Anne Tyler - Ladder of Years

So Delia gave up, for now, and bought a box of kibble and a sack of litter-box filler, the smallest size of each just to get her through one night. Then she lugged the cat home.

Belle was there ahead of her, talking on the phone in the kitchen. Delia heard her laugh. She tiptoed up the stairs, unlocked the door of her room, set the carton on the floor, and shut the door behind her. In the mirror she looked like a crazy woman. Tendrils of wet hair were plastered to her forehead. The shoulders of her sweater were dark with rain, and her handbag was spotted and streaked.

She bent over the carton and raised the flaps. Inside, the cat sat hunched in a snail shape, glaring up at her. Delia retreated, settled on the edge of her bed, looked pointedly in another direction. Eventually, the cat sprang out of the carton. He started sniffing around the baseboards. Delia stayed where she was. He ducked beneath the bureau and returned with linty whiskers. He approached the bed obliquely, gazing elsewhere. Delia turned her head away. A moment later she felt the delicate denting of the mattress as he landed on it. He passed behind her, lightly brushing the length of his body against her back as if by chance. Delia didn’t move a muscle. She felt they were performing a dance together, something courtly and elaborate and dignified.

But she couldn’t possibly keep him.

Then Belle’s clacky shoes started climbing the stairs. Belle almost never came upstairs. But she did today. Delia threw a glance at the cat, willing him to hide. All he did was freeze and direct a wide-eyed stare toward the door. Knock-knock. He was smack in the center of the pillow, with his bottle-brush tail standing vertical. You couldn’t overlook him if you tried.

Delia scooped him up beneath his hot little downy armpits. She could feel the rapid patter of his heart. “Just a minute,” she called. She reached for the carton.

But Belle must have misheard, for she breezed on in, caroling, “Delia, here’s a-” Then she said, “Why!”

Delia straightened. “I’m just trying to find a home for him,” she said.

“Aww. What a honey!”

“Don’t worry, I’m not keeping him.”

“Oh, why not? Er, that is… he is housebroken, isn’t he?”

“All cats are housebroken,” Delia said. “For goodness’ sake!”

“Well, then! Not keep this little socky-paws? This dinky little pookums?” Belle was bending over the cat now and offering him her polished fingernails to sniff. “Is it a prinky-nose,” she crooned. “Is it a frowzy-head. Is it a fluffer-bunch.”

“Mr. Pomfret’s detective found him out in the rain,” Delia said. “He just dumped him on me; nothing I could do. I mean, I knew I couldn’t keep him myself. Where would I put a litter box, for one thing?”

“In the bathroom?” Belle asked. She started scratching behind the cat’s ears.

“But how would he get out to use it?”

“You could leave your door cracked open, let him go in and out as he likes,” Belle said. “Ooh, feel how soft! I don’t know why you ever lock it, anyhow. Little town like this, who do you think’s going to rob you? Who’s going to creep in and ravish you?”

“Well…”

“Believe me, Mr. Lamb couldn’t gather up the enthusiasm.”

Belle stroked beneath the cat’s chin, and the cat tipped his head back blissfully. He had one of those putt-putt purrs, like a Model T Ford.

“I don’t know if I want my life to get that complicated,” Delia said.

“Is he a complication. Is he a bundle of trouble.”

Belle was holding an envelope in her free hand, Delia saw. That must be what had brought her upstairs. Eleanor’s stalky print marched across the front. Delia felt suddenly overburdened. Things were crowding in on her so!

But when Belle said, “Are you going to keep this itty-bitty, or am I?” Delia said, “I am, I guess.”

“Well, good. Let’s call him Puffball, what do you say?”

“Hmm,” Delia said, pretending to consider it.

But she had never approved of cutesy names for cats. And besides, it seemed that at some point she had already started thinking of him as George.

She was in bed that night before she got around to reading Eleanor’s letter. It was more of the same: a thank you for Delia’s last postcard, news of her Meals on Wheels work. I can certainly empathize with your desire to start over! she wrote. (That careful word, empathize, revealing her effort to say just the right thing.)

And I’m relieved it’s the reason you left. I had assumed it was Sam. I’ve wondered if maybe he expressly wanted a flighty wife, in which case you could hardly be held to blame.

But when you’ve finished starting over, do you picture working up to the present again and coming home? Just asking.

All my love, dear,

Eleanor

A furry paw reached out to bat the page, and Delia laid the letter aside. The cat had found a resting place next to her on the blankets. He had eaten an enormous meal and paid two visits to the makeshift litter box in the bathroom. She could tell he was beginning to feel at home.

She reached for her book-Carson McCullers-and turned to where she had stopped reading last night. She read two stories and started a third. Then she found she was growing sleepy; so she set the book on the windowsill and clicked off her little reader’s light and placed it on top of the book. Light continued to shine through the partly open door, sending a rod of yellow across the floorboards. She slid downward in bed very cautiously so as not to disturb the cat. He was giving himself a bath now. He pressed against her ribs with each movement in a way that seemed accidental, but she could tell he meant to do it.

How strange it was, when you thought about it, that animals would share quarters with humans! If Delia had been out in the wilderness, if this were some woodland creature nestling so close, she would have been astounded.

She yawned and shut her eyes and pulled the blanket up around her shoulders.

One of the stories she had read tonight was called “A Tree, a Rock, a Cloud.” A man in this story said people should begin by loving easier things before they worked up to another person. Begin with something less complex, he proposed. Like a tree. Or a rock. Or a cloud. The rhythm of these words kept tapping across Delia’s mind: tree, rock, cloud.

First a time alone, then a casual acquaintance or two, then a small, undemanding animal. Delia wondered what came after that, and where it would end up.

The Sunday before Thanksgiving, Belle waylaid Delia at the bottom of the stairs. “Say, Dee,” she said. “What’re you doing for the holiday?”

“Oh, um…”

“Want to have dinner at my place?”

“Well, I’d love to,” Delia said.

“I’m serving this real hokey meal: turkey and dressing, cranberry relish…”

“I didn’t know you cooked!”

“I don’t,” Belle said grimly. “It’s a plot. I’m trying to look domestic for this fella I’ve been seeing.”

At the moment, she looked anything but domestic. Sunday was always a busy day at the real estate office, and she was dressed to go out in her huge purple coat, the one with the shoulders not just padded but flaring to sharp points like an alien’s space suit. Lilac trousers swam beneath it, and the smell of her fruity, overripe perfume freighted the air all around her.

“Vanessa is coming with Greggie,” she said. “Nice touch to invite a child, don’t you think? And these out-of-towners I just sold a house to, married couple; that’s always good…”

“And I would help in the food department,” Delia guessed.

“Oh, I’m bringing in the food from outside, just between you and me. But I was thinking you could add a little, call it, class. I need for this guy to see me as all proper and respectable. And also you could advise me on the wifely touches: the centerpiece and et cetera. You must’ve used to do that stuff back home, didn’t you? Do you have one of those baskety things that look like a cornucopia?”