Love Saves the Day

by Gwen Cooper

  Josh has made the kitchen empty, too, and everything that used to live there is in a box or a garbage bag. It doesn’t look like our kitchen anymore, and the only way you could tell a human and a cat ever used it is because my bag of dry food is still sitting on the counter. When Laura comes out to wipe down the counters with a spritzy bottle and paper towels, she looks at the food and then looks around the apartment, as if she’s trying to see where I am. But then she just pushes the food bag to one side and keeps cleaning.

  I’ve never seen Laura look sad before, but today she seems sad. Her eyes fill up with water again as she moves into the living room, although she quickly blinks the water away. And the sadness is there in the way she talks, too. Usually Laura forms her opinions quickly and sticks to them, and you can tell, when she and Sarah disagree about something, how impatient she gets when Sarah hesitates and says, Well, maybe you’re right … I don’t know … And even though I always sympathize with Sarah, because she’s my Most Important Person, privately I agree with Laura that Sarah just needs to make up her mind. That’s part of the reason why Sarah and I get along so well, because I have strong opinions even when she doesn’t. Sarah always, for example, asks what I think about what she’s wearing before she goes out. If I like it, I stare at her with my eyes very big and put all my wisdom and approval into them. And if I don’t like it, I close my eyes slightly and turn my head off to the side, like maybe I’m just sleepy, but Sarah knows what that means. And she’ll say, You’re right, this skirt needs a different jacket, and change into something better before she leaves.

  But when Laura tells Josh she guesses they should get started on the big closets in the living room, she almost sounds confused. Instead of saying, We should get started on the big closets in the living room, she asks, I guess we should get started on the big closets in the living room? Even saying I guess instead of just we should is more uncertainty than Laura usually shows.

  I’m not sure what’s so confusing to her about this room. Everything in here seems ordinary to me. Maybe it looks and smells a little dustier than usual, with Sarah not having been here to clean for almost a week. My litterbox smells bad all the way from the bathroom and that’s embarrassing, especially when there’s a stranger here who doesn’t know how tidy I usually am.

  But I don’t think it’s dust or the litterbox that’s making Laura hesitate. Then it comes to me: Laura feels the way I do. She didn’t expect Sarah to leave any more than I did, and now she’s confused and sad because she has to decide what to do with Sarah’s and my stuff. I’ve been waiting for her to say something about where Sarah went and why, but she’s been left behind by Sarah just like I have.

  Realizing that even Laura didn’t know Sarah was leaving makes me feel for the first time that I really might never see Sarah again. It feels like my stomach is trying to squeeze all the way through the top of my throat. It feels worse than when humans used to shout at me on the streets, or the day I lost my littermates in that thunderstorm.

  Now I want desperately to come out, to tell Laura that maybe Sarah will come back if only we don’t move all her things that smell familiar and make her recognize this as her home. But Laura hasn’t called to me the way Sarah would, or tried to introduce me to the strange human in the way it’s supposed to be done. Too much is unusual today already, and the thought of coming out from under-the-couch the wrong way, without anybody even saying, Prudence, come here and meet so-and-so, the way Sarah always does, makes my stomach squeeze even harder.

  It’s Josh who first goes to the big closet and starts pulling things down. The shoe boxes of matchbook toys spill over his head. I expect him to be mad the way most humans would be if all those matchbooks fell on them, but he just says “D’oh!” and rubs his head in an exaggerated way, pretending the matchbook toys hurt him. From the way his eyes flick over to Laura I think he’s hoping she’ll laugh, because humans think it’s funny when things fall on other humans.

  Laura smiles, but that’s all.

  “Look at all these,” he says, crouching down to scoop up a handful of matchbooks. “Paradise Garage, Le Jardin, 8BC, Max’s Kansas City.” He puts them back in their box. “The writers I work with would kill to have spent five minutes at Max’s Kansas City.”

  Laura has finally started on the other closet, the smaller one near the front door. She’s going through boxes of papers, some of which she puts into folders that disappear into a big brown box. The others go directly into a garbage bag. “Just throw all that into trash bags,” she tells Josh. “The Salvation Army won’t want it.”

