It's Like This, Cat

by Emily Cheney Neville

  Dad comes back and goes over to the desk and scratches off a fast note. He says, “Here. Address it to Tom and go mail it right away. Palumbo says he’ll try him out at least. Tom can come over Thursday night and I’ll take him in.”

  Tom comes home with Pop Thursday about nine o’clock. They both look pretty good. Mom has cold supper waiting, finishing off the icebox before we go away, so we all sit down to eat.

  “Tom’s all set, at least for a start,” Dad says. ‘’He’s going to start Tuesday, right after Labor Day. Palumbo can use him on odd jobs and deliveries, especially over the Jewish holidays, and then if he can learn the business, he’ll keep him on.”

  “Never thought I’d go in for flower-arranging.” Tom grins. “But it might be fun. I’m pretty fair at any kind of handiwork.”

  Remembering how quick he unlocked the padlock to get Cat out in the cellar, I agree.

  He starts for his room after supper, and we all say “good luck,” “have a good time,” and stuff. Things are really looking up.

  I get up early the next morning and help Mom button up around the house and get the car loaded before Pop gets home in the afternoon. He hoped to get off early, and I’ve been pacing around snapping my fingers for a couple of hours when he finally arrives about six o’clock. It’s a hot day again.

  I don’t say anything about Cat. I just dive in the back seat and put him behind a suitcase and hope he’ll behave. Pop doesn’t seem to notice him. Anyway he doesn’t say anything.

  It’s mighty hot, and traffic is thick, with everyone pouring out of the city. But at least we’re moving along, until we get out on the Hutchinson River Parkway, where some dope has to run out of gas.

  All three lanes of traffic are stopped. We sit in the sun. Pop looks around, hunting for something to get sore about, and sees the back windows are closed. He roars, “Crying out loud, can’t we get some air, at least? Open those windows!”

  I open them and try to keep my hand over Cat, but if you try to hold him really, it makes him restless. For the moment he’s sitting quiet, looking disgusted.

  We sit for about ten minutes, and Pop turns off the motor. You can practically hear us sweating in the silence. Engines turn on ahead of us, and there seems to be some sign of hope. I stick my head out the window to see if things are moving. Something furry tickles my ear, and it takes me a second to register.

  Then I grab, but too late. There is Cat, out on the parkway between the lanes of cars, trying to figure which way to run.

  “Pop!” I yell. “Hold it! Cat’s got out!”

  You know what my pop does? He laughs.

  “Hold it, my eyeball!” he says. “I’ve been holding it for half an hour. I’d get murdered if I tried to stop now. Besides, I don’t want to chase that cat every day of my vacation.”

  I don’t even stop to think. I just open the car door and jump. The car’s only barely moving. I can see Cat on the grass at the edge of the parkway. The cars in the next lane blast their horns, but I slip through and grab Cat.

  I hear Mom scream, “Davey!”

  Our car is twenty feet ahead, now, in the center lane, and there’s no way Pop can turn off. The cars are picking up speed. I holler to Mom as loud as I can, “I’ll go back and stay with Kate! Don’t worry!”

  I hear Pop shout about something, but I can’t hear what. Pretty soon the car is out of sight. I look down at Cat and say, “There goes our vacation.” I wonder if I’ll be able to catch a bus out to Connecticut later. Meanwhile, there’s the little problem of getting back into the city. I’m standing alongside the parkway, with railroad tracks and the Pelham golf course on the other side of me, and a good long walk to the subway.

  A cat isn’t handy to walk with. He keeps trying to get down. If you squeeze him to hang on, he just tries harder. You have to keep juggling him, like, gently. I sweat along back, with the sun in my eyes, and people in cars on the parkway pointing me out to their children as a local curiosity.

  One place the bulrushes and marsh grass beside the road grow up higher than your head. What a place for a kids’ hideout, I think. Almost the next step, I hear kids’ voices, whispering and shushing each other.

  Their voices follow along beside me, but inside the curtain of rushes, where I can’t see them. I hear one say, “Lookit the sissy with the kitty!” Another answers, “Let’s dump ’em in the river!”

