign that says, MATES INSIDE. “People only see the sign. Thom McAn did it once. They got hordes.”
“You’re depressed,” says Morgan.
12/7. You and Moss invite the principals, except Amahl, over to dinner one night before a rehearsal. You also invite Bob. Three kings, Amahl’s unwed mother, you, and Bob: this way four people can tell cranky anecdotes about the production, and two people can listen.
“This really is a trashy opera,” says Sonia, who plays Amahl’s mother. “Sentimental as all get-out.” Sonia is everything you’ve always wanted to be: smart, Jewish, friendly, full-haired as Easter basket grass. She speaks with a mouthful of your spinach pie. She says she likes it. When she has swallowed, a piece of spinach remains behind, wrapped like a gap around one of her front teeth. Other than that she is very beautiful. Nobody says anything about the spinach on her tooth.
Two rooms away the cat is playing with a marble in the empty bathtub. This is one of her favorite games. She bats the marble and it speeds around the porcelain like a stock car. The noise is rattley, continuous.
“What is that weird noise?” asks Sonia.
“It’s the beast,” says Moss. “We should put her outside, Trudy.” He pours Sonia more wine, and she murmurs, “Thanks.”
Jump up. Say: “I’ll go take the marble away.”
Behind you you can hear Bob: “She used to be mine. Her name is Stardust Sweetheart. I got allergic.”
Melchior shouts after you: “Aw, leave the cat alone, Trudy. Let her have some fun.” But you go into the bathroom and take the marble away anyhow. Your cat looks up at you from the tub, her head cocked to one side, sweet and puzzled as a child movie star. Then she turns and bats drips from the faucet. Scratch the scruff of her neck. Close the door when you leave. Put the marble in your pocket.
You can hear Balthazar making jokes about the opera. He calls it Amyl and the Nitrates.
“I’ve always found Menotti insipid,” Melchior is saying when you return to the dining room.
“Written for NBC, what can you expect,” Sonia says. Soon she is off raving about La Bohème and other operas. She uses words like verismo, messa di voce, Montserrat Caballe. She smiles. “An opera should be like contraception: about sex, not children.”
Start clearing the plates. Tell people to keep their forks for dessert. Tell them that no matter what anyone says, you think Amahl is a beautiful opera and that the ending, when the mother sends her son off with the kings, always makes you cry. Moss gives you a wink. Get brave. Give your head a toss. Add: “Papageno, Papagena—to me, La Bohème’s just a lot of scarves.”
There is some gulping of wine.
Only Bob looks at you and smiles. “Here. I’ll help you with the plates,” he says.
Moss stands and makes a diversionary announcement: “Sonia, you’ve got a piece of spinach on your tooth.”
“Christ,” she says, and her tongue tunnels beneath her lip like an elegant gopher.
12/8. Sometimes still Moss likes to take candlelight showers with you. You usually have ten minutes before the hot water runs out. Soap his back, the wide moguls of his shoulders registering in you like a hunger. Press yourself against him. Whisper: “I really do like La Bohème, you know.”
“It’s okay,” Moss says, all forgiveness. He turns and grabs your buttocks.
“It’s just that your friends make me nervous. Maybe it’s work, Morgan that forty-watt hysteric making me crazy.” Actually you like Morgan.
Begin to hum a Dionne Warwick song, then grow self-conscious and stop.
Moss doesn’t like to sing in the shower. He has his operas, his church jobs, his weddings and bar mitzvahs—in the shower he is strictly off-duty. Say: “I mean, it could be Morgan.”
Moss raises his head up under the spray, beatific, absent. His hair slicks back, like a baby’s or a gangster’s, dark with water, shiny as a record album. “Does Bob make you nervous?” he asks.
“Bob? Bob suffers from terminal sweetness. I like Bob.”
“So do I. He’s a real gem.”
Say: “Yeah, he’s a real chum.”
“I said gem,” says Moss. “Not chum.” Things fall quiet. Lately you’ve been mishearing each other. Last night in bed you said, “Moss, I usually don’t like discussing sex, but—” And he said, “I don’t like disgusting sex either.” And then he fell asleep, his snores scratching in the dark like zombies.
