by Betsy Carter
At forty-two, she still worked in the laundry at Bellevue and kept the same shrine on her bedroom windowsill that she’d had on Leroy Street. There was sad-eyed Saint Benedict and kindly Saint Anthony, along with two statues of the Blessed Virgin, all of them bleached by the sun. Every morning before work, she went to the Church of the Guardian Angel, where she sat in a pew in the third row on the left side of the organ. On her knees, hands folded and eyes closed, she gave herself to prayer. She prayed for the souls of her two lost babies. She asked God to look after Kiefer, now a detective in the police department, and to heal her grieving daughter and bring her back to the church. She even prayed for the patients at Bellevue, but she never prayed for Ryan. It had taken her two years to stop mourning him, but when she had, like Catrina, she had shut him out as if he were dead.
Rose wasn’t one to criticize God, but in the matter of her unanswered prayers about Catrina, she felt he was being obstinate. No matter how hard she prayed for her daughter to come back to the church, it never happened. A typical argument between the two of them ran like this: Catrina would say, “The church was no refuge for me when Da disappeared, and all your praying and devotion didn’t help James stay alive. I have no use for a God like that.” And Rose would remind her, “You’re a girl from the church, like the rest of us. The world sees you that way whether you wear a cross around your neck or not.” But as in all things, Catrina went her own way.
Rose prayed that she would become a teacher when she finished high school, but Catrina had no interest in that either. Now that James was gone, the only place she could find the kind of absolute love he’d shown her was among the animals, and she was determined to work with them. It wasn’t hard to find the ones who needed help.
The stray dogs lived off the garbage in the streets, and people often dumped water on them to shoo them away. The law protected the ones with collars and licenses, but the collarless ones were rounded up and faced the same fate as those Catrina had seen down by the river, only these days they were gassed instead of drowned. Catrina looked after as many of them as she could. She’d bring them home, wash and feed them, and try to find a place for them. In that regard, Rose was helpful and would offer the strays up to coworkers at Bellevue or to the parishioners at her church. When a neighbor’s German shepherd, Sasha, got hit by a car and lost the use of her back legs, Catrina took her before she could be put to sleep. At first, Catrina tried tying a rope around Sasha’s hindquarters and letting her use her front paws to walk. Sasha never complained and gamely hobbled alongside Catrina. But she could see how it tired the dog, and eventually she jerry-rigged a Radio Flyer wagon with a pillow and a leather strap so, secured by the strap, Sasha was able to sit on the pillow and pull herself forward with her front legs. The dog thrived for years in that Radio Flyer and could even romp with the beagle puppy and the stray terrier that came later.
Four months after James died, Catrina went to the offices of the ASPCA to see if she could find a job. Their headquarters were on Twenty-Sixth Street and Madison Avenue and overlooked the park where she’d first met James. Inside, the smell of urine, feces, and unwashed animals smacked into her with such force, she thought she might be sick. When the urge to vomit subsided, she walked up to the man sitting at the front desk and said, “My name is Catrina Harty and I’ve come to apply for a job.”
The man was balding, with sad brown eyes and the defeated posture of someone accustomed to delivering bad news. “You say your name like I’m supposed to know you.” He squinted at her. “Do I know you?”
“No, but I’d like to work here. I’m very good with animals.”
The man snorted as if she had told a bad joke. “This work isn’t suitable for everyone.”
“There’s nothing about animals that frightens me,” she said.
“Oh yeah?” He took a deep breath as if savoring the punchline he was about to deliver. “How about dead animals? Anything about them frighten you?”
Catrina stiffened. “No, sir,” she lied. “I’m willing to take whatever work you might give me.”
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” He gripped the arms of his chair and pulled himself up. “This way.” He led her to a room that looked like a stable and smelled even worse than where she’d been before. There were overcrowded pens with straw beds for dogs and separate cages for cats and other small animals. “Here’s where we keep ’em. We hope some of them will be adopted, but it doesn’t always work out that way. When the pens get so full that we can’t fit another dog, we take ’em across the hall. We use gas. Chloroform. It goes quickly and they don’t feel nothing. You still interested?”
