by Alice Adams
The fourth and final cat event took place as we walked home from dinner one night, in the flower-scented, corny-romantic Hawaiian darkness. To our left was the surging black sea and to our right large tamed white shrubbery, and a hotel swimming pool, glistening darkly under feeble yellow floodlights. And then quite suddenly, from nowhere, a small cat appeared in our path, shyly and uncertainly arching her back against a bush. A black cat with some yellow tortoise markings, a long thin curve of a tail.
“He looks just like your Pink, doesn’t he?” Slater actually said this, and I suppose he believed it to be true.
“What—Pink? But her tail—Jesus, didn’t you even see my cat?”
I’m afraid I went on in this vein, sporadically, for several days. But it did seem so incredible, not remembering Pink, my elegantly striped, my tailless wonder. (It is also true that I was purposefully using this lapse, as one will, in a poor connection.)
I dreaded going home with no Pink to call out to as I came in the door. And the actuality was nearly as bad as my imaginings of it: Black and Brown, lazy and affectionate, glad to see me. And no Pink, with her scolding hauteur, her long-delayed yielding to my blandishments.
I had no good pictures of Pink, and to explain this odd fact I have to admit that I am very bad about snapshots; I have never devised a really good way of storing and keeping them, and tend rather to enclose any interesting ones in letters to people who might like them, to whom they would have some meaning. And to shove the others into drawers, among old letters and other unclassifiable mementos.
I began then to scour my house for Pink pictures, looking everywhere. In an album (Andrew and I put together a couple of albums, early on) I found a great many pictures of Pink as a tiny, tall-eared, brand-new kitten, stalking across a padded window seat, hiding behind an oversized Boston fern—among all the other pictures from those days: Zoe Pinkerton, happy and smoking a long cigarette and almost drunk, wearing outrageous colors, on the deck of her house. And Andrew and I, young and very happy, silly, snapped by someone at a party. Andrew in his bookstore, horn-rimmed and quirky. Andrew uncharacteristically working in our garden. Andrew all over the place.
But no middle-year or recent pictures of Pink. I had in fact (I then remembered) sent the most recent shots of Pink to Zoe; it must have been just before she (Zoe) died, with a silly note about old survivors, something like that. It occurred to me to get in touch with Lucy, Zoe’s daughter, to see if those pictures had turned up among Zoe’s “effects,” but knowing the chaos in which Zoe had always lived (and doubtless died) I decided that this would be tactless, unnecessary trouble. And I gave up looking for pictures.
Slater called yesterday to say that he is going back to Hawaii, a sudden trip. Business. I imagine that he is about to finish the ruination of all that was left of Zoe’s islands. He certainly did not suggest that I come along, nor did he speak specifically of our getting together again, and I rather think that he, like me, has begun to wonder what we were doing together in the first place. It does seem to me that I was drawn to him for a very suspicious reason, his lack of resemblance to Andrew: Whyever should I seek out the opposite of a person I truly loved?
But I do look forward to some time alone now. I will think about Pink—I always feel her presence in my house, everywhere. Pink, stalking and severe, ears high. Pink, in my lap, raising her head with some small soft thing to say.
And maybe, since Black and Brown are getting fairly old now too, I will think about getting another new young cat. Maybe, with luck, a small gray partially Manx, with no tail at all, and beautiful necklaces.
PART TWO
The Drinking Club
Harsh, powerful sunlight strikes the far edge of the giant pink bed on which Karen Brownfield, a pianist, now lies alone, Karen, on a concert tour. It must be midmorning, or nearly. On the other hand, perhaps early afternoon? Karen seems to have removed her watch; no doubt she has thrown it somewhere, or maybe given it away to someone (she did that once in Paris; she clearly remembers the boy’s fair pretty face). However, wherever she is now and whatever time it is, what day, she is not in Paris. Karen is sure of that much.
Would knowing any more, though, improve her head, which threatens to split open like a watermelon in the sun? If she knew where she was, for example, would she feel any better?
