Cat Sitter Among the Pigeons (12 page)

As I shook dry food into Cheddar’s bowl, Mr. Stern spoke to Ruby as if they were mid-conversation. “You’re a big girl, Ruby, and you know how to use the phone. You’re not doomed to starve just because I’ve ordered food for myself.”

She said, “I know that, Granddad. It just seems peculiar for a person to order dinner delivered without asking the other person in the house if she’d like something too.”

“I guess I got so used to not seeing you or hearing from you that it just slipped my mind that you were here.”

Ruby’s eyes flooded and she left the kitchen with Opal hugged tightly to her chest.

I didn’t speak. Just left Mr. Stern in the kitchen to sulk alone. I cleaned Cheddar’s litter box while he ate, then went back to the kitchen and washed and dried his bowls. I put fresh water in his water bowl and left the kitchen with my lips squeezed shut. Mr. Stern had a waiting empty wineglass on the bar, but he didn’t ask me to open a bottle of wine for him, and I didn’t offer.

Outside Ruby’s bedroom door, I tapped lightly and called her name. Her “Come in” was muffled, as if she’d had her face buried in a pillow. When I went in, she was sitting on the edge of the bed. Opal was in her crib watching the play of late sunshine on the wall.

I said, “This is my last stop for the day, and I’m going home to have dinner with my brother and his partner. My brother is the best cook in the world. Would you and Opal like to join us?”

She looked so grateful that I had to avert my eyes so she wouldn’t see the pity in them. “Do I need to change clothes?”

“Heck no, we’re barefoot diners.”

“I’ll just put a clean Onesie on Opal.”

I waited, thinking how young mothers may go out of the house looking like yesterday’s warmed-up oatmeal, but they want their babies to always look cute.

Before we left, Ruby ducked into the kitchen. “I’m going out with Dixie for dinner, Granddad. Can I have a house key?”

Taken by surprise, he muttered something I couldn’t hear, and when Ruby joined me at the front door she held a door key in her hand.

On the way to my place, neither of us spoke of the tension in Mr. Stern’s house, or of the fact that he was treating her shabbily. Neither did we speak of Myra Kreigle, of the trial, or of Vern. Instead, we talked about people on the street, the clothes they wore, the clothes movie stars and celebrities wore, the shops in Sarasota where women could buy those kind of clothes. Trivial woman talk to avoid deep woman talk.

At home, Michael and Paco accepted a guest lugging a baby with graceful equanimity. Paco hurried to set an extra plate on the redwood table on the deck, and Michael made the kind of admiring noises at Opal that warm the cockles of a mother’s heart. I left them on the deck to get acquainted while I zipped upstairs to shower and get into clean shorts and a T. When I came downstairs, Paco had Opal in his arms and Ruby was helping Michael carry food from the kitchen.

For a moment I felt as if I were looking at a slice of life preserved in the amber of time, with the baby being Christy, Ruby being me, and Todd a numinous presence somewhere in the shadows. The moment passed and we were just people getting acquainted—a woman who was a younger version of myself, a baby who was like my own child who had died, Michael and Paco who had always been there for me, and the wrenching memory of my beloved husband.

Ella did not share my bittersweet feelings. Ever since she had given Paco a scare by bounding into the trees while we ate, he had decreed that she would wear a light harness with a cotton leash looped around the leg of a lounge chair. She had come to tolerate that indignity, but she watched Michael and Paco fawning over the baby with the gimlet-eyed imperiousness of the Red Queen.

Dinner began with a cup of lentil soup with a squeeze of lemon to give it a lift. Michael whirred up a tiny bit in the blender for Opal and got a flirtatious flutter of eyelashes and a drooly smile. No matter how young or old, every female falls for Michael.

After the soup, Michael brought out poached Alaskan salmon with dill sauce, baby red potatoes, and a salad of cucumber, orange, and Florida avocado. Hot french bread and a crisp white wine made just the right finishing touch.

Over dinner, Michael and Paco and I kept the conversation moving, tossing topics around like beach volleyball players with the easy familiarity of people who know one another extremely well and speak a kind of code that doesn’t have to be explained. We talked of inconsequential things—the weather, a funny scene Paco had witnessed on the street, Michael’s buddy at the firehouse who had taken his family to Disney World.

“We’re taking turns filling in for him,” he told Ruby. “My day will be tomorrow.”

