After You've Gone (10 page)

Diana is fifteen now, not remarkably old for a cat, but fairly
old; could she have chosen now to go off into the woods to die? In the darkening thickets, tangled bent gray cypresses and tall heavy firs, in the rain?

An outrageous cat, more outrageous even than most cats are. She is sometimes passionately affectionate; she will press her fine-boned body against Maggie's leg, or her shoulder, with purrings and rubbings. But at other times, which are wholly of Diana's choosing, she can be haughty, even cross; she has a large vocabulary of negative sounds, as well as her loud, round purr.

But where—oh, where is she now?

Maggie's chest hurts, and her breath comes hard, and at the same time she is humiliated, deeply shamed by what strikes her as deranged: such an extreme, an “inappropriate” reaction to the loss of a cat, whom she surely must have known would someday die.

Turning from the woods (where Diana is?), Maggie heads slowly back across the tousled pale winter lawn to the house, the enormous house, every inch of which she has searched: under beds, back into closets, under sofas and chairs, behind shelves and more shelves of books.

In the kitchen, her mother's kitchen (now entirely her mother's, so clean, all traces of Maggie removed), with tranced, slow motions Maggie puts on some water for tea as she wonders, Why is it that by this time of her life she does not have a place of her own, other than her very small North Beach rooms, in San Francisco? Because I can't afford to buy anything, or to rent something larger, another familiar, more reasonable voice responds. Because in a quite deliberate way I chose an underpaid field, social work. And have chosen (more or less) not to marry, only to like men somewhat similarly engaged—recently Jonathan, a sculptor. Never lawyers or doctors or men in stock or real estate,
never.

Pouring tea into her own blue pottery cup, Maggie then sips, and she tries, tries very, very hard, to think in a rational way.

One solution would be to spend the night out here, in Inverness; obviously, the longer she is here, the more time there will be during which Diana could somehow show up. Maggie could redo her bed and get up very early, get back to the city by eight, when she has an appointment with Hue Wan Griggs and his mother, who are always meticulously prompt—coming all the way to the clinic from their Tenderloin (condemned) hotel.

However, at that vision of herself, raw-eyed with sleeplessness and still quite possibly without Diana, Maggie's mood plunges once more downward, blackly, into hopelessness, and she has what is really her most deranged thought so far. She thinks, If Diana does not come back, if I never find her, it means that Jonathan will leave, go back to Boston, and that the next time I have a mammogram they will find something bad, some shadow on the film that means I will die.

Loss of Jonathan and getting cancer are Maggie's most familiar fears, and at worst they seem (if unconsciously) related, try as she will to separate them rationally.

Jonathan: a sculptor who works in a restaurant that he despises, for a living. He too lives in North Beach, in an even smaller, cheaper place than Maggie's. Living together would save them money, they know that; however, they also agree that for them having the two places is much better. Both privacy and a certain freshness are preserved. They can take turns playing host at dinner, enjoying small ceremonies. Or on the nights that they do not spend together (Jonathan often likes
to work at night) they will meet for breakfast, fresh hard Italian rolls and morning love.

That is how in good times Maggie and Jonathan “relate” to each other. (The jargon of Maggie's profession, mixed with worse from pop psychology, is ironically used by them both, part of a well-developed private language.) In bad times Jonathan hates San Francisco, along with his job in the silly, pretentious restaurant; and sometimes Maggie feels herself included in his discontent.

Cancer: Maggie's history is “unfortunate.” Her mother and two aunts had fairly early mastectomies. However, all three women are still alive and seemingly well: successful surgery. Conscientious (frightened) Maggie has yearly mammograms, and she worries. Especially when Jonathan rails against the city, when he says that he is sure he could find a better job in Boston, or even in New York—then, imagining his departure, Maggie imagines too that in her grief she will also find a lump. And her full awareness of the total irrationality of this view is not much help.

And now—Diana.

Her tea, though, has imparted some hope to Maggie, along with its comforting warmth. Or, having gazed for some moments at the wilds of her own unreason, she feels more reasonable?

