Beauty & the Beasts

by Janice Kay Johnson; Anne Weale

  She waited; Garth continued murmuring. And the amazing happened: Smudge slid forward enough for Garth’s fingers to gently stroke his head. The cat quivered, then tilted his chin up for those fingers to reach his jaw and throat. Finally, wonder of wonders, he rubbed the length of his body against that hand, and Garth ruffled the black fur, his hand traveling down Smudge’s spine over and over, until even from fifteen feet away Madeline could hear the purr.

  Another cat jumped down from a wooden climber. It was Big Yellow, a bully, and now he growled low in his throat. Smudge started, froze for an instant and then flowed away. Garth slowly let his arm drop.

  Madeline clapped. “Bravo!”

  His head whipped around and, looking disconcerted, he said, “I didn’t know you were there.”

  “I didn’t dare move.” She smiled. “That was Smudge. He’s never let anyone here touch him, not since we turned him loose after he got neutered and vaccinated.”

  Flushing, Garth said, “Well, probably no one’s had the time. I mean, I’ve been sitting here for a while.”

  “I know.” She sat, too, on a lawn chair just outside the sliding door. Ajax, a snow white elderly cat, jumped onto her lap. Idly stroking him, Madeline continued, “But you seem to have a way with these guys.” She laughed, because one was butting his head against Garth’s back and another had scrambled onto his legs. “If you come a few more times, you’ll have to beat ’em off with a stick.”

  “I wouldn’t mind coming again,” Garth mumbled. “It’s not like I have anything else to do this summer.”

  She took that for the face-saving excuse she knew it to be; Ten Lives had had other young volunteers, many of whom lost interest quickly. She’d been scrubbing litter boxes and floors for two straight hours, and not once had Garth looked bored or asked when they were leaving. In fact, she’d seen him only when she glanced out the window.

  She couldn’t blame him for doing his visiting out here; the day was sunny and cloudless without being hot, late June weather at its best. The grass had recently been cut and raked, and even more cats than usual were outside. Some were sprawling in the grass or napping on the homemade climbers that substituted for trees.

  After a long sleepy pause, Madeline asked, “Have you been to the kitten room yet?”

  He looked up eagerly. “No, I didn’t know there was one.”

  “I’ll show you.” But she was too content to leap immediately to her feet.

  Garth seemed to feel the same. He shifted to accommodate another cat that slid under his arm and leaned against his knee. Today, she thought, he looked younger than he had the other day, more the boy he really was than the teenager he tried to be. From this side she couldn’t see the earring, and the sunlight transformed the fuzz of pale blond hair growing in on his bare skull into a shimmering halo. He looked a good deal like his father the same narrow intelligent face with sharp cheekbones, the same lanky grace, although less controlled in the boy. His eyes were bright blue, instead of his father’s gray-green, but when Garth quit sulking those blue eyes took in everything he saw, processed it, focused on any anomaly as penetratingly as Eric’s did. His gaze could be just as unnerving.

  Startled at her choice of. words, Madeline grimaced. And here she liked to think she’d become completely relaxed around his father.

  “Well,” she said, letting out a long breath, “shall we?”

  The house had four bedrooms, one of which was home to the kittens. Most of the year a couple of huge cages held the litters of younger ones, along with their mothers. Older kittens awaiting placement ran loose in the room. Cushy carpeted hammocks were slung from the windowsills; a bunk bed made a great climber, as well as offering the high perch they loved.

  “Cool,” Garth breathed the instant she opened the door and he saw two of the older kittens tumbling on the floor in mock battle.

  Within minutes he was waving the long wand with feathers attached to the end. Wizard and October raced after it, leaping and growling and snatching it in their teeth when they were quicker than Garth’s hand.

  Madeline quietly withdrew and left him. In the front office she returned phone calls for half an hour or so, then chatted with Joan, finally returning to the kitten room. Garth had one of the cage doors open and was trying to coax the two little black-and-white guys in the corner to come to him.

  “That’s Chev and Ron,” Madeline said softly. “They were found under a Dumpster at a Chevron station. We called them the Chevron Kids, and somehow that evolved. They’re petrified. We really need a foster home for them, somewhere they can get tons of attention for a few weeks. At their age, they ought to come around. If they can just learn to trust people, we could find them a home.”

