Love Saves the Day

by Gwen Cooper

  That’s when Josh left the kitchen and went upstairs to Home Office, clackety-clacking extra loud on the cat bed/computer thing the way I sometimes go after my own scratching post when I’m angry about something. After he was gone, Laura noticed all the tiny crumbs Josh had left on the counter when he made his lunch earlier, and she got out a sponge and spritzy bottle. She rubbed the counter much harder than necessary to get it clean. Both humans and cats have to find ways to use our extra energy when we get “riled up,” as Sarah puts it. It was a good thing I’d jumped onto the counter earlier to eat the bits of meat and cheese Josh spilled when he made his sandwich. If Laura had seen what it looked like before I helped clean up, she would have been even more riled.

  And last week, when Laura and Josh sat at the dining room table to go over their bills, Laura said how maybe they should try to put twice as much into savings while Josh was still getting money from his old job, even if doing that would make life “a little uncomfortable.” Josh told her they had plenty of money in savings, and Laura said, But for how long? Josh said, We’re a long way from being broke, Laura. I’ve been saving for fifteen years. You’ve seen all the paperwork. Neither of them said anything after that. But Laura got a frown-crease in her forehead, and the skin underneath Josh’s left eye twitched. It took a long time of my being in bed with Laura that night before she was able to settle into a real sleep.

  Laura’s been having a lot of trouble falling asleep, especially since Josh has started coming to bed later than he used to—long after Laura’s already been there for a while, with the television flickering some old movie like Sarah used to watch when she couldn’t sleep. When Josh finally does come to bed, he sleeps farther away from Laura, so there’s plenty of room for me to be there, too, but also so he’s touching her less. Sometimes Laura is so tired in the morning that she forgets to do parts of her usual morning routine, like putting on lipstick after her eye makeup, or styling her hair with the gels that live in bottles on the bathroom counter. A few times she’s forgotten to take the pill she takes every morning just before giving me my breakfast. She’s still feeding me right on time, though, every morning. Occasionally she fills my water too high like when I first came to live here. But now she just sighs instead of pressing her lips together when she sees water spilled from my jostling the bowl.

  Ever since the night three weeks ago when they fought about Josh’s severance agreement, things have been different between Josh and Laura. Somebody who’d just met them might not realize anything is wrong because most of the time they’re so polite to each other. They say each other’s names all the time, and make sure they say “please” and “thank you” after every little thing, the way humans talk to other humans they don’t know very well. (If you’re finished with the newspaper, Laura, could you please hand me the business section? Thank you. Or, Josh, could you please pick up some fresh litter for Prudence tomorrow? Thanks.)

  I don’t think Laura is as angry as Josh is, because she tries harder to make him talk. She keeps finding reasons to do little things she never used to bother with. If she decides to take a shower after she gets home from work, she brings the phone upstairs to Home Office and tells Josh, Here’s the phone, in case it rings while I’m in the shower. And Josh says, Thanks, without even turning to look at her. Laura waits, as if she expects Josh to say something more since she went to the trouble of bringing the phone up to him. But Josh is silent until, finally, he asks, Did you want something else, Laura? Or if Laura says, I thought I’d order Chinese, if that’s okay with you, Josh just says, Chinese is fine. Then Laura will say something like, Or we could try that new Thai place, if you want.

  Josh likes to tease Laura that you can tell she’s a lawyer by the way she negotiates over everything. If he’s the one who suggests Thai food, which Laura hates (and I agree, because Thai food is way too spicy for a cat to eat—which means they should never order it), Laura will say something like, Okay, Thai tonight, but then I get to choose for the next three nights. And Josh will respond by saying, Thai food tonight, you get to choose tomorrow, plus I’ll give you a foot rub. And Laura says, Thai food tonight, one foot rub, and you have to clean Prudence’s litterbox for the rest of the week. And Josh will squint his eyes and draw the corners of his mouth down, and say, Ooh … I don’t know … I can’t decide if I’m coming out ahead or not. Then they laugh and order the Thai food.

