New California Fiction : BAD LUCK WITH CATS

She was half dressed, wearing black underwear and one of Jerry’s undershirts, when someone she didn’t even know knocked on the door. “Do you have a black-and-white cat?” the someone asked.

“Jerry, stay here,” she called over her shoulder as she ran on her toes down the front walk.

He was already in the doorway. “What?”

“Get back inside!” She scooped up the mess in the street with one hand. One eye was dangling out of its socket.

“Brenda, what’re you doing?” he shouted from the front yard.

“Go away. Get back!” Trying to hide the cat’s body, she rolled it up in the bottom part of her undershirt. Jerry was coming toward her, but she made a wide circle around him, running over some finely crushed glass in the street, then down the alley to the first trashcan she could find. There was blood on the front of her shirt. A few nights back she’d had a dream about going to a symphony concert without a shirt on. She thought, So this is what that was all about. She dropped the undershirt in the trash on top of the cat then held an empty box over her chest as she jumped the back fence and went in through the back door. “Jerry, you here?” He didn’t answer. She left the box by the door and went into the bedroom, scooting quickly past the still-open front door.

Jerry was on the bed, lying diagonally like he had the last time, his face turned away from her. “Honey? Jerry?”

“It was Ozzie, wasn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“You don’t even care.”

“Don’t say that.”

“Well, you don’t.”

“Don’t start it again.” She took out another one of his undershirts.

“Like clockwork,” he said. “Every six months.”

“It was almost a year ago.”

In a way, though, he was right--it was only six months since he’d stopped mourning for Mikey, the dumb one, found stone dead in the gutter, not a mark on the body. Just too damn dumb to get out of the street. She hadn’t been home. Jerry had carried Mikey up to the porch, then went to the neighbor and asked what he should do next. He saved his crying until she got home, and he confessed that Mikey had been pestering him while he was practicing the xylophone, so he’d put the cat out, probably just 20 minutes before it happened. But he’d stopped crying and closed himself in his music room for several hours when he found out she’d thrown Mikey away instead of burying him. At least when they lost Big Sam there was no evidence; he’d just stopped coming home, disappeared one night.

She thought, It’s getting messier every time.

Jerry rolled over. He was wearing a T-shirt with a picture of Bobby Fischer on the front. Brenda got the penny jar from the dresser and poured a pile onto the mattress, then kneeled on the floor and started counting out sets of 50.

“I think we’d better go through with it,” Jerry said.

“With what?”

“You know.”

“I don’t think this is a good time to talk about it. Especially not now.” She found a slug among the coins and swore under her breath. Every time a cat died, he asked for a divorce.

“Where are Bessie and Spunky?” he asked.

“Around.”

“Do you think they miss Ozzie? Think they saw it happen?”

“Come on, Jerry.” She shook her head and began stacking the pennies in wrappers from the bank.

“You’re right, what a stupid thing to say. Typical, though, right? I thought I would someday grow up and get over this kind of stuff. But no .”

“You’re too old to grow up anymore.” She smiled at him.

“Yeah. How’m I gonna be able to suddenly become a pizza delivery boy or a popcorn vendor at the stadium?”

“ How to do it is simple--you just do it.” She had three dollars in pennies wrapped, so she put the remaining pennies back into the jar. “Besides, the symphony isn’t folding; it’s just a strike.”

“ I’m not striking,” he said. “Anyway, we’ve got to figure out what to do with Bessie and Spunky.”

“Why?”

“This is a crummy place for cats.”

“So what do you suggest?”

“We could move,” he said.

“You kidding? Eventually, yes. But now? Just for the cats? You’re out of your mind!”

“Then let me move.”

“ Let you? Who’s stopping you? I just think it’s a dumb idea.”

“I know. Aren’t all my ideas dumb?”

“Hey,” she said. “Want to walk up to the store with me? I’ve got to get some milk and eggs.”

“No. I’m going to get Spunky and Bessie and keep them inside until I think of what to do with them.”

