Love Saves The Day

LOVE SAVES THE DAY

1

Prudence

THERE ARE TWO WAYS HUMANS HAVE OF NOT TELLING THE TRUTH. The first used to be hard for me to understand because it doesnít come with any of the usual signs of not-truth-telling. Like the time Sarah called my white paws ďsocks.ĒLook at your adorable little socks, she said. Socks are what humans wear on their feet to make them more like catsí paws. But my paws are already padded and soft, and I canít imagine any self-respecting cat tolerating something as silly as socks for very long.

So at first I thought Sarah was trying to trick me by saying something that wasnít true. Like the time she took me to the Bad Place and said,Donít worry, theyíre going to make you healthy and strong. I knew from the tightness in her voice when she put me into my carrier that some betrayal was coming. And it turned out I was right. They stabbed me with sharp things there and forced me to hold still while human fingers poked into every part of my body, even my mouth.

When it was all over, the lady who did it put me back into my carrier and told Sarah,Prudence has such cute white socks! She was smiling and calm when she said it, so I knew she wasnít trying to trick Sarah like Sarah had tried to trick me about going there in the first place. I thought maybe I should lick my paws or do something to show them that these were my real feet, not the fake feet humans put on before they go outside. I thought that maybe humans werenít as smart as cats and wouldnít understand such subtle distinctions unless they were pointed out.

That was when I was very young, just a kitten, reallyóback when I first came to live with Sarah. Now I know that humans sometimes best understand the truth of things if they come at it indirectly. Like how sometimes the best way to catch a mouse thatís right in front of you is to back up a bit before you pounce.

And later at home, looking at my reflection in Sarahís mirror (once I realized it was my reflection and not some other cat who was trying to take my home away from me), I saw how the bottoms of my legs did look a bit like the socks Sarah sometimes wears.

Still, to say that theywere socks and not that theylooked like socks was clearly untrue.

The other way humans have of not telling the truth is when theyíre trying to trick one another outright. Like when Laura visits and says,Iím sorry I havenít been here in such a long time, Mom, I really wanted to come sooner†Ö and itís obvious, by the way her face turns light pink and her shoulders tense, that what she really means is she never wants to come here. And Sarah says,Oh, of course, I understand, when you can tell by the way her voice gets higher and her eyebrows scrunch up that she doesnít understand at all.

I used to wonder where the rest of Lauraís littermates were and how come they never came over to see us. But I donít think Laura has any littermates. Maybe humans have smaller litters than cats, or maybe something happened to the others. After all, I used to have littermates, too.

But that was a long time ago. Before I found Sarah.

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The Bad Place is a short walk from where we live in a place called Lower East Side. (Technically, it was Sarah who walked there, because I was in my carrier. Still, it didnít take her very long, and cats can walk faster than humans. Thatís a fact.) The lady there told Sarah that Iím a polydactyl brown tabby. Sarah asked if that meant I was some kind of flying dinosaur? The lady laughed and said, no, it just means I have extra toes. Iím not sure which of my toes are supposed to be the ďextraĒ ones though, because Iím positive I need them all. And itís not really true to say Iím brown because parts of me are whiteólike my chest and my chin and the bottoms of my legs. Also, my eyes are green. And even the parts of me that are brown have darker stripes that are almost black. But Iíve noticed that humans arenít as precise as cats are. Itís hard to believe they feel safe enough to sleep at night.

The stabbing lady also told Sarah that I was too skinny, which was to be expected because Iíd been living by myself on the street. She said Iíd probably fatten up quickly. Iíve gotten much taller and longer since then, but Iím still pretty skinny. Sarah says Iím lucky to stay that way without having to try. But the truth is Iím skinny because I never eat all the food Sarah gives me. Thatís because even though she feeds me every day, she never feeds me at exactly the same time. Sometimes she feeds me first thing in the morning, sometimes she feeds me when itís closer to midday. There have even been times when she hasnít fed me until after itís dark. Thatís why I always make sure to keep some food left over, in case one day Sarah forgets to feed me altogether.

And it turns out I was right to worry. Sarah hasnít been home to feed meóhasnít been home at allóin five days. The first two days I had to get by on what was left over in my food bowl. I even jumped onto the counter where my bag of dry food is kept and used my teeth and claws to make a small hole in it so I could get some food out myself.(I would normally never do that because itís bad manners. But sometimes there are things more important than manners.)

Finally, on the third day, a woman I recognized as one of our neighbors came over and opened a can of food for me.Prudence! she called.Come and eat, poor kitty, you must be so hungry.

I had been waiting under the couch for her to leave, but I came out when I heard the can open. The woman tried to stroke my head, though, so I had to go back under the couch again and twitch the muscles on my back very fast until I felt calm. I donít like to be touched by humans I donít know well. So I waited until she left before I came out to eat, even though I was starving after two days with hardly any food.

The woman has been back to feed me every day since then, although I still wonít come out from under-the-couch until sheís gone. Maybe sheís trying to trap me with the food. Maybe sheís already trapped Sarah somewhere, and thatís why Sarah hasnít been home for so long.

To pass the time while I wait for Sarah to come back, I sit on the windowsillóthe one that overlooks the fire escape Sarah says Iím never,ever supposed to go ontoóand watch whatís happening on the street. This also gives me a clear view of the entrance to our building, which means Iíll see Sarah as soon as she comes back.

To get to the windowsill, I jump from the floor to the coffee table, and then from the coffee table to the couch. Then I climb to the back of the couch and step right onto the windowsill. I can jump directly from the floor to the windowsill, of course (I could jump much higher than that if I had to), but this way I can check to make sure everything is safe and exactly the way I left it. If the little, everyday things donít change, it makes sense that the bigger and more important things wonít change, either. If I keep doing things the way I always do, Sarah will have to come back the way she always does. Probably I made a mistake of some kind a few days agoódid something in a different order than Iím supposed toóand thatís what made her go away.

Sarah and I have been roommates for three years, one month, and sixteen days. I would tell you how many hours and seconds weíve been together, but cats donít use hours and seconds. We know thatís something humans made up. Cats have an instinct that tells us exactly when the right time for everything is. Humans never know when theyíre supposed to do anything, so they need things like clocks and timers to tell them. Twice a year, Sarah sets all the clocks in our apartment forward one hour or back one hour, and that just proves how made-up hours are. Because itís not like you can tell everybody to move the world one whole day back or one whole year ahead and have it be true.

You might think Sarah and I are a family because we live together, but not everybody who lives together is a family. Sometimes theyíre roommates. The difference is that, in a family, everybody does things together, and they do those things at the same time every day. They all eat breakfast with each other, and breakfast is always at the same time in the morning. Then they have dinner together, and that always happens at the same time, too. They take each other to school or work and then pick each other up from those places a few hours later, and both the picking-up and the dropping-off happen on a schedule. I learned all about it from the TV shows Sarah and I watch together. Even the TV shows about families always comeon at the same time, every day.

(I used to think that the things on TV werereally happening, right here in our apartment. Once I tried to catch a mouse that was on the TV screen. I clawed and clawed at the glass and couldnít understand why I couldnít get the mouse. And Sarah laughed and explained that TV is like a window, except it shows you things that are happening far away.)

With roommates, itís more like you have separate lives even though you live in the same place. Things happen when they happen and not at any specific time. Also, families live in houses with an upstairs and a downstairs. Roommates live in apartments. Sarah and I live in an apartment, and our schedule is always different. Sarah says this is because they always change the times sheís supposed to work. She types things for a big office in a place called Midtown, and sheís so good at typing that sometimes they need her to type early in the morning, and sometimes they need her to type later in the day. Sometimes they pay her a lot of extra money to type all night and not come home until after the sun comes up, which is when most other humans are firststarting to work.

Money is what Sarah uses to get food for me and to keep our apartment. She always says you have to get it when you can get it, even if you wish you didnít have to. I know just what she means, because sometimes a cat has to chase her food when it runs by, even if sheís in the middle of a really great nap. Who knows when the next time food runs by will be? Thatís why smart cats spend most of their time nappingóto save their energy for when they suddenly need it.

But even on the days she doesnít work, Sarah doesnít do things on anything like a regular schedule. Sometimes I have to meow in my saddest voice and paw at her leg to remind her itís time to feed me. I feel bad when I have to do that, because I can tell from her face how unhappy it makes her when she forgets to do things for me. But she usually laughs a little in the way that humans do when theyíre trying to make something sad into something funny, and says she supposes the reason sheís so forgetful is because she has an artistic temperament, even though itís been years since sheís done anything creative.

Iím not sure what a ďtemperamentĒ is. Maybe itís something an artist makes. Or maybe itís something an artist uses to make something else. Whatever it is, though, Iíve never seen anything like that around here.

You might think from all this that Iím complaining about living with Sarah, but thatís not true. Living with Sarah is actually pretty great. For one thing, sheís always willing to share her food with me. When she sits down to eat, she usually puts some of her food on a little plate off to the side, and I sit on the table and eat with her. Although sometimes Sarah eats things that are just plain gross. Thereís one kind of food, called ďcookies,Ē that Sarah especially loves even though they donít have any meat or grass or anything in them. Sarah laughs when I turn up my nose in disgust and says I donít know what Iím missing. I think Sarahís the one who doesnít know whatís supposed to be eaten and what isnít.

There are two rooms in our apartment. In the room with our kitchen is also our couch and television and coffee table. This is the room people are allowed into when they come to visit us, although people hardly ever come to visit us except for Laura and, sometimes, Sarahís best friend, Anise. Anise only comes over two or three times a year because her job is going on tours in a place called Asia. Laura wonít come over if she knows Anise will be here, but Sarah and I are always happy to see Anise because when Anise smiles she smiles with her whole face, and shenever says anything even a little untrue. Also, as Sarah likes to say, Anise is a person who understands cats. (As much as a human can, anyway.) When I first came to live with Sarah, she brought home a ďself-cleaningĒ litterbox that would make a terrifyingwhirrrrrrr noise whenever I tried to use it. (I think it planned to keep itself clean by never letting me use it.) It scared me so much that I started going on the living room rug just to avoid it, which made Sarah very unhappy with me even though itclearly wasnít my fault. This went on for weeks until finally Anise came over and wrinkled her nose at the smell from the rug that now filled our whole apartment.Ugh, she said,doesnít Prudence have a litterbox? Then she saw theďself-cleaningĒ monster Sarah had brought home and said,Sarah, youíre scaring the piss out of her with that thing. (Although really the piss was getting scaredinto me until I couldnít hold it anymore.) She took Sarah right out to buy me a regular litterbox, and we didnít have any problems after that.

The other room in our apartment has our bed and a dresser for Sarahís clothes andómy favorite placeóour closet. Thereís all kinds of fun stuff for me to play with in both rooms, like old magazines that feel like the dry leaves I used to lie on sometimes when I lived outside, and framed posters on the walls that I can jump up and hit with my paw until they go in a different direction. There are shoe boxes of little paper toys that Sarah calls matchbooks, and Sarah says she has a matchbook from every club and bar and restaurant sheís been to in New York since she moved here thirty-four years ago. Even though Sarah has a lot of stuff, sheís careful to keep everything neat and put-away so thereís plenty of room for me to run around. Itís the one thing Sarahís good at being organized about.

