Bad Kitty

by Michele Jaffe

  “Are you going to sell my body parts to science?”

  “This is not a joke.”

  “Who would joke about something like that?” The way he was looking at me, it was fully possible.

  “You will leave here and apologize to your uncle Andrew and your aunt Liz. Then to your cousin and that girl she has with her. Then to the couple whose wedding you ruined. When you have finished doing that, you will return to our suite where you will pack your bags. The hotel has kindly agreed to let us all stay tonight, provided you do not leave your room. When we get home, you will be grounded for the foreseeable future except to go to school.”

  Weighed against apologizing to the Evil Henched Ones, having my body cut up and sold to science didn’t sound so bad. Really.

  I had forgotten how cold I was while basking in the heat of my father’s anger, but as soon as I tried to stand up and found that my knees were frozen in place, I remembered. I’d just pried myself off the chair when there was a commotion outside the door and Sherri! ran in, holding a robe out toward me.

  Bless you, Sherri!, I wanted to say.

  Then I wanted to shout it when she smiled and said, “It’s all taken care of. Everything is fine. We can stay in the hotel.”

  How totally MasterCard is my stepmother?

  My dad and I were staring at her and she said, “Wait, here he is,” and held out her arm like a game show hostess.

  A man wearing a double-breasted gray suit came in. He was handsome in a high-end-men’s-catalog kind of way, with a square jaw and brown hair graying at the temples. He had slight crinkles around his eyes and his face was tan except for a triangular patch around his hair-line. He walked with a spring in his step, like an acrobat or a long-distance runner, and even though he was featuring white socks with black shoes, a definite fashion no-no, I decided I would give him the benefit of the doubt if he was there to free me.

  He had a nice voice as he said, “Hello, Dr. Callihan. I am L. A. Curtis, the head of security for the resort.” Then he looked at me and said, “This, I presume, is Jasmine.”

  I nodded. “Yes, sir.” I couldn’t help thinking he looked more like someone who should be welcoming guests to Fantasy Island than a security chief. “I am very sorry, sir, for everything that—”

  He put up his hand and gave me a smile that almost blinded me, it was so white. “Stop, young lady. In fact, the Venetian Hotel would like to apologize to you and your family for any inconvenience.”

  Had I passed into a parallel universe? I looked around quickly. L. A. Curtis was wearing white socks with black shoes, which was suspect, but everything else—father steaming; Sherri! beaming; me cold—was just as I expected. Finally I managed to stammer, “Are you sure?”

  Mr. Curtis laughed like I’d said the funniest thing in the world. “Yes. We would like you to continue your visit with us. And the hotel would be delighted if you would allow us to cover the cost of your rooms.”

  This was really weird. “Um, thank you.”

  My father’s eyes sort of goggled and he started to say, “That won’t be necessary, we—” but Mr. Curtis cut him off with the words: “We would also like to extend the use of one of our limos to you at any time.”

  Oh, hello. Hotel limo? I was definitely in a parallel universe. Or one of those Candid Camera shows. That was it. And you know what? Who cared! They were giving me my own limo!

  Of course a limo wouldn’t really be any good to me if I were grounded. I said, “Does this mean I’m not in trouble?”

  “There will be no record of what happened today at the pool. You have been fully exonerated.”

  Everything in my brain at this point said: Jasmine, do not speak. Keep quiet. Pretend your two lips are but one. Do what Helen Keller would do.

  But I couldn’t stop myself. I said, “Why?”

  Mr. Curtis and my dad both gave me the same look. And let me tell you, it was not a look that said, “What a delight it is to have such an inquisitive daughter, let’s join hands in merry revelry!”

  To clarify, and because I was not yet completely gagging on the foot I’d inserted into my mouth, I went, “I just mean, what happened to change everything?”

  My dad continued with The Look, but Mr. Curtis flashed me another smile and said, “These things are complicated, Miss Callihan. Let’s just say—”

  At that moment there was a knock at the door, and when it opened, who should muscle in but the Fabinator, the large gentleman with the small bathing suit and the gun.

  Which he was still wearing. As I could clearly see beneath the turquoise mesh muscle shirt he’d slipped on.

  Oh, yes. He went there.

  “They want see the girl,” he said, demonstrating an admirable command of short words.