Take turns rinsing. Don’t tell him he’s hogging the water. Ask finally, “Do you think Bob’s gay?”
“Of course he’s gay.”
“How do you know?”
“Oh, I don’t know. He hangs out at Sammy’s in the mall.”
“Is that a gay bar?”
“Bit of everything.” Moss shrugs.
Think: Bit of everything. Just like a mall. “Have you ever been there?” Scrub vigorously between your breasts.
“A few times,” says Moss, the water growing cooler.
Say: “Oh.” Then turn off the faucet, step out onto the bath mat. Hand Moss a towel. “I guess because I work trying to revive our poor struggling downtown I don’t get out to these places much.”
“I guess not,” says Moss, candle shadows wobbling on the shower curtain.
12/9. Two years ago when Moss first moved in, there was something exciting about getting up in the morning. You would rise, dress, and, knowing your lover was asleep in your bed, drive out into the early morning office and factory traffic, feeling that you possessed all things, Your Man, like a Patsy Cline song, at home beneath your covers, pumping blood through your day like a heart.
Now you have a morbid fascination with news shows. You get up, dress, flick on the TV, sit in front of it with a bowl of cereal in your lap, quietly curse all governments everywhere, get into your car, drive to work, wonder how the sun has the nerve to show its face, wonder why the world seems to be picking up speed, even old ladies pass you on the highway, why you don’t have a single erotic fantasy that Moss isn’t in, whether there really are such things as vitamins, and how would you rather die cancer or a car accident, the man you love, at home, asleep, like a heavy, heavy heart through your day.
“Goddamn slippers,” says Morgan at work.
12/10. The cat now likes to climb into the bathtub and stand under the dripping faucet in order to clean herself. She lets the water bead up on her face, then wipes herself, neatly dislodging the gunk from her eyes.
“Isn’t she wonderful?” you ask Moss.
“Yeah. Come here you little scumbucket,” he says, slapping the cat on the haunches, as if she were a dog.
“She’s not a dog, Moss. She’s a cat.”
“That’s right. She’s a cat. Remember that, Trudy.”
12/11. The phone again. The ringing and hanging up.
12/12. Moss is still getting in very late. He goes about the business of fondling you, like someone very tired at night having to put out the trash and bolt-lock the door.
He sleeps with his arms folded behind his head, elbows protruding, treacherous as daggers, like the enemy chariot in Ben-Hur.
12/13. Buy a Christmas tree, decorations, a stand, and lug them home to assemble for Moss. Show him your surprise.
“Why are the lights all in a clump in the back?” he asks, closing the front door behind him.
Say: “I know. Aren’t they great? Wait till you see me do the tinsel.” Place handfuls of silver icicles, matted together like alfalfa sprouts, at the end of all the branches.
“Very cute,” says Moss, kissing you, then letting go. Follow him into the bathroom. Ask how rehearsal went. He points to the kitty litter and sings: “ ‘This is my box. I never travel without my box.’ ”
Say: “You are not a well man, Moss.” Play with his belt loops.
12/14. The white fur around the cat’s neck is growing and looks like a stiff Jacobean collar. “A rabato,” says Moss, who suddenly seems to know these things. “When are we going to let her go outside?”
“Someday when she’s older.” The cat has lately taken to the front window the way a hypochondriac takes to a bed. When she’s there she’s more interested in the cars, the burled fingers of the trees, the occasional squirrel, the train tracks like long fallen ladders, than she is in you. Call her: “Here pootchy-kootchy-honey.” Ply her, bribe her with food.
12/15. There are movies in town: one about Brazil, and one about sexual abandonment in upstate New York. “What do you say, Moss. Wanna go to the movies this weekend?”
“I can’t,” says Moss. “You know how busy I am.”
12/16. The evening news is full of death: young marines, young mothers, young children. By comparison you have already lived forever. In a kind of heaven.