Way in the back of our closet are a lot of clothes she never wears anymoreóshe wore them a long time ago, she says, back in her ďgoing-outĒ days. Some of her clothes have feathers on them, so of course I thought they were birds and tried to catch them with my claws. That was the only time Sarah ever got really mad at me. But if a human doesnít want her clothes chased by a cat, then she shouldnít have clothes that look like birds.

It took me a while, but Iíve finally gotten the whole apartment to the point where it has a comfortable cat-smell. Itís not anything a human would be able to smell, but if some other cat were to come here and try to move in with us, she would know that another cat already got here first. The back of the closet especially has a very homey and safe aroma. Sarah put some old things of hers there for me to sleep on, and itís the closest thing I have to my own private cave.

And, best of all, our apartment is filled with music. Most of it lives on round, flat, black disks that Sarah keeps in stiff cardboard holders. All the cardboard holders have pictures or drawings on them, and some of them look exactly like the posters hanging on our walls. The wall where the music lives, though, doesnít have any posters hanging on it. Thatís because that whole wall is nothing but music, from floor to ceiling. Sarah tells me Iím not allowed to mark any of it with my claws, which means it belongs just to her and not to both of us. Still, I get to listen to it with her. The black disks donít look like they should be able to do anything, but Sarah puts them on a special silver table that can hold two black disks at one time. Then she presses some buttons and moves some things around, and the disks sing their music. Sometimes we only listen to one or two songs, but there are times whenSarah makes the black disks sing all day. Sometimes, although not very often, Sarah sings with them. Thatís always my favorite.

Itís because of music that I adopted Sarah in the first place. This was when I was very little and had been living outside with my littermates. We were running away from some rats one day, which are the most disgusting creatures in the whole world. They have horrible long teeth and claws, and they smell bad, and if theyíre not chasing you to hurt you then theyíre trying to steal whatever bits of food youíve managed to find. Then it started to rainóa huge, terrifying thunderstorm that I was sure would drown every living thing that couldnít find a hiding place. My littermates and I, between running from the rats and then trying to hide from the rain, got separated. I ended up tucking myself under a broken cement block in a big empty lot. I was scared to be alone for the first time in my life, and I started mewing in the hope my littermates would hear me and come find me.

Instead, Sarah found me. Of course, I didnít know she was Sarah then. I just knew she was a humanótaller than most of them, with brown hair to her shoulders. She looked older than a lot of the humans who live in Lower East Side, but notreally old.

Usually, Iím very good at staying hidden from humans when I donít want them to find me. Most people would walk right past my hiding places without ever seeing me. I donít think Sarah would have seen me, either, except that she stopped in front of the lot and stared at it for a long time. She stared so long that the clouds went away and the sun came out, and thatís when she spotted my hiding place.

I thought she was just going to walk away and leave me alone. Instead she came closer and squatted down to hold out her hand to me. But Iíd never been touched by a human before and didnít trust any of them. Plus, I couldnít understand what she was saying because I didnít understand much of human language back then. I backed up until I fell into a puddle, shivering at how cold the rainwater made my fur.

And thatís when Sarah started singing. It was the first time Iíd ever heard musicóalmost everything Iíd heard until then were ugly and scary sounds, like machines, and things shattering on the sidewalk, or humans yelling at my littermates and me when they chased us away.

Sarahís music was the most beautiful thing Iíd ever heard. Iídseen beautiful things before, like the plates of perfect food that people ate at outside tables in warm weather. Or the shady grass under trees in the park that humans go to, which meant my littermates and I could do nothing but hide from the humans and look with longing at how pretty the sunlight was and how cool the shade looked.

But when Sarah sang, it was the first time something was beautiful just for me. Sarahís music wasmy beautiful thing, and nobody was going to chase me away from it or try to take it from me.

I couldnít understand the words she was singing, but there were two words her song kept saying:Dear Prudence. She sangDear Prudence right to me like it was my name. And it turns out Prudencewas my name. I just didnít know it yet.

But Sarah knew it all along. Thatís how I knew I could trust her, even though she was a human. I decided then and there to adopt her, because it was clear we were supposed to be together.

Mice hardly ever find their way into our apartment, but whenever one does I catch it and present it to Sarah, to show her that Iím willing to do things for her in exchange for her doing things for me. And I practice very hard at catching mice even when there arenít any around. I train on empty toilet paper rolls or crumpled-up balls of paper, leaping on them and rehearsing my fighting techniques so that when a mouse does come in, Iím ready. If I work hard, I hope that Sarah and I can be a real family one day, instead of just roommates.

Itís as Iím thinking this that I see, from my perch on the windowsill, Laura across the street. Sheís getting out of a car with a man I donít recognize. Laura and the man are carrying a bunch of big empty boxes.

And I couldnít tell you how I know it. Maybe itís because Laura so rarely comes over even when Sarahis here. I get a tight feeling in my belly that spreads up to my back and makes my fur stand up higher than it usually does. My whiskers pull back flat against my cheeks, and the dark centers of my eyes must be bigger because everything suddenly looks too-bright and startling in its clarity.

Even before Laura gets to the front door of our building, every part of my body knows already that something terrible has happened.

2

Prudence

LAURA AND THE STRANGE MAN BRING THE SMELL OF OUTSIDE IN WITH them. They also smell like each other. Notexactly like each other, because male humans smell different from female humans, but enough so I can tell they live together.

If Laura had come in by herself, I would greet her at the door with a loud demand for explanations. Although humans arenít as good at understanding cat language as I am at understanding human language, a firm and directmeow usually prompts a response. For example, if Sarah hasnít remembered to give me a cat treat, Iíll stand next to the kitchen counter and meow pointedly. This always makes Sarah either give me a treat or explain why she hasnít by saying something like,Oh no! Weíre out of treats! Let me run across the street and buy you some more. Sarah says this means I have herďtrained.Ē Training is what humans have to do to dogs, because a dog doesnít even know when to sit or lie down unless a human tells it to first. (The humans who keep dogs must bevery patient and kind to burden themselves with such simple-minded creatures.) Thatís not how I think of Sarah at all. Itís not that Itrain her, itís just that sometimes I have togently remind her.

But Laura is here with a man I donít know, so I decide to wait under the couch until Iím sure coming out will be completely safe. Humans can be unpredictable. Sometimes they lunge at me and rub my fur the wrong way, or even (this is so demeaning)pick me up off the ground! So all I can do is watch and wait while Laura props the front door open with her foot to allow the man to enter in front of her, then kicks it shut behind her and turns the three locks.

A long time ago Sarah gave me a red collar with a little tag attached to it that Sarah says spells PRUDENCE in word-writing. Sometimes, if I move too quickly, the tag makes a jingly sound. So I creep very slowly to the edge of under-the-couch, where I can get a better look at the strange man with Laura.

Heís taller than she is, with light brown hair and dark blue eyes, and heís skinnier than a lot of humans. What I can see most easily, though, are his feet and ankles. Heís wearing the kind of feet-shoes called ďsneakersĒ (because they help humans sneak quietly, the way cats do), and they must be old because theyíre covered in black smudges and dried mud, and thereís a little hole he probably hasnít noticed yet just under his left big toe. He hasnít been around any cats lately, because there isnít any fur or cat-smell on his anklesówhich is the first place a cat would rub her head to mark him with her scent. One of the laces from his sneakers dangles over the side of his foot. As I watch it wave in a tantalizing way while he walks, the temptation to attack it is almost irresistible. But I force myself to remain still, crouching so low that the fur of my belly brushesthe floor and tickles my skin uncomfortably.

Laura is also wearing sneakers, except hers are all-white and look much newer. I can tell by the little bumps in the tops of her sneakers that her toes are curled up, which means Laura is tense. She smells tense, too. Even more tense than she usually smells when she comes to visit us. The man with light brown hair must be able to smell her tension, too, because he sets down his own boxes and puts his hands on her shoulders. Sarah always strokes my back when Iím upset about something, like when I think I have a fly cornered but it buzzes out of my reach, or when a car outside makes an unexpectedboom! sound and frightens me. Laura seems to relax at the manís touch, but when he asks, in a kind voice, ďAre you okay?Ē her toes curl up again and she says, ďIím fine.Ē Then she pushes her fingers through her hair the way Sarah does. ďLetís just get this over with.Ē

ďWe could wait,Ē the man says. ďIím sure the super would understand if†ÖĒ

But Laura is already shaking her head.ďThursdayís the first of the month,Ē she says. ďIf we wait weíll have to take over the rent.Ē

My right ear turns forward so I can hear better when Laura says this. If Sarahís not paying rent money to live here anymore, that means sheís decided to live someplace else. The anxious feeling in my belly gets stronger as I try to understand why Sarah would go and not tell me or take any of her favorite things with her. On TV, when two humans are living together and oneof them decides to move away, first she tells her roommate why she has to leave (usually itís either because of Her Career or The Man She Loves). The two roommates get angry and fight about it, until they start remembering all the fun they had together. Then they cry and hug each other and theyíre friends again, and thatís when the second roommate, even though sheís sad to lose her friend, says she understands why the first roommate has to go and tells her she hopes sheíll be happy.

Roommates have to tell each other before they move away. Iím almost certain itís the Law.

Laura has a way of moving that says she knows exactly where sheís going and wishes sheíd gotten there earlier. Thatís the way she tries to walk into our bedroom, but she doesnít quite succeed. Her steps are the smallest bit slower than usual, and if she were something I was stalking, Iíd probably think this was a good time to pounce. She tells the man that sheíll take care of the bedroom and he should start on the kitchen. She hands him some old newspapers, and at first I think maybe theyíre going to play one of my favorite games, where Sarah crumples up newspaper and throws it for me to chase so I can practice my mice-fighting. But insteadthe man is using it to wrap up our dishes and glasses before putting them into the boxes. He even wraps up the big ceramic bowl that lives on the little table next to the front door. Thatís the bowl I like to sleep in when my body tells me itís almost time for Sarah to come home, so I can be right there at the door when she walks in. Once, when I was especially excited to see Sarah, I jumped out of the bowl so fast that it fell on the floor and broke. The sudden crashing sound drove me all the way into the bedroom and under the bed, where I stayed twitching my fur for a long time. But Sarah was very patient and calm as she glued the bowl back together. There were cracks in it after that, but Sarah said that was okay, because cracks are how the light gets in.

Laura and the man work silently, except when Laura tells him that the Army is coming over later to pick up our furniture and kitchen things and some of Sarahís clothing. I donít know what the Army is going to do with a bed that smells like me and Sarah sleeping together under the covers on cold nights. Or a couch that smells like the time I accidentally spilled a glass of milk all over it (it was the glassís fault; it was pretending to be shorterthan it really was), and I got so startled because the milk splashed on me so suddenly, and because I thought maybe Sarah would yell at me, but she only scooped me up and pressed her cheek to the top of my head and said,Poor Prudence! Then she hugged me tighter and said,Oh, Prudence, life would be so boring if you werenít here. (Which was so obvious she didnít need to point it out.)

