Distortions (14 page)

“I love you. I really love you. I can’t go on a trip and leave you.”

“What would I do with my cats?”

“We can take them. We’ll just put them in the car.”

“Some of them won’t ride.”

“What do you mean they won’t ride?”

“They’re scared. They meow and walk all around the car.”

“We’ll put them in a box.”

“Cruel.”

“Gloria, it’s cats. Just cats.”

“I want to tell you something, then. I wasn’t going to tell. Once I was a cat. You have to know that I am reincarnated.”

That’s the biggest word he’s ever heard her use. He questions her to find out if she knows what she just said.

“I went to a fortune teller, and she said what I thought was right. Once I was a cat, and I think I lived somewhere very, very cold. I don’t remember too much.”

“You really think you were a cat?”

“I know I was a cat”

“Well, what does that have to do with our going across country?”

“I can’t put a cat in a box. What if somebody put me in a box? How would I like it?”

“We’ll leave it out of the box.”

“Two would have to be in boxes.”

“You conducted experiments with these cats or something?”

“I’ve tried to ride with them. Two won’t ride.”

“When they get to the Grand Canyon they’ll love it. How many cats get taken to see the wonders of the world?”

“Why don’t we go see my sister and then she wouldn’t be so unhappy? It would only take eight hours of driving to see my sister.”

“Your sister isn’t one of the wonders of the world.”

The plans for driving to the Grand Canyon are going badly.

*

He gives her a new kitten, hoping that now she will love him enough to take the trip. Instead, she loves the cat. She tries out names, strokes it, shields it from the other cats’ curiosity.

She tells Hale that once she was a cat who sat on a velvet cushion
in some cold room, maybe in Russia the fortune teller said, and was tended by some beautiful woman, maybe a princess, who wished she would become human. And now that she has, she imagines that the beautiful woman is dead, or that this all happened in some far country that she will never find again. The story puts her to sleep as she tells it, night after night, her own personal fairy tale. He shudders to think that before he came to live with her she probably told the story to the cats. He knows it. But there is something about Gloria that reminds him of an animal. When he thought of her as a skunk maybe he was close to seeing her as a cat. He doesn’t believe or disbelieve the idea of reincarnation. He just wants to go to the Grand Canyon.

In the afternoon, while Gloria is out looking for a job, he drives to Paula’s house to see if there is any mail for him. There is a letter from his mother and an advertisement from a record club. He fills out the record-club form with Paula’s name, checks the “Country Favorites” category, checks “please bill me,” does not check that he wants the free calendar he is entitled to. Wait until Paula opens that box and sees Country Charlie Pride grinning at her. He puts the blank in Paula’s mailbox to be picked up. He opens the letter from his mother. It contains many exclamation points regarding his unwillingness to write, his unwillingness to take advantage of the educational opportunities his father etc. etc., and the news that a girl he went to high school with just got married to a man with leukemia and she
knew
it!!! He pockets the twenty dollars that is in the letter. He buys a postcard on the way to Gloria’s and writes: “What a surprise to get your treat. Thank you!!!” and drops it in a mailbox. With the money he buys a cage. He drives home. Gloria is still out looking for a job. He rounds up as many cats as he can and tries to lure them into the cage. They will not walk into it, so he puts them in, closes the door, and peers in. They don’t like it. He wants to go to the Grand Canyon.

Gloria comes home. She has found a job working in a department store. He tells her she must get away from such jobs, stop being taken advantage of, go West with him. She asks how people looking for thread and buttons exploit her. She sees the cage. She hates it. She does not want to go to the Grand Canyon. Go alone! He doesn’t even love her. She is going to sell buttons to people.
He can leave her anytime he wants. Her eyes are larger, imagining her abandonment. Wasn’t that what her sisters’ husbands were always doing?

He tells her that the cats will get used to the cage, and at night they can be free in the car. He thinks the trip could be accomplished in two weeks, allowing them time to really see the Grand Canyon. She puts her hands over her ears, complaining that she can’t stand any more talk about the Grand Canyon. In bed, she huddles on her side. It is strange that anything that big can huddle. She weighs the mattress down on her side, pulls the covers over her head to get away from him. Hale thinks that she may put him out. He doesn’t want that. He wants them both out together, on their way West. He thinks about what he could do that would be nice for her, reaches over to stroke her arm. She squirms. All right, then. He will get her another cat.

