Блейз Клемент - Cat Sitter On A Hot Tin Roof

I looked at the book and laughed. It was The Cat in the Hat .

I said, “That was Christy’s favorite story. She loved Dr. Seuss.”

It was amazing how that had just popped out of my mouth, flowing out easily, not choked by sobs or hoarse from a closed throat. I had been doing that a lot lately, mentioning Christy or Todd easily and casually. It was a strange and bittersweet feeling to be able to do that.

Pete said, “Hal called. The boy’s still out from the anesthesia.”

“Maybe that’s normal.”

“I don’t think so. I think he should be awake by now. Hal said the doctors keep coming in to check on him.”

“Well, they would anyway.”

Mazie raised her head and looked back and forth at us, like a spectator at a tennis match. Then she heaved another huge sigh. When a dog sighs a lot, it’s a sure sign of stress. In this case, it was also a sure sign that Mazie knew that neither Pete nor I knew diddly about what was normal for a three-year-old after brain surgery.

I got her leash and jingled it. “Let’s go for a walk, okay?”

Like a dutiful soldier, she hiked with me down the driveway to the sidewalk. We hesitated there, both of us uncertain which way we wanted to go. As if we had held a discussion about it and came to the same decision, we both turned at the same moment and walked toward Laura’s house. As we passed it, we turned our heads and peered through the shielding trees, but we didn’t see any sign of Laura.

I wondered if Laura’s defiance with her husband that morning had been an act. I wondered if she were inside her house needing a friend to talk to. I was her friend, or at least wanted to be, but I couldn’t ring her doorbell and say, “This morning I hid behind some bushes and eavesdropped on you and your husband. Want to talk about it?”

No, the best thing to do was to wait a day or two and ask her to have dinner with me. Then, if she wanted to tell me what was going on with her husband, we could talk.

At the end of the block, Mazie and I stopped to look at a couple of great blue herons standing at the base of a power pole. They were watching a fish hawk atop the pole. The fish hawk was downing a flopping mullet, and the herons were waiting to catch the leftovers.

Mazie made a wuffing sound and sat down with her tail wagging, probably a form of doggie applause for such a sensible display. Nature is neither squeamish nor wasteful. In the animal kingdom, every creature aids and is aided by every other creature. Humans, on the other hand, haven’t evolved yet enough to do that.

When the show was over, Mazie got up and walked back home with me. It seemed to me that the corners of her mouth were raised a bit, not in a smile exactly, but not in the morose look she’d had before. I felt more positive too. It’s good to be reminded of nature’s intelligence. Even when we can’t see it in our own lives, it’s still there.

As Mazie and I went past Laura’s house, I didn’t even look toward it.

I will never know if it would have changed anything if I had gone to her door right then.

11

On the way home, Ray Charles was still in my head singing “You don’t know me,” while I beat time on the steering wheel and grinned at the contradiction of a wide-hipped Silverado pickup with a gun rack in the back and a RAPTURE! sticker on the bumper. Florida is an Old Testament state where God walks with us in the cool of the evening. But he tells us not to get too smart, not to eat of the tree of knowledge, or we will die. And all around us, a sibilant sea whispers the soul’s terrifying truth: “If you eat of the tree, you will not die.” It’s no wonder so many of us are gun-toting fundamentalists.

At home, I pulled into the carport just as the sun plunged into the Gulf in a final burst of Technicolor glory. Paco was on the deck with Ella in his arms watching the show, and I trotted over to join them. Only Paco could manage to look slim and fit in slouchy black sweatpants and a floppy white T-shirt. The pants even accentuated the fact that he has the most gorgeous butt in the universe.

Gorgeous butt or not, he looked lonely.

He slung his free arm over my shoulder and we stood taking in the floating sky banners of turquoise and hot pink and orange. We didn’t speak until the colors had finally faded and the sun’s glittering path from horizon to shore disappeared.

As the surf wrote frothy messages on the sand, Paco said, “Have you eaten?”

“No, and I’m starving.”

“Me too.”

We both sighed in unison. Without Michael to feed us, we were like newly hatched chicks without a mother.

Paco said, “There’s some turkey and stuff in the fridge.”

I said, “We could make sandwiches.”

We both perked up. Sandwiches weren’t as good as what Michael would have fed us, but we had solved the dinner problem, and we had each other.

I said, “I’ll be down in ten minutes,” and loped upstairs.

Ten minutes later, I skipped down barefoot and still slightly damp from a speed shower, but decently covered in elastic-waist cotton pants and an oversized T-shirt, a female version of what Paco wore.

In the kitchen, Ella was perched on her stool looking wistfully at the spread on the butcher-block island. Paco had hauled out everything remotely related to sandwich making, and was crouched in front of the refrigerator poking into its innards.

He said, “I can’t find the horseradish mustard.”

“On the door. What kind of beer do you have?”

He held up a dark glass bottle with a long neck. “Some exotic stuff Michael got at the Sarasota Brewing Company. You can have Golden Wheat, Midnight Pass Porter, or Sunset Red.”

“Ooh, cool. I’ll have the porter.”

I got plates and made room for them by shoving aside cutting boards holding sliced turkey and ham, sliced tomatoes and onions. There was a loaf of pumpernickel bread and one of rye, along with jars of mayonnaise, three kinds of mustard, two kinds of pickles, black and green olives, several varieties of relish, both mild and hot salsa, and some things I didn’t recognize. Also chips, both potato and corn. We could have fed half of Siesta Key.

We took seats and fell on the food like happy cannibals, smearing big globs of mayonnaise and mustard on bread and layering on meat and condiments to hoggish heights. Being a lady, I daintily cut my sandwich in half, on the diagonal. Paco just held his carefully so nothing would slip out the bottom. For a few minutes, the only sound was the crunch of crisp pickles and snap of chips.

After a while, I said, “You know the woman I told you about? The one with the sadistic surgeon husband?”

“Yeah?”

“Well, he’s found her. This morning I overheard them talking. He was scary.”

“All the more reason for you to stay out of it. That woman’s situation sounds like a plane crash about to happen.”

“She needs a friend, Paco. That’s all I’m offering.”

“Sounds to me like she needs a good lawyer. Maybe a good shrink.”

“Just because she left her husband doesn’t make her crazy.”

“I’m just saying she needs more help than you can give her.”

I couldn’t argue with that, so we chewed for a few more minutes without talking.

But I’m the one who, when I was five years old and made to sit in a corner in kindergarten because I talked too much, told my mother that if you went too long without talking all your mouth bones would grow together. I don’t have any trouble with silence if I’m alone, but when another person is present, my mouth is still afraid all its bones will fuse if I don’t speak.

I said, “You know those songs or commercials that get stuck in your head?”

“They’re called ear worms. Comes from some German word that sounds like ear worms and means the same thing. Don’t remember what it is.”