Real Life (16 page)

“Exactly. The teen queens and the macho heroes. Oh, God, how it all makes me want to throw up. I mean, most people's value systems. Don't you agree?” Hugo nodded. He tried to think of something smart to say, something to convey to her his feelings about that afternoon on Main Street, but Nina spoke first, changing the subject. “Why do you live with your aunt?”

“My parents are dead,” Hugo said. He thought with guilt of the little lies he had told the Garners. With Nina, he would stick to the truth. “I lived with my grandfather but he died in April, so I had to come here. There was no place else for me to live. She's my only relative.” He had resolved to be honest, but already this sounded misleading—too pathetic. He didn't feel pathetic, but he didn't know how to modify his statement.

Nina was gazing at him sorrowfully—a Mrs. Garner expression. “You poor kid! What's your aunt like?”

He hesitated. He didn't want sympathy from Nina; it put him at a disadvantage. And he wasn't sure he liked the way she called him a kid. And he didn't know how to answer. His aunt. He had been glad when she left him with the Garners, glad to see her go. Then, unexpectedly, he had awakened that morning feeling funny and out of place at the Garners', wishing he were home. Home? At his Aunt Dorrie's. Missing her, sort of. Not much, but enough to confuse him.

“She's all right. She's nice,” he said. “She makes pots and things. You know? Like teapots and bowls and stuff.”

“You mean she's a professional potter—right? That much I knew from my sister. But what's she like? Do you mind living with her?” Nina was watching him intently as they climbed the hill. He felt she would probe into his soul if the fancy took her; she would fish down in the depths of his being and come up with everything he feared and was ashamed of. “Where would you rather be if you didn't live with your aunt?”

“I don't know,” Hugo said, beginning to be miserable. How could he answer such a question? Honesty was one thing, but having his bedtime fantasies dragged out of him by a girl he didn't even know was something else.

But by then they were at the house, and Nina seemed to forget about him again. She threw open the porch door, pulling her guitar strap over her head. Pregnant or not, Listerine jumped down from the porch windowsill to greet them as they entered—the black cat who had looked out at him in the dark. “There's my big baby,” Nina said. She set her guitar down carefully and fell to her knees. Hugo knelt beside her, conscious of his babyish fat legs. He wished he had worn jeans instead of elastic-waist shorts. The cat climbed onto Nina's thighs and kneaded there, her paws seeming too small and delicate to support her body, which was distended on each side and strangely lumpy looking, as if she had swallowed baseballs. Her fur was as black and shiny as the pond at night, and when Nina petted her she purred with such fervor that at first Hugo thought some appliance had begun to hum, maybe the refrigerator. “Come here,” Nina said to Hugo. “Pet her.” He obeyed, fascinated by the cat. Her fur was softer than any human hair, and she arched her back under his hand. “Isn't that a fabulous purr?” asked Nina, talking not to Hugo but to the cat. “Isn't she a sweetums? Hmm? Isn't she?” Hugo could feel something moving inside the cat as he petted her, a soft batting against his hand that filled him with an odd kind of rapturous panic, and he quickly pulled his hand away and began to scratch Listerine's head, watching Nina. He thought about cutting off his little finger, roasting it over a fire, crunching into it as if it were a piece of chicken. He felt no revulsion, only reverent curiosity: he would do that for Nina if she asked him, he thought—half knowing he was being absurd. He would have liked to tell her how some people seemed like another species entirely, aliens from another planet—the kids at the pizza parlor, for instance—and how he knew deep in his heart that he and Nina were of the same outcast stock. But he couldn't find the words, and he sensed that any such statement would be premature. His deepest concern at that moment was not to screw up.

“Do you want a Coke?” Nina asked him.

“Sure.”

They went into the kitchen—a big, bare, clean room. Hugo liked seeing the inside of other people's houses—how different they were from each other. He thought of his aunt's tiny, cluttered, messy kitchen, and the Wylies', full of electric gadgets and stainless steel, and Mrs. Garner's, all cozy and old-fashioned. He smiled, picked up a spoon rest in the shape of a pair of kittens with a ball of yarn. “You sure your sister won't mind if we drink her soda?”

