“No,” said Libertine. “Probably not.”
“Really?”
“Really. But listen, if you’re willing to keep an open mind and want to go down there sometime and see what we’re doing, I can probably arrange it.” And then, just like that, she hung up and had the most seditious thought: Wait until I tell Gabriel!
ON THE DRIVE down to Bladenham, Libertine told Ivy about the call from Trina.
“Hah!” Ivy crowed. “I knew it would work.”
“What would work?”
“Inviting you to be part of the project.” When Libertine turned in her seat to face her, Ivy patted her hand. “It’s nothing Machiavellian. I just thought if you could see for yourself what was involved in caring for our boy, you might feel less black-and-white about his being in captivity. So to speak.”
“So it was your idea to make me a volunteer?” Libertine asked, startled. The thought had never occurred to her before. She’d always assumed it was Truman’s, but Ivy must have planted it.
“It was. Of course, Truman and Gabriel had to agree.”
Libertine looked out her window at the flooded pasturelands while she collected herself. As a longtime loner, she wasn’t used to having other people direct her life, and though in this case she knew she should be grateful—was grateful—there was still something high-handed about Ivy’s pulling the strings. “I don’t know how I should feel about that,” she finally said.
Ivy glanced over at her. “You shouldn’t feel any way about it. We invited you and you accepted and now you know how much work and thought is involved in his rehabilitation. And if you happen to spread that word, it wouldn’t do any harm, either.”
“And what if I hadn’t ended up feeling that way?”
Ivy just smiled complacently. “I had faith.”
“This is making me really uncomfortable,” Libertine said, looking hard out of the passenger-side window.
Ivy glanced over, surprised. “Really?”
“I feel manipulated.”
“You shouldn’t. If anything, it was a vote of confidence in you. You know, your profession doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.” Libertine’s jaws clenched, but Ivy, apparently oblivious, went on. “Anyway, I wanted to give you a chance to have firsthand access to the whale. To help him, if he needed you.”
“And to help you, if he didn’t.”
“Exactly.”
“Well,” said Libertine doubtfully, “I guess I can’t fault your logic.”
“Of course not,” said Ivy.
But Libertine had moved on. “And Gabriel—what does he think of me now?”
“As far as I know, he’s accepted you as a member of the team.”
Is that all? Libertine thought but didn’t say. She could feel Ivy looking over at her, trying to get a read on her state of mind.
“No, more than that,” Ivy amended. “I know he’s glad you’re there. You’re providing a valuable extra pair of hands, and you don’t get in the way.”
“He told you that?”
“He did.”
At least it was better than Who?
THEY REACHED BLADENHAM in a driving rain. After waving good-bye to Ivy, Libertine pulled up her hood and reached into her raincoat pocket for the keys she was sure she’d put there. No keys. She scrabbled in her purse, with the same result. Getting wetter by the second, she was relieved to see lights on in Johnson Johnson’s house. He’d have an extra key. She dodged the puddles and knocked at the kitchen door. When there was no answer she gently pushed the door open and called out.
Johnson Johnson appeared in the doorway between the kitchen and living room. “Have you ever walked on the ceiling?” he asked her.
“What?”
“Walked on the ceiling.”
“Metaphorically, you mean?” She tried and failed to dampen a rising sense of impatience.
Johnson Johnson offered her the little square mirror he’d been holding and she declined.
“I’m sorry—I don’t know what—”
He demonstrated, holding the mirror against the bridge of his nose and looking down into it. “You have to be real careful not to step on the lights or kick them. Sometimes I trip over the door jambs, so you have to watch out for them, too.”
Helplessly Libertine watched him weave and giant-step his way around the kitchen and wondered if there was someone she should call.
“Here,” he said, holding out the mirror to her. “Now you.”
“I don’t really think—”
He held the little mirror to her face helpfully. She flinched, but he said, “Now look down.”
She looked down—and instantly understood. Reflected back to her was the kitchen ceiling, giving the illusion that this, not the floor, was where her feet were firmly planted. “Now walk,” Johnson Johnson said excitedly. “Go ’head.”
