The Cat Sitter’s Cradle (3 page)

I have always prided myself on being a good citizen. I pay my taxes, I vote, I don’t
litter, and I don’t speed … much. I get mad when I see a flag flying in the rain,
and I feel a surge of pride when I sing “The Star-Spangled Banner.” But if I helped
this young mother I would be breaking the law. I would be aiding an illegal alien,
which is wrong. At least, it’s wrong in the eyes of the law.

I took Sophie out to the back porch overlooking the bay and brushed her. Or, to be
precise, I held the brush steady and Sophie did all the work, cooing and purring as
she pressed the full length of her body through the brush, first one side and then
the other. I had never given much thought to the immigration brouhaha, but now I thought
about the poem at the Statue of Liberty that epitomizes what it means to live in a
democracy: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe
free…” I thought about what Jesus said to his followers: “Inasmuch as ye have done
it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” I’m not very
religious or political, but some things are either right or wrong, and you don’t need
to belong to a certain church or party to know which is which. Sending a homeless
young woman with a newborn baby out into a world that was all too ready to label her
a pariah was just plain wrong.

When I finished up my morning rounds, I headed over to the Village Diner, which is
practically my home away from home. Like most of my pet clients, I am a creature of
habit. Pretty much every day of the year, I go to the diner and have basically the
same breakfast. Two eggs over easy with extra crispy home fries and a hot biscuit.
There are a couple of booths in the front that have a nice view of the street, but
I usually take one of the booths in the back. My friend Judy is the waitress there,
and by the time I’m sliding into my usual spot she’s sliding a cup of coffee in front
of me. It’s a well-choreographed dance we’ve been doing for I don’t know how many
years.

Judy is long limbed and quick, with honey brown hair, piercing hazel eyes, and a sprinkling
of freckles on her nose. She’s left a line of no-good men in her trail—all bums, cheaters,
liars, losers, and sons of bitches, or as Judy calls them, dicks. I’ve held her hand
through almost every one of them, and she held mine when I hit that bump in the road
I mentioned before. Although I rarely see her outside the diner, she’s probably my
closest friend in the world other than my brother.

This morning, while Judy was pouring my coffee, I slipped into the restroom first.
Normally there’s maybe a little cat hair and some dog slobber to wash off, but not
today. I pulled a few towels from the dispenser and wadded them up into a makeshift
sponge. I scrubbed between my fingers and under my nails. I scrubbed my arms up to
the elbow. I scrubbed like a sailor swabbing the deck of a shrimp boat. I’m sure I’d
gotten it all off before, but there’s something about having blood on your hands that
makes you feel a little panicky, like the lady in that Shakespeare play—“Out! Out!
Damn spot!”

When I felt like a certified clean freak, I tossed the towels in the trash pail and
smoothed the wrinkles out of my shorts. I studied myself in the mirror. I don’t know
if it’s a blessing or a curse, but it seems like I’m always getting mixed up in stuff
I probably shouldn’t be.

Judy was waiting for me at the table. She was twirling a pencil in her hair and had
a particularly mischievous grin on her face.

“Your boyfriend was here earlier,” she said.

I slid into the booth, feigning ignorance. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Uh-huh.” She shifted her weight to the other hip. “You know, he left me an extra
big tip and was giving me all kinds of smiles. I think he might be a little sweet
on me, just so you know.”

“Oh, really?” I asked, cupping my hands around the coffee mug. “You should hop right
on that.” I wasn’t taking the bait. I know Judy far too well.

She went on. “Well, I’ll tell you, it was distracting. And I think he’s just so damn
tired of waiting for you he’s ready to settle for little ol’ me.”

“That must have been very upsetting for you,” I said.

“Oh, don’t worry, I’d settle with him any day of the week. In fact, I’d settle with
that boy
every
day of the week!”

She flipped her hair off her shoulders and sashayed back toward the kitchen, swaying
her hips for extra effect.

