Гвен Купер - Love Saves The Day

Nobody has petted me at all since Sarah went away, which seems like a long time ago now—five weeks. When I think about that, it doesn’t make me miss being touched by a human. It just makes me miss Sarah all the more.

Even though, with all the snow, it doesn’t feel like springtime, Josh and Laura are having his family over to the apartment tonight for a springtime holiday called Pass Over. Sarah and Anise used to talk sometimes about the casual “potluck” holidays Sarah would have in her Lower East Side apartment when Laura was young. Neighbors and friends and people who worked in Sarah’s store would come in and out all day whenever they felt like it, bringing food with them and eating foods the other humans had brought while Sarah played music on her DJ table. Christmas was one of only two days in the whole year when her store was closed. The other was Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving wasn’t so bad, Sarah said, but there would always be at least one person who would call her at home on Christmas Day, begging her to open the store just long enough to sell him one last black disk he needed to give some other human as a gift. When you’re raising a daughter alone, according to Sarah, you have to get your money when you can. So she would run over to her store long enough to sell that one black disk to that one human, and then it was good there were so many people in her apartment to keep an eye on Laura while Sarah was gone.

I don’t know how Upper West Side humans celebrate holidays, but it doesn’t seem like there’s anything “casual” about Josh’s family coming over. It’s Monday morning now, and Laura spent all Sunday attacking our apartment like she was mad at it. She’s always cleaning things whenever she has a few extra minutes, but yesterday she cleaned everything from the floors to the ceiling until every speck of dirt was gone and the apartment smelled unbearable from cleansers. She even cleaned under the bed in her and Josh’s room. Josh laughed when he saw her doing this and told her that his mother wasn’t going to inspect under their bed. But Laura said it was the first time his parents were coming over for dinner since they’d gotten married, and she wanted everything to be “immaculate.”

While Laura was busy cleaning, Josh went out to buy special foods to serve to his family. Everything went into the refrigerator when he got home, and now whenever Laura or Josh opens it, the smell of wonderful meats and other things I’ve never tasted before drifts all the way upstairs. I hope Laura remembers to be generous when she arranges my special Prudence-plate of food at dinnertime tonight.

I don’t know who exactly in Josh’s family is coming over, but the one person I know won’t be coming is the man who used to be married to Josh’s sister. That’s because yesterday I heard Josh say, “At least I don’t have to look at that Dead Beat at holiday dinners anymore.”

I’m not sure what a “Dead Beat” is. Anise used to say that Laura’s father was also a Dead Beat. But Sarah always used the word beat in a positive way when she was describing the music she loved. Anise also said that Laura’s father was a talentless good-for-nothing. He tried being in a band, and then he tried being an actor, and he was even a photographer for a little while, but he never stuck with anything long enough to become good at it, although he took that picture of Sarah that Josh brought to live with us here, and I see Laura looking at it sometimes when Josh isn’t in the room with her.

I know what dead means (it’s what happens to mice, for example, when cats catch them), but I also know how unusual it is for humans to say anything bad about dead people, because they can’t help being dead. So maybe being a Dead Beat means a human who makes really awful music and then forces everybody to listen to it until they wish they were dead. That doesn’t seem exactly right, though. I almost wish the Dead Beat was coming over tonight, so I could see what one looks like.

The thump of Josh’s feet coming into my room distracts me from my thoughts. He must be waiting for Laura, because he doesn’t do anything except stand there in the middle of the floor next to the Sarah-boxes. His eyes make a quick circle of the room without seeing me in the back of the closet, and they come to rest on the boxes of Sarah’s black disks. Crouching down, he starts to flip through them. My ears flatten against my head when he takes one out to look at the back of its cardboard cover. Those are Sarah’s black disks! It’s one thing if Laura wants to look at them (I guess), but for Josh to go through them by himself seems wrong.

Josh must be thinking the same thing, because he seems cautious at first, keeping one ear tilted toward the door, but it’s like he can’t help himself. And he’s forgotten all about his caution when Laura’s footsteps approach. “Look at this!” He turns his head up to her. “There’s a picture of your mother on the back of this Evil Sugar album! Right here.” He holds the black disk in its cardboard cover up to Laura, pointing to a spot I can’t see from where I am. “There she is with Anise Pierce in front of the Gem Spa awning.”

“She and Anise were roommates.” Laura’s voice sounds like she doesn’t really want to talk about this. “Before Evil Sugar moved out to LA.”

It’s funny to hear Josh call her “Anise Pierce,” because Sarah always calls her “Anise’s to Pieces.” Back before Anise was famous, crazy things always seemed to happen to her. Sarah teases Anise that she couldn’t even go out to buy a can of tuna for her cats without getting hit by a car or having her purse stolen or a tree branch fall right onto her head, or making some poor guy fall desperately in love with her at first sight—and usually all those things would happen in the same day.

“This was my favorite album in junior high,” Josh says. “I was obsessed with that whole generation of New York bands recording at Alphaville Studios.” He laughs. “I was devastated when Anise Pierce married Keith Amaker. That’s when I tried to convince my mother to buy me a drum set. I figured if drummers got girls like Anise Pierce, then I’d be a drummer, too.” Josh turns the cardboard cover over in his hands. “I never realized how tiny she was until I saw her standing next to your mother.” He looks up at Laura, his eyes shining with excitement but also looking confused. “How could you not tell me your mom knew her?”

“It never came up.” Laura shrugs. “Come on, let’s get these chairs down to the dining room before we’re late for work.”

Josh seems reluctant as he puts the black disk back into the box with the others, but he walks with Laura over to the black chairs that live in the corner without saying anything else. “There’ll be seven of us tonight, right?” Laura asks.

Josh puts one hand on her shoulder. “It’s not too late to call it off,” he says gently. “My parents would understand if you weren’t ready yet for a houseful of people.”

“Don’t be silly. We’ve been planning this forever.” Laura turns her head around so she can smile up at him, although her nostrils widen slightly the way humans’ do when they’re irritated. “And I keep telling you, I’m fine . Honestly.”

Laura carries one chair and Josh carries two as they pick their way around all the boxes on the floor. This is the only room Laura didn’t clean yesterday. She still doesn’t like coming in here, and I notice how her eyes don’t look into the Sarah-boxes on her way out, just around them to make sure she doesn’t bump into anything.

I think about that man Sarah talked about once—the one who lost his cat and all his reminders and didn’t want to be alive anymore after that. I wonder why Laura doesn’t want to look through these boxes and remember Sarah with me, so both of us can make sure she has a reason to come back.