Gertrude put both hands to her face. “How terrible, Mr. Van!”
“I remember packing the wagon for that trip. I was-s-s complaining all the time about sore arches. Hah! What I would give for some sore arches today yet!”
“Wasn’t Frank hurt?”
Mr. Van made an impatient gesture. “His-s-s head only. They picked Waterford crystal out of that blockhead for six hours. He has-s-s been gek ever since.” He tapped his temple.
“Where did you find this unusual wheelchair?” I asked.
“My dear Mevrouw, never ask a dealer where he found something. It was-s-s made for a railroad millionaire in 1872. It has-s-s the original plush. If you must spend your life in a wheelchair, have one that gives some pleasure. And now we come to the purpose of tonight’s visit. Ladies, I want you to do something for me.”
He wheeled himself to a desk, and Gertrude and I exchanged anxious glances.
“Here in this desk is-s-s a new will I have written, and I need witnesses. I am leaving a few choice items to museums. Everything else is-s-s to be sold and the proceeds used to establish a foundation.”
“What about Frank?” asked Gertrude, who is always genuinely concerned about others.
“Bah! Nothing for that smeerlap! . . . But before you ladies sign the papers, there is-s-s one thing I must write down. What is-s-s the full name of my little sweetheart?”
We both hesitated, and finally I said: “Her registered name is Superior Suda of Siam.”
“Good! I will make it the Superior Suda Foundation. That gives me pleasure. Making a will is-s-s a dismal business, like a wheelchair, so give yourself some pleasure.”
“What—ah—will be the purpose of the foundation?” I asked.
Mr. Van blessed us with one of his ambiguous smiles. “It will sponsor research,” he said. “I want universities to study the highly developed mental perception of the domestic feline and apply the knowledge to the improvement of the human mind. Ladies, there is-s-s nothing better I could do with my fortune. Man is-s-s eons behind the smallest fireside grimalkin.” He gave us a canny look, and his eyes narrowed. “I am in a position to know.”
We witnessed the man’s signature. What else could we do? A few days later we left on vacation and never saw Mr. Van again.
Gertrude and I always went south for three weeks in winter, taking SuSu with us. When we returned, the sorry news about our eccentric neighbor was thrown at us without ceremony.
We met Frank on the elevator as we were taking our luggage upstairs, and for the first time he spoke. That in itself was a shock.
He said simply, without any polite preliminaries: “They took him away.”
“What’s that? What did you say?” we both clamored at once.
“They took him away.” It was surprising to find that the voice of this muscular man was high-pitched and rasping.
“What happened to Mr. Van?” my sister demanded.
“He cracked up. His folks come from Pennsylvania and took him back home. He’s in a nut hospital.”
I saw Gertrude wince, and she said: “Is it serious?”
Frank shrugged.
“What will happen to all his antiques?”
“His folks told me to dump the junk.”
“But they’re valuable things, aren’t they?”
“Nah. Junk. He give everybody that guff about museums and all.” Frank shrugged again and tapped his head. “He was gek.”
In stunned wonderment my sister and I reached our apartment, and I could hardly wait to say it: “I told you your Dutchman was unbalanced.”
“Such a pity,” she murmured.
“What do you think of the sudden change in Frank? He acts like a free man. It must have been terrible living with that old Scrooge.”
“I’ll miss Mr. Van,” Gertrude said softly. “He was very interesting. SuSu will miss him, too.”
But SuSu, we observed later that evening, was not willing to relinquish her friend in the wheelchair as easily as we had done.
We were unpacking the vacation luggage after dinner when SuSu staged her demonstration. She started to gurgle and prance, exactly as she had done all winter whenever Mr. Van was approaching our door. Gertrude and I watched her, waiting for the bell to ring. When SuSu trotted expectantly to the door, we followed. She was behaving in an extraordinary manner. She craned her neck, made weaving motions with her head, rolled over on her back, and stretched luxuriously, all the while purring her heart out; but the doorbell never rang.
Looking at my watch, I said: “It’s eight-thirty. SuSu remembers.”
