Cattitude (13 page)

“Do you know where she moved?” Max asked.

“Somewhere on the northwest side.” Maria
flapped a chubby hand toward the front window. “She said she’d stop
by sometime, but I didn’t need to be psychic to guess that wasn’t
going to happen. People come, people go.” Some of her cheer
deserted her, like a puffer fish losing its puff. “It’s the way of
life.”

“You know the boyfriend’s name?”

Her lips pursed, her forehead rippled. “She
wasn’t going with him long before she moved out. Some dog name.
Stay. Sit. Fetch. Something like that.”

Max stood, giving Ted a look that brought him
to his feet too. “Thank you for your cookies and coffee.” Max
handed her a business card. “If you remember anything else, call
me.”

“I remembered one thing.” She pushed herself
up from the chair inch by excruciating inch, the struggle silencing
her. Max held out his hand to help her, but she shook her head, her
breath panting.

“Are you all right?” Ted asked.

“I’m old on the outside, but here...” She
tapped her head. “Up here I’m flirty and thirty. Kris, three doors
down, has a story about Sorcha. If you wanna talk to her, I better
go with you. She’s got a small son and wouldn’t let two strange men
in her place. Cory loves my cookies. I’ll take some with me.”

Max glanced at his watch. Ted had been
helping him out part-time since he’d been a junior in high school
but Max still had a lot to show him. And they needed to go to the
bank, and he had to make an appointment with his lawyer. Make it
legal. Get the papers signed by both of them. In just one week and
five days, he would hop on a plane and fly far away from Wisconsin.
He should leave the apartment now.

But he stayed rooted where he stood, waiting
for the plump, poky woman. Someone needed to take responsibility
for Sorcha before he sent her on her way. Even if he ended up
handing her to the fiancé.

Unless the fiancé was the reason behind her
memory loss. Maria said he was a user. It wasn’t a big step from
user to abuser.

Carrying a container of cookies, Maria led
them along the hall and knocked on the neighbor’s door. They waited
in silence, listening to the muted sounds of traffic from the busy
street outside. No one answered. Maria knocked again. Max heard a
siren wail. Still no answer.

Reaching over Maria’s head, Max knocked hard
enough to sting his knuckles. Once, twice, three times.

“Looks like no one’s home.” Ted smacked Max’s
arm. “We may as well go. Maria, will you tell your friend—”

The stairwell door clunked open and childish
laughter spilled out. They all turned toward the sound, drawn by
the pure joy. A dark-haired female pixie stepped into the hall,
followed by a smaller version, male, about four years old. The
woman blinked at them, the laughter in her face dimming. The boy
still giggled as he dashed past her.

“I won!” He spotted Maria. “Cookies!”

He ran to her, his hands out to take the
container, ignoring his mother’s demand to walk. “Hi, Maria, is
that for me?”

“Honey, I told you not to ask for cookies.”
His mother came up behind him, pulling his arms down.

Maria introduced them and explained why they
were there. Max gave Kris his card. She held it as if it were a
present from the devil, holding it away from her body with her
fingertips, her nose wrinkled. Then her mouth set, the corners
down, as though she’d made a decision that she didn’t like.

“Come inside.” She stuffed the card into her
jean pocket. “I owe Sorcha.”

Kris and Cory’s living room was the twin of
Maria’s, but theirs seemed roomier with only a couch, a TV and a
child-sized chair. Toys littered the floor, and a blue and gold
throw didn’t disguise the couch’s shabbiness.

Maria gave the cookies to Cory, then glanced
at a flamingo clock on the wall. “I’ve got to go.
The Love
Chronicles
is on and I hate to miss it.”

After Maria bustled out, Kris told Cory to
eat the cookies in the kitchen. She gestured to Max and Ted to sit
on the couch.

She remained standing, her lips clamped
together like a locked door. Finally she took a deep breath, her
slight breasts lifting and falling. “I never believed in psychics
or seeing the future, but Sorcha saved Cory’s life.” She held up a
closed fist and opened it, as if she were letting a moth fly
free.

Tension gathered in Max’s body, his spine not
touching the back of the couch. Next to him, Ted leaned
forward.

“She was moving out the same weekend Cory and
I moved in last October. We passed in the hall, she looked at Cory
and she went white. I swear I never saw anyone lose color like that
before. I thought she was going to faint, but she pointed at Cory
and said, ‘He’s the one.’”