She does not really believe that any such knowledge would help her. If she rang room service, and they told her, This is the Palmer House, in Cincinnati (if there is a Palmer House in Cincinnati), why would that improve her day? She doesn’t see it, although her husband, a psychiatrist, undoubtedly would. Julian, Karen’s husband, is committed to what he calls emotional information.
If she phoned Julian could he possibly tell her what went on last night here in her room? Well, of course not.
If she had played a concert, though, she would remember; she always does. And so, did she cancel a concert? That seems likely; quite possibly she canceled at about this same time yesterday, perhaps from this room, this bedside pink princess telephone. Noon is Karen’s usual canceling time, her cop-out hour.
Whatever it was she did last night, for which she must have canceled her concert, made the most incredible whirlwind mess of the room. Karen closes her eyes against the sight of it: wadded-up clothes (hers), and sheets, so many sheets! all also wadded up. And knocked-over lamps, two of them on the floor. Full ashtrays. Karen doesn’t smoke; they smell awful. Reeking glasses, partly filled with undrunk booze. Lord God, did she throw a party? Who?
What she can least well face, Karen has learned from other such mornings, is the sight of her own face. I can’t face my face, she once thought, on some other occasion, and it almost made her laugh. She is surely not laughing now, though. She is seriously concerned with the logistics of getting in and out of the bathroom with no smallest glimpse of herself in any mirror. She knows that even if you wrap yourself in a sheet you are apt to see, but she manages not to.
Once back from the bathroom, where she found her watch (stopped), and where she was able to braid her hair without looking at it—she is good at this—Karen decides that what she really needs is something to drink. Then she can begin with the guilt over whatever went on last night. But first she will telephone Julian, in California.
If another person should enter that room, for instance the elderly black waiter delivering the wine that Karen is about to order (this hotel, which is famous, is in Atlanta), he would see, in addition to the mess, a woman whose face is the color of white linen. A crazy-looking woman, with the whitest face and the biggest eyes, dark lake-blue, and the longest, thickest rope of red hair that he has ever seen.
It is actually only about nine-thirty in Atlanta. Karen has slept less than she thinks she has. Thus in California it is about six-thirty.
It is early for a phone call, especially since Julian is not alone in his bed, their bed, his and Karen’s. He is there with his lover, Lila Lewisohn, also a psychiatrist. (“Julian’s girl,” would be Karen’s phrase for what Lila is—girl, with ugly emphasis—if Karen actually knew what she now only strongly suspects.)
This is something that Julian and Lila have never done before, slept together at Julian’s house. Usually there are children at home, as well as Karen, and until recently there was Lila’s husband to whom she had to return, Garrett Lewisohn, a lawyer.
And tonight, after dinner in Sausalito, they had meant to go back to Lila’s house, on the western, seaward slope of San Francisco. However, as they approached the Golden Gate, the yellow fog lights and heavy traffic, they learned from another motorist that there had been an accident on the bridge, and it would be closed for at least another half hour. Not long to wait; ordinarily they would have done just that: Lila and Julian are accustomed to postponements, to deferral of pleasure. Tonight, though, for whatever reasons, an unusual mood of urgency was upon them (the wine, and the fact that they hadn’t been together for several weeks, Julian having been occupied with holding Karen together for her tour). In the resta
urant their hands often met, eyes meeting too, laughing but complicitous, sexual.
And so, “I don’t want to wait, do you?” Julian.
“No. But—”
Julian however had begun to turn the car about and to head too fast toward Mill Valley. Up the winding road to his very large, ultracontemporary house, all glass and steel, among giant redwoods, mammoth ferns.
Lila has been there before, of course. She and Julian, after all, are colleagues. And the two couples, Julian and Karen, Garrett and Lila, were for a time ostensibly friends.
As lovers, though, Lila and Julian have mostly gone to motels for love, always as far from the city as they have had time for: Half Moon Bay, Bodega Bay—they seem to seek the coast. More recently, since Garrett left (moving down to Atherton with his pregnant young girlfriend), they have enjoyed the privacy—the incredibly luxury, it seems to them—of Lila’s small but pleasant house.
Tonight, though, Julian’s house. Or Karen’s house. Her room. Her bed.