I donít understand what use the Army could have for those things, but thereís a lot happening right now that I donít understand. Sarah once knew a man who lost his cat and everything else heíd ever had, all on the same day. After that, Sarah said, he didnít want to live anymore. Maybe Sarah left because she knew Laura was going to come here with this man to take all our beautiful things away and she couldnít stand to see that happen. And now it occurs to me for the first time that if Sarah is going away, along with all our furniture and everything else we need, I might have to go away,too.

I crouch down lower under-the-couch and wish Sarah would come back and explain things. She could have told me before she left, even if the reasons why she had to leave were frightening or confusing. Sheknows, more than any other human, how much I understand.

Cats always understand things. Thatís why we make such good roommates.

Laura and the man with light brown hair are in opposite sides of the apartment, which means I can only watch one of them at a time. Even though my whiskers will let me follow the general movements of whichever one of them is behind me, I canít decide who I should follow with my eyes. Then Laura finds the floorboard in the bedroom that sounds like a human voice crying out when you step on it the wrong way. This brings my attention instantly to her. The doorway to the bedroom is exactly opposite the right arm of the couch, and by creeping all the way to the edge of the space underneath the couch, I can see into the bedroom and watch Laura work.

She and Sarah donít look exactly alike, but enough so you can tell Laura must have come from one of Sarahís litters. Their hair is the same color and length. Lauraís not quite as tall as Sarah, but sheís stretchier, and when she stands on her tiptoes to reach something on a top shelf she can reach as high as Sarah can. Her eyes are lighter than Sarahís and not as round, and her jaw is more square-shaped, and the makeup she usually wears when she comes over makes these differences more obvious. Laura isnít wearing any makeup today, which is unusual. The skin under her eyes is darker than normal, which makes her eyes look almost as dark blue as Sarahís, and her skin is so pale that itís even lighter than Sarahís. She and Sarah have the exact same hands, thoughósurprisingly big for such slender humans, with long fingers.

Lauraís hands are shaking a little now, but they still manage to make precisely folded and ordered stacks of things. She pulls Sarahís clothes from our closet with the kind of efficiency I use when burying something in my litterbox. From the clothes Sarah wears to the office, Laura creates a tidy, four-cornered pile. She uses a fat black pen to put word-writing on one of the brown boxes, which she then fills with Sarahís work and everyday clothes. Sarahís other clothes, the ones with shiny stones and fringes and feathers that I used to think were birds, go into a less tidy pile, and then Laura puts the pile of bird-clothes into a garbage bag.

Sarah doesnít wear the bird-clothes often, but I can tell (at least, I thought I could tell) that they matter to her like everything else in our apartment does.Itís important to keep your past organized, Sarah likes to say.

One night three months ago, Sarah was on the phone with Anise and kept using the wordremember a lot, like when she said,Remember the first time I came to hear you guys play Monty Pythonís? That place was such a pit! orRemember the night that crazy woman chased us down Fourteenth Street with a knife? And we had to begthat cabbie to get us out of there even though we didnít have any money?

That didnít sound funny to me, but Sarah laughed until she couldnít breathe. Iíd only heard Sarah laugh that long and loud when I had one of myvery rare clumsy moments. Like the time I tried to run straight through a closed window (how was I supposed to know that you couldsee through something but not necessarilyrun through it?), or once when I reached up to a paper plate on the kitchen table to try atiny bit of the food on it, but instead the plate and all its food fell on my head. (I still say that was Sarahís fault; she shouldnever have left a plate of food on the edge of the table like that.)

After Sarah hung up with Anise, she pulled a bunch of boxes and bags from the big closet in the living room. She took some black disks off the shelves and the apartment filled with music while the two of us looked through the matchbook toys. (Actually Sarah looked through them and I batted them around, because what good are toys if you donít play with them?) She kept saying things like,I completely forgot about thisplace! or,This was the very first club that ever let me spin, and I had to do it for free. It was so much harder for girl DJs. She showed me newspapers and magazines so old they donít make them anymore, full of word-writing (which I canít understand, but Sarah read some of it to me) about the music she used to listen to and the places she used to go to hear it. Then Sarah went into the bedroom and put on the outfits she hasnít worn since she as young.

She was so happy while she looked at herself in the mirror in those clothes! Except that after a while her face turned a light pink, and finally she shook her head and murmured the wordstupid under her breath. Then she changed back into her regular nighttime clothes, silenced the black disks, and tidied up the apartment before getting into bed.

The best thing about all that old stuff isnít that it helps Sarah organize the past. The best thing is that it smells like the two of us, here together in this apartment. And now all those clothes and everything else in our closet is disappearing into that bag and those boxes. I twitch the fur on my back to try to stay calm.

Maybe if I get to go with the bag and boxes, the things in them will still smell like me. But unless Sarah comes back, little by little the Sarah-smell will disappear from them. And then one day there wonít be anything left in the whole world that smells like the two of us together.

By now the bedroom looks empty, the bed naked the way it is on laundry-doing days when I help Sarah dress it in fresh sheets by running from corner to corner of the mattress to make sure the sheets donít go anyplace theyíre not supposed to. Laura is holding one of the Army boxes, to carry it into the living room, when the sound of a door slamming in an apartment upstairs startles her and makes her drop it.ďDammit!Ē she mutters under her breath. Water rushes to fill her eyes, and she wipes it away impatiently with the sleeve of her sweater.

ďLaur? Are you all right?Ē the man with light brown hair calls from the kitchen.

ďIím okay, Josh,Ē she calls back. Her voice sounds shaky, and she takes a deep breath. ďIhate these old walk-ups,Ē she adds. ďYou can hear everything.Ē

I realize now that Iíve heard about this man. The last time Anise visited us was seven months ago, and Sarah told her then that Laura was getting married to someone named Josh. Anise seemed surprised Laura was getting married at all, and Sarah said she was surprised at first, too, but that Josh was a Good Man. Anisesaid Lauraís marrying a Good Man was pretty miraculous, all things considered. Then they started talking about the man Sarah used to be married to, and I fell asleep eventually when I realized nobody was sayingPrudence.

Josh has made the kitchen empty, too, and everything that used to live there is in a box or a garbage bag. It doesnít look like our kitchen anymore, and the only way you could tell a human and a cat ever used it is because my bag of dry food is still sitting on the counter. When Laura comes out to wipe down the counters with a spritzy bottle and paper towels, she looks at the food and then looks around the apartment, as if sheís trying to see where I am. But then she just pushes the food bag to one side and keeps cleaning.

Iíve never seen Laura look sad before, but today she seems sad. Her eyes fill up with water again as she moves into the living room, although she quickly blinks the water away. And the sadness is there in the way she talks, too. Usually Laura forms her opinions quickly and sticks to them, and you can tell, when she and Sarah disagree about something, how impatient she gets when Sarah hesitates and says,Well, maybe youíre right†Ö†I donít know†Ö And even though I always sympathize with Sarah, because sheís my Most Important Person, privately I agree with Laura that Sarah just needs to make up her mind. Thatís part of the reason why Sarah and I get along so well, because I have strong opinions even when she doesnít. Sarah always, for example, asks what I think about what sheís wearing before she goes out. If I like it, I stare at her with my eyes very big and put all my wisdom and approval into them. And if I donít like it, I close my eyes slightly and turn my head off to the side, like maybe Iím just sleepy, but Sarah knows what that means. And sheíll say,Youíre right, this skirt needs a different jacket, and change into something better before she leaves.

But when Laura tells Josh she guesses they should get started on the big closets in the living room, she almost sounds confused. Instead of saying,We should get started on the big closets in the living room, she asks,I guess we should get started on the big closets in the living room? Even sayingI guess instead of justwe should is more uncertainty than Laura usually shows.

Iím not sure whatís so confusing to her about this room. Everything in here seems ordinary to me. Maybe it looks and smells a little dustier than usual, with Sarah not having been here to clean for almost a week. My litterbox smells bad all the way from the bathroom and thatís embarrassing, especially when thereís a stranger here who doesnít know how tidy I usually am.

But I donít think itís dust or the litterbox thatís making Laura hesitate. Then it comes to me: Laura feels the way I do. She didnít expect Sarah to leave any more than I did, and now sheís confused and sad because she has to decide what to do with Sarahís and my stuff. Iíve been waiting for her to say something about where Sarah went and why, but sheís been left behind by Sarah just like I have.

Realizing that even Laura didnít know Sarah was leaving makes me feel for the first time that I really might never see Sarah again. It feels like my stomach is trying to squeeze all the way through the top of my throat. It feels worse than when humans used to shout at me on the streets, or the day I lost my littermates in that thunderstorm.

Now I want desperately to come out, to tell Laura that maybe Sarahwill come back if only we donít move all her things that smell familiar and make her recognize this as her home. But Laura hasnít called to me the way Sarah would, or tried to introduce me to the strange human in the way itís supposed to be done. Too much is unusual today already, and the thought of coming out from under-the-couch the wrong way, without anybody even saying,Prudence, come here and meet so-and-so, the way Sarah always does, makes my stomach squeeze even harder.

Itís Josh who first goes to the big closet and starts pulling things down. The shoe boxes of matchbook toys spill over his head. I expect him to be mad the way most humans would be if all those matchbooks fell on them, but he just says ďDíoh!Ē and rubs his head in an exaggerated way, pretending the matchbook toys hurt him. From the way his eyes flick over to Laura I think heís hoping sheíll laugh, because humans think itís funny when things fall on other humans.

Laura smiles, but thatís all.

ďLook at all these,Ē he says, crouching down to scoop up a handful of matchbooks. ďParadise Garage, Le Jardin, 8BC, Maxís Kansas City.Ē He puts them back in their box. ďThe writers I work with would kill to have spent five minutes at Maxís Kansas City.Ē

Laura has finally started on the other closet, the smaller one near the front door. Sheís going through boxes of papers, some of which she puts into folders that disappear into a big brown box. The others go directly into a garbage bag. ďJust throw all that into trash bags,Ē she tells Josh. ďThe Salvation Army wonít want it.Ē

Maybe the Army wonít want those things, butI do! How could Laura not evenask me what I want to do with my own (well, Sarahís and my) things?