  She felt a little guilty. She ought to have talked to Eric before even hinting that Garth take on any project like this. But he was so perfect for it! The idea had come to her when she saw him petting Smudge. Garth had the patience and kindness needed to reassure scared cats and tame the semiferal. Best of all, he had time, something most adult volunteers lacked.

  And from what Eric had said and what she’d seen of Garth today, she thought he needed a purpose. Maybe two kittens who desperately needed him would be just the ticket. She couldn’t imagine that Eric would object.

  Well, in for a penny, she decided, and took a deep breath. “I don’t suppose…” she began.

  At that precise same moment Garth said, “Do you think I…?”

  They looked at each other and laughed. “Yes,” Madeline said, “I do think you could. If it’s okay with your dad. You’ll have to consult him first.”

  Garth’s shoulders hunched, and in an instant he was the sullen teenager again. “He doesn’t trust me to do anything. He’ll say no.”

  “I doubt it.” She touched his arm. “He loves animals. I think he’ll be pleased you do, too.”

  Easily read emotions chased across his face: hurt pride, anger, longing, stubbornness. Finally he shrugged. “Yeah, okay. I guess I’ll ask him. What can it hurt?”

  “Right.” Turning, she reached into the cage to pet Ron, the slightly braver of the two kittens. Chev cringed away, tiny white teeth showing as he hissed. She had to be honest. “The one thing that does hurt is when you take these guys home and teach them to love you and then you have to say goodbye.”

  Frowning thoughtfully, Garth looked even more like his father. “You’ve done it before?”

  “Lots of times.” Her smile was crooked. “I still cry every time.”

  “But are you really sad?”

  “No. At least, only partly. I know I can’t keep them all. What I’m doing is teaching them how to love and then finding them someone they can love for the rest of their lives. If I hadn’t been willing to do that and to cry a little, they’d never have had a chance. So it’s worth every tear. Getting to know them and seeing them get braver and then that moment when you know they trust you…there’s nothing like it.” Memories flooded her, green eyes and rust eyes, long white whiskers and stubby gray ones, the pointed furry faces of a dozen particularly beloved cats and kittens who had passed briefly through her life before she handed them on. For a second her eyes welled with tears. She picked up Chev, who curled into a small ball, and handed him to Garth. “Someday, he’ll purr just because you come into the room, and you’ll know he’s ready.”

  Garth bent his head as he ran a finger along the bumpy curve of the scrawny kitten’s spine. “And then maybe I could take some more.”

  “That’s the spirit!” On impulse she gave the boy a quick hug, retreating before he had a chance to react at all, much less protest. “I’m done here for the day. Shall we go beard your father? Or would you rather ask him alone?”

  “You mean, you’d ask him?”

  She laughed. “No, I mean we’d ask him.”

  “Oh.” He thought it over. “If you were with me, he’d probably say yes. He wouldn’t want you to think he was a jerk.”

  Garth might have a point. “Then maybe I shouldn’t be
there,” she said slowly. “I don’t want him to agree for no better reason than that.”

  “Does it matter why he agrees?” Garth asked with impeccable logic. “It’s not like Chev and Ron will care. They’ll still have the same chance.”

  “Yeah, but I have to keep dealing with your dad when he treats our cats,” she reminded him. “I don’t want him to feel resentful. Ten Lives needs him.”

  Garth carefully placed Chev back in the cage, petted Ron, then closed and latched the door. “Okay, then. I’ll do it.”

  “I’ll keep my fingers crossed. Give me a call after you talk to him.”

  Garth promised that he would. She dropped him at home, not going in, although it wouldn’t have mattered; Eric wasn’t here, anyway. She wished he was so that she could ride, maybe stay for dinner, have him walk her out to her car later for a moment of privacy….

  “You,” she told her reflection in the rearview mirror, “are behaving like a lovesick teenager!” She pushed in the clutch, shifted into reverse and muttered through clenched teeth, “I can still get through a day without seeing him, thank you very much.”

