The Last Lovely City (15 page)

I worried about her when I went away on trips. I would always come home, come into my house, with some little apprehension that she might not be there. She was usually the last of the three cats to appear in the kitchen, where I stood confused among baggage, mail, and phone messages. I would greet Black and Brown, and then begin to call her—“Pink, Pink?”—until, very diffident and proud, she would stroll unhurriedly toward me, and I would sweep her up into my arms with foolish cries of relief, and of love.
Ah, my darling old Pink
.

As I have said, Slater did not particularly like cats; he had nothing against them, really, just a general indifference. He eventually developed a fondness for Brown, believing that she liked him too, but actually Brown is a whore among cats; she will purr and rub up against anyone who might feed her. Whereas Pink was always discriminating, in every way, and fussy. Slater complained that one of the cats deposited small turds on the bathmat in the room where he sometimes showered, and I am afraid that this was indeed old Pink, both angry and becoming incontinent.

One night at dinner at my house, when Slater and I, alone, were admiring my view of the bay and of romantic San Francisco, all those lights, we were also talking about our trip to Hawaii. Making plans. He had been there before and was enthusiastic.

Then the phone rang, and it was Lucy, daughter of Zoe, who told me that her mother had died the day before, in Santa Barbara. “Her doctor said it was amazing she’d lived so long. All those years of booze.”

“I guess. But Lucy, it’s so sad, I’m so sorry.”

“I know.” A pause. “I’d love to see you sometime. How’s old Pink?”

“Oh, Pink’s fine,” I lied.

Coming back to the table, I explained as best I could about Zoe Pinkerton, how we got Pink. I played it all down, knowing his feelings about cats. But I thought he would like the multiple-insemination part, and he did—as had Andrew. (It is startling when two such dissimilar men, Andrew, the somewhat dreamy book person, and Slater, the practical man, get so turned on by the same dumb joke.)

“So strange that we’re going to Poipu,” I told Slater. “Zoe
always talked about Poipu.” As I said this I knew it was not the sort of coincidence that Slater would find remarkable.

“I’m afraid it’s changed a lot,” he said, quite missing the point. “The early developers have probably knocked hell out of it. The greedy competition.”

So much for mysterious ways.

Two days before we were to go to Hawaii, in the morning Pink seemed disoriented, unsure when she was in her sandbox, her feeding place. Also, she clearly had some bad intestinal disorder. She was very sick, but still in a way it seemed cruel to take her to the vet, whom I somehow knew could do nothing for her. However, at last I saw no alternative.

She (Dr. Ino, the admirable vet) found a large hard mass in Pink’s stomach, almost certainly cancer. Inoperable. “I just can’t reverse what’s wrong with her,” the doctor told me, with great sadness. And succinctness: I saw what she meant. I was so terribly torn, though: Should I bring Pink home for a few more days—whatever was left to her—although she was so miserable, so embarrassed at her own condition?

I chose not to do that (although I still wonder, I still am torn). And I still cannot think of those last moments of Pink. Whose death I chose.

I wept on and off for a couple of days. I called some close friends who would have wanted to know about Pink, I thought; they were all most supportively kind (most of my best friends love cats).

And then it was time to leave for Hawaii.

Sometimes, during those days of packing and then flying to Hawaii, I thought it odd that Pink was not more constantly on my mind, even odd that I did not weep more than I did. Now, though, looking back on that trip and its various aftermaths, I
see that in fact I was thinking about Pink all that time, that she was totally in charge, as she always had been.

We stayed in a pretty condominium complex, two-story white buildings with porches and decks, and everywhere sweeping green lawns, and flowers. A low wall of rocks, a small coarsely sanded beach, and the vast and billowing sea.

