“What do you think you’re doing?”
Helen stood in the doorway, holding onto the jamb with both hands. She was shaking and pale with fury.
“I was looking for Minoche. That’s all, Helen, I wasn’t snooping. I just wanted to see Minoche.”
“Well you can’t, okay, you can’t, nobody can see her anymore—you’re not the only person with problems, you know.” And with that Helen sank to the floor and began blubbering. “You’re not the only one in the world with a broken heart and no one at all to care about her. That cat loves me. She loves me.”
Colleen knelt down next to her. “It’s okay, it’s okay.” She patted her friend’s shoulder. “Where is she? Where did she go?”
Helen pulled a wad of Kleenex from her sleeve. She rubbed her eyes and blew her nose. She pointed to the closet.
“Can I look?” asked Colleen.
Helen nodded and went on crying. Colleen was, as always in a moment of crisis, calm and sure of her competence. Even as a child Colleen knew that no matter what happened, it was best not to become too emotional when someone else was breaking down. (The pull to join them was often great, however, because it would be a kind of relief to be the one other people had to deal with instead of the one having to do the dealing.) And so now, with Helen dissolving into puddles and what was clearly something revolting behind curtain number one, Colleen steeled herself and strode to the closet. Remember the Alamo. On Dornner and Blitzen. Into the Valley of Death … It was possible she was drunker than she thought.
When she pulled aside the shower curtain Colleen found Minoche’s red velvet bed on the floor by a pile of shoes, and on the bed was a cat-shaped form in a blue pillowcase. Rust-coloured seepage stained the cloth. The smell was pungent and eye-watering.
“Okay, okay,” said Colleen. She went back to Helen. “Let’s get you up, come on.” Helen was heavy and it was hard to pull her to her feet, but they managed to move her so she sat on the bed.
“I’m so sorry, Helen.”
Through a slurry of snot and tears Helen said, “I just woke up in the morning and there she was, dead. Poor little kitten. Poor little Minoche. I should have taken her to the vet.”
“You weren’t to know.” Colleen was not entirely sure Helen would have taken her to the vet even if she had known. No matter how sick poor Minoche had been, it was unlikely Helen would have made it out the door. “You could have called me, though, if there was a problem. I would have taken her.”
“What are you talking about? I did call you.”
“No—”
“Of course I did. I called you last week.” Helen stood up and pushed past Colleen. She went to the closet and squatted next to the corpse. “I tried for two hours to get through to you, but the phone was always busy, and when I did finally get you, you were too drunk. I could tell. Spouting some crap about how you were going to go off to Tunisia and walk the desert alone in search of your soul like Melville did. You weren’t any good to me then.” She turned, dabbed at her nose and glared at Colleen. “And you aren’t much good now.”
Colleen did not remember the phone call. She did remember reading about Herman Melville and how he sought relief from his depression by long sojourns in the desert wilderness outside Jerusalem. It had sounded attractive when she read it; it still did.
“If it wasn’t for you,” Helen said, “Minoche would still be alive.” She burst into tears again.
“Well, wait a minute,” said Colleen, but then she stopped. It would be easy to say it wasn’t her fault—she wasn’t the one who couldn’t leave this oubliette, who would rather let her beloved cat die than step into the open air—but she couldn’t. Helen was a wretch and Colleen understood wretchedness. She understood the impossibility of stepping over the wreckage of your own life to get to something better. “Minoche can’t stay here, Helen. You know that, right? So, would you let me take care of her?”
“You’ll just throw her in the garbage.”
“No, I won’t. I promise. I’ll wrap her up in some plastic and I’ll take her to the twenty-four-hour vet up on the Danforth. They’ll take her and see she’s properly … They’ll take care of her. You can’t keep her here.”
Helen sank into the considerable bulk of herself as if a balloon inside had collapsed. “I know. I know. My landlord’s been complaining. Threatening to come down with the Health Department. Accused me of hoarding.” She let out a juddering sigh. “Promise me you won’t just throw her away. Promise me.”