  Maybe the Army won’t want those things, but I do! How could Laura not even ask me what I want to do with my own (well, Sarah’s and my) things?

  Josh pauses when Laura says this, his hand in the middle of reaching up to pull things from the top shelf. He continues moving his hand in that direction, although he does it more slowly, the way you move to keep from startling a small animal. “You don’t want to throw it all away. Your mom wouldn’t have kept all this stuff if it didn’t mean something to her. Someday, when you’re ready, you’ll want to go back and look through it.”

  Laura sounds exasperated, just like she does whenever Sarah objects to what Laura thinks is a perfectly logical plan. “Where would we even put it all?”

  “There’s the spare bedroom,” Josh says in a quieter voice than the one he’s been using. “We could put everything there, temporarily at least.”

  Laura’s face changes just enough to let me know she doesn’t like this idea. If it were Sarah’s idea, Laura would keep arguing until she made herself right. But now she mutters, “Fine,” and keeps going through papers. Josh puts the matchbook toys back in their shoe boxes, then puts the whole thing into one of the big brown boxes. They’re both quiet again, until Josh struggles with a buldgy paper bag all the way in the back of the big closet. Once he’s freed it he peers inside and says, “Oh, wow!” Pulling out some of Sarah’s old newspapers and magazines, he says, “Mixmaster, New York Rocker, the East Village Eye.” His eyes go up and a little to the left, which means he’s remembering something. “My sister used to go into the city with her friends and bring these back for me. I still haven’t forgiven my mother for deciding they were ‘trash’ one day and throwing them all out.”

  Laura has been stacking up Sarah’s coats and jackets, which smell more like her than anything else. Why does she have to make everything of Sarah’s go away? Sarah once told me that if you remember someone, they’ll always be with you. But what if the opposite is true? What if getting rid of everything that reminds you of someone means they’ll never come back to be with you again? I feel the muscles around my face whiskers tighten and pull back again.

  Laura doesn’t know this, of course. She turns to face Josh, and when she sees the bag he’s looking through, she squints and walks over to where he’s sitting on the floor. She picks up the bag and looks at the script-y word-writing on its side. Then she says, “Love Saves the Day.”

  “Hm?” Josh says. He’s still flipping through the old newspapers.

  “Love Saves the Day,” she repeats. “That’s where this bag is from. It was that vintage store on Seventh and Second.” Now Laura’s eyes slide up and left. Her voice sounds softer, the way Sarah’s does when she’s telling me about something nice that happened to her a long time ago. “My mother and I used to go there sometimes when I was a kid. We’d spend hours trying on ridiculous outfits and then go up the block to Gem Spa for egg creams.”

  Josh grins up at her. “Do you have pictures?” I can tell he’s imagining Laura, except much smaller than she is now, wearing clothes like Sarah’s bird-clothes. He looks around the room. “I keep hoping to find your baby pictures, but I don’t see them anywhere.”

  The black centers of Laura’s eyes widen a little and her face colors, which is how I know what she’s about to say will be at least partly untrue. “We lost them in a move.”

  “Oh.” Josh sounds disappointed and unconvinced. But all
he says is, “That’s a shame.” He looks toward the table next to the couch, where Sarah and I keep a lamp and some framed pictures that I’ve learned to maneuver through without knocking them over. Josh says, “Well, at least there’s a picture of your mom and her cat.” He looks around the room. “Hey, where is the cat?”

  Laura’s head doesn’t move. “Hiding under the couch.”

  I’m not “hiding”! I’m waiting! Of course, I could never expect a human to understand a subtle difference like that. Still, this is probably as close as Laura is going to come to requesting my presence for a proper introduction. So, partly to give Laura a chance to do things the right way, and partly to make it perfectly clear to these humans that I was not “hiding,” I crawl out from under-the-couch and announce myself with a curt mew. Then I begin an elaborate stretching-and-grooming ritual, as if to say, Oh, is somebody here? I didn’t even realize it because I was napping so deeply. I certainly wasn’t hiding, if that’s what you were thinking.