I had to admit, Judy was probably right. Ethan probably was tired of waiting for me.
And why I kept him waiting, I had no idea. Ethan Crane is an attorney in town, and
he happens to be one of the most devastatingly beautiful specimens of man you could
ever hope to lay eyes or hands on. He could carry around one of those numbered ticket
machines, like the ones they have at deli counters, and women would line up for blocks.
We’ve had a sort of on-again, off-again flirtation going, but something’s always gotten
in the way. And that something has always been me.

Five years ago—five years, six months, and a couple of days, to be exact—I lost the
two most important things in the world to me: Christy, my little girl, and my husband,
Todd. A ninety-year-old man plowed his car into them in a grocery store parking lot.
He later said he meant to step on the brake pedal, but instead he stepped on the gas,
and they were both killed instantly, or so I was told.

Christy was three, and Todd was thirty.

It’s funny how it takes just a few seconds to tell the story of what happened, because
it feels like it goes on forever. At first I spent a lot of time in bed or staring
at the wall. I didn’t eat and I barely slept—to be honest, I was a slobbering, filthy
mess. Certainly, as anyone around here will tell you, I was unfit to be a police officer,
let alone carry a gun.

I’m okay now, except that sometimes I feel like it’s all been a terrible play, and
then the curtain comes down and the lights go up and I realize I’m not in the audience,
I’m on the stage. And you don’t need to be Sigmund Freud to know that I’m a little
commitment-phobic. That tends to throw cold water on the fire whenever somebody comes
along that I might want to get a little committed to. Somebody like Ethan Crane.

I know Todd would want me to be happy and be with someone, and I know Christy would
want the same. For a while I was happy, with Guidry, a local homicide detective I
fell very hard for. But then he took a job in his hometown of New Orleans, and I didn’t
want to follow him there, or I was afraid to. And that was that.

Judy returned with the coffeepot, and Tanisha, the cook, came out with my breakfast.
Tanisha is built like a linebacker but has the heart of an angel. We’re good friends,
even though we only see each other at the diner, mostly because she works nonstop.
The thought of going away and letting anyone else in her kitchen drives her crazy.
She runs a tight ship, and she doesn’t want anybody messing with it.

“Tanisha, when are you going to take a vacation?” I asked. “I don’t think I’ve ever
been in here when you weren’t cooking away in that kitchen.”

“Oh, Lord,” she cried. “Plenty times I think I’d like to just walk out of here and
keep on walkin’. Go to Tahiti or some fancy island somewhere and never look back.”
She crossed her massive arms over the back of the booth and looked at me dreamily.
“Lord knows they ain’t nobody gonna stop me. But you know what my problem is?”

“You’d miss me too much.”

She grinned. “Nope. I’m too nice. I’d be scared I’d hurt y’all’s feelings if I up
and disappeared.”

“It’s true,” I said. “You’re about the sweetest person I know.”

“Oh, honey, I know it,” she continued. “You know if there’s even a fly in my kitchen,
I don’t go swattin’ after it. I move him out the back door like a goddamn fool, like
a dog steerin’ a herd of sheep!” She shuffled across the floor back to the kitchen,
dodging around an imaginary fly. “Come on, mister fly sweetheart,” she said. “Get
yo ass back home. Your fly friends is all worried ’bout where you been!”

I wanted to tell Judy and Tanisha what had happened that morning, but I was afraid
they’d just tell me I was nuts to get involved, and I already knew that. Anyway, by
the time I left the diner I had made up my mind. I couldn’t live with myself if I
didn’t try to help Corina. I might be arrested, but I didn’t care. I had to look into
my own eyes when I stood in front of my bathroom mirror, and I wouldn’t be able to
face myself if I turned her in. I’m not sure what that made me in political terms,
but I wasn’t thinking politics. I was thinking of all living beings and the fact that
we’re all part of one enormous family. If we don’t help raise one another up, we will
all go down together.

The question was: How could I help her?

4

I pulled my Bronco into the parking lot at Walmart and made a few slow circles before
I found a good spot. I always get a little nervous in parking lots. Usually I’m totally
unaware of it until I see my knuckles whitening on the steering wheel, the same color
as those painted lines on the asphalt.

