Cat by Any Other Name (9781101597729)

by Adamson, Lydia

  I shut my eyes and prayed to my own God that whatever part of Barbara still lived would be at peace.

  Tim Roman stepped forward just then. He said in a booming voice: “I am glad you could all come today. Barbara would have wanted—” But suddenly his resolve crumbled, and he began to weep horribly. We didn’t know what to do, so we just stood there and watched him act out his pain.

  It didn’t last long. Tim held up his hand, and that seemed to help him regain control. Composed, he started his speech again, this time more quietly.

  “This is where she would have wanted her ashes . . . um . . . planted.” He stopped, laughing somewhat crazily. “I don’t know . . . what does one do with ashes? Place them? Plant them? Dump . . . Strew them, I suppose.” For a minute he stared, lost, at the box in his hands. Tim sighed deeply. “Oh, Barbara loved—but I guess I don’t have to tell you how much she loved this garden. It was always on her mind. And you were always in her thoughts. She loved all of you so much.”

  Without further words, he opened the box and turned it over quickly. The powdery white substance fluttered out. There was so little of it. But we could see the ashes float on the air and disperse, almost as if someone had flicked a giant cigarette.

  Tim snapped shut the lid on the box. All was quiet now. Even the persistent sounds of the city seemed to recede, like the last strains of the music at the end of a movie.

  Some of the guests began to leave, making their way over to Tim to offer their condolences. I heard one woman whisper to a companion that she was surprised there had been no religious ceremony, that there should have been a minister—or someone—to say a few words. Or at least Tim should have said a prayer.

  Renee suddenly wheeled in her place, away from the garden, and stared out at the street.

  “So stupid . . . so inexplicable!” she said to me bitterly.

  I watched her profile, her thin, dark face like a glove pulled tight.

  “Do you understand what I am saying, Alice? She had everything to live for. Everything, period. She was loved. And she loved. Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! No meaning. No sense at all. One moment she’s here with us, listening, laughing, talking. And then she’s gone. There’s no reason, Alice. Where’s the reason? Oh, God, sometimes I hate this world!”

  I couldn’t dispute what Renee had said. And I didn’t know how to comfort her. So I said nothing.

  Renee turned back toward the garden. “Ashes!” she snorted. “How appropriate: ashes, nothing, specks landing on some effete little plants in the most godforsaken part of the city.” She buried her face in her hands.

  All I knew was that it was imperative I should be alone. I wanted to go back to my apartment and see my cats. That’s all. I told Renee that I had to leave. Through the tears she nodded in assent. I walked briskly out of the garden and headed for Second Avenue, quickening my pace as if to match the speed of the flashbacks reeling through my head.

  In my mind I was back in Ava’s apartment, and Barbara had handed me her brandy glass because she was going to get some air, she said.

  “Alice!”

  At first I thought the sound of my name was just part of the reverie.

  “Alice! Wait!”

  But no, it wasn’t. When I stopped and turned, I saw a figure running up the block toward me. It was Tim Roman.

  He was approaching with frightening speed and purpose—at least it seemed that way. Running with abandon, desperation, as if catching up with me were the most important thing in his life, as if I had something of his that he had to retrieve at all costs.

  He stopped five feet away from me, trying to catch his breath. The box was still in his hand.

  Still breathing sharply, he asked: “Why are you leaving?”

  “I need to rest for a while, Tim.”

  “Did you at least see the ceremony?”

  I didn’t know what he meant. Hadn’t I just overheard a complaint about the distinct lack of ceremony? Then I realized he must be referring to the scattering of the ashes.

  “Yes, I was there, Tim. Didn’t you see me? I was standing next to Renee.”

  He regarded me strangely, as if he were puzzling out the meaning of the very simple words I’d just spoken.

  Tim said something I couldn’t hear. I moved closer. “What did you say, Tim?”

  “I said, ‘I don’t . . . know . . . what . . . to do.’” He had spoken very slowly and carefully, and never in my life had I heard any sadder words.