Swallowing, Kris glanced toward the kitchen,
adjacent to the living room, where the small boy sat at the table
devouring a cookie. She dragged her gaze back to them.

“She said she dreamed she was in an operating
room and doctors were taking the appendicitis out of a small boy.
She saw the boy’s face. Cory’s face.”

“That must’ve been creepy,” Ted said.

Max wanted to clobber him for interrupting,
but the pixie was nodding her head.

“I thought she was wacko. I hustled Cory
away, but two months later, he had a pain in his stomach that
wouldn’t go away. At first I thought it was the flu, but then I
remembered what she said and took him to the ER.” She rubbed her
arms, as if trying to warm herself. “It still scares me how close
he was to death.”

“Freaky,” Ted said.

“Do you know where she lives?” Max asked, but
she was shaking her head.

“I tried to find her. I wanted to thank her,
buy her a bottle of wine or something. But no one knew where she
moved.” She walked to a desk in the corner that wasn’t much bigger
than the one Max had in grade school. Scribbling on a scrap of
paper, she said, “Here’s my name and phone number. If she needs a
place to stay, she can live with me and Cory.”

“There you go, Max,” Ted said. “That’s your
solution.”

Max took the scrap of paper. “I’ll let her
know, but she’ll stay with us until she gets her memory back.”

Ted’s eyebrows arched. “I thought you didn’t
believe she had amnesia.”

“I don’t believe it and I don’t disbelieve
it.”

“You’re a fence sitter,” Kris said.

Ted shouted out a laugh.

Max gave him a look that should’ve stopped
his laughter but didn’t. “I’m keeping an open mind.”

Still laughing, Ted wagged his finger at Max.
“What you’re keeping, brother, is Sorcha. You sure that’s not what
you wanted all along?”

Turning his back on Ted, Max thanked Kris and
asked her to call if she remembered anything that might help
Sorcha. Ted thanked her too, telling her to come over and visit
Sorcha anytime.

“My car’s in the shop. Maybe next week.”

“Next week she might be gone.” Ted shrugged,
his easy come, easy go attitude firmly in place. “Bye, Cory,” he
called, waving.

The small boy waved back, his rounded chin
smeared chocolate-chip brown.

Max and Ted walked out of the apartment
building in silence, Max frowning as he crossed to his Jeep.

A clairvoyant? A victim? A woman on the run?
Who the hell was the woman in his house?

“Here, kitty.” Gwen peered into the gap
between bushes, straight through to the brick wall of the house.
Twisting her head, she looked from side to side, but only saw
sharp-needled branches and no cat. She bit her lower lip to keep
from crying out. Where would it be?

All day at school, only thoughts of the cat
kept her from hating her life like usual. She’d thought of a
hundred names for the cat, but couldn’t pick one until she found
out if it was a boy or a girl. When she and Katie had returned
home, Katie clomped to her room to change into her pants with the
elastic waist and a sweatshirt. Gwen raced to the kitchen and
opened a can of salmon. After emptying it into one of her mother’s
china dessert bowls, she hurried outside.

Even if the cat wouldn’t come to her yet, she
loved it. Maybe today would be the day the cat loved her back.

First she had to find it.

She crawled along the front of the house,
looking around the thick branches for a spot of gray fur, poking
her hand between the gaps, trying to tempt the cat with the good
china and the salmon. “Here, kitty, here, kitty.” Sharp needles
scraped the backs of her hands, and all she saw was darkness.

What if the cat left? What if it had a home
to go to? Someone else who loved it?

“I can love you better,” she whispered. “I
can love you lots. Lots and lots and lots.”

She got to her feet, careful not to dump the
bowl and its smelly contents, then hurried around to the back of
the house. Covered rose bushes and white wrought iron benches
circled statues of dead gods and goddesses that stared blindly at
Gwen. The rose garden, her mother’s landscaper called it. “My
garden,” Gwen used to call it. Last summer, she’d spent fifty
dollars of her own money to buy a bird feeder and bird feed. Katie
had said it was educational and even braved the pollen and plant
smells to help put it up.

Then Gwen’s mother flew home for a dentist’s
appointment, said it looked tacky, and threw it in the trash. A
week later, she left again.

