by Sue Miller
Jeanne roused herself and carried Claire off, back up to the guest bedroom, to change her diaper. The little girl shrieked her protest all the way up. While she was gone, Edith arrived, walking in without ringing the bell, stopping to greet Frieda in the living room before she went back to the kitchen to kiss Annie. She’d brought a fancy sauterne for after dinner.
The kitchen suddenly seemed crowded, people greeting one another, embracing, getting drinks. Annie chased them all into the front of the house—“I’m trying to get a meal on the table here!”
When Jeanne came back downstairs, she brought Claire to the living room again. The little girl looked silently but cheerfully around at all the new adults: so many fresh playthings. Then she picked her spoon up from the floor and the game began again, all of them sitting in a kind of circle around her.
The last to arrive were Natalie and Don, apologizing as they came in. They’d been having a long walk on Plum Island and hadn’t noticed the time. They too brought wine, and a wooden box of clementines.
“Oh, what a beauty!” Natalie said when she’d hung her coat up and come back into the living room. “What a cutie!”
“But of course,” Don said. “Look at her antecedents.”
Jeanne curtsied her head, making light of the compliment, but Annie could see, even from the kitchen, that she had flushed in pleasure.
Lucas offered them their choice of drinks—champagne, mimosas, martinis, scotch. There was a pleasant buzz of conversation that Annie heard snatches of while she warmed up some small fennel rolls she’d made earlier, tilting them back and forth in a pan of olive oil and then salting them. She put them in a straw basket under a cloth and took it to the living room, setting it down on the table along with some napkins.
Peter and Lucas immediately reached for the rolls, Lucas even as he was pouring a glass of wine for Annie.
“My god, these are wonderful!” Peter said, his mouth full.
Annie blew him a kiss.
Claire picked up a roll and chewed on it for a moment, then put it down on the table, spitting the bit of dough out. “Too sour!” she said, making a face.
“Not sour,” Lucas said, reaching for another one. “Salty.”
“Salty,” she echoed. She watched him steadily as he ate, exaggerating his chewing motion for her.
They reviewed their holidays. They bemoaned the difficulty of travel. They discussed the weather and compared it with the Thanksgivings of years past—the unseasonably warm, sunny one, everyone out walking around outside without coats. The heavy snowfall another year that kept people from having to travel.
When Annie called them to the table, Lucas brought Claire and set her in the old-fashioned high chair, offering her several spoons to bang on its wooden tray. Natalie unpacked a clementine and rinsed it off at the sink. She set it down on the high-chair tray also. She began to show Claire how to peel it.
The salad was passed around the table, and the rolls. They started to eat. Lucas moved behind each of them, pouring wine.
“So, what have you done with the cat today?” Frieda asked Annie.
“Well, the good thing about cats is, you don’t have to do much of anything with them.”
“What cat?” Lucas asked.
“Did I not tell you?” Annie asked, looking up at him. “About the cat?”
“No,” Lucas said. “You certainly did not.”
She seemed puzzled. “I didn’t tell you Karen died?”
“No. God!” Lucas said. “No! You didn’t.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry.” Annie sighed. “Well, she did. She died. It was about three or four months ago now. Four months.”
“Ah, that’s too bad,” Lucas said. “She was such a fixture in our lives.” He set the wine bottles on the table and sat down.
“What did she die of?” Don asked.
“Old age, I suppose you’d say,” Annie answered. “I don’t know, actually. I assume, heart failure or something like that. She was over ninety, so I don’t think they did an autopsy or anything like that. And she died at home.”
“But what has this to do with the cat?” Jeanne asked.
“He was Karen’s.” Annie looked over at Sarah. “Sarah remembered him.” Sarah nodded. “You don’t, Lucas?”
“Not so much. I’ve been gone kind of a long time, as you will recall.”
“So you took him in,” Jeanne said. “The cat?”
“Well, it’s a little more complicated than that.”
