by Gwen Cooper
He says this like it’s good news, although from the deepening frown on Laura’s face, she doesn’t think the same thing. But all she says is, “I’ll be down in a minute for the sub.”
Josh walks toward their bedroom, and Laura throws the little clothes back into their white box, then tosses the whole thing into one of the Sarah-boxes. “You must want dinner, too,” she says to me. Scratching some of the shedding fur on the bottom of my chin, she adds, “And maybe a good brushing later on.”
I look back at the Sarah-boxes for a moment. But then—thinking about my dinner and tuna and a nice, long brushing—I follow Laura down the stairs.
Josh never used to talk about his work very much, but now he talks about it whenever he can find somebody to listen. Laura usually wrinkles up her forehead and changes the subject. Or else she says things like Mm-hmm or Really in a way that doesn’t sound like she wants Josh to keep talking about it. But the littermates ask him lots of questions. Josh brings them here one day a week to help him organize his papers and stuff them into envelopes. I usually help, too, by scattering the papers onto the floor to make sure there aren’t any rats hiding in them—I’ve been extra cautious ever since we found that rat in the Sarah-boxes, even though it turned out to be a fake. Josh isn’t always as grateful for my efforts as he should be, though. He acts frustrated and says, “Ah, Prudence, why are you doing this to me?” while arranging the papers back into a tidy stack. But you can tell how happy and relieved the littermates are, when they laugh and praise me for all my help. Occasionally Josh, acting like he’s doing me a favor, will crumple one piece of paper into a ball and toss it for me to practice my mice-fighting with. Although the littermates have invented an irritating “game”—called Keep Prudence’s Paper Ball Away from Her—and they toss my paper ball back and forth to each other over my head, yelling, “Keep away! Keep away!” until, finally, I jump high enough in the air to smack it away from them and take it downstairs to under-the-couch.
Having the littermates here one day a week is more disruptive than it was having Josh around five days a week after he first lost his job. They have a hard time doing the sensible things cats (and older humans) do, like sitting in one spot for stretches of time, thinking important thoughts, and watching Upper West Side through our windows. Their constant movements disturb the air around me and make my whiskers tickle. And they always fight with me for my favorite napping spot on the couch. Josh and Laura have learned that a cat’s preferred sleep area is her own property and should be respected. But the littermates will plop themselves down on my spot even if I’m already sleeping there, which means I have to wake up from wonderful dreams of green grass and Sarah’s singing so I can scramble away from their lowering backsides before I get squashed. Even when I chuff and growl at them, they ignore me. You’d think that such young humans would be grateful to have a cat instructing them in proper manners. But never once have they said to me, Thank you, Prudence, for trying to teach us how to be polite. If it weren’t for the lure of rustling papers in Home Office whenever they’re here, I would stay away from them all the time.
They’re better behaved with Josh, though. Maybe that’s because he’s so patient and gentle with them, the way Sarah always is with me. (Although I’m more deserving of gentle patience than the littermates.) If they’re sitting at the little table in Josh’s office, they’ll even raise one hand in the air before asking him questions. I think this must be a good-manners thing that gets taught to young humans. It’s surprising to me that the littermates have been able to learn anything that’s good manners. But I’ve never seen any fully grown humans put their hands up before asking something, so obviously somebody trained the littermates to do this.
“Uncle Josh,” Robert asks with his hand in the air, “how come the people who live in the apartment building have to move away?”
“They don’t have to—yet,” Josh tells him. “There are rules that say how much money the people who own the building are allowed to charge people for living there. Now they want to change the rules and make the building so expensive that the people who live there won’t be able to afford it anymore.”
“That’s what happened to us.” Abbie’s face looks solemn. “When Mom and Dad got a divorce, we couldn’t afford to live in our house near Nana and Pop-pop anymore. We had to come live in an apartment because Dad stopped giving Mom money.”
Josh is putting some papers into a creamy-colored folder, but his hand freezes, the way a cat freezes when she spots something she’s going to pounce on. He looks so wary that I think maybe a mouse managed to find a hiding spot in those papers after all, and I peer around from my spot next to Robert’s chair, checking to make sure I didn’t miss a threat. “Who told you that about your father?” Josh asks Abbie quietly.
The littermates look at each other. Then Abbie says, “Sometimes we hear Mom on the phone, even though she has the door to her room closed.” Robert’s eyes get big and round, like he’s scared of what Abbie just said. “We don’t try to listen,” she says quickly. “It’s just sometimes we can’t help it.”
Josh’s eyes turn sad and also angry. But his voice is kind when he tells her, “You and Robert are lucky that your mom was able to find a good job, and that you have Nana and Pop-pop, and Aunt Laura and me, to help her make sure you won’t ever have to move away again. But the people who live in this apartment building already have so little money, they wouldn’t be able to afford a nice apartment if they had to move. And they’ve been living in their apartments a long, long time. Some of them have been living there since even before I was born.” Abbie’s and Robert’s eyes grow bigger, as if they can’t begin to imagine how long ago that must have been.
“Do any of the people who live there have cats like Prudence?” Robert wants to know.