Catrina nodded, not trusting herself to speak.
“So it would be your job to walk these dogs and, if you can, find homes for them before they’re, you know, put to rest. We got two other gals in there. You’d rotate with them. You’d also have to clean up the shit and piss and scrub down the floor.” He studied her pale, soft hands. “As I said, not the kind of work for everyone.”
Catrina thought about her mother and all the years she’d worked in that awful basement in Bellevue; how her father’s hands had been calloused from working at the docks. She looked at the animals, crammed together so closely that it was difficult to see them one by one. “I’m not scared. When do I start?”
Susanna and Iris were the other two gals. Both were older. Susanna had worked at headquarters for a year and a half, Iris for only three months. “You never get used to it,” Susanna told her. “It just becomes bearable.”
There were so many dogs that sometimes they weren’t walked for days, and no matter how many buckets of water the women poured on the floor, nothing could obliterate that smell. Catrina kept a change of clothes at the shelter: trousers, a pair of shoes, and an old shirt of her father’s. At first she washed them every day, but they’d be shit brown by the time she went home, so after a while, she didn’t even bother.
As much as she loved the dogs, Catrina wasn’t the kind to murmur to them, “Who’s the best dog?” and expect them to answer. Yet, taking them on their last walks felt like a sacred duty. She’d sit down on the street beside them and let them burrow their heads into her shoulder. Long after she went home at night, the sound of their barking rang in her ears.
Only once did she allow herself to get attached to one of them, a white terrier with tired legs and a worried expression. Whenever Catrina came into the shelter, the dog would greet her with a round, high-pitched cry. Catrina named him Felix and brought him pieces of ham from home. She wanted to take him in, but Rose said enough was enough, absolutely no more pets. Catrina tried to keep Felix separate from the other dogs in the pen, but it was impossible. When his time came, she walked with him across the hall and watched through the glass window as he and the other dogs were chloroformed. The sickeningly sweet smell of it seeped under the door. Felix fell on his side and weakly tried to kick back the gas. His eyes seemed to find Catrina’s. “I’m sorry,” she said as she watched the fight go out of him. She was reminded how dogs never cried with their eyes.
9.
Rose was concerned that her daughter’s infatuation with the animals would keep her entombed in widowhood. “I’m worried that you’ve let yourself go since James,” she said after Catrina came home from work one night reeking of God knows what. “Nobody wants a girl covered in dog hair.”
“That’s fine,” Catrina shot back. “I don’t want anybody who isn’t covered in dog hair.”
Rose recognized in Catrina her own intractability, and Catrina saw in her mother a familiar willfulness. It made for a contentious relationship, but also one of grudging respect.
They got up at six thirty every morning and had breakfast together before Rose headed to the hospital. Catrina fed and walked Sasha, then headed crosstown to the ASPCA. The two women divvied up the cooking and shopping and ate supper together. On Fridays, when Kiefer came for dinner, they’d cook some fish. Kiefer always brought fresh fruit and on very special occasions a
bottle of wine.
On weekends, Rose and Catrina walked to Herald Square, where Rose would urge Catrina to at least look in the shop windows. But Catrina had no interest. “We can’t afford these things anyway, so why bother?” she argued. The only thing Catrina enjoyed on those outings was traveling up and down the modern wooden escalators at Macy’s. Rose would stay outside with Sasha while Catrina gripped the handrail and studied the electric stairs unfolding and folding into themselves as many as four or five times in a morning.
In the afternoon, Catrina took Sasha for walks down to the river. On a sunless Saturday in January, the two of them were making their way back to Thirty-Sixth Street when a man strode up to Catrina and asked, “Is this dog an athlete of some sort?”
She laughed. “Not at all.”
“Then it must be that you use her wagon to haul home your groceries—am I correct?”
