Love Saves the Day (40 page)

Laura and Josh must have gone shopping while I was staying in the Bad Place, because now the living room floor is crowded with store-bought cat toys. There are little toys that look just like mice—with fur and everything—that squeak when I bite them, and balls with tiny bells that roll in all directions and remind me of the jingly toys Sarah brought home when I first went to live with her. Josh and Laura remembered to save the big paper bag the toys came in, and I crawl all the way into the back of it, holding one of my mice in my teeth and swiping out at their feet with my front paws whenever they walk past. There’s also one toy that’s like a long stick with feathers—like the ones from Sarah’s bird-clothes—dangling from a string at the end. Laura holds the end of the stick over my head and drags it around while I try to catch the dangling feathers. She laughs when I stand up on my hind legs and bat at them with my front paws, until I wonder who’s supposed to be enjoying this toy—her or me?

They also brought home something called catnip, which looks a little like the cooking herbs Sarah used to make our food with but smells
so
much more wonderful. Josh sprinkled some on the living room floor, and at first I was just breathing its smell in and noticing how nice it was. Then, the next thing you know, I was
rolling around on my back and all I could think was,
This is sooooooo gooooood
. This, of course, is not a dignified way for a cat to behave. I was able to recover a little bit of dignity when Laura walked by while I was rolling around, and I leapt at her ankles. She seemed as delighted with this display of feline hunting skills as Sarah ever had. She even scooped me up the way Sarah used to and asked, “Who’s my happy girl?” I rubbed my forehead against hers just the way I used to with Sarah when we lived in Lower East Side.

Days pass, I’m not sure how many. Laura doesn’t go to her office during the day, and she doesn’t read any work papers at night. Now she spends a lot of time napping, and I nap with her. Sometimes we nap together in the big bed upstairs, and sometimes we fall asleep on the couch until Josh comes to throw a blanket over us. He’s always very quiet, trying not to disturb us. He seems concerned about making sure Laura is getting enough rest, even though she isn’t getting sick in the mornings anymore.

She and Josh talk and watch movies and go out to lunch on days that aren’t even Sundays. Last night, they went out together to celebrate some sort of word-writing about that building on Avenue A. “We got a story!” Josh kept saying. “A story in
The New York Times
!” But he didn’t say how
many
times, or times
what
, so it was hard to know why it was such a big deal. It must have made more sense to Laura than it did to me, because she put her arms around Josh and said, “I’m proud of you.” The skin on her forehead didn’t even tighten the way it used to whenever Josh mentioned that building.

Later that night, after they came home, Laura told Josh a story about when she was fourteen, and the apartment building she and Sarah were living in got torn down. I was lying on the back of the couch, behind Laura’s head, and she reached one hand back to press my face close to hers when she talked about what happened to Honey the cat.

Josh was sitting at the other end of the couch. His eyes never left her face, and he moved closer when she got to the part about Honey and Mr. Mandelbaum, taking her hand and squeezing it
tight. “I’m sorry,” he said when she was finished talking, and pressed her face to his shoulder. “Oh, Laura, I’m so sorry. But you
must
know,” he squeezed her hand harder, “you have to know that nothing like that is ever going to happen to us.”

“How can you know that?” Laura’s voice sounded like she was ready to cry, even though she didn’t. “How can you possibly know what’s going to happen to us?”

Josh exhaled loudly through his nose and let go of her hand, running his own back and forth across the top of his head. “You’re right. I don’t know for sure. There could be a fire or a flood. Or a freak tornado could flatten New York. But we have resources. And we have each other.” Laura was staring down at her hands while Josh said all this, and he fell silent until she looked up into his face. “Nothing like that is ever going to happen to us, or to our child.”

Laura didn’t say anything. She leaned her head back against the couch, her hair brushing against my whiskers, and Josh put his arm around her again. He held her until her eyes closed, and she and I both settled into a peaceful sleep.

Two days later, at breakfast, Josh’s forehead is knotted, like he’s thinking hard about something. He fiddles with the twisty-tie from the loaf of bread he made his toast from, and when I stretch up one paw to reach for it, he drops it onto the ground in front of me so I can pick it up and toss it into the air. I chase it into the corner behind the kitchen table, where it tries to hide from me. Laura and Josh watch. “I have to tell you something,” Josh finally says.