“She said to make myself at home,” Nina said. She took two cans from the refrigerator. “Let's go sit on the porch. Unless you have to get somewhere. I'll sing you some of my songs if you like.”

“I'd love it!” He wished he hadn't sounded so enthusiastic, but Nina smiled at him in delight and he changed his mind. He would rather make her happy than be cool.

She said, “You mean it? I can hardly ever get anyone to listen.”

“Well, you can get me, anytime. I like your voice.”

“You do? That's wonderful. My mother says I sing like a cat in heat.”

She sang the song he had heard the night before when he lurked in the dark outside the porch. She had changed it slightly, worked out the bad rhymes, and at the end of each verse added a little humming bit that Hugo loved. She nodded as she hummed it, raising one eyebrow and making the hum sound somehow angry, almost threatening. When she was done, he said, “Wow,” and Nina laughed.

“I hope that means you like it.”

“It's great. I really think it's great.” He wished he could think of a supplementary word that didn't sound phony. Instead he asked her, “Is that a true song? I mean, did all that really happen to you? Are your parents really divorced?”

“Oh, no—they're utterly devoted to each other. In fact, they're quite disgusting about it, when you consider they're fairly old.” She reached across her guitar for her can of Coke and drank. “Singing is like walking through a desert. I get so dry!” He watched her throat pulse, and looked at the little hollows of her collarbones on each side, and then she coughed and said, “I love making things up. Every one of my songs tells a story. I think that's important.”

“I had an idea for a song once—actually a poem. I have this friend who writes poetry.”

“Yeah? What kind of an idea?” Did he imagine belligerence? He would have to remember, always, to tread carefully.

“Just a dumb idea. About how life is missing people. I mean—you meet someone and then you move away or something and so you miss them.”

“Oh, great. Terrific. Brilliant.”

“No, but then when people die, not just leave you but actually die, then they become—this was sort of the point of the song, which I warned you was dumb—then they become missing people, like missing persons, only if you say ‘missing people' it's more of a pun. Not a very good pun but sort of a dumb pun. It helps—well, it doesn't help much, but it helps if you put the emphasis on ‘missing' first and then on ‘people,' so that you can really see what you're talking about.”

“I get it, Hugo. You have this fatal tendency to overexplain.”

“Yeah. Sorry. I probably talk too much. Anyway, it's not much of an idea.”

“No. It's okay. It might make a song. It's kind of interesting.” Her voice was neutral; he couldn't tell what she really thought. He thought, suddenly, that nothing could make him happier than to have her turn to him and say, Oh, Hugo, that's fantastic! He closed his eyes for just a second, to imagine it, not daring to go further and imagine her falling into his arms.… He would save that for before bed: it would be his treat.

He said, “Why don't you sing me another song?”

She sang several, most of them either sad or angry sounding. There was one called “Midnight Roads.” The chorus went:

“I'd like to travel those roads,

Those long dark midnight roads—

Those roads where nobody knows my name,

Where I can play the driftin' game,

Where the miles can swallow up all my pain—

I'd like to travel those roads with you.”

Something about it made Hugo want to cry. It wasn't only the song itself, though it was sad, and Nina's voice dipped down at the end into what he recognized as a minor key, but the combination of the music plus Nina's face as she sang—ruminative and alert, as if she listened to herself and heard something surprising—and, outside the porch screens, the sun low in the sky making a golden path across the water, and most of all the way he felt. This day, he said to himself—clenching his fists tight to keep back tears—was one of the biggest of his life, a turning point. He was on this porch, not three feet away from a girl—a strange, exotic girl who became more beautiful to him every second. He longed to reach over and touch her wild hair, and when he realized that perhaps one day soon he would have the freedom and familiarity and ease with her to do that, then again the tears nearly spilled over.

Nina broke off suddenly in the middle of a verse and said, “What was that?”

Hugo composed his face. He had heard nothing but Nina's voice. Then it came again: a low yowling sound from inside the house.

“Listerine?”

They hurried into the kitchen where, in one corner, Nina had set up a bed for Listerine to have her kittens on, an old sofa cushion covered with a tattered beach towel. Listerine was lying there, and when she looked up and saw them she made the long, yowling sound again. Her eyes were large and round, the same gold color as the sun on the pond. Nina went over to her and knelt down. “What's the matter, my baby? Oh, Hugo!” She clasped her hands before her chest. He knelt next to her. “Hugo, look—the kittens are here.”

