by MB Caschetta
“A nap?” Marie says, seeking permission.
Susan holds up a box of hair color, Dark Ash Blonde. Her honeyed roots and dark eyes match the leopard-skin leotard she wears under her overalls. Susan, three or four inches taller than a child, wants to look fresh and alive when the others arrive. David used to call her Shorty.
“You nap,” she says. “I’ll dye.”
The cat rubs its scent along the perimeter of the wallpaper, prowling and crouching as it goes, stopping only once to gag and then vomit.
For most of the affair, Olive was loose and beautiful, her long legs meeting in the middle, hungry and wet. When Marie put her hand inside Olive, she felt the danger of being swallowed up whole. Though what really could happen? Olive’s e-mails demonstrated she was too self-absorbed to be threatening:
PRETEND THE WORLD IS AT YOUR DISPOSAL.
HAVE MORE AMBITION: BECOME A PARALEGAL.
Marie used to arrive home from work exhausted after David was asleep. She’d feed the cat half a can of turkey giblets from the fridge.
“Eat up,” she told David’s cat, one of his many strays. Young men, cats, and people’s mothers were always David’s specialty. Usually he was responsible for getting them hooked, so he could save them by cutting them off. One grandmother type still leaves fresh-baked cookies on the front stoop in gratitude.
“People need to be surrounded by life,” David said whenever a new stray arrived. He put them up in the guest room. “It reminds us we’re tribal at heart.”
Comments like these were supposed to make it okay when the mailman, for instance, nodded out on the sofa, or the next-door neighbor concocted God-Knows-What in the kitchen to sell to kids in the schoolyard.
Marie had always liked the animal strays best.
“We’re not cats, Marie,” David said with the latest one, happily scrubbing a pregnant feline in the bathroom. “That’s important information.”
He studied the whiskers, the tail and pink padding under the cat’s feet. “I’m calling this new one Horsy.”
“Please, no,” Marie said. “No drug names.”
“For old times’ sake, Babe,” David said. “Besides I quit today. For good. Had it.”
Marie nodded, as if she hadn’t heard it a hundred times. “That’s great.”
“Great?” David lifted the cat onto a clean towel. “I’m a failed drug pusher! What’s so great about that?”
Eventually Marie started to devise new ways out of her cycle of lying and sneaking. “Wake up, David,” she whispered, hovering over him in a bathrobe.
“What?” Under David’s dirty pajamas and narrow chest, he was pure heartache.
She brought a belt down hard across his ankles. “You left your clothes on the hall floor.”
“It won’t happen again.” His voice was breathy.
“No, it won’t,” Marie said. “Take your pajamas off.”
He was quivering.
“You’re not allowed to come, this time, David. Do you hear me?”
“Yes, Ma’am,” he said, excited already.
They had not had sex in months, and Marie was relieved by the familiarity, the push and pull of it, the being in charge, excitement rising between them.
“I love you, David,” Marie said.
As he moaned in the dark, she beat him into orgasm.
Now, Marie naps in the back bedroom. She wakes to the cat kneading her with its paws, then hears Susan answer the door, greeting their friends.
Gina Piscaretti speaks in a low voice.
She can hear Susan answer: “Depressed…lot of sleeping…bisexual again…extra touchy.” When Gina’s Great Uncle Reni was slain at the Blue Rose, Marie’s mother said she’d never met a kinder man in all her life.
“Bisexual?” she hears Gina say.
Everyone laughs.
Marie remembers how once she dutifully cleaned up David’s diarrhea as he lay trying to get clean on the futon she’s currently sprawled across. The cat makes a comforting paperweight on her chest. Marie scratches its ears, nuzzling closer.
From where they are curled around each other—half-asleep, half-awake—Marie can see the darkening sky, the last rays of orange sun. April is almost gone. She listens to her childhood girlfriends giggling in the kitchen, drinking beer, setting the table, gossiping.