  I try to walk faster, but I figure if I run they’ll chase me for sure. I walk along, juggling Cat, trying to pretend I don’t notice them. I see a drawbridge up ahead, and I sure hope there’s a cop or watchman on it.

  The kids break out of the rushes behind me, and there’s no use pretending anymore. I flash a look over my shoulder. They all yell, “Ya-n-h-h-h!” like a bunch of wild Indians, but they’re about fifty feet back.

  I grab Cat hard about the only place you can grab a cat, around one upper forearm, and I really run. The kids let out another war whoop. It’s uphill to the bridge. Cat gets his free forepaw into action, raking my chest and arm, with his claws out. Then he hisses and bites, and I nearly drop him. I’m panting so hard I can’t hardly breathe anyway.

  A cop saunters out on my approach to the bridge, his billy dangling from his wrist. Whew—am I glad! I flop on the grass and ease up on Cat and start soothing him down. The kids fade off into the tall grass as soon as they see the cop. A stone arches up toward me, but it falls short. That’s the last I see of them.

  As I cross the bridge, the cop squints at me. “What you doing, kid? Not supposed to be walking here.”

  “I’ll be right off. I’m going home,” I tell him, and he saunters away, twirling his stick.

  It’s dark by the time I get to the subway, and most of another hour before I’m back in Manhattan and reach Kate’s. I can hear the television going, which is unusual, and I walk in. No one is watching television. Mom and Pop are sitting at the table with Kate.

  Mom lets loose the tears she has apparently been holding onto for two hours, and Pop starts bellowing: “You fool! You might have got killed jumping out on that parkway!”

  Cat drops to the floor with a thud. I kiss Mom and go to the sink for a long glass of water and drink it all and wipe my mouth. Over my shoulder, I answer Pop: “Yeah, but if Cat gets killed on the parkway, that’s just a big joke, isn’t it? You laugh your head off!”

  Pop takes off his glasses and scratches his head with them, like he always does when he’s thinking. He looks me in the eye and says, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have laughed.”

  Then, of all things, he picks up Cat himself. “Come on. You’re one of the family. Let’s get on this vacation.”

  At last we’re off.

  11

  Rosh Hashanah at the Fulton Fish Market

  We came back to the city Labor Day Monday—us and a couple million others—traffic crawling, a hot day, the windows practically closed up tight to keep Cat in. I sweated, and then cat hairs stuck to me and got up my nose. Considering everything, Pop acted quite mild.

  I met a kid up at the lake in Connecticut who had skin-diving equipment. He let me use it one day when Mom and Pop were off sightseeing. Boy, this has fishing beat hollow! I found out there’s a skin-diving course at the Y, and I’m going to begin saving up for the fins and mask and stuff. Pop won’t mind forking out for the Y membership, because he’ll figure it’s character-building.

  Meanwhile, I’m wondering if I can get back up to Connecticut again one weekend while the weather’s still warm, and I see that Rosh Hashanah falls on a Monday and Tuesday this year, the week after school opens. Great. So I ask this kid—Kenny Wright—if I can maybe come visit him that weekend so I can do some more skin diving.

  “Rosh Hashanah? What’s that?” he says.

  So I explain to him. Rosh Hashanah is the Jewish New Year. About half the kids in my school are Jewish, so they all stay out for it, and I always do too. Last year the school board gave up and made it an official school holiday for everyone, Jewish or not. Same with Yom Kip
pur, the week after.

  Kenny whistles. “You sure are lucky. I don’t think we got any holidays coming till Thanksgiving.”

  I always thought the kids in the country were lucky having outdoor yards for sports and recess, but I guess we have it over them on holidays—’specially in the fall: three Jewish holidays in September, Columbus Day in October, Election Day and Veterans’ Day in November, and then Thanksgiving. It drives the mothers wild.

  I don’t figure it’d be worth train fare to Connecticut for just two days, so I say good-bye to Kenny and see you next year and stuff.