“A few of them do,” Josh says, smiling. “They’re worried that if they have to move, they might not be able to find a new apartment building that would let them bring their cats with them.”
Well! Imagine that! What kind of crazy apartment building wouldn’t want cats living there? Who would protect them from all the mice and rats if there weren’t any cats? Good luck finding a dog to do that as smartly and thoroughly as a cat can! Just when I think I’ve heard all the ridiculous things humans can do and say, I hear something else that makes me realize there’s no limit to how foolish humans can be.
The next time the littermates come over, Josh’s father drives his car from his house in New Jersey to go out to lunch with them. I dart upstairs to take a nap on the cat bed in Home Office, but when I hear everybody come back, I leap down and curl up beneath Josh’s desk, trying to look as if that’s where I’ve been napping all along. By the time they’ve gotten upstairs, I’m licking my right front paw and using it to wash my face clean in a lazy-looking way, just to make sure they’re completely fooled.
“Whew!” Josh’s father says, and settles himself into one of the chairs Abbie and Robert usually sit in. His face looks paler than I remember it being, and there are little drops of sweat-water on his forehead. “The heat’s so much worse here in the city than where your mother and I live. It’s hard on an old man.”
“Are you all right, Dad?” Josh sounds anxious. “Do you need a glass of water?”
“I’m fine, I’m fine.” His father waves his hand in front of his face. “Don’t tell Mother I got dizzy,” he adds sternly. “She worries ever since that scare with my heart last year. I’m seventy-five years old, and she still thinks I don’t know how to take care of myself.”
“I’ll bring you a glass of water, Pop-pop,” Abbie says. “Robert and I are thirsty anyways.” The two of them run out of the room (the littermates never seem to walk), and I can hear their footsteps thudding down the stairs.
“So tell me about this work you’ve been doing,” Josh’s father says. “It’s all the kids can talk about these days.”
“I’m only doing a small part of it.” For the first time, Josh seems almost embarrassed to
talk about his work. “There are organizations that exist for the sole purpose of preserving Mitchell-Lama housing. I’m just helping a little where I can.”
“Show me,” Josh’s father says. “I’m interested.”
“Well …” Josh pulls together some of the papers he usually gives to Abbie and Robert to put into envelopes. “I’ve been writing press releases and sending them out to reporters at newspapers and different websites, letting them know what’s going on. And I’ve been interviewing all the tenants in the building, collecting their stories. I’m writing them up and putting them together with some old photographs they were able to give me. I think showing that side of the issue might be effective.” He hands the papers to his father, who begins to flip through them slowly.
“I’ve also been pulling together a history of the music studio in the building’s Basement. It’s actually become pretty important in the community over the years. I’m trying to help them reincorporate as a not-for-profit, so they have some legal standing if we’re able to get this to a hearing.” Josh walks out and goes into my room, returning with a stack of Sarah’s black disks. A wisp of Sarah-smell follows them. I have a sudden, vivid memory of Sarah in our old apartment, wearing a long, thin summer dress and standing in front of the shelves where she kept her black disks, saying, I think I’m in the mood for Betty Wright today. What do you think, Prudence? But, just as quickly as the memory pops into my head, it pops back out and goes to where I can’t find it.
“If you look at the liner notes”—Josh hands the black disks to his father and points to some of the tiny word-writing on their cardboard covers—“you can see how many important albums were recorded there. So I’ve been putting write-ups of that together with photos of some of the bands, and sending it to the editors at my old magazine and some of our—their, I mean—competitors. I’ve also created a website and Facebook page for the building, and we’ve been encouraging community residents and owners of nearby mom-and-pops, who’ll eventually be threatened by the same economic factors, to contribute their own stories and memories. And we’ve put together an online petition. We’ve gotten about five thousand signatures so far.”
“Some of these photos take me back,” Josh’s father says. “Your mother and I were buying the house we raised you and your sister in at around the same time this building went up, it looks like.”
“Probably.” Josh smiles a little. “There are tenants who’ve been living there since the sixties.”
His father half closes his eyes. “When a man has lived in one place for fifty years,” he says, “and raised a family there, he doesn’t like to leave unless it’s on his own terms.”
“I wouldn’t think so,” Josh says quietly.
His father opens his eyes. “You’ve put a lot of work into this. It must have taken a lot of time to talk to everybody and do all this writing and research.”
Josh’s face turns a light pink. “I’ve certainly had the time.”
His father sighs and then he sets the papers and photos down on the little table. “I never really understood that job you had. I could see it was making you money, but it never seemed like real work to me. But this is something I understand. Helping people who want to keep their homes, I understand. And all this work you’ve done”—he gestures at the papers—“this is something you can look at and touch and hold in your hands at the end of the day. I’m sure all those people you’re calling now think of you differently because you’re coming to them doing work, not asking for work.”
“It’d be nice to think so.” Josh’s smile is lopsided.
“Trust me,” his father says. “People always respect a man who works hard and saves his money.”
“It’s tough to save money when you aren’t making any.”