Now Gwen hated the rose garden. When she was
older, she’d have her own garden. Everything would grow wild in it,
and she’d have bird houses and bird feeders everywhere.

“Kitty,” she called. “Where are you, kitty?
I’ve got food.”

Beyond the garden was a swimming pool,
covered until it got warmer. In summer, Katie sat on the side and
watched Gwen swim laps, counting to make sure she got enough
exercise. The chlorine made Katie’s hair feel like straw, so she
never went in. Even on the hottest days, Gwen didn’t stay in the
pool long. Swimming wasn’t fun by herself.

She looked past the pool, trying to spot the
green-eyed, gray-furred, best looking cat in the world. The lawn
stretched out a quarter mile, according to her father, trees
looking like sentinels ringing the property.

On one side was a house where adults with no
kids lived. Gwen knew because she’d snuck over there a couple
times. She even saw them playing in a big pond by the house last
July 4th, splashing and laughing. That night they’d set off
fireworks, and she’d watched from her bedroom window.

In the back was a marsh, and the other side
was a farmer’s field. Last summer he’d planted corn. The year
before he’d grown cabbage, and when the wind blew toward their
house it carried a stink that made Katie close all the windows in
the house.

Where would the cat be? The trees? Her
neighbor? The marsh? The field?

She shuffled back to the front lawn, her
shoulders slumped. The cat was gone. After four days of hope, she
was alone again.

“Here, kitty. Here, kitty.” Her voice was
flat, empty of hope. Last night, she’d knelt three feet away while
the cat gobbled her food. She’d told herself today was the day the
kitty would let her pet it, but that turned out to be a big fat
lie.

Sagging against the big maple, she slid onto
her butt, not caring about the bark digging into her back. At
school today, no one had sat with her at lunch. Katie had only said
a dozen sentences to her since breakfast. Her mother and father
hadn’t called her in ten days. If it wasn’t for the short notes the
new lawyer in charge of their money e-mailed each week, she
wouldn’t have anyone who cared enough to ask how she was doing. And
the lawyer only did it because she got paid.

Was there something so wrong with her that
her own mother and father didn’t like her?

“Even the cat doesn’t like me,” she said
aloud. She held back the tears that wanted to gush out of her eyes.
When she cried her eyes got red and so did her nose. Combined with
her big ears, she looked like an ugly, skinny clown.

Carefully, she set the bowl on the short
grass. Then she rolled stomach-down on the cold ground and hit it
with her fists, again and again.

“Why can’t I be like everyone else?” she
cried out. “Why? Why doesn’t anyone like me?”

Something nudged her thigh. Her fist in the
air, she whipped her head around. The cat looked at her with those
wide green eyes.

“Kitty?” Gwen stayed in that awkward
position, her neck cricking, afraid if she moved the cat would dart
away.

The cat rubbed her head against Gwen’s thigh
and meowed. The kind of meow that said, “I like you.”

“Kitty?” Gwen twisted into a sitting
position. “Kitty?” She held out her arms and stopped breathing.
Would the cat come to her?

She sent a prayer to God.
Please, let the
cat come to me. Please.

Never taking her gaze off Gwen’s face, the
cat took one dainty step at a time toward her. Slowly, as if it had
never done this before, the cat climbed onto Gwen’s lap.

Gwen breathed again. Inside her chest, her
heart warmed, growing bigger, glowing brighter. Slowly, carefully,
she brought her hand up and put it on the back of the cat’s neck.
Just as slowly, the cat lowered its body onto Gwen’s lap. Gwen
stroked the length of the cat’s back once. When it didn’t object,
she petted it and petted it. The cat purred, the small body
vibrating against Gwen’s thighs and tummy.

Only then did Gwen cry. For the first time in
her memory, another living being was offering her comfort and
affection.

“I love you,” she whispered. “I will always
love you.”

As if it understood her, the cat purred
louder.

***

Phil lied.

He lied to the small boy who opened the door
at the duplex where Bob’s blackmailer had resided, allowing him to
believe he was a reporter. He lied to the boy’s harried looking
mother who told Phil that her son had nightmares every night since
finding the dead body. He lied to the elderly neighbors who claimed
to have witnessed a chubby man in a ski mask fleeing in a dark car
with muddy license plates.