The door didn’t open. Nothing moved inside. She clawed harder. Soon a figure moved on the couch.
The man stretched, and the cat backed away. But the next minute she pressed at the glass again, looking in sideways, her whiskers flattened in white lines across her cheek. She had received food in that room; she had known warmth and shelter in there, and love. Layers of her nature surfaced, layers of Melissa’s childhood, but to the cat, she simply needed to be in there.
When the man didn’t come to let her in, she raked again impatiently. She saw him swing his feet to the floor.
He couldn’t believe this. The cat was staring in, raking its claws insolently down the glass. Why wasn’t it still afraid? Why had it come down here? A chill touched him. What the hell did it want? As it reared up, its belly shone white against the glass. Its mottled and white face seemed curiously intent, its green eyes demanding. He snatched up a museum catalog and threw it hard at the glass. The cat stopped clawing. But it didn’t run; it looked angry, almost looked incensed.
Maybe it smelled Morian, maybe had followed her because she fed it, maybe it thought she was in here. He pulled on his shorts, got a cup of coffee, sucking in the first sip, and went to shower and shave. The cat would be gone when he came out. He slammed the bathroom door on the sound of its claws.
When he came out the cat was still there. But it wasn’t scratching now, it was mewling. He rushed at the door shouting, flung it open, and chased the cat into the bushes.
He put the canvas of Natalie at Summer on the easel, poured out turpentine and oil, got a fresh cup of coffee, and stood back to study the painting. Then, squeezing half a dozen tubes onto the palette, he got to work; softening Natalie’s face and the purple shadow across her forehead, working in Indian Red, toning down the umbrella and its shadow across her shoulder. At some point the cat came back and began yowling stridently and clawing again. He wanted to throw the easel at it.
He worked steadily, ignoring the sound until his stomach began to growl either from frustration at the noise or from hunger. He refilled his coffee cop and stood in the hall looking at the painting. It was coming to life—there was warmth now. This was the one he’d wanted most to make right, the one Morian had looked at longest last night, though she had said nothing.
The cat was suddenly so quiet he looked up, hoping it was gone. It stared back at him, its green eyes huge and demanding. Christ, he and Morian had spent half the night waiting in the woods for the damned cat. It wouldn’t come then, so why was it down here now, trying to get in? He went into the kitchen, started some bacon, and broke four eggs into a bowl. When he turned the skillet down he could hear the cat yowling.
Why the hell didn’t it go to Morian’s? She was the one who wanted to feed it and mother it. He went out to chase it off, but this time it didn’t run. When he shouted it stood at the edge of the terrace looking so determined he almost laughed. For a little thing, it had a hell of a nerve.
Alice said cats went to the people who disliked them, that they found that amusing. He smelled the bacon burning, made a dash for the kitchen and flipped it onto a plate, swearing. He washed the skillet and started over, then turned the bacon low and went to phone Morian.
“That cat’s down here.”
“What cat?”
“The one last night.”
“Don’t be silly, Brade. It wouldn’t come there, it was too frightened.”
“The same cat. Clawing my door.”
“It can’t be. Are you sure? Calico with white paws and—”
“The same cat.”
“I’ll be down.” She hung up, and in a minute she came down the garden dressed to go to work in a sleek café au lait suit. Before she reached the veranda the cat fled for the bushes. Morian stood looking after it as Braden opened the door.
“It’s the same cat,” she said, frowning. She approached the bushes and tried to coax it out, kneeling awkwardly in her high heels, talking softly. They could see the cat peering but it wouldn’t come out.
Morian left at last, instructing Braden to feed it. “I’ll come for her tonight—my class is in an hour. Please, Brade—she’s just a young little thing, and frightened.”
“She wasn’t frightened while tearing up my door. And she looks old enough to hunt for her breakfast.”
“Feed her, Brade.” She cupped his chin in her hand, brushed his lips with hers, and left him.