Just before the phone rings and long before any sunlight penetrates the morning fog that envelops Julian’s house, naked Lila’s very long brown legs are entangled in sheets, her upper body pressed to Julian’s bare bony back. They breathe in unison, deeply.
(This is a scene that Karen has often imagined. Her most frequent and blackest fantasies are of Lila and Julian, in sexual poses. She has also thought of Julian with female patients; she has imagined him with some sad woman on the worn brown leather sofa in his office, humping away—although this seems much less likely than Julian with Lila.)
The phone bell. A soft, sudden, and terrible sound.
Both Julian and Lila, trained doctors, are instantly awake. And both, in the second before Julian answers it, think, Karen. Or maybe a patient; they both hope it will be a patient.
“This is Dr. Brownfield. Well Karen, of course I’m here, but my dear it is rather early. Six-thirty. Well, I know it’s later where you are. Tuesday, you must be in Atlanta.” He laughs, then coughs. “How is Atlanta? The concert? Well Karen, I’m really sorry. No I didn’t—No I don’t. Karen, I’m sorry. No I didn’t. No of course I don’t blame you. No one will—of course you can’t play when you’re sick. Yes it is unpredictable. No Karen, I am not mad at you. Yes, I do. No, I don’t think I should come to Atlanta, even if I could. No. No. If you need a doctor—No Karen, I am not mad. Yes. Right. Good. Good for you. Goodbye. Love.”
Hanging up, he leans back against the headboard and looks at Lila.
She sees that he is utterly, totally exhausted.
“Karen has a bad cold,” says Julian. “She says.”
“Oh.” As though Karen could see her, Lila begins to pull sheets up around herself, covering bare breasts.
“She had to cancel the concert. Of course.”
“By the way, what’s your name?” Karen, in Atlanta, is speaking to the man who has brought her the wine, a man who is large and old and black, with big gnarled hands. The bottle that he has brought on a napkined silver tray is tall and green, cold, glistening rivulets running down its sides.
“Calvin Montgomery, ma’am.”
“Oh Lord, please don’t call me ma’am. My name is Karen. Mrs. Brownfield. But you have a beautiful name.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Brown. Field.”
Karen laughs. “And now if you could just open it. I’m a pianist, but I feel all thumbs today. Plus which I’ve got a cold.” She laughs again.
As she watches him closely, eagerly, Calvin Montgomery with his big hands uncorks the wine in a single practiced gesture. “There you are. There’s your cold cure.”
They both laugh.
“Oh, Mr. Montgomery, thank you.”
“Shall I make breakfast here?” Julian asks this of Lila. They are now sitting up in bed, both with sheets drawn up around them.
Looking at Julian, his thinning gray-brown hair, large sad and gray eyes, Lila thinks as she has before of the deep affinities binding them to each other. We could be brother and sister, she has sometimes thought. Blood ties.
“I don’t think breakfast,” she tells him. “I don’t feel quite, you know, easy here.” Knowing that he must feel the same about her being there. “I’d rather my house. If we have to eat breakfast.”
“Well, something? Orange juice?” Julian has gotten up, is pulling on a robe. “You’ll feel better after some juice,” he reminds her.
Lila smiles, grateful. “Or I could just go home. But my car.” Her car of course has been left in San Francisco, and suddenly this transportation problem seems both insuperable and highly symbolic. They are surely not supposed to sleep in this house.
Tendrils of fog reach around the smallest branches of Julian’s huge redwoods, mysterious white feathers. And from somewhere comes the gentle, ambiguous sound of mourning doves, their softly descending notes.
I am simply not used to being here, Lila thinks, standing up and beginning to get into her clothes. I’ve never seen it before in the daytime, or almost day. All this fog. Julian is right, she thinks, I need some juice. Blood sugar.
The wine makes Karen feel at the same time physically improved and considerably worse in her head. As shadows disperse and she begins to remember.
An interview. Yesterday about this time, or was it later? At lunch? Yes, lunch. In any case, she was being interviewed in a strange restaurant in the below-street-level part of this hotel. A more famous, possibly preferable restaurant is billed as “rooftop,” to Karen a terrifying word. And so, this subterranean room, all stones and small calculated waterfalls, and walls of sheet water, quite effective really but slightly scaring.