When Brenda came back, he told her he’d arranged to give the two remaining cats to a friend’s father who had a small farm off the old highway that snaked through the Indian reservation. They would deliver the cats to the friend at the union hall after the meeting that night, and the friend would take them to his father. So Jerry was keeping the cats inside until it was time to go. The cats sat at the front door, looking over their shoulders and crying, standing up on their hind legs and sniffing at the keyhole, digging their claws into the carpet by the doorway until Brenda shouted at them. She and Jerry were sitting at the kitchen table deciding what he could do.

“It won’t last forever,” she said. “You could find something temporary.”

“It’s already been forever. I can’t figure out what this union wants, for us to play for every rinky-dink roadshow or circus that comes through and needs backup music? That’s just as bad as forever.”

She had two blank pieces of paper to write down all the ideas they came up with. One list was for things he could do, the other was for her. Her list was already started: piano lessons . The paper was stationery from one of the schools where she substituted, but the teachers didn’t seem to get sick very often. “OK, let’s get serious,” she said. “How about . . . we could go to the park and perform duets with a donation hat.”

“A voice and percussion duet? Great.”

“Just kidding. But remember how I sang at the park with my brother shaking a tambourine? We made a bundle.”

“Yeah,” Jerry said. “Ten dollars in half a day.”

“We’re not accomplishing anything,” she said. It started to rain. The cats had finally gone to sleep on the sofa, but raised their heads when the rain began to hit the metal rain gutter.

“Hey,” she said. “What do you say to giving up on this and going into the bedroom?”

“ Now ? Ozzie just got killed this morning.”

“And tomorrow he’ll have just been killed yesterday, and the next day he’ll have been killed the day before yesterday. . . . “

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Brenda shrugged. “Forget it.” The downpour suddenly intensified, as though someone outside had turned a hose onto the front window. “Wow, look at that. Do we have to go to that meeting?”

“ I have to,” he said. “Greg’s meeting me to pick up the cats.”

One of the cats stretched, hopped off the sofa and came toward the table, purring, then jumped into Jerry’s lap. “I have something to admit,” Jerry said.

Brenda wrote secretary on her list, then folded her hands on the tabletop, smiling slightly at him.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Just waiting for what terrible thing you’re going to ‘fess up to,” she said. “I can hardly wait. As a matter of fact, though, sometimes I wish you’d hit me or gamble away all our money--what’s left of it--or get into some really vicious drugs and start hocking stuff, or maybe start fooling around, or . . . I don’t know, something really bad .”

“Why?”

“Because, Jerry, what could we possibly say to a lawyer? That we’re incompatible because there are no duets written for voice and percussion? Or that life is intolerable because you need help starting the lawn mower or using a Phillips screwdriver? Or that I can’t respect you as a man because you watch the same movies over and over and still get all misty-eyed?”

“Is all that true?”

“That’s not what I’m saying. That’s not the point. It’s just that we don’t have anything bad enough to say.”

“That’s bad enough.”

“Forget it, Jerry. Go on and finish admitting, then we’ll have to get going,” she said. “Maybe I’ll admit something too.”

Jerry looked down at the cat. He was holding his hand very rigidly in a fist and letting the cat rub its head against his knuckles. “It was my fault . . . again.”

“It’s no one’s fault. It happens.”

“It didn’t have to happen. Last night, when I put Bessie and Spunky in the shed, I couldn’t catch Ozzie. He kept playing with me, hiding under the car, racing around me. So I said, OK, if you want to stay out all night, be my guest.”

“So you think you’re a jinx and no cat is safe around you?”

“Why do you have to say stuff like that?”

“Why do you tell me stuff like that? What am I supposed to say?”

He looked up briefly, then continued watching the cat butt its head against his knuckles. “Maybe you could say nothing. You could sit there and listen. You don’t have to answer if you’re not going to say anything helpful or the least bit . . . sympathetic.”

“That would be fine, if you ever talked about anything that even mattered.”

“What if the things I choose to talk about matter to me?”

