If You Could See What I See (35 page)

24

T
hat night, I pulled on two jackets and the knitted hat and scarf my mother sent me. The hat and scarf were pink, but there were three flowers in purple, yellow, and orange on each one. I loved them.

I sat on my deck, in the yellow Adirondack chair, right under the maple tree, and ate an artichoke with mayonnaise and hot garlic butter. I thought about Sperm Donors One and Two. Their relationships with my mother were decades ago and, according to her, one night stands.

But when my mother become famous years ago, did they recognize her on TV? Did they remember that one night?

Did they ever wonder if she became pregnant?

I tipped my head back and studied the branches above my head. The maple trees are one reason I love this tree house. Maybe I would buy it.

But could I handle living across the street from Blake? What if he got married, had children?

No, I couldn’t stay here.

Absolutely not.

I already missed the tree house.

And I had never stopped missing Blake.

He would be a great dad. I wondered if Sperm Donors One and Two were great dads.

“It’s only one more cat, Aunt Meggie. One more!”

Regan stood at my front door. He was wearing his basketball jersey—football had ended—and he was wet because he’d walked to my house in the rain. He had a gold cat the size of a small hippo in his arms.

“It’s a tiny cat. See?”

“But you already brought me Jeepers.”

“I know, I know. How is Jeepers?”

“He’s still hissing. Come on in.”

Regan took off his high-tops, one foot after the other. He towered over me.

“Jeepers is a good cat, right? Patient and sincere? He needs a friend.” He slung the new cat over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, then bent to pet Pop Pop. Pop Pop licked his hand and smiled extra wide. He barked. Regan barked back. This did not seem to bother the hippo cat.

“Jeepers does not strike me as the kind of cat who wants friends.”

“He does! I’m sure of it.” Regan nodded eagerly. “This one is a stray.” He held the cat up so we were eye to eye. “I’ve had posters up for two weeks. No one claimed her. She came to our back door and kept eating our cat food. Her name is Breadsticks because I like breadsticks.”

Now that made sense.

Two weeks ago, Regan made three touchdowns. After the second touchdown, and after getting tackled by a couple of joyful teammates, he leaped up, ran about three feet, and caught a frog. He ran the frog back to Matt, Lacey, Grandma, and me in the bleachers.

“Mom, please! I think this frog has been separated from his family!” he whined, helmet still on.

“Put the frog back, Regan, and get back out on the field,” Matt ordered.

“Dad, come on! Hermie needs a frog friend!”

“No, he doesn’t,” Lacey said. “He already has three frog friends.”

Regan’s helmeted head fell, and his shoulders slumped. His friends patted him on the back, sympathetic to the lost frog dilemma.

The coach yelled, “Rockaford, Peterson, Lumchuko, get your butts back over here right now!”

Regan started crying.

“Oh, for God’s sakes!” Lacey said. “Give me the frog.” She tossed her Coke through the slats of the bleachers, grabbed the frog, and dropped him into the empty cup. “Now go, you three! Go!”

A smile lit Regan’s face, and he sprinted back out with his buddies.

“He’s not my brightest child,” she muttered.

“It’s an obsession,” Grandma drawled. She’d come to the game in a blue lacy dress and blue heels with a black toe. Baubles: sapphires. “He is peculiar. He must marry some sort of horsey woman or a woman who collects cats who will understand.”

“He loves animals. What’s wrong with that?” Lacey peered at the frog in her cup with disapproval. He hopped, and her head sprung back up.

“He has to be a veterinarian,” I said. “Has to be.”

“This is his second year in Introduction to Algebra and he barely has a C,” Lacey said. “He’s not going to be a veterinarian.”

“I think he’s going to live in a home in the middle of nowhere in Wyoming,” Grandma said. “And he’ll have fifty pets, and people in town will say he’s that funny animal recluse man.”

“Thanks, Grandma, you’re ever so kind,” Lacey said, totally exasperated. “Did I need to hear that?”

“Your son is an animal collector. Like some people collect . . . spoons or thimbles. Odd, but endearing. Bizarre, but somehow likable.”

“You smoke cigars and sling back Irish whiskey,” Lacey said. “You have the warmth of a corpse sometimes. You’re so tough, I check to make sure you’re not made out of leather. You have more shoes than I do body cells, and he’s odd?”

Grandma shrugged her shoulders, fiddled with her sapphire necklace. “I adore him. I adore odd. He told me he wants me to create a line of animal underwear.”

The frog jumped out of the cup. I had to chase it down across the bleachers.

Regan sat down at my kitchen table and slung the hippo-sized cat onto his lap. I brought him some apple pie that Cassidy made me and two glasses of milk. He inhaled it. I cut him another slice. The cat sat quietly on his lap while Pop Pop bobbed about like a drunken sailor.

“Thanks, Aunt Meggie. I was starving. I could barely stand. Feels like I haven’t eaten all day.”

“But you did eat, right?”

“Hardly at all. Four eggs and toast and bacon and cereal for breakfast, then two sandwiches and three apples for lunch, then two slices of pizza and three bananas for snack. I was starving.”

He looked plaintively at me with those innocent green eyes. He had no idea how he sounded. “Glad you’re fed. That cat is not a small cat.”

“No, it’s a tiny cat. Feel her. Doesn’t weigh anything. Hardly a pound. Look at her, Aunt Meggie!” He held the cat up with one hand. The cat bent into an upside-down U shape. “Breadsticks won’t bother you, and she wants a home and family.”