He scrambled the eggs, put the burned bacon on a paper towel for the cat, and took his breakfast to the veranda. The sun rising at the back of the house left the terrace in shadow but washed golden light across the upper garden. The whole garden was torn and tangled from the wind, scattered with broken limbs. He put the burnt bacon by the bush, and his own plate on the table at the other end of the terrace.
He had eaten only a few bites when the cat came out. She sniffed the bacon but didn’t eat it. She sat down, staring the length of the terrace directly at him. Directly into his eyes. He looked back at her for some time, strangely caught by her clear, green gaze. She blinked, and blinked again, then bent her head and began to eat the burnt bacon.
When she finished the bacon she looked up as if she wanted more. He set his plate down at his feet, knowing she wouldn’t have the nerve to come for it.
She approached the plate slowly, her body tensed to run. Her green stare didn’t leave him. She was as dark as mink in the shadow of the terrace, her white markings sharply defined. She stalked the plate and watched him, seeming to hold both Braden and the plate in her wide gaze.
And, crouched at his feet, she licked up his scrambled eggs and bacon then got to work on the half piece of toast, holding it down with one white paw, tearing off small, neat bites, glancing up at him with a complacent warmth.
When she had cleaned his plate she gave him a slow shuttered look and flopped over at his feet to lie sprawled totally unprotected and trusting. Upside down, she began to wash her paws and face, glancing coyly up at him.
Amazed, he sat still, watching her. He guessed he didn’t know much about cats. He would never have thought one so frightened would so quickly turn bold. Amused by her, he studied the painterly mixture of russet and black that patterned her thick coat with intricate swirls almost like batik.
Her four feet were white like small white gloves, and the bottoms of her paws were pink. Where the fur parted at her white throat, the skin was pink, making her look frail and vulnerable. Her mouth and triangular nose were pale pink, her ears so thin the light shone through.
When he moved to get up she fled to the bushes.
He scrambled four more eggs and ate them in the kitchen, put his plate in the sink, made more coffee, and got back to work. Working, he glanced occasionally through the glass at the cat, who lay trustingly asleep on the terrace.
Satisfied with Natalie, he tackled Lady with a Yellow Buggy. Garcheff wasn’t having his gallery date. They were good friends; Garcheff would say he never dreamed of such a thing, unless of course Braden wanted to get off the hook. He was working steadily now, with a calm, sure sense. All he’d needed was Morian in his bed. He glazed gold into the shadows, worked life into the woman’s face where before it had been stark, wove light into her figure and into the tree-tossed background until the painting began to glow. The old sure, elated feeling lifted him. When he looked up the door was ajar.
The cat was asleep on the model’s couch, stretched across a piece of vermilion silk. He moved to grab her by the back of the neck and dump her out, but he thought she might scratch.
If she got behind the stacked canvases he’d never get her out. He bent and took her up carefully, sliding his hands under her warm, relaxed body. She hardly woke, she lay limp and trusting in his hands, raising her gaze full on him, her eyes languid.
He stood looking down at her, holding her. Her warmth radiated through his hands. At last he put her back down on the couch, on the warm indentation she had made in the silk.
This way, he’d know where to find her when Moria
n got home.
It was evening, almost six, when he finished Lady with a Yellow Buggy. Drained, he avoided looking at the work, had looked too long, the colors burned into his mind so he couldn’t see anything clearly. But he knew the work had life now, resonance. Somewhere he had gone heavy-handed with this series, working as if with dead people. Still, maybe this was a false high, maybe he’d hate the stuff tomorrow. The cat was awake, staring up at him all languid ease and long emerald eyes, her mouth curved as if she were smiling. She jumped off the couch with a soft thud and came to him, wound around his bare ankles. The sensation was so strange he stepped away. Where the hell was Morian?
When the cat rolled onto her back, her white belly and throat exposed, he thought he could have crushed her throat with one kick. Before he knew it he was kneeling, stroking her.
