by Ann Beattie
On Thursday, quite unexpectedly, Eugenie Nestor appeared at the door, carrying a paper plate covered with Saran Wrap. “Father Donegan said you would let me in,” she said. It took a moment to register. First of all, though I’d heard her screaming and beating pans for years, I’d rarely seen Eugenie Nestor, and when I had, she hadn’t been wearing black wraparound glasses and a big sun hat with a calico bow. “Father said not to drown the kittens. To ask if you would take one. To ask all my neighbors,” she said.
It registered. She had been to see the priest. He had told her—
“Bless you for enduring our struggles with the cats,” she said. “I would like us to be friends. People should be friends with their neighbors, as Father says. He says there’s a chance you might want one of the kittens. The Key lime cookies are a present, whether or not you care to take a kitten.”
“You know, this is very nice of you, Mrs. Nestor,” I said. “Please come in. Would you like an iced tea?”
“Do you have Coca-Cola?” she said, handing me the cookies. They slid around on the paper plate. There seemed to be only a few of them.
“Yes, I think we do. Come into the kitchen.”
“This is a rental house, isn’t it?” she said. “Very nice. I’ve looked through the fence. Of course, today that wouldn’t be any problem, would it? My husband says the hole reminds him of Ghostbusters.”
“We rent from a couple in Vero Beach.”
“How would you feel about a cute kitten?” she asked, changing the subject.
“We don’t have any pets. It would make it too difficult to travel,” I said.
“Without ice, please,” she said.
I poured the Coke into a glass. I poured some Perrier into a glass for myself.
“Father has taken one of the kittens,” she said. “My husband’s dentist might take one for his daughter. One way or another, I have to find people.”
“An ad in the paper?” I suggested.
“He already drowned four. My husband, I mean. He said that regardless of what Father said, the cat was as much his as mine, and what he wanted to do with his four kittens was drown them.” She cleared her throat. I moved toward the front porch. She followed. “Of my four, one has been spoken for, and there’s a chance the dentist might take another.”
I nodded.
“You wouldn’t take one?” she said.
“I really can’t, Mrs. Nestor. My husband and I travel a lot. It’s very difficult to find places that will—”
“You can sneak them in,” she said.
“Mrs. Nestor, I’m really not going to take one of the kittens. I realize you would like me to do that. But I’m not going to be able to.”
“The Minichiellos are heartbroken about the parrot,” she said. “They haven’t heard about any sightings of it. They had that bird for years. They think it will die.”
“That would be a shame,” I said.
“I asked them to take a kitten, but she doesn’t feel a kitten is a good replacement for a parrot that could count to fifteen. It always said good morning to her. She’s heartbroken.”
“I can understand that,” I said.
“Father put up a note on the church bulletin board. It’s been up for a week,” she said. She had never taken off her black sunglasses. She had pushed the hat back on her head. She had drained her glass. She said: “The mother cat was upset he’d drowned the kittens. She knew it was him. She peed in his hammock.”
“Perhaps we can talk another time,” I said. “I have some things I need to do before it gets any later.”
“Housework,” she said.
“Errands,” I said.
“If on your errands you think someone might be interested in a kitten, could I give you our phone number?”
“Absolutely,” I said.
“We’re in the book, but people are too lazy to look. You’d have to give the number to them,” she said.
“Let me get a piece of paper,” I said.
“And a pen,” she said.
I went into the kitchen, forcing myself to be patient. Soon she would be gone.
“I was a lapsed Catholic,” she said. “I regret those years away from the church.”
“Just jot down your phone number,” I said. “And thank you for the cookies.”
“Do you think there’s any chance you’ll change your mind?” she said.
“No,” I said.
“Because if you do, you could call over the fence. Or just walk through the broken part and let me know.”
“I won’t change my mind,” I said.
She put her face in her hands and began to cry, using the piece of paper she’d written her number on as a tissue. “Nobody ever changes their mind,” she said. “My husband hasn’t changed his mind once in forty years. He said he hated cats when we got married. I gave away my cat. Then when we moved to Florida a cat followed me home one day and I thought he’d change his mind, because it was such a pretty cat. But he didn’t change his mind about that cat or about any of the others. For forty years, he’s drowned kittens. What do they say? Always a bridesmaid, never a bride.’ With me, it’s always a cat, never any kittens.” She wiped tears from her eyes. She said: “I agreed with that woman who was screaming the other night. She came here to give us a message, do you realize that? She was sent from on high with a message. It’s true: no one protecting anyone else. It’s my right to have kittens if I want them, but would anyone protect my rights? Nobody would. Father says give away the kittens because my husband will drown them. I don’t even know if they’re alive now. I could go home and find them all in a bucket.”
“Mrs. Nestor,” I said, “this is not anything I can help you with. Do you understand?”