“I promise.”
Helen buried her head in her hands. “Do what you have to.”
“Come back out to the living room and let me handle it, then, okay?”
Helen stood and walked down the hall with Colleen following, breathing through her open mouth. She could taste the decay on her tongue. She took the bottle out of the fridge, uncorked it and poured herself a full glass. She drank half of it. There wasn’t much left and after considering what she had to do, she finished it off.
While Helen sat on the couch, crying again, Colleen found a garbage bag and went back to the bedroom. It was a horrible task. She gagged several times, swallowing repeatedly to keep from being sick. When the cat’s liquefying body was safely in the plastic bag, Colleen washed her hands under water so hot they remained red for minutes afterward.
Minoche had been about eight years old. The cat, Colleen realized, had spent its entire life in this basement. Chasing centipedes and spiders had been its greatest joy. Colleen wondered if it might not have committed suicide. Insects would take over the place now.
By the time she came back to the living room carrying the bag as gently as she could, cradling it and not letting it hang at the end of her arm like so much trash, Helen had pulled a coverlet up to her chin and was curled in the corner of the couch. The television sound was back on. A doctor holding a cane in one hand and a clipboard in the other told a patient, “I like you better now that you’re dying.” Helen looked away from the screen and when she saw the bag she moaned. There was such pain in the sound that Colleen felt a stab in her chest. It was just a cat, just a fluffy grey cat with a bad habit of trying to climb up your leg, but when you had so little, such a loss was great.
“Do you want me to stay with you for a while longer?”
“No. I don’t. Just take her and go, will you?”
Colleen set the bag down on the floor while she put her coat on. Helen didn’t move to help her, or even look at her. “I’ll take good care of her, Helen, and I’ll check on you tomorrow.”
She was halfway up the stairs when Helen called out to her. “You should have been there when I needed you, when Minoche needed you.”
The words were scalding, and although Colleen did not deny the truth in them, nor her own self-loathing, something in her rebelled. Was Helen responsible for nothing? “I’ve said I was sorry.”
“Go home, Colleen. Thanks for taking care of her body. We’ll leave it at that.”
It was tempting to leave the cat’s body on the stairs. Then what would the old recluse do? As Colleen walked toward the street she wondered what the hell she should do with the carcass. She wasn’t about to take a bus to the subway and then make the long journey over to the Danforth, and she wasn’t going to pay for a cab either. When she’d walked far enough from Helen’s low window that if the woman stood on a stool to look after her she wouldn’t be able to see her, Colleen shifted her burden and let the bag dangle. Now what? The night was cold as iced steel and the stars were bright, distant and utterly disinterested. No one had their garbage cans out, which left only one solution.
Colleen didn’t want to go through the lobby of her building dragging a dead cat, nor did she want to walk all the way around to the back. It was cold. She was cold. Her nose dripped. The situation was absurd. As she neared the building entrance a car pulled up alongside her and stopped at the front doors. It was a sports car, bright yellow, low to the ground. Nobody living in this building could afford a car like that, surely. She wal
ked past, determinedly not looking at it. A girl giggled and told the driver she’d be back down in a minute. Colleen opened the door to the building and the girl followed her in.
“Hey. Wow, it got cold, huh?” said the girl. She was dark haired, with a lot of eye makeup and very red lipstick smeared around her mouth. It was on her teeth, as though she’d taken a bloody bite out of something. Perhaps she had.
“That will happen in Canada this time of year,” said Colleen.
The girl chuckled as though what Colleen had said was funny, and then she looked down at the bag Colleen carried and wrinkled her pert little nose ever so slightly. The smile on her face faltered.
Oh, charming, thought Colleen. Now I’m the old lady who smells. She was just at that point when she could see behind the masks people wore, could see down to what they really thought and felt and understood the judgments they passed—and it was always so ugly, so wounding.