Sure enough, Libertine found herself circling the light fixture, which appeared to be growing vertically at her feet, its chain magically transformed into a stem, the glass shade a mushroom top. She laughed out loud. When she lowered the mirror after completing a thorough circuit of the kitchen, Johnson Johnson was beaming, his hands clasped to his chest in delight. “See?” he said, bouncing a little on the balls of his feet. “See?”
“I really was walking on the ceiling,” she marveled, handing the mirror back. “I felt like I could sit right on the light and it would hold me.”
“I like to jump from the kitchen into the living room and back. You have to jump pretty high, though, because it’s a long way from the ceiling to the archway. Sometimes I don’t even make it.”
Libertine high-stepped over the doorway and almost immediately caught sight of the upside-down living room wall beyond. Lowering the mirror, she saw that the entire wall was covered by a fun-house array of carpeted shelves and ramps and tubes and hammocks. Several holes in the ceiling led to upstairs rooms. In the very center, Kitty was peacefully snoring in a suspended faux-fur hammock. Libertine stood motionless in the doorway, transfixed. “Oh!” she cried. “Neva described this to me, but I had no idea it was so wonderful!”
“The hammock is heated, so Kitty can sleep there in the winter,” Johnson Johnson said. “He has arthritis.”
“He’s told me,” Libertine said. “I guess on an especially damp day even the small bones in his tail hurt. So I can imagine how much he appreciates this.”
“I know,” said Johnson Johnson.
Libertine checked her watch and saw that it was nearly six o’clock. “Hey, shouldn’t you be at the Oat Maiden?”
“Truman says I have to take at least one evening off every week.”
“Well, that’s smart. So you don’t burn out.”
Johnson Johnson nodded soberly.
“Just out of curiosity, what do you do on your days off?” Libertine asked.
“I make treats for the bears.”
“Bears?”
“At the zoo.”
“What kind of treats?”
“They really like fruit bars.”
“They do?”
“With apricots. And raisins.”
“Sounds like a busman’s holiday.” She suddenly became aware of her rain-damp jeans and the leaking seams of her jacket, and set down on the counter the small mirror she still held in her hand. “I almost forgot why I came over,” she said. “I’ve lost my key.”
He looked grave. “But then you can’t get in.”
“Exactly. If you can unlock the door, I’ll find my key eventually, or I can have a copy made tomorrow if I don’t.”
“Course.”
So she followed him into the rain, pulling up her hood and concentrating on his Doc Martin–booted feet splashing ahead of her down the little path to her apartment.
“I’m so glad you were home,” she said when he’d unlocked the door.
“Me, too,” he said, and she wondered whether he meant he was glad to have been home because he so seldom was, or that he was glad he’d been there to help her—nuance wa
s not his strong suit. In any event she watched him until he’d reached his back door and ducked into the warmth and light without looking back. For the merest fraction of a second, she felt his presence in her head, the first human she’d ever perceived, as sweet and light as a whisper.
THE NEXT FRIDAY, on one of Libertine’s days off, the phone woke her from a sound sleep. Neva was on the other end.
“Hey, we just stopped at the Oat Maiden on the way to work to pick up a muffin and it wasn’t open. No sign, no explanation, nothing. We called Delilah and she said she’d waited for half an hour and then she went back home. She tried calling Johnson Johnson, and then she tried calling you, but no one answered.”
When she wasn’t working late Libertine had fallen into the habit of having a mug of milk and a chocolate chip cookie at the Oat Maiden just before closing. Once the door was locked, she helped Johnson Johnson and sometimes Delilah clean up the kitchen and restock condiments, top off the soda dispenser, and wipe down and set the tables for the following morning.
“Maybe he’s sick. But I saw him yesterday and he was fine,” Libertine said.
“He worked a few months ago with a temperature of a hundred and four,” Neva said. “So he’s not sick. Can you check on him?”
