Love Saves the Day (37 page)

“I think so,” Josh replied. “Which animal hospital should I take her to?”

“St. Mark’s Vet down on Ninth and First,” Laura responded immediately, trying to control the panic now rising in her own chest. “That’s where my mother always took her.”

“That’s all the way downtown. Shouldn’t I bring her someplace closer?”

“What if she has a medical condition they know about and we don’t?”
Like my mother did
, she thought. “Tell the cabbie you’ll double the fare if he can get you there in fifteen minutes. Triple if he makes it in ten.”

“Laura, I—”

“Just
go
,” Laura interrupted. “Go now. I’m on my way down.” She hung up and turned to look at Clay and Perry, still seated across the room and watching her closely.

“Is everything okay?” Perry asked.

“My—” Laura stopped, hearing in her own head the words she was about to say, knowing how they would sound to Clay and even to Perry. Squaring her shoulders, she said it anyway. “My cat is sick.”

At first, Clay looked more startled than anything else. “What?” he asked.

“My cat is sick,” Laura repeated. “She’s unconscious and she’s on her way to the animal hospital. I have to go meet her there.”

Having made this statement, Laura felt foolish for a moment. Not because of what she’d said, or for wanting to rush immediately to the animal hospital. She simply didn’t know how to get out of the room. If she’d had a child, and if she’d said,
My daughter is sick, she’s unconscious
, she could have left instantly. Nobody would have expected her to do anything else. But this was something different. Instinctively she waited either for permission, as a good underling should, or for the confrontation that would make permission irrelevant and carry her out the door.

“You’re kidding, right?” Clay glanced at Perry. Turning to Laura again, he said, “
What
did you say?”

Laura had fought already with her husband that morning. She’d even fought with Prudence who (her heart clutched with guilt and fear) was now on her way to the hospital.
Might as well make a clean sweep of it
, she thought grimly. Aloud to Clay she said, “I think you heard me just fine.”

“No, I don’t think I did,” Clay replied. “Because what it sounded like you said is that you, an associate, are walking out on a multimillion-dollar contract review with two senior partners because your
cat
is sick.”

“See?” Laura was gathering her notes and papers. “I knew you heard me.”

For one second, Clay gaped at her. It was inconceivable that anybody, any associate, would have the nerve to speak to Clayton Newell this way in his own office. Then his eyes hardened. “Of course I heard you.” His voice was wintry. There wasn’t an associate in the firm who didn’t tremble when Clay sounded like this. “It just never occurred to me that you were serious.”

Laura thought of all her late nights in the office, all the times she’d worked twelve, thirteen, fourteen hours, leaving Josh to stew at home, because Clay had dropped some last-minute project on her desk, demanding an immediate turnaround even as he knew—as Laura herself had known—that he wouldn’t be in the next morning until hours after the deadline he’d given her.

“Clay,” Laura said, turning to face him, “you know how committed I am to this firm. I didn’t even take time off when my mother died.” She heard her own words echo in her head.
I didn’t take time off when my mother died. My mother
died,
and I came right back to work. As if nothing had happened
. “I’ve never put anything else first. You know I haven’t. Not once in all the years I’ve been here. But this is something I have to do, and I have to go now.”

“Don’t throw your commitment in my face like it was a special favor you conferred on us.” Clay was angry now. “You were committed and you worked hard because that’s the price of admission in a firm like this, and
you
know that.”

“Clay—” Perry attempted, but Laura interrupted him.

“No, Perry, he’s right. I was back in this office one hour after my mother’s funeral. I didn’t want anybody to think that I wasn’t man enough to handle it.”

“You could have taken all the time off you needed,” Perry remonstrated gently. “We would have given it to you.
I
would have given it to you. All you had to do was ask.”

“I know.” Laura took a shaky breath. “I do know that. I’m not blaming anybody. But I came back here anyway. And I was back here after my husband lost his job, even knowing that every single one of you knew it was about to happen and didn’t tell me. I thought I knew where my loyalties were supposed to be. I made a choice.” She remembered the day Sarah’s and her apartment had been torn down.
You can’t make me!
she’d cried when Sarah had tried to get her to leave. She thought of Josh, who only this morning had yelled at her about how they never went out, never had enough time together, because of her job. She had been outraged, unable to believe that Josh could be so unreasonable as to act as if she had any choice in the matter, any control over the number of hours she spent at the office.