  It’s easy to fool them, because humans have a much harder time detecting untruths than cats do.

  “Well, hey, Prudence,” Josh says, turning to face me. “You look like a sweet girl. You’re a sweet girl, aren’t you?”

  The condescension in his tone is unbearable. I fix him with an icy stare and swish my tail to remind him of his manners, and then I go back to cleaning my face with my left front paw. Josh slowly reaches out a hand toward the top of my head, but I stop him with a warning hiss. Talking to someone you haven’t been properly introduced to is rude, but touching someone you haven’t been properly introduced to is far worse. Laura laughs for the first time since she’s been here and says, “Don’t take it personally. Prudence isn’t a ‘people cat.’ ”

  Josh and Laura watch as I begin cleaning behind my ear. Why are they paying such close attention to how I wash myself? Then Josh says, “I’m happy to have her come live with us, Laur, but if you wanted to find another home for her, I’d understand. Everybody would understand.”

  Laura is silent for a moment as her eyes look into mine. I keep my face carefully expressionless, not wanting her to know how nervous I am thinking of all the unbearable change that would come from having to live in a new place with strangers. “It was important to my mother that Prudence stay with us,” Laura finally says. “She was very specific about it in her will.”

  I think about the day I met Laura. I was still small then, and I’d only been living with Sarah for four weeks and three days. Sarah said, in the voice she only uses when she’s talking to me, “Prudence, this is my daughter, Laura.” Laura stiffened when I approached her the way I knew I was supposed to when Sarah spoke in that voice. She didn’t bend down to get closer to me, she didn’t move at all, but her eyes followed me. “I’m sure she’d like it if you pet her,” Sarah said, and although I dislike being touched by humans I don’t know well, Laura smelled enough like Sarah to make me think that maybe I’d also adopted her when I adopted Sarah. I rubbed against her ankles and even purred for her. Not as much as I purr for Sarah, but enough to let Laura know I accepted her.

  She and Sarah shared a smile when they heard me purr, and I didn’t know back then how unusual it was to see the two of them smile at each other happily like that. Then Sarah said, “Animals have always liked you. I remember how crazy the Mandelbaums’ cat was about you.”

  And just like that, Laura’s whole face changed. One time, when I was still very small, Sarah didn’t see me in front of her and she stepped on my tail. The pain of it spread all the way up my back. And the sharp suddenness of that pain made me angry, so angry I hissed and whapped out at Sarah with my claws. That’s what Laura’s face looked like in that moment. First there was a fast and terrible pain, and then there was anger, just as fast and terrible, at Sarah for causing it. Laura stopped smiling and her shoulders got stiffer.

  “Honey,” Laura told Sarah. “The Mandelbaums’ cat was named Honey.” And then, using her voice the way I’d used my claws, Laura said, “I don’t even know why you want a cat, Mom. I didn’t think you cared about them all that much.”

  Sarah’s face looked sad then, although she didn’t try to defend herself. She knew she had said the wrong thing, even though I could tell she hadn’t meant to.

  I don’t want to go live with Laura. I don’t want to live anywhere with anybody except right here with Sarah. But if Sarah isn’t paying money to live here anymore, that means I can’t live here anymore, either. Apparently Sarah knew she was leaving and wanted me to live with Laura. Maybe she’s planning to come back and wants to be sure she knows exactly where to find me. That must be it!

  The relief I feel as I realize this is wonderful—so wonderful it’s all I can do to keep from collapsing into a deep, luxurious nap as the tension leaves my body. Still, I can tell by the way Laura is looking at me that she’s thinking about what Josh just said, how he would understand if Laura wanted to send me to live somewhere else. I remember how happy her face was for a moment when she heard me purr that first day, and I think she must like cats more than she’s willing to say right now. (What’s not to like about living with a cat?)