12/17. Give your cat a potato and let her dribble it about soccer-style. She’s getting more coordinated, conducts little dramas with the potato, pretends to have conquered it, strolls over it, then somersaults back after it again. She’s not bombing around, crashing into the sideboards anymore. She’s learning moves. She watches the potato by the dresser leg, stalks it, then pounces. When she gets bored she climbs up onto the sill and looks out, tail switching. Other cats have spotted her now, have started coming around at night. Though she will want to go, do not let her out the front door.
12/18. The phone rings. You say hello, and the caller hangs up. Two minutes later it rings again, only this time Moss answers it in the next room, speaks softly, cryptically, not the hearty phone voice of the Moss of yesteryear. When he hangs up, wander in and say, blasé as paste, “So, who was that?”
“Stop,” says Moss. “Just stop.”
Ask him what’s the big deal, it was Sonia wasn’t it.
“Stop,” says Moss. “You’re being my wife. Things are repeating themselves.”
Say that nothing repeats itself. Nothing, nothing, nothing. “Sonia, right?”
“Trudy, you’ve got to stop this. You’ve been listening to too much Tosca. I’m going out to get a hamburger. Do you want anything?”
Say: “I’m the only person in the whole world who knows you, Moss. And I don’t know you at all anymore.”
“That’s a different opera,” he says. “I’m going out to get a hamburger. Do you want anything?”
Do not cry. Stick to monosyllables. Say: “No. Fine. Go.”
Say: “Please don’t let the cat out.”
Say: “You should wear a hat it’s cold.”
12/19. Actually what you’ve been listening to is Dionne Warwick’s Golden Hits—musical open heart surgery enough for you. Sometimes you pick up the cat and waltz her around, her purr staticky and intermittent as a walkie-talkie.
On “Do You Know the Way to San Jose,” you put her down, do an unfortunate charleston, while she attacks your stockinged feet, thinking them large rodents.
Sometimes you knock into the Christmas tree.
Sometimes you collapse into a chair and convince yourself that things are still okay.
When Robert MacNeil talks about mounting inflation, you imagine him checking into a motel room with a life-size, blow-up doll. This is, once in a while, how you amuse yourself.
When Moss gets in at four in the morning, whisper: “There are lots of people in this world, Moss, but you can’t be in love with them all.”
“I’m not,” he says, “in love with the mall.”
12/20. The mall stores stay open late this last week before Christmas. Moss is supposed to be there, “in the gazebo next to the Santa gazebo,” for an Amahl and the Night Visitors promotional. Decide to drive up there. Perhaps you can look around in the men’s
shops for a sweater for Moss, perhaps even one for Bob as well. Last year was a bad Christmas: you and Moss returned each other’s gifts for cash. You want to do better this year. You want to buy: sweaters.
The mall parking lot, even at 7 p.m., is, as Moss would say, packed as a bag, though you do manage to find a space.
Inside the mall entranceway it smells of stale popcorn, dry heat, and three-day-old hobo urine. A drunk, slumped by the door, smiles and toasts you with nothing.
Say: “Cheers.”
To make your journey down to the gazebos at the other end of the mall, first duck into all the single-item shops along the way. Compare prices with the prices at Owonta Flair: things are a little cheaper here. Buy stuff, mostly for Moss and the cat.
In the pet food store the cashier hands you your bagged purchase, smiles, and says, “Merry Christmas.”
Say: “You, too.”
In the men’s sweater shop the cashier hands you your bagged purchase, smiles, and says, “Merry Christmas.”
Say: “You, too.”
In the belt shop the cashier hands you your bagged purchase, smiles, and says, “Come again.”
Say: “You, too.” Grow warm. Narrow your eyes to seeds.
In the gazebo next to the Santa gazebo there is only an older man in gray coveralls stacking some folding chairs.
Say: “Excuse me, wasn’t Amahl and the Night Visitors supposed to be here?”
The man stops for a moment. “There’s visitors,” he says, pointing out and around, past the gazebo to all the shoppers. Shoppers in parkas. Shoppers moving slow as winter. Shoppers who haven’t seen a crosswalk or a window in hours.