As I walked across the lot, I tried to imagine myself in Corina’s shoes. She had probably
suspended any fear of being taken into a stranger’s house when faced with the alternative:
alone in a strange world with a newborn baby, no medical help, no money. What could
she possibly have been thinking? Where would she live? How could she hope to fend
for herself and a newborn? I tried not to think of the possibilities as I pulled out
a cart and headed over to the baby supplies aisle.

It suddenly occurred to me that I had no idea what to get. Before Christy was born,
Todd and I had read every baby book under the sun. We could tell you which diapers
were the most absorbent, and what brand of baby slings were 100 percent cotton and
why you shouldn’t give a pacifier to a newborn. Surely I’d gone out and bought all
this stuff before, possibly in this very store, but I couldn’t remember it to save
my life. It’s as if I’d blocked it all out.

There was a woman balancing a package of disposable diapers and a can of powdered
infant formula in one arm and a towheaded baby boy in the other. The girl was young
and pretty, in pale-washed jeans and a light pink tank top, with straight blond hair
and clean skin. On her shoulder was a tattoo of a bird, perched atop a cross of thorns.

“Excuse me,” I said. “I was wondering if you could help me a bit?”

“Yeah,” she said, shifting the baby to her other arm, “if you’ll get
this
.”

She lifted one leg up to reveal a white paper napkin stuck to the inseam of her jeans
just above the ankle.

“Just realized I’ve been walking around like this all day,” she said. “It’s stuck
on there like glue, and if I put him down now he’ll start wailing.”

I peeled the napkin off her leg and tried to brush away as best I could whatever had
held it there. I hoped it was baby food.

I said, “My friend has a baby, and I want to help her out, and I was wondering if
you could help me with what kind of stuff she needs.”

The girl wrinkled her nose, stuffing the napkin into her back pocket. “You mean, like
food stuff? Or clothing stuff?”

“Well, what would be the basics?”

“Depends,” she said. “Boy or girl?”

“Girl.”

“How old?”

I hesitated. “Well, my friend is one of those health-nut types, you know, so she hired
one of those home birth people and—”

“A doula,” she said.

“Yes, that. And she had the baby at home, because she…” I cleared my throat. “Because
she doesn’t really believe in doctors and everything.”

The girl tilted her head. “Uh-huh. And how old is the baby?”

“Ummm, an hour?” I said, looking at my watch. “Two hours tops.”

The girl pursed her lips together and looked at me with one cocked eyebrow, like I
was perhaps the most moronic creature she had ever laid eyes on.

“Oh,” she said. “Wow.”

I raised my shoulders as if to say “What are you gonna do?” and made a face that was
half apologetic smile, half tormented grimace.

She sighed. “Go get a cart.”

You wonder how anybody ever had a baby before the invention of Walmart, plastic, and
the assembly line. Disposable bottles, wet wipes, pacifiers, panty shields, rubber
nipples, baby powders, booties, syringes, gas drops, burp cloths, Onesies, crib pads,
cotton swabs, nursing bras, diaper pails, bottle warmers, breast shields, bottle brushes,
bumper shields—the list goes on and on. I nearly had one whole cart filled and was
ready to go get another when the girl finally said we were done.

Since I wasn’t sure if Corina would choose to breastfeed her baby, I had to cover
all my bases and get some powdered formula as well, not to mention eye drops, aspirin,
rash cream, a bulb syringe, and an aspirator. I could barely remember what half the
stuff was for, but between me, Joyce, and Corina I was sure we could figure it out.

“You can use this as a crib for now,” the girl said, sliding a bright pink car seat
onto the rack under the cart. “And you can never have too many baby blankets.”

She handed me a fleecy pink blanket. As I tossed it on top of the basket, I was about
to thank her for all her help when she said, “You know, it’s not my place to say,
but your friend should see a doctor.”

For a second I thought I detected some quotation marks around the way she said
your friend.
She had definitely avoided asking any more questions, and I was pretty sure she was
convinced I was either a kidnapper or was running some sort of illicit, black-market
baby-supply company.

“No insurance, right?”

I shook my head. “She’s going through a pretty tough time right now.”

“Yeah, here.” She held out her baby. “Take him.”

Before I could think of a reason to protest, my arms were reaching out and taking
the baby from her. He immediately howled in utter despair.