and put it back on again. I gather my hair in a ponytail on top of my head, then yank it out. I try everything. Nothing works.
My head is full of visions, faces that swim up at me out of the dark. Starankovic’s wounded mask. A baby-faced Hank, tears coursing down his cheeks. Ned, with his cat’s eyes, lying with me like an incubus. Finally, Mike’s robust face appears, with its coarse, working-class nose stuck in the middle. Framed by untamable brown curls, animated by eyes full of love. But you love me for it, he’d said. I bury my head under the pillow, which helps no more than the cushions over the telephone.
I feel wretched as I watch the night bleed into the dawn. Angry. Tired. Guilty. I feel the need to do penance, to make up for my date with Ned, so I get up to clean the bathroom. Penance, if you don’t know, is the notion that the soul can be Martinized While-U-Wait, like a camel skirt. Probably the most bizarre concept I’ve ever heard, after original sin. The idea that a child’s soul turns black the instant of its birth is something even Angie couldn’t make me understand. But I scrub behind the toilet seat just the same. Despite my best efforts, I’m still Catholic after all these years.
I scuff into the living room in my pink slippers, dust mops for the feet, and exhume the telephone receiver. I hang it up and rearrange the cushions on the couch. Alice watches me, looking faintly suspicious.
“Who asked you?” I say.
I scuff into the kitchen and crack a pressurized can of Maxwell House. The can opens with a fragrant hiss, then the telephone rings.
“Fuck!” I send the can opener spinning across the kitchen counter. Is it the caller? At this hour? I pound into the living room, my adrenaline pumping, and tear the receiver from the cradle. “Who is this?”
“Mary? It’s Ned!”
“Oh, jeez.”
“I know it’s early, but that’s quite a greeting.”
“Someone keeps calling me and hanging up. It’s not you, is it?” I’m only half joking.
“Did you push star sixty-nine?”
“What’s that?”
“If you push star sixty-nine after someone calls you, the phone calls them back.”
“How do you know that?”
“I’m cool, remember?”
“Oh. Yeah.” I cringe.
“Okay. Well. Let me say why I’m calling before I lose my nerve altogether. I wanted to tell you that I’m sorry about what happened after dinner. About pushing things like that. I couldn’t sleep, I felt like such a bozo. I’ve always liked you, Mary. Been attracted to you. But still, I shouldn’t have done that. I’m sorry.”
“Uh … that’s okay.”
“I really am sorry.”
“I know.”
“Well, I would love to see you again. If you want to see me again, that is. I promise I won’t attack you. I mean it.”
I pause. I don’t know how to say what I need to say. That I haven’t dated in ten years? That the last man I dated before Mike was Ned? That I’m not ready yet? That I may never be?
“Okay, fine,” Ned says suddenly. “Whatever you want. Maybe after June you’ll change your mind. Does that sound all right to you?”
“Okay. I guess.”
“We can be friends until then. Would that be okay with you?”
“Fine.”
“God, I hate this talking about feelings. It can be so bloody exhausting.”
“So cut it out. Be like me.”
He laughs softly. “I’ll see you later then, at work.”
“Sure.” I hang up, feeling somewhat empty. I like him, but I’m not ready for what he wants. And he’s a mystery to me, still. Why didn’t he tell me about Berkowitz?
Meeeooow! It’s Alice, wanting to be fed. She saunters into the kitchen, tail high.
“You only talk to me when you want something,” I say, and follow her in. I pour some allegedly gourmet cat food into her bowl. “You don’t call, you don’t write.”
Alice ignores me; she’s heard it all before. I squat down and watch her. She eats with her eyes closed, but still manages to find each little kibble fish. It’s her best trick, I decide, stroking her silky back. She’ll tolerate my touch until the kibble fish are gone; then she’ll return to the windowsill. Her next feeding will be the next time she acknowledges that I pay the rent around here. I’d give her away in a second, to a science lab, if it weren’t for Mike. He found her in a trash can and brought her home in the pouring rain, wrapped in his denim jacket. She didn’t move the whole time, so Mike thought she was dead.
“If she’s dead, why did you bring her home?” I asked, ever the pragmatist.
“I couldn’t leave her there, like she was trash,” he said. “I’ll bury her tomorrow, before school.”
He put her in a Converse shoe box and put the shoe box under the bathroom sink. The next morning, Mike found her in the bathtub, staring in wonder at the dripping faucet. He named her Alice in Wonderland; she imprinted him on her cat brain as Mommy. They were crazy about each other.
After Mike died, I got the idea that he would want to see Alice again, at least to say good-bye. I know it sounds crazy, but I drove the animal to the cemetery and made my way through the graves with the bulky cat carrier until I got to the plain gray headstone that says LASSITER. It doesn’t say BELOVED HUSBAND on it, because I couldn’t bear to see that chiseled so finally on his headstone.
I set Alice’s carrier down at the foot of Mike’s grave and opened the door of the carrier with shaking hands. Out came Alice, sniffing the summer air. I watched, teary-eyed. I didn’t know what to expect, but I hoped it would be something magical and profound. It was neither. What happened was that Alice took off, springing between the monuments like a jackrabbit. I shouted for her and gave chase, leaping in my espadrilles over mounds that constituted ANTONELLI and MACARRICCI, by the flying eagle that said TOOHEY and the weeping cherub that marked FERGUSON. Alice kept going and so did I, because the last thing I wanted to do was lose Mike’s cat in the frigging cemetery. I caught up with her by the CONLEY mausoleum. She scratched me all the way back to LASSITER.
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