“The money will come.” Josh’s father says it very firmly. “It wasn’t always easy for your mother and me, you know. She had to get that job at the jewelry counter so we could send you and your sister to college. But we worked hard and, one way or another, the money always came.”
Abbie and Robert come running back with a glass for Josh’s father. As he drinks from it, Robert says, “Hey, where’s Prudence, Uncle Josh?”
“I think she’s hanging out under the desk,” Josh says, bending over to check. His sideways eyes look into mine. “Prudence, do you want to come out and say hello to my father?”
I don’t, really. But Josh is (finally) trying to introduce me the right way, which means that not coming out would be bad manners.
“Well, hello there, Prudence.” Josh’s father pats my head awkwardly, and I’m relieved when it seems like that’s all he’s going to attempt to do. “Remember Sammy?” he asks Josh. “You and your sister were crazy about that dog. He could chase cats all day.”
I continue to stand there and let Josh’s father pat my head, even though I can’t help liking him a little less for having one of those wretched dogs that thinks it’s fun to chase cats just because they’re not smart enough to think of anything sensible to do. Josh’s father doesn’t know as much about cats as I do about humans, because he says, “I think Prudence likes her Pop-pop.”
Josh laughs out loud. “So Prudence is your granddaughter now?”
“She’s the closest thing you and Laura have given me so far.” His father sounds stern again.
Josh’s smile shrinks. “We’re working on it, Dad.”
“I may be an old man, Josh,” his father tells him. “But I can still remember that if you think of it as work, you’re doing it wrong.”
Josh is in a good mood after his father leaves. He walks around the apartment, humming music under his breath and snapping his fingers. He goes into Home Office and bangs away on the cat bed/keyboard for a little while, but I can tell he has too much energy to sit still for long. Pretty soon I hear what sounds like heavy things being moved around in Home Office’s closet, and then Josh comes into my room, carrying a big stack of black disks. I can tell by their scent that these were never Sarah’s—he must have had more black disks than I realized, living inside the closet of Home Office all this time.
Josh sits cross-legged and starts spreading out the black disks all over the floor, arranging and then rearranging them in ways that must make sense to him, although I can’t tell what the pattern is. I jump on top of one of the Sarah-boxes, to get out of his way, and soon the whole floor is colorful with the cardboard holders for black disks. Then he scooches over to the boxes of Sarah’s black disks, and starts pulling out some of those and putting them on the floor, looking at the word-writing on each of them and then deciding which ones should go where.
Sarah used to do this sometimes, take out all her black disks and spread them over the floors of our apartment. She was always coming up with new ways to arrange them on their shelves—by what year they came out, or by things she called “genre” or “influence.” Once—this is the last way she did it while we lived together—she put them all in what she said was alphabetical order. I can understand Josh wanting to do the same thing with his own black disks, but it’s making me nervous to see Sarah’s all spread out this way without her being here to supervise. Cautiously, I climb out of the Sarah-box I’ve been lying in and try to step into the small spaces between the cardboard covers on my way out, but there aren’t any, really. Sarah would never let me walk on her black disks! The covers feel smooth and slippery under the pads of my feet, but I’m afraid to use my claws to try and get more traction.
While I’m trying to find a good way out, I hear Laura come through the front door. “Josh?” she calls out.
“Up here,” he calls back.
The sound of the feet-shoes Laura wears to work comes clicking up the wooden stairs. Her face seems to draw inward when she gets to the doorway of my room and sees what Josh is doing. “What’s all this?”
“Don’t worry,” Josh tells her, looking up with a quick grin. “I know which ones are mine and which are your mom’s.”
“But what are you doing?” she a
sks again.
“I’m trying to get a visual sense of which of these were recorded at Alphaville, which ones were influenced by artists who came out of Alphaville, which ones use sessions guys who recorded other albums at Alphaville.” He leans back to rest on his heels and admire his work. “Quite a history for one down-on-its-luck recording studio, huh?”
“It looks like a record store in here,” Laura says faintly.
I don’t think she’s agreeing with him, exactly, but that’s the way Josh must understand it, because he smiles at her again. “You know, some of these are worth real money.”
“Probably.” Laura’s lips thin together.
Josh looks up and finally notices the expression on her face. “I’m not saying we should sell them. I’m sorry if that seemed insensitive. It’s just the geek in me getting excited looking at all this stuff.”
“I didn’t think you were.” I think she means it, but her lips stay thin.
Josh has decided to change the subject, because the next thing he says is, “My dad was here today. We took the kids out for lunch, and afterward I was showing him everything I’ve been working on. What he responded to most was the personal side of the story—the people living in this building who’ll have to move and uproot their lives. I don’t think I’ve done enough with that part of it yet. I was thinking maybe you could help me.”
“Me?” Laura looks completely surprised. “How could I help?”
“Well, the night we met,” Josh says. “You have no idea how moving you were when you were talking about the building you grew up in, and the people you knew there. I know you all had to move when the place was condemned. You have a much better grasp on the emotional side of what these people are facing now than I do.”
Laura’s face draws even further into itself. Little bumps appear in the tops of her shoes as her toes curl up. When she speaks, her voice sounds funny. “What kinds of things do you want to hear?”