Ladder of Years (22 page)

Although every so often something would stab her. A song from Ramsay’s Deadhead period about knock-knock-knocking on heaven’s door, for instance. Or a mother and a little girl hugging each other in front of the house across the street. “She’s leaving me!” the mother called mock-plaintively to Delia. “Going off to her very first slumber party!”

Maybe Delia could pretend to herself that she was back in the days before her marriage. That she didn’t miss her children at all because they hadn’t been born yet.

But in retrospect it seemed she had missed them even then. Was it possible there had been a time when she hadn’t known her children?

Dear Delia
, Eleanor wrote. (She addressed her letter to 14 George Street this time.)

I was so pleased to get your postcard. It’s good to know that my little gift came in handy, and I’m glad you’re doing some reading.

I myself find it impossible to sleep if I don’t read at least a few pages first, preferably from something instructive like biography or current events. For a while after Sam’s father died I used to read the dictionary. It was the only thing with small enough divisions to fit my attention span. Also the information was so definite.

Probably Sam has been marked by losing his father at such an early age. I meant to say that in my last note but I don’t believe
I did. And his father never had a strong personality. He was the kind of man who let all the bathwater drain away before he got out of the tub. Maybe it would worry a boy to think he might grow up to do the same.

I hope I haven’t overstepped.

Love, Eleanor

Delia didn’t know what to make of that. She understood it better when the next note came, some two weeks later.
Please forgive me if you felt I sounded “mother-in-lawish” and that’s why you didn’t answer my letter. I had no intention of offering excuses for my son. I’ve always said he was forty years old when he was born, and I realize that’s not easy to live with.

Delia bought another postcard—this one the kind with a picture on it, a rectangle of unblemished white captioned
Bay Day in Bay Borough
, so there was even less space to write on.
Dear Eleanor
, she wrote.
I’m not here because of Sam, so much. I’m here because

Then she sat back, not knowing how to end the sentence. She considered starting over, but these postcards cost money, and so she settled, finally, for
I’m here because I just like the thought of beginning again from scratch.
She signed it,
Love, Delia
, and mailed it the following morning on her way to work.

And after all, wasn’t that the true reason? Truer than she had realized when she wrote it, in fact. Her leaving had very little to do with any specific person.

Unlocking the office door, she noticed the pleasure she took in the emptiness of the room. She raised the white window shades; she turned the calendar to a fresh page; she sat down and rolled a clean sheet of paper into the typewriter. It was possible to review her entire morning thus far and find not a single misstep.

Mr. Pomfret sometimes employed a detective named Pete Murphy. This was not the swaggery character Delia would have envisioned, but a baby-faced fat boy from Easton. It seemed he was hired less often to locate people than to
fail
to locate them. Whenever a will or a title search required his services, Pete would plod in, whistling tunelessly, and trill his pudgy fingers at Delia and proceed to the inner office. He never spoke to her, and he probably didn’t know her name.

One rainy afternoon, though, he arrived with something bulging and struggling inside the front of his windbreaker. “Got a present for you,” he told Delia.

“For me?”

“Found it out in the street.”

He lowered his zipper, and a small, damp gray-and-black cat bounded to the floor and made a dash for the radiator. “Oh!” Delia said.

Pete said, “Shoot. Come out of there, you little dickens.”

Beneath the radiator, silence.

“It’ll never come if you order it to,” Delia said. “You have to back away a bit. Turn your face away. Pretend you’re not looking.”

“Well, I’ll let you see to that,” Pete decided. He brushed cat hairs off his sleeves and started for the office.

“Me! But … wait! I can’t do this!” Delia said. She was speaking now to Mr. Pomfret; he had come to his door to see what all the fuss was about. “He’s brought a stray cat! I can’t take care of a cat!”

“Now, now, I’m sure you’ll think of something,” Mr. Pomfret said genially. “Miss Grinstead was a cat in her last incarnation, you know,” he told Pete.

“Is that a fact,” Pete said. They walked into the office, and Mr. Pomfret closed the door.

