Shirley Murphy: Murphy_Shirley_Rousseau_Cat_Telling_Tales_BookFi

Now as the sun rose higher, its warming rays touched not only the cat tiles of the mantel, but the letter that stood on top, a small pink envelope propped against a stack of architecture books. A letter that seemed to Joe as insistent as a blinking neon sign, awaiting Ryan’s attention, a missive he found both repugnant, and worrisome.

When the letter first arrived, in the regular afternoon delivery, he’d had no idea of the dilemma it would cause. The small, note-sized envelope, addressed in a clumsy and unskilled hand, seemed unimportant, hardly worth noticing as Joe pawed idly through the mail Clyde had left on the coffee table. The writing seemed to be a woman’s, someone who had plodded through grammar school at a time when the teaching of cursive was out of fashion, a woman who had apparently spent her entire adult life still laboriously printing her awkward little messages.

There was no return address, and the postmark was too blurred to make out the point of origin. The envelope was directed to Ryan in her maiden name, Flannery, which she still used professionally, and not to Mrs. Clyde Damen, but it did not appear to be of professional content; it didn’t have the polish of a business letter concerned perhaps with the design and construction of a new house or with the proposed requirements for some costly and extensive remodel. When Ryan had come in from work in her jeans and boots, and opened it, when she scanned the letter, her green eyes narrowed to a frown. She’d stood a moment rereading it, as if to make sure she’d gotten the message straight, her dark, short hair windblown and sprinkled with sawdust like the sparkles from some children’s party. At last, making no comment to Joe or to Clyde regarding the contents, she’d turned away, carried the letter upstairs and left it on her studio mantel where it now resided, the open note folded atop the envelope, the corner of a photograph visible underneath. As if the message wasn’t exactly private, but she didn’t care to discuss it. Of course the tomcat had followed her and, when she went on about her business, had leaped up and read it for himself.

The message carried an aura of disaster, of bad karma, if you will, that made his fur twitch and his paws tingle with sharp misgiving. The fact that Ryan didn’t want to talk about it was sign enough that the request was going to screw up their lives. What was really worrisome was that, though she’d set the letter aside, she hadn’t ignored it to the point of laying it facedown and slapping a book over it, or dropping it in the round file. This unsolicited bid for bed and board would, sooner or later, require her dutiful response. Joe knew what answer he’d give, but he guessed Ryan wouldn’t follow his advice. Social courtesy is a human trait that most cats don’t consider of much value. Except, of course, when that courtesy is toward the cat himself.

Now he watched Ryan select a dozen real estate ads, and lay them out beside him. He flattened his ears when she propped three ads rudely against his gray flank as if he was some kind of cute copyholder. She gave him an innocent green-eyed look and scratched under his chin until his ears came up again, of their own accord, and he felt a purr rumbling. That was the trouble with Ryan, her charm got him every damn time.

Some of the little houses were so cheap the brokers hadn’t bothered with flyers or color pictures at all, had simply placed small black-and-white newspaper ads. Some were tiny old guesthouses, behind larger dwellings, which had apparently been sectioned off into their own lots. Two of the cottages were foreclosures, three were bank sales, all had suffered dizzying drops in price, as the economy fell. But in Molena Point, even the bottom of the barrel was still of value, every bit of land on the central coast was at a premium, and oceanfront lots were as dear as gold, even the smallest parcel worth as much as some Midwest mansions.

But that didn’t mean Ryan and Clyde had to snap them up like a cat snatches mice from the cupboard. Rising impatiently, Joe sent the ads sliding off his side and across the table. Ryan gave him a look, and picked them up. “You needn’t be so grumpy.”

“You’re collecting economic disasters,” he said coolly, “gambling on a collapsing market, just begging to lose your shirts with these expensive toys.”

“Market’ll pick up,” Ryan said gently. “You’re just not big on patience.”

“I’m patient on a mouse hole.”

“You are patient tracking a felon,” she said, reaching again, to scratch his ears. She always knew how to get to him. “I’d like to know who’s bought up so many of these old places, though, grabbed them before the listings even hit the street.” While expensive homes and estates had taken a tumble, it was the small vacation cottages and the homes of those who worked at the service trades that had been hardest hit.

But then suddenly many of these had been purchased overnight, including three of the cottages that Ryan and Clyde had badly wanted, that would have lent themselves to just the kind of renovations they enjoyed working on. And then after the houses went off the market so quickly, they had stood empty for months. No resale signs, no renters, no work crews making repairs to put them back on the market at a quick profit. They simply sat. Empty and uncared for, the weeds growing tall, the lawns turning yellow even with the early spring rains, the old paint peeling like the skin of an onion. This was not like Molena Point, where most of the cottages were carefully maintained, their paint fresh, their front gardens lush with bright blooms and flowering trees and bushes.

In two cases, in the very neighborhood where Ryan and Clyde had made their last purchase, the neighbors had begun to see hushed activity late at night around the neglected houses, soft lights behind drawn shades, strange cars pulling quietly into the drive and soon slipping away again.

And now here they were this morning, still looking at that blighted neighborhood despite the neighbors’ unease and the whole country’s worry over the real estate market—as if nothing here, in this village, could stay down for long.

But as the two diligently sorted through the ads, forever optimistic, Joe was more interested in the problem of the moment. In the letter on the mantel that needed decisive action before their happy home was invaded by some strange young woman in the throes of a divorce, with two cranky-looking kids in tow, a woman severely driven by a sudden lack of a home and income. If this Debbie Kraft gained a foothold, if she moved in with them as she was pushing to do, she might linger for months, as persistent as a bad case of mange.

Leaping from the table to the mantel, he read it again, looking pointedly at Ryan. This, not pie-in-the-sky real estate investments, was the dilemma facing them right now. He looked at the photograph of Debbie herself and the two little girls that she had enclosed hoping, perhaps, to charm an invitation from the Damens. There wasn’t much charm apparent. She was a scrawny young woman with an angry scowl on her face, long, dull hair hanging loose down her back, her ankle-length denim skirt sagging at the hem, both children clinging to it like baby possums grasping their mother. The kids were maybe four years old, and twelve, both as ragged as their mother. The older child’s expression was as sour as her mother’s, too. The younger girl didn’t look at the camera but stared at the ground, huddled into herself, perhaps in a fit of shyness, or perhaps fear. The best-looking one of the group was the cat, and even he didn’t look too happy.

The older child held the big red tabby awkwardly in her arms, squeezing him so tight the cat’s ears were flat to his broad, tomcat head. The camera had caught his ringed tail blurred, swinging in an angry lash, the cat obviously practicing great restraint in not slashing his juvenile captor. Debbie’s letter didn’t mention the cat, until the very end.