Ruby didn’t care what Michael’s schedule was—why would she?—but Paco and I nodded like business executives noting a significant change in plan. I didn’t know if Ruby was aware of how diligently we worked to avoid speaking of Myra Kreigle or her trial.

Dessert was big chunks of sweet watermelon, the real kind with black shiny seeds and honest flavor. Ruby let Opal gum a tiny bite, but she mostly drooled red juice on her Onesie, and the new experience of watermelon made her cry. Opal had enjoyed as much of new acquaintances as she could stand.

I said, “I think it’s time to drive you home.”

Ruby smiled. “If you don’t mind. It’s past Opal’s bedtime.”

While Ruby gathered up the diaper bag and said her thank-yous and goodnights to Michael, Paco slipped inside the house to put on shoes. He followed us to the carport and climbed into his dented truck. “I’ll follow you.”

His voice didn’t leave any room for discussion, which made me realize that in addition to adding shoes to his attire, he’d probably also added a few loaded guns. I looked toward the deck, where Michael was busily gathering up leftovers and chatting with Ella. He and Paco had come to a decision they hadn’t discussed with me, and the decision was that Paco would stick to us like glue and make sure nothing happened to Ruby on the way home.

If Ruby found it unusual to have an armed deputy riding on our bumper, she didn’t mention it. At Mr. Stern’s house, I pulled into the driveway and left the motor running while Ruby gathered her baby paraphernalia. Opal was fussy, but Ruby leaned across to hug me before she slid out of the car. “Thanks, Dixie. I appreciate that dinner more than you can ever know.”

She slammed the car door closed and scurried toward the front door, with Paco close behind her. He waited until she had unlocked the door and disappeared inside, then glided past me to his truck. On the drive home, he stuck close to me, and it occurred to me that he was guarding me as carefully as he’d guarded Ruby. It was a disquieting thought.

Back home, I waved a thank-you to Paco and headed up my stairs while he ambled across the yard to his back door. I was inside my apartment before I realized he’d ambled with deliberate slowness to give me time to get inside. Another disquieting thought. I didn’t believe I was in danger, but apparently Paco thought it was a possibility.

A wave of exhaustion hit me as I got ready for bed, and I crawled between the sheets with the kind of mind fog that comes from too much thinking. Even so, I was still thinking. I wondered how long it would take Ruby to recover from the trauma of the last several years of her life. From what Mr. Stern had said, Ruby’s life had taken a sharp turn when she was in her early teens. Within two or three years, her mother had died a lingering death, her father had been killed in a war, her grandmother had died of heartache, and Ruby had been left with a grandfather who was incapable of showing affection. In her pain, she had turned to Myra Kreigle as a mother substitute. In her naivete, she had let Myra use her to defraud other people. With the same need for love that we all have, she had believed she had found it with a race car driver named Zack Carlyle. Zack had turned against her when he lost all the money he’d invested with Myra Kreigle, and Myra was willing to destroy Ruby to save herself.

I wondered what any individual’s limit is. How much pain and loss can any of us absorb before we collapse? I knew what my own limit was, and I knew every person has his or her own limit. Ruby had taken more hard knocks than most women could take, even women a lot older, but I knew a moment would inevitably come when she couldn’t take any more.

If I ran the world, every adult would get several time-outs from life. The time-outs would come about every twenty years, and each one would last five years. Five years to recover from school or marriage or parenthood or career or war or grief. Five years to cry or sleep or pray or stare at the wall. A roof and a bed would be provided, along with an unlimited supply of wholesome food, musical instruments, and books. No drugs, alcohol, or tobacco would be allowed. No therapists or religious proselytizers. At the end of five years, recovered lifers would swear an oath to give more thought to the four Fs—family, friends, food, and fun—than to career goals, achievements, possessions, status, or bank statements.

When sleep managed to shut up my thinking mind, my dream mind took over and sent me to a gift shop so posh and out of my league that I was embarrassed to pollute it with my presence. I didn’t have any choice, though. Under dream rules, I had to buy a gift for Guidry and I had to buy it at that particular shop.

I said, “I want to buy a gift for someone important to me.”

As soon as the words left my lips, I felt my face flush. The female salesclerk, who looked like Myra Kreigle but was somebody else, gave me a pitying look.

“Would that be a male or female? Adult or child?”

My face got even hotter. I should have thought this out before I came in.