That woke her up. She pulled on jeans and a Biedelman Zoo sweatshirt and ducked out into the rainy morning. When Johnson Johnson failed to answer her knock she tried the kitchen door, pushing it open when he didn’t answer; and saw him sitting on the kitchen floor cradling a dying cat in his arms, his cheeks streaming with tears.
“Oh, no—oh, honey, not Kitty.” Libertine squatted down beside him, her knees going off like gunshots.
Johnson Johnson looked at her, brokenhearted. “He always comes to eat. He likes tuna, which is what we have on Friday mornings, but he didn’t come. I found him in his favorite basket, the one in the bathroom where all the clean towels are.”
“And he was like this?” Libertine sat on the floor. “May I see?”
Johnson Johnson nodded miserably. Libertine gently lifted the old tomcat in her arms, smoothed his fur, listened to him breathe; and then, returning him to Johnson Johnson’s arms, she sat down on the floor. “He’s in no pain,” she said softly. “And he isn’t frightened.”
They sat together for five, then ten more minutes before the old cat drew a few deep breaths, pressed a little more heavily into Johnson Johnson’s arms, and was gone. Johnson Johnson gave an involuntary cry.
“I’m so sorry,” Libertine said. “He was a wonderful cat and you gave him the best home in the world. He knew how much you loved him, and that you were with him at the end.” She plucked a paper towel off the roll and gently blotted his face.
“Can you hear him?” he whispered.
“No.”
“I’m going to miss him so much,” Johnson Johnson said.
“I know you will,” Libertine said.
“Do Chocolate and Chip know?”
“I’m sure they do. Animals can sense when death is near.” Libertine was quiet for a long beat, and then said, “Neva and Truman stopped by the Oat Maiden a little while ago. They’re worried about you. I want to call so they know you’re all right.”
Johnson Johnson barely nodded.
“And then let’s bury Kitty and get some flowers for his grave. I think he’d like that.”
Soberly he said, “Yes.”
“May I have him?”
Johnson Johnson allowed Libertine to take the body gently from his arms. “Do you have any clean dishtowels?” He pointed mutely to a drawer and she pulled out two plain white linen cloths, shrouding the body tenderly on the kitchen counter.
“One of us needs to call Neva back,” she said. “Do you want to do it?”
Johnson Johnson was still sitting on the kitchen floor. “You,” he said; and so she did, telling her their sad news.
“Oh, no.”
“He’s devastated.”
“I’m sure.” Libertine could hear Neva cover the mouthpiece and say over her shoulder, presumably to Truman, “Kitty died. The old one—the tomcat.” And then to Libertine she said, “I’d like to come and pay my respects. He was a good cat. I know how much Johnson Johnson loved him.”
Libertine put her cell phone against her chest and said, “Neva and Truman would like to come pay Kitty their respects. Is that okay?” Johnson Johnson nodded mutely. Libertine turned the phone back and said to Neva, “How soon can you get here?”
“Half an hour, plus or minus.”
“They’re coming in half an hour,” she told Johnson Johnson once she’d hung up. She extended a hand. “Come on—let’s get you off the floor.”
Johnson Johnson took her hand and she pulled as hard as she could, until they were perfectly balanced, and then he flew forward and she staggered backward right into the kitchen counter.
“Ow,” said Johnson Johnson, looking at her with alarm.
Libertine rubbed her back ruefully. “I’m fine. Do you have coffee? I could make coffee. I think we could use some.”
Johnson Johnson directed her to a bag of beans, a grinder, and the coffeemaker—a very good one, she was surprised to find. She wouldn’t have pegged him as a coffee drinker; he seemed like more of an herbal-tea-with-sugar type. She didn’t really want coffee and he probably didn’t, either, but it gave her something to do, and that was the point. Once the machine was burbling and huffing, she admired the room, as she always did when she was here. Like the Oat Maiden, it was a cheerful masterpiece, with a black-and-white checkered mopboard and a compass painted on the floor.
Johnson Johnson was standing in a corner of the room with his arms abandoned at his sides. “I’d love to hear what Kitty was like when you first met him,” Libertine said. She motioned Johnson Johnson to sit across from her at the kitchen table, which was painted with the kind of black-and-white spiral used in optical illusions and 1960s movies to denote a time change or entrance into a dream state.
