Cat In The Dark

8

DORA AND RALPH Sleuder's shuttle from L.A. was due to land at 11:03, and as Mavity headed up the freeway for Peninsula Airport, her VW chugging along with the scattered Sunday traffic, the fog was lifting; the day was going to be pretty, clear and bright.

Wilma's elegant breakfast had been a lovely way to end the week; though the pleasant company made her realize how much time she spent alone. It would be nice to have Dora and Ralph with her, despite her crowded little house. She did miss her family.

She really ought to entertain them better, ought to get Wilma's recipe for that elegant casserole. All she ever made for breakfast was eggs and bacon or cereal. Well, of course she'd be making grits. Dora couldn't face a morning without grits-she always brought instant grits with her from Georgia. The first time Mavity heard of instant grits, which were more common in the south than instant oatmeal, she'd doubled over laughing. But after all, it was a southern staple. And Dora worked hard at home. On the farm, breakfast was a mainstay. Dora grew up in a household where her mother rose every morning at four to fix grits and eggs and salty country ham and homemade biscuits from scratch, a real farm breakfast. Biscuits and redeye gravy became Greeley's favorite after he married a southern girl at eighteen and moved south to her father's farm.

Greeley and his wife had had only the one child, only Dora, and for thirty years he had lived that life, so different from how he grew up here in California. Imagine, getting out to the fields every morning before daylight. You'd drink Dora would want to get off the farm, but no, she and Ralph still planted and harvested and hauled produce to market, though they had some help now. And now they had that junk car business, too. Ralph called it a "recycled parts exchange."

For herself, she'd rather clean other people's houses than do that backbreaking field labor. After a day's work, her time was her own. No sick cows to tend, no broken water lines or dried up crops to worry over. She could come home, make a nice cup of tea, put up her feet, and forget the world around her.

And maybe Greeley hadn't liked it all that well, either, because the minute Dora's mother died-Dora was already married- Greeley hit out for Panama, and the next thing she knew, he'd learned to be a deep-sea diver. That had shocked everyone. Who knew that all those years, Greeley Urzey had such a strange, unnatural longing?

Well, he was happy living down there in Central America, doing his underwater repairs for the Panama Canal people, and Dora and Ralph were happy with their farm and their junk business. And I'm happy, Mavity thought, except I wish Lou was still here, that he wasn't taken away from me so soon. She shoved aside the word lonely, pushed it down deep where it wouldn't nudge at her. She knew she'd soon be grousing because of too much family, longing for some loneliness-well, for some privacy.

Never happy. That's the trouble with me. Maybe that's the trouble with everyone, always something that doesn't suit. I wonder what it'll be like in the next world-I wonder if you really are happy forever?

She had given herself plenty of time heading for the airport, and in the brightening morning she took pleasure in the Molena Point hills that flanked the little freeway, the dense pine and cypress woods rising dark against the blue sky, and the small valleys still thick with mist. Ahead, down the hills, the fog was breaking apart over the wide scar of the airport that slashed between the houses and woods. Greeley had wanted to come along, and she could have swung by the house to get him if she'd had room, but he ought to have known the Bug wouldn't handle another passenger plus a mountain of baggage. Even though Dora and Ralph traveled with all those suitcases, she'd never seen either of them wearing anything but jeans and T-shirts or sweatshirts printed in Day-Glo with some crazy message. Besides, they were not small people. Each time she saw her niece and Ralph, their girth had spread a little, expanding like warm bread dough.

But they were a sweet couple, and she'd get them tucked into the car one way or another. Maybe by their next visit she would have a bigger house, three nice bedrooms, one on the main level for herself, two upstairs for company. Not too big, though. Too much to clean. Maybe a place up in the hills. She wondered why Wilma didn't open an account with Mr. Jergen and increase her own pension. Sometimes she didn't understand Wilma; sometimes she thought Wilma's career as a parole officer had left her with no trust at all. Wilma relied on her close friends, but she didn't have much faith in other folks.

