Cat Sitter on a Hot Tin Roof (8 page)

11

O
n the way home, Ray Charles was still in my head singing “You don’t know me,” while I beat time on the steering wheel and grinned at the contradiction of a wide-hipped Silverado pickup with a gun rack in the back and a RAPTURE! sticker on the bumper. Florida is an Old Testament state where God walks with us in the cool of the evening. But he tells us not to get too smart, not to eat of the tree of knowledge, or we will die. And all around us, a sibilant sea whispers the soul’s terrifying truth: “If you eat of the tree, you will not die.” It’s no wonder so many of us are gun-toting fundamentalists.

At home, I pulled into the carport just as the sun plunged into the Gulf in a final burst of Technicolor glory. Paco was on the deck with Ella in his arms watching the show, and I trotted over to join them. Only Paco could manage to look slim and fit in slouchy black sweatpants and a floppy white T-shirt. The pants even accentuated the fact that he has the most gorgeous butt in the universe.

Gorgeous butt or not, he looked lonely.

He slung his free arm over my shoulder and we stood taking in the floating sky banners of turquoise and hot pink and orange. We didn’t speak until the colors had finally faded and the sun’s glittering path from horizon to shore disappeared.

As the surf wrote frothy messages on the sand, Paco said, “Have you eaten?”

“No, and I’m starving.”

“Me too.”

We both sighed in unison. Without Michael to feed us, we were like newly hatched chicks without a mother.

Paco said, “There’s some turkey and stuff in the fridge.”

I said, “We could make sandwiches.”

We both perked up. Sandwiches weren’t as good as what Michael would have fed us, but we had solved the dinner problem, and we had each other.

I said, “I’ll be down in ten minutes,” and loped upstairs.

Ten minutes later, I skipped down barefoot and still slightly damp from a speed shower, but decently covered in elastic-waist cotton pants and an oversized T-shirt, a female version of what Paco wore.

In the kitchen, Ella was perched on her stool looking wistfully at the spread on the butcher-block island. Paco had hauled out everything remotely related to sandwich making, and was crouched in front of the refrigerator poking into its innards.

He said, “I can’t find the horseradish mustard.”

“On the door. What kind of beer do you have?”

He held up a dark glass bottle with a long neck. “Some exotic stuff Michael got at the Sarasota Brewing Company. You can have Golden Wheat, Midnight Pass Porter, or Sunset Red.”

“Ooh, cool. I’ll have the porter.”

I got plates and made room for them by shoving aside cutting boards holding sliced turkey and ham, sliced tomatoes and onions. There was a loaf of pumpernickel bread and one of rye, along with jars of mayonnaise, three kinds of mustard, two kinds of pickles, black and green olives, several varieties of relish, both mild and hot salsa, and some things I didn’t recognize. Also chips, both potato and corn. We could have fed half of Siesta Key.

We took seats and fell on the food like happy cannibals, smearing big globs of mayonnaise and mustard on bread and layering on meat and condiments to hoggish heights. Being a lady, I daintily cut my sandwich in half, on the diagonal. Paco just held his carefully so nothing would slip out the bottom. For a few minutes, the only sound was the crunch of crisp pickles and snap of chips.

After a while, I said, “You know the woman I told you about? The one with the sadistic surgeon husband?”

“Yeah?”

“Well, he’s found her. This morning I overheard them talking. He was scary.”

“All the more reason for you to stay out of it. That woman’s situation sounds like a plane crash about to happen.”

“She needs a friend, Paco. That’s all I’m offering.”

“Sounds to me like she needs a good lawyer. Maybe a good shrink.”

“Just because she left her husband doesn’t make her crazy.”

“I’m just saying she needs more help than you can give her.”

I couldn’t argue with that, so we chewed for a few more minutes without talking.

But I’m the one who, when I was five years old and made to sit in a corner in kindergarten because I talked too much, told my mother that if you went too long without talking all your mouth bones would grow together. I don’t have any trouble with silence if I’m alone, but when another person is present, my mouth is still afraid all its bones will fuse if I don’t speak.

I said, “You know those songs or commercials that get stuck in your head?”

“They’re called ear worms. Comes from some German word that sounds like ear worms and means the same thing. Don’t remember what it is.”