“It’s quite touching, isn’t it?” Gertrude remarked.
That was not the end of SuSu’s demonstrations. Almost every night at half past eight she performed the same ritual.
I recalled how SuSu had continued to sleep in the guest room long after we had moved her bed to another place. “Cats hate to give up a habit. But she’ll forget Mr. Van’s visits after a while.”
SuSu did not forget. A few weeks passed. Then we had a foretaste of spring and a sudden thaw. People went without coats prematurely, convertibles cruised with the tops down, and a few hopeful fishermen appeared on the wharf at the foot of our street, although the river was still patched with ice.
On one of these warm evenings we walked SuSu down to the park for her first spring outing, expecting her to go after last year’s dried weeds with snapping jaws. Instead, she tugged at her leash, pulling toward the boardwalk. Out of curiosity we let her have her way, and there on the edge of the wharf she staged her weird performance once more—gurgling, arching her back, craning her neck with joy.
“She’s doing it again,” I said. “I wonder what the reason could be.”
Gertrude said, almost in a whisper: “Remember what Mr. Van said about cats and ghosts?”
“Look at that animal! You’d swear she was rubbing against someone’s ankles. I wish she’d stop. It makes me uneasy.”
“I wonder,” said my sister very slowly, “if Mr. Van is really in a mental hospital.”
“What do you mean?”
“Or is he—down there?” Gertrude pointed uncertainly over the edge of the wharf. “I think Mr. Van is dead, and SuSu knows.”
“That’s too fantastic,” I said. “Really, Gertrude!”
“I think Frank pushed the poor man off the wharf, wheelchair and all—perhaps one dark night when Mr. Van couldn’t sleep and insisted on being wheeled to the park.”
“You’re not serious, Gertrude.”
“Can’t you see it? . . . A cold night. The riverfront deserted. Mr. Van trussed in his wheelchair with a blanket. Why, that chair would sink like lead! What a terrible thing! That icy water. That poor helpless man.”
“I just can’t—”
“Now Frank is free, and he has all those antiques, and nobody cares enough to ask questions. He can sell them and be set up for life.”
“And he tears up the will,” I suggested, succumbing to Gertrude’s fantasy.
“Do you know what a Newport blockfront is worth? I’ve been looking it up in the library. A chest like the one we saw in Mr. Van’s apartment was sold for hundreds of thousands at an auction on the East Coast.”
“But what about the relatives in Pennsylvania?”
“I’m sure Mr. Van had no relatives—in Pennsylvania or anywhere else.”
“Well, what do you propose we should do?” I said in exasperation. “Report it to the manager of the building? Notify the police? Tell them we think the man has been murdered because our cat sees his ghost every night at eight-thirty? We’d look like a couple of middle-aged ladies who are getting a little gek.”
As a matter of fact, I was beginning to worry about Gertrude’s obsession—that is, until I read the morning paper a few days later.
I skimmed through it at the breakfast table, and there—at the bottom of page seven—one small item leaped off the paper at me. Could I believe my eyes?
“Listen to this,” I said to my sister. “Th
e body of an unidentified man has been washed up on a downriver island. Police say the body had apparently been held underwater for several weeks by the ice . . . . About fifty-five years old and crippled . . . . No one fitting that description has been reported to the Missing Persons Bureau.”
For a moment my sister stared at the coffeepot. Then she left the breakfast table and went to the telephone.
“Now all the police have to do,” she said with a quiver in her voice, “is to look for an antique wheelchair in the river at the foot of the street. Cast iron. With the original plush.” She blinked at the phone several times. “Would you dial?” she asked me. “I can’t see the numbers.”
Stanley and Spook
When I first met Jane she used to say: “I’d rather have kittens than kids.” Ten years later she had one of each: Stanley and Spook, a most unusual pair. She also had a successful engineer for a husband and a lovely house in the Chicago suburbs and a new car every year.
In the interim we had kept in touch, more or less, by means of Christmas cards and vacation postcards. Then one spring I attended a business conference in Chicago and telephoned Jane to say hello.
