Tomcat in Love (12 page)

“
Killer!” she screamed—absurdly—and I defended myself as best I could. I took the wise course. I sucked up my courage and lied.

“Your stupid cat!” I yelled back. “It
bit
me.”

Lorna Sue hesitated. I could see the uncertainty in her eyes, those microscopic droplets of remorse and guilt that accompany a convincing piece of deception.

“Bit you?” she said. “Does it hurt?”

“Like crazy,” I said. “I need a
rabies
shot.”

And then effortlessly, out of the blue, I summoned the evidence of tears. Real tears, real anguish. (One could argue, perhaps, that I am a born liar. But one could also argue that I had no alternative. I was in love with Lorna Sue Zylstra—madly in love, heroically in love—and simply could not bear the burden of her ill will.)

It was an instructive moment. In matters of the heart, with love on the line, what can be the harm of an innocent lie or two?

“Rabies,” I repeated.

I winced and grabbed my thumb, removing it from view, but already Lorna Sue had performed a rapid medical survey. The concern in her eyes turned to skepticism, then faded into something for which there is no adequate piece of language—something sad and weary and resigned and knowledgeable. A child, yes. But she looked at me with exactly the same expression I would encounter four decades later, on a Tuesday afternoon, the ninth day of July, when she turned her back and walked out on me forever.

As an adult, she said: “Don’t be an eighteen-year-old.”

As a child, in the attic that day, she said: “You’re a liar, Tommy.”

Mrs. Robert Kooshof removed my feet from her breasts, stepped out of the tub, and began drying herself with a large monogrammed towel.

“What a jerk,” she muttered. “I was totally patient with you—I sat there like some idiot psychiatrist—and what’s the upshot? You told her a dumb fib. So what? I mean, you could’ve explained
that
in ten seconds.”

“I’m a wordsmith,” I said. “It takes time.”

Mrs. Kooshof wrapped the towel around her splendidly proportioned upper torso. With a distinct growl, she reached down, turned on the cold water, and left me to the pneumonia bugs.

Dumb fib?

Mrs. Robert Kooshof had missed the point.

A pattern was established on that Saturday morning. Issues of trust, issues of faith.

If necessary, we will lie to win love. We will lie to keep love.

(
Cat
becomes
mattress
.)

Granted, Vanilla had not bitten me—my own fault—but why should a mere accident jeopardize the world’s greatest romance? Why should I (or anyone) be condemned by a fleeting lapse of concentration? Why should I (or you) be judged by a piece of bad luck, a fluke of physics, a momentary miscalculation? Under such circumstances,
is
it truly a crime to rescue oneself with a modest little lie?

Apparently so.

I
t was not until evening that Mrs. Kooshof spoke to me again. I poured on the charm. I followed her around the house in my underwear. Persuasively, like the teacher I am, I insisted that the fate of that poor, crushed cat was entirely relevant to the collapse of my marriage years later. Without such detail, I asked, how could she expect to understand the human being she’d found weeping in her backyard?

None of this helped.

Mrs. Kooshof remained incommunicative, silent as stone, and in the end I was compelled to grovel. I did the tear thing, pleaded for a final chance—a first-rate performance—and near dinnertime Mrs. Kooshof relented. “All right,” she said. “One chance. Divorce. What did you
do
to her?”

I hesitated.

“A long story,” I said.

(The truth, to put it squarely, is that I have always had trouble
with the truth. Confession is not to my taste. I fear ridicule; I fear embarrassment.)

Mrs. Kooshof may well have suspected my dilemma. The wrinkles along her eyes seemed to soften. “You stepped out on her?” she said quietly. “Had a fling?”

“Never.”

“Secret love letters?”

“Hardly,” I said. Then to my surprise I added: “The betraying little saint wanted me to see a psychiatrist. A counselor! She thought I was—you know—thought I was losing my grip. Thought I was paranoid. Jealous of Herbie, jealous of a hairy goddamn tycoon. Ridiculous! I
told
you, didn’t I? Right at the start didn’t I tell you point-blank how ridiculous it was? Absurd! You
heard
me, right?”

“Oh, yes,” said Mrs. Kooshof.

“Do I
look
paranoid?”

“Well—”

“Totally nuts! Lorna Sue, I mean.” My voice had shuttled up to a high register, quavering. “Believe me, it was a nightmare. She said she’d leave me if I didn’t get help.
Her
phrase—‘Get help.’ What could I do? I faked it. Made up a few stories. So
what
?”

“What sort of stories?”

“Well, you know—the counselor kind. Told her I was busy getting analyzed. Very helpful, I told her. Except one day Lorna Sue picked up the checkbook, asked why I wasn’t paying the cocksucker. I was trapped. So I started writing these phony checks to make her feel better. Hid them under the mattress.”

“You invented a shrink?”

“Right.”

“And wrote checks to this … this made-up psychiatrist?”

“Right.”

Mrs. Kooshof’s face lost some of its wholesome Aryan radiance. She seemed to slide down inside herself, quiet and thoughtful. “Well, God,” she finally said, “I don’t know how you could even sleep at night.”

“Fitfully,” I admitted. “Poorly, indeed.”

She turned and faced me. “This whole thing, it’s just so incredibly convoluted. You’re sure there wasn’t something else?”

“Such as?”

“You tell
me
. Girls. Affairs.”

“Certainly not,” I said firmly. “Out of the question.”