“Huh. Well, I’ve got one. I keep hearing Ray Charles singing ‘You don’t know me.’ That’s all. Just ‘You don’t know me’ over and over. It’s making me nuts.”

“Yeah, I hate those things. I hate commercial jingles the most. One time when I was on a stakeout, I kept hearing a voice say,
Raid kills bugs dead.
All the damn night long, I heard that commercial.”

I drained the last of my porter and set the bottle on the butcher block.

“The little boy who had surgery hasn’t waked up yet. Surgery was at seven this morning. Shouldn’t he be awake by now?”

Paco’s dark eyes studied me. “You said he’s three years old, right?”

My throat worked for a moment in a vain attempt to deny his implicit meaning, but I knew he was right.

I said, “Okay.”

In the shorthand communication that develops between people who love and support one another, he was telling me that I was seeing my three-year-old daughter in Jeffrey, seeing her crushed skull every time I thought of Jeffrey’s brain surgery, feeling the edges of the same cold anguish I’d felt when Christy was killed. He had warned me not to do that anymore, and I had agreed to stop. Those unspoken codes may be the best thing about families.

I helped Paco put away all the leftovers and tidy up the kitchen, then blew kisses at him and Ella and went upstairs to bed. As I fell asleep, Ray Charles was still softly singing in the shadows of my mind.

“You don’t know me,” he said, “You don’t know me.”

12

B
y a quarter to five next morning, I was dressed and on my porch, trying to shake the feeling that the day would be a bad one. I was glad that Michael would come home at eight o’clock and would be home for the next forty-eight hours. I’ve felt safer all my life when Michael was nearby, and I guess I always will.

The sky was clear and milky, moon and stars withdrawn into its haze. Subdued bird twittering and gentle surf made morning music, the sea’s breath was cool and smelled of salt and kelp, a new day’s forgiveness dispensed with open hand.

There was absolutely no reason for a ton of weight to ride on my chest.

The next few hours flowed with the same smoothness. No unpleasant surprises. Nothing out of the ordinary. At the Sea Breeze, Billy Elliot and I galloped around the oval parking lot until he was satisfied and grinning, and I was gasping for air. After Billy Elliot, I walked a sedate pug and then a pregnant collie mix. When the dogs were all walked and fed and brushed, I saw to the cats on my list. At each house, I fed them, groomed them, and spent about fifteen minutes playing with them. Sometimes we played with a cat’s own toys, and sometimes with one of mine.

Dogs don’t much care what games you play with them, they’re just tickled that you’re playing with them at all. You can roll old ratty foam balls around for dogs, or even throw them a cat’s toy, and they’ll think you’re the coolest playmate they’ve ever had.

Cats, on the other hand, are as fickle about their toys as they are about their food. Wave a peacock feather at a cat one day, and he’ll jump for it with ecstatic excitement. Wave the same feather the next day, and the cat will sit with a disdainful sneer on his face and look at you as if you have insulted him, his mother, and all his ancestors back to Egypt.

At Mazie’s house, I heard saxophone music as I went up the walk to the front door. Pete answered the doorbell with the sax in his hand, all the lines in his face curving upward.

“The boy’s doing fine. Hal called early this morning, said he came out of the anesthetic late last night. He was groggy and confused for a while, but now he’s alert. Hal said they’d be moving him to Sub-ICU sometime this morning.”

My knees went weak with relief. “Did Hal say what the doctors think about the seizures?”

He shook his head. “I didn’t ask. I didn’t want to keep him. Poor guy, he sounded exhausted. He just wanted to tell me Jeffrey was out of ICU and to make sure Mazie was okay.”

At the sound of her name, Mazie raised her head, then lowered it with a sigh and stretched her chin against her forepaws.

Pete said, “I’m worried about her, but I told Hal she was okay. I didn’t want him to worry too.”

I knelt beside Mazie and stroked her head. “Jeffrey will be home soon, Mazie, and he’s going to be fine.”

I hoped with all my heart that I was telling her the truth—that Jeffrey would come home soon and never have another seizure.

