Catfantastic II

by Andre Norton

  “Well… yes…” Clara’s voice now was the trembling that meant a lapse into confusion, into dismay and fear, as the edges of her known world crumbled. “I mean… I know… but he is a lawyer, and lawyers do have to make a living… and anyway, Jeannie’s family… .” In that rush of broken phrases, in that soft old voice, the arguments Jeannie had tried to teach her aunt to say sounded as silly and implausible as they might printed on a paper. Jeannie knew-as Clara would remember in a moment, if she calmed down-that Sam had not charged her a penny for managing her money since he’d taken it over. Jeannie thought it was stupid; Clara claimed to know the reason, but would never explain.

  The lawyer’s face stiffened at the mention of money, and Jeannie wished she had not put those words in her aunt’s mouth. Yet that seemed to do what she had wished of the whole conversation; his warm voice chilled, and he said “If that’s how you feel, Clara-Mrs. Timmons-then of course there’s no question of not doing exactly as you wish. I brought the papers, as you asked.” Jeannie left the room on a pretext of making iced tea for everyone, while Clara signed and Pearl witnessed; she was not surprised, when she returned, to find them on the point of leaving. The lawyer’s glance raked her up and down like an edged blade, but his voice, in deference to Clara, was gentle.

  “I’m quite sure you’ll take excellent care of your aunt, Mrs. Becker. She’s one of our town’s favorites, you know-if you need help, you have only to ask.”

  “Thank you,” said Jeannie softly, in her best manner. Great-aunt Clara must have told him she’d been married. She herself liked the modern fashion of “Ms.” which left her marital status handily obscured. Keith had been a mistake, and the divorce had been messy, what with the battle over the kids. He had custody, on account of her drinking-not that she was really an alcoholic, it was just that one time and unlucky for her that the roads were wet. But she could trust Great-aunt Clara not to have told anyone about that; she had too much family pride.

  Pearl shook hands with her firmly. “I’ll be dropping by every day, you know,” she said, with her big old teeth showing in a fierce grin. “If you need a few minutes to go downtown, that kind of thing.”

  The old lady. Clara. She had a heart condition, for which she was supposed to take two of these little pills (morning and evening) and three of those (with each meal.) There were pills for the chest pain that came on unexpectedly, and pills for the bloating. She could just get out of bed, with help, to use the toilet and sit for a few minutes while Jeannie changed her bed. Jeannie was very careful and very conscientious, those first weeks. She kept the rasping whine out of her voice, the note Keith had told the judge was his first sign that something was really wrong.

  And in return, Great-aunt Clara talked. She had had no full-time companion for years, not since her last sister died, and she had a life’s stored memories to share. Jeannie gritted her teeth through the interminable tales of Clara’s childhood: the pony her brother had had, the rides in the buggy, the first automobile, the first electric light in the town. And endlessly repetitive, the stories of Clara’s favorite cat, Snowball.

  “He looked just like that,” Clara would say, waving feebly at the cheap print of a sentimental painting on the wall, the picture of a huge fluffy white cat with a blue bow around its neck, sitting beside a pot of improbable flowers on a stone wall. It was a hideous picture, and Jeannie was sure Snowball must have been a hideous cat. The picture was not the only reminder of Snowball. Clara had an old, yellowing photograph of the animal himself (he looked nothing like the cat in the painting… merely a white blur beneath a chair), several white china cats of various sizes, and a cat-shaped pillow covered with rabbit fur. At least Jeannie hoped it was rabbit-fur, and not the cat himself, stuffed.

  She did not care enough to ask. She was sick and tired of Snowball stories, from the time he caught the mouse in the kitchen (“And carried it outside without making any mess on the floor at all…”) to the time he hid in the car and startled Clara’s father by leaping on his shoulder as they were driving to church, and the car swerved, and everyone thought her father had been… indulging, you know… until the cat leapt out. The town had laughed for days. Jeannie felt she had been trying to laugh for days, a stiff grin stretched across a dry mouth.

  She wanted a drink. She needed a drink. But she would not drink yet, not while Pearl came by once a day or more, and the lawyer stopped her on the street to see how things were coming. First they must see what good care she took of Clara; first they must believe she was what she appeared.