“No, you aren’t.” She told him about Sasha’s accident and how she had rigged the Radio Flyer for her.
The man was older, and handsome. His eyes, nearly black, went well with his white teeth, black hair, and dark skin. He looked like a movie star, though Catrina couldn’t figure out which one. He crouched down beside Sasha and rubbed her chest. “Well, look at you, what a pretty girl you are; you are some girl.” Sasha licked the man’s hand.
“She likes you,” said Catrina.
The man continued to scratch Sasha. “It’s not me, it’s the chicken I was handling this afternoon. I’m very good with chicken cutlets.” He winked at Catrina.
“So you’re a butcher then?” Catrina was disappointed that he wasn’t a movie star.
“Nooo,” he said, cracking a toothy smile. “I run a restaurant and cabaret east of here, on Thirty-Eighth between Fifth and Madison, the Blue Moon. Maybe you’ve heard of it?”
Catrina shook her head. “Truth be told, I don’t get out very often.”
“I hope I’m not being too nosy,” he said, “but what do you do when you’re not walking Sasha?”
“I work at the ASPCA. Mostly I take care of the animals who are about to be put to death.” Catrina thought of her mother’s warning about men not wanting women covered in dog hair and realized that she didn’t want this handsome man to think of her smelling like shit, so she turned the conversation in another direction. “Someday I’d like to work for a veterinarian, but right now, I don’t think any will have me, a woman with limited experience.”
“I’m sure lots of veterinarians would have you. You haven’t found the right one.” The way he looked up at her, sideways with a half smile, made her smile back in an equally provocative way. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had this much conversation with a strange man. When he stood up, he shook each leg as if to make sure his pant cuffs were even. He wore a blue-and-white-striped shirt with a white collar and red braces under a camel-colored coat. She could see that the coat label said Brooks Brothers. His clothes fit well, and their fabrics seemed soft and expensive.
“I’m an animal lover myself,” he said. “Do you mind if I walk with the two of you for a while?”
“Suit yourself.”
His name was Walter Bianco. He told her that he’d grown up with three dogs and two sisters in Mount Vernon.
“I’ve never been there,” she said. “Is it far from here?”
“Far enough. We had our own house, a backyard, a porch, you know, the whole kit and caboodle. How about you? I hear a little brogue. Are your people from Ireland?”
His smile was like the sun in her eyes. She noticed how soft his lips were and wondered if he had more teeth than other men.
“My people, yes, all from County Mayo. I’m the first American girl in my family. My parents came over as children. In fact, I grew up close to here.” Her whole kit and caboodle was a far cry from three dogs, a porch, and a backyard, so she decided to leave it at that. Besides, they’d arrived at her building. “Well, here I am,” she said, planting a foot on the front stoop. “You must be very busy at the restaurant. I’ve taken too much of your time already.”
“You haven’t taken anything,” said Walter. “You and Sasha here have given me great pleasure. I often take a break from the restaurant at around this time, so maybe we can take another walk together soon.”
Catrina considered her answer. “I see no harm in that.”
“Good.” He drummed his fingers on the wrought-iron banister. “Now I know where to find you.”
The next time they met, a week later, it was not by accident. Walter was sitting on the stoop of her building as Catrina and Sasha came down the stairs. “Ah,” he said, “I thought this was the right time. Mind if I walk with you?”
“Would it matter if I minded?” she asked, lifting Sasha onto the wagon.
“If you told me I was the last person in the world you would ever walk with and that you found me repulsive and annoying, it would matter.”
“And why would I tell you that?”
Walter smiled. “Do they teach girls how to be sassy in County Mayo?”
“My da,” she said. “He brought it with him.”
They headed downtown and talked about Sasha and the spell of cold weather they were having.
“Do you ever get a break?” Walter asked.
“A break from what?”
“You know, your work, Sasha, this neighborhood? Do you ever get away from it?”
Catrina laughed. “I work very hard to be in it, my life, my work, Sasha. Why would I want to get away?”