Except that she did have a choice. She always had.

“I made a choice,” she repeated. “And I’m making one now.” She walked to the door.

“Don’t assume you’ll be welcome here if you decide to come in
tomorrow,” Clay said to her back. “I’ve got résumés for at least a hundred people as good as you are who’d kill to take your place.”

“Clay,” Perry said quietly. Always the voice of reason. “Don’t say things you don’t mean.”

Laura paused in the doorway but didn’t turn around. What had she expected to find in this place, anyway? Had she thought Perry was her
father
? Perry had his own family, his own children. If she lost Josh, if they couldn’t get past the things they said to each other that morning, and if she lost this pregnancy like she’d lost the last one … If this office was truly all she had left, then what was it, really, that she would have? Some money. A bit of tenuous security, so long as she said
yes
and
no
at all the right times and was properly obedient. Late nights of stumbling home, bleary-eyed, to an empty apartment and a phone that didn’t ring once all weekend.

She remembered the day she’d gotten the official offer from Neuman Daines. How proud she’d been! She had called Sarah to let her know, but not in the way a daughter calls her mother to share in the glow of her accomplishments. Just matter-of-fact.
Here’s where I’ll be working. Here’s where you can reach me if you need me
. Except that Sarah
had
needed her. And she had needed Sarah. It wasn’t confusion over phone numbers that had kept them apart.

“She was my mother’s cat, Clay.” Laura’s voice was no longer argumentative. “She’s all I have left of my mother.”

She didn’t wait to hear if Clay or Perry responded. She walked out.

In the back of the cab that sped down a rain-slick Park Avenue, Laura pressed her right foot impatiently against the floor as if there were an imaginary accelerator beneath it, willing the car to go faster. When it slowed down behind another cab making a turn, Laura leaned forward and said desperately to the driver, “Go around him, go
around
.” She knew, somehow, that this was her
fault. She’d yelled at Prudence only this morning.
Why can’t you just leave me alone?
Laura’s stomach lurched in agony, and she pressed her hand, cool from the rain outside, against her forehead. If this
was
her fault, if she had done this to Prudence somehow, then surely she could undo whatever it was, if only she got there quickly enough.

When had it happened—how long had it been since Prudence, nearly unnoticed, had crept into that place in her heart once held by Honey, a place she had kept resolutely closed for so many years? Prudence with her black tiger stripes and dainty white paws. Prudence waiting patiently outside her bathroom when she was sick in the mornings, then following at her heels, turning in eager circles as Laura prepared her morning meal. Prudence sitting up with her night after night, purring melodically next to her on the couch, her only comfort—the only reason she was finally able to fall asleep—on so many nights during these past few months. Laura thought about Prudence’s peremptory, guttural meows as she demanded some treat of tuna or cheese. Why hadn’t she given those things to Prudence from the first day she’d arrived in their home? Why had she needed to be asked? She had known the things cats liked, that made them happy. And she had known how it felt to lose Sarah.

The taxi passed a green apartment building awning, beneath which a woman held the hand of a chubby, diapered infant, clearly in the early bowlegged days of learning to walk. Laura thought of Prudence’s funny little kitten waddle in her mother’s kitchen, Prudence rising on fuzzy, unsteady legs to snatch some treat or tidbit from Sarah’s outstretched hand. The cab was racing down Second Avenue now, past Baby Bo’s Cantina. Sarah had loved their quesadillas. They’d been a Sunday ritual for her, along with the fried plantains she’d known Laura enjoyed and had made a point of having when she knew Laura would be coming over. Laura had noticed when Sarah stopped bringing the quesadillas home, sharing the sour cream and pulled chicken with Prudence. But she hadn’t thought to ask why.