  Day after dull day passed by. Summer in a small town, to one used to a large city, is largely a matter of endurance. Jeannie didn’t know any of the faces that fit the names in Clara’s stories. She tried harder to follow them when Pearl was there, but the women had been close for over seventy years, and their talk came in quick, shorthand bursts that meant little to an outsider. Pearl, quick to notice Jeannie’s confusion, tried to explain once or twice, but gave it up when Clara insisted “Of course she knows who we mean-she’s family.” The two women giggled, chattered briefly, giggled, shed tears, and to Jeannie it was all both boring and slightly disgusting. All that had happened years ago-before she herself was born-and what did it matter if some long-dead husband had thought his wife was in love with a Chinese druggist two towns away? Why cry over the death of someone else’s child in a fire forty years ago? They should have more dignity, she thought, coming in with the tray of iced tea and cookies to find them giggling again.

  Grimly, with a smile pasted to her face, she cooked the old-fashioned food Clara liked, washed the old plates and silver (real silver: she didn’t mind that), and dusted the innumerable figurines on the shelves that seemed to crawl all over the walls. Not just white china cats, but shepherds and shepherdesses, barking dogs, fat-bellied ponies in lavender and cream, unbearably coy children being bashful with each other in costumes that reminded Jeannie of the more sickening children’s books of her past. Blown-glass birds and ships and fish, decorative tiles with flowers hand-painted, Clara explained carefully, by the girls of her senior class. Pearl ‘s tile had a wicked-looking yellow rose, thorns very sharp, on pale green. Jeannie thought it was typical of her… sallow and sharp, that’s what she was. She dusted the old photographs Clara had on every wall surface not covered by shelves of knickknacks: hand-colored mezzotints of a slender girl in a high-necked blouse with leg-o-mutton sleeves…“your great-grandmother, dear”… and a class portrait from Clara’s high school days. Ben and Larry, the boys Clara and Pearl had loved (or whatever it was) were two stiff, sober-faced lads with slicked-down hair in the upper right and upper left-hand corners. Jeannie tried to imagine them in ordinary clothes and hair, and failed. All the faces were sober, even frightened; it had been the class of ‘17.

  In August, Jeannie first began to notice the smell. No one had ever said Jeannie was slovenly; the one thing she truly prided herself on was cleanliness. She hated the feel of Clara’s flesh when she bathed her-that white, loose skin over obscene softness-but she would keep her great-aunt clean until her dying day. The smell of age she found unpleasant, but not as bad as in a nursing home. No, the smell she noticed was another smell, a sharper, acrid smell, which her great-aunt tried to tell her was from the bachelor’s buttons under the window.

  Jeannie did not argue. If she argued, if someone heard her arguing with her great-aunt, it would be hard to present herself as the angel of mercy she knew she was. She did say she thought bachelor’s buttons had no smell, but with a wistful questioning intonation that let her aunt explain that those bachelor’s buttons smelled like that every summer, and she liked the smell because it reminded her of Snowball.

  Of course, Jeannie thought, it’s a cat. A tomcat smell, the smell of marked territory. Odd that it came through a closed window, in spite of air-conditioning, but smells would do things like that. Since Clara said she liked it, Jeannie tried to endure it, but it was stronger in her bedroom, as if the miserable cat had marked the bed itself. S
he looked, finding no evidence, and vacuumed vigorously.

  Outside, on the white clapboard skirting of the old house, she found the marks she sought. Hot sun baked the bachelor’s buttons, the cracked soil around them (she had not watered for more than a week), and the streaked places on the skirting that gave off that memorable smell. On the pretext of watering the flowers (they did need watering, and she picked some to arrange inside) she hosed down the offending streaks. And a few days later, dragging the hose around to water another of the flowerbeds (when she had this house, she would forget the flowerbeds), she saw a white blurred shape up near the house, and splashed water at it. A furious streak sped away, yowling. Gotcha, thought Jeannie, that’ll teach you, and forgot about it.