Turning off the freeway into the small airport, she drove slowly past the glass doors of the little terminal but didn't park in front. You could never depend on that fifteen-minute parking. They'd give you a ticket one second after your time was up-as if the meter maid was lurking just around the corner, hungry to make her quota. Continuing on down the hill, she pulled into a short-term space, locked the car, and headed double-time back up the steep incline.

Pushing open the glass door, her frizzy gray hair was reflected, and her thin old body, straight as a stick in her white uniform. She might look frowsy, but she was in better shape than most women half her age. She wasn't even breathing hard after the steep climb-and she didn't have to pay some expensive gym to keep fit.

She got paid for doing her workouts scrubbing and polishing and sweeping, right on the job.

Greeley was the same as her, as lean as a hard-running hound. Dora, being Greeley's daughter, ought to be the same, but she took after her mother. Ample, Greeley said.

Still, Dora didn't have Greeley's quick temper, and that was a blessing.

Peninsula Airport was so small that most of its flights were commuter planes. The runways would take a 737 if some airline ever decided to put on a straight run, but no one had. Crossing the lobby toward the three gates, she saw that all three of the little glassed-in waiting areas were empty. To her left at the Delta desk a lone clerk stood staring into space as if sleeping on his feet.

In the larger general waiting room to her right, only three travelers occupied the long lines of worn chairs. Two men sat slumped and dozing, as if they might have traveled all night or maybe waited there all night huddled down into the cracked leather. She couldn't see much of the man behind the pillar, just his legs. She had the impression of limpness; maybe he was asleep, too.

She thought she'd like a cup of coffee but, checking her watch by the airport clock, there really wasn't that much time. Anyway the airport coffee was expensive and not worth hiking upstairs, throwing away a buck and a half. Wilma's coffee was better. And where would she put another cup? She was so full of breakfast her ears bulged.

Choosing a seat in the middle of a row of attached chairs, she settled down where she would be able to see the incoming plane but away from the overflowing ashtrays and their stink of stale cigarettes. After one week with Greeley smoking in the house, she longed never to see another cigarette; her little cottage smelled not only of cat, but like a cheap bar as well.

She could have put up one of those thank you for not smoking signs in the living room. Not that Greeley would pay any attention. He'd pitch a fit if she tried to make him go outdoors to smoke.

Between the stink of cigarettes and the stink of that cat, she'd have to burn her home to the ground to get the smell out.

Mavity's cottage, anywhere else but Molena Point, would be called a shack. It was a low-roofed, California-style clapboard, one step up from a single-wide trailer. But in the upbeat seaside village, it had value. Well, she thought, the land had value. Located right on the bay, it was real waterfront property, even if the bay, at that point, was muddy and smelly.

One would think, from looking at the Molena Point map, that her house faced a wide bathing beach. In fact, her little bit of land occupied a strip of marsh between the bay and the river-oh, it had patches of beach sand, but with heavy sea grass growing through. And the marsh was sometimes in flood. All the foundations along the shore were real high, and in bad weather one wanted to have buckets handy. The lower part of her house was stained dark with blackish slime that, as many times as she hosed and scrubbed it, just kept getting darker.

She hadn't thought much about her property value until Winthrop Jergen pointed out just how dear that land might be and had explained to her how much she could borrow on it, if she chose to invest more heavily. But she hesitated at the thought of a mortgage. She would hate to have something happen, though of course nothing would happen.

She did love the view from her porch; she loved the marsh and the sea birds, the gulls and the pelicans and terns. The land just above her place, up the hill where the old Spanish mission rose against the sky, was pricey property. There were fine, expensive homes up there bordering the valley road; and the old mission was there. She loved to hear its bells ringing for mass on Sunday morning.

Dora said the bells brought her right up out of a sound sleep. But what was wrong with that? Being southern, they got up for church, anyway. They always trotted off to mass, even if they weren't Catholic. Ralph said it was good for the soul to worship with a little variety.