  L. A. Curtis gave what looked to me like his first genuine smile as a little boy appeared behind the Fabinator. He was the boy from the pool. Not the cute one who wouldn’t take his shirt off, the little one. The one who had told me to run.

  Demon child, you might call him. In light-up Spider-Man sneakers. And with a runny nose. Definitely sinister.

  Standing next to him was the most perfect-looking woman I had ever seen besides Sherri! She was medium height with long blonde hair, wearing a black-and-orange silk wrap over her bathing suit. The only thing not quite perfect about her was that she had a black smudge shaped like a lightning bolt on the toenail polish of her left big toe. Honestly, that was the ONLY imperfection.

  L. A. Curtis cleared his throat and said, “Miss Callihan, I’d like you to meet Fred and his mother, Ms. Bristol.”

  The perfect woman was Fiona Bristol! The yogi-slash-kindergarten teacher-slash-model-slash-scandal-haver. She must have been my savior. Why why why couldn’t the Evil Henches have talked louder so I would have known what Ms. Bristol’s scandal was?

  Ms. Bristol pushed her son forward and said, “Fred, don’t you have something to share with the lady?”

  Fred took a step toward me and then said to the floor, “I’m sorry I got you in trouble.” At least, I think that’s what he said. He talked like someone angling for top prize in a “Don’t Move Your Lips or Else Alien Ants Will Crawl into Your Mouth and Eat Your Brain” contest.

  I understood, though. Parents. I said, “You didn’t do anything wrong. Is your cat okay?”

  Only then did he look up at me. I’d read in some of Sherri!’s Buddhism books about people with old souls, but I’d never really gotten what they meant until I saw Fred’s face. He had cheeks and stuff like a little boy, but his eyes looked like they’d seen way more than most eight-year-olds. He nodded. “He’s fine. We found him in some bushes.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Mean And Dangerous Joe. We call him Mad Joe for short.”

  “That’s a good name for him,” I said, meaning it.

  “He’s a watch cat,” Fred informed me, wiping his nose on the back of his hand.

  His mom decided to cut in here. She said, “Sweetheart, we use Kleenex for that,” and then smiled at me apologetically. “I’m sorry, he’s got a mild case of the sniffles. I wanted to thank you also for chasing after Mad Joe. He’s been a bit spooked lately, and I don’t know what we would do if something happened to him.” She put her hand on Fred’s shoulder when she said that and he didn’t even try to shrug it off. He was one unhappy kid.

  “I’m glad everything has worked out all right.”

  Then there was one of those silences where everyone studies the carpeting like they’ve never seen such a remarkable substance before—carpeting! Wonder of wonders! It’s like hair! For the floor!—until L. A. Curtis stepped in to rescue us. Turning to Ms. Bristol, he said, “Why don’t you two go back up to your suite while I finish up with the Callihans?”

  My father stood up as they left, then turned to Mr. Curtis and said, “We’ll be going as well. Thank you for your help.”

  “Before we leave, I was wondering—” I started to say, but my dad put on a weird smile and went, “Wouldn’t you ra
ther stop asking questions, Jasmine, and go enjoy yourself?”

  Only the way he said it, it wasn’t a question. It was more like a threat. Slash order. So I agreed.

  Then there was another round of handshaking all around and a good deal of bonhomie (if that means goodwill between my father and L. A. Curtis) and we moved to the door. I couldn’t get rid of the feeling, though, that despite him being very nice, none of this was Mr. L. A. Curtis’s idea of a fun afternoon. In fact, I got the nagging sense that his version of an ideal world was one with fewer Jasmine Callihans in it. And I thought I knew why.

  As I went by him to leave, I said, “I’m really sorry you had to be called away from fishing because of me. I hope you can go again tomorrow.” I kept going, but he put a hand on my wrist to stop me.

  He looked at me quizzically. “What a strange thing to say. What made you think that?”

  “Well, I noticed—”

  “Jasmine,” my father’s voice said behind me, “we are going. Now.” And he grabbed my arm. For a minute I thought my dad and Mr. Curtis were going to play Stretch Armstrong with me, but Mr. Curtis let go, and my dad dragged me behind him.