“Male,” I said. “Adult.”

“Aha,” she said, as if I’d gone beyond her expectations. “Now, is this adult male a coworker, a family friend, a relative, or a lover?” The sneer in her voice implied that it was highly unlikely I had a lover.

Now my face was so hot I knew I had turned an unlovely magenta. I had to get this conversation under control.
My
control, and the way to do that seemed to call for pretending not to be Guidry’s lover.

“More like a friend who might conceivably become a lover. Someday. Maybe.”

She gave me a coolly appraising look and I knew she was wondering how anybody as incoherent as I had ever managed to meet a man like that. Meanwhile, my face had got flaming hot because I’d used the word
conceivably,
as in
conceive,
as in get pregnant not by asexual means.

She said, “Does he have any hobbies that you know of?”

Clearly, she doubted I knew a man well enough to know if he had hobbies. I felt insulted, but the truth was that if Guidry had any hobbies, I didn’t know what they were.

I said the only thing that came to mind. “He’s from New Orleans.”

She nodded, the way people encourage awkward children, but she disappeared without suggesting an appropriate gift. I was left feeling I’d missed the only opportunity I’d ever have to give something valuable to Guidry.

15

I woke the next morning feeling as if a weight had rolled off me while I slept. I still felt that Ruby and I were kindred spirits, but Ruby’s load was her own to carry, not mine. The law of cause and effect creates strict boundaries in every person’s life, and Ruby was experiencing the effects of her own decisions and actions. I could sympathize with her and be of help to her, but I knew I could not and should not interfere in her life. Furthermore, I was a pet sitter. My job was to empty Cheddar’s litter box, not to imagine myself mother to Opal or big sister to Ruby. Mr. Stern was Ruby’s grandfather, and even though he had behaved like a prize boob the day before, I believed he was a better man than he acted, and that he cared for Ruby and Opal. They would all be okay without my hand-wringing concern.

Going downstairs to the Bronco, I whisper-sang off-key, “You’re entirely way too fine, entirely way too fine, get me all worked up like that, entirely way too fine, da-da-da-di-da, um-hunh.” Lucinda Williams will never fear competition from me. The air had a salty, sandy, fishy Gulf smell, the fragrance of life. The sky was fleecy, with a thin disc of retreating moon hanging over a pewter sea. On the pale shoreline, as if to echo my whispered song, a sighing surf foamed scalloped designs onto the sand. A great blue heron asleep on the hood of my Bronco extracted his plumed head from under his wing when he heard my song, gave me a red-rimmed glare of indignation, stretched his wings to their full six-foot span, and flapped away with the muted sound of an avalanche. All in all, a normal, run-of-the-mill, predawn morning on the Key.

The rest of the morning was typical. The horizon pinked at the right time, glowed apricot on cue, and ever so subtly transmuted itself into a smooth pale blue canvas for the day’s artistry. Gulls gathered into balletic groups to swoop and wheel against the sky’s blue scrim, terns and egrets got busy picking up tasty morsels on the ground, songbirds trilled and chirped just because they felt like it. Billy Elliot and I did our regular run, and then I went house to house feeding cats, grooming cats, playing with cats. I was so efficient, so cheerful, so
good,
I could have been the star of a documentary about pet sitting.

Even Mr. Stern’s sulkiness didn’t faze me. When I got to his house, Ruby opened the door. She looked happier, and I hoped it was because she’d escaped stress for a little while the night before.

She rolled her eyes toward the kitchen in a sort of conspiratorial way to let me know that Mr. Stern could hear us. “Cheddar’s with Opal again. He slept under the crib last night and he’s been in the bedroom all morning. Opal looks for him when he’s not there. It’s funny how they’ve bonded.”

I didn’t imagine Mr. Stern thought it was funny. I had an image of him sitting alone in the dark courtyard, watching the play of light on the waterfall without Cheddar in his lap.

I bustled into the kitchen as if I didn’t notice Mr. Stern’s dour expression. He sat at his spot at the bar, waiting for me to arrive and boil his eggs, make his toast, pour him a cup of coffee from a pot heating on its pad on the counter. Mr. Stern was perfectly capable of boiling his own eggs, making his own toast, and pouring his own coffee. Jealousy of Cheddar’s attachment to Opal had caused him to go infantile and demanding, traits he would have sneered at in anybody else.