Words from a recent Olive e-mail float into Marie’s head:
LET’S BE CASUAL, NOT COMPLICATED.
I’M IN IT FOR FUN. HOW ABOUT YOU?
TELL ME YOUR SECRETS.
PRETEND I’M YOUR FRIEND.
There’s a knock on the door.
“Everyone’s here,” Susan says gently.
Marie’s limbs are like stone. “Be right out.”
She gets up, putting David’s cat into a duffel bag, leaving the zipper open a bit for breathing room. She finds some clothes and puts them in her backpack.
Leaning a folding chair to the window, she climbs out as quietly as she can.
Tip-toeing to the front stoop, she unlocks her bike. The bare light glows through her front window: Her old friends are laughing in there, putting their arms around one another, raising their bottles in a glinting circle of amber-colored glass, reunited after many years. Marie listens for the happy sound of clinking beer.
She likes the idea of spying on her life through shabby curtains, finding happiness there.
Outside, it’s getting chilly. On her bike, Marie makes her way along the empty streets to the railroad tracks across town. The cat bounces against the handlebars as her bike’s thin tires hit the tracks. They remind her of the bruised veins in David’s ropy arms.
She pedals and holds on.
*
On the first train waiting at Atlantic Avenue, she takes a seat near the door, across from a sleeping woman, whose clothes and glasses remind her of Olive. At this moment, the real Olive might be sending her an e-mail:
IT’S NOT OKAY FOR PEOPLE TO JUST DISAPPEAR.
Once the train starts moving, Marie unzips the bag, letting the cat’s head stick out.
“Cute,” the sleeping woman says, apparently only resting her eyes for show. “What’s her name?”
“Oh, it’s Honey, I guess.”
“Nice.” The woman has the same ironic intonation as Olive. Even so she is pretty.
“Someone else named her,” Marie says.
“Where are you going?” the woman asks.
Nowhere, thinks Marie. They sway with the motion of the train.
“Penn Station.”
“And after that?”
“Somewhere warm,” Marie says. “What about you?”
“I’m leaving too.” The woman tugs at the red scarf tied around her neck. “Things didn’t work out so well here.”
The cat begins to make more noise. The woman scratches its ears.
“I used to have cats.” She looks at Marie. “Before...well…whatever.”
Marie pushes the cat’s head back in the bag.
“Things never got right,” the woman adds. “What else can a person do?”
This is more information than Marie bargained for. Still, the woman looks so sad Marie can’t judge her harshly.
As more people board the train, the woman slides into the seat next to Marie. She places her cashmere coat on her knees to cover the cat as people make their way down the aisle.
In the dark glass of the train’s dirty window, they are a pair already: Marie in the foreground looking young and lost; the well-dressed woman next to her sleepy and worn.
The cat twitches.
Marie wonders if the cat ever dreams about what happened in the bathroom: David pounding open the bathroom window with his little pearly gun, not even high, just stupid; the sound of something loud and searing, the smell of something sweet and dripping. The cat, warm and wet, growing very still, feeling sick, vomits up a hairball when it senses that death has come. One or two thuds and then nothing, nothing, nothing.
For a long time, nothing.
On th
e train, the cat twitches, purrs, and yawns. Marie puts her hand in the bag for the warmth of another living being. We’re not cats, Marie. They pass stops where Marie could get off and get back home easily if she wanted. Soon, on another train, they will pass houses and fields and ponds that look exactly like the spot where her brother Sal drowned and her uncle froze to death one very unlucky winter.
Marie closes her eyes.
Under the soft coat the woman pets David’s cat, rubbing under its chin, listening to the steady sound of purring.
“There, there, Honey,” she says.
people
say
thank you
Violet’s psychic vision about her sister came on a Thursday. It was a few moments before the blue-plate special arrived—no croutons, dressing on the side—near the end of the millennium.
