by Clea Simon
“I better take this big guy to my place,” said Violet, hefting the placid cat a little higher on one shoulder and reaching behind her to close the door. “You won’t tell, will you?”
I wasn’t sure if she meant about the cat who’d escaped the round-up or the cops, who’d missed whatever evidence she’d hoped to find. The first had my complete sympathy, but I still hadn’t heard her reasons for the second.
“Don’t do anything, at least not without letting me know first.” That was a non-answer, I knew, but it seemed to work. Smiling once more, she accepted one of my cards before she took off down the driveway, top heavy with a happy cat who no longer had a care in the world.
mmm
Thinking about Sibley and wondering about the fate of his former housemates, I too took my leave, driving to the shelter across the river where the bulk of Lillian’s cats had been taken. Clean, if somewhat sterile, the low brick building housed a well-lit public area with cages of animals up for adoption. Index cards posted on the front of each unit listed the animals’ names and special needs, if any. Several were decorated with smiley faces and stars, as well as notes reminding potential pet parents that older animals make great pets, too.
“Hi, Sandra, is Rachel in?” I’d been on a first-name basis with most of the shelter staff since last month, when I spent a weekend reporting a Sunday piece. The glossy story, accompanied by heartbreaking photos, had brought in a flood of donations and helped a few animals, the featured ones at least, find new homes.
Sandra buzzed me in, and I opened the glass-windowed door to the shelter’s working rooms. Reaching automatically for the disinfecting hand cleanser, I wiped my hands together to spread the alcohol gel as I peered into the separate isolation rooms seeking the vet.
“I got your call,” the tall brunette greeted me as she came out of a room of cages and reached for yet another plastic dispenser of cleanser. “I’m glad you’ve gotten another kitten!”
“It’s not an adoption,” I stopped her cold. “It’s a foster situation. This is one from that house that I hear got dumped on you.”
“Do you think she’s sick?” The vet looked concerned. Young kittens too small for vaccines can quickly sicken and die from such common illnesses as distemper, but not so quickly that they don’t bring an entire neighborhood—or shelter’s worth—of litters down with them. “Vomiting? Diarrhea?”
“No, it’s her leg,” I answered, describing the kitten’s limp and following Rachel into another isolation room. I kept talking as she opened a cage where a mother and her kittens were waiting out their days before they could be moved to the adoption center out front. “Plus, she probably needs worming, ear mite drops, and treatment for whatever else you’re finding on the cats from that house.”
“Bring her by tomorrow. I’ll see her on my lunch break, around one,” said Rachel, examining one mewling little guy. She looked first in his eyes, which had a bit of gunk on them, then turned the complaining kit upside down to examine his healing navel and then his bottom, which his mother had cleaned well. “But you’d be surprised. Those cats seem in great shape. I’d been warned—Officer D’Amato in Animal Control had called me—that it was possibly a hoarding situation and there were a lot of cats. But they’re all well fed and none of them seems dehydrated. Most of them have been neutered, too. We’ve got some fleas.” She replaced the kitten and picked up his sister. “It’s finally warm enough for the outdoor cats to be getting them. But unless the blood tests come back with something unexpected, I think that entire lot is all moving on to adoption.”
On that happy note, I took myself home, picking up food for Musetta and myself along the way. Parking in Cambridge, a city of tow zones and regular street cleaning, can be a challenge, with temporary No Parking signs sprouting like mushrooms after a rain. Despite one such notice warning of a mover’s van and another for repaving, I found a spot less than a block from my building. As I balanced the bags to unlock the door, I heard the impatient mew of welcome. Raising one foot to do the kitty-blocking maneuver I’d perfected with James, I felt that life, finally, might be going my way.
mmm
The first message on my answering machine burst that bubble.
“Krakow! What happened? Photo says they’re not going to shoot a stiff for you. Call me.” Damn, I’d forgotten to cancel the photo assignment. I’d forgotten to tell Tim about the new development on the story, too. I’d have some backtracking to do.