  But when Laura suggests Thai food now, which should make Josh happy since he’s the only one who likes it, he doesn’t say anything except, Get whatever you want, Laura.

  When I was much younger and had only been living with Sarah for a few months, I used to have a hard time getting my tail to do what I wanted. I would be trying to groom myself, and my tail would wriggle all over the place, pulling itself out of reach of my claws no matter how hard I tried to catch it. I would growl and snap at it, to show it how serious I was. Sometimes I even tried to chase it down, but it always remained just out of reach of my teeth, and all that happened was I wound up running in circles. I didn’t get angry at it, exactly. But it was frustrating to see a part of myself doing things I didn’t want or expect or understand.

  That’s what Laura and Josh remind me of now. They seem bewildered and frustrated when they look at each other, like they just can’t understand the things this other human—who they thought they were so close with—is doing or saying.

  I wish I could talk in human language, so I could tell Laura that Josh is only acting so angry because his feelings are hurt, just like hers. Maybe then she would sleep better at night.

  Of course, if she wasn’t having trouble sleeping, she might not want me to sleep in the bed with her. And sleeping next to Laura is the best I’ve slept since the day Sarah left without telling me why.

  Today is Sunday and Laura is awake earlier than she usually is on Sundays—so early that I don’t have to do any of the things I do on Sundays to gently remind her to feed me breakfast at my regular time, like lying on her chest and staring straight at her face until her eyes open, or walking on top of the clock radio next to her head until it starts playing loud music. When Josh hears the clock radio on Sunday mornings, he buries his head under a pillow and says in a muffled, irritable voice, Isn’t today Sunday? Can’t you hit the snooze button or something? And Laura, sounding sleepy, tells him, I don’t think there is a snooze button on a hungry cat.

  But today Laura gets up at her usual workday time and cleans the whole apartment. I even hear the sounds of The Monster rampaging in the living room while I’m eating in the kitchen! (I realize now that Laura and Josh use The Monster to make the floors clean. Sarah used to get the same thing done with just a regular broom and rolling thing called a carpet sweeper. It seems foolish to risk all our lives by having a Monster living in our apartment just so we can have cleaner floors, although I do have to admit that Laura seems strong enough to control it—for now.) My heart pounding, I leave most of my food uneaten and race for my upstairs room with the Sarah-boxes as fast as four legs can carry me. But when I get there, the door is closed! I meow in my loudest “fishmonger” voice, but the continual shrieking of The Monster downstairs drowns it out. When nobody responds, I jump up and latch onto the door handle with all my front toes, then let the weight of my body hang down until it drags the handle down, too, and makes the door swing open a crack. We had regular round doorknobs when I lived with Sarah in Lower East Side, but here in upper west Side the door handles are long and skinny enough for me to hold without slipping off.

  Josh wanders out of his bedroom—dressed to go outside in jeans, his old sneakers with the dangly shoelace, and a shirt with buttons down the front—in time to see the door swinging open with me attached to it. He laughs. “Poor Prudence! Did you get locked out of your favorite room?”

  The Prudence-tags on my red collar make a tinkling sound as I drop to the floor and sit on my haunches, looking up at Josh as he looks down at me. His upper lids droop a bit as his eyes narrow, and I wonder if he’s figure
d out the same thing I have—that Laura doesn’t want to come into this room to clean, but also doesn’t want to leave the door open for someone to see how this room is dustier than any other room in the apartment. “All right,” Josh says, “we’ll leave it open just enough for you to get in and out. Okay?” He reaches for the door handle and pulls the door almost-closed. I’m surprised when I have to push it open a bit wider with the sides of my belly as I pass through. Once I would have been able to fit easily into an opening this size. I realize suddenly how long it’s been since I last worried about not being fed on time, and started eating all my food as soon as it’s put in front of me.

  “I’m off to get bagels and smoked fish,” Josh tells me. He smiles. “If you’re good, you can have some later.”