Josh pauses when Laura says this, his hand in the middle of reaching up to pull things from the top shelf. He continues moving his hand in that direction, although he does it more slowly, the way you move to keep from startling a small animal.ďYou donít want to throw itall away. Your mom wouldnít have kept all this stuff if it didnít mean something to her. Someday, when youíre ready, youíll want to go back and look through it.Ē

Laura sounds exasperated, just like she does whenever Sarah objects to what Laura thinks is a perfectly logical plan.ďWhere would we even put it all?Ē

ďThereís the spare bedroom,Ē Josh says in a quieter voice than the one heís been using. ďWe could put everything there, temporarily at least.Ē

Lauraís face changes just enough to let me know she doesnít like this idea. If it were Sarahís idea, Laura would keep arguing until she made herself right. But now she mutters, ďFine,Ē and keeps going through papers. Josh puts the matchbook toys back in their shoe boxes, then puts the whole thing into one of the big brown boxes. Theyíre both quiet again, until Josh struggles with a buldgy paper bag all the way in the back of the big closet. Once heís freed it he peers inside and says, ďOh, wow!Ē Pulling out some of Sarahís old newspapers and magazines, he says,ďMixmaster, New York Rocker, theEast Village Eye.Ē His eyes go up and a little to the left, which means heís remembering something. ďMy sister used to go into the city with her friends and bring these back for me. I still havenít forgiven my mother for deciding they were Ďtrashí one day and throwing them all out.Ē

Laura has been stacking up Sarahís coats and jackets, which smell more like her than anything else. Why does she have to makeeverything of Sarahís go away? Sarah once told me that if you remember someone, theyíll always be with you. But what if the opposite is true? What if getting rid of everything that reminds you of someone means theyíll never come back to be with you again? I feel the muscles around my face whiskers tighten and pull back again.

Laura doesnít know this, of course. She turns to face Josh, and when she sees the bag heís looking through, she squints and walks over to where heís sitting on the floor. She picks up the bag and looks at the script-y word-writing on its side. Then she says, ďLove Saves the Day.Ē

ďHm?Ē Josh says. Heís still flipping through the old newspapers.

ďLove Saves the Day,Ē she repeats. ďThatís where this bag is from. It was that vintage store on Seventh and Second.Ē Now Lauraís eyes slide up and left. Her voice sounds softer, the way Sarahís does when sheís telling me about something nice that happened to her a long time ago. ďMy mother and I used to go there sometimes when I was a kid. Weíd spend hours trying on ridiculous outfits and then go up the block to Gem Spa for egg creams.Ē

Josh grins up at her.ďDo you have pictures?Ē I can tell heís imagining Laura, except much smaller than she is now, wearing clothes like Sarahís bird-clothes. He looks around the room. ďI keep hoping to find your baby pictures, but I donít see them anywhere.Ē

The black centers of Lauraís eyes widen a little and her face colors, which is how I know what sheís about to say will be at least partly untrue. ďWe lost them in a move.Ē

ďOh.Ē Josh sounds disappointed and unconvinced. But all he says is, ďThatís a shame.Ē He looks toward the table next to the couch, where Sarah and I keep a lamp and some framed pictures that Iíve learned to maneuver through without knocking them over. Josh says, ďWell, at least thereís a picture of your mom and her cat.Ē He looks around the room. ďHey, whereis the cat?Ē

Lauraís head doesnít move. ďHiding under the couch.Ē

Iím not ďhidingĒ! Iím waiting! Of course, I could never expect a human to understand a subtle difference like that. Still, this is probably as close as Laura is going to come to requesting my presence for a proper introduction. So, partly to give Laura a chance to do things the right way, and partly to make it perfectly clear to these humans that I wasnotďhiding,Ē I crawl out from under-the-couch and announce myself with a curtmew. Then I begin an elaborate stretching-and-grooming ritual, as if to say,Oh, is somebody here? I didnít even realize it because I was napping so deeply. I certainlywasnít hiding, if thatís what you were thinking.

Itís easy to fool them, because humans have a much harder time detecting untruths than cats do.

ďWell, hey, Prudence,Ē Josh says, turning to face me. ďYou look like a sweet girl. Youíre a sweet girl, arenít you?Ē

The condescension in his tone is unbearable. I fix him with an icy stare and swish my tail to remind him of his manners, and then I go back to cleaning my face with my left front paw. Josh slowly reaches out a hand toward the top of my head, but I stop him with a warning hiss. Talking to someone you havenít been properly introduced to is rude, buttouching someone you havenít been properly introduced to is far worse. Laura laughs for the first time since sheís been here and says, ďDonít take it personally. Prudence isnít a Ďpeople cat.í†Ē

Josh and Laura watch as I begin cleaning behind my ear. Why are they paying such close attention to how I wash myself? Then Josh says,ďIím happy to have her come live with us, Laur, but if you wanted to find another home for her, Iíd understand. Everybody would understand.Ē

Laura is silent for a moment as her eyes look into mine. I keep my face carefully expressionless, not wanting her to know how nervous I am thinking of all the unbearable change that would come from having to live in a new place with strangers.ďIt was important to my mother that Prudence stay with us,Ē Laura finally says. ďShe was very specific about it in her will.Ē

I think about the day I met Laura. I was still small then, and Iíd only been living with Sarah for four weeks and three days. Sarah said, in the voice she only uses when sheís talking to me, ďPrudence, this is my daughter, Laura.Ē Laura stiffened when I approached her the way I knew I was supposed to when Sarah spoke in that voice. She didnít bend down to get closer to me, she didnít move at all, but her eyes followed me. ďIím sure sheíd like it if you pet her,Ē Sarah said, and although I dislike being touched by humans I donít know well, Laura smelled enough like Sarah to make me think that maybe Iíd also adopted her when I adopted Sarah. I rubbed against her ankles and even purred for her. Not as much as I purr for Sarah, but enough to let Laura know I accepted her.

She and Sarah shared a smile when they heard me purr, and I didnít know back then how unusual it was to see the two of them smile at each other happily like that. Then Sarah said, ďAnimals have always liked you. I remember how crazy the Mandelbaumsí cat was about you.Ē

And just like that, Lauraís whole face changed. One time, when I was still very small, Sarah didnít see me in front of her and she stepped on my tail. The pain of it spread all the way up my back. And the sharp suddenness of that pain made me angry, so angry I hissed and whapped out at Sarah with my claws. Thatís what Lauraís face looked like in that moment. First there was a fast and terrible pain, and then there was anger, just as fast and terrible, at Sarah for causing it. Laura stopped smiling and her shoulders got stiffer.

ďHoney,Ē Laura told Sarah. ďThe Mandelbaumsí cat was named Honey.Ē And then, using her voice the way Iíd used my claws, Laura said, ďI donít even know whyyou want a cat, Mom. I didnít think you cared about them all that much.Ē

Sarahís face looked sad then, although she didnít try to defend herself. She knew she had said the wrong thing, even though I could tell she hadnít meant to.

I donít want to go live with Laura. I donít want to live anywhere with anybody except right here with Sarah. But if Sarah isnít paying money to live here anymore, that means I canít live here anymore, either. Apparently Sarah knew she was leaving and wanted me to live with Laura. Maybe sheís planning to come back and wants to be sure she knows exactly where to find me. That must be it!

The relief I feel as I realize this is wonderfulóso wonderful itís all I can do to keep from collapsing into a deep, luxurious nap as the tension leaves my body. Still, I can tell by the way Laura is looking at me that sheís thinking about what Josh just said, how he would understand if Laura wanted to send me to live somewhere else. I remember how happy her face was for a moment when she heard me purr that first day, and I think she must like cats more than sheís willing to say right now. (Whatísnot to like about living with a cat?)

So, ignoring Josh with his bad manners, I walk over to Laura and pat her leg with my paw, claws sheathed, the way I do when I want Sarah to pay attention. Then I rub my head against her ankles, to mark her with my scent and make her understand that she has no choice about whether or not to take me with her.

Laura doesnít reach down to pet me, but she does sigh in a resigned-sounding way. The tightness in my stomach relaxes even more, and I rub my head harder against her legs.

Josh may never have had a cat to teach him proper manners, but spending only a few minutes with me has already made him smarter. He doesnít say anything, but when he hears Laura sigh he can tell as plainly as I can that itís been settled.

The sun is getting lower and the apartment is almost empty. The closets have been cleared out, the rugs rolled up so the Army can take them when they come for the furniture. The posters on the wall that I used to love batting in different directions have been taken out of their glass frames and rolled up so they fit into the boxes of things that are coming with us. It looks and smells so different that, already, itís getting harder for me to remember the life Sarah and I had together here. My plastic carrier is waiting by the door, and even though I usually hate getting into it (because the only time Sarah puts me in it is when sheís taking me to the Bad Place), I crawl in now voluntarily. I know Iím not going to the Bad Place today. And, besides, itís almost the only thing left here that smells like Sarah and me at the same time.

When Laura and Josh rolled up the rugs, they found the old squeaky toys Sarah used to bring back for me when I first came to live here. She always said how bad she felt that I had to be alone while she was out working, and she wanted to make sure I had something to play with and to make sounds for me when I was by myself. She never understood that Iliked having my own quiet space and being alone sometimes. Maybe that was because Sarah never really liked being alone.

Those toys werenít as interesting to me as the matchbook toys or the newspapers Sarah crumpled up (itís no fun to play with things you think youhave to play with; itís much more fun to play with stuff you just find), and I lost track of where they were a long time ago. But I remember how happy it made me when Sarah first brought them home. That was how I knew, even though she was never good at keeping to feeding schedules or things like that, that she was thinking about me even when she wasnít here to see me. Just like I thought about her even when she was gone. It meant I was right that day when I decided to adopt her.

Iím still angry with Sarah for leaving me without saying good-bye. Mostly, though, I just hope I get to see her again someday. Sheís the only human Iíve ever loved.

The only things still unpacked in the whole apartment are Sarahís collection of black disks and the special table she plays them on. Josh washes his hands before he touches them, and from the way he approaches I can tell how badly heís wanted to look through the black disks since he first walked in. I donít like it, because those areSarahís black disks and evenIím not allowed to touch them. But Sarah doesnít live here anymore. She must have had her reasons for leaving them, and that must mean that wherever sheís living now, she still gets to hear music.

ďI canít believe how many there are,Ē Josh says to Laura. ďI donít think Iíve ever seen a vinyl collection this big.Ē

ďI never noticed how big it was, either,Ē Laura says. ďShe must have kept more than I realized after she sold the record store.Ē

ďThereís such a range.Ē The way Josh sounds makes me wonder if maybe not all humans have a wall of black disks like Sarah does. From behind the metal bars of my carrier I can see Josh in pieces, the way I used to see the world in pieces when Iíd crouch beneath our big window and look up through the fire escape bars. He sits down cross-legged in front of the records. ďLook at all this.Ē

ďMy mother was mostly into dance music,Ē Laura says. ďBut her roommate was in a punk band and the two of them swapped records a lot.Ē

Josh grins.ďI guess that explains why sheís got the DictatorsíGo Girl Crazy! shelved next to Disco Tex and the Sex-O-Lettes.Ē

ďLetís pack them up. We can look through them later at home,Ē Laura says. When Josh hesitates, she turns her mouth up at the corners and says, ďScoutís honor.Ē

Josh nods. Then he says,ďOh!Ē He stands and walks over to an open brown box and pulls something from it. ďI didnít wrap this because I thought you might want it for the apartment.Ē

Laura walks over to see what Josh is holding. It looks like one of the framed photographs that used to live on the table next to the couch.

