by Sigrid Nunez
I assured her that she was making sense, and that she should keep talking.
I’ve decided I’ll write about it only if I discover something new to say about it, she said. Which won’t happen.
A good death, she said. Everyone knows what that means. Free of pain, or at least not convulsing in agony. Going out with poise, with a little dignity. Clean and dry. But how often did that happen? Not often, in fact. And why was that? Why was that too much to ask?
She said, You talk now. I can’t bear the sound of my own voice anymore.
As on my last visit, I tried talking about the usual things, books I’d read, movies I’d seen, but kept lapsing into silence, at which she would become agitated and start talking herself again.
Do you know who came to see me yesterday?
She named someone I knew only by reputation but who’d been a good friend of hers since journalism school. He’d been fired from his paper’s staff and from his teaching position within hours of being accused of a half-dozen incidents of sexual misconduct, including an affair with a TA.
He was always that way, she said. As the bad joke about Harvey Weinstein goes: came out of the womb groping his mother. A dirty old man when he was still in his twenties. He was one of them: always ogling and drooling and unable to keep his hands to himself. Well, I didn’t know what to tell him, my friend said. In the blink of an eye his life is destroyed. He’d even thought about suicide, my friend said this man had confessed to her. Imagine, he sat right there where you’re sitting and talked about how he might as well end it all, and then he caught himself and started begging my forgiveness for being such an insensitive prick, and then, my friend raised her voice as she said, he started crying. I kept saying it was okay, she said, because I couldn’t stand to lie here listening to him crying and apologizing, but Jesus, you know, it was not okay, she said, it was anything but okay, my friend said emphatically to me.
That’s the one thing I will not tolerate, she went on. Do feel bad for me, but no goddamn sniveling or blubbering in front of me. I won’t have it, she said. Now I’m sorry I ever confided in him. But he’s such an old friend, you know, and so far I haven’t told many people. And in fact that’s something I have to start thinking about, isn’t it, my friend asked rhetorically: Who should I tell and how should I go about telling them. And, more important, who do I want to see. There’s a lot to think about. I’ve been making a list. I have to say goodbye to people, you know. I have to— Should I give a party? I’m serious! Should I make an announcement on Facebook? I’ve seen people do that. It makes sense, of course, but it seems so bizarre to me. I’m not sure I could bring myself to do that.
I said she didn’t have to figure out everything all in one day. I asked her if she’d thought about how—if she was really sure about not doing any more writing—she wanted to spend her time after she left the hospital. And where. Was there someplace she wanted to go, I asked, aware that travel was at the top of most people’s bucket list, a term I had heard her object to vehemently long before her diagnosis: Could they have come up with an uglier term?
She didn’t know, she said. She waved a limp hand in the air. It’s a paradox that I’ve noticed, she said. I know I’m dying, but when I lie here thinking, especially at night, often it’s as if I had all the time in the world.
That must be eternity, I said without speaking.
The nearness of eternity, she agreed silently.
Sometimes I even catch myself wishing the hours would move a little faster, that the day would end sooner, she said. Adding: Oddly enough, I am often bored.
How will you ever get through this, I thought.
I really don’t know, she thought back.
Wouldn’t that be something, she said to me, if dying turned out to be a bore.
Her phone rang: her daughter. Her plane had landed, she would be there soon. Was there anything she could pick up for her mother on the way?
I used the interruption to try to calm my emotions by deep breathing.
Oh look, she said. Outside the hospital window it had begun to snow, and because the sun was just going down the snow was tinted a sunset pink.
Pink snowflakes, she said. Well. I’ve lived to see that.
* * *
—
He’s still a kitten, my host said in a tone suggesting enormous pride in him for this. He can be really rambunctious and mischievous, and he tends to roam at night. Make sure your door is closed tight so he won’t bother you.
The same paperback mystery on top of the same pile on the nightstand.
The killer makes friends with a woman he meets in a bar, a young actress who has come to the big city from the Midwest in hopes of becoming a Broadway star. Though she finds him morose and maddeningly secretive, she doesn’t in the least suspect his crimes. It is through her that he begins to realize his dream of “getting more culture.” She lends him books and takes him to art films and museum shows. Far more important, she turns him on to disco dancing. It is the era of Saturday Night Fever. The killer turns out to be a spectacularly good dancer who quickly establishes himself as king of the floor. When the woman encourages him to study dance, he throws himself into it, taking classes six days a week, advancing so quickly that he begins to think seriously about a professional career. Now his whole life is transformed. He has never been so happy. But when severe tendinitis forces him to stop dancing, he is crushed. Bitterly, he reflects that, no matter how big his talent, no matter how hard he works, because he started training too late he will never have a shot at fame.
