The Last Romantics(26)
*
Inside the Hamden house, I followed Caroline up the stairs. We moved slowly, cautiously. Ferrets, foxes, even bears lived in the woods around here; or maybe the house had a squatter. We stood for a moment on the landing to listen. And then we heard it: a high-pitched, mewling sort of noise like a newborn’s cry. We followed the sound to the master bedroom, where a metal bed frame bereft of mattress sat smack in the middle. Yellow autumn light filtered through the dirty windows, giving the room the feel of an old photo, something ghostly printed on tin. And there in the far corner, splayed atop a pile of old newspapers, was an enormous orange tabby. Her long stomach bristled with pink, distended nipples, and surrounding her were a dozen newborn kittens, each one no bigger than an infant’s fist and just as soft, round, and useless.
We stood motionless in the doorway. We made no sound, but the cat saw us. Her ears went rigid. When Caroline began a slow approach, the cat pulled back its head and hissed, showing four pointed white teeth, two up and two down. She looked reptilian, or like a small, vicious monster from a fairy tale. A few of the kittens mewed faintly. One struggled to open its eyes, and then it did and they were the hueless blue of water, and they stared straight into me.
“Uh-oh,” I said.
Caroline didn’t answer straightaway. “Well, that’s unexpected,” she said, her voice strained but cheerful. “Of course there’s a family of cats in the master bedroom.”
“At least they’re cute.” I moved closer to touch one, but the mother reared up its head and hissed. I stepped back. “I bet the girls would love a kitten,” I said. Other than the rabbit Celeste, I’d never owned a pet, but the same childish yearning returned now, an echo of an ache so potent I imagined the girls must feel it, too. How could you not want something to care for?
“Well, we’ve got Milkshake,” Caroline replied, referring to their yellow Lab who poured like sticky liquid over every visitor. “And the girls have their gerbils.”
“What about Louis?” I suggested.
“He’s got Stu the chameleon. And a tankful of saltwater fish.”
“Well, we could put up signs. Give them away.” I was trying to salvage Caroline’s mood, which I could see was declining rapidly and perhaps irreversibly. She was the camel, and this was the straw.
“No.” Caroline shook her head. “That would take too long. And Nathan will be here in two days. He’ll want to keep them all. Trust me.” She said the last with a certain testiness.
“Let’s just clean the downstairs first,” I said. “Let the cats sleep. We’ll decide later.” Postponing a difficult decision was a specialty of mine. I found that often the difficult part evaporated into the haze of delay.
But Caroline didn’t answer. She was staring at the cats with a mixture of disgust and exhaustion; her mouth had a pulled-down quality, a tired little frown. At this moment all of her family’s worldly possessions were packed into a U-Haul being driven from Austin, Texas, to Hamden, Connecticut, by two men named Sasha. The Sashas had claimed they would make no stops. Probably they were in Pennsylvania by now, home of the Amish. Perhaps stuck behind a family in a horse-drawn carriage. Perhaps already running late. Caroline’s children, staying the night with a kindergarten friend in Austin, were undoubtedly eating too much sugar and playing with toy guns. Nathan was living out of a suitcase; he’d packed only one pair of pants. Everyone was waiting for Caroline to proclaim the new house ready.
There were times—at Christmas, say, or the day we all took Noni to the shore for her sixtieth birthday—when I envied Caroline’s centrality. The way her children bounced around her with their giggles and sticky lips and Nathan rubbed her shoulders as she closed her eyes and sighed: it all looked so fine and sweet. But sometimes it looked simply crushing. A straitjacket of her own making. Every morning she packed three school lunches, each one requiring a different sandwich. Every night three different bedtime stories.
“Listen, I’ll take the kittens,” I offered. “My roommates keep saying we need a pet.”
Caroline sighed. “Fiona. You’ll have thirteen pets.”
I shrugged. “I’ll find homes for some of them.”
“That’s ridiculous. You don’t know how to take care of a cat.”
“Of course I do,” I said. “Cats are easy.”
“They’re living things.”
“I know that.”
“They need food and water.”
“I know that, too.”
“Consistent care.”
“Caroline. Stop. I’ll keep a few, find homes for a few more. And the rest I’ll take to a shelter.”
“But they’ll die at a shelter.”
I tilted my chin, considering. “Yes, that’s probably true.”
“No.” Caroline shook her head. “I can’t do that. I’ll keep them. I’ll figure it out.”
“Why don’t we give one to Joe and Sandrine!” I said. “A wedding present!” This struck me as an inspired idea, but Caroline shook her head.
“Not Joe,” she said, and paused. Something flickered on her face, not the cat or the house, something deeper and older. “Listen, let’s go outside for a minute.” She kept one eye on the cat as she backed out of the room.