In truth, however, I felt a twinge of guilt. Along with the checks, I had stashed several other embarrassing items beneath my marital mattress, most prominently a certain leather-bound love ledger. It was a diary of sorts, a carefully quantified record of my life as a man of the world. (Names. Dates. Body types. Hair color. Other such vital statistical data.) Perhaps at that instant I should have mentioned the ledger—who knows?—but under the circumstances I saw no point in overwhelming my consort with excessive data. Instead I shrugged and said, “No affairs.”

Mrs. Kooshof sighed.

“Well, sorry, but I don’t understand. You could’ve just—I don’t know—just junked the phony checks. Tossed them out. Burned them.”

“An oversight,” I said. “Major error. I forgot.”

“Forgot?”

“I lead a hectic life.”

My companion pushed to her feet, carried her half-eaten dinner to the kitchen sink, then turned and gazed directly at me for several seconds, her lips moving as if she were at work on a problem of trigonometry. The dear woman had never looked more ravishing: an improbable blend of Great Plains housewife and sturdy strumpet. (Rayon blouse. Black stretch pants. Alpine breasts. Bewitching blue eyes.) In short, to be completely frank, the laws of hydraulics had come into play, and it was with a playful tingle of joy that I rose up, joined her at the sink, arranged my hands at her hips, and suggested an impromptu excursion to the bedroom.

Mrs. Kooshof shook her head. “Zip it shut,” she said. “You’re still not telling me the whole truth. I can
feel
it. What happened next?”

I made a silky, sensuous sound with the tip of my tongue.
“Nothing, really. Pronounced myself cured. Told her Dr. Constantine did a bang-up job.”

“Dr. Who?”

“Constantine. Ralph. Fictitious, but a good man.”

Mrs. Kooshof grunted. “But what if your wife had gone to a phone book? Tried to find the guy?”

“Unlisted,” I said. “Exclusive shrink.”

“You told her that?”

“More or less.”

Again, I tried to divert her attention, toying boisterously with a button on her blouse, but Mrs. Kooshof pushed me back and said, “You’re right, it’s ridiculous. In fact, I don’t think you even know what truth
is
. Not a clue.”

She strode out of the kitchen.

For the next hour, if not longer, she busied herself in the bathroom, behind a locked door, and eventually, in a condition of intense discomfort, I found myself attempting to converse through the tiny crack between floor and door. There was no longer any point in holding back. Flat on my belly, lips low, I completed the dismal record—how Herbie gave every indication of being in love with his own sister, how he had spied on me, how he had located incriminating evidence under my mattress and ruthlessly displayed it to Lorna Sue. My performance, I judged, was soulful. I pressed my heart to the door. I wept copiously.

(The word
performance
, I must insist, should in no way imply dissimulation on my part. The exact reverse: I was engaged in heartfelt truth telling. I was throwing an actor’s light on the human spirit. Survey, for a moment, your own linguistic performances. When your husband deserted you. When you learned about that cheap redhead named Sandra. Did you not feel as if you were on a stage, or before a movie camera, and did you not play your role with gusto? Perhaps ham it up on occasion? Manufacture a wail or two, exaggerate a groan, embellish your own invective? In one way or another, it seems to me, virtually every human utterance represents a performance of sorts, and I, too, have been known to lay on the flourishes.
I enjoy the decorative adjective, the animating adverb. I use words, in other words, as a fireman uses water.)

Hence no apologies.

I wept and emoted and sprayed language through the crack beneath Mrs. Kooshof’s bathroom door. I fell asleep at the end. (Emotion of any sort exhausts me.)

When I awoke, Mrs. Robert Kooshof lay at my side. Her breath came in loud gusts. At first I felt certain she was sleeping, but after a moment it occurred to me that this sweet woman was shedding tears of her own. She shuddered and moved up against me. I held her. She held me. And then for some time we gave way to our grief, a pair of middle-aged love losers, two desperate souls.

Deep in the night, Mrs. Kooshof said, “Thomas, could you ever love me?”

Later she said, “I suppose not.”

And then near morning, she put her head on my shoulder and said, “You’re a scoundrel, right? All the lies. Just a hopeless, unreliable old tomcat—that was the whole point of your stupid story. And I’ll never trust you. A promise—I won’t
let
myself.”

But this, too, was a performance.

At daybreak I woke to find her sound asleep, thumb at her mouth, curled up like a little girl.

I was on the road to Minneapolis by seven o’clock. The skies were clear, the air was balmy. At the halfway mark I stopped at a restaurant, consumed a hearty breakfast, and placed a collect call to the Kooshof residence in Owago. No answer, so I tried again when I reached my apartment, then twice every hour until dark. Inexplicably, I felt a flutter of disappointment. Almost terror, almost sadness. I went out for an early supper—called her once more between courses—then took a long, leaden stroll across campus before making my way home.

She stood waiting at the door to my apartment building. Inevitable, I suppose. Yet oddly touching.

I helped with her suitcases, of which there were four, and kissed
her in the elevator. She wore high heels, a black blouse, glass earrings, carmine lipstick. She’d had her hair cut.

“Tampa,” she said. “I’m still invited?”

“Yes, of course,” I told her, then hesitated. “You realize that we don’t leave for two more weeks?”

“I’ll wait,” she said. “Right here.”

“Certainly.”

“And I should warn you, Thomas. I get what I want.”

“Do you, indeed?”

For a few seconds Mrs. Kooshof watched the elevator’s floor indicator. “Tampa—it’s so boring. Why not Mexico or Guadeloupe? Forget all this revenge business.”

“Not likely,” I said.

She shrugged and unbuttoned her black blouse. “You care for me, though. You
do
, don’t you? I’ll bet you’re almost in love.”

“Ah,” said I.