Cat Tales (4 page)

My mother went cold and distant after; she
had held down a job as a receptionist at the local walk-in clinic
for some time, but after the arrest she simply stopped being the
same smiling, efficient, helpful person that the office wanted as
their face to the world. By early fall the job had evaporated. She
returned home one day, and never really left it again – and the
weird and somehow scary thing was that she still got "dressed for
work" every morning, with her smart work clothes getting more and
more wrinkled and grungy and dirty, and then did very little else
except sit and stare into space or occasionally into the TV where
the endless cycles of the daytime soaps to which she would quickly
become addicted followed one another in quick and dreary
succession. It was a gradual thing, but it did not take too long
for those twisted fantasies to become far more real to her than her
own family's lives. She barely spoke to us at all, and it fell to
me, often, to scrape together a meal for the family in the evenings
when my scowling father came home from his own job. He had never
been, had never aspired to be, anything more than what he was – a
good mechanic who knew his way around cars. Had the fates been
kinder he might have made a go of it in his own shop – but he had
never had that chance. He had spent his life obeying other people's
orders, often people far less qualified and way less savvy than he
was, and he had managed to shoulder it all for a long time – but
when the family fell apart, so did he, and the bitterness and
resentment he had tried to keep from us now came home with him from
work and became the silent guests at every meal.

I learned quickly to keep my head down and my
voice low. My younger brother, barely eight that summer, was still
too much of a child to realize the need for it, the only one of us
in the household who could still find a smile in a day. He took me
out into the overgrown back yard that summer, and shared with me
clouds shaped like dragons or like sailing ships or like pirate
hats; he went wandering barefoot out into the streets and still
managed to find, somewhere, in the weed-infested gutter-backyards
of local businesses, something pretty – a posy of weed-flowers to
bring back to our mother, who barely noticed them, or to me.

He laughed out loud once too often, at the
wrong time. My father lashed out in fury. My baby brother had to go
to the Emergency Room to have stitches put into the gash in his
scalp, ripped open when he flew across the kitchen and into the
edge of the kitchen table, and to fix his broken nose. He did not
laugh too much or too often, after that.

I was thirteen when my father came home one
night later than usual. I had left the porch light on, and my
brother and I had retired to our rooms already – my mother was
alone in the living room, alone in the dark with only the
flickering light of the TV set for company. I could hear my father
stumble into the entrance hall, and the glass shiver in the hallway
window as he slammed the door hard; the creaky floorboards in the
hall told me that he had not swung into the kitchen, where I had
left a meal laid out for him, but had continued down the corridor
which led to the back of the house and our bedrooms. The steps
paused outside my own door.

What instinct made me do it I don't know –
but I was out of bed and underneath it in one swift move. I could
barely see from where I was cowering, my view partially obstructed
by disarranged bedclothes hanging down almost to the floor – but
there was a thin and then widening ribbon of light as the door was
pushed open and my father stood in the doorway looking inside. At
my bed. At the bed where I should have been sleeping.

He muttered something under his breath – not
a worried exclamation at finding his daughter's bed empty, but
something else, something that sounded angry and frustrated and
actually peeved that something that he had wanted was not where he
had though he had left it. Whether my senses were augmented by my
fear, I don't know – but even underneath the bed I thought I could
smell the reek of cheap beer that came from him – from this man in
the doorway – standing between me and safety instead of being my
bulwark against danger – knowing that I would never be safe in this
house again.

He left, and I stayed for a long time curled
up on the dusty floor underneath my bed, shivering. And then I
climbed out of my bedroom window, let myself down gently into the
dirt of a fallow flower bed, and walked away from the house across
cool evening grass, barefoot and wearing nothing but a thin
nightgown which was beginning to be tight across my chest and which
barely reaching to my knees.

You cannot find a safe house until you need
it – because until you need it you do not know it is there.

The house at the far end of our street must
have been there for as long as we had lived there. Must have been –
it could not have popped up like a mushroom in the night, waiting
for me as my bare feet hit the cold pavement of the sidewalk. It
was full dark now, but there was a light on above the door of the
cottage, glimpsed through a half-open gate leading into a wild
garden. It was surrounded by a tall hedge, which was nothing but
green now – but somehow, although I could have sworn that I was
ignorant of this place, I knew that the bushes were lilacs and
would be covered with purple blooms in the spring. In the meantime
there were other scents here now – something soft and sweet and
enticing, night-blooming jasmine perhaps, something that made me
stop before the gate and hesitate, looking into the garden. A grey
tabby cat sat on the top step of the porch, flicking its long tail,
looking straight back at me with a grave and serene pair of golden
eyes.

This is a safe house.

The words came at me from nowhere, from the
night. I reflexively turned to look, to see who had spoken, but
behind me there was nobody and nothing… nothing but night,
thickening, lowering, gathering up against me, like a monster
growing huge at my back, its bright stars slitted eyes waiting for
me to take a wrong turn, to stumble, to slip, to fall, before it
would swallow me whole.

I stepped into the garden. The weight of the
darkness immediately lessened, became less threatening; the tabby
was gone, but the front door behind it was ajar. I could not
remember whether it had been thus before or not – either way, it
was unusual, and I stood frozen, caught between a sudden irrational
fear of the dark and the terror of the unknown which lay behind
that half-open, oh-so-inviting, door bathed in the spill of a
lantern-shaped light fixed just above it.

"Come in," a voice called from inside. "You
are welcome here."