In any case, she stands up resolutely, and stretches a little before taking her teacup and saucer over to the sink, neatly washing and drying and putting them away.
Of course
Diana will show up sooner or later, Maggie now thinks. If not tonight, tomorrow. At worst, she, Maggie, could call in sick (a thing she has never once done); Hue Wan and his mother, and
her five or six other appointments could get through the day without her. Couldn't they?

Going outside to try calling Diana again, and again, she thinks that now, for sure, Diana will emerge through the trees, with her slightly loose-jointed walk, her mad yellow blinking eyes, in the dark.

At the upward slope of the house a wide path leads to the crest of the hill, from which one can see the ocean—on clear days, the brilliant Pacific. Almost nothing would be visible up there now, in the gathering, thickening dark; still, Maggie has an odd impulse to take that path, to hike up across gullies and fallen trees and rocks to the top of the ridge, to look out at the black space where the sea must be.

However, even for Maggie in her current state of unreason, this seems too extreme a step, and she finds herself thinking instead about Hue Wan Griggs, whom she might or might not see tomorrow. Hue is part Vietnamese, part black, very dark and small for his age, with wide, amazingly beautiful, luminous, heavy-lashed eyes. And diagnosed as autistic—no contact, just hitting, bumping into things, staring off. But last week he smiled, he actually smiled in what Maggie believed was her direction. And now she feels a pang of loss at the thought that she could miss another such smile.

But no Diana. In the light steady rain and the increasing cold, Maggie stands and calls, and calls, and no cat comes. And all her plans and half-decisions seem then to dissolve in that rain. Whether she stays overnight or goes back to the city is wholly unimportant, for nothing will work, she now thinks. Her superstitious wooing of Diana or perhaps of fate itself was to no avail. Of course not.

Sodden-hearted, she turns again toward the house, without a plan. Irrelevantly and painfully she is remembering a weekend
that she and Jonathan (and Diana, of course they brought her along) spent at this house last summer, a time that she later came to think of as perfect. Or as close to perfect as imperfect humans can arrive at. (And cats: Diana, a non-hunter, chased mice and squirrels, and lost, but seemed to enjoy the chase.) Perfect soft bright weather for hikes and picnic feasts. Amazingly brilliant views of the sea, and of further piney ridges, cliffs of rocks. Amazing love.

Looking up at the huge square gray house before her, Maggie now sees it as inhabited by shades. By Jonathan, and by her parents. By beautiful, gone Diana.

Reluctantly she opens the front door. She goes into the living room, and there, an orange-gold mound in the middle of the sofa, there is Diana: Diana entirely engrossed in grooming her tail, licking, burrowing for a probably imaginary flea. Not even looking up.

And of course there is no way to find out, ever, where she has been, and much less why: why she should hide for what is now almost three hours, why hide when she must have heard Maggie call, and call, from wherever she was, in however deep a sleep.

An hour or so later, Maggie is driving her small car back across the Golden Gate Bridge, in the murky yellow lights (the supposed suicide-deterrents). Her overnight bag and the small sack of leftover food and her books are on the back seat, and Diana, as always, is sleeping on Maggie's lap; she is simply there, asleep and lightly purring, shedding golden hairs on Maggie's dark, still-damp skirt.

And Maggie can no longer even invest the return of her cat with magic meanings: Jonathan might still decide to throw it all up and move back to Boston, or New York; a mammogram
could still hold bad news for Maggie. None of her wildest, her most despairing thoughts are assuaged for good. Tonight when she gets home she will call Jonathan, who may or may not feel like coming over to see her. And tomorrow morning at eight she will meet with small, doe-eyed Hue Wan Griggs, who may or may not smile.

For some years I lived alone in a small white clapboard house, up on a high wooded bluff above the Mississippi River, which I could hardly see—so far down, glimpsed through thick vines and trees, and so narrow just there.

This was near Minneapolis, where I was an assistant professor at a local college. Teaching marine biology. And I thought quite a lot about the irony of my situation—a sea specialty in the landlocked Midwest. (I am from Santa Barbara, California, originally, which may explain quite a bit.)

