Cat Deck The Halls

40

T HE STAGE OF Molena Point Little Theater was framed with evergreens, and five Christmas trees stood tall behind the white-robed choir; Cora Lee French, the evening’s soloist, was brightly robed in Christmas red.

Cora Lee had reserved, for her friends, a spacious box looking down over the audience to the stage. Only the three cats were seated higher than any human, up among the shadows near the ceiling, comfortably sprawled along a rafter, warm and snug in their exclusive aerie.

In the friends’ private box, little Corlie French sat at the front with Lori Reed, Detective Davis, Captain Harper, and Charlie. Charlie was dressed in emerald velvet, her red hair piled high and caught with a holly sprig. Ryan, seated behind her, wore white fleece and sported a white bandage wound rakishly around her head. Clyde sat on her left, Dallas to her right, his sport coat lumpy with his own hospital wrappings. Wilma, the senior ladies, and the Greenlaws filled the last rows, dressed in a rainbow of Christmas colors. The cats, looking down past their friends’ box, could see the top of Dillon Thurwell’s red head where she sat with her parents. None of the audience looked up among the rafters to discover three cats perched above them-or almost no one.

Wilma looked up once, and grinned; Charlie and Clyde looked, and then Ryan glanced up but immediately looked away again, as if shifting position to ease her aching head. The cats watched her warily.

“Do you think she knows?” Dulcie whispered. “Oh, she couldn’t.”

“Don’t go imagining things,” Joe told her. But, watching Ryan, Joe felt tense and uncertain, too. “She can’t know,” he said reassuringly. “Ryan isn’t…” But then, recalling his argument with Clyde, he shut up and said no more. Had Clyde told Ryan? Oh, hell, he wouldn’t do that.

But, thinking of this, Joe crouched there on the rafter in the darkened theater, silent and uncomfortable, wondering.

Dulcie looked at him, frowning, but then she turned away, giving herself to the music, to the Christmas hymns and carols that had been beloved by humans for so many centuries. Whatever Ryan might have guessed, she thought, there was nothing they could do about it, and her little niggling worry lost itself in the cascades of magnificent Christmas music, in the joyous paeans to a power greater than anyone on earth could really understand. She didn’t speak, and there was not a sound from the audience below her. And when at last the concert had ended and the stage lights went up, still everyone sat hushed, bathed in the afterglow.

And then applause rang through the rafters so violently that the cats spun around on their beam and raced away, back into the lighting booth, escaping the deafening thunder. Running through the dim and shadowed booth, leaping tangles of cable and wires that seemed as threatening as land mines, they fled out through the window they’d left unlatched, to the cold silence of the roof-to the almost silence.

They listened as the soft echo of applause died below them, and as one last hymn began in a curtain call for the chorus. More applause. And then one more, lighter Christmas song, a merry and warming solo by Cora Lee. And then they heard the hustle of the crowd rising and moving out to the lobby; and the cats headed for Kit’s house, for the Greenlaws’ Christmas party.

Trotting quickly across the cold rooftops, they said little, each small cat still caught in a wonder beyond anything that even these special cats could conjure. Caught in the glorious noise of mankind, which far outstripped the ugliness that seemed, too often, to overwhelm the world of humans.

P AUSING IN KIT’S tree house, the cats sat for a little while watching the Greenlaws’ guests arrive, looking down through the windows, enjoying the bright Christmas tree and the lighted candles, the laughter and the good smells, basking in the tangle of familiar and happy voices on Christmas Eve. Lori and Dillon had arrived, Dillon with her parents, Lori with Cora Lee and little Corlie and Mavity. The two older girls, already eating and laughing, seemed nearly recovered from their painful disappointment.

A disappointment of the ego, Dulcie thought, smiling. Not of the pocketbook. The cats, after the awards ceremony and the buffet picnic and the very satisfying auction, had padded close behind Cora Lee and the three girls as they came down the stairs and headed for Cora Lee’s car, Lori and Dillon holding Corlie’s hands, one on either side.

“That was,” Cora Lee had told them, “the best Christmas present I could have had, to see your house sell for the highest price of them all.” She looked down at the girls. “You received nearly twice the amount of the prize money. And what thrills me most is to know where your playhouse will be donated.”

“But,” Lori said, “we didn’t win.”

Cora Lee paused by the car, turning to look sternly at her. “You did next best. Your house did better, if you want to look at the financial gain. Think about that, Lori. Your house sold for far more than the winner received. Doesn’t that impress you? You built a wonderful house. You did a fine job on it, and it has given back to you a nice boost for your future, a sizable addition to your college fund. But best of all,” Cora Lee said, looking very serious and cool, “is that it will become a part of the San Francisco Children’s Hospital.” She hugged both girls. “Do you know what an honor that is?” Beside her, Corlie looked up at the girls, her dark eyes bright and needy, as if she very much wanted them to smile.