Neither of us enjoyed our walk, and when we came back and turned into her driveway, something at the edge of my vision streaked across the street and into the trees and foliage. I turned my head, but whatever it was had disappeared. I had only caught a quick flash of movement, but I’d got the impression of a small brown animal with a long tail. Somewhat like a lemur, except lemurs live on a different continent. Actually, it had seemed like a small brown cat. To be even more specific, it had seemed like Leo on the lam.

I led a reluctant Mazie down the sidewalk closer to Laura’s house. I didn’t see any signs of life, but that didn’t mean Laura wasn’t home. She could be inside reading the morning paper and Leo could have run out when she went outside to get it. She could be in the shower, not realizing that Leo was loose. Or she could be on the jogging trail, completely unaware that Leo had slipped out when she opened the door.

Mazie pulled on the leash, wanting to go home. I hesitated a moment, torn between wanting to let Laura know her cat was outside, and knowing Mazie was right. I was on her time, not Leo’s. Besides, I wasn’t even sure I had seen Leo. It could have been some other dark cat with a long tail.

Telling myself Leo would eventually come home—if it had
been
Leo—I led Mazie back to her house. Pete was waiting outside the front door like an anxious father.

I handed Mazie’s leash off to him and said, “I think I saw Laura Halston’s cat while Mazie and I were walking. He runs out every time he sees an open door.”

“Why?”

“I guess he’s a nature cat. Doesn’t like living inside.”

“That’s how I’d be if I were a cat. I’d join the circus again, be on the move all the time.”

“Are there circus cats?”

“Well, sure, lions and tigers. A few people have got domestic cats to do some tricks, jump through hoops, that kind of thing, but cats don’t have a strong desire to please people like good circus animals have. Cats are liable to get bored in the middle of an act and just flat quit.”

“I think I’ll go next door and tell Laura, just in case it was Leo. He might have gone out when Laura opened the door to go running.”

“She ran real early this morning. I took Mazie outside to pee, and I saw her run across the street to the jogging trail.”

“I’m not even sure it was Leo.”

“A bobcat, maybe. People see bobcats in their yards all the time. Bobcats and panthers were here first, poor things.”

I didn’t think it had been a bobcat I’d seen. I was almost positive it had been Leo.

I left the Bronco in Mazie’s driveway and walked to Laura’s house, peering all around as I went in case Leo had returned to his own yard. As soon as I started up Laura’s walk, I saw that her front door was ajar. When I got closer, I saw Leo in the corner of the small porch. He was gnawing on one of his paws as if something was stuck between his toes. I wasn’t surprised that he’d come home. Cats have an unerring sense of direction, and they usually return soon enough when they’ve run away.

Cats are also skittish, and Leo might streak away if I approached him. I knelt on the walk and talked softly to him.

“Hey, Leo, remember me? Would you let me pick you up?”

He paused in his paw cleaning, tilted his ears toward me, and then went back to cleaning his foot. He seemed to be telling me that he wasn’t unfriendly, but to not take him for granted.

I looked toward the door again. If I ignored Leo and rang the doorbell, he might take offense at my nearness and run away. The smart thing would be to call Laura and tell her he was out and let her handle him. Keeping an eye on him, I pulled out my cell phone and dialed information, then remembered that Laura’s landline number was in her parents’ name and she hadn’t given me her cell number. I put the phone back in my pocket and got to my feet.

Leo turned his attention to another paw, going at it with a determined intensity. Whatever his feet had picked up on his dash to freedom was something he didn’t want to keep. Watching him from the corner of my eye, I took a few cautious steps toward the door and realized my heart was pounding much harder than the situation warranted. I told myself a cat had got out through a door accidentally left ajar, that’s all there was to it.

But I knew Leo had been outside now long enough for Laura to have missed him. I knew there was something terribly wrong about that open door. And above all else, I knew what Laura’s husband had said to her the day before. He had told her he would see that she paid for what she’d done.

While I debated what to do next, Leo stopped gnawing at his toes and watched me. Old deputy habits made me scrutinize the door facing for signs of forced entry. I didn’t see any, but when I looked more closely at the landing, I made out several small dark brown circles.

I don’t know why it had taken me so long to see them. Perhaps I had known all along they were there and denied them. Whatever the reason, they told me why Leo was so busily cleaning the pads of his paws.