To Libertine’s surprise Johnson Johnson pulled his chair in to the table and closed his eyes. “I was taking out the garbage and I heard meowing in the bushes—those purple rhododendron by the mailbox. I looked underneath and it was Kitty. He was bleeding from his ear, and he was really brave, because I had to use a little shampoo to get the blood out of his fur. He didn’t try to bite me or run away or anything. After that I gave him some milk and a can of tuna, and he ate the whole thing. Maybe he hadn’t eaten in a while. So then, when he was done, I fixed him a nice bed in a box and told him he could live with me if he wanted to, and he did.”
“You could tell he was very happy here.”
Johnson Johnson nodded solemnly. “I know.”
Then they both got quiet for a few minutes. Libertine was surprised at how comfortable the silence was, as though talk between her and Johnson Johnson was unnecessary—something she’d never felt with anyone before, not even with Larry Adagio. “Do you have any family here?” she asked after a while.
“My parents,” he said.
“But I thought they were . . . gone.”
He nodded. “They’re in the cemetery, but that’s here.”
“Oh. No brothers or sisters?”
“No. After me, I don’t think they wanted anybody else.”
“I’ve heard you were a very good son. Truman said you took excellent care of them right to the end.”
“Well, I mean, they were home and I was home, so. . . .” He appeared to struggle for a minute with a thought. “Do you think Friday misses his family?”
“I don’t know. I’m sure he must have, at least in the beginning. He was caught when he was still very young and dependent. I’ve definitely had the sense that he was frightened. His mother was on the other side of the net, I think, trying to get him out, but she couldn’t do it.”
“I didn’t know they caught him. Why did they catch him?”
Libertine could see his distress. “So people could come and see him. There’s a lot of money in that.”
&n
bsp; “Oh. Who caught him?”
“I don’t know.”
“Maybe someone should catch them.”
Libertine laughed, but he was deadly serious. “Then they’d know.”
They sat with their thoughts until Libertine said quietly, “You know, neither one of us has family nearby—living family, I mean—and everybody needs that. So I have an idea: would it be okay if I’m your family, and you’re mine?”
Johnson Johnson looked at her solemnly before nodding.
“So from now on,” she said, “if you need help, if you’re sad or happy, if you’re unsure about something, come to me and we’ll figure it out together.”
Johnson Johnson nodded emphatically. “Yes,” he said.
WHEN THE COFFEE was ready Libertine found thick white mugs in a cabinet over the stove and poured them each a brimming cup that neither of them touched. Outside, a freshening wind made skeletal branches tap insistently against the window over the sink and sorrow filled the room. Neither of them said another word until Neva and Truman arrived with a dozen carnations for Kitty’s grave—Neva had gotten to know Kitty well during the year she’d rented the little apartment that Libertine lived in now. Ivy roared up in her emissions-belching Mercedes, and Sam and Corinna pulled in right behind her. Sam put a box of Dunkin’ Donuts on the counter and Corinna hugged Johnson Johnson tightly and Libertine slipped out back during the commotion and dug a grave beneath a rhododendron.
When they were all outside, Neva asked Johnson Johnson, who carried the shrouded Kitty with the utmost care, if he would like to say any last words, and when he looked stricken Corinna placed a hand on his arm and said, “Honey, would you rather have one of us to do that?”
He nodded and they all exchanged glances—You? No, you—and Libertine noticed that through the telepathy of close friendships they all agreed it should be Truman. Clearing his throat and with heartfelt solemnity, he said, “We are gathered here to honor a cherished family member and comfort our good friend.” He turned to Johnson Johnson and said, “Kitty found unconditional love in your heart as well as your home. Because of you, in his senior years he never went hungry, never suffered in the cold and rain, and always knew he was safe in the home you gave him. No gifts are greater.” He paused a moment, and then concluded, “Here lies a good cat. He will be missed.”
Friday's Harbor: A Novel Page 15