  “Tim,” I began, then left it. “Poor Tim.”

  I kissed him gently on the cheek, backed up a few steps, turned, and started across the avenue.

  “Just a minute!” he cried out. “Alice, I have something to give you!”

  “What do you have to give me?”

  “I have something to give you,” he repeated, not answering my question.

  I paused a minute before saying, “I have to go now, Tim. Call me—okay?”

  The traffic light was with me at that moment. I took the opportunity to cross. When I reached the other side, I looked back. He was still standing there, holding that box.

  Chapter 3

  Tim didn’t call me. Instead he simply appeared on my doorstep one afternoon. He was carrying two boxes this time.

  His appearance put the seal on what had already been a difficult morning. I had spent the day up to that point trying to sell packets of dried catnip to gourmet shops and the fancier grocery markets in my neighborhood. We were all still reeling from Barbara’s death, but we’d decided to carry on the work of the herb garden anyway, because Barbara would have wanted it that way. We maintained the division of labor that had been decided upon: We all harvested, but Sylvia and Ava dried the plants, and Renee packaged them, and me, I sold them. It was a task for which I would never have volunteered. But my sister gardeners had somehow come to the I suppose rather logical conclusion that an actress should make an ideal saleswoman.

  By ten thirty that morning I had already been in and out of four stores, without a sale.

  My fifth stop was a brand-new, upscale health food store on Second Avenue. It was called Nature & Nurture. I walked in boldly, remembering Ava Fabrikant’s pep talk, designed to assure me I’d be a successful salesperson. “But, Alice, you’re an actress—remember? An actress. You know how to make an entrance, right? You know how to persuade, inspire trust, charm. You’ll just sweep in grandly and turn it on. You’ll blow the competition out of the water.”

  “What competition is that?” I asked.

  “You’ll be irresistible,” she assured me.

  But my grand entrance into Nature & Nurture was wasted. The place was entirely devoid of people. It did look like a well-stocked operation, however: jars and jars of organic, pesticide-free jams and spreads . . . cans of scrupulously prepared vegetarian soup . . . bottles of gargantuan mega-vitamin tablets . . . racks of books on the subjects of health and exercise and holistic healing . . . even a small refrigerator stocked with bottles of goat’s milk and containers of mysterious murky liquids whose labels were printed in colorful Japanese lettering.

  I walked over to the deserted counter. How quaint—there was a little bell. I gently tapped on it, but the tinkle wasn’t loud enough to rouse a mouse. So I slapped it hard. I’ll flip back into the charm mode as soon as the proprietor appears, I told myself.

  “Coming, coming,” I heard someone grumble from the back of the store. A man appeared a minute after that. He was dressed in black T-shirt and jeans, and was covered with dust. I noticed he was carrying a pair of pliers and a light bulb, obviously having been repairing something in back. He didn’t seem excited at the prospect of what, for all he knew, was a paying customer.

  “What can I do for you, miss?” He ran his hand through the wisps of graying red hair above his round face.

  By way of an
answer, I took out one of the small packets from my shoulder bag and held it up. “I’d like to interest you in carrying our wonderful organic catnip. It’s homegrown, right here in the city in a lovely herb garden downtown. It costs you only seventy-five cents a unit, and you could sell it easily for a dollar and a half or even two dollars a bag.”

  I guessed my pitch wasn’t working, because he didn’t reply. He looked from my face to the bag of catnip and then back at me. Before I could go on with my spiel, though, he began to laugh. Not just a chuckle but a huge laugh—one I might have appreciated if this had been a production of Private Lives, for instance.

  I didn’t understand. What had I done?

  After a minute he composed himself. “I’m sorry. Please excuse me. It’s just that I come out here like Jeeves the Butler, in answer to that ridiculous bell, and I see this tall, gorgeous woman in a forties suit jacket my mother would have killed for, and then you launch into a spiel about catnip, and then I realize you were Kate in the last play I ever took my mother to. It was all just too funny.”

