LOST
RUDOLPH THE CAT
GRAY, SKINNY, WHITE PAWS, SHORT HAIR BUT A FLUFFY TAIL. LIKE THE TAIL CAME FROM ANOTHER CAT.
NINE YEARS OLD.
LAST SEEN ON AUGUST 25TH BUT NOW I SEE HIM EVERYWHERE.
ANSWERS TO: BABY, RUDY, RUDE, RUDE BOY, COME HERE.
LIKES: RUBS ON HIS BELLY, TO BE TOLD THAT HE IS VERY GOOD AND BEAUTIFUL, GIRLS WHO WILL LOVE HIM FOREVER.
REWARD OFFERED.
SIGNS
I offer Fast Eddie a one-second look at my tits if he’ll let me make twenty-five copies on his greasy copy machine, but it’s the start of the workday, so my copies are free. He waves me on and goes back to his phone call.
Our phone number, and Aunt Bev’s too, is written in the tiny little squares on the bottom of the flyer I copy. I make a cut between each square so they’ll be easy to tear off, take home, and hold, as the numbers are dialed with news. I hang up my lost-cat signs all over the ten blocks of Rosary I imagine Rudolph would have been likely to roam. But no one calls.
The telephone poles around Rosary are white with flyers. It didn’t used to be like that, Dad says, before the county tore. Back then, Rosary had regular internet, the real kind, like a real living way to connect, and people lost and found things, and each other, that way. Now computers are pretty useless here, but the telephone poles are crammed with flyers, everybody buying or selling. Or begging. These poles are the real Yellow Pages of Rosary, full of desperate phone numbers from Single White Males, mostly, and they are seeking hard. There really aren’t anything but white males in Rosary, so I don’t know why they bother with the description, like it’s a selling point or something. I don’t even know why they call them telephone poles anymore, since every real phone is wireless and only a legal adult with two forms of identification can purchase one here. Aunt Bev says it’s a holdout from when people used to be proud of progress instead of terrified of it. Now it just sounds weird and you can hardly read through all the flyers before your neck gets sore from looking up. But I still post mine anyway, right between the offers and the promises, and I hope.
MUSICAL CHAIRS
The seating arrangement at our house used to look like this in the mornings:
—three empty chairs and then one mostly filled by Dad when he would sit down to have a cup of coffee and a piece of toast before going to work. He’d fold his hands over his toast, never touching the coffee until “the gratitude’s been added.” The blessing. Dad’s best part of waking up.
And like this in the evenings:
—a dark kitchen because Dad is working overtime, as usual, all the overtime he can get, or he is at his Thursday night council meeting, or men’s prayer group, and I’m at Fast Eddie’s, which Dad unknowingly refers to as Aunt Beverly’s, because he never acknowledges that her shoppe is a business and certainly not a psychic one, because he never acknowledges that I might be somewhere else drinking myself into a readiness to come home. Dad calls this “doing my homework,” which is kind of poetic if you think about it.
Or:
—the light is on over grilled cheese and tomato soup or boxed macaroni and cheese and salad from a bag because we’re both home. Still, Dad won’t touch his, or the iced tea, until his hands are folded over it, until he whispers those words I can barely make out except for my name in them and what he is always asking his God to do when he says it. “Bless Helen.” And I don’t fold my hands, rest my forehead on them like Dad, but I wait. I look out the window, at the bushes that we seem to keep watering just so the spiders have a place to string their webs, up at the clock with the abalone shell numbers and its hands covered in dust, at the mess of orange cheese fakery and noodles on my plate. As Dad prays, I make an inventory of things right in front of my face, things to believe in that require no faith at all.
* * *
The mornings are the same since that day in Principal Harrison’s office, except Dad’s prayer is longer, which seems impossible. Now there are more names in it to perk my ears up, the Doncasters, Iris’s name and Bird’s real name. Bird, who perks up other parts of me.