The airport loudspeaker crackled, announcing the incoming commuter flight from L.A., and she rose and moved into waiting area number three and stood at the window. The runway was still empty, the sky empty.

It had been a long time since she'd seen Dora and Ralph, though they had talked on the phone quite a lot recently. Now that Greeley was considering moving back to California, she thought the Sleuders might decide to come out to the coast, too, maybe settle down inland where properly was cheaper. Since they had that terrible financial loss last year, she supposed they didn't have a lot of money. Well, the only reason she could afford to be here was because she and Lou had bought their little place nearly forty years ago when prices along the marsh were nothing. And both of them always worked, too. Their cottage had been only a couple thousand dollars, back then, and was called a fishing shack.

She'd buried Lou in the Molena Point Cemetery thirteen years ago last April, and she had to admit, if only to herself, she was lonely-lonely and sometimes afraid.

Well, maybe she wasn't the only one who was lonely. Before Ralph made their plane reservations, Dora had called her four times in one week, long chatty calls, as if she, too, needed family. Then Dora surprised her by deciding to head out her way, when they didn't even know if Greeley was coming. Usually it was Greeley who set the dates, far in advance, when he could get off work.

The small, twin-engine commuter flashed across the sky. Mavity pressed against the glass watching as it came taxiing back, its turbo engines throbbing, and slowed and turned and pulled up before the building. She watched two men push the rolling metal stair up to its door, watched the baggage cart run out to the plane, and stood looking for Dora and Ralph. There was no first class on the commuter, so they might even be first in line.

Waiting for her family, she did not see the thin-faced man behind the pillar shift in his chair for a better view of the plane- a pale, waxen-faced man with light brown hair hanging down his back in a ponytail, pale brown eyes. His brown cords and brown polo shirt were deeply wrinkled, his imitation leather loafers pulled on over bare feet.

Half hidden behind the post, Troy Hoke had observed Mavity since she arrived, and now, watching the disembarking passengers, he smiled as Dora and Ralph Sleuder came ponderously down the metal steps and headed across the tarmac toward the building. Dora's T-shirt said GEORGIA PEACH, stenciled over the picture of a huge pink peach, and Ralph's shirt told the world that he was a GEORGIA BULLDOGS fan. As they came into the glass-walled waiting room, Hoke lifted his newspaper again. The two big people surged inside, laughing and engulfing Mavity in hugs. He kept the newspaper raised as the three stepped to the moving baggage belt and stood talking, waiting for the luggage. He had parked at the far end of the long-term section and, coming up into the terminal forty-five minutes before Mavity arrived, he had loitered in the gift shop reading magazines until he saw Mavity's old VW Bug pull by the glass doors heading for the parking lot. Had watched her come quickly up the hill again, in that familiar, impatient jerking way she had, and swing in through the glass doors to check the flight postings.

The luggage was being unloaded, the two baggage handlers throwing it off the cart onto the belt. It took a while for the Sleuders to retrieve their suitcases, slowly building a tilting mountain of baggage. He watched the two hefty folk and Mavity slide and drag suitcases across the lobby to the main door, where Dora and Ralph waited beside their belongings while Mavity went to get her car, pulling into the loading zone. He was amused at their efforts to stow all the bags into the interior of the VW and in the hood. They rearranged the load three times before they could close the doors. Dora sat in the front seat balancing a big duffle on her lap. Ralph, in the back, was buried under three suitcases. Not until he saw the VW drive off and turn toward the freeway did the thin-faced man leave the terminal, taking his time as he walked to his car and then headed for Molena Point.