  Josh’s footsteps thud quickly down the stairs, and The Monster stops shrieking long enough for him to tell Laura that he’s going out to get the bagels. She tells him not to forget to bring the shopping list they made last night.

  I dart into the room and burrow into my sleeping place in the back of my closet—listening closely to be absolutely sure The Monster isn’t going to come in here to threaten me or the Sarah-boxes, but mostly thinking about fish.

  Josh’s whole family comes over at noon to talk about money, and who’s sick and who’s well, and who’s still married to their husband or wife—although they say they’re here for a holiday. Josh gives his mother a big hug when she comes in and says, “Happy Mother’s Day.” Josh’s mother hugs Laura a bit longer than she hugged Josh, and rubs her hand up and down Laura’s back. “Happy Mother’s Day,” Laura murmurs, and Josh’s mother kisses her on the cheek before letting her go.

  Laura came to Sarah’s and my apartment in Lower East Side a year ago for this same holiday. She also brought over bagels and fish, along with a bunch of red carnations that Sarah put in a little yellow vase in the middle of our kitchen table. The two of them sort of hugged (whenever they hugged, it was always as if they’d forgotten how), although Laura was less stiff than she normally was when she came to visit us. Her cheeks were pink and her eyes sparkled. She laughed when Sarah tossed the twisty-tie from the bag of bagels in my direction and I leapt to catch it with my front paws in midair. She even smiled patiently while Sarah chattered at her about the weather, and a funny thing somebody at her work had said, and whether Laura had seen any interesting movies lately.

  After they finished getting plates and food on the table, I jumped right into the middle so Sarah could arrange some fish on a little Prudence-plate for me. Laura wrinkled up her nose and said, “Ugh, Mom, do you always let Prudence eat on the table?”

  Sarah’s shoulders straightened the way they do whenever she thinks Laura is criticizing the way she does things. But she just said, “Prudence and I understand each other.” She stroked the back of my neck a few times before putting one hand underneath my body so she could lift me gently to the floor, setting my special plate of fish down next to me. The two of them watched me. Then Sarah picked up a fork and started putting fish onto her bagel. She glanced at Laura. “Sometimes I think I’m crazy to love her as much as I do.”

  “Love is love,” Laura said. Even though there was food in front of her, she hadn’t touched it. “Who’s to say what’s crazy?” The corners of her mouth turned up in just the hint of a smile, and her cheeks got pinker. She seemed shy and pleased with herself, like she had the kind of secret it makes you happy just to think about. Suddenly Sarah was looking at her more closely—then she smiled, and her eyes sparkled, too.

  Laura isn’t pink-cheeked and sparkly today. Everybody keeps looking at her out of the corners of their eyes, trying to seem as if they aren’t, and Laura notices everybody doing this but pretends she doesn’t. Are they all looking at her because she’s the only human whose mother isn’t here for Mother’s Day? But Josh’s parents’ mothers aren’t here, either, and nobody’s watching them, so that can’t be right. Still, Josh is being nicer to Laura than he’s been these past few weeks, sitting on the arm of the couch next to her and putting an arm around her shoulders. She doesn’t move away, but she also doesn’t touch his leg or look up into his face like she used to.

  The dining room table has been set up with a huge mound of bagels in a straw basket I didn’t know we had, along with containers of soft cheeses and platters of different kinds of smoked fish. After the last holiday, I know better than to jump onto the table and demand some—no matter how tempting all that wonderful fish smells. I look up anxiously into Laura’s and Josh’s faces as everybody piles their plates with food to take back into the living room. (Josh’s father doesn’t pile his plate quite as high as everyone else, because Josh’s mother tells him, “Abe, remember what Dr. Stern said about your cholesterol.”) I even rub my right cheek hard against the table leg, carefully scraping my teeth against it to get them extra clean, so everyone can tell by my scent that this is my food place right now. But nobody seems to notice how politely I’m waiting. At least the littermates are better behaved than they were the last time. Robert bends down to put his face (too) close to mine and, holding out one hand, says, “Here, kitty. Can I pet you?” But the hand he’s holding out doesn’t have any fish in it, so I flinch away in disgust, raising my right front paw with the claws extended as a warning.