ďHow old was she here?Ē Josh asks. ďShe looks so young.Ē

Laura takes the picture from his hand.ďShe was nineteen. This was right before she had me.Ē

ďShe was beautiful.Ē Josh looks at Laura and smiles. ďLike you.Ē

ďNo,Ē Laura says. ďIíll never be as beautiful as my mother was.Ē

At first I think sheís doing this thing called modesty, which is when humans pretend not to be as special or good at something as they know they really are. (This is something a cat would never do.) But thereís too much sadness in her smile when she adds, ďWhen I was little, I always used to think how lucky I was to have the prettiest mommy.Ē

ďOur kids will feel that way about you someday.Ē When Laura doesnít respond, Josh puts his arm around her shoulders and says, in a gentler tone, ďThey will, Laur. I promise.Ē

It seems like a nice thing for him to say. Especially since itís hard for me to judge human beauty (anything stripped of its fur and forced to walk on its hind legs looks naked and awkward to me). It doesnít seem like thereís any reason for Lauraís eyes to fill with water again because of what Josh said. But they do.

I think Josh wants to give Laura privacy to make the water go away, even though she swallows hard a few times and blinks it back before it can fall. He goes over to the black disks again, takes one out, and puts it on Sarahís special table. Music fills the apartment one more time. Itís so much like the kind of thing Sarah would do that, for the first time, I think maybe I could get to like Josh. He even sings along with the music, the way Sarah sometimes used to.

Love is the message, love, love is, love is the†Ö

[ ŗūÚŤŪÍŗ: img_3]

Most of the big brown boxes stay in the apartment for the Army to come and take them. The rest are carried down by Laura and Josh to the giant metal box on wheels thatís attached to the car. Laura carries the garbage bags down the outside hallway to Trash Room. She leaves the front door open when she does this, and through the open door I hear her footsteps pause on her way back from Trash Room. Then I hear her go back and pull one of the garbage bags out. Herfootsteps get faraway sounding, like sheís taking the bag outside, and I guess sheís adding it to the boxes weíre bringing.

I stay in my carrier the whole time. I have to. Laura has closed and locked it, which is just plain rude because didnít I get in here of my own free will? Is there any good reason to treat me like some stupid dog trying to run out of a kennel? I think humans donít even realize how much they insult catsí dignity sometimes. But I donít have long to be angry about this, because Laura quickly comes back inside and picks up my carrier. I catch one last glimpse of the apartment through its bars and wonder if Iíll ever live here again.

Laura takes me outside, and I have to close my eyes halfway because the sun is getting so bright as it comes through the crisscrossed bars of my carrier. She climbs into the car and settles my carrier on her lap, and Josh gets into the car through the other door, so he can sit behind the big round thing that makes the car go.

Iíve never been in a car before. The feeling of it isnít so bad once I get used to the sensation of something other than legs moving me forward. Itís even soothing me into drowsiness, and I have to fight to keep my eyes open, because I donít want to miss anything. I had no idea how much Iíd never seen before until now, watching everything that moves past the windows of the car.

The farther away we get the wider the streets are, until Iím positive weíre not in Lower East Side anymore. Some of the streets are so wide I canít believe theyíre real. And the buildings! I canít even see the tops of all of them, although I stretch my neck as high up as my carrier will allow me. I never saw buildings this tall in Lower East Side. In some of their windows I see other cats, lounging in the late-day sunlight or batting at curtains that try to block their views. I wonder if theyíll get to live in their apartments forever, or if maybe one day theyíll have to move away like I am because their humans stop coming home. I wishI could ask them. Maybe one of them knows what youíre supposed to do to make a human return after sheís left you.

Josh tells Laura heís going to take the West Side Highway. We drive past a wide river, which holds more water than I ever imagined seeing in real life. There are boats on the water, and people in other kinds of strange, smaller machines that let them move on top of the water as if they were running on it. (Iíve always felt sorry for humans because they have to get all the way into water to get clean, but here are these humans doing it for no good reason!) The sidewalks near the river are a swarm of humans holding food, shopping bags, or the hands of smaller humans. One of them is throwing bread crumbs to anenormous flock of pigeons andóoh! How wonderful it would be to jump into the middle of that flock and show those silly birds whoís boss!

Laura rolls down the car window on our side, and all kinds of smells come rushing to my nose. The mixture of aromas makes me think of the time before Sarah, when I lived outside with my littermates. I can smell other cars, and birds, and humans sweating in their coats, and the scent of new, fresh dirt. Itís that time of year when the cold starts to go away, so I can smell flowers, too, and other things I canít name because Iím too overwhelmed. I wish I could stay where we are long enough to identify every single thing I smell and give it its proper name.

And if I did get to stay hereóright here on this very spotóI would never have to go to Laura and Joshís apartment. I would never have to start the life Iím going to have to live, at least for now, without Sarah in it.

3

Prudence

THE HUMAN WORD FOR SOMEONE WHO MOVES FROM ONE COUNTRY to another isimmigrant. I moved from Lower East Side to Upper West Side, which is obviously all the way on the opposite side of the world. And if itís on the other side of the world, then it must be a whole different country. This means Iím an immigrant, too. (Sarah used to talk about the immigrants in Lower East Side who had to move away because apartments got expensive, just like I had to.)

TV says that immigrants sometimes get homesick. Iíve been here sixteen days so far, and I was sick for the first five of them. Thatís how long it took just to get used to how different the food is in Upper West Side. I was nervous abouteverything being so different, and having different food, too, was more than I could bear. I heard Josh tell Laura that they should buy me somethingďbetterĒ than the ďcheapĒ food Sarah used to feed me. (Oh, I loved that food! I wish Sarah was here to tell Josh to buy me the food I like.) He brought something home in a can and told Laura it was ďorganic.Ē Thatís a word humans use to describe food that comes from a farm instead of a factory. Except the food came in a can, and cans only come from factories, so how could it be in a canand be organic?

Trying to figure out what exactly was in my food that smelled so different from the good food Iím used to made my stomach sick and nervous. The only time I came out of the closet in the upstairs bedroom (which is where they put all the Sarah-boxes) was when I had to throw up. This made Josh worry and tell Laura that maybe they should take me to the Bad Place, which only made my stomach clench tighter. But Laura went out and bought a can of the food Iím used to and mixed some of it with Joshís new food. Even though it wasnít as good as just my regular food by itself would have been, at least it smelled familiar enough for me to eat without feeling nervous.

Now Laura mixes some of my old food with the new food every morning, except each day thereís more of the new and less of the old. I think Lauraís trying to trick me into not noticing, so that one day soon she can put down just the new food and none of the food I like. As if that would fool a cat!

When I lived with Sarah, my first feeding of the day was always a happy time. I would stand next to her at the kitchen counter and meow for her to hurry up (humans tend to dawdle when theyíre feeding cats) while she emptied the food into my special Prudence-bowl. Then Iíd run in excited circles in front of her feet while she carried the bowl to the kitchen table where I could eat it.

I canít do the same thing with Laura, though. For one thing, Laura is never in a happy mood when she comes into this room with all the Sarah-boxes to put my food down. She doesnít like it here, in a way that has nothing to do with my living in here most of the time. I can tell by the way the tiny hairs on her arms rise slightly when she enters, or just walks past the doorway. And even if I wanted to run around in circles (which I donít), the floor in here is so crowded from the Sarah-boxes that there isnít room for me to run without bumping into things.

Also I canít eat in front of Laura the way I did with Sarah, because I donít want Laura to know too much about my eating habits. For example, I have to drink three laps of water for every five bites of food. When I lived outside, I learned that water thatís been standing still for a long time usually tastes bad. Now I like to rattle my water bowl with my right paw before I drink from it, so I can see the water move and keep it tasting fresh. Sarah understood this and only filled my water bowl up halfway. But Laura fills it all the way to the top, so some of it sloshes onto the dark, polished floor and leaves light spots on the wood when it dries. Lauraís mouth presses into a straight line when she sees those spots, and I think sheíd be mad if she saw me sloshing the water bowl on purpose. Yesterday she brought home a blue rubber mat with ridiculous cartoon drawings of smiling cats all over it (is this what Laura thinks cats aresupposed to look like?), and she put it under my food and water bowls so nothing spills onto the floor anymore. Probably it would have been easier to just stop filling the water bowl so high, but even if I had a way of suggesting this to her, I doubt sheíd listen.Laura has to do things her own way, Sarah always says. I guess I should be grateful she still lets me eat in here, with all of Sarahís and my old things around me, instead of insisting I eat someplace else. I donít think Iíd be able to force much down without having safe, familiar smells around me.

I havenít been getting enough sleep, which also makes me feel less healthy and alert than I used to. Sleeping is usually one of my favorite things to do, and this is something humans would be wise to learn from cats. Humans never seem to get enough sleep, and Laura and Josh havenít nappedonce since Iíve been here! (The last few months I lived with Sarah, she was smart enough to follow my example and started napping with me more frequently.) But sleeping is harder for me now, because every time I wake up I get confused about where I am and why everything smells different. I have to remember all over again that I live with Laura and Josh now instead of Sarah, and when I remember it hurts from my chest all the way down to my stomach. Itís gotten so Iím afraid to fall asleep because it hurts so much to wake up.

Sometimes, though, I get fooled for a few moments, and thatís the hardest of all. Like right now. Itís early in the morning, before anybodyís left for work, and Iím in the back of the closet having just opened my eyes. I smell the can of my old food opening and see a woman with Sarahís hair bending over my bowl.Good morning, Sarah, I meow. Sarah looks up in surprise, and when her hair slides back from her face I see it isnít Sarah at all. Itís Laura whoís looking at me, wondering why I just meowed when Iíve been quiet most of the time since Iíve been here. It was Lauraís hair, so much like Sarahís, that tricked me.

Besides her voice when she sang, just about my favorite thing about Sarah was her hair. I loved to rub my face against it and bury my nose in it. I could spend hours batting at it with my front paws, or watching Sarah twisting it in and out of ponytails, or noticing the way each strand sparkled and turned a slightly different color from the other strands in the sunlight that came through our windows. Once I was sitting behind Sarahís head on the back of our couch with my nose and mouth nestled in her hair, and I chewed off a big mouthful. Sarah got mad (although she couldnít help laughing when she saw me sitting there with a chunk of her hair in my mouth as if it were a mouse I was carrying back to my den). I donít know why I did it, exactly, except I was thinking how nice it would be if I could have some of Sarahís hair to take with me to my little cave in the back of our closet.

One of the times when Anise came over to our apartment, she cut Sarahís hair for her. Aniseís hair always looks different every time she comes over. Sometimes itís very short and straight, and other times itís long and curly. Sometimes she even puts streaks of different colors in her hair, like green or pink.

