Shout Her Lovely Name

by Natalie Serber

  Father Matthew averts his gaze.

  “Whoa.” Wrangler Man pulls back like he’s been hit. “Man. Shit.” I hear the crack in his voice, and so does Father Matthew because he asks him if he’s okay.

  “My kid brother’s name was Steven.” And his voice breaks completely. “Shit.”

  Father Matthew has his hand on Wrangler Man’s shoulder. He murmurs of loss and comfort as he leans over my bowed head. My husband and son are in the aisle now too. Walter’s lips are pressed into a thin line and I see the questions in his eyes. It’s okay, I mouth. Zeke is sleeping in Walter’s arms. The blister on his lip still flutters with each breath.

  Behind me Wrangler Man hacks and spits into a cup. He slides open the porthole cover between our seats and I am surprised by the sun reflecting off the fat layer of clouds. I’d forgotten what time of day it was here on this plane, flying toward our families.

  Stanyos swallows and swallows; his soft brown eyes glaze over like he’s been waiting for this his whole life.

  Manx

  Nora requested fluffy and white. A kitten to name Candi, with an i. A kitten who would weave figure eights around and between her ankles while she poured milk on her Cheerios. Instead, her mom dropped a box over the schoolyard stray. An emaciated, dark tabby who spent his time hissing at students and licking out the inside of Jell-O pudding cups. Ruby brought him home for Nora on Good Friday.

  Ruby bathed the cat in their kitchen sink, using the last of the Short and Sassy shampoo. When Nora ran into their apartment after school, the damp cat was perched on the windowsill, clicking his jaw at a bird in the magnolia tree. If the cat had had a tail, he’d have been swishing it back and forth, pumping his frustration out, but he was a Manx.

  Her mom sat at the kitchen table smoking, bloody toilet paper wrapped around her wrist where the cat scratched her. “Happy Easter.” She re-crossed her legs, dangled a tan sandal from her toe. “Are you thrilled?”

  Nora stood in the center of the room watching the shoe bounce on her mother’s foot and then she looked back to the cat. A bead of drool glinted at the corner of his jaw.

  “It was starving, Nora.” Ruby leaned forward to stub out her cigarette, then she mentioned that owing to the cat, their karma would probably improve, for providing shelter and everything, and besides, maybe all the cat required was a full bowl and consistent love. When Nora asked her what she meant by consistent love, her mom took a long swallow from her wine spritzer and jiggled her shoe some more. “Someone to be there every single time he meows at the back door.”

  Weekday afternoons Nora walked home alone from Beachwood Elementary to their apartment on lower Primrose Terrace, a neighborhood of stucco apartment buildings renting to older couples, struggling actors, and stewardesses. Usually Nora would make herself a snack—Ritz crackers and marshmallow fluff—then watch a talk show on TV, Merv, Mike, Phil, or Dinah. After today, someone would always be home waiting to greet Nora, and she pictured her cat curled up in her lap, licking cracker crumbs off her fingertips while she waited for her mom. She named her cat Phil Donahue, hoping he’d greet her the way Donahue ran to the women in his audience, eager to hear anything they had to say about seat belts, war, or divorce.

  It’s not that Nora didn’t have friends, she did, but Jocelyn, whose big apartment was on the first floor, went to St. Agatha’s school and she wasn’t available to play in the afternoons. They were the only children in the building and so they were friends. The only reason Jocelyn’s family lived on lower Primrose at all was that her dad was the manager. He was also an official at St. Agatha’s, and Donald wore a suit, either dark green or brown, every day of the week. When Nora delivered the rent check once a month, Donald would call her into his telephone study with the leather desk blotter, the dark wooden crucifix, and the rye-toast smell hanging in the air. She knew he knew she and her mother didn’t attend church, which was why Jocelyn wasn’t allowed to play at Nora’s. But every month, as she waited in his tiny study while Donald wrote out a receipt in letters so small and pointy they looked like crabs crawling across the page, he made the same joke about her mother. How’s Diamond . . . er . . . Emerald . . . Sapphire . . . until he settled on Ruby. Then he pulled a coin from behind Nora’s ear.

  Sometimes her mom sent her downstairs with a note requesting an extension, and Donald would run his tongue around the inside of his cheeks, clear his throat as if phlegmy displeasure were lodged there. Nora never knew if the envelope she carried contained a note or a check and she held her breath every time he slit it open with his silver letter opener. Either way, Donald, with his dark eyebrows that nearly met in the middle of his forehead, and the rash of capillaries spread across his nose, made Nora’s mouth go dry.