  Back home I’m pretty busy right away, on account of starting in a new school, Charles Evans Hughes High. It’s different from the junior high, where I knew half the kids, and also my whole homeroom there went from one classroom to another together. At Hughes everyone has to get his own schedule and find the right classroom in this immense building, which is about the size of Penn Station. There are about a million kids in it—actually about two thousand—most of whom I never saw before. Hardly any of the Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village kids come here because it isn’t their district. However, walking back across Fifth Avenue one day, I see one kid I know from Peter Cooper. His name is Ben Alstein. I ask him how come he is at Hughes.

  “My dad wanted me to get into Peter Stuyvesant High School—you know, the genius factory, citywide competitive exam to get in. Of course I didn’t make it. Biggest Failure of the Year, that’s me.”

  “Heck, I never even tried for that. But how come you’re here?”

  “There’s a special science course you can qualify for by taking a math test. Then you don’t have to live in the district. My dad figures as long as I’m in something special, there’s hope. I’m not really very interested in science, but that doesn’t bother him.”

  So after that Ben and I walk back and forth to school together, and it turns out we have three classes together, too—biology and algebra and English. We’re both relieved to have at least one familiar face to look for in the crowd. My old friend Nick, aside from not really being my best friend anymore, has gone to a Catholic high school somewhere uptown.

  On the way home from school one Friday in September, I ask Ben what he’s doing Monday and Tuesday, the Jewish holidays.

  “Tuesday I got to get into my bar mitzvah suit and go to synagogue and over to Brooklyn to my grandmother’s. Monday I don’t have to do anything special. Come on over with your roller skates and we’ll get in the hockey game.’

  “I skate on my tail,” I say, because it’s true, and it would be doubly true in a hockey game. I try quick to think up something else. We’re walking down the block to my house, and there’s Cat sitting out front, so I say, “Let’s cruise around and get down to Fulton Fish Market and pick up some fish heads for my cat.”

  “You’re a real nut, aren’t you?” Ben says. He doesn’t say it as if he minds—just mentioning the fact. He’s an easygoing kind of guy, and I think most of the time he likes to let someone else make the plans. So he shrugs and says, “O.K.”

  I introduce him to Cat. Ben looks him in the eye, and Cat looks away and licks his back. Ben says, “So I got to get you fresh fish for Rosh Hashanah, huh?”

  Cat jumps down and rubs from back to front against Ben’s right leg and from front to back against his left leg and goes to lie down in the middle of the sidewalk.

  “See? He likes you,” I say. “He won’t have anything to do with most guys, except Tom.”

  “Who’s Tom?”

  So I tell Ben all about Tom and the cellar and his father disappearing on him.

  “Gee,” says Ben, “I thought I had trouble, with my father practically telling me how to breathe better every minute, but at least he doesn’t disappear. What does Tom do now?”

  “Works at the flower shop, right down there at the corner.”

  Ben feels around in his pockets a minute. “Hey, I got two bucks I was supposed to spend on a textbook. Come on and I’ll buy Mom a plant for the holidays, and you can introduce me to Tom.”

  We go down to the flower shop, and at first Tom frowns because he thinks we’ve just come to kid around. Ben tells him he wants a plant, so then he makes a big thing out of showing him all the plants, from the ten-dollar ones on down, so Mr. Palumbo will see he’s doing a good job. Ben finally settles on a funny-looking cactus that Tom says is going to bloom pretty soon.

  Ben goes along home and I arrange to pick him up on Monday. I wait around outside until I see Tom go out on a delivery and ask him how he likes the job. He says he doesn’t really know yet, but at least the guy is decent to work for, not like the filling-station man.

  I sleep late Monday and go over to Peter Cooper about eleven. A lot of kids are out in the playgrounds, and some fathers are there tossing footballs with them and shouting “Happy New Year” to each other. It sounds odd to hear people saying that on a warm day in September.

  Ben and I wander out of the project and he says, “How do we get to this Fulton Street?”

  I see a bus that says “Avenue C” on it stopping on Twenty-third Street. Avenue C is way east, and so is Fulton Street, so I figure it’ll probably work out. We get on. The bus rockets along under the East Side Drive for a few blocks and then heads down Avenue C, which is narrow and crowded. It’s a Spanish and Puerto Rican neighborhood to begin with, then farther downtown it’s mostly Jewish. Lots of people are out on the street shaking hands and clapping each other on the back, and the stores are all closed.