The killer thinks a lot about John Travolta. It turns out that he and Travolta have many things in common: they share the same birthday, they are exactly the same height and weight, they each come from suburbs near Manhattan, they each won a dance competition doing the twist when they were kids, they each had a father who played football. But their mothers could not have been more different. John’s mother, an actress and singer herself, had encouraged him to pursue a career in show business, taking charge of his early training. Now, far worse than the pain in his legs, this question torments the killer: What kind of life might his have been had he had a mother like John Travolta’s?
More and more of the killer’s time is consumed in a state of rage against the star. Travolta’s high “sissified” voice singing “Summer Nights” becomes stuck in his head, driving him to distraction. Give him a way and he would kill John Travolta.
Instead he kills a fellow dance student, stalking him to his Brooklyn home after class one night. He also impulsively strangles a college student after having sex with her in Riverside Park.
The police fail to connect the four homicides thus far committed by the killer. While they remain stymied in their separate investigations, he continues to hang out with the unsuspecting actress (now just beginning to find some big-city success) and her circle of artistic young friends.
The cat came in on little fog feet. I was not even aware of him until he jumped onto the bed. His whiskers tickled as he snuffled my cheek. Earlier he had lain by the fireplace. Is there anything more hygge than lying close to a loudly purring cat whose warm fur smells of woodsmoke, watching him knead the duvet?
I closed the book and turned out the light.
I had a decent home, the cat said, his words muffled by the purr but still clear. I’m not saying it was the lap of luxury. But I had food and fresh water every day, and a dry bed, and at the time I’d never known anything better. I was born in a cage in a shelter, he said. I never knew how sweet, with the right human, life could be, especially when the human is a female of a certain age living without a mate.
I was adopted to be a mouser not a pet, he said, and my first home wasn’t a nice house like this, it wasn’t even a house, it was a store, a convenience store just off the highway, run by an old guy in a wheelchair with his wife and son.
I did my job, the cat said, I ke
pt the mice away, and in return I had my bed—really just a cardboard box with a ratty old bath towel folded in it—and my bowl was kept full of crunchies, and well, that was it, my life, my whole world. The people weren’t bad as people go, but they weren’t cat people, either, not by a long shot, the cat said, and after I made the mistake of jumping in the guy’s lap one day while he was rolling through the aisles only to find myself flying into the cereal boxes I kept my distance. It’s strange how wide the range of human responses to our kind is, the cat said. As precious as human young to some, to others we’re not much higher than plants, and to still others filthy varmints with no more rights or feelings than a stick.
There was much coming and going through the long hours that the store was open, said the cat, but I tended to keep to myself in the back, and it was rare for anyone to notice me. And though I noticed everyone myself I hardly bothered to look up past their knees. For the truth is, we are less curious than the saying goes, at least in regards to human strangers, who after all do not differ greatly one from another. In the early days after I arrived I thought about my mother a lot (as it happened, I was the last to be adopted, and so for a few blessed days I’d had her all to myself), I missed her, and oh did I cry for her. But I’m a cat, said the cat, and I quickly adjusted to my new situation.
When I came here, to this house, though, after everything I’d been through—including a second stay at the shelter, where there was no longer any trace of my mother, not even her smell—I might as well have been a newborn again, I felt so helpless, said the cat, so puny and scared. And when this lady took charge of me, with her bowls of warm milk and wet-washcloth baths and piles of soft clean bedding, and the way she hovered as I went about investigating each new room, I remembered what it was like to have a mother, and I knew I had found a second one.
It happened in the middle of the night, but luckily the store was still open, the cat (who had stopped purring) went on. The son was working the counter alone and I was asleep in my box when smoke started pouring up from the basement. We were both out of there in a flash—not that he gave me a thought, but I was at his heels when he raced through the door. I ran across the highway and crouched there, not sure what to do. When the fire trucks came it was too much for me—the sirens made my ears hum after for days—so I ran and ran until I was too tired to run anymore. It was freezing that night, said the cat, and I wasn’t used to being outdoors. I lost the feeling in my ears and paws—I was afraid they would always stay that way! I crawled under a porch, where I felt at least safer, if not any warmer. When light came, I made my way back home and saw that it was home no more, just a reeking soggy blackened wreck. The front door had been secured with a lock and chain. There was no sign of my peeps.
I sat there in a daze, the cat said, not knowing what I should do. Cars drove by, a few slowing down so that people could gawk, but no one pulled into the lot or took any notice of me. Being small and gray, said the cat, I’m easy to miss.
Then I saw two bicycles approaching. The riders I knew. Bad kids, double trouble, who often played hooky from school, and who on more than one occasion, when it was just the old man in the store, stole candy bars or chips and mocked his helpless rage before riding away.
How I let them catch me is a shameful story, said the cat. Remember, though, how hungry I was and maybe then you’ll understand what I felt when one of them pulled out and pushed toward me a balled-up foil wrapper that, even from a distance, smelled divinely of flesh. In my weakened state, it was a cinch for him to seize me by the scruff. The other took hold of my tail, and after swinging me about, all the while whooping and cackling like fiends, they carried me to the dumpster in back of the store. Once they’d tossed me in and rolled the cover shut they kicked and banged away at the sides until at last they got bored and took off.