“I don’t mean forever,” he said. “I mean a distraction. For instance, have you ever been to a show on Broadway?”
“No.”
“Would you like to go with me to see The Band Wagon? It’s supposed to be a wonderful revue with Fred and Adele Astaire. I could sneak out of the restaurant for a few hours Thursday night.”
“A Broadway show?” she asked. “And what does one wear to a Broadway show?”
“When one is as beautiful as you, it hardly matters. Any old dress will do.”
“That’s good, because I happen to have only one dress, and it’s old.”
That evening, Catrina told her mother that she’d met a man in the street who’d been friendly to her. “I was friendly back,” she said. “I didn’t realize it until after, but I was definitely very friendly back. He invited me to see a show on Broadway, something with Fred and Adele something-or-other. I said yes.”
“An Irish man?” asked Rose.
“He’s very handsome and he owns a restaurant uptown.”
“Yes, but is he Irish?”
“Almost certainly not,” said Catrina.
Walter Bianco was forty-one, Catrina was twenty-one. He wooed her with raw oysters and thick steaks. He took her to the circus and to the Metropolitan Opera House. He bought her expensive silk suits and hats with stitched-on labels that said Made in France. When the air was cold enough to form breath clouds, he bought her a silver fox jacket with squared shoulders and flared sleeves. It didn’t take her long to understand that the Blue Moon was one of New York’s most deluxe restaurants and cabarets, and slim Walter Bianco, with his lantern jaw, big smile, and glazed black hair, was the man of the moment.
It seemed to Catrina that he knew everyone in New York. If people didn’t already know Walter, something about him made them think they did. When she walked down the street with him, she saw how men nodded at him, and how women nudged whomever they were with and then turned away, probably thinking, as she had, that he looked like some movie star. People were forever touching his forearm and saying, “Oh, excuse me,” or brushing up against him, though probably not by accident. By his side, the world was a prettier and more exciting place, the way it had been on her da’s shoulders.
On Valentine’s evening 1932, they were invited to the opening of a new nightclub in Times Square. Walter told her he wanted her to be the sexiest girl there and gave her a midnight-blue dress made of clingy silk jersey that was slit up the side. It had a low back, décolletage, and long
sleeves that came to a point right after her wrist. She’d never worn anything so glamorous or expensive, and it felt liquid against her skin. That night, she pinned up her hair and wore the faux-diamond drop earrings he’d given her a few months earlier. Rose was still at the hospital when Walter rang the bell. Catrina opened the door and watched as he took in the sight of her. “You’re magnificent,” he said, holding out his arms.
In that dress, under the gaze of that man, Catrina took his hands in hers and pulled him toward her. It had been a long time. He kissed her neck. She turned away and locked the front door. He kissed her back. He didn’t fumble when he unzipped the dress and carried her to the couch. He stroked her in ways and places that made her cry out. In turn, he took her hand and showed her where her touch was welcome. He called her “baby doll” and “sweetheart,” and she called him “my beautiful man.” When they were finished, she asked him, “Are you this attentive to all your chicken cutlets?”
“No,” he answered. “Only the ones I intend to eat.”
Walter said of himself that he’d been around the block a few times, and Catrina knew he hadn’t traveled alone. He taught her things and made her feel desirable and beautiful. It was different from being with James. James and she had been the same. With him, she’d felt safe and understood. She had loved him purely; sex had been sweet. Walter was anything but safe; sex with him was not sweet. There was something dangerous about him that she found arousing: the way he scattered vulgarities through his sentences, the company he kept, how he held her by the wrists when they kissed. He was nothing like James, and with him, she was nothing like the girl she’d been then.
She took care with how she looked for him. For the first time, she wore lipstick and chose clothes that showed off her natural curves. She styled her hair with waving lotions and wore it tied at her neckline. After work at the ASPCA, she’d scrub down and splash 4711 cologne on her neck. These days, she spent less time commiserating with Iris and Susanna, as she was eager to get home and prepare for her time with Walter.