  Every time the bus stops, the driver shouts to some of the people on the sidewalk, and he seems to know a good many of the passengers who get on. He asks them about their jobs, or their babies, or their aunt who’s sick in Bellevue. This is pretty unusual in New York, where bus drivers usually act like they hate people in general and their passengers in particular. Suddenly the bus turns off Avenue C and heads west.

  Ben looks out the window and says, “Hey, this is Houston Street. I been down here to a big delicatessen. But we’re not heading downtown anymore.”

  “Probably it’ll turn again,” I say.

  It doesn’t, though, not till clear over at Sixth Avenue. By then everyone else has got off and the bus driver turns around and says, “Where you two headed for?”

  It’s funny, a bus driver asking you that, so I ask him, “Where does this bus go?”

  “It goes from Bellevue Hospital down to Hudson Street, down by the Holland Tunnel.”

  “Holy cow!” says Ben. “We’re liable to wind up in New Jersey.”

  “Relax. I don’t go that far. I just go back up to Bellevue,” says the driver.

  “You think we’d be far from Fulton Fish Market?” I say.

  The driver gestures vaguely. “Just across the island.”

  So Ben and I decide we’ll get off at the end of the line and walk from there. The bus driver says, “Have a nice hike.”

  “I think there’s something fishy about this,” says Ben.

  “That’s what we’re going to get, fish,” I say, and we walk. We walk quite a ways.

  Ben sees a little Italian restaurant down a couple of steps, and we stop to look at the menu in the window. The special for the day is lasagna, and Ben says, “Boy, that’s for me!”

  We go inside, while I finger the dollar in my pocket and do some fast mental arithmetic. Lasagna is a dollar, so that’s out, but I see spaghetti and meat balls is seventy-five cents, so that will still leave me bus fare home.

  A waiter rushes up, wearing a white napkin over his arm like a banner, and takes our order. He returns in a moment with a shiny clean white linen tablecloth and a basket of fresh Italian bread and rolls. On a third trip he brings enough chilled butter for a family and asks if we want coffee with lunch or later. Later, we say.

  “Man, this is living!” says Ben as he moves in on the bread.

  “He treats us just like people.”

  Pretty soon the waiter is back with our lasagna and spaghetti, and he swirls around the table as if he
were dancing. “Anything else now? Mind the hot plates, very hot! Have a good lunch now. I bring the coffee later.”

  He swirls away, the napkin over his arm making a little breeze, and circles another table. It’s a small room, and there are only four tables eating, but he seems to enjoy acting like he was serving royalty at the Waldorf. When we’re just finished eating, he comes back with a pot of steaming coffee and a pitcher of real cream.

  I’m dolloping the cream in, and it floats, when a thought hits me: We got to leave a tip for this waiter.

  I whisper to Ben, “Hey, how much money you got?”

  He reaches in his pocket and fishes out a buck, a dime, and a quarter. We study them. Figure coffees for a dime each, and the total check ought to be $1.95. We’ve got $2.35 between us. We can still squeak through with bus fare if we only leave the waiter a dime, which is pretty cheap.

  At that moment he comes back and refills our coffee cups and asks what we will have for dessert.

  “Uh, nothing, nothing at all,” I say.

  “Couldn’t eat another thing,” says Ben.

  So the waiter brings the check and along with it a plate of homemade cookies. He says, “My wife make. On the house.”

  We both thank him, and I look at Ben and he looks at me. I put down my dollar and he puts down a dollar and a quarter.

  “Thank you, gentlemen, thank you. Come again,” says the waiter.

  We walk into the street, and Ben spins the lone remaining dime in the sun. I say, “Heads or tails?”

  “Huh? Heads.”

  It comes up heads, so Ben keeps his own dime. He says, “We could have hung onto enough for one bus fare, but that’s no use.”

  “No use at all. ‘Specially if it was yours.”

  “Are we still heading for Fulton Street?”

  “Sure. We got to get fish for Cat.”

  “It better be for free.”

  We walk, threading across Manhattan and downtown. I guess it’s thirty or forty blocks, but after a good lunch it doesn’t seem too far.