  “You saw me in Taming of the Shrew?”

  “The Cherry Lane. Nineteen seventy-one. You were exquisite.”

  “Well, aren’t you nice? And you like my clothes, too.”

  He laughed again. “Guess you never know how things are going to turn out, right? I’m managing a rabbit-food emporium, and you’re pushing— I mean . . .”

  “Yes,” I jumped in. “Well, anyway, this really is a fine product. Would you consider trying a few packages?”

  “Look. Thanks, anyway. But we can’t use it. There’s a pet store around the corner. Why don’t you try them?”

  “I could leave it here on consignment,” I pressed on, though I wanted nothing more than to be out of there. “You pay nothing unless you sell it.”

  “I’m sure we won’t have any call for it.” He shook his head. He was starting to walk away. I was losing him.

  “One minute more!” I called out, knowing now the literal meaning of “Don’t take ‘no’ for an answer.” “You do know, of course, that catnip is not just for cats?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Did you know, for instance, that catnip was brought to the New World back in 1620 by a Captain Mason, who had selected it as one of the essential herbs to be planted in the gardens of Newfoundland fishermen?”

  I’d done it now. But since he’d obviously already decided I was a nut, I went on. “Why, the Romans used it for ailments of the nose and throat. The American colonists used it as a remedy for mild stomach disorders in children. And trappers used it to relieve poison ivy burns.”

  I didn’t know whether he believed all of it, but I knew then that I had him. I threw out, as a final flamboyant tidbit: “In medieval Europe it was a common culinary herb for soups and stews. And surely you know how delicious and healthful it is as a tea?”

  The man sighed, all the fight gone out of him. “Leave a couple,” he said, and he smiled again.

  I stacked twenty packets neatly on the counter and left.

  I began the walk home, exhausted.

  As soon as I turned the corner onto Twenty-Sixth Street, I spotted Tim Roman on the stoop of my apartment building.

  When he noticed me approaching, he straightened, holding my eyes with his own until we were standing face-to-face. His face looked thinner, and his eyes were bloodshot. His wavy gray hair was a little mussed. For the first time, he looked his age—about fifty. But if there was about him a worn-down air, there was also one of sportiness— Tim looked almost rakish. His black turtleneck and overalls gave him a look of downtown artiness. Well, after all, he was a designer.

  “I have something to give you,” he said in a clipped voice, nodding at an oblong box lying on the step. But my eye went of its own accord to the other box: a cat carrier.

  “That’s not . . . Swampy?” I asked, incredulous. Was he going to give me Barbara’s cat?!

  “Yes, it is Swampy,” he replied. “I thought you might spend a few minutes with him. He’s become so morose since Barbara— I think he misses a woman’s touch.”

  “But I have two cats upstairs, Tim. It wouldn’t be fair—not to mention safe—to bring another cat into the house.”

  “Couldn’t you put them in another room, just for a few minutes? I promise I won’t stay long.”

  He was obviously still in the throes of grief. There was so much pain in his face that at that moment I would have done just about anything to rid him of it.

  We climbed the stairs together, landing after landing, five flights in all. He waited outside while I herded my beasts into the small bedroom. Bushy was no problem; he was sleeping on the living room rug as usual, so I just plucked up the big Maine coon in my arms and carried him down the hall and dropped him on the bed. He yawned and sought out the pillow. Pancho was another story. My no-tailed, scarred, gray ASPCA survivor was on one of his crazy runs through the apartment, in flight from imaginary enemies. I stationed myself at the door of the bedroom, and when Pancho flew by and into the room, I shut the door behind him. Then I admitted Tim and his parcels.

  Tim went to the sofa and sat down, wearily stretching out his long legs. His tiredness showed in his every movement. Grief takes a lot out of you—I knew. He closed his eyes and kept them that way for a long moment. I sat quietly in my chair.

  Then he roused himself and bent down to open the door of the cat carrier.