Laura’s body stiffens a little. “Okay.” Her voice sounds deeper than usual, the way a human’s voice sounds when they’re nervous but trying not to sound that way.

“I’ve been getting a lot of calls since the
Times
article came out,” he tells her. “Magazines and other papers that want to do follow-up stories, things like that. I’ve also been hearing from a lot of the artists who’ve recorded in the music studio over the years. Some of them are pretty big names.” He pauses. “Anise Pierce
called last night after you went to bed. She read the article, too. She wants to come out here and help.”

Laura’s left hand, which has been resting in her lap, rises onto the table. She drums two fingers against it. From underneath the table, where I’m sitting with my twisty-tie, I can hear the light
thump thump
of fingers against wood. “Anise,” she repeats. “Anise Pierce wants to come
here
, all the way from Asia, to help save a music studio she hasn’t set foot in for thirty years.” I think Laura may be asking a question, although I can’t be sure. Her voice doesn’t go higher at the end of what she says the way human voices usually do when they’re asking a question.

“She’s in California now,” Josh tells Laura. “She got back a few weeks ago. To be honest, I think she wants to come out here to see you more than Alphaville.”

Laura doesn’t say anything right away, although I can see her toes curl up inside her socks. At last she says, “You said yourself that all kinds of people have been coming forward since the
Times
article ran. Do you really need Anise’s help?”

“Maybe it would be good for you to see her again,” Josh says. “How many people knew your mother as well as she did?”

“Let’s talk about it later.” Laura pushes back her chair and stands. “Right now I want to do some grocery shopping, and I’m not sure I have anything to wear outside that still fits me.”

Laura has been getting fatter lately, probably because she sleeps a lot more and stopped drinking coffee. She pauses in the doorway and, without turning around, says to Josh, “You can call Anise and tell her to come if she wants.”

Laura walks up the stairs, and I follow her. If she’s unsure about what clothes to wear, she’ll want my opinion, the way Sarah always did.

For days Laura attacks our apartment. She moves everything around on counters so she can scrub every little corner, pushes rugs out of the way to sweep away whatever bits of dust might be
hiding there, and stands on ladders so she can wipe shelves and the tops of furniture too tall for a human standing on the floor to see anyway. Blue liquid from a spritzy bottle makes rainbows in the sunlight when she stands near the window to clean, but it smells fake sweet and falls onto my fur when I get too close. I squint my eyes and let my mouth hang open, trying to keep the stink of it from invading my nostrils. Even The Monster gets taken from its special closet. I hide in Home Office—which is the one room Josh told Laura she isn’t allowed to clean—until The Monster is safely back in its cave.

“Maybe we should hire someone to do all this,” Josh says.

Laura is lying on her belly on the floor of their bedroom, half underneath the bed as she tries to get rid of something called “dust bunnies.” I see little balls of fur and human hair, but nothing that looks like a bunny. “We don’t need to hire somebody,” Laura says. “It’s not like I’m busy doing anything else these days.”

Josh has been standing in the doorway to the bedroom watching Laura chase the invisible bunnies. Now he turns to leave. “Anise Pierce isn’t going to look under the bed,” he says over his shoulder.

“Yeah? Thanks for letting me know,” she says in her “dry” voice.

By the time the doorbell rings the next night, the apartment is so clean it doesn’t smell like anybody lives here. I’m busy rubbing my Prudence-smell back into the living room couch when Josh opens the door. Laura is seated on the couch with her back straight and her hands folded in her lap. After spending a lot of time deciding what to wear, she finally put on a pair of jeans and a soft, light blue sweater that’s big enough to hide her growing belly. I think the color of the sweater looks beautiful with her eyes.

There’s the sound of Josh saying hello and Anise’s familiar voice, deep and raspy, answering him. Then she walks into the room behind Josh. Seeing her face again and smelling her Anise-smell makes memories of Sarah and our old apartment fill my mind so fast, I have to lie down for a moment and feel the cool wood of the floor against the skin of my belly. I see Sarah and
Anise singing along to black disks and talking about The Old Days, Sarah telling Anise about Laura and Josh back before I knew that, someday, Laura would become my Most Important Person. I remember Sarah holding me in her lap while she told Anise there was something wrong with her heart, and Anise saying,
You should tell Laura, Sarah. She’d want to know. She loves you more than either of you realizes
.