There I sat at the bottom of that dark cold damp bin, which was empty but slimy with filth, said the cat. I could not stop shaking. What next? Would the brutes return to finish me off? And if they didn’t return, how would I ever get out of there? I began to cry, making my voice as big as possible, said the cat, and very big indeed it sounded to me in that void, but no one heard, no one came, and soon I had no voice left to cry anymore. Still I kept opening and closing my mouth in silent meow, as we cats do when in despair.
I must have slept on and off, said the cat, but the cold and the pangs of hunger and thirst kept me mostly awake. Awake, but not alert. My mind was hardly under my control anymore, I felt myself slipping away, into an ever-deeper dark and cold—then I heard a voice.
Holy shit, a rat.
Looking up, I saw blue sky and a large head silhouetted against it. A second head appeared, and there came a different voice: That ain’t no rat, dummy, it’s a cat.
Oh wow, said the first head. Let’s get it out of there.
Nah, said the other. Looks sick to me. Might have rabies. Let’s call the ASPCA, let them handle it.
And so, said the cat, who was purring again, I found myself back at the shelter. And one day, after I’d been nursed back to health, I and about a dozen other cats and dogs were loaded onto a bus and driven to a shopping mall.
Call it beginner’s luck: my very first Rescue Me Day and I get adopted. The best thing would’ve been to be reunited with my mother, which was what I was hoping for. But if that was not to be, the next best thing was this lady. She is my second mother, said the beautiful bourbon-eyed silver-furred cat.
He told many other stories that night—he was a real Scheherazade, that cat—but this was the only one I remembered in the morning.
VII
I went to visit my neighbor, an eighty-six-year-old woman who has been living on her own in one of the ground-floor apartments of our building ever since her husband died twenty years ago. This woman once worked as an administrative assistant in some division of our city government. After she retired she got a job as a cashier in a local drugstore, but she hated having to be on her feet for hours at a time so she quit after just a few months. Aside from some babysitting when she was a girl, these two jobs, administrative assistant and drugstore cashier, are the only jobs this woman has had her entire life. The first time I visited her I shocked her by listing all the jobs I’d had since leaving school, some of which I had to struggle to recall. The only thing that appeared to shock her more was my saying that I’d never been married and didn’t have any children. That this could have been a choice rather than some kind of curse she would not accept.
She has a son who lives in Albany and who comes to see her once or twice a month, usually on a Sunday, and always by himself. He and his wife are divorced. He has several children and grandchildren, but none of them come to visit the old woman and since she refuses to travel she never sees any of them. There is just the son, driving down one or two Sundays each month from Albany, where he works as an accountant for a legal firm.
It used to happen on these visits that he would take his mother out. I would meet them on their way to a play or a movie, or I’d see them through the window of our neighborhood Chinese restaurant. She is under five feet tall with a hump that forces her chin almost to meet her breastbone. Frail though she is, this gives her a somewhat robust and even menacing aspect, like some kind of headbutting animal. She has to screw up her eyes when she addresses anyone who isn’t a small child, in a manner that looks painful. Her son is a rangy man who, to accommodate her while walking and talking, has to take baby steps and arch himself sideways like a willow. From a distance they look less like mother and son than like father and obese child. But these days I don’t see them walking and talking, because the man can no longer get his mother to go out. For a while he was able to coax her at least as far as one of the benches in the building courtyard. But she couldn’t sit still. It bothered her that she was visible to anyone looking out the windows of the apartments facing the courtyard. It didn’t matter that these were her neighbors. For one thing, neighbors or not, ju
st about all of them were strangers to her. Long as she has lived in the building—longer than any other tenant, it turns out—she has no friends here. She had a few friends over the years, but they have since moved away, or, like her husband and just about all the friends she’s ever had, these people have died.
This kind of fear—the fear of being seen, or watched, or spied on—has begun to consume the woman more and more. Even worse: her fear of being tricked, or cheated.
Some of it is age, her son said to me. Everyone knows old people can be paranoid. But she’s not crazy to think she’s being preyed on. Her phone rings all day long, he said (meaning her landline, she’s never had a cell phone), and it’s just one scammer after the next. Everyone gets these kinds of calls, but after you hit a certain age it’s like you become this gigantic target. She gets confused by their fast talk and she gets scared, especially when they address her by name. How do they know her name? How did they get her number? Of course she understands what these people are up to and that she has to be on her guard. But she lives in fear that, one way or another, one of these crooks will get around her. Lately she’s been obsessed with a story she heard on the news, about a woman who was so ashamed that she’d let some caller rip off her savings that she killed herself. It seems this poor lady was afraid that when her family found out what a stupid thing she’d done they’d declare her incompetent and take away her freedom.