  Once, Nora walked into Jocelyn’s kitchen to find Donald gripping Jocelyn’s mother’s arm. She heard him yell-whisper erratic home life and multiple partners. When he and Margaret noticed Nora, Donald clamped his mouth shut, and Margaret’s pale English complexion flushed pink. The kitchen went quickly still. Nora averted her eyes from Donald’s hand on Margaret’s arm to the window and the 25 MPH sign out front. Sunlight streamed in, washing the spotless counter in sweet yellow light and bouncing off a china sugar bowl. “It smells clean in here” was all Nora could think to say.

  Ruby told Nora that Donald’s disgruntled attitude had nothing to do with the rent extensions. Donald’s disenchantment revolved around his wife’s habit of wearing pantyhose twenty-four hours a day, as reported by Nora who three times had spent the night in the big apartment.

  Nora and her mom lived in the building on lower Primrose because it was an improvement from their last place and they were working their way up the hill to the green lawns and swing sets and cute white bungalows. Their building did have a sliver of lawn in front, but Jocelyn and Nora ignored it, mostly staying in the carport—rolling around belly-down on skateboards, or putting on plays in Margaret’s clothes. Now that Nora had a real live pet to include, she thought their games might evolve. Ruby provided her with an old scarf to fashion into a leash for Phil Donahue, but when she tied it on, he nearly yanked his oniony head through his new flea collar.

  “Keep that beast away,” Jocelyn yelled. She stopped running circles around her mother and a large aqua mound on the floor of the carport and pointed accusingly at Phil Donahue. “His claws will ruin my new pool.” She sang out the last two words as if she were a game-show host.

  Margaret looked up from unfurling the blue plastic heap and smiled at Nora. “Have you a new pet, lamb?” Margaret baked scones and saved Jocelyn’s hand-me-down Cotswold-wool sweaters for Nora. Nora knew she was an opportunity for Margaret to tend to those less fortunate and thus an avenue to God.

  “My mom says he needs consistent love,” she said to Margaret.

  “You must come ’round for a dip later.”

  “Where’s his tail?” Jocelyn stood with her hands on her hips.

  Nora scooped up her hissing cat and stared at all the amazing blue. She breathed in the new-plastic smell and scratched the stump where Phil Donahue’s tail should have been.

  “He’s a Manx, love.” Margaret’s British accent made anything seem charming.

  Nora was secretly mastering the accent by whispering a list of words before bed each night, like a prayer: tomato, trespass, brilliant, wee, biscuit, charming, love.

  On the first day of Easter vacation, Ruby insisted Nora come along to the vet since she was the one who’d wanted a damn cat in the first place. “The Catholics’ pool will be there when we get back,” she said.

  They had to coast down the hill to the Mobile station with its red Pegasus soaring above Sunset Boulevard.

  “We made it here on fumes,” Ruby told the attendant. She also told him she was taking her daughter’s new cat to the vet, and that’s what the commotion coming from the cardboard box on the back seat was all about. The man peered around Ruby’s blond head, Nora waved, and his eyes drifted back to her mother’s slender neck and the front of her bl
ue dress. Ruby was always doing things like this, making Nora go places she didn’t want to, driving like a fiend, telling her story to anyone who would listen.

  The examination room had a drain in the center of the floor, for hosing down, Nora supposed, yet it still smelled of ammonia, pee, and animal fright. The walls were decorated with posters of hip dysplasia, plaque-ridden canine teeth, and opaque eyeballs. Not one picture of a happy pet. This lack concerned Nora but her mother didn’t notice because she was staring at Dr. Shapiro as he shuffled through a stack of forms, uncapped a pen with his square white teeth, and held the cap in his mouth, leaving his moist pink tongue exposed. Nora clutched Phil Donahue’s box on her lap until his claws pierced the cardboard and dug into her thigh. When she yelped, her mom furrowed her brow, a habit she was trying to break by wearing Frownies to bed every night. Then, just as quickly, she stopped and turned back to Dr. Shapiro’s glossy black mustache, freshly shaved cheeks, and cleft chin. A butt chin, Nora thought.

  Dr. Shapiro set down his clipboard. His cheerful blue eyes, happy as polka dots, fixed on her mom, and Ruby lowered her lashes. “How old is Phil?” he asked.

  “Phil Donahue,” Nora corrected.

  “We’re not certain,” her mom said, keeping her chin down and gazing up from beneath her brows. “The Easter Bunny brought him early for my daughter.”