Anise always tells Sarah that sheís been wearing her hair the same way for thirty yearsólong and straightóand that she should change it now and then ďjust for fun.Ē (Whatísfun about change?!) This one time, though, she actually talked Sarah into it. Anise sat her down in one of our kitchen chairs with a towel around her neck, and attacked Sarahís head with scissors until her hair was much,much shorter. While Anise worked they talked and laughed about The Old Days, when they were young and too poor to afford new clothes or professional haircuts, so Anise made their clothes and cut their hair for them.

I was miserable when I saw Sarahís beautiful hair falling in sad little clumps to the floor, and for the first time I didnít like Anise very much. But Lauraís reaction was even worse. When she came over three Sundays later and Sarah opened the door, Lauraís face froze. Her eyes widened and got shinier than normal. ďYourhair!Ē she cried. ďWhat happened to it?Ē

ďYou donít like it.Ē Sarah made this a statement instead of a question.

ďNo, I just†ÖĒ One hand moved up from Lauraís side as if she was going to touch the side of Sarahís head, although it stopped before it got there. ďIím surprised, is all,Ē Laura finally said. ďWhat made you decide to do something so radical?Ē

ďI was ready for a change. Do you like it?Ē Sarah almost looked shy. ďAnise did it for me.Ē

Laura made a sound like a snort.ďThatís Anise,Ē she said. ďYou can always count on her for the little things.Ē She emphasized the wordlittle.

Lauraís hair looks and smells like Sarahís, although she spends more time straightening it in the mornings with a loud hair dryer than Sarah ever did. Laura cares about hair a lot. That must be why she got so upset when Anise cut Sarahís off.

Sarah let her hair grow back long and never tried cutting it short again after that. When Laura visited, her eyes would travel to the top of Sarahís head and down the length of Sarahís hair while Sarah chattered at her. I think she was waiting for Laura to notice and say something about it. But Laura never did.

Laura doesnít usually linger in this room, but sometimesólike nowósheíll spend long, quiet minutes after she feeds me looking out the windows, watching a flock of pigeons on the rooftop of the building across the street. You can see these same pigeons from the tall living room windows downstairs that go from the floor to the ceiling and make up two whole walls of the room. The pigeons are the same color as coffee when you add cream to it, which is an unusual color for pigeons. Other than that, though, I donít see whatís so interesting about them. But Laura canít seem to move her eyes away.She even winds a single strand of hair around one finger, the way Sarah always does when sheís thinking deeply about something.

Iíve tried watching the pigeons also, to see what Laura finds so fascinating, but all the pigeons ever do is fly around in big circles for an absurdly long time, and then come back to land on the rooftop. Naturally I hadnít really expected to see much because pigeons arenít even as smart asdogs, if you can believe it.

The room is silent while Laura watches the pigeons and I crouch in the closet waiting for her to leave. Upper West Side is quiet in ways that Lower East Side never was. In Sarahís and my apartment, when the windows were open, I could hear squirrels and large bugs turning in the earth, birds singing while they nested in trees. People would walk along the sidewalk, their voices talking into tiny phones and the sounds drifting up to the third floor where Sarah and I lived.Cars drove past with music flying out of their rolled-down windows to announce that they had arrived. Like the way the man who lives in the lobby of this apartment building calls Laura and Josh to announce when their pizza or Chinese food is on its way upstairs. In Lower East Side, even when our windows were closed, you could always hear people talking in other apartments or water moving through pipes in the wall. Sometimes I would hear loudcrack! sounds without being able to tell where they came from. It used to startle me until Sarah explained that it was just our buildingďsettling.Ē

There are neighbors and cars and birds here in Upper West Side, too, but the street is so far below us that you canít hear any of its sounds. I never hear people talking or playing their televisions loudly in their own apartments next to this one. Most days, after Laura and Josh have left for work, the only thing I hear is the jingle of the Prudence-tags on my red collar as I walk from room to room. Sometimes, if Iíve been sitting still for a while, I meow loudly and send the sound of it echoing from the walls and ceilings, just to make sure I havenít gone deaf.

Sarah never liked it when things were too quiet. Maybe thatís why she played music and watched TV all the time. She would chatter and chatter at Laura whenever Laura came over to visit, afraid of the silence she would hear if she stopped because Laura never had much to say in return. Sarah told Anise once that Laura had built a wall around herself with silence. I used to imagine Sarahís chatter goingchip, chip, chip at this wall, even though I couldnít see where the wall was. It must be different for Laura in Upper West Side, though, because she and Josh talk all the time.

Josh walks past the doorway now, in the nicer clothes and dark feet-shoes he wears to work. Lauraís own work clothes match each other a lot more than Sarahís. Today she wears a black jacket and matching black pants with shiny high-heeled black shoes. The only thing that isnít black is the white blouse she wears under her jacket.

Josh pauses when he sees Laura standing in front of the window and says,ďEverything okay?Ē

ďIím fine.Ē Laura smiles a little and turns to face him. ďJust daydreaming.Ē

Something about the way Joshís eyes narrow and widen makes me think he notices more than most humans do. Whenever Lauraís talking to him, his eyes zip all over her face, and you can tell how interested he is in what sheís saying. Itís not like when Sarahís eyes stayed focused anxiously on Lauraís face without moving, or when Laura would look off to the side while Sarah was talking to her. Sometimes, though, when Sarah would turn her eyes to watch me do something, Laura would look into her face with an expression that was hard to describe. The skin at her throat would tighten, as if she was about to say something. But by the time Sarah looked at her again, Lauraís face would be wearing its normal expression, and she would say something unimportant to Sarah like,This is good coffee.

Joshís eyes leave Lauraís face now just long enough to look around the room once. ďWhereís Prudence?Ē

ďHiding in the closet.Ē My tail swishes when I hear Laura describe what Iím doing as ďhidingĒ instead of what it really isówaiting for her to leave already.

ďShe sure does love that closet,Ē Josh says.

ďShe just needs some time.Ē Laura plucks a strand of my fur from the sleeve of her jacket. ďI donít think sheís very comfortable yet. It doesnít seem like sheís sleeping much.Ē

Josh walks toward Laura and brushes his hand gently across her cheek.ďThereís a lot of that going around these days.Ē

Laura touches his hand with her own, but takes a small step back so heís not touching her face anymore. ďIím fine,Ē she repeats. Then she looks down at the watch on her wrist and says, ďWeíre going to be late if we donít get a move on.Ē

I listen to the sound of their feet-shoes going down the stairs and wonder how much longer Iíll have to live here before Sarah comes to take me back to Lower East Side.

Every morning, after Laura and Josh have left for work, I wander around the apartment trying to find a place where I can feel comfortable enough to settle into the kind of long, good sleep I need more and more desperately as the days go by. Itís hard to sleep well, though, when nothing smells the way itís supposed to. Laura makes this problem worse because sheís always cleaning and wiping things down with foul sprays and polishes that smell the way humans think things like lemons and pine trees are supposed to smell when they grownaturally outdoors. She especially hates it when there are any crumbs or bits of food on the kitchen counters or floor. Crumbs are how you end up with roaches and mice, Laura says (although she really doesnít have to worry about that whileIím here), and I remember Sarah saying how they always had to be careful about that in the apartment they lived in together when Laura was a child.

I crawl in and out of the Sarah-boxes, looking for a way to get comfortable among the smells I know. I press my cheeks on the things in the boxes, rubbing Sarahís smell into me and my smell into the Sarahthings, but the boxes are too full for me to find a place to lie down and sleep. Yesterday I tried burrowing into the big Love Saves the Day bag that was lying on its side in one of the Sarah-boxes. I thought that, since it already smells like Sarahís and my apartment, if I could dig all the way into it I could surround myself with that wonderful Sarah-and-me-together smell, as if it were a cave.

It took a while to drag all the newspapers and magazines out of the bag to make enough room for me to squeeze in. But once I got all the papers out, I realized there was something made of cold metalócompletely uncomfortable to lie againstóat the bottom of the bag. Even using my ďextraĒ toes, I couldnít pry it out. When Josh came home and saw all the old newspapers scattered on the floor, he chuckled and said, ďLooks like somebody had a good time today.Ē I donít know what made him think that (Iíd had anythingbutďa good timeĒ), but he must have liked that idea because he was smiling while he put the newspapers and magazines back together. It took him longer than it needed to, since he was reading them while he straightened everything out. He stuffed the magazines and newspapers back into the Love Savesthe Day bag, then took the bag into Home Office, which is the room right next to this one. I guess thatís sensible. There are already lots of magazines in that room anyway, because Josh works for a company that makes magazines.

Now I creep slowly into Home Office, listening for footstepsójust to be sureóeven though I already heard Laura and Josh leave for the day. Home Office is far too crowded with what Josh calls ďmemorabiliaĒ and what Laura calls ďjunkĒ (although she smiles teasingly whenever she says this) to be a truly comfortable room for me. But thereis a wonderful heated cat bed that rests on the desk in front of a small TV screen. Attached to the bed is a toy mouse on a leash, which just goes to show how little humans like Josh know about mice. In the first place the toy mouse looks nothing at all like areal mouse, and in the second place no mouse would ever let a human put a leash on it, because even mice are smarter than dogs.

Josh likes to use this cat bed as a scratching post, exercising his fingers on it without stopping for hours on end. They make aclackety-clack noise and not the clawing sounds that usually come from a scratching post. If he sees me sleeping on itóusing it theright wayóhe chases me off so he can take over and use it the wrong way. So now I come in here to nap lightly for brief stretches during the day while heís gone. The first few times Josh saw me sleeping here, he told me that my having to stay off it was a ďrule.Ē If I werenít so tired from not sleeping enough, I probably would have thought Josh giving me ďrulesĒ was funny. All cats are born knowing that thereís no point in paying attention to unreasonable rules made by humans. Besides, what humans donít know wonít hurt them.

Iím able to sleep for a little while, but everything still smells too foreign for me to relax very much. I step carefully from the cat bed to the desk, from the desk to the chair in front of it, and then leap from the chair to the floor. Then I make my way back to the room Laura feeds me in. The room with all the Sarah-boxes.

Laura might not like coming into this room very much, but I do have to admit that sheís very good at keeping to a scheduleómuch better than Sarah. She feeds me at the same time every morning except on Sundays, which is the only day when Laura doesnít go to her office. She works in a law office like Sarah, and Laura must do something even more important than typing because thehumans in her office need her to do her work just about every second sheís awake. When she comes home at night she brings big stacks of paper with her so she can do even more work here in the apartment. She wears glasses while she reads her work papers, and probably she wears the glasses in her office, too. There are always faint pink marks on the sides of her nose from where they press into her skin.

Lauraís workdays are much longer than Sarahís ever were, and itís usually long after dark before she comes home to give me my nighttime feeding. Most nights Josh goes out with friends from his own work, but even so he still gets home before Laura. Sometimes he tells her that he wishes she could come home earlier, and Laura explains how her clientsí businesses would fall apart if she didnít do as much work as she does, and then her bosses would give her even less work in the future. Getting less work sounds just fine to me, but Laura obviously thinks this would be a bad thing. It seems like the more work some humans do, the more work theyhave to do, which doesnít make any sense. But very little of the way humans think about things makes sense to me.