“You know what, Jerry?” she grinned. “You should’ve been a soap opera star. I swear, 80 percent of the women in America would be in love with you.”

“Great. The one I’m married to doesn’t even watch TV.”

“OK, how about this?” She chuckled while writing movie star on his piece of paper, then passed the paper across the table to him. “So . . . you feel guilty about Ozzie. OK, I’ll sit here and listen. Really, I’m listening.” She bent to write housekeeper and gardener on her list.

“Sure.”

“Really. Why do you feel guilty?”

“Well . . . they depend on me. I let them down. I guess I let you down too.”

“No, you didn’t.” She got up and went into the bedroom to get their raincoats.

“Yes, I did,” he said. “Look at the mess we’re in.”

“No, you didn’t.” She smiled and handed him the car keys. “I never depended on you.”

“Good thing. Who would? I don’t do anything useful.”

“Jerry, look, you’re like the cats, you just do the thing that makes you what you are. Just like they had to do the things that being a cat is all about, so they got squashed.” She went back to her list and wrote truck driver , child care and sex .

“No,” Jerry said. “You can’t convince me that being a cat automatically includes getting hit by cars.”

“OK.” She crossed out sex .

“Let’s go .” He grabbed her list, crumpled it and tossed it into the kitchen sink.

THE MEETING WAS SUPPOSED to be private, for union members only, but Brenda stood in the doorway and listened to someone recite a list of laughable items on the latest offer. Almost everyone in the room did at least chuckle after each item, so sometimes she missed the first few words of the next one. But Jerry wasn’t laughing. He was sitting in the back row on the far side of the room from where Brenda was huddled in the doorway. It was still raining, and the roof had a very small awning. When the wind came up, the rain slanted and wet not only the porch area but the floor inside the room too, so it wasn’t as though she was dry, just drier than she would be if she was standing in the parking lot. Jerry had asked her why the hell she wanted to come. He was sitting there with one elbow on one knee, his cheek in his hand. It was the same way he’d sat in his classes at college. He was really almost exactly the same as he’d been when she was first attracted by his graceful walk, his easy laugh. He’d even been a campus hero for a week after his desperate efforts in a psychological test and interview to get out of the draft. He’d actually received the unfit designation he’d wanted, and the poor duped analyst had diagnosed him as neurotically immature and suggested treatment. It got him out of the draft but he couldn’t avoid ROTC. Twenty years ago in Oklahoma, every boy had to take ROTC, so Jerry had protested by getting Ds. He had to be careful to make sure they were Ds and not Fs. He wouldn’t want to have to repeat ROTC. She suddenly remembered he’d learned how to take a gun apart and put it back together.

A gust of wind spattered rain across her back. She’d missed the last several items while thinking about ancient history. They’d moved on to working conditions, and the latest offer concerning the backstage area was to remove the word “suitable” from the old contract’s wording: “Each musician shall have a suitable locker.” The rain intensified, hitting the pavement in the parking lot with a sound like water on a hot griddle, so someone got up and closed the door and Brenda had to run back to the car for shelter. They were parked next to the guy who was taking the cats to his father’s dirt farm. The cats were in a big cardboard box on the guy’s back seat. The box was no longer rocking, so the cats had probably settled down. She sat tapping her foot, twisting her hair, pushing her cuticles back, staring at the rivulets running down the windshield.

SHE TRIED TO GET HIM UP AT 9 and again at 10, but he didn’t stagger into the bathroom until 11:30. “You’re still here,” he said after his shower. “Didn’t you get any calls?”

“No one’s sick today. You missed the rally, you know. You slept right through.”

“You thought I should go do that Teamster stuff?”

“I was going to go with you.”

“What the hell for?”

“I like to watch you picket,” she said. “You look so . . . “

“So much like a guy who’s picketing.”

“No, you look so . . . different, somehow.”

“Maybe you just never saw a bunch of idiots walking in circles holding signs.”

