Lorrie Moore - Like Life

“You can help me,” said Jane finally, “but this man was here before me. And actually so was he.” One of the men ahead of her twisted back to look, red-faced, and then turned front again and spoke very quietly to the woman in the white shoes.

“My name is Miller,” said the man, sternly, secretively. He wore a suit, and his tie was loosened. “I’m here to pick up the cat my wife brought in this morning for surgery.”

The woman blanched. “Yes,” she said, and she didn’t ask for a first name. “Gooby Miller,” she said into the microphone. “Gooby Miller to the waiting room.” The man had taken out his wallet, but the woman said, “No charge,” and went over and tapped things into her computer for a very long minute. A young high school kid appeared from the back room, carrying a box in his arms. “The Miller cat?” he said in the doorway, and the man in the suit raised his hand. The boy brought the box over and placed it on the counter.

“I’d also like to speak with the veterinarian,” said the man. The woman in the white shoes looked at him fearfully, but the boy said, “Yes, he’s waiting for you. Come right this way,” and led the man back into the examination room, the door to which blinked brightly open to let them in, then shut behind them like a fact. The box sat all alone on the countertop.

“Can I help you?” the woman asked Jane.

“Yes. I’m here to pick up my cat from the groomer. My name is Konwicki.”

The woman reached for the microphone. “And the cat’s name?”

“Fluffers,” said Jane.

“Fluffers Konwicki to the waiting room.” The woman put the microphone down. “The cat’ll be up in a minute.”

“Thanks,” said Jane. She looked at the cardboard box at her elbow on the counter. The box said DOLE PINEAPPLE. She listened for scratching or movement of any kind, but there was none. “What’s in the box?” she asked.

The woman made a face, guilty with comedy, exaggerated. She didn’t know what sort of face to make. “Gooby Miller,” she said. “A dead cat.”

“Oh, dear,” murmured Jane. She remembered the children she’d met earlier that day. “What happened?”

The woman shrugged. “Thyroid surgery. It just died on the table. Can I help you, sir?” Someone was now bringing out Rex the poodle, who went limping toward his owner with a cast on his front foot. It was all like a dream: Things you’d seen before, in daylight, were trotted out hours later in slightly different form.

After Rex was placed in a child’s toy wagon and wheeled out of the vet’s, the groomer appeared bearing Fluffers, who looked dazed and smelled of flea dip laced with lilac. “He was a very good cat,” said the groomer, and Jane took Fluffers in her arms and almost peeped, “Thank God they didn’t bring you out in a pineapple box.” What she said instead was: “And now he’s all handsome again.”

“Found some fleas,” said the groomer. “But not all that many.”

Jane quickly paid the bill and left. Dusk was settling over the highway like a mood, and the traffic had put on lights. She carried her cat to the car and was fumbling with the door on the passenger’s side when she heard squeals from the opposite end of the parking lot. “Fluffers! Fluffers!” They were a child’s excited shouts. “Look, it’s Fluffers!”

The boy and girl Jane had spoken to that morning suddenly leaped out of the station wagon they’d been waiting in across the lot. They slammed the back doors and dashed breathlessly over to Jane and her cat. They had on little coats and hats with earflaps. It had gotten cold.

“Oh, Fluffers, you smell so good — yum, yum, yum!” said the girl, and she pressed her face into Fluffers’ perfumed haunches and kept it there, beginning to cry. Jane looked up and saw that what little light there was left in the sky was frighteningly spindly, like a horse’s legs that must somehow still hold up the horse. She freed one of her hands and placed it on the girl’s head. “Oh, Fluffers!” came another muffled wail; the girl refused to lift her face. Her brother stood more stoically at her side. His face was pink and swollen, but something was drying hard behind the eyes. He studied Jane as if he were reorganizing what he thought was important in life. “What is your name?” he asked.

IT WAS a little thing, just a little thing, but Jane decided not to risk the audition after all. She phoned Bridey and apologized, said she was coming down with a bug or something, and Bridey said, “Probably got it from that Heffie, always taste-testing the way she does. At any rate, I hope you’ll come over for dinner sometime this week, if possible,” and Jane said that yes, she would.

And she did. She went the following Thursday and had dinner with Bridey and Bridey’s husband, who was a big, gentle man who did consulting work for computer companies. He was wearing a shirt printed with seahorses, like one her ex-lover the toymaker had worn when he had come east to visit, one final weekend, for old times’ sake. It had been a beautiful shirt, soft as pajamas, and he’d worn it when they had driven that Sunday, out past the pumpkin fairs, to the state line, to view the Mississippi. The river had rushed by them, beneath them, a clayey green, a deep, deep khaki. She had touched the shirt, held on to it; in this lunarscape of scrub oaks and jack pines, in this place that had once at the start of the world been entirely under water and now just had winds, it was good to have a river cutting through, breaking up the land. In the distance, past a valley dalmatianed with birches, there were larger trees, cedars and goldening tamaracks — goldening! — and Jane felt that at last here was a moment she would take with her into the rest of life, unlosable. There seemed nothing so true as a yellow tree.

After dinner she actually went to a Community Chorus rehearsal with Bridey and sang through some of the exercises with everyone. When the sheet music was passed out, however, there wasn’t enough to go around. The director took attendance and gazed accusingly out at the sopranos, saying, “Is someone here who isn’t actually supposed to be?” Jane raised her hand and explained.

“I’m afraid this is not allowed. If you want to be in the chorus you must have already auditioned.”

“I’m sorry,” said Jane, and she stood and gave her sheet music back to the choir director. She picked up her purse, looked down at Bridey, and shrugged unhappily.

“I’ll phone you,” mouthed Bridey.

But it was nearly Christmas season by the time Bridey phoned, and Jane was very busy at the store. There were lots of special holiday dips and cheese rolls, and they were trying to do gift wrap besides. In the midst of it all Heffie announced she was quitting, but the day she did she brought in a bottle of champagne, and she and Jane drank it right there on the job. They poured it into Styrofoam cups and sipped it, crouching behind the deli case, craning their necks occasionally to make sure no customers had wandered in.

“To our little lives,” toasted Heffie.

“On the prairie,” added Jane. The champagne fizzed against the roof of her mouth. She warmed it there, washing it around, until it flattened, gliding down her throat, a heated, sweet water.

She and Heffie opened a jar of herring in cream sauce, which had a messily torn label. They dug their fingers in and ate. They sang a couple of Christmas carols they both knew, and sang them badly.

“ Let every heart prepare him a room ,” sang Heffie, her mouth full of fish. The world was lovely, really, but it was tricky, and peevish with the small things, like a god who didn’t get out much.

“Surfing,” said Heffie. “You gotta get away from these plains winters and go someplace with waves and a warm current.” Inside the deli case, the dry moons of the cheeses and the mucky spreads wore their usual plastic tags: HELLO MY NAME IS. Jane reached in and plucked out the one that said, HELLO MY NAME IS Swiss Almond Whip.