“Tell,” Peter commanded.
It was a long story, as Annie told it. She was interrupted often by someone asking someone else to pass the wine, or the salt and pepper, or the salad bowl.
She had been bothered one night by Karen’s cat, she said, yowling almost as if he was in heat. “But of course, he’s a male cat. Altered, but male. So I assumed, well, maybe she was keeping him in because there was some cat in heat nearby. But it went on and on through the night—well, off and on—and then the next morning, it started up again.
“When I looked over, I could see him inside there, at the kitchen window this time, hanging by his claws on the screen, and really, I knew right then. I tried telephoning, but of course there was no answer. I could hear it ringing and ringing. It was about seven in the morning by then, so I called nine-one-one and the ambulance came.”
“I thought you had a key,” Edith said.
“I do. But I didn’t think I could bear it, if something had happened. I just didn’t want to . . . to be the one in charge, I suppose.”
And that was true. But it was also true that she had been in charge of Karen, increasingly so as the months went on. To the degree she could, she monitored the old woman’s appearance. She always checked in with her before she went to the grocery store. She picked up things that Karen would be able to fix easily for herself—canned soups, bread, eggs. Sometimes prepared food from Formaggio—a roast chicken or pasta salad. And at least once a week, she had the old woman over for dinner, though Karen ate very little on these occasions. Mostly she just wanted to talk—to discuss with Annie her confused version of the world. The people who came and looked through her windows at night. Who stole her money and her books. The houses on the street that had burned up. And once, tearfully, she broke the news to Annie that Graham—she called him “that fat man you live with”—had died. “I didn’t want to tell you,” she said to Annie. “But then I talked to your mother, and she said I should.” She pulled a crumpled Kleenex from a pocket in her skirt and blew her nose. “I couldn’t be sorrier,” she said.
“It’s all right,” Annie had said. “I’m almost used to it.”
Now she went on with her story of the morning of Karen’s death. “There was a niece, though, I remembered that—somewhere on the North Shore. So after the ambulance took her away—”
“She was already dead, then?” Lucas asked.
“She was. They wouldn’t say much to me, of course—I’m sure they saw me as just the nosy neighbor who let them in. But they did tell me that. And that they were taking her to the hospital. To Mount Auburn. I said I’d try to find someone—some relative or something. So anyway, I looked up the niece—I knew it was Ipswich or Gloucester, one of those towns—and she had the same last name, thank goodness. So I told her Karen had died, and where to call.”
She and Graham had wondered about this niece every now and then. Was she real? Or maybe just a figment of Karen’s imagination? They suspected the latter, having been witnesses to the long solitary life next door, the cat and his two predecessors seemingly the only companions the old lady ever had. So Annie had been a bit startled when she found this niece so easily.
“She seemed . . . put out, I’d have to say.” (“Christ!” the woman had said. “Well, it was bound to happen sooner or later.”) “But she turned up later that day. She came to get the key from me so she could get in. I think she’d already been to the hospital. I was glad, I suppose, to shed my responsibility for her. For Karen, I mean. Horrible as that i
s to say.”
They were all silent for a moment.
“It seemed the niece just wanted out too, really. The whole thing seemed beyond sad to me. Though she did come back over to ask if I’d take the cat in for a few days. She needed some time to straighten things out, was what she said.”
“So now you’re stuck with him?”
“Not stuck, really. Because it turns out she’d left him to us. Karen had. In her will. To Graham and me. At some point he apparently agreed to it. I knew nothing about it.”
When Annie had told her the story, Sarah had imagined it, Karen asking, her father reassuring her. Of course! Of course! Sam’s like a brother to me. Or maybe, It’s easy enough to say yes to you, Karen, because you’re never going to die anyway.
“But you are stuck, still,” she said to her mother now.
Another silence. After a moment, Annie said, “Well, she left quite a bit of money, too.”
Sarah hadn’t heard this before.