Ours was a second-floor unit, with a nice wide balcony for sunset drinks, or daytime sunning. And, looking down from that balcony one night, our first, I saw the people in the building next door, out on the grass beside what must have been their kitchen,
feeding their cats
. They must have brought along these cats, two supple gray Siamese, and were giving them their supper. I chose not to mention this to Slater, I thought I could imagine his reaction, but in the days after that, every time we walked past that building I slowed my pace and looked carefully for the cats, and a couple of times I saw them. Such pretty cats, and very friendly, for Siamese. Imagine: traveling to Hawaii with your cats—though I was not at all sure that I would have wanted Black and Brown along, nice as they are, and pretty.

Another cat event (there were four in all) came as we drove from Lihue back to Poipu, going very slowly over those very sedate tree- and flower-lined streets, with their decorous, spare houses. Suddenly I felt—we felt—a sort of thump, and Slater, looking startled, slowed down even further and looked back.

“Lord God, that was a cat,” he said.

“A cat?”

“She ran right out into the car. And then ran back.”

“Are you sure? She’s all right?”

“Absolutely. Got a good scare though.” Slater chuckled.

But you might have killed a cat, I did not say. And for a moment I wondered if he actually had, and lied, saying the cat
was okay. However, Slater would never lie to spare my feelings, I am quite sure of that.

The third cat happening took place as we drove down a winding, very steep mountain road (we had been up to see the mammoth gorges cut into the island, near its western edge). On either side of the road was thick green jungle growth—and suddenly, there among the vines and shrubs, I saw a small yellow cat staring out, her eyes lowered. Frightened. Eyes begging.

Slater saw her too, and even he observed, “Good Lord, people dumping off animals to starve. It’s awful.”

“You’re sure she doesn’t live out there? a wilderness cat?”

“I don’t think so.” Honest Slater.

We did not talk then or later about going back to rescue that cat—not until the next day, when he asked me what I would like to do and I said, “I’d like to go back for that cat.” He assumed I was joking, and I guess I mostly was. There were too many obvious reasons not to save that particular cat, including the difficulty of finding her again. But I remembered her face; I can see it still, that expression of much-resented dependence. It was a way even Pink looked, very occasionally.

Wherever we drove, through small neat impoverished “native” settlements (blocks of houses that Slater and his cohorts planned to buy, and demolish, to replace with fancy condos), with their lavish flowers all restrained into tiny beds, I kept looking at the yards, and under the houses. I wanted to see a cat, or some cats (I wanted to see Pink again). Realizing what I was doing, I continued to do it, to strain for the sight of a cat.

The fourth and final cat event took place as we walked home from dinner one night, in the flower-scented, corny-romantic
Hawaiian darkness. To our left was the surging black sea and to our right large tamed white shrubbery, and a hotel swimming pool, glistening darkly under feeble yellow floodlights. And then quite suddenly, from nowhere, a small cat appeared in our path, shyly and uncertainly arching her back against a bush. A black cat with some yellow tortoise markings, a long thin curve of a tail.

“He looks just like your Pink, doesn’t he?” Slater actually said this, and I suppose he believed it to be true.

“What—Pink? But her tail—Jesus, didn’t you even see my cat?”

I’m afraid I went on in this vein, sporadically, for several days. But it did seem so incredible, not remembering Pink, my elegantly striped, my tailless wonder. (It is also true that I was purposefully using this lapse, as one will, in a poor connection.)

I dreaded going home with no Pink to call out to as I came in the door. And the actuality was nearly as bad as my imaginings of it: Black and Brown, lazy and affectionate, glad to see me. And no Pink, with her scolding
hauteur
, her long-delayed yielding to my blandishments.

I had no good pictures of Pink, and to explain this odd fact I have to admit that I am very bad about snapshots; I have never devised a really good way of storing and keeping them, and tend rather to enclose any interesting ones in letters to people who might like them, to whom they would have some meaning. And to shove the others into drawers, among old letters and other unclassifiable mementos.