“I have information to suggest you’re in for trouble,” Violet said, putting her cell phone down on the table and settling in for what promised to be a stormy meal. “It’s the nanny, I think. My suggestion is to fire her.”
Sometimes the onset of the precognitions came as a strange sensation in her body, just under the skin: not quite a headache, not quite a shiver. Like edging toward something, like sifting through junk mail in the mind. Then—like now—there came a splintering open, a warm wash of light, through which undeniably valuable information emerged.
Judith blinked back a few tears, reaching for her glass of water. “Where do you come up with this stuff?”
“I’m telling you, it’s bad. Maybe Ray’s been a decent husband, but there are things you need to know.”
Often Violet felt as if she were channeling someone else, though when she looked down at her own white blouse and floral skirt, her own fashionable patent-leather sandals, she saw it was only herself. The experience was strange yet familiar. Since childhood, she had nurtured these talents, making not necessarily big predictions about The Future, but intuiting smaller difficulties that might easily be avoided with grace.
Nothing wrong with a little advance warning. People either listened or they didn’t.
Violet remained cautious, especially around her family, weighing the good against the bruising and scarring that might result when she opened her mouth.
Judith shook her head.
“Nannies don’t generally show up at four in the morning, do they?” Violet whispered. “They don’t instinctively know when Ray’s having insomnia, or when the light in his study might be on. That kind of knowledge requires driving around in the family Suburban at God-knows-what hour. Prowling without headlights. Don’t tell me Ray hasn’t encouraged it.”
Violet pointed to her cell phone lying next to the butter.
“I can’t just call her mother,” Judith said. “Nothing has happened. And besides, they’re neighbors, Vi. The last thing we need is more talk about Ray. I’ll never find another babysitter.”
Violet felt a momentary blur behind her eyes, as if a bare lightbulb had been switched on. Words ran through her mind like ink—indelible—and she knew it as surely as she was sitting in a restaurant with Judith: the deed was as good as done. The present was still the present, she reminded herself: This was her little sister. This was her brother-in-law, of whom she’d always suspected something.
“He’s doing it, Judy.”
Judith blew her nose on the wad of Kleenex crumpled in her fist. “I don’t understand you, Violet. These ridiculous pronouncements of yours.”
The salads arrived. “Call the girl’s mother,” Violet said. “It’s one simple sentence: Your child’s services are no longer required. Then hang up.”
“This is a story about how I didn’t get much sleep last night because of a hang-up caller, not some sordid porno movie about the babysitter!”
“Then why are you crying?”
A waiter appeared holding a pepper mill under Violet’s nose; she motioned him away.
“I never did believe Ray’s story about the you-know-what,” she thought aloud.
Judith’s face turned red. “Ancient history? Is that what this is about?”
Most of the people who took Violet seriously were initially stunned, sat there like sheep that she’d dragged to slaughter, but by the end of her vision—through which Violet usually stumbled like an idiot savant reciting Lear—they acted relieved. Lightning strikes, and people say thank you.
Judith shifted in her chair, dipped a carrot into her dressing.
Her sister wasn’t the same girl she’d once been, Violet thought; she used to be a fighter. Violet reached across the table and patted Judith’s hand. It was a family trait to ignore good sense, however it arrived.
Once Violet delivered the information, she was done. Her body returned to its normal, dull existence; her mind settled down. She ate lettuce and carried on conversations like everyone else. Whatever happened with the information after that was merely the natural fulfillment of things to come.
That Monday Judith caught Ray in the pantry, the girl’s jeans unbuttoned, shirt pulled up. A series of phone calls, a violent shoving match (inadvertently involving eight-year-old Ray Jr.), and a brief stay at Motel Six followed. Then, tenuously, the first quivers of reconciliation. Ray got on his knees and made promises.
In exchange for her silence, the nanny was given a severance package.
“Violet,” Judith said without anger, gratitude, or a trace of relief, “you fucking amaze me.”