On the towel with Listerine, nearly lost in a fold, were two moving creatures, wet black rats. Hugo could see their small snouts, their tiny paws, their closed-up eyes. They resembled a mole he had seen once behind Rose's trailer, little rooting things. He put out a finger. “Don't touch them,” Nina said, and laid her fingers across the back of his hand. “She might not like it yet; they're too new.”

He leaned down closer and said, “I think there's something wrong with Listerine.”

“What do you mean?”

“Is there a light we could put on?” Nina got up and turned on the overhead light. Listerine stared up at them, and her golden eyes narrowed in the glare. She yowled again, a noise rich with desperation. “You see?”

“It's a kitten coming out,” Nina said.

“It looks like it won't come.” He bent closer. He could see the tiniest possible paws and a stringy tail hanging limply from Listerine's behind. He wondered why there was no blood, no struggle, just this bit of a kitten dangling there and Listerine's pained eyes.

She made her noise again. Nina sobbed. “Hugo, what can we do? I think it hurts her.”

“Call the vet?”

“I don't know who the vet is! And vets don't come to your house and deliver kittens. Oh, Listerine!” She reached out a hand to the cat, and Listerine leaned toward it and yowled, and then she opened her mouth and began to pant. Hugo had never heard a cat pant; it was a harsh little sound that scared them both. “Hugo, do you think we should do something?”

“I think we should pull it out.”

Nina clasped her hands before her chest again. They knelt close beside one another, their faces close enough to kiss. He thought, I will remember this moment all my life. Then he leaned down to Listerine and grasped the dangling kitten and pulled. He was too gentle, afraid Listerine would bite him or scratch, but she only panted. With his fingers around the kitten he sensed that it was dead—shouldn't it squirm? Maybe that was the trouble, maybe dead kittens didn't come out so easily. “I've got to pull hard, Nina,” he said, and looked at her. Her eyes were small and brown; right now they brimmed with tears.

She said, “Can you do it?”

Tears came to his own eyes; he couldn't help it, and he knew somehow that it was all right to cry a little. He touched the kitten again, felt the slimy fur, cool under his fingers. He got a good grip, felt the little paws, the taut stomach, and he pulled. The kitten came out, and behind it a knotty, muscled cord, and blood. Hugo suppressed a cry and set the kitten on the towel. “That's it,” he said. He looked at Nina again. Tears were rolling down her cheeks. He put an arm around her shoulders.

“That's it, Nina. She should be okay now.”

Listerine reached her head over to the kitten, nosed it, began to lick it. It didn't move, no matter how ferociously it was licked. “It's dead,” Nina whispered. “The poor thing.”

He tightened his grip on her shoulder. They watched while Listerine chewed at the cord, and bit it off. Then she expelled a bloody mass that they thought at first was another kitten until she licked at it and chewed it until it was gone. Neither of them spoke. Hugo wondered if what was happening was what was supposed to happen. He wondered if Nina knew, but he didn't like to ask and break the silence between them—an absence of talk in which it was possible for his hand to remain across her shoulders. He felt awed and reverent, the way he imagined people felt in church, the way he figured he was supposed to have felt at his grandfather's funeral when all he had been able to feel was panic, and the knowledge that he was wearing sneakers with a suit. But he felt it now, watching the cat: the sense that he was in the presence of something miraculous, beyond his comprehension, perfect and ancient and real.

He had no idea how long they knelt there. He had lost track of the time while Nina was singing, and that seemed hours ago. Now he remembered that the sun had been low across the pond, and he wondered, without caring, if the Garners were waiting dinner for him. He knew he wouldn't leave until Nina did. Eventually, Listerine ignored the dead kitten and began to pay attention to the other two, licking them until they squeaked. They nuzzled at her and finally found the part of her they wanted, and began blindly to nurse, pushing at her with their paws opened out like stars. Listerine lay back, purring. Hugo heard Nina take a deep, shuddery breath, and then she said, “Oh, Hugo,” and turned to him, and he held her close against his chest.