*

He goes to a house where kittens are being given away. The house is near the university, and several hippies look at him long and hard before they even show him the kittens. The kittens are in a box of rags. The girl lifts them out gently. He says he would like all of them. “Wow,” she says, “there’s only one more we want to get rid of.” She gives him a funny look. She also gives him a kitten. He buys a ribbon for its neck and takes it to Gloria’s house and drops it on the sofa. Hale is depressed; soon summer will be over, the best time to see the Grand Canyon will have passed, the kitten will have grown into a cat, and here he will be, still waiting.

Gloria sees that he is sad when she comes home from work. Good. She begins to feel guilty because she won’t go along with his plans. Good. She says that she has been thinking it over and that soon she will have reached a decision about the trip. As she talks, she sees the new addition. “Pretty little baby,” she exclaims, and mothers the kitten, who has been sleeping on the sofa. She thanks Hale, says that she loves the little thing. He decides to turn the tables on her. She loves the kitten, but she doesn’t love him. This makes her mad. She does love him. She sits on his lap—she is incredibly heavy—swaying her feet like a petulant little
daddy’s sweetheart, getting her way. She just needs a little more time to think, because her sisters all did things that were crazy and they were so unhappy, and she does not want to have to go to unhappiness meetings at night and let everyone know how unhappy she is. She kisses his neck, promising that tomorrow night she will tell him. Right now she is going to fix him a nice dinner, to show him that she loves him. She goes into the kitchen. One of the cats follows her, and as it passes his chair he gives it a shove with his foot. The cat runs after her. That’s it! He’s been doing this all wrong. He should be getting rid of the cats instead of bringing them home. He should round up all the damn animals and get rid of them, and then in her grief she would agree to do things his way. Hale decides to give Gloria one last chance to come through, and then he is going to start doing in her cats.

*

Gloria sits on his lap again. She says that she thought all day long while she was selling buttons, and as she looked at the customers she thought that those women were all loved and that she wasn’t. She just couldn’t agree to a trip with a man she felt didn’t love her. Desperate, he assures her that her feelings are wrong. And when she leaves the room he grabs a cat to strangle, but realizes that she’ll know he killed it—it has to be more subtle.

The next day he puts several cats in the car and drives to a farm far from the highway, and lets them out. He drives away, smirking. One of the cats has the last laugh, though. Several days later it finds its way back to Gloria’s house. She has mourned for the cats, and now God is answering her prayers and has sent back a messenger. This messenger is going to tell her something about the other cats, but of course her cooing brings no response; the usual rubbing against her leg, a little more milk lapping than usual because of its long journey. So the piece of shit found its way home. He decides he will poison it.

*

They die like flies. The veterinarian doesn’t know what happened to the first cat. Would she like an autopsy done? Sacrilege! No. No autopsy. And when she goes back with a dead kitten he
says, at first, that sometimes this just happens with little kittens, gives her a tissue to dry her eyes, sends them away. He is afraid to let her see this veterinarian again, though, because eventually the man will suspect poisoning. So when the next cat is found dead, by a neighbor, in the neighbor’s yard, Hale tells Gloria that their former veterinarian was no good—he didn’t even know why her poor cats died. They have to find another veterinarian. In fact, this is too traumatic for her.
He
will take the corpse to the veterinarian and report to her. She thanks him, weeping, and pulls money out of her pocket. And he gets in the car with the cat wrapped in a towel on the seat beside him and heads for the imaginary veterinarian, parking the car off the highway and running up a slope to put the bundle beside a big tree. Two to go, and then it will be just the two of them.

Driving home, he stops at the Golden Arches, eats a victory cheeseburger, french fries and a Coke. The Golden Arches are a rainbow, and at the end of it lies the Grand Canyon.

*

He puts the kitten in the cage. He puts the cage in his car. He drives to the Humane Society. They want a donation. He says that he doesn’t have the three dollars. The truth; but what a look the woman gives him. She accepts the animal wordlessly. Three dollars would make her say “Thank you” to exonerate him from guilt; for nothing, she just looks away.