There were slippers waiting by the door, and
they seemed to be there for me – I examined my cold but grimy feet
with some misgivings, but then slipped on the quilted slippers
anyway and ventured a few steps further in. Through an archway to
my left, a small cozy sitting room opened up, a tall lamp with a
tasselled lampshade made from heavy yellow silk cast a warm golden
glow on the place. There was a stone fireplace, with a wrought-iron
fire-screen before it; a wingback armchair with a tapestry throw on
it; a bay window with a calico-upholstered cushion on the window
seat, where a majestic black cat was currently stretched out in an
act of ownership and possession which left no doubt as to his
absolute right to claim this particular spot in the room for his
own. There were bookshelves on two of the three walls, stuffed with
books; some looked old, ready to fall apart, and others barely
read, as though they had been brought home from the bookstore an
hour ago.

"Tea?" said the voice that had invited me
in.

I turned sharply. A silver-haired woman stood
smiling at me from the doorway across the room, leading out into
the kitchen; she had a paisley shawl wrapped loosely around her
shoulders, and was dressed in a long cotton shift which left her
feet bare. She gestured with a hand, back in the direction of the
kitchen. "I've just put the kettle on. You look like you need a cup
of tea. I've cookies, too. Go make friends with Felix, I'll be
right back."

Felix, the black cat, yawned at the mention
of his name, flicking his tail and glancing in my direction with
haughty emerald eyes.

"Where's the other cat?" I asked
incongruously. "The tabby…?"

"Oh, around," said the woman, and smiled. The
smile was strange, an accent note, a hint of cinnamon in apple pie,
suggesting that there was more beneath the surface of the question
than met the eye – but that was all I got. She ducked back into the
kitchen, and I dutifully padded over to crouch next to Felix, who
suffered me to scratch under his chin, his eyes closing to slits, a
hint of a purr escaping from his vibrating throat.

The rattle of cup against saucer brought my
attention back to the low table in the middle of the sitting room;
as I turned, the silver-haired woman was just straightening after
putting down a tray containing a tea cozy presumably hiding a
teapot, two porcelain cups and saucers with pink roses on the
sides, and a plate of cookies.

I stared at the offerings.

"I… no, thank you," I said awkwardly,
suddenly overwhelmed by a sense of being in fairy country, that
taking a sip of tea or a bit of cookie would cost me my freedom, or
my soul. It would mean something I only barely understood, an
acceptance of a contract the terms of which I did not know; it
would be almost like allowing a door to close behind me without any
guarantees that it would be opened again if I wished to leave.

But there was something in the scent of those
cookies. A smell of belonging, and safety, and home. It was the
scent of my baby brother's laughter before it had been
quenched.

"What kind of cookies are they?" I asked,
unable to help myself.

"Chocolate chips, of course. Everything
tastes better with chocolate," my hostess said. "And my own honey,
for sweetening, instead of sugar."

"You make honey?"

"Well, the bees do. I have a hive, out back,"
she said.

I could have sworn I had never noticed this
house before, but once she said that I could remember things quite
clearly – the garden in summer, just sufficiently unkempt to invite
pleasurable speculation and daydreams about what went on behind
that tangle of bushy lilacs, old-fashioned roses, holly, rowan,
hazel a bunch of colorful flowers for which there were no real
names – they were just splashes of scarlet or blue or gold amongst
the green.

There were butterflies. And humming birds.
And a stork had a nest on the chimney pot, and swallows' nests in
the eaves.

And there were bees – a quiet heady hum to
the flowers in the dog days of summer, something somnolent and
sweet, lulling, inviting, as though to step through her gate –
never quite closed, always a little ajar – would mean stepping into
a small piece of heaven, apart from the rush and tumble of the
real-life world.

There were other memories. There were cats –
always cats – lots of cats; there was the silver tabby which I
remembered seeing outside the front door, the sleek black
silhouette of Felix… but there had been others, a streak of
marmalade, or a glimpse of tortoiseshell. Sometimes they seemed to
be hurt, slinking into the garden, limping, looking like they had
been in a fight, with scratched noses or shredded ears.

"Where's all your other cats?" I dared to
ask, my voice sounding thin and reedy with an odd sort of
apprehension.

"They come and go," she said. "Felix and I,
we are the only ones that live here. The others come when they need
me. This is a safe house."

It was the second time I had heard those
words.

"Don't worry, sweet girl. You will always be
safe here," she said.

The world smelled of jasmine, and quiet
night, and sanctuary. She held out the plate of cookies. I took
one.

I don't remember going home, but I woke in my
own bed, late; my father had already left for work and my mother
was at her accustomed spot in front of the TV, staring at it with
dead eyes, wearing work nylons which were twisted around her ankles
in an untidy spiral and which had a run all the way up one
calf.

The world was still wounded, still wrong,
still hurt. But there was something new in it, something that I
could not – yet – name or find a proper place for. The world was no
less full of fear and of darkness… but there was something I sensed
standing between me and the true horror of it all.

I didn't find out exactly what until some two
or three days later. My father had been late home again, but this
time I was still out in the kitchen when he returned from work. His
eyes were terrible – black holes in his face, empty of anything
other than anger and need. He looked straight at me, and said my
mother's name – very softly, but very clearly – and the hand that
reached for me was not the hand of a father. It was the hand of a
man, reaching for a body to slake a need. I was not his daughter in
that moment. Perhaps I never would be again.

Somehow I slipped from his grasping arms,
whimpering, half-blinded with terror and with tears, and ran for
the safety of my room – but it was an illusion, for we had doors
that did not lock and even if they did his weight would tear the
flimsy door from its hinges if he chose to lean on it hard enough.
But I skittered into the darkness of my room, slammed the door
closed behind me, stood with my back against it for a breathless
moment, and then heard his heavy steps following me down the
corridor. I left the door, backed into the far corner, coming up
against the wall when there was no further room for retreat, slid
down it until I sat curled in a pathetic ball of fear and
helplessness, arms wrapped tightly around knees drawn up against my
chin, eyes huge and dark and fixed on the doorway through which he
would inevitably come…