For the next half hour, Delia worked with one eye on the radiator. She watched a gray-and-black tiger tail unfurl from behind a pipe, gradually fluffing as it dried. She had a sense of being under surveillance.

When Pete reemerged, she said, “Maybe the cat belongs to someone. Have you thought of that?”

“I doubt it,” he told her. “I didn’t see no collar.” He trilled his fingers and left. When the door slammed behind him, the tail gave a twitch.

Delia rose and went to the office. “Excuse me,” she said.

Mr. Pomfret said, “Hmm?” He was back at his computer already. This morning he had discovered something called Search-and-Replace that was apparently very exciting.
Tap-tap
, his fingers went, while he craned his sloping neck earnestly toward the screen.

“Mr. Pomfret, that cat is still under the radiator and
I
can’t take it anywhere! I don’t even have a car!”

“Maybe get a box from the supply closet,” he said. “Damn!” He hit several keys in succession. “Just see to it, will you, Miss Grinstead? There’s a good girl.”

“I live in a boardinghouse!” Delia said.

Mr. Pomfret reached for his computer manual and started thumbing through it. “Who wrote this damn thing, anyhow?” he asked. “No human being, that’s for sure. Look, Miss Grinstead, why don’t you leave early and take the kitty wherever you think best. I’ll lock up for you, how’s that?”

Delia sighed and headed for the supply closet.

Pet Heaven: they might help. She emptied a carton of manila envelopes and carried it to the other room. Kneeling in front of the radiator, she placed a palm on the floor. “Tsk-tsk!” she said. She waited. After a minute, she felt a tiny wince of cold on the back of her middle finger. “Tsk-tsk-tsk!” The cat peered out at her, only its whiskers and heart-shaped nose visible. Gently, Delia curved her hand around the frail body and drew it forward.

This was hardly more than a kitten, she saw—a scrawny male with large feet and spindly legs. His fur was almost startlingly soft. It reminded her of milkweed. When she stroked him, he shrank beneath her hand, but he seemed to realize he had nowhere to run. She gathered him up and set him in the carton and folded the flaps shut. He gave a single woebegone mew before falling silent.

It was still raining, and she didn’t have a free hand to open her umbrella, so she hurried along the sidewalk unprotected. The carton rocked in her arms as if it contained a bowling ball. For such a little thing, he certainly was heavy.

She rounded the corner and burst through the door of Pet Heaven. A gray-haired woman stood behind the counter, checking off a list. “You wouldn’t happen to know if Bay Borough has an S.P.C.A.,” Delia said.

The woman looked at her a moment, slowly refocusing vague blue eyes. Then she said, “No; the nearest one’s in Ashford.”

“Or any other place that takes homeless animals?”

“Sorry.”

“Maybe
you’d
like a cat.”

“Gracious! If I brought home another stray my husband would kill me.”

So Delia gave up, for now, and bought a box of kibble and a sack of litter-box filler, the smallest size of each just to get her through one night. Then she lugged the cat home.

Belle was there ahead of her, talking on the phone in the kitchen. Delia heard her laugh. She tiptoed up the stairs, unlocked the door of her room, set the carton on the floor, and shut the door behind her. In
the mirror she looked like a crazy woman. Tendrils of wet hair were plastered to her forehead. The shoulders of her sweater were dark with rain, and her handbag was spotted and streaked.

She bent over the carton and raised the flaps. Inside, the cat sat hunched in a snail shape, glaring up at her. Delia retreated, settled on the edge of her bed, looked pointedly in another direction. Eventually, the cat sprang out of the carton. He started sniffing around the baseboards. Delia stayed where she was. He ducked beneath the bureau and returned with linty whiskers. He approached the bed obliquely, gazing elsewhere. Delia turned her head away. A moment later she felt the delicate denting of the mattress as he landed on it. He passed behind her, lightly brushing the length of his body against her back as if by chance. Delia didn’t move a muscle. She felt they were performing a dance together, something courtly and elaborate and dignified.

But she couldn’t possibly keep him.

