Гвен Купер: Love Saves The Day

Realizing that even Laura didn’t know Sarah was leaving makes me feel for the first time that I really might never see Sarah again. It feels like my stomach is trying to squeeze all the way through the top of my throat. It feels worse than when humans used to shout at me on the streets, or the day I lost my littermates in that thunderstorm.

Now I want desperately to come out, to tell Laura that maybe Sarah will come back if only we don’t move all her things that smell familiar and make her recognize this as her home. But Laura hasn’t called to me the way Sarah would, or tried to introduce me to the strange human in the way it’s supposed to be done. Too much is unusual today already, and the thought of coming out from under-the-couch the wrong way, without anybody even saying, Prudence, come here and meet so-and-so , the way Sarah always does, makes my stomach squeeze even harder.

It’s Josh who first goes to the big closet and starts pulling things down. The shoe boxes of matchbook toys spill over his head. I expect him to be mad the way most humans would be if all those matchbooks fell on them, but he just says “D’oh!” and rubs his head in an exaggerated way, pretending the matchbook toys hurt him. From the way his eyes flick over to Laura I think he’s hoping she’ll laugh, because humans think it’s funny when things fall on other humans.

Laura smiles, but that’s all.

“Look at all these,” he says, crouching down to scoop up a handful of matchbooks. “Paradise Garage, Le Jardin, 8BC, Max’s Kansas City.” He puts them back in their box. “The writers I work with would kill to have spent five minutes at Max’s Kansas City.”

Laura has finally started on the other closet, the smaller one near the front door. She’s going through boxes of papers, some of which she puts into folders that disappear into a big brown box. The others go directly into a garbage bag. “Just throw all that into trash bags,” she tells Josh. “The Salvation Army won’t want it.”

Maybe the Army won’t want those things, but I do! How could Laura not even ask me what I want to do with my own (well, Sarah’s and my) things?

Josh pauses when Laura says this, his hand in the middle of reaching up to pull things from the top shelf. He continues moving his hand in that direction, although he does it more slowly, the way you move to keep from startling a small animal. “You don’t want to throw it all away. Your mom wouldn’t have kept all this stuff if it didn’t mean something to her. Someday, when you’re ready, you’ll want to go back and look through it.”

Laura sounds exasperated, just like she does whenever Sarah objects to what Laura thinks is a perfectly logical plan. “Where would we even put it all?”

“There’s the spare bedroom,” Josh says in a quieter voice than the one he’s been using. “We could put everything there, temporarily at least.”

Laura’s face changes just enough to let me know she doesn’t like this idea. If it were Sarah’s idea, Laura would keep arguing until she made herself right. But now she mutters, “Fine,” and keeps going through papers. Josh puts the matchbook toys back in their shoe boxes, then puts the whole thing into one of the big brown boxes. They’re both quiet again, until Josh struggles with a buldgy paper bag all the way in the back of the big closet. Once he’s freed it he peers inside and says, “Oh, wow!” Pulling out some of Sarah’s old newspapers and magazines, he says, “Mixmaster, New York Rocker , the East Village Eye.” His eyes go up and a little to the left, which means he’s remembering something. “My sister used to go into the city with her friends and bring these back for me. I still haven’t forgiven my mother for deciding they were ‘trash’ one day and throwing them all out.”

Laura has been stacking up Sarah’s coats and jackets, which smell more like her than anything else. Why does she have to make everything of Sarah’s go away? Sarah once told me that if you remember someone, they’ll always be with you. But what if the opposite is true? What if getting rid of everything that reminds you of someone means they’ll never come back to be with you again? I feel the muscles around my face whiskers tighten and pull back again.

Laura doesn’t know this, of course. She turns to face Josh, and when she sees the bag he’s looking through, she squints and walks over to where he’s sitting on the floor. She picks up the bag and looks at the script-y word-writing on its side. Then she says, “Love Saves the Day.”

“Hm?” Josh says. He’s still flipping through the old newspapers.

“Love Saves the Day,” she repeats. “That’s where this bag is from. It was that vintage store on Seventh and Second.” Now Laura’s eyes slide up and left. Her voice sounds softer, the way Sarah’s does when she’s telling me about something nice that happened to her a long time ago. “My mother and I used to go there sometimes when I was a kid. We’d spend hours trying on ridiculous outfits and then go up the block to Gem Spa for egg creams.”

Josh grins up at her. “Do you have pictures?” I can tell he’s imagining Laura, except much smaller than she is now, wearing clothes like Sarah’s bird-clothes. He looks around the room. “I keep hoping to find your baby pictures, but I don’t see them anywhere.”

The black centers of Laura’s eyes widen a little and her face colors, which is how I know what she’s about to say will be at least partly untrue. “We lost them in a move.”

“Oh.” Josh sounds disappointed and unconvinced. But all he says is, “That’s a shame.” He looks toward the table next to the couch, where Sarah and I keep a lamp and some framed pictures that I’ve learned to maneuver through without knocking them over. Josh says, “Well, at least there’s a picture of your mom and her cat.” He looks around the room. “Hey, where is the cat?”

Laura’s head doesn’t move. “Hiding under the couch.”

I’m not “hiding”! I’m waiting! Of course, I could never expect a human to understand a subtle difference like that. Still, this is probably as close as Laura is going to come to requesting my presence for a proper introduction. So, partly to give Laura a chance to do things the right way, and partly to make it perfectly clear to these humans that I was not “hiding,” I crawl out from under-the-couch and announce myself with a curt mew . Then I begin an elaborate stretching-and-grooming ritual, as if to say, Oh, is somebody here? I didn’t even realize it because I was napping so deeply. I certainly wasn’t hiding, if that’s what you were thinking .

It’s easy to fool them, because humans have a much harder time detecting untruths than cats do.

“Well, hey, Prudence,” Josh says, turning to face me. “You look like a sweet girl. You’re a sweet girl, aren’t you?”

The condescension in his tone is unbearable. I fix him with an icy stare and swish my tail to remind him of his manners, and then I go back to cleaning my face with my left front paw. Josh slowly reaches out a hand toward the top of my head, but I stop him with a warning hiss. Talking to someone you haven’t been properly introduced to is rude, but touching someone you haven’t been properly introduced to is far worse. Laura laughs for the first time since she’s been here and says, “Don’t take it personally. Prudence isn’t a ‘people cat.’ ”

Josh and Laura watch as I begin cleaning behind my ear. Why are they paying such close attention to how I wash myself? Then Josh says, “I’m happy to have her come live with us, Laur, but if you wanted to find another home for her, I’d understand. Everybody would understand.”