through repetition, flushed all the logic out of the fact that a cat can’t do math.
“Don Diego is named after Zorro’s alter ego, a dandyish fellow that nobody ever suspects of being Zorro,” my mother begins to explain to Carol, apropos of nothing in particular. “Why, no one would imagine, while watching our Don Diego in the pantry, daintily nibbling on his Fancy Feast, that when he ventures into the yard, he becomes a virile and mysterious hero. Mrs. Gummidge is named after the widow in David Copperfield. Our Gummidge also weeps, perpetually, in her own plaintive mew.”
The Dr. Moreau of interior decorating, my mother sits among strange mixtures of animal prints, in her dark laboratory of excess. Zebra print pillows populate the sofa, a deep-orange leopard rug spreads across the living room floor, and peacock feathers peak out from the ceramic Chinese umbrella holder. The alligator boots my mother has put on her feet are the variable in today’s experiment in hybridity. She strokes Cleopatra, the chubby Siamese who sits next to her, on one of the five luxurious cat beds in the living room.
My mother continues to psychoanalyze the cats as Carol nods quietly and smiles her actress’s smile, the corners of her mouth rising high up on her face, only to turn slightly downward at the last moment—like a firework streaking up to the sky and failing to explode.
Carol is afflicted with Sjögren’s syndrome, a rare condition that makes one unable to produce tears. When she cries, she must squeeze drops of saline solution into her eyes. In life and on the stage, Carol is an actress incapable of summoning tears. She often arrives on the porch, Visine in hand, coming to present my mother with a new plot to sabotage Terry—or win him back. “Kit, I’ve got it. We can plant a camera in his apartment, and catch him, in the act … Or maybe I should just write him a long letter, tell him that I love him. What do you think?”
Carol brings plans to my mother like densely tangled knots. My mother carefully unties each one. While my mother frequently talks Carol out of her outrageous plans, she sometimes trumps Carol with machinations of her own. Several weeks ago, enacting a plan of my mother’s, the two broke into Terry’s office in the middle of the night to steal financial documents.
On Carol’s more manic days, she greets my mother on a sustained pitch, at the top of her rich coloratura soprano, and the two women exchange operatic dialogue for a few moments, before Carol goes careening into an aria about the tawdriness of Terry’s mistress. “That Debbie is a sluuuuuut!” she shrieks.
Carol talks about the divorce obsessively. She puts on an exaggerated Southern accent, referring to the upcoming hearing as my trial. “Aw, Kit, you gotta come tuh mah trah-uhl, and testifah! You can say: Wha ye-es, Ah saw them two—togethah!”
Today, though, Carol is subdued—not despondent and not at peace, just still. Well acquainted with the cast of cats, she does not mind listening to my mother’s stream of anecdotes.
“I don’t know what to do with Gummidge,” my mother sighs, rising from the sofa. She walks to the antique cabinet across the room. It is an heirloom, one of few that survived, having been in storage at the time of the fire. “She’s sick. Moaning all the time. I think we’re making the right decision, taking her to the vet’s,” she says.
“Yes,” affirms Carol. My mother draws a silver Jacobson’s department store box from the cabinet. She sits back down and opens it. It is filled with photographs of cats. My mother is not a linear person, and the images are not organized chronologically.
My mother shows Carol pictures of Little Fox, the cat to whom she used to sing her original lullaby, “Cuddle Cats,” in retaliation against my father’s saying he abhorred the word “cuddle.”
We’re just a couple of cuddle cats, cuddling all day long
We’re just a couple of cuddle cats, that’s why I’m singing this song
Cuddling, cuddling, cuddling all day long
Singing, singing, singing our cuddle cat song
(Repeat indefinitely)
My mother shuffles past a black-and-white photograph of a cat that catches Carol’s eye. “Which one is that?” Carol asks.
“Hmm?” my mother hums.
“The gray one,” Carol says. The cat appears to be gray, but as the picture was taken in black and white, in real life the cat could have been orange, deep cream, or pale brown.
“I don’t want to talk about that one,” my mother says, abandoning her gentle, nostalgic tone.
“Why not? What’s his name?” asks Carol. My mother speaks a Z-word name that Carol forgets immediately. Then she pauses, and inhales slowly through her nose.
“My second husband was a painter with an ungovernable temper. He used to come home and throw his paints against the wall. One night he came home and threw that cat against the wall.”
“He killed it,” Carol gasps. My mother silently returns Carol’s gaze.
“There have been three people I haven’t been able to save. That cat was one of them. The first two were my best friends. David Grant. We were best friends in high school. Then we both went to the University of Michigan. He was an art major. He had an original Andy Warhol print in his apartment. And Patricia Alexander. We sang ‘The House of the Rising Sun’ together for the high school talent show. She went on to a school out of state. Each of them got married shortly after college. And I lost them.”
“To marriage?” asks Carol.
“David was gay, but he was in denial. He left his wife and went to San Francisco. But he couldn’t deal with his sexuality. He jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge. And Patricia. One night her husband found her. Hanged in the shower. A suicide, but I’ve never believed it. She wasn’t the type. For years, I’ve had dreams about her being trapped under the stairs, trying to escape, and me not being able to save her. Sometimes in the dreams I am inside her body, trapped inside her body, and trapped under the stairs, trying to make noise, trying to call out, and not being able to …” she pauses. “I think Patricia was murdered by her husband.
“I’m the one who lost myself to marriage. But I saved myself. I fell in love with Laurence way too young. At eighteen. He was handsome, and very well read. He started beating me as soon we married, especially in the abdomen. It’s a miracle Evan wasn’t miscarried. Laurence broke my hands and my nose. He beat me until I was unrecognizable. Once Laurence made me a sandwich. I thought how uncharacteristic. Braunschweiger. He had hidden an enormous amount of LSD inside. For hours I saw only red and green. I stepped into the bathroom, looked in the mirror, and saw a reptile staring back. One morning, I packed up some things, whisked up Evan, and got out. I became unrecognizable on my terms. I changed my name from Elizabeth Hartshorn to Clare de Lanvallei, the name of an English ancestor of mine who was among the signers of the Magna Carta. Then after the second husband I finally married Rick. Then I had Joseph, fourteen years after having Evan. When I married Rick I just threw all my old names together. My legal name is Clare Christina Elizabeth Christine Hartshorn de Lanvallei McKay.” My mother chuckles at her many names.
Carol feels the urge to cry, and roots nervously through her purse full of medications, pulls out her Visine drops, and drowns her eyes in saline.
“The hour approaches, Carol,” my mother says.
“Let’s do it,” Carol