Mavity's little car was so loaded she thought its springs would flatten right down to the ground. Leaving the terminal, she was certain the tailpipe would drag along the concrete. Before she left home she'd removed all her cleaning stuff-brooms, mops, her two vacuum cleaners, the canister model and the old Hoover upright, and her scrub buckets and plastic carrier fitted out with bottles of cleaning solutions and window scrapers and rags-had left it all in the carport hoping Greeley's cat wouldn't pee on everything. Now, beside her, Dora sat pinned down by the big duffle bag and by her bed pillow, which she always carried when she traveled because without it she couldn't sleep. Dora's arm pooched over the gearshift, and her thigh squished against it so hard that they might have to drive the freeway in low gear.

"Where's Greeley?" Ralph asked, looking around the VW as if he expected his father-in-law to materialize from beneath a suitcase.

"He's really anxious to see you," Mavity said. "Too bad there wasn't room in the car."

"How long is it to the house?" Dora said nervously. "I should have stopped in the ladies' room."

"Ten minutes," Mavity lied, cutting the time in half. "You remember. Only a little while. You can hold it."

"Is there a Burger King near? We could stop there for the restroom. Or a McDonald's?"

Patiently Mavity swung down an off-ramp to McDonald's and watched Dora make a trip inside. When Dora wedged herself back into the car she was toting a white paper bag emblazoned with the golden arches and smelling of hamburger and onions. She handed Ralph a double burger, its wrapping damp with mustard, and shoved a giant paper cup between her knees.

Mavity, pulling onto the freeway again, was glad the Sunday traffic wasn't heavy. Already she was beginning to feel like a sardine packed too tight. She tried to keep her mind on the cool, piney sea wind blowing in through her open window. Ahead, as she turned toward Molena Point, the wide expanse of sea with the sun on it eased the tight feeling across her shoulders. But when they turned off the highway into the village, Dora said, "I'd love to see where you work, where they're doing that remodeling. Could we stop by there?" Dora loved anything to do with houses.

"We can come back," Mavity told her. "After we unload. Or this evening after supper we can take a run up, the four of us." If she didn't get out of the crammed car soon she was going to have one of those shaky attacks that left her feeling weak.

But Dora's face crumpled with disappointment.

"Or what about tomorrow morning?" Mavity said quickly. "You and Ralph and Greeley can drop me off for work, take your time looking at the building-though it's just a mess of lumber and Sheetrock-then you can have the car for the day, go out for a nice lunch, and pick me up at five. How would that suit you?" She seldom offered her car when they were visiting, because she needed it for work, and she knew Dora wouldn't refuse.

Dora nodded, despite the disappointment that pulled down her soft jowels. Mavity only hoped she could show them through the apartments quickly tomorrow, without getting in everyone's way. Dora seemed totally set on seeing the project, and when Dora got her mind on something, it was hard to distract her.

They found Greeley at home in the kitchen frying chicken. He made drinks for Dora and Ralph, and they sat in lawn chairs out on the grass, looking at the bay, talking and catching up, until Dora and Ralph got hungry.

Dora didn't mention the apartment building again during dinner, but Monday morning she and Ralph were up early getting themselves ready, getting in Mavity's way as she tried to wash and dress.

And up at the apartments, they insisted on poking through every room, bothering the two carpenters and chattering to Pearl Ann and Charlie, who were busy hanging Sheetrock, slowing everyone's work until Pearl Ann opened a can of paint thinner and accidentally spilled some on Dora, and that sent Dora off with Ralph in the VW to change her clothes.

She thought it strange that Dora had seemed to avoid the patio, keeping to its roofed walkway or inside the apartments, but glancing out often-almost as if she didn't want to be seen, though there was no one living in the apartments, only Mr. Jergen, and his office lights weren't burning; the upstairs windows were dark as if he had gone out. Maybe Dora, looking out at the flower beds, had developed an interest in landscaping. Heaven knew, the patio could use some nice plants and bushes; it must look to Dora like last year's dried-up farm stubble.

Well, despite Dora's peculiarities, it was good that she had gotten her mind off her troubles; this was not an easy time for the Sleuders. Mavity guessed she ought to be a bit more tolerant of Dora's irritating manner.