“Hey hon, how’s it going? Did you get those clips I sent you?” Bunny’s friendly voice warmed me. “We’re hoping you’ll come by this weekend, test drive the new sofa. It has been way too long.” She and Cal had been nesting, but in an inviting and not-too-obnoxious way. I’d been the one to let time slide by.
“Theda?” The deep, soft voice of the third message wasn’t familiar, and then I remembered with a little thrill of pleasure. “It’s Connor, Ralph’s friend. I was hoping to catch you in.” He paused and I could hear my heart beat. “But I guess I’ll see you around.”
That was it, no suggestion to get together. No request for me to call him back. Which was probably just as well, I told myself, stifling the sigh of disappointment. I’d had enough experience with the guys in clubland to know that a cool start could heat up if I gave it time. Let it play out, let him make the moves. Following Bunny’s call, I could hear her voice in my head giving me the time-honored advice that neither of us had followed too well in the ten years we’d been friends. Still, despite a tendency to gripe, she’d ended up with Cal, who loved her, mishegas and all. And I knew that despite her complaints the two were a great match. I should be so lucky. Since I didn’t have a choice, I might as well tell myself I’d have done the smart thing. After feeding Musetta and making a turkey and salami sandwich for myself, I settled in with a pad and prepared to do damage control on my career.
“But it’s a great story,” I found myself protesting minutes later. One of the few times I could get my editor on the phone and he wasn’t having any of it.
“No, it’s a crime story. And you’re a feature writer. What am I saying? It’s not even a crime story.” Tim’s voice faded as he stood up and paced away from the speaker phone. Not a good sign. “It’s a dead old lady story. And I’m not interested in a dead old lady story.”
“What about all her cats? They’ll go up for adoption in seventy-two hours and then they have something like a week to find a home or they’ll be destroyed, maybe less. I mean, unless the police find an heir who wants to take them or a will that provides for their care. Writing about them would help.”
“You did a shelter story already for the magazine. Real nice work, Theda.” The compliment didn’t follow through to his tone of voice, and I remembered how jealous editors could be. I guess it meant he valued me.
“Why don’t you get out to the clubs and get me something on nightlife. What’s going on with drugs out there?” I could almost see him drawing broad gestures in the air. “Is anyone doing anything new anywhere? Has anyone famous been busted somewhere?”
“I think a lot more people are interested in animals than you think.” I tried to talk him down, but he must have heard something else in my voice.
“You’re not still all upset because of your cat, are you?” My continued silence gave him his answer. “Christ, Theda. It’s been a month. You’ve got to get out more.” I didn’t need his hamfisted sort of sympathy. What I needed was work; I’d been counting on the cat-lady piece. So murmuring what I hoped could be taken for assent, I suggested a profile on a new Wednesday night series, a local singer who was booking acoustic blues and jazz at a restaurant in nearby Jamaica Plain. She’d had a name that Tim had recognized and I hinted, with absolutely no basis, that local celebrities were considering it the latest cool hang.
“Midweeks are the new weekends now,” I heard myself saying.
“I thought those were Mondays,” he replied in all seriousness, and the deal was sealed. A quick call to Bunny secured me a brunch da
te for Sunday. I told her that the cat story was on hold, at least for now, and that I’d explain later. We agreed that I’d pick up fresh bagels on my way over, and then it was time to work.
mmm
I’d been involved with newspapers since I was a kid. My junior high school hadn’t had a paper, so I started one that we copied and stapled by hand and gave out once a month. It was only eight pages, but it was good enough to outlast me, and provided a solid training ground for the young writers I then edited on my high school paper. In college, I’d mixed my English major literature courses with writing workshops, trotting out my singsong attempts at verse and some highly autobiographical short stories for an endless series of meetings and discussions. It wasn’t an entirely useless exercise: I’d learned to hide my feelings when the criticisms grew really cutting, and I also probably mastered some craft through, if nothing else, the repetition of rewriting. But whether it was all the more confident students in my writing classes, the ones who wore black all day and smoked clove cigarettes, or the fact that I kept one foot in the more pedantic literature camp, I never really believed I could make it as a writer. Newspapers, yeah, sure, I loved them. But as an editor, a grammarian and fact checker and maybe, if I were very good, an assigner and shaper of stories. Not as a writer, never that.