It was no longer raining. The sun had been out since the clouds broke at about 7 that morning, when she’d gotten up to make applesauce out of the box of bruised apples she’d bought at a farmer’s market for $2. The last of the jars were being processed. Every window was steamed up and the house smelled appley. Jerry was reading the paper, but he’d discarded the classified ads. She was going to spread the ads out and go through them to see what jobs they could apply for, but the phone rang. It was too late to get a substituting job that day, and too early to be an assignment for tomorrow.

Jerry didn’t move, so after four rings, Brenda picked it up. It was the guy who’d taken the cats to his father. She stood leaning against the wall in the kitchen where she could see Jerry still looking at the sports page, and she listened to the guy explaining how his father had put the box in an empty horse stall and opened it but didn’t take the cats out because it’s best to let them explore new territory on their own. But, he assumed, something had frightened them--maybe one of the cats that already lived there, or one of about 20 dogs his father kept--so Bessie and Spunky had left the box a lot sooner than he would’ve expected them to want to leave. Maybe the thunder and lightning had frightened them too, and since it was night they couldn’t see where they were going, and the bottom line was they’d just flat-out disappeared. Maybe they would come back, the guy said, but with all that rain, his father wasn’t holding out too much hope. That was an awful lot of rain, the guy said. It was just too much rain.

Brenda thanked the guy and hung up. Jerry didn’t even ask “what was that?” like he usually did after she got a phone call. She went back to where she’d spread the classified ads on the floor, kneeled, read down one column and asked, “Is busboy or hospital orderly OK??”

“Oh God, I guess so,” he groaned. He had the paper folded to the crossword puzzle, then began rhythmically stabbing his pencil through the paper.

Then she told him about Bessie and Spunky. “They could be hiding, Jerry. They might just suddenly come out from underneath something and go ask for something to eat. Or they might even find their way back here . It’s happened, hasn’t it?”

He got up and went into the bedroom. She sighed, paused for a second, staring at the still-empty opening for a dishwasher, then followed him, but he wasn’t lying across the bed or looking up phone numbers of divorce lawyers. He was in the closet, kneeling, with his head hidden underneath the clothes. When he backed out, he had his leather high-top sneakers.

“What’s up?” she said. “You gonna wear those for picketing tomorrow? Your bad ankle bothering you?”

“Hell, no. I’m going out to look for the cats.”

“Now?”

“Tomorrow morning, if they don’t come out this afternoon, like you said.”

“You mean, we’re going to search that whole valley out there?”

“You don’t have to come.”

“Who’s going to carry you home when you step on a wasp nest or trip in a gopher hole or slip in the mud?” She stopped and sniffed. “I think the applesauce is done.”

“I hate it when you get this way,” he said.

“What way?”

“Rushing all over doing stuff.” He sat on the bed holding the shoes, one on each knee. They were still almost new. She’d persuaded him to buy them after his last bad ankle sprain two years before. He looked at her. “You ready to admit it yet? Ready to give up?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Why’d it have to rain, anyway,” he moaned. “I hate rain.”

“It needs to rain or things don’t grow.”

He left his shoes on the bed and went back to the living room, stepped on the classified ads on his way to the sofa and picked up the tattered crossword puzzle. Brenda went out into the back yard to weed the small garden area she’d cleared the week before. She had planted some quick-growing, easy-care vegetables--lettuce, chard, bush beans, green pepper. The ground was saturated and the small plants were flattened. She used twigs to support the ones that weren’t beaten to death. There was a snake on the lawn that she killed with the hoe.

IT WASN’T REALLY A FARM after all. It was about 50 square yards where the sagebrush had been cleared, surrounded by a low, leaning chain-link fence to keep the pack of dogs from roaming free. The house was a converted portable horse stall. The barn was several more portable horse stalls facing each other with sheet metal covering the space between the roofs. There were two sheep in a pen, their dirty wool full of burrs and sticks. There were a few chickens loose with the dogs. There were three horses in stalls, one empty stall where the feed was stored and one stall used as a pen for some puppies. A few cats sat on the roof or the tops of stalls. There hadn’t been any other houses along the last three miles of dirt road. The telephone wires stopped where the paved road did. The guy had a generator for power and a tank to hold water.