  Dr. Shapiro examined Nora, her face, her height, trying to determine if she was too old for the Easter Bunny. Nora said nothing. It was one of Ruby’s not-to-be-broken rules: Never tell a man your age (and Nora was especially not supposed to tell when Ruby was in the room).

  “Shall we have a look?” He opened Phil Donahue’s box. “Psst. Kitty . . .”

  Phil Donahue hissed and swatted at Dr. Shapiro’s long fingers, and the muscles in Ruby’s neck stiffened. Nora smiled. She wasn’t quite certain why, but she didn’t want this to go well for her mom. She wanted to get it over with. She wanted to be swimming. Phil Donahue leaped from the box, and Dr. Shapiro grabbed for his hind legs. The cat writhed and spit, but Dr. Shapiro held on while Nora cajoled in her best Margaret voice, “Hello, love. It’s all right, darling.” After a moment Ruby reached over and pinched the fur at Phil Donahue’s neck so hard she pulled his cheeks back, showing all his teeth. Nora was about to object, worried that Ruby was hurting the cat, but her mom saw her expression. “He’s fine,” she declared, lifting Phil Donahue by the scruff and arranging him in the crook of her elbow, his skinny body pressed against her chest. The unspoken threat—watch yourself—was clear to Nora from her mother’s controlled tone and gaze that lingered too long, like a pinch.

  Dr. Shapiro shone a light into the cat’s yellow eyes, squeezed tight to the size of slivered almonds. He examined his ears, his gums, and the pads of his feet. He guessed Phil Donahue to be about a year old. Nora flinched when he administered three vaccinations. And all the while, Ruby stroked the cat’s head. When Dr. Shapiro noticed the scratch up the inside of Ruby’s wrist, he quit doctoring Phil Donahue and tenderly guided Ruby’s hand beneath the light. “I don’t like the way this looks.”

  “It’s only a scratch,” she said, but she let him hold her hand while she stared at his bald spot as if it were a halo.

  All but forgotten, Phil Donahue sat beneath a chair, licking himself as if nothing had happened. While her mom blossomed under the veterinarian’s concerned eye, Nora stared at a poster of a cat’s heart. Spaghetti-length worms wriggled in and around the chambers in a complicated tangle of bodies.

  “Thank you, Dr. Shapiro,” Ruby said as he ran his finger along the angry red line.

  “Please, call me Guy.”

  Dr. Shapiro pressed a tube of antibiotic ointment into Nora’s hands, told her to be sure she “anointed” her mom’s wrist three times every day. He told Ruby if it didn’t get better she might need to have it looked at again. He also said they should plan on coming back soon, as Phil Donahue should be neutered. He whispered the last word, as if the cat could understand. Nora’s gaze never left the poster and Dr. Shapiro nodded toward the diagram of the cat’s heart. “Strays get those worms,” he said with a lilt to his voice.

  Even Nora had the good sense to know parasites and flirtation were a bad combination.

  “Bring Phil Donahue back and we’ll fix him up.” His gaze finally left Ruby and found his patient. “And, Nora, make sure you keep fresh water in his bowl.”

  “Oh, she will.” Ruby stroked the top of Nora’s head. Dr. Shapiro couldn’t see how she lightly tugged Nora’s hair with her next sentence. “Nora wants to be a vet.”

  Dr. Shapiro’s eyes lit up. Both he and Ruby stared at Nora with proud smiles, as if they’d all leaped forward ten years and were dropping Nora off at her new dorm. It wasn’t the first time her mom had made her over in someone else’s image. Nora dropped to her knees to retrieve her cat. Still nonchalant, he ignored her fingers wriggling on the floor. She reached toward him and he let her pet his head. He even rubbed his cheek against her palm, growing affectionate. Nora and Phil Donahue were united in their dislike for the vet.

  Dr. Shapiro saw them to the front door of his office, his hand floating an inch above the small of Ruby’s back. Ruby asked him if he liked jazz and suggested that perhaps he’d like to hear an amazing piano player this Saturday night at the club where she moonlighted from her teaching job. He said that sounded fine, wonderful. Ruby gave her horn a single toot as she drove out of the parking lot.

  On the way home they stopped at Safeway for two Dreamsicles and a dozen cans of Kitty Queen cat food. Ruby chucked Phil Donahue beneath the chin, saying, “One good turn deserves another.”

  Donald’s Pontiac was gone when they arrived home. Nora dashed to the carport, taking both ice cream bars. Since Ruby had a date this weekend she didn’t want one anyway. She wanted to look fantastic in her black cocktail dress. “Go now,” she agreed. “His holy tight-ass isn’t home.”