  ERIC KNOCKED on Garth’s bedroom door. “Dinner’s ready!” he called. Half the time, Garth called back, “I already ate.” Tonight the door swung open immediately, as if he’d been standing by it. “What did you make?” He sniffed. “Eggs?”

  “Yup. My world-famous omelets.”

  Closing the door behind him, Garth started down the hall. “Cool.”

  Cool? Eric stared after his son. Had Madeline worked a magic spell? He had to hear about the visit to Ten Lives.

  He made himself wait until he’d dished up the food, they’d sat side by side on stools at the breakfast bar, and Garth had already shoved the first bite of omelet in his mouth.

  Then, very casually, Eric asked, “What did you think of the shelter today?”

  “It was cool.” Garth swallowed, glugged half a glass of milk and wiped his mouth with one hand, then added, “We stayed a couple hours.”

  “I got Hannah there, you know.” Eric smiled ruefully. “Or maybe I should say, she got me. No,” he said to the cat, whose upward gaze had become purposeful. “You know you’re not allowed on the counter.”

  Her tail whipped, but she didn’t spring upward.

  “There’re a lot of really scared cats there.” His son thrust another bite in his mouth and kept talking around it with an animation Eric hadn’t heard since he’d arrived. “I petted this black one named Smudge that Madeline says nobody’s touched since he came. I’ll bet I could tame him.”

  “You planning to spend more time there, then?”

  “Yeah, I guess.” Garth ate in silence for a moment, then shrugged. “Why not?”

  “I admire what they’re doing,” Eric said neutrally. “Did you meet Joan?”

  “Kind of. I mean, she buzzed through talking a mile a minute. Then she left for work.”

  “Yeah, that’s one energetic lady.”

  For the first time Garth looked him straight in the eye. “You don’t make them pay when you go there, do you?”

  Eric explained the arrangement. “So far it’s working out well. They haven’t swamped us with sick animals, and I can easily afford the time I give. I neuter right there on the spot, and they bring the females for spaying into the hospital. We’ve had a couple cats that had viruses and weren’t eating that we kept on IVs for a few days. They do a good job there medicating for the minor stuff.”

  “Oh.” Head bent, Garth tore the crust of his toast into shreds. “I was wondering—” He stopped. “I mean, Madeline asked me something…”

  “Yeah?” Eric prodded.

  “Well, there’s these two little kittens,” Garth said in a rush. “Chev and Ron. They’re black and white, and somebody found them under a Dumpster at a Chevron gas station. See, they’re not used to people, and they hiss every time someone tries to touch them, but they don’t bite or scratch or anything like that, and Madeline thinks if someone just spent lots of time with them for a few weeks, they’d get friendly and be adoptable.”

  It didn’t take ESP to figure out where this was going. Eric said dryly, “She has a foster home lined up of course.”

  “She says they’re hard to find,” his son told him, his expression earnest, “and she already has a litter of kittens in her extra bedroom. She can’t take any more right now, ‘cause she has to place these before her mother comes for a visit. Her mother doesn’t like cats very much,” Garth explained, “and she wouldn’t want any in the bedroom where she sleeps.”

  “I see,” Eric said gravely. A kinder father would have ended the suspense and said, Why don’t you do it? He decided to make the kid carry through, however hard it was for him.

  Garth took a deep breath. “The thing is, I thought maybe I could have them in my bedroom. Just for a few weeks.” He watched his father anxiously. “I’d change the litter every day, and Madeline said I could bring cat food home so you wouldn’t have to buy any, and—”

  “Sounds good to me,” Eric agreed, taking pity at last.

  “They wouldn’t be any trouble,” the twelve-year-old hurried on. “I won’t ask you to do anything. I promise. I—” He blinked. “Did you say yes?”

  “You bet.” Eric smiled. “I’d foster cats for the shelter myself if I weren’t gone such long hours.” Don’t push it, some inner voice warned. Don’t approve so much he starts thinking it was your idea, or it’s what you want him to do. Eric took a sip of the wine he’d poured himself. “Madeline is good at persuading people to do something useful, isn’t she? You’ll have to go to an adoption day with her. She charms the socks off people. They go out to shop, come home with a cat. They probably lug that carrier in their front door and wonder what in hell got into ’em.