  Once the littermates have their food arranged on plates (and why should they get to have fish before I do?), they race upstairs to eat and watch TV in Laura and Josh’s bedroom. Normally food is never allowed upstairs. “That’s what I asked them to give me for Mother’s Day,” Erica says drily. “One quiet meal with grown-ups.” Then she sighs. “I was hoping Jeff might send some of the money he owes so I could swing camp for them this summer.” She looks at Josh, who’s now sitting next to Laura on the couch, but not so close that their arms touch. “Remember how much we loved Pine Crest?”

  “Eight weeks in the mountains away from our parents.” Josh smiles. “What could be better?”

  “Eight weeks in the suburbs with no kids,” Josh’s mother says, and everybody laughs.

  Josh turns to look at Laura. “Did you ever go to summer camp?”

  “Me?” Laura seems surprised. She scrunches her eyebrows and turns up one side of her mouth, as if she thinks this question is foolish. “Lower East Side kids didn’t go to summer camp. Unless you count roller skating through an open fire hydrant as camp.” She grins. “We used to call it urban waterskiing.”

  “So what did your mother do with you when school was out?” Josh’s mother asks.

  Laura shrugs. “Mostly I helped out at her record store, or stayed with neighbors in our building. Some mornings she’d take me with her to the thieves’ market on Astor Place to buy back records shoplifters had stolen. Then we’d go to Kiev for chocolate blintzes. That’s only until I was about nine or ten,” Laura adds, in a way that makes it seem like she wants to change the subject. “After that I started taking summer classes to help me prepare for the tests to get into Stuyvesant.”

  Josh’s father’s eyebrows raise and he lets out a low whistle. My ears prick up at the sound, thinking maybe he’s calling me over to give me some fish. I run to stand next to the chair where he’s sitting and rub my cheeks vigorously against its sides. But all he does is say, “Your mother cared about your education. Stuyvesant’s one helluva prestigious high school.”

  “Believe me, I know.” Laura gives a short laugh. “Those tests were not easy.”

  “So, wait,” Josh says. “You would have been nine in, what, ’89?” When Laura nods, he says, “That must have been a great summer to hang out in a record store. You had Mind Bomb by The The, Paul’s Boutique, the Pogues’ Peace and Love.”

  Laura’s face as she looks at him is perplexed but also affectionate for the first time in a long time. “How can you possibly know all that right off the top of your head?”

  Josh grins. “You knew you married a geek.”

  “Hey,” Erica interrupts. “Didn’t Bleach come out that summer?”

  �
��That’s right!” Josh turns to face Laura again. “What did your mother think of early Nirvana?”

  “Oh, I don’t know.” Laura takes a bite of her bagel, and I watch enviously as the fish goes into her mouth. But when nobody else says anything, waiting for her to answer, she swallows and tells Josh, “She wasn’t all that interested in them at first. It wasn’t her kind of music. But Anise came into town and dragged her to see them at the Pyramid Club. It was the first time they’d played New York, and Kurt Cobain got into a brawl with one of the bouncers. That was on Tuesday night.” There’s a kind of unwilling respect in Laura’s smile. “Wednesday morning she called her distributer and had him overnight her a gazillion copies of Bleach. By the time the store closed on Sunday she’d sold out.”

  Josh’s father stands and carries his empty plate into the kitchen. I sink to my belly and put my nose between my front paws, disappointed that he didn’t think to give me any fish. “The Lower East Side was so violent back then,” he says. “Remember, Zelda? Every time you read about it in the papers, it was nothing but muggings, arson, and drug dealers.” He comes back to the living room and settles again into the chair.

  “You were taking your life in your hands just driving through that neighborhood,” Josh’s mother agrees. “It’s surprising your mother decided to raise a child alone down there.”