  “Nora, hello.” Margaret answered her knock in a gingham housedress and pantyhose. “Jocelyn’s in the kitchen.”

  Margaret always wore pantyhose. Nora had seen her pull a fresh pair from between sachets in her lingerie drawer on one of the nights Nora had been allowed to sleep over. Margaret, who changed her clothes in the closet, would step out in fresh hose, chenille slippers, and her nightie, the limp pair, still bearing the shape of Margaret’s legs, hanging from her wrist. She’d make a black and tan for Donald and then watch TV from the other end of the flowered sofa while he stifled belches. At bedtime Margaret slipped into her side of Jocelyn’s bed while Nora slept on the floor in a pile of lilac-scented quilts. Donald had his own room, though most times he slept in front of the TV. Nora didn’t think much about it, just assumed that British people used cream on their cereal, said telly and bum, and kept separate bedrooms.

  “Can’t swim today,” Jocelyn announced. She licked a glob of lemon curd off a teaspoon. “Donald says it’s too close to the Resurrection. Too holy for swimming. Mummy says we must listen.”

  When Nora tried Mummy at home, like “Mummy, I’ve got to use the loo,” Ruby looked up from her lesson planning with a sour smile and told her she wasn’t goddamned Julie Andrews. As if Nora needed reminding.

  “My cat has worms.”

  “Will he be okay?” Margaret asked from the sink.

  “We hope so.” Nora nodded. “The worms are inside his heart.”

  Though Phil Donahue wasn’t the cat of her dreams, he did swat around the Sugar Pops Nora tossed him, torturing them until with a final pounce he’d lick off the sweet coating. He liked them so much Nora took to mixing some with his cat food. She kept his water bowl full as Dr. Guy had directed, but Phil Donahue preferred to drink from the bathtub. He’d balance on the edge and dip his tongue toward Nora’s hand, cupped just below the surface. She liked feeling his tongue under the water, rough and soft. When he finished, he’d pad out of the room, stepping high, shaking each paw.

  At night, when her mom was correcting papers and watching Laugh-In, Nora let
him out to do his business. Nightgowned and barefoot, she would stand in the dry grass and wait for him. There were no streetlights on lower Primrose. The stars flecked across the velveteen night sky were incredibly bright and as dense as the freckles across her mom’s shoulders. Nora often didn’t know Phil Donahue was back until he surprised her, turning figure eights around her ankles.

  Saturday night, before the date with Dr. Guy, Ruby and Nora stretched out on their twin beds, sharing a bucket of chicken. Ruby lounged in a lacy black bra and sheer black hose; a triangle of pubic hair showed dark below her bellybutton, a wine spritzer rested on her stomach. She dangled a cigarette from her fingers. Nora’s 7Up was tinged pink with the treat of one splash of wine. Phil Donahue nibbled shreds of thigh meat off Nora’s palm.

  “Nora-bean.” Her mom had the soft, confident voice she got after a glass of wine. “Pick out my dress.”

  Gathered in her mom’s closet like a knot of beautiful women, her mother’s dresses mysteriously held their shapes on the hangers, like Margaret’s pantyhose, all curves. Nora stood on a chair and shuttled through, chose the black chiffon, arranged it across the empty bed. Her mom then motioned for Nora to take off her own nightgown, and she slipped a red spaghetti-strapped mini dress over Nora’s shoulders, saying, “Let’s see this on a beautiful girl.” Nora loved everything about the dress, the cool fabric pouring over her, the rhinestones clumped in the bodice where breasts would someday appear. Mostly she loved her mom calling her beautiful.

  “Makeup?” Ruby asked, setting the makeup-mirror bulbs to candlelight. She brushed iridescent pink eye shadow on Nora’s lids. Mimicked how she wanted Nora to close her eyes, hold her lips while she brushed on mascara first and then lip-gloss. “This skin is the best thing your father left you,” she said softly, her breath warm on Nora’s cheeks. She didn’t often bring up Nora’s father. She mentioned him now as casually as if she were describing weather. Other times Nora might have seized on the words father left you but not then. Right then all she wanted was her mom’s creamy complexion and for her mom to skip the date with Dr. Guy, to stay home so Nora could have her all to herself. Ruby slicked her signature shade of lipstick, Frosted Rumor, over her lips, turned up the volume on the stereo, then petted Phil Donahue, who was stretched across Nora’s bed lazily watching the two of them through half-closed eyes as if he didn’t care what they did.