  Swampy ambled out. I had seen the cat before at Barbara and Tim’s apartment, but I never ceased to marvel at him. Swampy was positively thuggish, the quintessential alley cat: a massive, low-framed beast with bright, confrontational eyes, a swaggering gait, and a short coat the blue-black color of a mean-looking gun.

  “Barbara talked to him all the time,” Tim said, “and now he has no one to communicate with.” A case of classic projection, I thought smugly, although I never would have said so. Instead I began to speak to Swampy, holding my hand near his head so that he could sniff me. He seemed to be uninterested in what I had to say. He just continued to check out his new surroundings, maybe looking for trouble. Then I got an idea. I fetched one of the packets of catnip and hit him gently on the nose with it, allowing him to get a good whiff. That perked him up. I threw the packet behind the pillow on the sofa. Swampy leaped up and began to search.

  With the cat happily engaged, Tim picked up his second package from the floor.

  “Here, Alice,” he said, extending it to me, handling the box as though it were a sacred object.

  I placed the box on my lap and took off the lid. Inside were a pair of running shoes and a jogging outfit. I continued to look down at the items, not understanding their significance.

  Tim leaned forward, pressing his strong, tapered fingers together. “They were Barbara’s,” he said quietly. “Alice, you know how much she thought of you. Barbara loved you. She’d want you to have something personal of hers, I just know she would.”

  I searched my mind for something to say. “I didn’t know that Barbara was . . . I didn’t know that she ran.”

  “Oh yes, for some time now. She ran every morning. Left the house at six and came back around eight. Then we’d have coffee together before I went to work.” He looked off then, and I could see that he was crying.

  “I think I’d better be leaving now,” he said. Tim retrieved the cat and stuffed him into the box. “Thank you, Alice.”

  I sat looking at the clothing, shaking my head. Then I closed the lid of the box and stashed it in the hall closet. Weird. The events of the long day were starting to close in on me. I was tired, too. I heard the sounds of a disagreement in the bedroom, so I went in and released my two cats. I lay down with the radio on and fell into a somber, dreamless sleep.

  Chapter 4

  “Earth to Swede. Earth to Swede. Come in, Alice! Where are you, girl?” Tony
Basillio was waving his hand in front of my face.

  We were sitting in a dark bar on Seventh Avenue in the twenties. It was a few minutes past noon.

  “I’m sorry, Tony,” I said, sipping from my club soda. “I’m distracted, I guess. Was I being rude?”

  “I wouldn’t say ‘rude,’” he laughed, “but I just told you the best news I’ve had since I left my wife. Since I decided to chuck the copy stores. Maybe my only good news since you stopped—ahem—sleeping with me. And you just sit there like you’ve lost your best friend.”

  He had just finished an exuberant story about the big break he’d received. He’d landed the job as stage designer for a far-out, modern-dress production of Julius Caesar, at the American Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Connecticut. The original group was long extinct, but a new company had been formed and were using the old theater. Excited at being back in the theater milieu, he couldn’t wait to get to work. He was leaving the City for Connecticut in a couple of days.

  I had to smile ruefully at the inadvertent sick joke he’d just made. “Truth is, Tony, I did lose my best friend. Just about my best friend.”

  “What do you mean?”

  I gave him the capsule version of recent events. He had known, of course, about my work at the herb garden, thought all of it was hilarious, but I had not spoken much about my friendship with Barbara and what she had come to mean to me. I don’t really know why I’d never told him how close we’d become—perhaps because I thought he’d be jealous. I depended heavily on Tony’s friendship, too.

  He paled. “Oh, God. I really put my foot in it, didn’t I?” he said. “Swede, I’m so sorry.” And he leaned over and kissed me.

  It was only when he leaned back that I noticed he was letting his hair grow long again. His thin face, handsome but pockmarked, and his deep-set eyes made him look rather like an aging addict. He would be pleased, I thought, to know that he was beginning to look like Julian Beck or better Artaud.