She was elated! “Linda, you’ve got to come out here for a visit when you’ve finished with your meetings. Ed has an engineering job in Saudi Arabia, and I’m here alone with Stanley and Spook. I’d love to have you meet them. And you and I can talk about old times.”
She gave me directions: “When you get off the freeway, go four miles north, then take a left at the cider mill until you come to Maplewood Farms. It’s a winding road. We’re the last house—white with black shutters and an enormous maple tree in front. You can’t miss it.”
Late Friday afternoon I rented a car and drove to the affluent suburbs, recalling that we had once lived contentedly in tents. Now Jane lived in Maplewood Farms, and I had an apartment with a view on New York’s Upper East Side.
When Jane and I first met, we were newly married to a pair of young engineers who were building a dam in the northern wilderness. The first summer, we lived in a sprawling “tent city” and thought it a great adventure. After all, we were young and still had rice in our hair. Eventually, cottages were built for the engineers. Shacks would be a better description. Jane decorated hers, I remember, with pictures of cats, and for Christmas Ed gave her an amber Persian that she named Maple Sugar. That’s when she made her memorable announcement about kittens and kids. All that seemed ages ago.
Arriving at Maplewood Farms I was driving slowly down the winding avenue, admiring the well-landscaped houses, when I noticed a fire truck at the far end. People were grouped on the lawns and the pavement, watching, but there was no sign of anxiety. Actually, everyone seemed quite happy.
I parked and approached two couples who were standing in the middle of the street, sipping cocktails. “What’s happening?” I asked.
A woman in a Moroccan caftan smiled and said: “Spook climbed up the big maple and doesn’t know how to climb down.”
“Third time this month,” said a man in an embroidered Mexican shirt. “Up go our taxes! . . . Would you like a drink, honey?”
The other man suggested: “Why don’t they cut down the tree?”
“Or put Spook on a leash,” the first woman said. Everyone laughed.
The fire truck had extended its ladder high into the branches of the big maple, and I watched as a fireman climbed up and disappeared into the leafy green. A moment or two later, he came back into view, and a cheer went up from the bystanders. He was carrying a six-year-old boy in jeans and a Chicago Cubs sweatshirt.
Jane, waiting at the foot of the ladder, hugged and scolded the child—an adorable little boy with his father’s blond hair and his mother’s big brown eyes. Then she and I had a tearful, happy reunion.
“I thought Spook was your cat,” I said.
“No, Stanley is the cat,” Jane explained. “There he is on the front step. He’s dying to meet you.”
Stanley was a big, gorgeous feline with thick blond fur and a spotless white bib. He followed us into the house, his plumed tail waving with authority and aplomb.
Jane instructed her son: “Show Aunt Linda to the guest room, and then bring her out to the deck for cocktails.”
Spook lugged my overnight case upstairs and showed a great deal of curiosity about its contents when I unpacked. “Are you my aunt?” he wanted to know.
“Not really. But you can call me Aunt Linda. I’d like that.”
Then the four of us assembled on the redwood deck overlooking a flawless lawn and a wooded ravine, its edge dotted with clumps of jonquils. Jane and Stanley and I made ourselves comfortable on the cushioned wrought-iron chairs, while Spook—now wearing a camouflage jumpsuit—chose to sit on the Indian grass rug at my feet. He was an affectionate little boy, and his Buster Brown haircut was charming. He leaned against my legs in a possessive way, and when I rumpled his hair he looked up and smiled happily, then licked his fingers and straightened his blond bangs. I thought to myself: He’s as vain as his good-looking father.
As we sipped orange juice and vodka, I asked how Spook got his name.
“He’s really Ed Junior,” Jane said, “but he was born on Halloween, and Ed called him Spook. At school the teacher insists on calling him Edward, but he’s Spook to all the neighbors . . . . Linda, you’re the perfect image of a successful young woman executive—just like the pictures in the magazines. I envy you.”
Spook said: “Are you a lady engineer?”
“No, I’m an industrial electronic supply sales manager.”