  While we were riding up to our adjoining suites in the elevator, Sherri! said, “Jas, were you just guessing that he was on a boat?”

  “No. His face was tan except for one corner of his forehead like he’d been out in the sun wearing a cap at an angle, he had a groove on his thumb where he’d been pressing it against something for a long time, and I guessed that something was a fishing line when I saw his cufflinks were fishing hooks. He was pretty nattily dressed, but he was wearing white socks with a gray suit and black shoes, which made me think he’d gotten dressed quickly to come to work. I bet Thursday is a quiet day at a casino, so it would be a good day for him to take off.”

  Sherri! said, “I think it’s so cool how you can do that. I only noticed that he’d recently had his teeth done at BriteSmile. What about Ms. Bristol? Did you notice anything about her?”

  Which made my dad growl and go, “Don’t encourage her.” Then he growled at me. “How many times have I asked you not to play your little detective games in public?”

  “Eleven?”

  More growling. “I’m serious, Jasmine. They are both disconcerting and troublesome. You embarrass people, and they don’t like that. I’m sure I don’t have to remind you what happened that time at the aquarium.”

  Okay, that was five years ago. More than a quarter of my life ago. I was sure my father would not want to be held responsible for things he’d done a quarter of a lifetime ago. I was going to point this out, but he kept right on talking, saying, “I really thought that if nothing else, what happened today would have taught you to mind your own business.”

  To which I said reasonably, “Actually, Dad, according to child labor laws, it’s illegal for me to have my own business, at least in California.”

  My father sighed. He gave me the same sort of sad look I’d gotten a strong dose of earlier, the one that prophesied for me a lifetime of holding cells and clammy bikinis and being a huge disappointment to him. Part of me was mad at how unfair that was—because it was not like I had been not minding my own business. Did I summon the cat? No, I did not. And did I end up being THANKED and getting a limo? Yes, I did—but a bigger part of me just wanted it to stop. I decided at that moment that for the rest of our trip, I would be a Model Daughter, the kind you read about in Hallmark cards and see on TV ads (not the ones about how bad drugs are, the other ones). There would be no more “happenings” for me. Not so much as a thought about Ms. Bristol or why Fred seemed so sad or how important you had to be to get to keep a bodyguard with a gun at the pool, not to mention a “watch cat.” I would take my dad and Mr. Curtis’s advice and mind my own business and enjoy my vacation and not get into any trouble. With a limo at my disposal, how hard could that be?

  Oh, yes. I actually thought that.

  Four

  But being a Model Daughter did not exactly come naturally to me. I blame my father for that. In addition to being a genius, my father’s superpower is to take your deepest and most precious desires and use them against you.

  I call him the Thwarter. In my head I mean, not to his face. Usually.

  This is how it works: Most of my friends’ parents applaud and encourage it when their children evince an interest in some new hobby or subject. They see it as a precious spark to be nurtured and cultivated and blown on so it might one day blaze into—well, a blaze.

  Not my dad.

  Although he worked two jobs to enable his younger brother to follow his dream of becoming a doctor, my educational dreams are meaningless to him. As his behavior in the elevator made clear, my dad wants nothing more than to take the spark of scientific inquiry burning inside me and douse it with fire extinguisher foam. Then maybe stomp on it.

  He says it’s for my own good. Just like his suggestion that, instead of the topics that interest me, I should focus my attention on, and I quote to demonstrate how very, very sound of mind he is, “Things like combustion engines and needlepoint and maybe baking.” Oh, certainly, Father, right after I make my own soap and perhaps dip a few souvenir candles from my 1888 girlhood! Curses, I got tallow on my pinafore!

  Seriously, if he could lock me up at home without getting in some kind of trouble with the law, I really believe he would. My father is so overprotective he makes the Secret Service look like a bunch of slackers. Part of it has to do with the fact that my mom died in an accident when I was six, and I guess in some ways, until Sherri! at least, I was all he had. But it’s one thing to be overprotective and another thing to be the Thwarter.

  Ever since my mom died, the only thing I’ve wanted to be is a police detective. Not to go on a quest or try to solve some Nonexistent Mystery Surrounding Her Death, but because that was when I learned about how people leave things behind, even when they are gone from our lives.

