Cat Laughing Last

18

Rehearsal was over. Everyone but Cora Lee had left the theater. Mark King had closed the piano and departed reluctantly, worrying about Cora Lee, standing backstage holding her hands, his round face flushed with anger and concern.

"I'll be fine, Mark. I just want to sit here for a few minutes alone, in the quiet theater. Guess this part meant more to me than I thought," she said, laughing.

"There's nothing I can say about this. It's incredible. I'm hoping something will happen to change Traynor's mind," he said darkly, then turned and moved away through the dressing rooms.

The kit heard the back door slam. When Cora Lee sat down on a folding chair near the piano, the little tortoiseshell came out from the shadows and crawled up into her lap. Around them, the empty theater seemed to echo with the spirits that had been summoned from the past-and with the tensions, with the inexplicable trade-off for which Mark King and Cora Lee had no answers. The kit reached a paw, touching Cora Lee's cheek.

"All right," she told the kit. "Let someone else play Catalina. But does it have to be Fern Barth! Fern will destroy Catalina. I do love the story, I love the songs, Kit. I feel so close to Catalina-I don't want her story made ugly and common."

She hugged the kit close. "Maybe after Traynor's dead," she said coldly, "if he is indeed dying, there'll be a real performance somewhere of Thorns of Gold. But not for me, Kit. It will be too late for me.

"I'm sixty-four years old. I keep myself in shape, but there's a limit. Maybe Vivi Traynor's right, maybe I'm already too old."

Cora Lee wondered-was it possible that, for some reason she didn't understand, Vivi didn't want this play produced? She looked around the empty theater. "There are ghosts here, Kit. All the ghosts of plays past, people who have been brought alive here. Did you know that?"

The kit knew. She climbed to Cora Lee's shoulder, nosing at her cheek.

"Emotions so powerful, Kit, that they're part of the old walls, even part of the plywood sets that we cut up and use over and over until there's nothing left but chips. All those lives are here. And now, is Fern's saccharine version of Catalina going to join them?"

She rose abruptly, settling the kit more securely on her shoulder. "Well, I can't help it. I can't make anything different, I can't unmake whatever twisted motives Vivi and Elliott Traynor follow." She cuddled the little cat close. "It isn't losing the part that makes me cry, Kit. I cry from anger, always have. Anger at unfairness, at human coldness. Why would Elliott Traynor butcher his own play?

"When I was little, Kit, in second grade, we had a teacher who baited us unmercifully. Prodded us, bore down on us, accused us of things we didn't do, ridiculed and beat us down until she made me cry out of pure rage."

Cora Lee looked down into the kit's round yellow eyes. "I've always been like that. I'm irate when I feel helpless, when I feel used." She touched the kit's nose with her nose. "Can you understand, Kit, how it is to cry with anger when you feel helpless?"

The kit understood. She knew exactly how that felt. The smallest cat in the band of roving cats she'd traveled with, she'd been the butt of them all, two dozen big, cruel felines who delighted in tormenting her, who abandoned her in alleys, who drove her away from whatever food they found to fight over. She knew how helplessness felt. But she couldn't tell Cora Lee that.

"On the streets, in New Orleans, when bigger kids ganged up and hit us and wouldn't let us go, and no grown-up would help us, that made me cry-with pure temper, because no big person would help us." Cora Lee laughed. "I got so mad sometimes that I broke things. Threw china at the wall. That wasn't civilized, but no one took the time to teach us about being civil. Throwing china was the only way I knew to drive away the demons and make me feel better."

The kit shivered. The look in Cora Lee's black eyes was so deep it was like falling into bottomless chasms.

"You make me feel better, Kit. You're good company. You listen and don't try to destroy me. Could I take you home with me tonight? It's just at the other end of the building. I don't like to leave you alone in the theater, and I won't turn you out in the dark. Would Wilma mind?" She looked at the kit, puzzled. "What makes you come here, Kit? What draws you here?"

The kit purred and kneaded her mottled black-and-brown paws gently into Cora Lee's shoulder, careful to keep her claws tucked in.

Cuddling the kit, Cora Lee went backstage to the wall phone beside the dressing rooms, and in the soft light, she dialed Wilma's number. The kit lay her face against Cora Lee's cheek to listen, feeling deliciously secretive and smug, her fluffy tail twitching with pleasure.

"Your tattercoat kit is here, Wilma. In the theater."

"I'm not surprised," Wilma said, laughing. "Shall I come get her?"

"She's been here since early in the tryouts. Could I keep her overnight? She's… we're friends. I have cold roast chicken and milk custard, if you think that would agree with her."