“Oh,” he said, and after a moment added: “Is that hard to do?”
“Not if you like Zener diodes and unijunction transistors.”
“Oh,” he said, and then he climbed onto my lap.
“Spook dear,” his mother admonished, “always ask permission before sitting on laps.”
“That’s all right,” I assured her. “I like little boys.”
“He loves to be petted, you know.”
“Don’t we all? . . . How long will Ed be gone, Jane?”
“Another three weeks.”
“Don’t you mind his long absences?”
She hesitated. “Yes . . . but it’s a good living. It’s paying for a housekeeper five days a week and a good college for Spook and some fabulous vacations.”
As we talked, the cat listened, turning his head to watch each of us as we spoke. “Stanley looks so intelligent,” I remarked.
“He’s good company. He’s almost human . . . . Linda, you never told me why you and Bill divorced.”
“I wanted a career of my own,” I said. “I was tired of being a dam-builder’s wife. The construction camp was driving me up the wall, and Bill was drinking heavily. Things were all wrong.”
At this point a robin flew into the yard and tugged at a worm, alerting Spook, who jumped from my lap and chased him. The crafty bird took flying hops just lengthy enough to stay beyond the boy’s grasp.
“That robin comes every evening during the cocktail hour,” Jane said. “He likes to tease Spook, I think. Stanley isn’t the slightest bit interested.”
“Are you going to have any more children, Jane?”
“We’d like to adopt a girl. After what I went through with Spook, I couldn’t face childbirth again. He was born at the camp, you know—a year or two after you left. I didn’t have proper prenatal care because I refused to go to that so-called doctor at the camp. Do you remember him?”
I nodded. “His office smelled more of whiskey than antiseptic.”
“He made passes at everybody, and I do mean everybody!”
“They couldn’t get a really good doctor to go up there and live in those conditions.”
At that moment a large dog bounded over a fence and headed straight for the boy. Spook had been lying on the lawn, chewing a blade of grass, but he scrambled to his feet and headed for the nearest tree.
“Spook, no more climbing, please,” his mother called. “Juneau won’t h
urt you. She just wants to play.”
The man in the Mexican shirt came to the fence, calling: “Here, Juneau. Come on home, baby.” To us he explained: “She broke her chain again. Sorry.”
Precisely as we finished our second drink, Stanley jumped down from his chair with a fifteen-pound thump and went to Jane, putting one paw on her knee.
“Stanley’s telling me it’s time for dinner,” she said. “Linda, I’ll put the ramekins in the microwave while I’m feeding the cat. Mrs. Phipps fixed chicken divan for us before she left. You might see if you can find the son-and-heir and tell him it’s time to wash up.”
I wandered around the grounds, noting the professionally perfect flower beds, until I found Spook. He was digging among the jonquils. “What are you doing?” I asked.
“Digging,” he said.
“You’re getting your jumpsuit all muddy. Come and clean up. It’s time for dinner.”
He raised his nose and sniffed. “Chicken!” he squealed, and headed for the house, running in joyful circles as he went. A few minutes later he appeared at the dinner table, looking spic and span in chinos and a tiger-striped shirt, with his face and hands scrubbed and his Buster Brown haircut combed to perfection.
We dined at a table on the deck, and Stanley tried to leap onto the redwood railing nearby, but he missed his footing and fell to the floor, landing on his back.
“Honestly, he’s the most awkward cat I’ve ever seen,” Jane muttered. “Come on, Stanley. Aunt Linda won’t mind if you sit with us at the table.” She indicated the fourth chair, and he lumbered up onto the seat, where he sat tall and attentively. She said: “Stanley’s mother was Maple Sugar. Do you remember her, Linda? She had a litter of five kittens, but he was the only one who survived. He’s a little odd, but isn’t he a beaut?”
Spook was picking chunks of chicken out of his ramekin and gobbling them hungrily.
“Don’t forget the broccoli, dear,” his mother said. “It makes little boys grow big and strong. Did you tell Aunt Linda you’re going to take swimming lessons?”
The Cat Who Had 14 Tales Page 10