During those Minnesota years, despite professional busyness, a heavy teaching load, labs, conferences, friends, and a few sporadic love affairs, I was often lonely, an embarrassing condition to which I would never have admitted. Still, and despite my relative isolation, at that time I regarded the telephone as an enemy, its shrill, imperative sound an interruption even to loneliness. When my phone rang, I did not anticipate a friendly chat. For one thing, most of my friends and lovers were also hard-working professionals, not much given to minor social exchange.

Thus, on a summer night about a year ago, a rare warm clear twilight, reminding me of Southern California, I was far from pleased at the sound of the telephone. I had just taken a bath and finished dressing; I was going out to dinner with a man I had met recently, whom I thought I liked. (Was he calling to break the date? Native distrust has not helped my relationships with men, nor with women.) We were going out to celebrate my birthday, actually, but I did not imagine that the ringing phone meant someone calling with congratulations, my birthday not being something that I generally talk about.

What I first heard on picking up that alien instrument was the hollow, whirring sound that meant a long-distance call, and I thought, How odd, what a strange hour for business. Then, as I said hello, and hello again, I heard silence. At last a female voice came on, very slurred. But then words formed. “Judith? Have I got Miss Judith Mallory?
Dr.
Mallory?”

“Yes—”

“Judy, is that you, truly? Truly, Jude? Judy, do you know who this is?” An excited, drunken voice, its cadence ineradicably familiar to me—and only one person has ever called me Jude. It was Jennifer Cartwright, my closest early-childhood friend, my almost inseparable pal—whom I had not heard from or about for more than twenty years, not since we both left Santa Barbara, where we grew up together, or tried to.

I asked her, “Jennifer, how are you? Where are you? What are you doing now?”

“Well, I'm back in our house, you know. I've come back home. I've been here since Mother died, and I guess I'm doing okay. Oh, Judy, it's really you! I'm so happy …”

Happy was the last thing that Jennifer sounded, though; her voice was almost tearful.

“Oh, Jennifer.” I was assailed by an overwhelming affection
for my friend, mixed with sadness over whatever ailed her just now, including being so drunk. I had not even known that her mother was dead. Nicola—Nickie Cartwright, whom I had also cared about a lot.

My own parents had both been dead for some time, which is one reason I had had no news from Santa Barbara. Also, since they died of so-called alcohol-related ailments, I was perhaps unreasonably alarmed at Jennifer's condition. A nervous stomach, which is no stomach at all for booze, had kept me, if unwillingly, abstemious.

“And oh!” Jennifer's voice sounded indeed much happier now. “I forgot to say happy birthday. Judy, Jude, happy happy birthday! Every year I think of you today, even if I haven't ever called you.”

“You're so good to remember,” I told her. “But really, tell me how you are.”

“Oh, you tell me! First off, you tell me just what you have on.” Such a perfect Jennifer question—or Nickie: Nickie too would have asked me what I was wearing, in order to see me, and to check on how I was.

To please Jennifer, I should have described a beautiful, colorful dress, but a lack of imagination, I believe, has kept me honest; I tend to tell the truth. My former (only) husband observed that I had a very literal mind, and he might have been right, as he was with a few other accurate accusations. In any case, I told Jennifer, “Just a sweater and some pants. My uniform, I guess. But they're both new. Black. Actually, I'm going out to dinner. This man I met—”

Jennifer began to laugh, her old prolonged, slow, appreciative laugh, and I thought, Well, maybe she's not so drunk. Just a little tipsy, maybe, and overexcited.

“Oh, Jude.” Jennifer was laughing still. “You're going out
on a date, and we're so old. But you sound like you're about sixteen, and wearing something pink and gauzy.”

Rational, sober person that I am, I could have cried.

But Jennifer went on in a conversational, much less drunken way. “I think about you so much,” she said. “And everything back then. All the fun we had. Of course, since I've moved back here it's all easier to remember.”

“I'm really sorry to hear about Nickie,” I told her.

“Well, just one more terrible thing. Everyone gets cancer, it seems like to me. Honestly, Jude, sometimes I think being grown up really sucks, don't you? To use a word I truly hate.”

“Well, I guess.”

“Your parents die, and your husbands turn out bad. And your kids—oh, don't even talk to me about kids.”