Cat Raise The Dead

5

Mae Rose had her good days, when she was able to walk slowly out onto the patio, holding on to the back of the chairs, when she could sit out there enjoying the flowers and the warm sun. But there were days when she was so shaky, when she looked back at herself from the mirror white as flour paste.

Those days she felt vague and afraid, those days she was too weak to walk at all, and had to be helped not only from her bed and to get dressed, but even into her wheelchair. Those bad days, a nurse wheeled her into the social room and through it to the dining room and helped to feed her, and she felt 120 years old.

But the times when she woke feeling strong and happy and ready for the day, she felt as good as she had at fifty. Those times she could even sew a little. Of course, she still made the doll clothes-that was nearly all she had left. All her life she'd made doll clothes, even when she was so busy working in wardrobe before the children were born. After the children came she'd left little theater, and that was when she hit on making a business of designing doll wardrobes. James had laughed at her- James had always patronized her-but she'd had a brochure printed up with pictures of her dressed dolls, and she sent carefully stitched samples of her little doll coats and dresses, too. It didn't take long before she was making enough money from her exclusive toy-store customers to dress herself and their three girls and buy the little extras they wanted. James said she spoiled the children. James thought her impossibly childish just because she loved the little, pretty details of life. If that made her childish, she couldn't help it. James said she would have fit better in the Victorian era, when a woman could be admired for choosing to deal only with the minute and the pretty.

Well she'd raised three children, and not a lot of help from James. He had died when their oldest, Marisa, was only twelve. It wasn't her fault that she hadn't been able to deal with the passions of those children; they were James's children, born and bred. When they got into their teens, and she was trying to raise them alone, it seemed impossible that the little beasts could be her own. The girls' puberty had been a terrible time: she had suffered from too many sick headaches during those years.

But the girls all got married off at last, and whatever went on in between she had wiped from memory. Now, of course, all three girls lived so far away that they could seldom visit, two on the East Coast with their husbands, and Marisa in Canada on a farm and already five children of her own to worry over. Now that she didn't see the girls except every few years, and now that Wenona, her one good friend, was dead these long years, and Jane Hubble wasn't here anymore, the doll wardrobes were all she had.

She missed Jane. She missed Wenona. Years ago, when Wenona died, before she, Mae, ever came to live here at Casa Capri, she had known she would spend the last years of her life alone. Wenona had been her only real friend. In little theater all those years together, Wenona in charge of scenery and publicity, and they'd had such lovely times. Their long walks through the village, and shopping together, going up to the city. Wenona had loved to look at fabrics for the doll wardrobes though she didn't sew. Wenona couldn't really love the dolls, not like she cared about cats.

She had to laugh, the way Wenona always had to go feed the stray cats down at the wharf. As if that were her sole responsibility. And the way she spoiled her own cats, putting in cat doors, buying special food, tramping the neighborhood calling if one of them didn't come home. Always worrying over her cats.

But then Wenona went on down to Hollywood with a wonderful chance to work in the MGM prop department. She'd thought Wenona would be back, that she really wouldn't like Hollywood, but she had stayed. She came up once a year, and they had a few days together, but then the cancer, very quick, and Wenona was gone.

And she was alone again.

Wenona dead. James dead. And her own daughters across the country. When Jane Hubble had come to live here, that was a blessing, but now Jane, too. The nurses said she was over in Nursing, said where else would she be? But she didn't believe them.

She'd given Jane one of her five dolls before Jane had the stroke-they said it was a stroke. Once she asked a nurse if Jane still had the doll, and the nurse had looked so puzzled. But then she said yes, of course Jane had the doll.

If Jane had gone away or died, she'd like to have the little doll back again as a keepsake to remind her of Jane. But she didn't ask. They were so strict here, strict and often cross. They took good enough care of you, kept you clean, changed your linens and washed your clothes, and the food was nice, but she sometimes felt as if Adelina Prior's hard spirit, her cold ways, rubbed off on all the staff. There was no one Mae could talk to.

When she had phoned her trust officer to tell him that she didn't think Jane really was over in Nursing, he treated her as if she was senile. Said he was sorry, that he had talked with the owner, Ms. Prior, and Jane was too sick to have visitors, that he saw nothing wrong. Said that the Nursing wing was too busy and crowded with IV tubes for anyone to visit, that visitors got in the way and upset the sick patients.

Jane would hate it over there. Jane was so wild and full of fun. In that way, Jane was like Wenona. Those years when Mae and Wenona roomed together, Wenona was always the bold one, always making trouble. She would never put up with any kind of rules, from their landlord or from the manager of little theater when she was helping with the sets. And Jane was like that, too, always telling the nurses how stupid the rules were. She made everyone laugh, so crazy and reckless-until they took her away.

Four times Mae had tried to go over to Nursing to visit, and every time a nurse found her and turned her chair around and wheeled her back. So demeaning to be wheeled around against her will, like a baby.

Eula said maybe Jane packed up and walked right out of Nursing, even if she did have an attack. Eula was her only friend now. Eula-so sour and heavy-handed.

She had wanted to tell Bonnie Dorriss, who ran the Pet-a-Pet program, about Jane, but she decided not to. Bonnie Dorriss was too matter-of-fact. That sturdy, sandy-haired, freckled young woman would never believe Jane had disappeared; she'd laugh just like everyone else did.

Well at least when Pet-a-Pet started, she had the little cat to talk to. Holding Dulcie and stroking her, looking into her intelligent green eyes, she could tell Dulcie all the things that hurt, that no one else wanted to hear. Cats understood how you felt. Even if they couldn't comprehend the words, they understood from your voice what you were feeling.

Maybe the little cat liked her voice, too, because she really seemed to listen, would lie looking up right into her face, and with her soft paw she would pat her hand as if to say, "It's all right. I'm here, I understand how you are grieving. I'm here now, and I love you."