Edward Fields, minor Mid-Atlantic poet of fleeting renown and Violet’s husband of twenty years, was more exuberant about her gifts. “The truth, Violet! The absolute truth! You’ve helped me find my way.”
They’d been bickering for several weeks about the unkempt lawn. Edward was interested in art, not obligation.
Then came the light and a location, a Southern state.
“Oh, go to Georgia!” Violet had said inexplicably in the middle of their next fight about salting the icy front walkway. As happened so often, the words popped out of her mouth without warning, their meaning unknown to her.
“Do you know what a remarkable thing this is?” Edward was still holding her hand. “After all these years? To think you are the one to offer me happiness so generously. But of course it would be you. Who else? Extrasensory Violet!”
Violet wanted to take it back. “I didn’t mean it literally.”
“But therein lies the brilliance,” Edward said. After all these years, he said he no longer loved her; perhaps he never had. “I’m lazy. I need someone to take control, someone who will do it all for me. That’s where Georgia comes in.”
Georgia McFeely was a fifty-three-year-old rare-books librarian, and Edward’s lover, apparently. Violet had met her once briefly at a Rutgers faculty party.
“You’re in love with her?” Violet said, slowly catching on. She felt her stomach rotate.
“Georgia wants a lazy lover.” Edward was never one to spare the gritty details. “I swear, Violet. All she wants me to do is lie back. She even binds my hands and feet. It’s absolutely fantastic! And you understand! You have given me permission through your divination. It’s perfect! A gift from God!”
He grinned at her from across the sofa. In all likelihood he was leaving, he said.
A slave state, Violet thought.
“I thought you’d be happy,” Edward said. “You know, given how dissatisfied you’ve been.”
He was right. She should have seen it coming.
Violet could pinpoint the exact moment things had gone awry. She’d been helping her mother settle into a new room at the nursing home in Plainsboro. After a difficult morning of name-calling and wrist holding—twice Violet’s mother had mistaken her for someone else and twice called her a cunt—Violet had offered to shampoo her mother’s hair.
Surprisingly, her mother seemed delighted by the idea.
Violet placed two folding chairs one behind the other on the sun porch so she could take the tangles out of her mother’s hair as they watched the sun setting across Route 103.
Violet felt calm—even affectionate—as she slowly unpinned her mother’s bun, untwisted the long braid, and began caressing a length of silver in her hand. Like ribbon, she thought.
Her mother hummed.
The sun sank in a slow glinting arc over New Jersey, until it was nothing more than a glowing memory. In the dim room, her mother began to speak lucidly.
“Violet,” she said, “I’ve been thinking about your life.”
“Really? What have you been thinking?”
“I’ve been thinking that you need a little more life in it.”
Violet was touched, as if her mother actually wished the best for her. “That’s probably true.”
“All those papers you grade,” she said. “All that time with Edward and his insipid poetry.”
“Now, Mother.”
“No, really, Violet.” Her mother straightened in her chair. Her voice became urgent. “How do you expect me to keep track of who you are when you don’t even know yourself?”
Violet opened her mouth.
“Look at you!” her mother said to her reflection in the dark window. “When’s the last time Violet Stern Fields had a good laugh? Does she ever laugh? And when’s the last time Violet Stern Fields had a good time?” Each question felt like a slap. Her mother turned in the chair to face her. “I mean, Violet, have you ever had an orgasm?”
Violet saw herself in the windowpane: a shock of curly hair, a gash of mouth. Tears blurred her vision.
Violet’s mother yanked the brush from her hand and said in a completely different voice, “What say we stir up some trouble in the TV lounge?”
After a long, teary drive home, Violet found Edward in the study grading papers and insisted they make love there and then on the oak desk.
After, she’d said, “We’re going to start making love every week. And with a little vigor, if you don’t mind.”
Edward murmured and went back to his work.
She’d actually grabbed his shoulders. “Do you know any good jokes, Edward? Can you please make me laugh?”