* * *
The evening prayer is very different from before, though. Now it looks like this:
—there are no empty chairs. One is mostly filled by Dad, one is tipping back on two legs, leaning against the wall, filled by Bird. Next to Bird and inched as far away from him as I can move, there’s me. The fourth chair is empty then full, empty then full, as Iris is cooking and sitting, stirring something on the stove, sitting, getting more iced tea, sitting, getting one more thing no one asked for, sitting. For goodness’ sake, woman, would you sit?
When the food is ready we hold hands.
And when Bird’s hand touches mine for those seconds over the table, his middle finger circles around and around in my palm.
THE MARK WHERE THE NAIL HAS BEEN
Bird is a piece of ass. Everyone knows it. Including and especially Bird. Until Winthrop arrived, he was the tallest kid at Rosary even though, like me, he is only a junior this year. And he wasn’t even held back. A fact that is a source of constant surprise. Bird’s hair is golden and thick and he pushes it straight back so it adds to his height, but still, stray curls manage to hang into his eyes, locks of hair that are easy to imagine swaying back and forth over you. He doesn’t look like Iris at all. Like his dad, I guess, and so I forgive Iris a little bit for being unable to resist making just one hot mistake.
Bird sees right into you. He has that gift, like Aunt Bev’s, except he can only see this one part, one thing. Bird can only see that piece of you that wants him. He zeroes right in on it and then he smirks, shakes his head like tsk tsk tsk, but it’s my name he says, the only time he says it in full, on nights after these mandatory suppers, when Dad and Iris have taken their tea out onto the porch.
Bird and I clear the table. I’m working too fast and he’s working too slow. I am not looking at him, I am not going to look at him. But when I hand him another plate to dry, he doesn’t take it. He stands there, the wet plate dripping onto the linoleum between us, he waits for me to look at his face. When I do, he shakes his head slowly, that lock of hair falling between us, and he whispers with a tsk tsk tsk. “Helen, Helen, Helen.”
* * *
I watched him do this during Vacation Bible Camp, to girl after girl after girl on those afternoons after lunch when Pastor Ted would check his watch and stand up, saying, “Okay, I’ll be back in twenty minutes,” when he’d point heavenward and add, “I’m leaving my boss in charge.”
The afternoon after that first inner-space lecture, Bird stood up as soon as the door closed on all of Pastor Ted’s earnest goodwill. Bird stood up and took over. He didn’t exactly point, but he looked right at one of the girls seated around the long table where our lunches were spread out. He stared at this Thumper named Jessica who blushed constantly and could hardly look any of us in the eye, much less Bird. Jessica wore her long hair in a French braid, her lunch was obviously packed by her mom and came with fruit chopped in a plastic container, a napkin rolled up. And Bird was staring at her. It was like watching one of those nature shows when you feel sorry for that deer straggling behind the herd even though nothing has happened to it yet.
I don’t think Bird even knew her name, but when Jessica finally looked up at him, because she had to, because the room was still and silent and everyone was looking at her now, he nodded toward the closet door and said, “Do you want to go to Outer Space with me?”
And she said yes.
Well, not exactly. She didn’t say anything. But she stood up so fast that she knocked her official Vacation Bible Camp binder onto the floor and she didn’t even pick it up. Bird went to the closet and held open the door for her then, as if the old rusting vacuum and the forgotten scarf and empty hangers inside of it were the finest accommodations. And, just like he was a guest at a fancy hotel, he knew they would not be disturbed when he shut the door.
At first no one moved. We sat as hypnotized as
Jessica had been. Listening. I don’t know for what. Then we were all watching the clock over the refrigerator, the second hand moving busily along, the way I imagined Bird’s hands were doing down the buttons of Jessica’s blouse, up under Jessica’s bra. Up. Down.
Then only Cy watched the clock. The rest of us passed around Jessica’s plastic cup of strawberries. Said nothing. When there was only a minute or so until Pastor Ted’s return, Cy knocked on the closet door and Bird and Jessica popped out, sweaty and ruffled. And hot.