She kept her stride long, and pretty darn even, all things considered, and made her way to the back of the building. Laughter, inappropriate and slightly worrying, bubbled up her throat. Oh dear. Oh dear. That wasn’t a great sign. Next she’d be laughing and crying all at once and if that was going to happen she really needed to be in her own room where no one could see her and think they should call the cops. She would not look good in a straitjacket. Almost no one did.
The rear door was heavy and the wind was against her, so she shouldered into it. It slammed back in a gust, and as it did, it caught the garbage bag in the jamb. Something, possibly a leg bone, snapped and the bag tore slightly. The smell, which she really hadn’t noticed before in spite of the red-mouthed girl’s insulting nose crinkle, now burst up with the power of a stink bomb. Colleen would not look at whatever poked through the plastic. She heaved herself against the door and it gave way so that she stumbled into the parking lot. Holding the bag as far away from her body as possible, she jogged to the three rusty rubbish bins standing in a row by the service entrance. It wasn’t hard to toss the mushy bundle over the side of the container. It hit the metal with a sickening thud and rustled to the bottom.
And then it was done. Minoche was no more. She wondered if she should say some words. The only thing that came to mind was “the song of mehitabel,” Don Maquis’s poem about a free-spirited alley cat in her ninth life: wotthehell wotthehell / there’s a dance in the old dame yet / toujours gai toujours gai. There was no denying Minoche was an alley cat now.
Oh dear, there was that laughter threatening again.
What was wrong with her? She was not a callous person. She had loved the little fluffball, so imperious with her green eyes and aloof flick of the tail. She had been such a pretty cat and poor Helen’s only friend. Gone for want of a phone call, perhaps. Dead for want of someone to take her to the vet.
Oh dear, there were the tears.
Colleen hurried back inside. In the lobby—thank you for emptiness—into the elevator—still no one, bless you, elevator—along the blissfully vacant hall to her door. Click, you lovely lock, get ready little Russian fairy, here comes Colleen.
The door closed behind her and once again the unoccupied apartment, which just a moment before had seemed such an appealing sanctuary, took on a sinister aspect. The bone-grey light from the city outside flowed through the windows. Such an aggressive, soulless light. It made the table, the shelves, the television, the sofa, all look malevolent, as though they might come to life at any moment and hunch across the floor toward her. Ridiculous, she told herself, and flicked on the lights. That was better, but she couldn’t get over the feeling something might come slouching along the hallway from the bedroom. Some hand might grip the corner of the wall. Colleen’s chest tightened.
Get a hold of yourself. Why was she suddenly so frightened of the place that had been her home all these years? She reached for the vodka bottle on the kitchen counter without taking off her coat and—to hell with it—lifted it to her lips and drank. One gulp and then several more. Hello, little Tatyana, Fairy Queen. Dance me a pretty Cossack dance. Dance away my fear. She would be like Dostoyevsky—a realist who did not fear the results of her study.
The apartment was impossibly, accusingly quiet. She removed her coat and dropped it on the floor next to her purse. Who cared? She poured a glass of straight Russian courage—why bother with the cheap illusion of a mix? She went to the living room and popped Tom Waits into the CD player. Tom sang about orphaned things left out in the rain, things no one wanted. She sang along to the music. Was there a sadder song on the face of the planet? The despair tango. She drank and swayed and turned out the lights. The place didn’t look so frightening anymore. Tom sang on about all the broken and rusted things he’d never throw away. And then the long lonely train whistle. She sat on the couch. Ah yes, here came the tears, the pretty tears, sparkling like diamonds on her lashes.
Tom Waits’s gravel-velvet voice floated over her. Such sweet sorrow. Someone knew her, someone sang her soul. She was born in the wrong time. She should have been a young woman in the 1930s, working in a diner, maybe, pouring coffee for the customers, engaged in repartee. Her eyes would be haunted with some past heartbreak of which she never spoke. She would answer the invitation to the blues. In fact, maybe she’d start leading that life now. She’d just take off, leave her crazy mother in the semi-capable hands of the nursing staff. She’d cash in her inheritance and buy a silver trailer, one of those round ones—Airstream—that’s what they were called. She’d drive it out to cowboy country and get a job in a bar. Why not? Or a desert restaurant. She’d be the one all the regulars told their stories to and she’d write those stories down and just like Annie Proulx out there in Newfoundland or Montana or wherever she was these days, she’d tell the truth about the lives of everyday folk and she’d be a great success. A great success at last.