The walls in this room are painted yellow, and the paint in here smells new. The floor is made of smooth wooden boards that have been polished until they shine in the sunlight like water. The first few days I was here, I thought maybe the floors really were made of water, they were so slippery. It took me days to learn how to walk here without my hind legs sliding out from under me if I ran or turned too quickly.

These same slippery wooden boards cover all the floors in the rest of the apartment, and even Laura and Josh slip a little on them sometimes. The other day Laura slid right into Josh as they were walking down the hall, and he reached out and grabbed her before she fell. I would have hated having a human grab me that way, but Laura squirmed and laughed. She laughs at a lot of the things Josh does. Sometimes he crumples a paper napkin in his hand, brings his hand to his mouth, and then coughsómaking the crumpled paper napkin fly out.Oh, excuse me, heíll say.I donít know how that happened. It looks ridiculous to me, but Laura always rolls her eyes and laughs. This hardly seems fair. WhenI cough up a hairball for real, Laura doesnít roll her eyes affectionately while she cleans it up and say,Youíre so funny, Prudence!

This room is mostly empty aside from the Sarah-boxes and four dark brown wooden chairs with black leather seats, which live stacked up in one corner. I tried marking justone of the chairs in this room with my claws the way Iíd marked our couch in Lower East Side (all I wanted was to make this room feel more like my own), but Laura saw me and said, ďNo! No, Prudence!Ē in a sharp voice. I donít see why she had to get so excited. She could have calmly said something like,Prudence, marking chairs is bad manners in Upper West Side, and I would have understood her just as well. Maybe even better.

I donít really need the chairs anyway, though, because the two big windows have sills for me to lie on while I look at things outside. This apartment is so high up that from the windows I can see all kinds of things I never thought about before. Like what the tops of buildings look like. Some of them have black tops, and some of them are white, and some have little brick areas where humans grow flowers and sit outside in the sunshine. A few of the roofs have these giant, pointy-topped round things I once heard Josh call ďwater towers.Ē All around us is more sky than Iíve ever seen, and when the sun is very bright and the sky is very blue, I see little squiggly things behind my eyes if I stare at it too long.

If Sarah lived here with me, she would probably carry one of those chairs from the corner next to the window, so the two of us could sit and look out at the sunshine together. Sheíd hum and stroke my fur while I sat in her lap, and maybe sheíd even sing the Prudence song to me until I fell into a deep sleep.

But Iím alone in here almost all the time, and the only music anybody has sung to me since I left Lower East Side is the memory-music Sarah sings inside my head.

I hear a key turning in the lock of the front door downstairs, and from all the jingling I know itís Josh. Laura must always have her key ready as soon as she steps out of the elevator. I never hear her jingling keys around, looking for the right one, before she comes in.

The sound of Joshís feet-shoes comes up the stairs, and the faint scent of his cologne that smells so much stronger in the mornings drifts past as he walks toward his and Lauraís bedroom. After he changes out of his work clothes into socks and sweat-clothes, he spends a little while clackety-clacking on the scratching post in Home Office. Then he goes downstairs to listen to music in the living room while he waits for Laura. I hear the muffled sounds of it coming up through the floor of my room.

Most of Joshís music lives on small silvery disks that go in a different kind of machine than the table Sarah uses to make her black disks sing. He also has a few black disks, although not nearly as many as Sarah. Even Sarah didnít have more than a few when I first adopted her. Her posters and black disks and the special ďDJĒ table she plays them on were living by themselves for years and years in a place called Storage. It was only after Iíd been living with Sarah for nearly two months that she went out one day and brought them home.It was you, you know, Sarah murmured later, when we were on the couch listening to the black disks together.You brought my music back. I thought Iíd lost it forever. I rolled onto my side and purred, because I could tell from Sarahís voice and hands how much love there was between us in that moment. But I didnít know what Iíd done to give Sarah back her music. Maybe Iíll do whatever it was again. Maybe (if I have to be here that long) in a couple of months Laura and Josh will drive out to Storage one day and come back with hundreds of their own black disks.

Josh likes music almost as much as Sarah. If heís listening to music and Laura is in the room, heíll pucker his lips and put his hands on his hips and pretend to strut around. He looks pretty foolish when he does this, but it always makes Laura laugh. Or heíll take Lauraís hand and put his arm around her waist, and the two of them dancefor real. It makes me wonder if Sarah would have liked to have another human to dance with when she used to listen to music in our old apartment.

Sometimes lately, because I havenít slept well in so long, I get confused about whatís really happeningnow and whatís a memory or part of a dream I might be having if I were asleep. A breeze from the open window in my room makes the white curtains move. When its shadow on the opposite wall moves, too, I think for a moment that I see Sarah here in this room, bending down to stroke the fur of my back and saying,What should we listen to tonight, Prudence?

I stretch for a long moment, pushing my front paws all the way out in front of me and arching my back. My tail stretches, too, pointing straight up and curling at the tip. I have to get up and move around, or else Iíll just lie here not really sleeping and not really awake, thinking I see Sarah everywhere. The hurt I feel when I remember Sarahisnít here starts to spread from my chest to my belly again. Trying to make the hurt leave me alone, I stand up and walk toward the stairs.

I used to wish Sarah and I lived together in a house with stairs, but it turns out stairs are tricky if youíre not used to them. Iím trying to figure out if itís better to move each of my four legs individually to the step above or below me, or if I should move both of my front paws at the same time and then sort of hop with my back ones. I try to practice the stairs when Laura and Josh are out ofthe apartment so they wonít see me. That would be embarrassing.Poor Prudence doesnít know how to use stairs! they might say, and chuckle at my ignorance. Two days ago, I happened to walk into Josh and Lauraís bedroom and saw the two of them rolling around on top of each other in the bed, making odd noises. It was the least dignified thing Iíd ever seen in my entire life. I have no intention of making myself look equally foolish in front of them.

Thereís a spot exactly halfway down the stairs where the floor gets flat for a little way before turning back into steps. When Laura and Josh are home, I can still practice walking up and down the top half of the stairs and then rest on the flat spot, peeking around the wall to watch what theyíre doing in the living room.

The smallest part of the living room is the dining room next to the kitchen, which has a long table of dark wood and four matching chairs that look exactly like the ones that live stacked up in my room. The only time Iíve seen Laura and Josh in the dining room is when they pay bills and talk about money. Laura worries that theyíre not putting enough into savings, and Josh says Laura worries about money too much. Once I heard Laura tell Josh he only thinks that because he doesnít know what itísreally like to have no money at all.

Even though this apartment is much bigger than Sarahís and mine, Josh and Laura donít have nearly as much stuff in it as we did. Thereís nothing hanging on the walls, and none of the ďknickknacksĒ Sarah loves so much, like beautiful little glass bottles or the prisms she hung in our windows to make the sunlight sparkle and dance in different colors. Sarah used to keep plants, including a special kind called ďcat grassĒ that was good to eat when my belly was upset with me. Here thereís only one plant that lives in a corner of the living room, and itís made out of silk.

There are some framed photographs on shelvesómostly pictures of Josh at different ages, doing things like standing outside in the snow (which is just cold water!) holding up a pair of big wooden sticks or on a stage somewhere with lots of other young-looking humans, wearing funny costumes. There arenít nearly as many pictures of Laura, and none from when she was younger. There are a few of Laura and Josh together on the day they got married, and also from their honeymoon in a place called Hawaii. (Thereís a lot of water in the background of the honeymoon pictures, so Hawaii must be near that river we drove past on our way to Upper West Side.)

Thereís also one from their wedding day of just Laura and Sarah. Lauraís wearing a plain, short white dress with a little white jacket and holding a cluster of long, beautiful white flowers. Sarahís dress is light purple. This is my favorite photograph, because I remember when I helped Sarah decide that this was the outfit she should wear to see her daughter get married. It makes me happy to look at it, even though Laura and Sarah donít really look comfortable, posed stiffly, each with one arm around the other.

Now Josh stands up from the couch and walks past the shelves with the photographs on his way into the kitchen. I hear the sound of heavy pans being jostled free from a cabinet, and after a few moments the smell of cooking floats toward the stairs. It smells like Josh is making eggs, although that canít be right. Josh only makes eggs on Sunday mornings, and Laura goes out to get bagels for them to eat with the eggs. Laura says Josh makes the best scrambled eggs ever, although I wouldnít know because nobodyís thought to offer me any the way Sarah would if sheíd cooked something for breakfast.

Itís always bad when things happen in a different way than theyíre supposed to, but when the thing thatís different is with your food, thatís the worst of all. I think maybe, even though she likes Joshís eggs, Laura is going to be upset when she comes home and finds out Josh is making them on a Tuesday night instead of a Sunday morning. But what actually happens when Laura finally comes through the front door, and then walks into the kitchen to see what Josh is doing, is that she says, ďWhatís all this?Ē in a voice that sounds surprised and pleased.

ďBreakfast for dinner,Ē Josh says. ďI had a jones for scrambled eggs. And I thought it might help you sleep. You usually go right back to bed after breakfast on Sundays.Ē

ďI donít go back to bedalone.Ē Laura isnít laughing, exactly, but her voice sounds like sheís smiling.

ďHey, Iíll try anything if it helps you relax.Ē

ďThanks,Ē Laura says, in what Sarah would call a ďdryĒ voice. Then I hear the wet, puckering sounds Josh and Laura make when they put their mouths together. After a moment, when the sounds stop, Laura says in a quieter voice, ďYou donít have to worry about me, Josh. I keep telling you. Iíve just got a lot on my mind, with work and everything.Ē

Thereís a clatter of plates and silverware, and then the sounds of Laura and Josh walking from the kitchen to the living room couch, where I can see them again. The two of them talk about what they did at work all day while they eat. When the music that was playing stops, Josh walks across the room towhere his music lives. This time he takes out a black disk instead of one of the small silvery ones.

The song that starts playing sounds like one Sarah and Anise used to listen to the two or three times a year when Anise came over. Something about aďpersonality crisis.Ē The two of them would act silly, singing into things like hairbrushes and empty paper towel rolls as if they were the microphones that singing humans on TV use. Anise has a nice singing voice (even though her regular speaking voice is deep and scratchy), and I can tell Sarah likes Aniseís singing better than her own. After all, Sarah says, Anise is famous for her singing.

Humans and cats must like different things in singing voices, because I think nobody has a nicer voice than Sarah. Anise would always say how Sarah should have tried being a singer professionally. I would rise up on my hind legs, butting my head against Sarahís hand because it made me so happy when she sang. And Anise would bend down to scratch behind my ears the way I like and say,Lookóeven Prudence agrees with me!

But Sarah says she never had that Thing Anise has that lets her perform on a stage in front of other people. Thatís what she liked about being a DJ, she says, and about the record store she opened after she stopped being a DJ. She could still give people music without having to stand in front of them.And anyway, Sarah would say to Anise,I was never as talented as you.