I began then to scour my house for Pink pictures, looking everywhere. In an album (Andrew and I put together a couple
of albums, early on) I found a great many pictures of Pink as a tiny, tall-eared, brand-new kitten, stalking across a padded window seat, hiding behind an oversized Boston fern—among all the other pictures from those days: Zoe Pinkerton, happy and smoking a long cigarette and almost drunk, wearing outrageous colors, on the deck of her house. And Andrew and I, young and very happy, silly, snapped by someone at a party. Andrew in his bookstore, horn-rimmed and quirky. Andrew uncharacteristically working in our garden. Andrew all over the place.

But no middle-year or recent pictures of Pink. I had in fact (I then remembered) sent the most recent shots of Pink to Zoe; it must have been just before she (Zoe) died, with a silly note about old survivors, something like that. It occurred to me to get in touch with Lucy, Zoe’s daughter, to see if those pictures had turned up among Zoe’s “effects,” but knowing the chaos in which Zoe had always lived (and doubtless died) I decided that this would be tactless, unnecessary trouble. And I gave up looking for pictures.

Slater called yesterday to say that he is going back to Hawaii, a sudden trip. Business. I imagine that he is about to finish the ruination of all that was left of Zoe’s islands. He certainly did not suggest that I come along, nor did he speak specifically of our getting together again, and I rather think that he, like me, has begun to wonder what we were doing together in the first place. It does seem to me that I was drawn to him for a very suspicious reason, his lack of resemblance to Andrew: Whyever should I seek out the opposite of a person I truly loved?

But I do look forward to some time alone now. I will think about Pink—I always feel her presence in my house, everywhere. Pink,
stalking and severe, ears high. Pink, in my lap, raising her head with some small soft thing to say.

And maybe, since Black and Brown are getting fairly old now too, I will think about getting another new young cat. Maybe, with luck, a small gray partially Manx, with no tail at all, and beautiful necklaces.

PART TWO

Harsh, powerful sunlight strikes the far edge of the giant pink bed on which Karen Brownfield, a pianist, now lies alone, Karen, on a concert tour. It must be midmorning, or nearly. On the other hand, perhaps early afternoon? Karen seems to have removed her watch; no doubt she has thrown it somewhere, or maybe given it away to someone (she did that once in Paris; she clearly remembers the boy’s fair pretty face). However, wherever she is now and whatever time it is, what day, she is not in Paris. Karen is sure of that much.

Would knowing any more, though, improve her head, which threatens to split open like a watermelon in the sun? If she knew where she was, for example, would she feel any better?

She does not really believe that any such knowledge would help her. If she rang room service, and they told her, This is the Palmer House, in Cincinnati (if there is a Palmer House in Cincinnati), why would that improve her day? She doesn’t see it, although her husband, a psychiatrist, undoubtedly would. Julian, Karen’s husband, is committed to what he calls emotional information.

If she phoned Julian could he possibly tell her what went on last night here in her room? Well, of course not.

If she had played a concert, though, she would remember; she always does. And so, did she cancel a concert? That seems likely; quite possibly she canceled at about this same time yesterday, perhaps from this room, this bedside pink princess telephone. Noon is Karen’s usual canceling time, her cop-out hour.

Whatever it was she did last night, for which she must have canceled her concert, made the most incredible whirlwind mess of the room. Karen closes her eyes against the sight of it: wadded-up clothes (hers), and sheets, so many sheets! all also wadded up. And knocked-over lamps, two of them on the floor. Full ashtrays. Karen doesn’t smoke; they smell awful. Reeking glasses, partly filled with undrunk booze. Lord God, did she throw a party?
Who?

What she can least well face, Karen has learned from other such mornings, is the sight of her own face.
I can’t face my face
, she once thought, on some other occasion, and it almost made her laugh. She is surely not laughing now, though. She is seriously concerned with the logistics of getting in and out of the bathroom with no smallest glimpse of herself in any mirror. She knows that even if you wrap yourself in a sheet you are apt to see, but she manages not to.