A few years out in the real world taught me that my caution wasn’t completely misplaced. Good editors, particularly good copy editors, were always in demand. I’d snagged a job right out of school as an editorial assistant at my alumni magazine. The post called for a glorified secretary really, but I was proud as hell of the “editorial” in the title. Plus as soon as I started catching typos and, much to my boss’ dismay, inaccuracies in the regular columns handed to me to input into the computer, my duties expanded. It was rudimentary editing, more fact-checking than anything, but it beat simply typing. I started writing professionally that year, too, freelancing stories about the local rock scene for a free weekly. But I told myself that this side of my life was just for fun. If I covered a band, I’d get on the guest list next time they played. If I wrote something that made my friends laugh, it made me happy. That wasn’t work. And because the alumni magazine already had a copy editor, after a year I started looking around for another job.
In some ways, I was lucky. The weekly that had been publishing me—adding the princely sum of twenty-five bucks a story to my meager salary—was hiring a fact checker, so I applied. That job soon lead to full-fledged copy editing, which meant learning grammar on the job, reading newspaper copy with Strunk and White on my lap and a cubicle full of sticky notes reminding me “if ‘to’ then ‘from’!” and “farther along, but further in.” When a position opened up at the Mail, I’d taken the test and held my breath, waiting for the call telling me I was invited to join the major league.
I got it, and with it a raise and my first non-roommate apartment. But despite my increasing prosperity—the Mail paid wages that could and did support some of my colleagues’ families—I had grown increasingly dissatisfied. For one thing, the higher up I went in the publishing world, the further—or was it farther?—apart the editing and writing worlds went. At the weekly, everyone did everything. I’d never had the stomach for crime reporting, but I’d done my time at City Hall licensing hearings. Hell, our drama critic doubled as the typesetter. But by the time I had some seniority at the Mail, I was lucky to sell so much as a book review once a month. Every other editor I approached looked at me funny when I tried to pitch stories, as if a fish were asking them for wings. A copy editor writing? Didn’t I get paid enough? They didn’t understand that I missed it. I missed writing. Missed the thrill of researching a story, the joy of conceiving it—of twisting it this way and that to find the angle that would give me the best access to the parts that mattered. I even missed filing on deadline, the adrenaline rush of turning in the pages or sending the electronic file with the knowledge that my words, with my byline, would next see light in lovely black type. Which was why, even though I had money in the bank and only had to work occasional holidays and Sundays, I had quit and tumbled myself back into relative penury.
If I didn’t make a go of it, I had only myself to blame. Which on this particular afternoon meant buckling down to a round of phone calls, first to the club I’d be reporting on later to make sure that the folks in charge would be around and available to chat. Then to one of my most reliable, if dull employers: a home section editor who could usually be counted on to throw an assignment my way.
“Bookshelves? I can do bookshelves.” Fifteen minutes later we were agreeing on a story. “Built-ins and custom work, sure. I’ve got three contractors at my fingertips.” Those fingertips were reaching for the Yellow Pages as I spoke, so my assurance wasn’t totally false. Besides, the basic rule of freelancing, our source of pride, is that we can reach anyone with three phone calls. I’d find sources for a home renovation piece easier than that.