A garbage truck turned a corner to emerge and stop in front of
them. The cabbie slammed the brakes, flinging Laura—still leaning forward—against the Plexiglas partition separating the front seat from the back. Rubbing her forehead, she was about to make another impassioned plea for him to go
around
the wretched thing, but the driver was already looking over his left shoulder and sliding into the next lane. They made better time after that, easing into the rhythm of the lights and making it through a few yellows at the last possible second. St. Mark’s Church, where she and Sarah had gone every New Year’s Eve to listen to all-night poetry readings, flew by on their right. At Second and Ninth they passed Veselka, where she and Sarah had sometimes treated themselves to borscht in the summer, mushroom-barley soup in the winter. The restaurant and the church remained, but Laura would never go to either of those places with her mother again.

With one loss, Laura realized, others multiplied. Suddenly she wanted her mother with a desperate want that sat on her chest and wouldn’t let her breathe. She wanted to feel her mother’s arms around her, to press her face into the graceful bend between her mother’s neck and shoulder and inhale the comforting scent of her mother’s hair. More than anything, she wanted to hear her mother sing. She hadn’t heard Sarah sing in sixteen years, not since that June day when Laura was only fourteen.

But she would never hear her mother sing again. For the first time since Sarah died, Laura truly understood—
felt
all the way down to the pit of her stomach—the awful finality of the word
never
. She would never hear Sarah’s voice again. She would never have her mother’s comfort again. She hadn’t felt the loss as deeply as she should have because Prudence had been there, a living piece of her mother that was still with her. And now she didn’t know if Prudence would survive the day.

For months Laura had been unable to cry for her mother’s death. For one dreadful moment, she felt herself on the verge of breaking down completely, right here in the back of this cab. She bent forward to put her head between her knees, willing herself to hold it together.

With a squeal of rubber against wet pavement, the cab skidded to a stop. “Twelve dollars, miss,” the driver told her. Laura handed him a twenty from her purse and hastily murmured, “Keep the change.” She drew the jacket of her suit over her head to protect it from the rain as she ran from the car and down the short flight of metal stairs to the basement-level entrance of the animal hospital.

The waiting room was tiny. Blond-wood floors and recessed lighting created what probably had been intended as a warm, comforting atmosphere. But it was the kind of gray, rainy day when even lighting the lamps seemed to enhance the gloom rather than dispel it.

As Laura shook the rainwater from her jacket, she saw Josh pacing the small room. He had turned a stranger’s face to her that morning. It had been like that other day all over again, when her mother had turned on her with a stranger’s eyes and slapped her across the face. Worse than seeing their home destroyed, worse even than losing Honey and Mr. Mandelbaum, had been seeing a person she didn’t know wearing her mother’s face. It had seemed impossible that she and Josh could ever again speak to each other kindly, with love in their voices, after the things they’d said.

But Laura could see at once that all that had been put aside, at least for the moment. Josh’s face was as taut as her own, his eyes red. “Josh,” she said. She quickly crossed the room to where he stood and, without thinking, put her hand on his arm. She felt the warmth of his skin beneath his shirt. “Josh, what happened?”

“It was the lilies,” he said, and Laura’s heart turned over at the haggard look on his face.

“What lilies? What
happened
?”

Josh sank onto one of the benches in the waiting room, wooden benches that suggested festive outdoor activities where people might bring their dogs, and that held wicker baskets containing magazines like
Cat Fancy
and
Best Friends
. “For our anniversary, I went to the florist who made your wedding bouquet. I had him
make an identical one. It was supposed to come before you left for work today.” He gave a mirthless laugh. “Nothing this morning has gone the way I’d planned.”

Laura felt tears sting her eyes. “Oh, Josh,” she murmured, and sank down onto the bench next to him.

“Prudence ate some of the lilies.” Josh seemed to address this to the bulletin board with flyers for lost dogs and kittens for adoption that hung on the wall across the tiny room, unable or unwilling to look her in the face.

“Okay,” Laura said, confused. “Cats eat plants sometimes.”

“Yes,” Josh said. “But lilies are
toxic
to cats. There’s something in them that shuts their kidneys down.”