She really was thin, all bones beneath the soft fur. Tiny little bones; he hadn’t realized cats were so delicate. He must have known that once, because Alice was always petting cats on the street and he must have petted them to please her. When he stopped stroking her, the cat touched his hand with a soft white paw, wanting him to keep on. Irritated, he turned from her to look up the garden, wondering if Morian was home. He saw Anne Hollingsworth pull in, leaving her car in the drive. When he rose to make himself a drink, the cat followed him to the kitchen.
“I’m not feeding you again—forget it. Morian can feed you. Cats stay where they’re fed.” The cat sat down in the middle of the kitchen and looked up at him demandingly. He turned away, relieved at the knock on the door. Morian could get the damned beast out of here.
It wasn’t Morian, it was Anne—disheveled, red-faced from crying, her brown hair half damp and unknotted, her eyes swollen. Even her tailored suit looked limp.
“I’m sorry, Brade, but I can’t—I wouldn’t come barging in but…” She shivered and dug in her purse for a handkerchief. He put his arm around her and led her in, and handed her a clean paint rag. She blew her nose on it, then leaned bawling against him. He held her close, amazed; he’d never seen Anne cry. He’d never seen her messy and unkempt. She was the essence of the perfect professional woman.
Finally she got herself under control. Gulping back the last spasms, she stared up at him. Her face was blotched; she looked terrible. Damp hair clung to her forehead. She straightened her blouse, picked up his drink from the work table, and took a long, calming swallow.
“I’ll make myself another, come on.” He guided her toward the kitchen, like directing a small child. “Can you talk about it?”
“It’s Tom.” She leaned against the cupboard where he put her. “He’s worse. Not—not sicker. Just…I don’t know…His temperature’s gone. Two weeks of flu has left him pale and he’s lost a lot of weight. But it’s not any of that, it’s—the way he is.” She looked up at him, her eyes filled with a fear that made him stare. “He looks at me like a stranger, Brade. As if he hates me. He…” She finished her drink and accepted the refill he had ready. He had made it weak—she wasn’t a heavy drinker.
“He doesn’t look at me the same. He doesn’t speak to me the same. I could be the scrub woman. He’s…totally unresponsive. I don’t know how to describe it.” She shook her head. “Braden, I’m afraid of him. I’m afraid of my own child.”
He didn’t understand what she was saying; she wasn’t making sense. “Let me run it by you. Tom doesn’t look at you the same way. He doesn’t speak to you the same, and you’re afraid of him.”
She nodded.
“How long have you felt this way?”
“It’s not the way I feel! It’s the way he is!”
“I’m sorry, Anne. How long has he been this way?” She made him uneasy; he kept wanting to move around. He propelled her toward the studio.
She sat down, cradling her drink.
“How long?”
“This is going to sound insane. As if—as if I’m going on about nothing.”
He waited.
“It started this morning. But he’s so…”
Braden tried not to show his annoyance.
“Listen, Brade, I know how it sounds. But it’s true. He’s—it started this morning all at once. He is totally, completely different. He could be a different boy.”
“But you can’t…”
“He is so changed, Brade. As if—as if that boy up there is not my son.” Anne looked up at him, her face puffy and desperate. He felt chills; he’d never known Anne to have flights of imagination. He wondered if she’d been working extra hard or if something had happened he didn’t know about. Anne was the sensible one, always in charge of her life, perfectly groomed in her neat little business suits, able to juggle her work and care for Tom, planning things out, knowing exactly what to allow for in a given situation.
He said, “All the time Tom was sick he wasn’t like this?”
She shook her head.
“But now, today, he’s different.”
“Yes.”
“Did you call the doctor?”
“I called him and went to talk to him. I just got back. He said—he just said…to wait. To see how Tom is in a few days. See if he gets worse. Call him if he gets worse.”
Braden took her glass and went to refill it. When he got back she was sitting just as he had left her, clutching her hands together in the same way, her knuckles white. She went on talking as if she hadn’t stopped. “And the cat—he—Tom tried to kill Pippin.”