It was still the workday, so I left messages on five answering machines, figuring that the first three to call me back would make it into the story. Just to see what else I could find, I switched my computer on and tooled around the Internet, pulling stories on local bookshelf manufacturers and a couple of interior designers who might be relevant. To really make it as a journalist—especially if you wanted to survive as a freelancer—you had to get more than just what your story required. You needed to have background, to understand what was going on, even if only a fraction of your research appeared in print. While those articles printed, I let myself play, slipping a White Stripes CD into the computer and cranking it as a new-mod soundtrack to some basic computer-age snooping. Bopping in my seat, I called up a search engine and plugged in Connor’s name. No matches came back, and I wondered about the spelling of his last name. Davys? Daves? Three songs slipped by in pure guitar-pop fury, but the computer didn’t respond, though one close miss—“Connor Davitz”—did turn up a local Irish-Jewish caterer who might make an interesting story at some point. Finally, I gave up. So many of my friends were writers or musicians, I was used to finding some kind of paper trail on them. Reviews, publicity, or whatever. But if this guy wasn’t so bohemian, maybe that was for the better. Now Lillian, that might prove more interesting. Maybe I’d turn up an ancient enemy, an old rival in love—or in cat collecting—who had proved deadly. I typed in “Lillian Helmhold” and sang along to the music while my iMac did its business.
No tales of geriatric feuds surfaced. Instead, I found a death notice for a Lillian Rosbach Helmhold, which had just run in that morning’s paper, reminding me that my fun and games involved a real woman and a real life. I sobered up a bit and turned the music down, but my curiosity was piqued. A legal ad listing her full name again and asking any heirs to come forward made me wonder about Dougie—obviously Doug or Douglas—and whether he even knew about his mother’s death. I typed his name in, wondering if it would help me find him. What I got were a slew of stories from the Berkshires area newspapers, out in the western part of the state, starting from about two months before. “Grief at Greenleaf House,” read the first headline. One Douglas Helmhold, age thirty-eight, was listed among the residents who had had to be evacuated when a private Northurst residential facility was damaged by fire. The fire, said the report, was probably caused by the residents’ propensity for smoking.
“They light up all the time,” one of the home’s live-in counselors was quoted as saying. “We try to keep them from smoking in the house, especially in their rooms, but they don’t want to go outdoors in the winter, and who can blame them? Plus, the nicotine is calming to many of them and it’s hard to get them to quit.” An accompanying editorial on the crusade to ban smoking at all mental health care facilities had me rolling my eyes halfway through, but at least it was better than the usual “not in my backyard” screeds. Northurst sounded like the kind of liberal college town that would kill these people with kindness before kicking them out, and for that I was glad. I’d read enough about mental illness to know that
finding a quiet, low stress, and safe environment can go a long way toward making life—and treatment—bearable. People like Dougie might never actually recover, but if he could settle into a regular routine, he’d be more likely to stay on his medications and out of trouble.
mmm
That bubble was burst by the next round of stories. The fire, according to a piece in the Northurst Eagle, had not been caused by an errant butt. A cigarette had served as a fuse, but the couch it had been dropped on had been doused with lighter fluid, too. Plus, someone had jiggered with the gas in the kitchen, loosening the pipe that ran into the stove and turning the kitchen into a potential bomb once the fire spread. Only luck and the sharp nose of one of the eight residents had kept the fire from reaching beyond the common room—and kept the hundred-year-old clapboard from exploding. The next day’s front page explained why someone had gone to all that trouble: Social Security checks, the disability monies that supported most of the residents, had been disappearing into an unauthorized bank account, as well as monies that were supposedly paying for the residents’ many prescriptions, and that account had been emptied.
Some of the drugs seemed to be unaccounted for, as well, according to a follow-up written by one Ethan Reinhardt, Eagle contributor. Could he be the freelancer I’d met at the Marc Starr press party? Whoever, he was, he was good: he’d interviewed the overnight staffer who had been quoted in the first news story, but obviously had spent more time digging up background material, too. I remembered him talking about the importance of listening and observing, and I could tell he practiced what he preached. By the time Ethan had filed his second article, he’d found more news to report. The overnight counselor who’d first spoken to the press—the one who’d pointed a finger at the residents’ smoking—had gone missing. Police wouldn’t say if he was suspected of involvement, but they did let out that he was wanted for questioning.