Hale bides his time. In another week he can take the last kitten to the Humane Society, but he can’t take it away from Gloria yet. She has been clinging to it, at night, sitting up in the dark house, certain that there is a curse on it that she must try to ward off. The kitten has a sleek coat, bright eyes, it plays with a ball of yarn. But she is right in knowing that its health is no protection. She pities the dead cats because she thinks God is punishing her through them, and that’s not fair. He tells her that a vindictive God is nonsense. Maybe it was some virus that went through them … Gloria hangs on his words. She is so upset that he thinks about sparing Lucky, but he must have Gloria to himself, she must turn all her attention toward him so that their trip West will be wonderful. She must want to take pictures of him standing mighty on the edge of the Grand Canyon, instead of snapping
cute little kitten pictures for her photograph album, already filled with pictures of the dead.

His sister calls, saying that she and Paula want his junk out of their house. He drives over that afternoon, taking a big laundry basket with him. He loads his clothing into it, and his book.

“I don’t know why you decided that of all the women in the world you had to take that poor broken-down maid,” Paula says.

“We love each other,” he says.

“You don’t. You never used to speak. Paula and I were afraid she was going to quit because there were bad feelings,” Mary says.

“Then you should be happy now.”

“I’m not happy. Are you doing this as a joke?”

“I’m in love with her.”

“Are you going to marry her?”

“She doesn’t want to get married. Her family is all fucked up. She has a lot of sisters who are getting divorced or just sitting around suffering. I don’t know.”

“She’s piggy,” Paula tells him.

“I know. But I love her.”

“That’s nice,” Paula says.

“It’s not nice. It’s a sick joke,” Mary says.

“We’re going to take a trip to the Grand Canyon,” Hale tells them.

That afternoon he decides that Lucky’s time is up. He puts Lucky in the car. Trapped, Lucky raises his paws to the window and looks out. The cat looks out the window until it gets where it’s going: the same farm where its friends disappeared, only Lucky has the extra good luck to be discharged in front of two children, who stare at Hale’s car as if they expect something. You should, little ones, he thinks, for I have brought you another kitty. Lucky is dropped out the window. The children stare. They will no doubt tell the story to their parents, exactly as it happened, and if their parents do not let them keep Lucky they will think their parents are cruel and they will hate them. The parents know that! Lucky Lucky.

*

Because of all the horrible things that have been happening, Gloria hasn’t spoken about the trip yet. That night, as he rocks
her in his arms, he says that she must rest from this ordeal. They will go West, forget. Just the two of them. He puts his head on her big shoulder, lets it sink to her breast. A crackling noise; money in her brassiere. Yes, she says. She supposes.

*

On the second day of the trip, Gloria is in good spirits. They stop for lunch, and after lunch they sing. They were taught a lot of the same songs when they were children. He can’t talk to her about politics because she knows so little and he gets bored trying to fill her in, and she doesn’t like the music he likes on the radio, so usually they just hold hands or sing. He doesn’t even let go of her hand to shift gears. He smiles at her often, marveling at those tiny feet, crossed so demurely, and at her large body. It’s good she has money and a car in good condition, because they have to stop often for food—she’s always hungry—and he couldn’t afford the highway prices, and his car never would have made it.

They stop at a motel with a pool, and she is as excited as a child. She hurries to get undressed and races out of the room while he’s still putting on his bathing trunks, and when he walks across the parking lot to the pool he sees Gloria at the top of the blue ladder, her hips spread over the sides; he is in time to see her splash into the pool. He takes a picture of her with his Instamatic as she surfaces, her thick hair untamed by the water.

They sit on chairs by the pool, sipping Coke from a can. The water dries on the tops of her huge breasts and is replaced by sweat. She drinks two Cokes and he drinks one. It is her idea to ask the owner of the motel the name of a good restaurant, and she goes to the desk while he’s showering. He sings in the shower. A delicious dinner! The Grand Canyon! Tum-de-dum, he sings, a little tune he learned from her. He steps out of the shower, wraps a towel around himself, and hears faintly, above the air conditioning, crying.