Her interviewer is a pale and puffy young man, with a small rosy mouth and blinking white-blue eyes. A Southern, very Southern voice.
At first he was hard to understand, but gradually, after the skirmishes of small talk, he began to come through. “Married to a psychiatrist,” he was saying. “Must be extremely interesting. Though I don’t suppose they talk a lot about their cases, not supposed to anyways. But don’t you find it just the least little bit of what you might call a threat?”
“Oh, I do,” Karen said. No one, certainly not the shrink that she herself once went to, though not for long, has ever quite asked this. And Karen realized that from the start she had felt something very sympathetic about this young man. Karen likes fat people; she finds them comforting. Julian is so extremely thin, all sharp bones and stretched dry skin.
“I don’t need to tell you that the question is solely motivated by a personal curiosity,” the young man assured her, blinking, signaling his commitment to truth. Hal, did he say his name was? Yes. Hal.
“I’ve just put in so much time with those fellows and lady shrinks too, that for the life of me I can’t imagine a home life with any one of them,” said Hal.
“Oh, you’re absolutely right,” Karen told him. And then she confided, “I think I’m coming down with a really bad cold. Can you hear it in my voice?”
“Oh, I sure can. Well, maybe this here ice tea was a mistake.” At first this seemed an odd remark, and then not odd. Karen recognized a certain gleam in those pale eyes, along with a certain timid question in his voice.
“I’m sure you’re right,” she told him, laughing lightly and tossing her long braid back over her shoulder. “We need some stronger stuff. What do folks around here mostly drink?” (Lord, where had she suddenly got that accent?)
“Bourbon, mostly. Although I’ve gone off that hard stuff myself.” Righteous Hal. “But I can tell you, there’s a certain very nice concoction—” He snapped his fingers for the waiter.
The concoction when it came was fairly sweet and very strong. Karen could tell it was strong. And watching Hal as he drank, his eager quick repeated sips, she thought, No wonder I like you.
They had a couple of concoctions, all the time talking in a very civilized way about Karen’s professional history, Hal taking notes: Wellesley, Juilliard, the Paris Conservatory. Brahms, Chopin, Debussy.
And the
n, maybe on the third of those drinks, they returned to the question of shrinks. Living with them. Talking to them. The terror.
“Most probably in their spare time they ought to just only talk to each other,” Hal said (fatally).
“Oh, you are so right,” Karen told him. “My husband, Julian Brownfield, has this big friend, and when I say big I mean really, really big, you never in your life saw such a big tall woman. Name of Lila Lewisohn.” And out it all poured, in that crazy new sweet Southern voice. All Karen’s worst fears, her ugliest, most powerful fantasies.
“I can just see her big long legs in some great big old bed, some motel I guess, all wrapped around my skinny white old Julian.”
Along with the new accent Karen seemed to have acquired a new persona, and one that she liked a lot. She liked being a silly, pretty, somewhat flirty, complaining little woman, talking to that nice big fat old boy. Telling him just about everything.
Her cold by then was making her sniffle and sneeze, and quite naturally Karen had a lot to say about her condition. “It’s still just coming on strong. I can feel it all over me,” she told Hal. “Although these concoctions of yours are really something else. But you know if you’ll just excuse me I think I’ve got to call my agent. There’s just no way I can play a concert tonight. As a matter of fact I think I’d better make the call from my room. Why don’t you just come on up with me, give me some moral support? Lord God, will he be mad! I’m telling you, fit to kill.”
So far Karen remembers it all, the whole conversation now plays as precisely as a tape, in her grimed, exhausted mind.
Now, continuing in her new Southern voice, she thinks, Julian wasn’t very nice to me on the phone. He tells me he cares how I feel, but he doesn’t, not really. All he really cares about is his patients, and that awful old Lila.
Julian and Lila have left Mill Valley, crossed the bridge, and reached San Francisco, Lila’s house. But although alone in those familiar surroundings they are not quite restored to each other. For one thing there is almost no time. Both have morning patients; Julian must leave. And for another Karen is so present to them both, having just arisen from her bed, been awakened by her voice.