  Clara had another small stroke in September, that left her with one drooping eyelid and halting speech, now as ragged as soft. Jeannie had driven her (in Clara’s old car) to the hospital in the county seat, and Jeannie drove her home, with a list of instructions for diet and care. In between those two trips, in the hours when the hospital discouraged visitors, she explored Clara’s little town. The square with its bandstand had been paved, parking for the stores around it. She remembered, with an unexpected pang of nostalgia, climbing into the empty bandstand and pretending to be, a singer. A hardware store had vanished, replaced by a supermarket which had already swallowed a small grocery store the last time she’d visited. The farm supply and implement company had moved out of town, as had the lumberyard; a used car dealer had one lot, and the other was covered with rows of tiny boxlike rental storage units. A few people recognized her; she hurried past the door that opened onto a narrow stair-upstairs was the lawyer’s office, with its view over the town square and out back across a vacant lot to the rest of town.

  It was stiflingly hot. Jeannie got back in Clara’s car and drove out of town toward the county seat and its hospital, well aware of watching eyes. But the county seat had more than a hospital, and it was larger, and she was less known, Clara’s car less noticeable. She parked in the big courthouse lot, walked a block to a sign she’d noticed, and glanced around. Midafternoon: the lawyer would be in his office, or in court.

  She came out two hours later. Not drunk at all-no one could say she was drunk. A lady, worried to death about her old great-aunt, needing a cool place to spend a few hours before the hospital would let her back in… that’s all. She knew her limits well, and she knew exactly what she wanted. She had the name and number she had expected to find, and would not need to visit the Blue Suite again.

  That night, alone in the house (Clara would be in the hospital another two days, the doctor had said), she lounged in the parlor as she never did when Clara was there. She had remembered to call Pearl, had said she didn’t need any help with anything, and now she relaxed, safe, wearing the short lacy nightshirt she’d bought in the county seat, enjoying the first cold beer she’d ever had in this house. She smirked up at the shelves of figurines. Clara’s monthly allowance wouldn’t exactly cover what she wanted, but she knew there were places to sell some of this trash, and if Clara were bedfast she’d never know.

  Clara came home more fragile than before. She never left the bedroom now, and rarely managed to sit up in the armchair; Jeannie had to learn to make the bed with her in it. She had to learn other, more intimate services when Clara could not get out of bed at all. But she persisted, through the rest of September and October, until even thorny Pearl admitted (to the supermarket clerk, from whom Jeannie heard it) that she seemed to be genuinely fond of Clara, and taking excellent care of her. When the first November storm slashed the town with cold rain and wind, Pearl called to apologize for not visiting that day. Jeannie answered the phone in the hall.

  “It’s all right,” she told Pearl. “Do you want me to wake her, so you can talk?”

  “Not if she’s sleeping,” said Pearl. “Just tell her.”

  “She sleeps a lot more now,” said Jeannie, in a voice that she hoped conveyed delicate sadness.

  Clara was not asleep, but her voice no longer had the resonance to carry from room to room… and certainly not enough to be overheard on the phone. “Who was it, dear?” she asked when Jeannie came back to her.

  “Nothing,” said Jeannie. She knew Clara’s hearing was going. “Some salesman about aluminum siding.” She felt a rising excitement; it had taken months, but here was her chance. A day or so without Pearl, another inevitable stroke-it would work. It would be easy. “Do you think Pearl will try to come out in this storm?”

  Clara moved her head a little on the pillow. “I hope not… but she’ll call. Tell me if she calls, dear, won’t you?”

  “Of course.”

  Two days later, it was possible to tell Pearl that Clara had forgotten being told-of course she had told her about the calls, but since this latest stroke, and with the new medications… Jeannie delivered this information in a low voice, just inside the front door. Pearl herself looked sick, her wisps of white hair standing out in disarray, her deep voice more hoarse than musical. If Jeannie had been capable of it, she would have felt pity for Pearl then-she knew she ought to, an old woman whose oldest friend was fading into senility-but what she felt was coarse triumphant glee. Old cow, she thought, I should try you next. Pearl was nodding, showing no suspicion; perhaps she was too tired. ‘.

  She left them alone, and went to fix them tea; she could just hear Pearl ‘s deep voice, and a wisp of plaintive trembling treble that must be Clara. When she came in with the tray, Clara’s hands were shaking so that she could not hold the cup.

  “Are you sure you told me, dear?” she asked Jeannie. “You couldn’t have forgotten?”

