Douglas Nelson - Cat On A Blue Monday

"What a memory for detail! And checking out an animal isn't that arcane as long as it isn't big enough to kick you."

Matt leaned forward to adjust the air-conditioning fan. "The farm was my grandparents'; we went there almost every weekend when I was a kid, but I lived in the city, the old, inner city."

Temple nodded and eyed the neighborhood the Storm's headlights revealed in bright snatches. "Funny, I was here just today on an errand of mercy; I guess you'd call it."

"Errand of mercy?" He sounded struck by the phrase.

Temple took her right arm off the wheel and flexed it weight-lifter style, while

declaiming:

"Cat feeder for the world,

Litter-l ugger, stacker of Tender Vittles,

Player with kittens and the nation's pet-sitter . . ."

Matt's laughter was relaxed for the first time that evening. Temple knew that her impromptu paraphrase of Carl Sandburg's poem "Chicago" wouldn't amuse him if he hadn't told the truth about growing up there. She sighed. Here she was, expecting every word to be a lie, like Molina, just because Molina had proved that Max Kinsella was living a lie. All men did not lie just because Max had, and besides, Max's sins were of omission more than commission. What were Matt's sins? Maybe she'd find out tonight, Temple thought with interest.

"Turn here," he said tersely.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, why?" "I can't believe it! I was just on this street a few hours ago, yesterday evening. l could have found my way here solo, even in the dark. The Cat Lady I visited lives near here. Does your old teacher keep cats, by any chance?"

"Only two, Peter and Paul,"

"Peter . . . ? A pumpkin-colored--"

"There she is! She shouldn't be waiting outdoors at night in this neighborhood," Matt hissed under his breath, opening his door and bounding out of the car before Temple had fully stopped it.

She followed as soon as she could wrestle her tote bag from the backseat, where it had fallen to the floor and wedged itself behind the driver's seat. Then she remembered Matt's concern and locked the Storm. By now he was conferring intensely with a woman whom the streetlight etched in pale grays.

She eyed Matt's former teacher with interest: tall and white-haired, she was leading Matt down the block at a rapid pace. "it was easier to tell you to come here than to direct you to a new address," she was explaining in the breathless voice of one who's been handling a crisis alone for too long.

"Fine, Seraphina," he said, turning to make sure Temple was all right. "This is a neighbor, Temple Barr."

The woman turned to give Temple a glance that took her in from top of the head to tippy-toes. Then she bustled on down the overgrown sidewalk, a bag like a doctor's swinging against her leg. Temple wondered if the woman was a doctor--or a nurse--and if so, why did she need Matt? And what kind of name was "Seraphina" and why just that?

"We look in on this elderly neighbor lady," Seraphina was explaining to Matt. She turned right at a walkway leading to the shadowy bulk of a house. "She's a bit . . . eccentric, and sometimes confused. She isn't always the most reliable person, cries wolf, but she called tonight again in a very credible panic. When I came over, I couldn't decide if her distress was physical or mental, but it was distress--"

"Then you didn't send for an ambulance?" Matt demanded, almost accused.

"I thought we'd decide about that . . . after." Seraphina had stopped at the front door to grope in her pocket for a key.

Temple reflected on how only elderly women came equipped with routine pockets nowadays. Her own jumpsuit had none, no doubt to preserve its sleek, wrinkle-free modern lines; too bad people didn't come with the same guarantee.

"None of this may be necessary--" Matt was saying with an impatience new to him "----me, Temple's car and Temple, this . . . entire emergency."

"It is necessary!" Seraphina retorted fiercely. "Do you think I would call on you if it weren't an extreme matter?"

Matt didn't answer for a moment. "You might think you were doing it for my own good," he said at last.

"For her good, I gave up on you when you graduated grade school; you're on your own, Matthias," she answered, then pushed a key into the lock and worked the heavy door open.

"I left Rose with her," she added, to Temple's mystification, if not Matt's.

Temple could only follow along like an unneeded comma, a trailing, expendable body tacked to the end of the mysterious rescue party. Her floppy shoes had made a disgraceful racket on the walk outside; they were no more discreet on the interior tile floors. But after four steps into the house, she stopped dead.

Even in the dark of night, even distracted by the emergency and the puzzling, unspoken byplay between Matt and this Seraphina woman, Temple knew where she was. Her nose told her so. Her nose said "Cats ahoy!" Cats to bow and port, and cats amidships. Cats high. cats low, cats large, cats small. Cats in hats, maybe, but most certainly cats in litter boxes, oh my.

A light switch flashed on at the older woman's sure touch, illuminating a staircase rising into the dark of a second story. Sure enough, cats were sprawling on the treads and balancing on the wrought-iron handrail and playing patty-cake through the bars of the decorative bird cage.

Matt and the old woman were working their way upward, stepping around cats as called for. He had taken the bag from her and from the rear, looked like a doctor making a house call.

Temple rushed to catch up with the pair, even though she felt redundant to their drama. The upstairs hall led to a bedroom, of course, where another old woman sat beside an even older woman who lay on the bed, her head tossing, her hands wringing. Blandina Tyler looked waxen and harried at the same time. Her eyes roamed the room's perimeter as if seeking escape---or an unseen enemy trying to enter.

"Noises again," she was murmuring in a monotone. "Betrayed by noises and lights and hisses. And Peter could not be found. They were coming for the Lord, and Peter could not be found . . . . Has the cock crowed yet?"

"Hush, Blandina." Seraphina rustled over like a veteran nurse and passed a calming hand over the woman's brow.

"The neighborhood roosters will be screeching soon enough." She glanced at the attendant. "Any change?"

The woman named Rose shook her grizzled head. "She may have hyperventilated while you were gone, but her condition got no worse, just the nonsensical ravings--"

Temple watched the two women, puzzled. They were past seventy, bespectacled, plain and rather clumpy, yet both radiated an air of cheerful competence polished to a high gloss, like retired nurses. Matt, she saw, watched the woman in the bed as if hypnotized by her. Did he know Blandina Tyler?

"They want me to die." Miss Tyler wailed suddenly.

"They will take all I have and draw lots for the rest. For the cats, I was in the garden when they came, with noise and lights--and where was Peter? Run away. I wasn't going to struggle, but then--oh, it's horrible, horrible, Profanity.

'Pray for us now and at the hour of our death--' I don't want to die that way!"

Her clutching fingers reached for the women trying to calm her agitated body. She clung to their hands as if to sanity.

"She's no better," Seraphina judged. "Call the ambulance, Rose," As her friend rushed from the room. Seraphina bowed close to the stricken woman. "I've brought the sacrament, Blandina. You needn't worry about dying untended."

"Not . . . Father Hernandez!" Blandina both begged and ordered. "Not . . . him. He wants me in heaven without my cats, and I won't have that. I'd rather go to hell!"

"Now, you don't mean that, and it won't happen, and not Father Hernandez, Someone else."