“You’re a monster,” she said. “Some people aren’t cat people, they’re dog people. I can understand that. But you—you’re just selfish. You just want to travel. It’s what that woman said. That woman was an angel, who’d come to speak to you. Did you hear her say that you were the idle rich? You are. You and your husband are monsters. You have friends who go on rampages, and you turn them loose like wild beasts, like other people’s yards were the jungle. My plants were all pulled up. The same day he drowned the kittens, my whole yard was destroyed. You are horrible, violent, selfish people. I never want to see you again.”
“That’s wonderful,” I said. “All you’ll have to do is leave, then.”
“Where can I find that angel?” Mrs. Nestor said.
“Cleaning rooms at the Hyatt, as a matter of fact. Go home and call the Hyatt and ask to speak to the angel Daphne Rupert. She works the afternoon shift. You can reach her.”
Which she did, and here is what followed: Daphne exited a recently cleaned room, having no idea Eugenie Nestor was the one who had left three kittens in an Easter basket with a towel draped over the handle. It was there, wedged between the miniature shampoos and the rolls of toilet paper: a purple and pink wicker basket with three kittens curled inside. She took it to the manager’s office, and the manager of course couldn’t understand it, except that she knew a dirty trick had been played on the hotel. Daphne felt there was some suspicion that she knew more than she did—that perhaps they were even her kittens, which she was trying to foist off on the Hyatt. Well: thank God it was not a baby; they had all agreed on that. Really, it could have been much worse if a baby had been abandoned on the cleaning cart. The whole episode upset Daphne so much she blurted out the whole story to Andy, who had given her an extra two hours pay for the trauma she had undergone and who was therefore now back in her good graces, painting her floating in the pool in a new bikini he had reimbursed her for—a rather nice little blue-and-white checked cotton suit. He was able to be amazed, and to listen sympathetically, because I had told him nothing about Eugenie Nestor’s visit. He’d been teaching at the community college, and when he came home I was on the phone, and by the time I was off, Daphne was in place in the pool, and I could hear, through the open window, that she was telling him a story
that wasn’t all that surprising to me. She thought something had been fated, though she barely understood what. Just a sense she had, she told Andy: first the cat jumping in the pool and circling, circling. Then, coming out of a room and seeing something on top of her cart that turned out to be kittens. She was no kitten lover, but one of the cooks at the hotel had taken a fancy to one of them, and the manager had taken the other two to her vet, who had agreed to try for a week to place them, before turning them over to the animal shelter. On and on Daphne went, about how peculiar she found life in Key West. “I want to go to Tortola next year instead of coming here,” I heard Andy say wearily. The fence had been repaired by the gardener, who was very handy. Things were again calm at the home of Eugenie and Old Nestor. He was probably in his hammock, the orange cat having forgiven him—where else was she going to live?—curled in his lap. Eugenie was probably in the kitchen, baking another three (it turned out to be only three) cookies. I thought about the many places Andy and I had traveled during our marriage, and how many of those places had seemed magical, for a while. Key West lasted longer than most: the Atlantic breezes, the lush foliage, the amazing light that Andy captured so well, painting paintings that sold for enough money at the New York gallery that represented him that, by ordinary standards, we really had become the idle rich.
As I mulled over our good fortune, Lem passed by, driving the Conch Train. Once again, as he sped by, I caught the tail end of a joke dissipating in the breeze, like the string of a kite blowing quickly out of reach. I opened the front door and stood on the porch, looking at the bougainvillea spilling off a balcony across the way. Then I looked at two young men skating in sync, with their arms around each other, their bodies toned and tanned. Key West was a place that encouraged people to be childish, and I found that atypical, and delightful.
I was startled from my reverie when the Minichiellos’ parrot began its countdown from the royal palm in the front yard. It was there! It had returned—or at least it taunted with the possibility of its return. It looked well, and seemed to be enjoying its freedom. Counting “one, two, three,” it spoke looking directly at me, and then—though I may have seen too many Walt Disney movies—I would swear that it winked. The moment it said “fifteen” it flew away, having a more distinct idea than most of us when it should leave and perhaps even where it should fly.
The Women of This World
THE DINNER was going to be good. Dale had pureed leeks and salsify to add to the pumpkin in the food processor—a tablespoon or so of sweet vermouth might give it a little zing—and as baby-girl pink streaked through the gray-blue sky over the field, she dropped a CD into the player and listened matter-of-factly to Lou Reed singing matter-of-factly “I’m just a gift to the women of this world.”
Nelson would by now be on his way back from Logan, bringing Jerome and Brenda—who had taken the shuttle from New York, after much debate about plane versus train versus driving—for the annual (did three years in a row make something annual?) pre-Thanksgiving dinner. They could have come on Thanksgiving, but Nelson’s mother, Didi, was coming that day, and there was no love lost between Didi and her ex-husband, Jerome. Brenda didn’t like big gatherings anyway. Brenda was less shy than she used to be. She used to nap half the afternoon—Jerome said because she was shy—but lately her occupation as a gym teacher had become glamorous and she had quit teaching at the middle school and become a personal trainer, and suddenly she was communicative, energized, radiant—if that wasn’t a cliché for women in love.