  So, ignoring Josh with his bad manners, I walk over to Laura and pat her leg with my paw, claws sheathed, the way I do when I want Sarah to pay attention. Then I rub my head against her ankles, to mark her with my scent and make her understand that she has no choice about whether or not to take me with her.

  Laura doesn’t reach down to pet me, but she does sigh in a resigned-sounding way. The tightness in my stomach relaxes even more, and I rub my head harder against her legs.

  Josh may never have had a cat to teach him proper manners, but spending only a few minutes with me has already made him smarter. He doesn’t say anything, but when he hears Laura sigh he can tell as plainly as I can that it’s been settled.

  The sun is getting lower and the apartment is almost empty. The closets have been cleared out, the rugs rolled up so the Army can take them when they come for the furniture. The posters on the wall that I used to love batting in different directions have been taken out of their glass frames and rolled up so they fit into the boxes of things that are coming with us. It looks and smells so different that, already, it’s getting harder for me to remember the life Sarah and I had together here. My plastic carrier is waiting by the door, and even though I usually hate getting into it (because the only time Sarah puts me in it is when she’s taking me to the Bad Place), I crawl in now voluntarily. I know I’m not going to the Bad Place today. And, besides, it’s almost the only thing left here that smells like Sarah and me at the same time.

  When Laura and Josh rolled up the rugs, they found the old squeaky toys Sarah used to bring back for me when I first came to live here. She always said how bad she felt that I had to be alone while she was out working, and she wanted to make sure I had something to play with and to make sounds for me when I was by myself. She never understood that I liked having my own quiet space and being alone sometimes. Maybe that was because Sarah never really liked being alone.

  Those toys weren’t as interesting to me as the matchbook toys or the newspapers Sarah crumpled up (it’s no fun to play with things you think you have to play with; it’s much more fun to play with stuff you just find), and I lost track of where they were a long time ago. But I remember how happy it made me when Sarah first brought them home. That was how I knew, even though she was never good at keeping to feeding schedules or things like that, that she was thinking about me even when she wasn’t here to see me. Just like I thought about her even when she was gone. It meant I was right that day when I decided to adopt her.

  I’m still angry with Sarah for leaving me without saying good-bye. Mostly, though, I just hope I get to see her again someday. She’s the only human I’ve ever loved.

  The only things still unpacked in the whole apartment are Sarah’s collection of black disks and the special table she plays them on. Josh washes his hands before he touches them, and from the way he approaches I can te
ll how badly he’s wanted to look through the black disks since he first walked in. I don’t like it, because those are Sarah’s black disks and even I’m not allowed to touch them. But Sarah doesn’t live here anymore. She must have had her reasons for leaving them, and that must mean that wherever she’s living now, she still gets to hear music.

  “I can’t believe how many there are,” Josh says to Laura. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a vinyl collection this big.”

  “I never noticed how big it was, either,” Laura says. “She must have kept more than I realized after she sold the record store.”

  “There’s such a range.” The way Josh sounds makes me wonder if maybe not all humans have a wall of black disks like Sarah does. From behind the metal bars of my carrier I can see Josh in pieces, the way I used to see the world in pieces when I’d crouch beneath our big window and look up through the fire escape bars. He sits down cross-legged in front of the records. “Look at all this.”

  “My mother was mostly into dance music,” Laura says. “But her roommate was in a punk band and the two of them swapped records a lot.”

  Josh grins. “I guess that explains why she’s got the Dictators’ Go Girl Crazy! shelved next to Disco Tex and the Sex-O-Lettes.”

  “Let’s pack them up. We can look through them later at home,” Laura says. When Josh hesitates, she turns her mouth up at the corners and says, “Scout’s honor.”

  Josh nods. Then he says, “Oh!” He stands and walks over to an open brown box and pulls something from it. “I didn’t wrap this because I thought you might want it for the apartment.”

  Laura walks over to see what Josh is holding. It looks like one of the framed photographs that used to live on the table next to the couch.

  “How old was she here?” Josh asks. “She looks so young.”

  Laura takes the picture from his hand. “She was nineteen. This was right before she had me.”