“She left you money?” Edith said.
“Well, not to me, exactly.” She seemed embarrassed. “But to me, yeah. To take care of him. Sam.” She made a funny, guilty face, and nodded several times. “The cat.”
“To take care of the cat?” Lucas echoed.
Annie nodded. “Yeah,” she said.
“How much money?” Sarah said. “If I may ask.”
She turned to Sarah. “A ridiculous amount.”
“How much?”
She smiled, ruefully. “Fifty thousand dollars.”
Those at the table seemed to move as one, though in different directions, some leaning forward to look at Annie, others pulling back, surprised.
“My god, Mother! You didn’t tell me that part of the story.”
“Well, it’s the embarrassing part, really. Isn’t it?”
“It is a whole lot of Meow Mix,” Don said.
“I know.” She laughed and lifted her hands, helpless. “And he’s fifteen years old. He won’t live long enough to eat a tenth of it. Less than that. But she really loved him.” Her face sobered for a moment, and then she shrugged. “So suddenly I’m a rich widow with a cat. A cliché.”
This was, relatively speaking, true. Sarah knew the details. Graham had left a life insurance policy for $200,000, and Peter had a buyer for the store—he didn’t want to hold on to it without Graham. He’d told Annie, and Annie had told Sarah, that he thought she’d get about $80,000, after taxes and everything else.
“But the funny thing is, I like him,” Annie said.
“Who?” Jeanne asked.
“The cat.”
“I thought you didn’t like cats,” Lucas said.
“Did I say that?”
“More than once.”
“Well, I suppose I did.” She looked pensive. “They’re all a little bit snotty, really. And Sam does have a certain . . . hauteur, I guess you’d say. But now that Karen isn’t there anymore, he’s more or less dropped that pose. With me, anyway. I think he realizes he can’t get away with taking that tone now. He’s actually quite affectionate.”
“I don’t like them,” Natalie said. “Cats. I just can’t like them.” She made a face, shaking her head. “Because of birds. Because I’m a birder.” She was holding her hand out toward Claire, so the baby could slowly pass her the little pieces of clementine peel she’d managed to get off. “And cats, who aren’t even native to this country, kill billions and billions of birds a year.”
“Billions? You’re sure?” Sarah asked. “That sounds like way too much. Not millions?”
Natalie shook her head. “Billions,” she said emphatically, angrily.
Claire looked at her, interested. “Biyuns,” she said quietly, as if to herself. Then, louder: “Beeyuns!”
“I would have felt the same way,” Annie said. “I did feel the same way, Lucas is right. But I think just taking care of something—someone—endears them to you.”
“Oh!” Natalie said. “Don! This explains you.” Several of them laughed, Don included. Claire looked around benignly, eagerly, her smiling mouth opened expectantly, as if someone might let her in on the joke. You could see the stubs of two lower teeth clearly.
“So where is he now?” Frieda asked again. “The cat.”
“Oh, I put him back over at Karen’s for the day. I wasn’t sure how he’d be around Claire. It seemed better not to risk it.”
Peter started on a story about an uncle of his, the big family fight that resulted from his leaving all of his money to a particular niece. The one who’d taken care of him as he aged, sure, but still . . .
They talked about wills, who had one, who didn’t. Lucas said all of this reminded him to get on it. “But it seems like such a concession to death.”
“Yeah, it does,” Peter said. “It is. But you just can’t keep saying ‘Who, me?’ forever.”
“I know. But I’m just not ready yet.”
“Ready to make a will, or to die?” Sarah asked.
“God, Sarah!” Peter said. “What about . . . tact?”
“The latter,” Lucas said to Sarah. “I have a few things I’d like to do first.”
“Ah, I’ve always wanted to see Paris before I die,” Don said, in his best W. C. Fields voice.
“What kinds of things?” Sarah asked.
“I don’t know, really. Just . . . you want to leave something behind, don’t you? Something to be remembered by?”