  When my mom had her accident, our house filled up with detectives and police officers asking questions and talking to my dad. One of them, this nice lady officer, took me aside and taught me how to find fingerprints on doorknobs and light switches. For months afterward I went around the house covering every surface with all my mom’s old eye shadow and blush, looking for any prints of hers that might still be there. I guess in retrospect I can see why that sort of freaked my dad out, but the way he dealt with it—taking all of my mom’s fingerprints I had carefully lifted and saved on paper and throwing them away and telling me never to do anything like that ever again OR ELSE—didn’t really make me want to stop. Him being overprotective because my mom died, okay, but even as a first grader I knew that was no way to parent.

  Like all good radicals, I took my cause underground. In second and third grades I would go over to Polly’s house after school and we would play Barbie Crime Scene. Polly liked it because she got to dress Barbie and Ken and Skipper up in the right outfits for whatever scenario we were doing—like beachwear for “Tropical Paradise Turns into Bloodbath” or party clothes for “Massacre at a Charity Ball.” We would pose them like crime victims and leave “evidence” around, and then the Spice Girls and My Little Pony would come and figure out what happened. Polly’s mom thought our game was so cute she even had their housekeeper make a lab coat for Posh Spice that said CORONER on the back. (She didn’t like it as much when Skipper offed Barbie and Ken and tried to cover up the evidence in “Night of Kasbah Passion Turns to Night of Horror” by setting a small fire. On an antique Persian rug. But that was kind of understandable.)

  One day my dad came to pick me up when we were presenting our evidence in court (the Honorable Hungry Hungry Hippo presiding)—not even reconstructing a crime or doing “Courtroom Shootout Takes Down Key Witness” or anything—and his head almost peeled open to let Weebles come dancing out. It was unhealthy for us to think about murder, he said, waving his arms around. It was unnatural for us to reconstruct crimes, and, more than that, we could be putting ourselves in grave danger!
>
  Yes! Grave danger! Playing Barbies! (And he wasn’t talking about us developing eating disorders due to Barbie’s unrealistic portrayal of the female anatomy, either. Or Achilles tendon injuries from walking on tiptoe. Or the fact that if you looked really close, Barbie’s eyes did seem a bit CrAzY.)

  I know he meant well. That he was just trying to protect me from…well…something. Something only he could see. Which is called, in the world of non-geniuses, Mental Illness. Anyway, from then on, Polly and I were only allowed to play Non–Crime Scene Barbies. For some reason my father saw no problem with us playing “Barbie and Ken Go to Hawaii to Save Their Marriage by Picking Up Another Couple for Sexy Good Times,” but if Barbie and Ken had gone to Hawaii to “Rescue Another Couple from a Crazed Kidnapper,” that would have been wrong.

  I know. It’s a wonder I grew up as normal as I did.

  And nothing has changed. In fact, I think it’s gotten worse. He still gets all red in the face if he sees the teensiest dusting of eye shadow on a surface, even if it just spilled while I was attempting to apply it to my eyelid. And okay, why I would be doing that in the kitchen is a bit of a mystery, and maybe I was trying to lift prints off the pitcher to see who had left the orange juice out AGAIN, but that could not in any way count as being dangerous. Or if I accidentally use the verb “to detect”—for example, in the sentence, “I detect that we are out of milk”—he goes cuckoo. Milk! Dangerous! It’s like a mania or something. In my gentle, daughterly way I have even suggested that he talk to a professional about his problem, but surprisingly, he does not take kindly to this idea. “This is not a joke, Jasmine,” is what he says. And I totally agree. Any man who is afraid of Barbies and milk needs serious help.

  Apparently, however, the problem is all mine. I am the one with “unsuitable, dangerous, and unhealthy” hobbies. Which is why, if I went to him today and asked for a few thousand dollars to set up a meth lab in the pool house, the chances are higher that he would give it to me than if I asked for a $400 advance against my allowance to buy a new microscope so I could replace the one from the Strawberry Shortcake Chemistry Kit I’ve been using since I was five. (Yes, that one has sentimental value, since my mom bought it for me before she died, but I really feel I am ready to move on to a microscope that is more than a tube of pink plastic with a magnifying glass at the end. And possibly even one that is not strawberry scented.) What kind of parent thinks this way?