Dale turned on the food processor and felt relieved as the ingredients liquified. It wasn’t that the food processor hadn’t always worked—assuming she placed the blade in the bottom correctly, that is—but that she always feared it wouldn’t work. She always ran through a scenario in which she’d have to scoop everything out and dump it in the blender, and the old Waring Blender that had come with the house didn’t always work. With blenders so cheap, she amazed herself by not simply buying a new one.
Jerome was not Nelson’s father, but his stepfather. Nelson was forever indebted to the man for appearing on the scene when he was five years old, and staying until he was sixteen. Jerome had seen to it that Nelson was spared going to Groton, and had taught him to play every known sport—at least every ordinary sport. But would Nelson have wanted to learn, say, archery?
Nelson wanted to learn everything, though he didn’t want to do everything. He wanted to do very little. He liked to know about things, though. That way, he could talk about them. Her mean nickname for him was No-Firsthand-Knowledge-Nelson. It got tedious sometimes: people writing down the names of books from which Nelson had gotten his often esoteric information. People calling after the party was over, having looked up some strange assertion of Nelson’s in their kid’s Encyclopedia Britannica to discover that he was essentially right, but not entirely. They often left these quibbles and refutations on the answering machine: “Dick, here. Listen, you weren’t exactly right about Mercury. It’s because Hermes means ‘mediator’ in Greek, so there is an element of logic to his taking the souls of the dead to the Lower World”; “Nelson? This is Pauline. Listen, Rushdie did write the introduction to that Glen Baxter book. I can bring it next time and show you. He really does write introductions all the time. Well, thanks to you both for a great evening. My sister really appreciated Dale’s copying that recipe for her—though no one can make butterflied lamb like Dale, I told her. Anyway. Okay. Bye. Thanks again.”
They would be twenty or thirty minutes away, assuming the plane landed on time, which you could never assume if you knew anything about Logan. Still: there was time for a quick shower, if not a bath, and she should probably change into a dress because it seemed a little oblivious to have people over when you were wearing sweats, even if you did have a cashmere sweater pulled over them. Maybe a bra under the sweater. A pair of corduroys, instead of the supercomfortable sweats. And shoes . . . definitely some sort of shoes.
Nelson called from the cell phone. “Need anything?” he said. She could hear Terry Gross’s well-modulated, entirely reasonable voice on the radio. Only Nelson and Terry and her guest were talking in the car: all passengers silent, in case Dale had forgotten some necessary ingredient. Yes, pink peppercorns. Try finding them on 95 North. And of course they weren’t really peppercorns, they were only called peppercorns because they looked like black peppercorns. Or: purple oregano. An entirely different flavor from green.
“Not a thing,” she said. She added, disingenuously: “Thanks for checking.”
She was wearing black corduroy pants and a white shirt. Keeping it clean would preoccupy her, give her some way to stay a little detached from everyone. In her way, she was shy, too. Though she wore bad-girl black boots.
“Brenda wants to see the Wedding Cake House. I thought we’d swing by. Would that mess up your timing?”
“I didn’t cook anything,” she said.
Silence, then. Mean of her, to set his mind scrambling for alternatives.
“Kidding,” she said.
“I thought so,” he said. “Well: what about it? Want to see it, yourself?”
“I’ve seen it,” she said. She had toured it soon after they moved to the area. It was a yellow-and-white house in Kennebunkport, huge, with Gothic spires like pointed phalluses. Legend had it that it was the creation of a sea captain for his bride, to remind her of their wedding when he was off at sea.
“We’ll be back around four.”
Protests from Brenda. Someone else, talking to Terry Gross in a deep, earnest voice. “See you soon,” he said. “Hon?” he said.
“Bye,” she said. She picked up two bottles of red wine from the wine rack near the phone. A little too close to the heat grate, so no wine was kept on the last four shelves. Not a problem in summer, but a minor inconvenience come cold weather. She remembered that Brenda had been delighted with a Fumé Blanc she’d served last time, and bought the same bottle for her again. Jerome, of course, because of his years in Paris, w
ould have the St. Emilion. Nelson had taken to sipping Jamison’s lately. Still, she’d chilled several bottles of white, because he was unpredictable. On the top rack lay the bottle of Opus One an appreciative photography student had given her at Christmas. Two nights later, she planned to serve it to the doctor who had diagnosed both her hypoglycemia and her Ménière’s disease, which meant, ironically, that she could no longer drink. If she did, she’d risk more attacks of the sickening vertigo that had plagued her and gone misdiagnosed for years, leaving her sweaty and trembling and so weak she’d often have to spend the day following the attack in bed. “Like taking acid and getting swept up in a tidal wave,” she had said to the otolaryngologist. The woman had looked at her with surprise, as if she’d been gathering strawberries and suddenly come upon a watermelon. “Quite a vivid description,” the doctor had said. “My husband is a writer. He sometimes stops me dead in my tracks the same way.”
