Punish Me with Kisses (28 page)

She spent Christmas Eve in front of her TV staring at the electronic Yule Log on Channel 11, the log which burnt forever, flames leaping in time to Christmas carols. The pipes in her apartment gurgled. Watching, huddled in a sweater, she felt herself sinking into a depression in which loneliness and helplessness and isolation were all combined. Where could she turn? How long was her misery to go on? Had her father really murdered Suzie? Was he a monster, a maniac?

In her desperation she thought of Dr. Bowles upstairs, and how kind the psychiatrist had been that morning several weeks before. Though it was Christmas Eve and the doctor probably wasn't home, she telephoned her anyway. She almost hung up when Dr. Bowles answered, ashamed to be bothering a stranger on a holiday. She was silent, about to put the receiver down, when Dr. Bowles began to speak.

"It's all right. I'll hold on. I know how you feel calling at a time like this. But I know you wouldn't call unless you were really troubled, so I'll just hold on until you feel calm enough to speak."

Such warmth, such sympathy and kindness, without even knowing who was on the line.

"This is Penny Chapman," she said. "The girl in 2-B. I wondered—I was just wondering—I mean I feel so bad now and I wondered—"

"You wondered if it would be all right to come up. Yes, of course it is—I told you that, day or night. You come up right now and we'll see what we can do."

They talked for hours, or rather she talked while Dr. Bowles listened. Penny told her everything about Suzie and the trial and Jared and the diary and how she'd discovered that her father had had an affair with Suzie—and might even have killed her, though she couldn't accept that, found it impossible, farfetched. Then she told the psychiatrist how Jared had left, and then about Mac and being alone and her feeling that her family was very sick and cursed and how she wondered now whether that sickness had touched her, too.

It was exhilarating to tell all this to a stranger, especially one so radiant with understanding. The woman's eyes never showed shock or disapproval. She listened and responded, brought out the story by helping Penny along, anticipating sometimes by using phrases that precisely described her state-of-mind: "Then you felt just awful"—"That, of course, must have come as a terrible blow."

Dr. Bowles was the best listener Penny had ever met, and there was something cozy and merry about her apartment that spoke of an optimistic view of life—the brightly colored Norwegian rug, the orange and yellow cushions spread about the floor, the plate of Christmas cookies on the table, the flickering candles and the little undecorated tree. There were five or six cats in the room, beautiful ones, Persians, who moved and leaped about with grace. At one point, when Penny stopped her story to admire them, Dr. Bowles said: "Yes, they're beautiful. I think of them as living flowers."

Hours later, when she was finished and exhausted, Dr. Bowles finally spoke. "It's late now, Penny—time for sleep. Go home now and rest. Then, if you like, come back tomorrow at noon. I'm having some of my patients in. Oh—I hate that word: 'patients.' My children. That's what they are. We spend our holidays together because we're like a family. Join us, spend Christmas with us. Then in a few days we'll get together and talk some more. And remember Camus: 'Happiness, too, is inevitable.' It
is
, Penny. It
is
."

She could hear the sounds of people as she ascended the stairs on Christmas Day, the sounds of a party, and yet she paused outside the door, feeling shy. What would it be like to spend Christmas with people she didn't know, those strange people she'd seen so often carrying cat boxes up and down the stairs, or out on the street unloading cat supplies from the van?

It was an all-right group, she decided, once she saw them close-up, an even mixture of young men and women who seemed normal and intelligent, if a bit severe and gaunt. But there was something special she noticed about them—an intensity, an almost haughty confidence, a sense of certainty in their eyes. They spoke quietly, seemed self-absorbed, were pleasant to her if a little cool, but then, she realized, they shared the bond of Dr. Bowles, and she was new to that.

Their approach to the doctor was almost worshipful, as if the radiance and compassion of that kindly woman was the force that made them a group. There was something else she noticed and that was they talked a lot about cats. They knew the names of the six Persians in the room, called to them, stroked their backs, and Penny overheard bits of conversation about veterinarians, who was good and who wasn't, the one who'd make
housecalls
, a girl in Brooklyn, a "cat sitter" you could call if you were leaving town.

She was sitting with some of them eating pecan pie (it seemed as if each guest had brought something: a pie, cookies, a bottle of eggnog, a bowl of punch) when a girl about her own age asked how long she'd been in therapy.

"Actually," said Penny, "I guess I only started last night. I live here in the building—that's how I met Dr. Bowles. I was a little surprised when I first came up here. I'd always thought she had a lot more cats from the smell in the lobby and on the stairs—"

At that the others froze. A little while later the girl excused herself, and a few moments after that Penny saw her talking with Dr. Bowles. They were gazing at her, looking concerned; when they noticed that she was staring back they nodded at her and smiled. The girl returned, was warmer than before, introduced herself as Wendy, said she worked on animated films.

The cat question was disposed of the day after New Year's when Penny officially began her therapy. Dr. Bowles brought it up at once. She said she wanted to explain it right from the start, so that Penny understood very clearly what it was about.

"My patients are protective," she said, "because there're laws about how many animals can be kept in a private house. If my neighbors discover I have too many cats they can call the Health Department and then inspectors will come around. Some of my patients have been kicked out of their buildings, and a couple of times the Health Department's hauled their little cats away. They murder them outright, or else sell them to laboratories where they're used in experiments, literally tortured to death. Can you imagine? People just don't understand how much love is needed by the harmless creatures of the world. I have many more cats than these six Persians, Penny. Up in the attic I have many more, which is why sometimes you may be able to detect a smell downstairs. I'll take you up there one day and show them to you. But for now I've brought down this pair of kittens. Brother and sister—they're for you. Aren't they just divine?"