The cats had watched them drive away, and then, wanting to know what the Bureau man had found in Gabrielle’s computer, and wanting to know what new intelligence had come into the station, they went their separate ways. As Joe Grey headed for the station, Dulcie and Kit raced over the roofs to the seniors’ house.

They had found Corlie already there, snuggled on the living-room window seat with the two dogs, and they could hear Cora Lee and Gabrielle in the kitchen. Joining Corlie and the dogs, pretending to doze but listening to every word from the kitchen, they soon knew that Gabrielle hadn’t even asked if the girls had won, and that she was in no mood to hear the financial good luck of anyone, particularly of little girls.

Mel Jepson had, indeed, been able to bring back Gabrielle’s programs, and he had found all four accounts stripped bare. He had, however, also found Kuda’s accounts, to which Gabrielle’s money had been transferred. The cats marveled at what a skilled computer technician could do. Despite the fact that it was a holiday, Jepson had, with a few personal phone calls, been able to put a hold on the transfer of funds to Kuda’s accounts. “By tomorrow,” he’d told Gabrielle, “if there are no glitches, the money should be deposited back to you.” The cats hoped that would be the case, if only for the sake of the three other seniors. Gabrielle was hard enough to live with, anyway, without this disaster and her resulting emotional furor upsetting the household.

But now, at Kit’s house, trotting across the oak limb and in through the dining-room window to join the party, they put aside Gabrielle’s misfortune as Dulcie and Joe paused on the sill eyeing the long table where that delectable buffet was laid out-and Kit leaped onto a chair, poised to reach up a paw and snag a slice of roast turkey. This was, after all, her own home. She drew back only when Lucinda spied her and gave her a warning look.

But then Lucinda served up three small plates from the buffet and set them on the windowsill: a Christmas feast loaded with rich delicacies that would put down any normal cat, but did not bother these small gluttons. Not until the cats finished every crumb, and looked up, did they see how crowded the room had become.

All their friends had arrived, even Evina Woods. She sat before the fire talking with Max Harper. The cats heard her say she was flying out in the morning, that Cora Lee would take her to the airport when she picked up little Corlie’s aunt Louise. Slipping down from the window ledge and making their way across the crowded room, the cats leaped to the top of a bookcase and settled down to wash, and to listen.

They learned, within the hour, that Dorothy meant to press charges against the Wickens and Leroy for the theft of the mural. That the mural would, indeed, be hung in the main hall of the school. That Max Harper was certain Leroy Huffman would be indicted for the murder of young Marlie James. That Cora Lee was hoping to persuade Corlie’s aunt Louise to stay and visit for a while in Molena Point, to keep little Corlie near her. And that Charlie was so wired about the response to her book, and about the reviews it was getting, that she was already toying with several new writing projects. Comfortably sprawled above the heads of the party, the cats napped, and listened, and enjoyed; and they pronounced the party a success, a needed time of healing for all their friends, a time of comforting one another after a week of distress; a time of getting their balance, again, for the new year to come.

T HAT NIGHT JOE Grey slept in his tower, his windows closed against the icy wind, his cushions pawed into a warm nest around him to replace the warmth of a bed partner, and to block out any private conversation from the rooms below.

I better get used to this, the tomcat thought. This could be the new order of the day.

But Joe had no notion of what was really coming, and how much he would have to get used to. He awoke to thin daylight and the heady aroma of bacon, and decided it was okay to go down into the house.

Pausing a moment to admire the silvery morning around him, he soon slipped in through his cat door onto a rafter, dropped down to Clyde’s desk and then to the Oriental rug. Ryan’s foldout bed was empty. Glancing through the glass door to the upstairs deck, he saw her standing out in the cold, wrapped in Clyde’s warm wool robe, sipping a mug of coffee. He studied her with interest.

Though she had her back to him, Joe recognized clearly the stance and body language that heralded Ryan Flannery’s preoccupation with some new and exciting design problem. Curious, he stood watching.

Ryan had built this upstairs deck atop the carport as part of the total remodel she’d done, which gave Clyde’s one-story house a second floor. Now, Joe thought, what’s she up to? Are we remodeling again? What? Is Clyde planning to enlarge the study?

But even as he stared at her slim back, wrapped in Clyde’s plaid robe, Ryan turned and looked at him, fixing him with a steady green gaze. Eye to eye. Woman to cat, in a too-familiar manner that shocked Joe and made him back away.

“I was just wondering,” she said, stepping back into the warm room, “if the city would let us build a solarium up here-a kind of studio.”

Joe stared silently at her, his heart starting a staccato beat against his ribs. A studio? Clyde has no use for a studio. Why are you telling me? Why are you talking to me?

“Would that be all right with you?” Ryan said.