The kit smiled and snuggled down with contentment.

"Those delicacies are certainly allowed," Wilma said. "You'd better have your share first, or she'll eat it all. How did tryouts go?"

"Could we talk about that tomorrow? I… didn't get the part."

"I don't believe that."

"I…" Cora Lee's voice trembled.

"Tomorrow," Wilma said. "Take the kit home. Are you all right?"

"I'm fine. Just need some rest. I'm going to feed the kit and myself, have a hot bath, and get into bed. I'll bring her home in the morning."

"Have another towel handy. She likes to dabble her paws in the tub. Give her something that floats, and she'll have the whole bathroom soaked, splashing at it."

Cora Lee laughed. The kit didn't see anything funny. Hanging up, Cora Lee carried the kit over her shoulder as she turned out the last light and then locked the back door behind her. Heading past several closed shops with their softly lit windows, a dress shop, a toy store, a knitting studio, she turned up a lighted stair tucked between two parts of the building. Climbing two flights, with the kit snuggling against her chin, she moved along an open balcony overlooking the street. Unlocking the third door, she switched on a lamp and shut the door tightly behind her. She set the kit down on a creamy leather sofa so soft that the kit rolled and rubbed her face into the pillows.

The room was done all in almond and white and cafe au lait- ice cream colors, the kit thought. She liked that; this room made her purr. Cora Lee opened a tall, whitewashed music center, and put on a CD of soft jazz. She gave the kit a little smile, as if maybe she had come to some kind of decision. The kit couldn't ask to share her secret.

The small kitchen had a creamy tile floor and white cabinets. Cora Lee fixed a plate for each of them, poured a glass of wine for herself, and carried their tray into the living room, putting the kit's plate on the hearth and her own dinner on the coffee table.

Cora Lee ate slowly, relaxing in the music she loved and in the company of the little cat. It was nice to have a special animal to share her supper, it had been some years since she'd had a pet, since she'd put her dear old spaniel to sleep. She still missed him. She'd depended on him a lot when she was newly widowed, in those months just after Robert died.

Robert was killed on their thirtieth anniversary in a plane accident, on his way to meet her for a week in the Sierras as an anniversary present. She had never felt quite whole since. But she had not felt, until recently, the true fear of being alone as she grew older, fear of the approaching years when she might be ill and need assistance, and had no one to help her, no family. That sense of helplessness had made her take a hard look at her life.

Was their Senior Survival plan going to work? Was this going to be a practical solution for all of them?

"It sure beats paying five thousand dollars a month, Kit, in a retirement home. I couldn't do that. All of us have too much money to go on welfare, and too little to pay those kinds of prices. We're caught in the middle, Kit."

She thought that, with the right legal setup, they could make something better for themselves. Watching the kit lapping up custard, she wished the little cat could understand what she was saying, she seemed such a sympathetic little soul. Rising, she went to the kitchen to dish up more custard, hoping she wouldn't make the kit sick. Wilma was right, this little cat ate like a St. Bernard.

Returning, she refilled her wineglass and turned down the lamp. Could four or five women living together really get along? Was that going to work; would they make the necessary decisions without bickering? If they could hire someone to cook and clean and care for them when they were older, would they find someone they could trust? But they were civil people. And they had three trustees picked out to handle many of the problems.

When the kit had licked up the last of the custard, Cora Lee took their dishes to the kitchen, washed them in hot soapy water, and put them in the drain. "Come on, Kit. I'm bushed."

She ran a hot bath, found a sponge to float for the kit, and spent more time laughing than relaxing. She mopped up the water afterward with four big towels, wondering where this little cat had sprung from, who was so different and amusing. They were in bed by midnight, snuggled together.

As Cora Lee's breathing slowed toward sleep, the kit lay looking around her at the carved, whitewashed bedroom furniture, at the sheer white curtains blowing across the open window. Even the paintings on the walls were cream toned. What a pity that Cora Lee would have to leave this apartment when the ladies all moved in together. These bright rooms with their cafe au lait carpet soft under her paws, and the jazz music and cold chicken and custard, this was a lovely place to live. The kit liked it all so much, that she couldn't stop purring. And, purring, she drifted off into dreams.

But in her dreams she was standing on a strange sidewalk, in a strange part of the village and there was blood on the concrete along with broken glass. Afraid, she woke mewling and pressing tightly against Cora Lee.

But it was a dream, only a nightmare like when she was small and the big cats made her sleep alone in the cold behind the garbage cans and she had bad, bad dreams.

Only then there had been no one to hold her. Now there was someone safe, and she burrowed closer under Cora Lee's chin, safe with Cora Lee, and warm.