* * *
The next day, the sticker with Jessica’s name was gone from her Vacation Bible Camp binder and stuck instead to the cover of Bird’s actual Bible. The white square with her nervous handwriting fit perfectly over the “Holy” embossed there.
Her sticker was followed by stickers from the camp binders of Celeste, Zoey, and Allison, until the entire cover was full. Then Marie’s sticker appeared along the Bible’s spine, and on its back, April’s, and no less than two Kats’. The Kats were distinguished by a cavalier underline on one, a drawing of a whiskered cat face on the other. Jessica was distinguished by having been first, and by managing to make it through to the end of camp despite being so brokenhearted that Jesus wept again. Bird was distinguished by having the camp’s most desecrated Bible by virtue of his having gone to Outer Space with every girl at camp. Every Thumper, anyway. And what distinguished me was that Bird and I never went to Outer Space. Even though it was all I thought about. Or because it was all I thought about. Like he knew. Like it would be too easy that way and he wanted to make it harder for me.
So to speak.
* * *
When Iris and Bird have gone home after another dinner from hell, I can’t help it. Teeth brushed, lights out, and while Dad’s kneeling at his bedside, likely thanking the good Lord for bringing the Doncasters into our lives, I’m saying a prayer all my own. My hand flies inside my pajama bottoms as I remember the feel of Bird’s knee pressing into mine under the table, the way his muscles flex when he cuts into Iris’s chicken-fried steak, his smell that carries over whatever spices she dumped into the pan. His smell that is like old tires and fire. How he says my name over and over again like he knows this, what I’m doing right now, in my bedroom, in the dark. I go to church, find my steeple, open the door, and come to my own personal Jesus.
STAPLES
The next week, when Bird and Iris are over for dinner, the dinner when she says she wants me to start calling her Iris instead of Mrs. Doncaster, Bird says, “Hell, I didn’t even know you had a cat. And now it’s gone?”
“Now, Spencer,” Iris says. Her voice takes on a clucking as she peels potatoes at the sink, the potatoes she said she needed no help with. I asked. I ask every time if she wants help with something, but mainly it is to hear her say no. Because I don’t want to help. Except with cyanide.
The sound is the same kind of clucking like Bird does when we’re washing dishes, like she knows someone is being naughty and she likes it. Tsk tsk tsk.
Just then, Dad shuffles in the front door. He’s late today. And because Iris goes to greet him, neither of them hears Bird when he leans in close to me, his hand on my knee under the table before I can push my chair back. “Isn’t your aunt in the business of helping people find some pussy?” He says “pussy” casually, like he’s been reading porn with me and Winthrop, saying all the words aloud until nothing, not a single one, can make us stumble or blush. And I don’t. Usually. But Bird says it like he’s just had some and is ready for some more, and when he says “pussy,” in that whisper, with his hand hot at my knee, I feel my face flush and it is still warm when my dad comes into the kitchen.
Dad has one of my lost-cat flyers in his hand, apparently brought over by the woman I should no longer call Mrs. Doncaster. When I see the look on Dad’s face, scrunched with worry, I know we are going to have a talk. And after dinner, when we’re alone, we do. Iris’s potatoes au gratin settles like stone in the quarry of my stomach. All the things I want to say to my dad, to explain to him, and all I want to say back to Bird, to do to him, are swallowed there, waiting to fill my dreams tonight.
GRACE
Maybe I want him to worry. For Dad to think about me for a few minutes, notice me, our house and our life, and how what we are missing cannot be replaced. When Aunt Bev worked that magic trick in our kitchen with Mom’s letters and fire, she gave back to Dad what he’d actually never lost, put it right in him forever. Where it always was. Mom’s love. And I was still out here, outside of him, but I had never felt forgotten until the Doncasters started becoming a fixture in our house. So, yeah, maybe I was being a little bit of a drama queen with the lost-cat flyers. But it was a cry for help from a telephone pole, it isn’t like I need an intervention.
And it worked. Too well. If I had tried to hurt myself, Dad would know what to do. There would be doctors, a mess to clean up. This is a little trickier, and it shows on Dad’s face. The door has barely closed behind Iris and Bird after dinner and dishes and plans for next time when Dad catches me in the hallway trying to slink away.
