One-Eyed Cat (19 page)

“Mama! There are two kittens. I can see them, just there by the silver spruce.”

He heard her low laugh. “How lovely!” she said. “It's a cat family out for a walk. It really is a cat's moon.”

The dark small shapes of the kittens rolled each other up like snowballs and vanished. Now only the first cat remained. Ned crouched, the better to see. The cat looked directly at him. He saw the empty socket where its eye had been. Suddenly, as though that second was all the cat would allow Ned, it moved swiftly away and vanished, too.

“We must go home,” Mama called. “The wind is rising … We'll catch colds.”

He stood up and turned back to the mansion. The moon was behind it and its shadow fell like a mantle upon the ground before it.

His mother had stepped off the veranda and was looking up at the house, too. She recited something as if only to herself.

“
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,

The solemn temples, the great globe itself
…”

“Is that from the Bible?” Ned asked.

“No, it's William Shakespeare—from a play called
The Tempest
.”

They walked to the file of maple trees. The moon would be setting any minute. It had grown much darker. She took his arm as they stepped over the long-ago collapsed stone wall and emerged on Wallis land.

“That cat had only one eye,” he said quickly to her. “I shot it, and that's why.”

She halted. She said his name once, inquiringly, as though she was not sure he'd spoken.

“After Papa put the gun away when Uncle Hilary gave it to me, I went up to the attic and got it. I went to the stable, and I saw something move. I aimed at it and shot. A cat turned up at Mr. Scully's with one eye. We fed it and took care of it. It almost died and then it got better. Then Mr. Scully got sick. And I kept feeding the cat. But it stopped coming to Mr. Scully's woodshed. One time I saw it at the Makepeace place—where we saw it tonight.”

The silence around them was immense. He imagined that all the creatures sliding and creeping and walking about in the dark were listening to him. He couldn't see his mother's face. She was so still, like a tree standing there.

“It was the same cat we saw just now. The one that came to Mr. Scully's. A one-eyed cat.”

“Someone else, something else, might have hurt it,” she said. “You don't know for sure.”

He thought for a moment. Then he said, “Maybe. But I shot something. I knew it was alive. When I aimed the gun at whatever was moving, I didn't care, Mama.” He heard, and was surprised, at how loud and sure his voice was. She reached out and took his hand and pulled him a little—he felt rooted to the spot. Then he gripped her fingers and they went on toward the house. When they came to the maple tree from whose branch he liked to swing out over the bank, over her old rock garden, she paused again.

“I saw you that night,” she said. “I had gotten up, and it was one of those times I could walk. I was happy whenever that happened. I heard you going to the attic, then out the front door. After a time I tracked you. I went to the attic, too. I sat for a bit in that old Morris chair. Then I looked out a window and saw you coming back to the house, carrying something.”

“It
was
you,” he said. “It was the gun I was carrying. I thought that face at the window was Mrs. Scallop's. After a while, I began to think I just made it up, or dreamed that someone had seen me.”

They were close to the porch. He could make out the steps and the shape of the lilac which would bloom in another month, he knew, and then the great purple blossoms would fill the hall with their scent.

“All this time you've had it on your mind,” she said. “Since September.”

“I told Mr. Scully but he couldn't speak anymore. He couldn't move. I know he heard me, though. I don't know what he thought.”

“Maybe he knew already,” she said. “Let's sit on the steps a moment. I feel out of breath.”

He sat down next to her, holding his chin in one hand. He felt the comfort of his own house behind him. When he sat on the Makepeace veranda, it was as if he'd gone to another country. He glanced at his mother. He wasn't waiting for anything to happen now; he wasn't waiting to say anything to her.

“I want to tell you something about myself,” she said. “I ran away from home when you were three years old. I went north, to Maine. I found a cottage on a river and lived in it for about three months. It was a tidal river, and the tides dropped around ten feet. At night, I could hear the water gurgling. I remember it sounded like several very large people in a bathtub.”

He laughed a little. It didn't stop him from being afraid of what she was telling him.

“I bought a rusty old bicycle and rode to the village nearby every day, where I got my groceries. I bought jam and bread and cider and sometimes, apples. I ate like a child eats. And I went to the library once a week. It was so quiet where I was except for the river. I used to get up at dawn. Herons and egrets would be feeding in the mud.”

He heard in her voice how much she had liked it there.

“Why did you run away?” he asked.

She said, “I was afraid of your father's goodness. I'm not so very good.”

He could not understand that. But he couldn't remember that she'd ever been gone, either. It was as though he'd been suddenly let into a room where only grown-up people live and talk, and he couldn't understand the language yet. But something stirred in his mind, in his memory, a kind of feeling of familiarity, of hearing something that—even if he didn't understand it—he had heard before.

“Why did you come back?” he asked softly.

“Papa and I wrote to each other. He didn't tell me right away about you walking all over the house at night. Yes … that's what you used to do. You found your way everywhere, little as you were, and because you were up all night, you were sleepy all day. I came back because I missed you both so much. And I came back so you would stop that night-walking and get a night's sleep.”

He could tell by her voice that she was making a joke. She often made jokes when she was sad. He knew that just as he knew that Papa whistled when times were hard.

She was silent for a little while.

“Do you think you knew it was a cat—that night?” she asked finally.

“No. I knew it was
something
. I pretended it was a shadow. Then I got so I didn't know whether I was pretending or not.”

He was thinking about her being so far away and how he had gone up and down the stairs in the house at night those months she was away, into all the rooms, probably up to the attic, too.

“This time it was you who came looking for me,” he said.

“Yes. I saw you walking toward the maples. I followed you.”

The doors behind them opened and light shone on them. They both stood up and turned.

Papa was standing in the doorway, the hall light on. He was wearing his bathrobe and his worn leather slippers.

He shaded his eyes with one hand and peered out at them.

“There you are!” he said. He smiled. “I've been looking all over the house for you. Then I thought—they've gone for a walk on this beautiful spring night.”

“We went to the Makepeace mansion,” Mama said.

“I'm so glad you've come home,” Papa said.

About the Author

Paula Fox is a notable figure in contemporary American literature. She has earned wide acclaim for her children's books, as well as for her novels and memoirs for adults. Born in New York City on April 22, 1923, her early years were turbulent. She moved from upstate New York to Cuba to California, and from one school to another. An avid reader at a young age, her love of literature sustained her through the difficulties of an unsettled childhood. At first, Fox taught high school, writing only when occasion permitted. Soon, however, she was able to devote herself to writing full-time, but kept a foot in the classroom by teaching creative writing at the University of Pennsylvania, New York University, and the State University of New York.

In her novels for young readers, Fox fearlessly tackles difficult topics such as death, race, and illness. She has received many distinguished literary awards including a Newbery Medal for
The Slave Dancer
(1974), a National Book Award for
A Place Apart
(1983), and a Newbery Honor for
One-Eyed Cat
(1984). Worldwide recognition for Fox's contribution to literature for children came with the presentation of the Hans Christian Andersen Award in 1978.

Fox's novels for adults have also been highly praised. Her 2002 memoir,
Borrowed Finery
, received the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for the Art of the Memoir, and in 2013 the
Paris Review
presented her with the Hadada Award, honoring her contribution to literature and the writing community. In 2011, Fox was inducted into the New York State Writers Hall of Fame.

Fox lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband, the writer Martin Greenberg.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1984 by Paula Fox

Cover design by Connie Gabbert

ISBN: 978-1-5040-3742-6

This edition published in 2016 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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New York, NY 10038

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