Shirley Murphy: Murphy_Shirley_Rousseau_Cat_Telling_Tales_BookFi

Dear Ryan,

It’s been such a long time since our art school days in San Francisco. I tried to write to you at your old address. When the letter came back, I called your husband’s office. What a shock that you’d divorced, and then he died. Well, I managed to wiggle your address out of them, anyway.

My situation has changed, too. I have two little girls, and now Erik has left me, so I guess men are all the same. He took all our savings. I have no money, even to pay a lawyer to try to get the child support he isn’t paying. He stopped paying rent, so of course we were evicted, he did that to his own children. I have to be out by next week and I have nowhere to go. I have nothing, and no one who cares, but you. I have no job, and don’t know what I’ll do until I can get some money out of Erik.

He’d never dream I’d come to Molena Point, he knows I don’t have anything to do with my mother, and that I don’t see my sister. Of course he and Perry Fowler still own Kraft Realty and he’s right there in the Molena Point office, that’s all the more reason he won’t expect to see me, he’ll think I’d go far away from him. But I don’t know where else to go, except there to you, there’s no one else to help me, only you and Hanni, you and your sister are the only real friends I have. I’m glad Erik doesn’t know about you, at least I kept some things to myself. I’m leaving Eugene the end of the week, but the drive down from Oregon will take longer with the kids, they always have to eat and go potty. Here’s our picture that my neighbor took last year, the girls were cute then but they’ve gotten so gangly now. In the picture, Tessa is four, Vinnie is eleven. We don’t have the cat anymore, Erik used to throw things at it, so I guess it ran away. A neighbor said it hung around the nursing home up the street, that they took it in, but then that burned down. The kids won’t stop whining after it, so stupid. I’ll see you soon, I do hope you have room for us, otherwise I don’t know where we’d go.

Your friend and eager houseguest, Debbie Kraft

This was just great, just what they all needed, a whining houseguest with two kids, one that looked like a royal pain—and practically on Clyde and Ryan’s anniversary, which they’d planned to spend having a quiet dinner with close friends. Joe looked again at the picture, focusing on the red tomcat, a handsome young fellow with wide, curving stripes. There was a certain look about him, a sharp awareness in his wide amber eyes that made Joe wonder, that made him pause with a keen curiosity. Debbie didn’t seem to care that he might have died in the nursing home fire, in a shocking and painful death. Had she even bothered to look for him? Or was a child’s lost cat like a lost hair ribbon, of only passing note and no value?

But the strangest part was, they had lived in Eugene. There was the home of Misto, the old yellow tomcat who had left Oregon before Christmas, hitting the highway to begin his journey south to Molena Point, searching for his kittenhood home. Both cats were from Eugene, both had the look that Joe knew well, that was not the look of any ordinary feline.

Misto had left three grown-up offspring somewhere in Eugene, he had lost track of all three as they ventured out on their own into the world.

Could this cat be Misto’s son? The picture was taken a year ago. Now, was he even still alive? There was no one to ask, no one to know his fate or to care. When Joe looked down from the mantel, Ryan was watching him. “Stop frowning, Joe. She’s not staying here.”

Joe wasn’t so sure. Ryan might be a no-nonsense businesswoman, but she had a soft spot for the less fortunate that, Joe feared, would make her cave right in, would let that woman move on in and take over their happy home.

Clyde said, “Why can’t she go to her mother? What’s that about? She’s broke. No job. Two kids to feed. Let her go to her mother or her sister. The Fowlers are loaded, why can’t she stay with them?”

“How can she?” Ryan said. “Perry Fowler’s not only her brother-in-law, he owns half of Kraft Realty, he and Erik are co-owners. He’d be sure to tell Erik she’s here.” She shook her head, perplexed. “I don’t know what the estrangement’s all about, Debbie was always secretive, often for no reason at all. She told me once, years ago, she and her sisters would sneak around, sneak out at night. That she married Erik to get away from the village and from her mother, but she didn’t tell me why. They ran off before she finished Molena Point High. Later, when she moved up to San Francisco, she was in some of my classes in art school, and in some of my sister’s. Hanni couldn’t bear her, no one could. She’d hang around on the edges of a group, pushing in, interrupting whatever you were talking about, always with a problem of her own that was far more important, always a dilemma she wanted someone else to solve for her. She’d borrow tubes of paint, lengths of expensive canvas, never return anything. She’d say she forgot, then say she didn’t have the money. She cheated on tests, begged for rides even when it was miles out of everyone’s way. Tag along if we went out for lunch, and then never have the money to pay for hers. She was just there one summer semester, she never graduated, and she never did much with what she did learn. Hanni was one of the gifted ones, and Debbie tagged after her. As if, if she stayed close, Hanni’s talent—or her grades—would rub off on her.”

After listening to Ryan’s description, Joe considered packing his figurative suitcase and moving out for the duration—he knew Ryan wouldn’t refuse this woman. He could move in with his tabby lady, take refuge with Dulcie and her housemate. Wilma Getz spoiled Dulcie worse than Ryan spoiled him, she’d serve up fillet, salmon, anything he asked for. The imminent descent of Debbie Kraft, with one kid who looked mean as snakes and another who was as yet an unknown quantity, made his head hurt and his skin twitch. If Ryan and Clyde wanted kids, they’d have some of their own. Looking again at the photo, he could find sympathy only for the cat.

“I always wondered,” Ryan said, “what could possibly be so bad between mother and daughter, that Debbie never even phoned her, never wrote to her? Well, I guess any number of things could, but I can’t get my head around it.” Ryan’s own mother had died of cancer when Ryan was small. They had been a close, happy family. The idea of hating your mother was foreign to her, and repugnant.

“Letter’s dated eight days ago,” Clyde said. “It’s only a two-day drive down from Eugene. She says she has nowhere else to go, so where is she?” He glanced away in the direction of the street as if she might materialize, standing out there looking up at him. “Even the cheapest motel,” he said, “the cheapest restaurant, is expensive if you’re flat broke and have two kids to feed.”

Joe said, “We could pull the shades. You could pull the cars on through the carport into the garage, pretend we’re out of town.”

“Quit worrying,” Ryan repeated. “They’re not staying here.”

“Where, then?” Joe and Clyde said, together.

“Maybe the Salvation Army has room,” she said, referring to the army’s charity shelter.

“Did she write to Hanni, too?” Joe asked hopefully.

“She did. You know Hanni has no room, with their two boys.” Ryan smiled. “Hanni said she wasn’t inviting Debbie Kraft there to lift the good silverware and trash the house.” Ryan’s sister Hanni was among the best-known interior designers in the village, a glamorous woman with striking prematurely white hair, a penchant for bizarre and beautiful costumes, fabulous jewelry, and sleek convertibles—but with an even deeper attachment to old jeans, a fine hunting dog, and a good shotgun, an indulgence that, these days, she got to enjoy only rarely.