She picked up two Siamese blue-points and placed them in Penny's arms. Penny, a little surprised at first, looked at them, their little whiskered faces, their blinking eyes. Suddenly she felt her heart go out to them. She received them as a loving gift.

"They're about ten weeks old now, right in the middle of their
kittenhood
. They purr so nicely. Go on—place your fingers against their necks. There—that's it. Can you feel them purring now?" Penny could feel them. "They're going to play a considerable role in your therapy, Penny. This old tiger cat, too."

The old tiger, whose name was James, was large and plump and grave. He wasn't very friendly. When Penny reached out to him, he pulled back and began to hiss.

"Don't be afraid of James. He doesn't know you yet. He's going to act as sort of a watch-cat for the kittens. He'll look out for them, and maybe for you as well. You like the kittens because they're playful and frisky, but old James has other lessons to teach, about calm and wisdom, self-containment and inner peace."

Dr. Bowles explained how she used cats in her therapy. People, she said, think only of themselves as they go about plundering and poisoning the earth. They need creatures to love and care for, to distract them from their anxieties. They need examples of simplicity and serenity which only the so-called "lesser creatures" can provide.

"When I started out in practice," she said, "I urged my patients to form strong relationships, find lovers, marry, bear children, raise families. But then I discovered this didn't work. They would continue to act out their neuroses and, in time, the relationships would fail. It was then that I began to think in terms of pets, and this dovetailed with my conviction that the defenseless creatures of the world were being ravaged mercilessly by man. Men, you know, are sadistic beings who slaughter whales and porpoises, kill leopards for furs and alligators for belts, capture the great wild horses who roam freely in the West, capture them and decimate them to make food for dogs whom they enslave. We live in a city where people abandon their pets in Central Park. Imagine! They drop them off there when they're bored with them, as if the creatures were only so much trash! Most die quickly. They have no sense of how to survive. It hurt me so much to see this that I started to rescue cats. I'd find alley cats, throwaway cats, wild cats living in the Park. I'd bring them home, nurse them and feed them, and then, when I had too many, I began to give them to my patients, too. And then I discovered an amazing thing. That by taking responsibility for these innocent little lives my patients became gentler, learned to share and be protective, lost their sense of loneliness and alienation, stopped thinking only of themselves. Over the years this idea of protecting little creatures and helping people deal with their lives has grown together in my mind. It's the basis of my practice. I believe it's my special gift."

The doctor told her how to train her kittens to use a litter box, and suggested some particularly tasty cat foods she thought they might enjoy.

"You'll come to love them, Penny, and caring for them you'll start gaining confidence in yourself. We'll begin to meet now for therapy once a week, and after a while you'll join our group sessions on Friday nights."

S
he enjoyed her kittens from the start, enjoyed watching them tumble, practice stalking, play games of hunter and prey. But James was something else. For all her efforts to establish a relationship he remained cold and aloof. Sometimes she'd come home from work and find him silhouetted against the window. She'd call to him, he'd turn his face, look at her then turn away. He wouldn't cuddle with her or allow himself to be petted, and whenever she called to him he'd stare at her through strangely flecked slit eyes. He was a silent watchful cat, a "watch-cat" as Dr. Bowles had said, but he seemed more interested in coolly observing her than in teaching patience or the virtues of inner peace. Penny complained to Dr. Bowles that he made her feel uneasy. "A normal first reaction," the psychiatrist said. "I've placed him with other patients and he's done well with them. Give him a chance, Penny. You'll see."

For all the activity in her life now, therapy, caring for her cats, her morning runs, her work with Mac at B&A, she was still haunted by thoughts of Suzie and her father, reduced, when she allowed herself to think of them, to feelings of terror and pain.

There was something so troubling about Suzie's diary, its hard spiteful tone, its underlying cries for help. She looked at it nearly every day, studying the early pages about Suzie's life in New York from the time she quit college until she left for Maine. All that degradation—she'd demanded it, endured it, to make herself forget. And then, when that had failed, she'd designed the "summer project," that mad scheme to woo her father back. It was crazy, of course, yet it had an internal logic.
Rational madness,
Penny thought, a closed system by which Suzie had almost deliberately sentenced herself to death.

S
ometimes I think I'm on the right track, arousing anger, attention at least. Other times I think it's all a bummer, and I'm wearing down my pussy to the bone. Could chalk up the whole summer to experience, the whole year for that matter, and try an austere fife come fall—a nunnery somewhere, the kind of place when you spend eight hours on your knees scrubbing germs off hospital floors. Well—WHY NOT? Never did a stitch of honest work in my whole life. Probably do me good. But would really hate it if people went around saying: "Have you seen the change in
Suze
? What a turnaround! From whore to saint, and that smile, that glow—remember how sick she used to look when she was being such a cunt last summer in Maine?"—

J
amie
Willensen
: perhaps Suzie had confided in him; perhaps he could clarify some things. Several evenings Penny walked by his studio to catch a glimpse, something that would give her an opening, allow her to meet with him and talk. Finally, on impulse, she called him blind one night when she saw the lights in the room above his studio were on. Something inside her, something she couldn't control, turned her voice tough the moment he picked up the phone. "Hi. This is Penny—Suzie's sister. I'm in a booth downstairs. OK if I come up?"

He was stunned, obviously surprised. "I don't know." He sounded cagey. "Just what exactly do you want?"

"Invite me up and find out," she dared him.

"I'm not sure I should. And I'm expecting someone else."