She looked at Braden nakedly, her eyes like a hurt child. “You know how Tom loves Pippin. That cat hardly left Tom’s room the whole time he was sick. Tom lay there with Pippin cuddled in his arms.” She began to sob again, choking, then looked up at Braden with cold anger. “This morning Tom threw an iron bookend at Pippin—threw it hard enough to kill him, it made a terrible dent in the wall. It barely missed Pippin. Tom was white with rage. When Pippin leaped away, Tom grabbed up the lamp to throw that, jerking out the cord, standing up on the bed screaming. I snatched the lamp from him and got Pippin out of the house. The look on Tom’s face, his eyes…The cold, horrible look in his eyes…”
Braden held her—he didn’t know what else to do.
“Pippin won’t even come to me now. He just runs; he won’t come near the house. I don’t blame him.”
“Maybe it’s Tom’s medicine. Could the medicine have turned him strange?”
“He hasn’t had that prescription for a week. He had Pippin on his bed last night while he ate dinner, loving and petting him. It was only this morning when I carried Pippin into his room that…Pippin tensed suddenly and stared at Tom and leaped away, clawing me and hissing. He has never done that. And the minute Tom saw him he went white and grabbed the bookend.”
“But why did Pippin hiss when you brought him in? Tom hadn’t hurt him yet.”
“I’m trying to tell you. Tom…” She set her drink down, put her face in her hands.
He knelt beside the chair, holding her hand, puzzled and upset by her lack of control.
“When Tom got sick that first night, Brade, when his fever was so high, he kept saying strange things, crazy things. But he was never like this, not like today. He seems filled with hatred suddenly—with a cold, terrifying hatred.”
“Drugs can cause mental change, Anne. Psychological change.”
“When I reminded the doctor of that, he said, Not with this drug.”
“And a drug could cause him to smell different,” Braden said reasonably. “Maybe to the cat he smells different. Maybe—Bob says…”
“I don’t want to hear what Bob says.” She glared at him, then lowered her glance. “I’m sorry. You touched a sore place. I don’t want to think about—about Tom being…”
He held her close. “I know you don’t. But if the drugs caused it, it isn’t like his father was. It’s—why don’t you…”
“Talk to Bob?” She shook her head.
“Talk to the doctor. Ask him if—”
“I told you! I did talk to him! That’s half of what’s the matte
r. He doesn’t believe me. He really doesn’t give a damn!” She stared at him, enraged. “I just came from talking to him. He left me so—he said there was never a case of that happening with this drug. Never. But then when I pressed him he said maybe it could happen, he simply couldn’t say. He didn’t offer any help, he didn’t offer to see Tom. He didn’t want to run any tests, he just said to wait, see what happens. He just covered himself and left me hanging. That’s what’s so terrifying, that there’s no one to understand or to help. No one to tell me what’s wrong.”
A crash cut them short. Braden remembered the cat and headed for the kitchen.
The cat was in the middle of the table ravaging a loaf of bread. Ravaging was the only word; she had shredded the wrapper and was hunched over the bread, gulping it down. She had, in the process, knocked a plate off, smashing it.
“When did you get a cat?” Anne said behind him. “Tom will—would have—would have laughed,” she said faltering.
“After all your remarks about cats. Braden, she’s hungry. You can’t feed her bread. Don’t you have any cat food?”
“It’s not my cat. I didn’t feed it the bread—can’t you see it just helped itself? I didn’t ask it in here, it’s Morian’s cat. Go call her and tell her the damned cat’s down here.” Maybe that would distract Anne. And maybe Morian could do something to help her, make her feel better.
Anne knelt and took the cat in her arms, stroking it. It relaxed against her, staring into her face coquettishly, and purring. With the cat over her shoulder like a baby, she opened the cupboard door, found a can of chicken, as familiar with his kitchen as with her own. They often fixed meals together, platonic and comfortable, Anne and Tom, Morian and Olive Cleaver.
“For Christ sake, don’t feed it my chicken. It’ll never leave. Let Morian feed it.”
The Catswold Portal Page 19