“A great place to be a cat,” Brenda said, “but a lousy place to be a human.”

“Great place to be a cat if you’re not chased away by all the dogs. . . . “

“Or eaten by a coyote,” she said, which she hadn’t said before, although she knew it must have occurred to him. Sure enough, he turned sharply and said, “Shut up.”

The owner of the place wasn’t there, but his son had said to go on up and look around for the cats. The dogs barked but let them come through the gate. Jerry had brought a cat toy--a plastic ball with a bell inside it--that he shook in one hand as he walked through the barn and called the cats’ names.

They looked under every feed sack, behind every bale of hay, between boxes of tools and horse junk. Then they walked around the inside perimeter of the fence, looking under abandoned pieces of sheet metal, peering into dark holes in an old water tank. There was another opening in the fence--not a gate, just a place where two ends of the chain link came together and were tied shut with a piece of rope. Jerry untied the knot.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“I’m looking for the cats, what did you think I was going to do out here, look for a job?”

“I don’t know which would be more hopeless.”

There was an erosion path winding down into a shallow canyon. The ground was still wet but it was probably 85 degrees and there were no shade trees. The highest bushes came only to their waists. The little trail was rutted down the middle. It was also filled with holes of various sizes--big enough for a squirrel or skunk, small enough for a spider or wasp.

“What makes you think the cats would stay on a trail?” she asked.

“You have a better idea?”

After a moment she said, “I guess not.” Then added, “It’s as good as anywhere else. Might as well, while we’re here. But we can’t keep chasing forever.”

Jerry didn’t answer. He paused every few steps to shake the toy and call the cats’ names. His foot hit some loose mud and slid out in front of him once, but he caught himself with his palms against some big rocks, then went on calling, pausing to scan the area, moving on again. They’d gone down the trail far enough so they couldn’t see the barn anymore. The shallow canyon was only a side entry into a huge valley surrounded by low rolling hills, all covered with the same dry, scrubby bushes, rocks, holes and--for now--mud. It went on forever, without a tree or river to break the monotony or provide a goal. They would never be able to cover it all, foot by foot, shaking every bush, jingling the cat toy outside every crevice between two rocks, following every erosion trail, rolling every boulder. And even if they could eventually cover it all, actually look everywhere , they’d never find anything. While they were looking here, Bessie could be torn in half and eaten by a coyote three miles away, the carcass filled with maggots, the head carried down a hole by a possum or skunk, and the pieces scattered by crows and buzzards. By the time Jerry worked his way three miles to the west or east or south or wherever she’d been killed, there’d be nothing there. He’d just step right over the mound of red ants swarming over a piece of her tail and keep looking. Things could just disappear, no longer exist, why go on sliding around in the mud trying to find something that’s just not there anymore. “Oh God, Jerry, it’s hope less!”

He was about 10 steps in front of her. She sat on a flat rock that was flush with the ground, the bushes now towering over her head. “What are we going to do , what’ll we do ?” She was shrieking and Jerry was slipping in the mud, coming back up the trail toward her. “Look at us, look at us, we just can’t, how can we--it’s so hopeless and pointless to even go on trying and we’ll never . . . “

Jerry squatted beside her, then crouched over her, hugging her with his arms and legs. Her nose was in his ear and her mouth open against his jaw. He ran his hand down her spine then softly patted the back of her head. “We can’t, we can’t, we can’t,” she moaned. “And what difference would it make? What’s gonna change if we go on for another five minutes or six months? Call it off, please, call it off.”

“Quitter.”

She almost fell over into the mud as Jerry pushed away and stood up. She stared as he wiped her tears off his cheek and neck, his eyes slits, then he went back down the trail, calling the cats and shaking the toy. She watched until he was out of sight and she couldn’t even hear him anymore.