“Why don’t you keep her then?”

His face crumpled. “Because you know we already have a bunch of cats and Mom says I can’t have any more or she’ll be called that weird cat lady, or something like that. I don’t think she’s weird. Cats have good spirits. Please, Aunt Meggie? I’ll come and visit her. Can I visit Jeepers right now? And I want to say hi to Mrs. Friendly and Ham the Hamster and play with Pop Pop now that I’m fed and watered.”

I didn’t laugh out loud when he said “fed and watered” because he said it in all seriousness. Poor guy. “Let’s bring this cat upstairs to see Jeepers. Jeepers likes to be alone, so I’m not sure how they’ll get along.”

We introduced Breadsticks and Jeepers.

Immediately they rolled into a cat fight—hissing, clawing, screeching, fur flying. We had to leap in and separate them, which was a struggle because twice they wriggled out of our hands. Pop Pop watched, tongue out, darting back and forth, panting and grinning, like he was some bookie who would win a bunch of money depending on the outcome of the fight.

“Aunt Meggie, this isn’t a problem after all,” Regan said after he tossed Breadsticks the hippo cat back over his shoulder. Jeepers scurried under my bed, still hissing. “I’ve solved this problem with my brain. You keep Jeepers upstairs and Breadsticks downstairs. That’s a good idea, right?”

“Ah, perfect. So give them a list of rules and read it to them? One stays up, one stays down?”

He looked confused, baffled. “Uh . . . well . . . if that’ll work, that’d be good. I don’t know if Breadsticks speaks English.... Okay, I gotta go. I have math homework and Dad has to help me, because I don’t get this math at all. This is my second year in Introduction to Algebra—I told you that, right—and it’s . . .” He looked pained. “It’s so hard. It’s like trying to read space alien language. I love you, Aunt Meggie.” He gave me a big hug. “Good-bye Jeepers.” He bent down to smile at the hissing, trembling Jeepers under the bed.

He climbed down the ladder with Breadsticks still slung over his shoulder, then bent to say good-bye to Mrs. Friendly and Ham the Hamster. “Good-bye, Pop Pop.”

Pop Pop barked, and Regan barked back.

Regan set Breadsticks down and she darted under the couch, meowing. I hugged Regan before he left. “Uh, can I take a small piece of apple pie with me for a snack on the way home? I need more feeding.”

Pop Pop barked after he left, then looked at me and barked again. He always wanted an answer. I barked back.

Ham the Hamster rode on her hamster wheel. Who knew where she was trying to go.

Mrs. Friendly stuck out his tongue. Breadsticks meowed pathetically.

My tree house had become a zoo.

At eleven o’clock that night, through hail and rain, I had to take Jeepers and Breadsticks to the pet hospital. Breadsticks had not obeyed the new rule about staying downstairs. Obviously she didn’t understand English. The cats got in another fight and both needed stitches. Pop Pop, the dog bookie, seemed to enjoy the action.

On my way home at one in the morning, I saw Blake on his deck on the phone. I am sure he saw me, as he turned when I turned into my driveway.

He still had not cashed my check for his truck.

I felt like I owed him, which I truly didn’t like. It made me nervous and off balance.

But I had to smile, a tiny smile.

It was so . . . chivalrous.

I hate to sound like a swooning maiden, but chivalry was so romantic. It wasn’t the gift of the money, it was the gift of the generosity behind it.

My defenses were coming down, I could feel ’em.

 

Two months after Aaron came home from another stay at yet another clinic, I cheated on him.

I cheated on him for four weeks.

I was in Boise finishing up filming a documentary about a young man with cerebral palsy and how he had raised $100,000 for the Red Cross.

I met a man there named Henry Russell. Henry owned sixteen tire shops across the western states. I met him in a Mexican restaurant the first night. He was tall, broad, friendly. He was not married. I never would have done what I did if he were married, and yes, I do know how shallow and hypocritical that statement sounds.

I told Henry I was married the first night. By the third night I was crying over an ice-cream sundae that he insisted I eat. I told him about Aaron’s mental illness, how I hadn’t known before I was married that he suffered from it, how he’d been committed multiple times, how he’d tried to kill himself. I did not speak about Josephine, that pain too private and raw.

I met him every night for dinner, sometimes a movie, a dessert. He always insisted on paying, which I found so romantic. He was gentle and kind and completely, utterly, mentally stable. He was fun and made me laugh.

He was, essentially, great.

I had never been treated with such respect, such warmth, by any man I’d dated. I was beyond desperate for love, attention, affection, and a friend, and the time with Henry saved me.

Being with Henry made me realize that I wasn’t the problem; it was Aaron. Intellectually I knew it, but emotionally I was too exhausted and battered to internalize it. Henry made me believe that I was worth something, that I was a person worth laughing and talking with, and holding hands with at the movies. He made me see that I did deserve more in a marriage.

I slept with him starting the fourth night. I went to bed with a mentally stable man who hugged me all night, then I woke up to a mentally stable man who brought me coffee in the morning. He had a modern log cabin for a home, and he made things easy. He wanted to continue seeing me. I told him I couldn’t. He cried. So did I.

He wanted to get Aaron stable and healthy, and then he wanted me to leave him. I had blown through all of the money I’d saved for years on Aaron’s care and supporting his films that had never made money. I was almost totally broke. Henry offered to pay for long-term treatment for Aaron. I could not accept that gift.