Laura stands, and Anise and Laura look at each other for a long moment. I can tell from the way Laura’s eyes widen that she’s remembering things, too. “My God,” Anise finally says. “You look just like her. I’d forgotten.”

“Not the eyes,” Laura replies. “She always said I had my father’s eyes.”

Anise’s laugh is loud and hoarse-sounding. “We won’t hold that against you.” She crosses the room in only three long steps and wraps her arms around Laura. She seems to grow taller, so that all of Laura is folded up into her hug. “I’m sorry, baby. I’m so sorry. It’s a terrible thing to lose your mother, especially when she was so young.” Anise’s eyes over Laura’s shoulder are shiny with water. “I still can’t believe she’s gone.” She pulls back to look at Laura. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be here for her funeral.”

Laura takes a step back from Anise. “I know how hard it can be to reach you when you’re overseas.”

“I have a cell phone now,” Anise says. “I don’t think you would have had trouble reaching me, if you’d really wanted to.”

Anise looks at Laura, who seems to shrink a bit until it looks almost like she and Anise are the same size. Anise’s words sound like an accusation, but then she smiles and adds, “You must have gotten your stubbornness from your father, too.”

Laura doesn’t seem to know what to say to this. Josh, who’s been standing there watching them asks, “Anise, what are you drinking?”

“Just some tea with lemon, if you’ve got it,” she tells him and Josh disappears into the kitchen.

“Have a seat,” Laura says, and Anise perches on the shorter end of the couch. Now that she’s closer to me, I realize how familiar
she smells. There was a hint of this same smell on the bird-clothes Sarah kept in the back of her closet.

Anise notices me sniffing her leg and grins. “Prudence!” Putting one hand beneath my nose, she says, “It’s a long time since I’ve seen you, baby doll.” She begins petting me almost before I know what’s happening, but her fingers are so skilled they find all the good places behind my ears and under my chin that I’m helpless to protest. I fall to the ground and flip onto my back, sad when Anise pulls her hand away too soon. “Look at this apartment,” she says, her bright eyes darting around the room. Then she laughs. “Sarah must have
hated
this place.”

Laura laughs, too, in an unthinking way that seems to surprise her. “You’re right,” she tells Anise. “My mother said buildings like this look more like hotels than homes. But then,” she adds, “I remember her complaining about how hard the stairs in her building were on her knees whenever it rained.”

“It stinks getting older,” Anise agrees cheerfully. The little lines around her eyes crinkle as she smiles again. “Your whole life you’re young, and that’s all you know how to be. That’s all you
remember
being. Everything anybody says to you starts with,
You’re young. You’re young so you don’t know any better. You’re too young to know what being tired feels like
. And then one day they stop saying it. You realize it’s been years since anybody called you young. These days everything people say to me begins with,
At our age. At our age, who has the energy to run around Asia with a rock band?
” Josh has returned with two cups of tea, handing one to Anise and the other to Laura. Anise sips at hers and says, “I don’t think I’ll ever be the grown-up your mother already was at nineteen, but she also had a gift for staying young. That’s tough to pull off. I appreciate it more every day.”

Laura drinks from her teacup, too, but doesn’t respond to this. Josh walks across the room to fiddle with something next to the TV, and music fills the room. Anise is also silent for a moment, then says, “Is this Sarah’s copy of
Country Life
?”

Josh looks surprised. “It is,” he tells her. “How did you know?”

“Because I gave it to her.” She puts her teacup down on the
coffee table. “Before I moved to California. You always recognize the crackle of your own records.”

“We have a bunch of her records and things upstairs,” Josh says. “You guys should look through them.”

Laura’s face tightens. But Anise says, “I’d love that, if it’s okay with you?”

She looks over to Laura, who hesitates before nodding and putting her teacup on the table next to Anise’s. Standing, she says, “Come on. I’ll show you where everything is.”