Joe tried not turn tail and run, or to look terrified. He sat down and washed his left-front paw. Ryan knelt, pulling Clyde’s robe closer around her, and tried to look him in the eye. Joe wouldn’t look at her; he concentrated on his paw.

“Come on, Joe. Did you think I was out cold when you made that call to dispatch? To Mabel Farthy? When you said, ‘Thank God it’s Mabel’?”

Joe looked at her a long time, his heart pounding so hard he felt like he had a herd of drunken mice dancing inside his chest.

“With a concussion,” Ryan said, “it takes a while for a person’s memory to come back. The length of time varies. In my case, it didn’t take long.”

Joe remained safely silent, deeply occupied with his grooming. This was terrible. This was a major crisis. Why the hell wasn’t Dulcie here? She’d know how to handle this woman.

Ryan reached to stroke his ear, but then she drew her hand back. “Joe, I heard Dulcie say, ‘Her cell phone!’ and then Kit raced away. Then, in just a minute, you had Mabel on the line. You said, ‘Thank God it’s Mabel,’ then, ‘Stanhope mansion…’ and then something about thieves hitting me with a hammer.” Ryan smiled. “You told Mabel I was out cold.”

Joe abandoned his pretense at grooming and openly gawked at her.

“Well, of course I kept my eyes shut,” she said. “I didn’t know what I was hearing. Talking cats? I thought I was in really bad shape, having really crazy delusions.”

Joe gave her a look that said he understood. But he wasn’t willing to answer. He could only swallow, his throat as dry as if he’d just eaten feathers.

“It will take a while for us both to get used to this,” Ryan said, rising. “I can understand that.” She looked solemnly down at Joe. “Never fear, tomcat. I’ll keep my mouth shut. This is not the kind of secret I would ever share with the department. Or,” she said, “with anyone in my family.” And she turned away and headed downstairs, giving him space, following the enticing aroma of pancakes and bacon.

It took Joe some time to recover sufficiently to follow her. He strolled into the kitchen, where breakfast sat on the stove keeping warm. No one was there but the three household cats eating from their bowls on the rug. From the living room he heard voices. He wandered in, trying to look casual.

Ryan and Clyde were sitting on the floor before the lighted Christmas tree eating chocolates from a box that Ryan had apparently just unwrapped. Ryan looked at Joe, and held out her hand to him. The sparkle of the diamond ring on her finger reflected the colors of the Christmas lights. Third finger, left hand. A ring that had not been there yesterday evening when Clyde brought her home from the hospital, and had not been there a few minutes ago, upstairs, when she knelt talking to him. The empty ring box lay beside the open box of chocolates.

Joe would hear, later, how Clyde had gone shopping before he picked Ryan up at the hospital, would hear all about Clyde’s agonized thoughts that had accompanied this decisive move, how Clyde had wanted to ask Wilma to help pick out the ring, wanted a woman’s opinion. Or maybe Charlie. Or Ryan’s sister, Hanni-except that Hanni’s taste ran to pizzazz and dazzle, and that wouldn’t suit Ryan. Joe would hear about how Clyde thought, should he ask Joe first, to make sure it was okay? And should he buy a ring? Or should he just ask Ryan first, and pick out the ring together? Was he sure he wanted to do this? And how would this go down with Joe Grey? Clyde would tell Joe how, when he’d thought about not asking her, a terrible loneliness had gripped him, an emptiness that he had never before experienced.

Clyde did not usually share his dilemmas so freely. Joe would listen patiently to all the mental suffering involved in this commitment; he would hear how, after Clyde had bought the ring, he debated about whether to keep his secret from everyone, in the event that, after all, he would be obliged to return his purchase.

But now the deed was done, and apparently the ring had been accepted, the decision had been made by both parties, and this early Christmas morning, beside the Christmas tree, Joe Grey looked at Ryan, and she looked at him. And the two of them shared a secret that even Clyde didn’t yet know. There they were, the three of them sitting beside the Christmas tree. Joe and Ryan looking at each other. Clyde looking from Ryan to Joe, puzzled-and it was then that Rock bounded in through the dog door, from the back patio, skidded through the kitchen, and crashed into them, licking their faces, licking Joe Grey in the face as happily as if the big hound had a new toy for Christmas.

We’ll see about that, Joe thought, pushing away Rock’s nose with a velvet paw.

But for a long time afterward, that moment would remain frozen in Joe Grey’s memory like some treasured family photograph. He and Ryan and Clyde and Rock, on this early Christmas morning, all together before the Christmas tree, frozen in time as permanently as the preserved images from Pompeii-a Christmas memory to last, perhaps, for all his nine lives.

And then Clyde raised his coffee cup in a toast. “Merry Christmas, Joe. Merry Christmas, Ryan. And Rock. Merry Christmas to all of us, to a brand-new family.”