“Helen.” He has the flyer. I had hoped to hide it but couldn’t get out from under Bird’s stare to grab it and I knew Bird would bring it up again if I gave him the chance, knew he would love a reason to say “pussy” again, right in front of my dad, and then laugh it away while I tried to figure out how to act, how to pretend to be shocked and not turned on at the same time. Tsk tsk tsk.
“Helen.” Dad smooths the paper out, unfolds a corner. “Are you feeling okay?”
I look at the flyer in his hand, how he holds it, gently, like he doesn’t want to get his fingerprints on it. Like it is some kind of X-ray and maybe by examining all the shadows that fall between its whiteness and blackness we can figure out just how sick I am.
He holds it out to me and waits. Like the letters on it are leaves at the bottom of a cup and he doesn’t want to jumble them up before I have a chance to see what they foretell.
And I say nothing. Because I’m not a doctor. And I’m not telling anyone’s fortune. I am just a kid and one who is trying not to speak before knowing how much trouble she is actually in.
Dad starts pulling out a staple still stuck in a corner from where Iris ripped the flyer down. It is bright purple, from the special rainbow set Dad bought for me with the brand-new heavy-duty stapler and the all-color set of Sharpies. So I could make lost-cat flyers when Rudolph first disappeared.
Six years ago.
Right after Mom died.
I said I was being a little bit of a drama queen.
The markers, staples, and stapler. This was the only gift, the only thing, the only action Dad took in my direction, from the day we rushed to the hospital to say goodbye to Mom until that morning, almost a year later, when Aunt Bev made him swallow all of Mom’s words, swallow them down, so he could finally find something inside of himself to say to his own still-living daughter.
And here he is now, pulling one of those staples out like our lives depend on its preservation. Not looking me in the eye. Not saying anything more. And then it is like he is the one who knows he has done wrong and is wondering just how wrong this time. How much trouble has he caused? Is his daughter losing her mind, finally, like he had done once?
We stand there. Two big kids trying to figure out who is in charge, looking for the directions for a game too advanced for us. Playing pretend, just like we did while he was lost because Mom was lost and then the cat got lost. Like we did when Dad went out and bought me some tools for finding whatever there is that can be found. Because he at least seemed to understand this much, then: when your faith leaves you, when there is nothing but silence and an empty bed, sometimes you have to make your own signs.
LAZARUS
I felt Rudolph’s weight and warmth and reached for him, for his skinny, furry self on the side of my bed, but he wasn’t there. Instead, it was Dad, his big bunch of keys cold on his belt loop. His face was puffy like usual back then, the months after Mom died, l
ike he hadn’t so much been asleep as buried, the sheets and pillowcases creasing into the creases already etched into him.
Mom’s dead, I thought.
I thought this because this is what you think after someone dies. Every morning when you wake up you lunge for this thought because thinking this as fast as you can saves you from the splintering pain of not remembering, of thinking they are still alive even for a single second. If Mom is already dead, I thought, why is he looking at me like that? I could feel the bad news in the air and it was so heavy hanging there, I was surprised not to hear Aunt Bev’s cowboy boots on the stairs already, come to help us with this tragedy, with this new grief, whatever it was.
“Dad?”
“It’s time to get up for school, first day of sixth grade.” He stood up, then started talking fast, like a shy person making a toast. “Helen, I have bad news.”
He held out his hand, it jingled as he did. He was holding Rudolph’s collar, a circle of frayed and faded leather with a rusted bell and a tag that said his name and our phone number and, on the back, Please call, she misses me.
It might as well have been the first day of kindergarten, the way I burst into tears.
Dad tried. He tried to interrupt me, to stop my racing thoughts. “No, Helen.” He knelt down beside my bed, put his hands on my knees. “He’s … I don’t know. I found his collar in the driveway.”
“I’m going to look for him.” I grabbed the collar as if it were a clue.
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