  “She’s pretty,” Garth said. A blush flagged his cheeks.

  “Yeah, but I don’t think that’s it.” A bite halfway to his mouth, Eric paused to ruminate. “She’s… morally uncompromising,” he mused aloud. “You find yourself wanting to please her, impress her. Maybe rise to her level. Then she gives you that smile—” He put on the brakes. Good God, he’d just made himself sound like a hopeful puppy dog, wriggling and wagging for attention and a kind word from the nice lady. Where was his dignity?

  Garth was regarding him with a disconcertingly adult expression. “You really like her, don’t you, Dad?”

  Dad. Another first for the summer. A stab of pleasure made Eric realize how much he’d missed such a trivial thing: hearing his son call him Dad.

  “I guess I do,” he admitted. “But we haven’t known each other that long.” He shrugged. “We’ll see.” When Garth didn’t comment, Eric asked, “Do you like her?”

  “She kinda reminds me of this teacher I had last year. For computers. She never had to yell or anything. Nobody wanted to bug her, you know?”

  Eric pushed his empty plate away. “Yeah, I’ve known people like that. This teacher, was she young and pretty?”

  “Nah.” Garth sounded bewildered that anyone could have that effect on a whole class and not be pretty. “Actually she was kind of old. Her hair was getting gray.”

  The poor woman was probably forty-five. Eric didn’t ask whether he fell into the same category.

  Garth finished his milk, this time using the hem of his T-shirt to wipe away the mustache. Eric wondered what Chuck Morrison, CEO, thought of such table manners.

  The phone rang, startling them both. “I’ll get it,” Eric said, and slid off the bar stool, taking his dirty dishes to the sink at the same time. “Hello?”

  “Hello, Eric.” The voice was Noreen’s. It sounded as faraway as he knew her to be; the line crackled. “I thought I’d check in and see how things are going.”

  “Garth’s right here. Why don’t you talk to him?” Eric said, waving the boy over. Handing him the receiver, he said, “It’s your mother.”

  Garth turned his back and hunched his shoulders. “Mom?” he said, voice low.

  Eric in
terpreted his son’s body language as an instinctive plea for privacy. “I’ll be back in a minute,” he said, and left the room.

  Not two minutes had passed when Garth called, “Dad, Mom wants to talk to you.”

  Surprised, he put down the newspaper he’d barely picked up and went back into the kitchen. “You’re already done talking to her?”

  Garth shoved the phone at him. Something in the boy had changed in those brief minutes. The sulkiness was back, along with acute unhappiness. “Yeah, like I had so much news,” he said rudely, and abruptly left the kitchen.

  Frowning after him, Eric said into the receiver, “Noreen?”

  “I can tell how much he misses me.” Her attempt at lightness failed. “Is he mad at me or just in a generally charming mood?”

  Down the hall Garth turned into his bedroom and slammed his door. So much for rapprochement.

  “There’s a hell of a lot you didn’t tell me,” Eric said bluntly. “Either that, or he pulled a Cinderella act in reverse in the john of the airplane.”

  “Oh.” She laughed nervously. “You mean the earring and the shaved head? They do look awful, don’t they? But they’re just the style right now. Kids have to rebel somehow.”

  Eric’s fingers tightened on the phone, and through his teeth he said, “All our son does is shut himself in his bedroom and listen to rap music. He acts like he hates me. Apparently he hates you, too. Not to mention ‘Chuckie.’” He mimicked the way Garth said the name. “Is that the style right now, too?”

  Her long silence left him feeling like a brute. She never had liked “unpleasantness”—her word for anything that upset her. He heard a ragged breath that might have been a sob. Dammit, why didn’t she storm back at him? Remind him that she’d been left to raise their son alone nine months of the year, that she was doing the best she could. Tell him to go to hell. But, no.

  “I should have warned you,” she said unhappily. “It’s just…”

  “You thought I wouldn’t take him if I knew what a pain he’d be?” Eric didn’t like the hardness in his voice any more than she would.