“Annie and Nat have it all over the rest of us there,” Don said. “Pictures. Actual things. And then also the particular way of seeing the world they offer us.”
“Mine scattered widely over about two, or maybe three, living rooms in Cambridge, Massachusetts,” Annie said.
“Oh, come on, Annie,” Natalie said.
“Well, but you do always compare yourself, don’t you?” Annie said. “Don’t you?” she asked Natalie.
“To whom?” This was Frieda.
“Well, in my case, to people who have a more . . . singular vision, I guess you’d say.” And suddenly the image of Sofie Kahn came to her—Sofie, the lake behind her, her head tilted back as she swayed slightly to the deep, thrilling sounds she was making. “I wish I did.” And then, because she’d sounded so wistful, even to herself, she changed her voice. “See, I don’t, if you really look at the whole oeuvre.” She exaggerated this word, to make it seem pretentious. “I’ve just . . . gone around, trying this and then trying that. Jumping around. But then you notice that someone else, Nan Goldin, say, or Bill Eggleston, or Diane Arbus—they have some one thing they’re doing, always. Something they must need you to see.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad to me—a wide-ranging talent,” Frieda said.
“That’s kind of you,” Annie said, looking down the table at Frieda. “A very kind spin to put on it.”
“Well, there are other things anyway, besides work,” Lucas said. “Maybe you’ll be remembered for the parties.”
“Certainly I’ll remember those,” Peter said.
Don said, “This meal ain’t half bad either.”
“Thank you. Thank you all.” Annie bowed her head to each of them around the table.
“And Diane Arbus is creepy anyway,” Sarah said.
“Do you think so?” Natalie asked. “I really love her work. It’s like information from another planet, almost.”
“That’s what I mean,” Sarah said.
They’d finished eating by now. Natalie asked Sarah about her work, and Sarah started to explain it to her and to Don. Frieda was taking her turn passing things back and forth to Claire now, her face open and eager as she leaned toward her granddaughter. Peter and Jeanne were talking earnestly, about wine, Annie thought. She went upstairs to get her camera. When she came down, she began moving around the table taking pictures, entering the conversations only occasionally.
It was photographing Claire that had started Annie’s turn back to taking pictures of people, as well as to her old camera; and because of that, to developing film again, in a t
iny darkroom she’d made in the old pantry in the back hall off the kitchen—she’d had to move out of her studio when the building sold.
It had felt like a kind of homecoming to her, working in the darkroom again. Everything about it was dear and familiar, even though the room was really too small to work in easily. But she loved it. She’d forgotten how she loved it. The sharp smell, the unreality of the red light, the slow emergence of this version of the image, now this other version—the control you had over that, over the way you saw things and wanted to remember them.
What she had wanted initially was just to record the little girl as she changed, to remember all the versions of her, some of which seemed to last for only a few weeks. She’d gone to New York every few months, and tried to see Claire every time Jeanne and Lucas came up to stay with Frieda. Most of the pictures she took were black and white—she wanted the more intimate sense of Claire that offered, she felt, as she worked with the film. She thought with sorrow of how she had let Sarah grow up without taking many photographs of her. Maybe if she’d looked at her more, looked at her more with the camera—that intense kind of noticing—everything would have been better for Sarah. And might have been better for her as well. Sometimes, watching Claire, she remembered laying Sarah across her own mother’s lap, and was astonished at the version of herself that could have done such a thing. She remembered Sarah, more or less balanced there, lying so still, as if she knew even then that no one would catch her if she started to fall.
She’d thought of herself as making up for all that with the photographs of Claire. She’d taken pictures of the little girl asleep, of her crying, of the curve of her naked back from behind as she squatted on the patio, watching the path of ants across the brick. Of the back of her head, like a beautiful rounded jug, her too-big ears with their intricate curves on either side of it. Of her hands, fat and yet somehow delicate. Of her blank face as she began to succumb to sleep.