  “I’m sure, Aunt Clara. I’m sorry-maybe you were still sleepy, or maybe the medicine…” She held the cup to Clara’s lips, waited for her to slurp a little-no longer so ladylike in her sips-and set it down.

  Pearl, leaning back in her chair, suddenly sniffed. Jeannie stiffened; she had bathed Clara carefully (that duty she would always perform) and instantly suspected Pearl of trying to make her feel inferior. But Pearl merely looked puzzled.

  “Do you have a cat again, Clara?” she asked. Jeannie relaxed, relieved. She answer for her aunt.

  “No, but there’s a stray, and he… uh… he… you know.”

  “He sprays the house? It must be, to smell that strong on a chilly day. I thought perhaps indoors-”

  “Did I ever tell you about the time Snowball clawed the minister’s wife?” asked Clara brightly. Jeannie glanced at Pearl, and met a wistful and knowing glance. She accepted that silent offer of alliance as silently, and told her aunt no.

  After that it was as easy as she’d hoped. November continued cold and damp; Clara’s friends came rarely, and readily believed Jeannie’s excuses on the telephone. Once or twice she let a call go through, when Clara was drowsy with medicine and not making much sense. Soon the calls dwindled, except on sunny bright days when they asked if they could come see her. This Jeannie always encouraged so eagerly that everyone knew how hard it was on her, poor dear, all alone with dying Clara.

  When they came, Clara would be exquisitely clean and neat, arrayed in her best bedjacket; Jeannie, in something somber and workmanlike. They never smelled alcohol on her breath; they never saw bottles or cans in the house. They never came without calling, because, as Jeannie had explained, “Sometimes I’m up most of the night with her, you know, and I do nap in the day sometimes…” That was only fair; no one could fault her for that, or wanted to bring her out, sleepy and rumpled, to answer the doorbell.

  It was true that Clara’s monthly allowance from the trust would not buy Jeannie what she wanted. She began in the cedar chests which were full of a long lifetime’s accumulation: old handpainted china tea sets, antique dolls and doll clothes, handmade quilts and crocheted afghans. She would not risk the county seat, but it was less than fifty miles to the big city, where no one knew anyone else, and handcrafted items brought a good price.

  Gradually, week by week, she pilf
ered more: an old microscope that had belonged to Clara’s dead husband, a set of ruby glass that they never used, a pair of silver candlesticks she found in the bottom cupboard in the dining room. Clara had jewellery that had been her mother’s and her older sisters’, jumbled together in a collection of old jewellery boxes, white and red and green padded leather, hidden in bureau drawers all over the house, under linens and stationery and faded nightgowns from Clara’s youth and brief marriage. With one eye on the bed, where Clara lay dozing, Jeannie plucked first one then another of the saleable items: a ruby ring, a gold brooch, a platinum ring with diamond chips, a pair of delicate gold filigree earrings.

  Autumn passed into winter, a gray, nasty December followed by a bleak and bitter January. Jeannie felt the cold less, with her secret cache of favorite beverages and pills. Pearl came once a week or so, on good days, but Jeannie always had plenty of warning… and Clara now knew better than to complain. Jeannie had used no force (she had read about it), but threats of the nursing home sufficed. And it was not like real cruelty. As she’d told Clara, “What if it does take me a little while sometimes… at least you got a nurse to yourself, on call day and night, and that’s more than you’d get there. They let people like you lie in a wet bed… they don’t come running. You ought to be glad you’ve got me to take care of you-because you don’t have no place else.” She felt good about that, really, even using bad grammar on purpose. The world was not the bright, shiny gold ring Clara had told her about when she was a child; using good grammar didn’t get you anywhere she wanted to go.

  She intended it to be over before spring. She could not possibly stand another summer in this dump. But picking a time, and a precise method-that was harder. Clara slept most of the day now, helped by liberal doses of medicine; the doctor was understanding when Jeannie explained that she needed her own sleep, and couldn’t be up and down all the time when her aunt was agitated. Jeannie watched her, half-hoping she’d quit breathing on her own. But the old lady kept breathing, kept opening her eyes every morning and several times a day, kept wanting to talk, in that breathy and staggering voice, about the old days.