Perri O'Shaughnessy - Presumption Of Death

She stuck her head through the door. Two sleepy, curly heads emerged from the flowered sheets.

“Rise and shine,” she said. Her mother used to say that, and she said it too, hoping for good moods.

“I’m awake,” April announced. “We’ll be right there.”

“Where’s Grandpa?” Callie asked a few minutes later, sliding onto a stool at the counter, at eight years old, the older and more aware of Jolene’s two granddaughters.

“He works all week. He’s catching up on his sleep.”

“I thought you said he retired,” Callie said.

“Nobody retires from worrying. He needs a break.”

“Doesn’t he have to go to church with us?” asked April, only four years old, but already looking for angles. April’s red hair made you want to worry about her temperament, but she was nothing like Cathy, her mother, at the same age. She tended to think more in advance of any misbehavior.

“He usually does,” Jolene answered, a lie, but a forgivable one. George used to attend church in the days when he felt better, when the world helped him be his best self.

“I never saw him go. Not once,” Callie said, pouring syrup on her final, gigantic pancake. “You make the best pancakes in the world, Grandma.”

“Callie, your Grandpa’s been sick for a long time.”

“Where’s Mama?” April asked. Her face, shiny with hope, glowed, poreless, young, innocent. “Can she come with us? Why doesn’t she come see us?”

“She’ll come when she can,” said Jolene, reverting to her standard answer.

“Sometimes I have dreams about her not coming,” Callie said.

“Don’t you concern yourself like that, child,” Jolene said firmly. “Why, she’s coming in a couple of weeks.” She decided to call her daughter and insist on a visit. Cathy didn’t mean to be so mean. She didn’t intend to abandon her two darling children. But her life was so hard, she couldn’t always do the right thing.

Wouldn’t it be nice if the girls’ father were involved. Where was he, anyway? Sailing ships around the world? In prison? Whenever she asked, Cathy got canny. “He’s in the merchant marines, Mama, out at sea. Unreachable.” Or, “He’s trying to provide for us, for God’s sake. He’s just had a lot of bad luck.” Like he was really just a traditional husband, slaving away for a living wage.

George had always provided. He might be stingy, but he hadn’t ever asked her to work outside the home. His legs were really bothering him these days, and he had to stay in bed a lot. Thank goodness he could play his guitar even in bed. He got more pleasure out of that old hollow-body than most men get from their wives. He was playing it in the bedroom right now, working on a new song.

“Grandpa’s up!”

“You stay right here, Callie.”

George sang from the bedroom,

I’m at the Humble Pie Motel in Room two-thirty-three

And if you ever loved me, honey, ask the manager for the

key…

Her heart filled up with love for him. But I’m going to have to do something, she thought to herself, not for the first time. Yessirree.

Then they heard something else, a yowling Jolene knew well. George’s muffled voice trailed off. He was listening too, but he wouldn’t do anything about it. “Hey!” April said, now having fun arranging the mangled food on her plate with the contentment of a well-fed child. “I hear the kitties.”

“That woman’s a nuisance,” said Jolene. “Poor Ruthie. Spending all her money on those animals. We don’t need a bunch of wild cats roaming around this neighborhood. I wish she would just smell the roses and quit.”

“Such pretty kitties,” said Callie. “She’s my hero.”

“You know,” Jolene said, “people who feed abandoned animals aren’t doing anyone any favors. In a place like this, those animals can’t get by without being fed. They’re domesticated but they don’t have homes anymore. Cruel people have abandoned them. In nature, they would… move on.”

“But if they’re hungry?” Callie asked. “Why can’t they get food if they need it? I think the Cat Lady is right. Otherwise, they just wander around crying, they’re so sad and hungry.”

Well, naturally, she would feel that way. Maybe she remembered those days with Cathy, when none of them had enough to eat. She and George had not known about the deprivation until the court stepped in that day Cathy left the babies strapped into car seats in the car for four hours while she played house with a new boyfriend in Seaside.

Luckily, shade had come to protect the car and preserve the girls’ lives after an hour or two. A few days in the hospital and the girls were fit as red ants in August again. “Why don’t you two get yourselves upstairs now and find something cute to wear today?” Jolene suggested, not wanting to think anymore about that ordeal, which she hoped the girls didn’t remember.

Her grandchildren cleared the table quickly, well-trained by Jolene, rinsing the dishes and stacking them neatly in the dishwasher.

Jolene couldn’t ignore it anymore. Cats, making that ear-shredding yowling right outside the kitchen door. After church she planned a game of Monopoly with George and the girls. But first she needed to do something to shut up those dang cats.

“You wear the blue,” she called up the stairs to Callie. “April, how about that white dress trimmed in pink?”

“It’s too small,” April said.

“Just for today.”

“Well, okay. But something new next week, Grandma, if we can afford it. This one’s above my knees.”

The two girls trooped around upstairs quietly, whispering so that they wouldn’t disturb Grandpa’s songwriting. While they ran floods of water in the bathroom, Jolene wiped the table, still trying to ignore the keening whimpers of the cats outside.

George had said only yesterday when she remarked on the daily bedlam outside, leave Ruthie alone. Ruthie had the title of town character and what you do with town characters is you don’t molest them or stare at them, you let them sing to themselves and mutter or in Ruthie’s case feed cats and hand out leaflets.

Her Twelve Points were all over town. Jolene saw those leaflets spreading all up and down the valley, moving down to Big Sur in the pack of some Danish tourist, riding up to San Fran in some migrant worker’s beat-up truck, moving east into the forest like a flea on a squirrel… if only Ruthie had something to say. The problem was, she didn’t think very well, like most human beings.

But the cats… Jolene knew George didn’t like them any more than she did. She had heard about what contamination they might cause in a sandbox, and they had one out back, mostly for April, because at four, she still liked to dig around and dream her baby dreams.

Jolene rubbed a spot into the window with the edge of her apron so that she could see across the street, past the bridge. Ruthie’s heap of junk dominated. Obviously, Ruthie had slept in the lot over there. Someone ought to get her into an assisted-living situation. Maybe Ruthie wasn’t so old, but she was incompetent. The money she spent on those wild cats must absorb any income she had coming in.

Slamming the dishwasher door shut, Jolene pulled at her apron, locating a peg to hang it on. She would have to go out there, speak to her. Make Ruthie see sense.

She had her hair up in rollers, big ones, because she liked a softer look, but it was still early, nobody else would be out. Full of resolve, she marched across the street to the dilapidated white car.

“Hello in there,” she said. Ruthie sometimes slept in this car under a quilt made of old wool suit fabric. She checked the back, but couldn’t see inside.

“Ruthie?”