Then Belle’s clacky shoes started climbing the stairs. Belle almost never came upstairs. But she did today. Delia threw a glance at the cat, willing him to hide. All he did was freeze and direct a wide-eyed stare toward the door. Knock-knock. He was smack in the center of the pillow, with his bottle-brush tail standing vertical. You couldn’t overlook him if you tried.

Delia scooped him up beneath his hot little downy armpits. She could feel the rapid patter of his heart. “Just a minute,” she called. She reached for the carton.

But Belle must have misheard, for she breezed on in, caroling, “Delia, here’s a—” Then she said, “Why!”

Delia straightened. “I’m just trying to find a home for him,” she said.

“Aww. What a honey!”

“Don’t worry, I’m not keeping him.”

“Oh, why not? Er, that is … he is housebroken, isn’t he?”

“All cats are housebroken,” Delia said. “For goodness’ sake!”

“Well, then! Not keep this little socky-paws? This dinky little pookums?” Belle was bending over the cat now and offering him her polished fingernails to sniff. “Is it a prinky-nose,” she crooned. “Is it a frowzy-head. Is it a fluffer-bunch.”

“Mr. Pomfret’s detective found him out in the rain,” Delia said. “He just dumped him on me; nothing I could do. I mean, I knew I couldn’t keep him myself. Where would I put a litter box, for one thing?”

“In the bathroom?” Belle asked. She started scratching behind the cat’s ears.

“But how would he get out to use it?”

“You could leave your door cracked open, let him go in and out as he likes,” Belle said. “Ooh, feel how soft! I don’t know why you ever lock it, anyhow. Little town like this, who do you think’s going to rob you? Who’s going to creep in and ravish you?”

“Well …”

“Believe me, Mr. Lamb couldn’t gather up the enthusiasm.”

Belle stroked beneath the cat’s chin, and the cat tipped his head back blissfully. He had one of those putt-putt purrs, like a Model T Ford.

“I don’t know if I want my life to get that complicated,” Delia said.

“Is he a complication. Is he a bundle of trouble.”

Belle was holding an envelope in her free hand, Delia saw. That must be what had brought her upstairs. Eleanor’s stalky print marched across the front. Delia felt suddenly overburdened. Things were crowding in on her so!

But when Belle said, “Are you going to keep this itty-bitty, or am I?” Delia said, “I am, I guess.”

“Well, good. Let’s call him Puffball, what do you say?”

“Hmm,” Delia said, pretending to consider it.

But she had never approved of cutesy names for cats. And besides, it seemed that at some point she had already started thinking of him as George.

She was in bed that night before she got around to reading Eleanor’s letter. It was more of the same: a thank you for Delia’s last postcard, news of her Meals on Wheels work.
I can certainly empathize with your desire to start over!
she wrote. (That careful word,
empathize
, revealing her effort to say just the right thing.)

And I’m relieved it’s the reason you left. I had assumed it was Sam. I’ve wondered if maybe he expressly wanted a flighty wife, in which case you could hardly be held to blame.

But when you’ve finished starting over, do you picture working up to the present again and coming home? Just asking.

All my love, dear
,
Eleanor

A furry paw reached out to bat the page, and Delia laid the letter aside. The cat had found a resting place next to her on the blankets. He had eaten an enormous meal and paid two visits to the makeshift litter box in the bathroom. She could tell he was beginning to feel at home.

She reached for her book—Carson McCullers—and turned to where she had stopped reading last night. She read two stories and started a third. Then she found she was growing sleepy; so she set the book on the windowsill and clicked off her little reader’s light and placed it on top of the book. Light continued to shine through the partly open door, sending a rod of yellow across the floorboards. She slid downward in bed very cautiously so as not to disturb the cat. He was giving himself a bath now. He pressed against her ribs with each movement in a way that seemed accidental, but she could tell he meant to do it.

How strange it was, when you thought about it, that animals would share quarters with humans! If Delia had been out in the wilderness, if this were some woodland creature nestling so close, she would have been astounded.