But first, she would send Jake an e-mail. Tell him exactly, and finally, what she thought of him.
In the bedroom, glass nicely full and sitting there so prettily next to her laptop, she stared at the computer screen. How to begin? Somewhere from the region of the living room came Waits’s voice, singing about a girl sending someone blue valentines from Philadelphia. Oh, that was a message from the gods, surely.
Dear Jake,
This will be the last you’ll hear from me. But I couldn’t go without reminding you of a certain afternoon. I’m listening to Tom Waits right now. Do you remember? That’s what we were listening to: we were listening to Tom Waits singing a song about a man haunted by the only woman he’d ever loved, whom he treated so badly she left him and never came back.
You were high. You were always high then. You only told me you loved me when you were high. You sat on my old brown plaid couch and I sat on the floor in front of you and you tangled your fingers in my hair. I ran my nails along your thighs and felt your muscles jump.
It was snowing outside. I remember that. Snowing so hard the late-afternoon light coming in through the window looked bright even though it was almost dark.
I’d never loved anyone the way I loved you and it didn’t matter to me that we fought as much as we did. I couldn’t get enough of you. I didn’t know what you were thinking just then. I used to think I understood you, but now I’m not so sure. The man I thought I knew wouldn’t have done what you did today. Wouldn’t have been doing what you’ve been doing all these years. I see that now. Maybe I just made you up. But that afternoon, what you did took me by surprise. You lifted me up and held me on your lap with my face buried in your shoulder so I couldn’t see your eyes. I tried to pull back but you wouldn’t let me.
“If I ever fuck up, I mean really fuck up,” you said, “you do what it says in the song. Send me a blue valentine from wherever you are.”
We sat like that for a long time, till long after the song had finished.
“Promise me,” you whispered.
“I promise,” I said.
But I never did. Why should I be the one to keep a promise? Then again, maybe I’m k
eeping it now. Consider this your blue valentine, you cold-hearted, manipulative shit.
It wasn’t bad. It was almost poetic. Maybe she had what it took to be a writer after all. She imagined Jake reading it. She imagined his great regret. She imagined he’d see how much he lost when he lost her. She imagined him tossing in his bed at night, calling out her name when he made love to that ridiculous Taquanda. She pressed send. And there it was, gone.
She hummed along to the music as she danced a little dance on the way back to the living room. Waits was singing now about his bad liver and broken heart. She sang along. She knew all the words, every stinging soul-etching word. She’d been singing along with Waits since the mid-eighties, back when she could drink anyone she knew under the table and then, what? What had happened? When had it happened? All those people she knew once upon a time were somewhere else now, married with kids, driving BMWs and Audis and working as stockbrokers or insurance executives or lawyers. She still had her writing. She should be writing this very minute. She would get her journal and begin immediately. Inspiration twirled along the notes of Waits’s poetic dissolution …
She stood up, a bit too quickly, and yelped when she cracked her shin against the coffee table. She grabbed her leg, lost her balance and ended up on the carpet with vodka spilled down her chest. For a moment she simply sat there, shocked by the fall. For the second time that day she was covered in spilled booze. It was unbearable. She drained what was left in her glass. Her vision swam. She’d gone too far. Had had too much. She needed food. It took her a few minutes to get to her feet and she used the wall as a support as she made her way back to the kitchen. Crackers and butter. Cheese. A piece of bread and butter. She hadn’t known she was so hungry. She considered making scrambled eggs, but even in her vodka fog she understood using a gas stove at this precise moment might not be prudent.
The Empty Room Page 20