All I hear for a few moments is this song and the sound of one fork scraping across a plate. Josh is still eating, but Lauraís fork is hanging halfway between her plate and her mouth. Then Josh says, ďIs everything okay?Ē

ďHm?Ē Laura shakes her head slightly, the way Sarah does when sheís trying to ďclear her thoughts.Ē ďIím sorry,Ē she says. ďI got distracted.Ē

Joshís face flushes pink, although I canít tell whether this is because heís embarrassed or because heís about to say something that isnít true. ďIím sorry,Ē he says. ďI wasnít thinking. I saw this same record in your momís collection when we were cleaning out her apartment.Ē

ďProbably,Ē Laura answers. ďShe liked the New York Dolls.Ē

Josh is watching Lauraís face, which is trying to look the way it normally does, and would almost succeed if not for the crease between her eyebrows. Finally, Josh says gently, ďWhy donít we go upstairs when weíre done and go through some of her boxes. We can do the records over the weekend. I really think,Ē he adds in a hurried way, as if heís afraid Laura might cut him off, ďyouíll sleep better once itís done. And if we cleared a few out of the way, we could make life a little better for Prudence. I see her pacing around that room all the time. She hardly has space to turn around in.Ē

The muscles around my whiskers tighten. If Joshreally cared about me, heíd know that the very last thing I want is to see even one of those boxes go away.

Also, if he really cared about me, heíd have let me try some of his eggs.

ďPrudence is still getting used to being in a new place,Ē Laura says. ďSheíll be fine. And Iíve got a ton of paperwork to go through tonight.Ē She stands, holding her plate.

ďDonít worry,Ē Josh says. ďIíll clean everything up.Ē

ďThanks,Ē Laura tells him, and stoops to kiss him on the cheek.

The apartment is silent, except for the scratch of a pen against paper from where Laura works on the living room couch. Josh went to bed a long time ago. From my spot halfway down the stairs, I can see that Laura is tired, too. Every so often she pauses to push up her glasses and rub her eyes. She doesnít go upstairs to bed, though. Probably because she knows that even when she does, sheíll spend hours flipping from side to side and kicking at the sheets, the way she seems to every night.

Something has been tickling at my left ear, and twitching it back and forth doesnít make the tickle go away. Finally I reach my back left paw around to scratch at it with my claws. This makes my Prudence-tags jingle, and Laura looks up, startled. Our eyes meet. Itís the first time sheís seen me in this spot. My body tenses, waiting to see if sheís going to do anything.

ďHey, Prudence,Ē she says softly. ďCanít fall asleep?Ē

Iíve heard Laura and Josh talkabout me since I came to live here, but this may be the first time Laura has talkedto me. This makes me feel nervous, for reasons I donít quite understand. Rising to a crouch, I turn and take the top half of the stairs at a hop, then scurry down the hallway, staying close to the wall, back into my darkened room with all the Sarah-boxes. My Prudence-tags ring the whole way and only stop when I dart into the back of my closet.

Laura comes into my room and pauses. Even though she canít see me hidden back here without turning the light on, I can tell she knows that this is where I am.

The dark outline of her shape crosses the room and kneels in front of one of the Sarah-boxes. Thereís a bang and rustle of things moving around, and then the crinkling noise of a heavy bag being pulled out from beneath heavier things. I remember, now, Laura going back to Trash Room to get one of the plastic garbage bags she threw out the day they brought me to live here.

Laura approaches the closet and I scurry backward, my backside in the air as I keep my nose pressed tightly to my front paws.ďHere you go,Ē she whispers as she hunkers down onto her heels and thrusts something into the closet toward me.

Itís one of Sarahís dresses from her ďgoing-outĒ days, dull gold with a white diamond-shaped pattern on it. I remember thinking, that day when Sarah tried on all her fancy bird-clothes, that Iíd never seen Sarah look prettier than she did in this dress from when she was younger than Laura is now.

I creep cautiously toward the dress, kneading at it with my front paws to make it into a more comfortable shape. Already I can tell that having something soft with that good, familiar, Sarah-and-me-together smell to lie in is going to make it easier for me to sleep tonight. Laura continues to crouch in front of the closet, and when I look up from the dress, her eyes are looking into mine again. We look at each other, and then, very slowly Laura closes her eyes and opens them again. This was something Sarah did, slowly close and open her eyes when I was looking at her, and I feel a rush of exhaustion wash over my body. As my eyelids droop Laura slowly blinks at me again.

My eyes close into sleep so quickly that I donít even hear when she leaves the room. It isnít until the next dayówhen I wake up after having slept late into the morning for the first time since I can rememberóthat I realize some things are the same everywhere. Even here in this foreign country, all the way on the other side of the world from the home I was raised in, somebody has taught Laura the correct way to speak cat.

4

Prudence

JOSH AND LAURA KEEP SAYING HOW UNUSUAL IT IS FOR THERE TO BE snow so late in April, but thatís just what happened this week. A giant snowstorm came in with such hard wind that it blew the snow sideways. Back in Lower East side, you would have been able to hear the wind howling through the cracks between the window frames and the wall. It was odd to see so much wind outside while inside,the apartment stayed silent.

Sarah used to laugh when I would press my nose against the windows during snowstorms, trying to catch some of it on my paw. Even knowing I couldnít get to it through the glassóand even knowing how cold and nasty the snow would be if Icould get to itóthe urge to catch some as it fell was irresistible. Laura and Josh went to their offices anyway, even though it was snowing so hard. With nobody here to laugh as I batted at the windows, trying to catch snowflakes, suddenly didnít seem like as much fun as it used to be.

The day it snowed, Josh came upstairs to my room with the Sarah-boxes to pull out his and Lauraís heavy winter coats from the back of my closet. Heíd thought theyíd put them away for the year and wasnít expecting to have to wear them again so soon. He also wasnít expecting to find so much of my fur clinging to the wool. He complained to Laura about it, which just seems unreasonable. After all, my fur is what keepsme warm, so having some of my fur on their coats could only keep Laura and Josh warmer, too. Really, Josh should bethanking me, if you think about it.

Not that most humans know how to show cats the gratitude we deserve.

Josh asked Laura if maybe they should start closing the closet door to keep me out, and the fur on my back twitched hard at the thought of losing my favorite dark, cozy sleeping place. But Laura laughed and said it would be easier to move the coats to another closet than to get a cat to change her habits.

Two weeks after Laura gave me Sarahís dress to sleep with, things between us havenít changed a lot. Itís true that Iím sleepingmuch better than I was, now that I have something that smells like Sarah and me together to curl up with. I also spend a lot more time downstairs, now that Iím more used to things. Lauraís eyes have a way of following me whenever she looks up from whatever work papers she has in front of her. Sometimes her fingers bend and straighten, and I can tell that sheís thinking about touching me. She hasnít tried to pet me so far, though.

Nobody has petted me at all since Sarah went away, which seems like a long time ago nowófive weeks. When I think about that, it doesnít make me miss being touched by a human. It just makes me miss Sarah all the more.

Even though, with all the snow, it doesnít feel like springtime, Josh and Laura are having his family over to the apartment tonight for a springtime holiday called Pass Over. Sarah and Anise used to talk sometimes about the casual ďpotluckĒ holidays Sarah would have in her Lower East Side apartment when Laura was young. Neighbors and friends and people who worked in Sarahís store would come in and out all day whenever they felt like it, bringing food with them and eating foods the other humans had brought while Sarah played music on her DJ table. Christmas was one of only two days in the whole year when her store was closed. The other was Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving wasnít so bad, Sarah said, but there would always be at least one person who would call her at home on Christmas Day, begging her to open the store just long enough to sell him one last black disk he needed to give some other human as a gift. When youíre raising a daughter alone, according to Sarah, you have to get your money when you can. So she would run over to her store long enough to sell that one black disk to that one human, and then it was good there were so many people in her apartment to keep an eye on Laura while Sarah was gone.

I donít know how Upper West Side humans celebrate holidays, but it doesnít seem like thereís anything ďcasualĒ about Joshís family coming over. Itís Monday morning now, and Laura spent all Sunday attacking our apartment like she was mad at it. Sheís always cleaning things whenever she has a few extra minutes, but yesterday shecleaned everything from the floors to the ceiling until every speck of dirt was gone and the apartment smelled unbearable from cleansers. She even cleaned under the bed in her and Joshís room. Josh laughed when he saw her doing this and told her that his mother wasnít going to inspect under their bed. But Laura said it was the first time his parents were coming over for dinner since theyíd gotten married, and she wanted everything to be ďimmaculate.Ē

While Laura was busy cleaning, Josh went out to buy special foods to serve to his family. Everything went into the refrigerator when he got home, and now whenever Laura or Josh opens it, the smell of wonderful meats and other things Iíve never tasted before drifts all the way upstairs. I hope Laura remembers to be generous when she arranges my special Prudence-plate of food at dinnertime tonight.

I donít know who exactly in Joshís family is coming over, but the one person I knowwonít be coming is the man who used to be married to Joshís sister. Thatís because yesterday I heard Josh say, ďAt least I donít have to look at that Dead Beat at holiday dinners anymore.Ē

Iím not sure what a ďDead BeatĒ is. Anise used to say that Lauraís father was also a Dead Beat. But Sarah always used the wordbeat in a positive way when she was describing the music she loved. Anise also said that Lauraís father was a talentless good-for-nothing. He tried being in a band, and then he tried being an actor, and he was even a photographer for a little while, but he never stuck with anything long enough to become good at it, although he took that picture of Sarah that Josh brought to live with us here, and I see Laura looking at it sometimes when Josh isnít in the room with her.

I know whatdead means (itís what happens to mice, for example, when cats catch them), but I also know how unusual it is for humans to say anything bad about dead people, because they canít help being dead. So maybe being a Dead Beat means a human who makes really awful music and then forces everybody to listen to it until theywish they were dead. That doesnít seem exactly right, though. I almost wish the Dead Beatwas coming over tonight, so I could see what one looks like.

The thump of Joshís feet coming into my room distracts me from my thoughts. He must be waiting for Laura, because he doesnít do anything except stand there in the middle of the floor next to the Sarah-boxes. His eyes make a quick circle of the room without seeing me in the back of the closet, and they come to rest on the boxes of Sarahís black disks. Crouching down, he starts to flip through them. My ears flatten against my head when he takes one out to look at the back of its cardboard cover. Those areSarahís black disks! Itís one thing ifLaura wants to look at them (I guess), but for Josh to go through them by himself seems wrong.

Josh must be thinking the same thing, because he seems cautious at first, keeping one ear tilted toward the door, but itís like he canít help himself. And heís forgotten all about his caution when Lauraís footsteps approach. ďLook at this!Ē He turns his head up to her. ďThereís a picture of your mother on the back of this Evil Sugar album! Right here.Ē He holds the black disk in its cardboard coverup to Laura, pointing to a spot I canít see from where I am. ďThere she is with Anise Pierce in front of the Gem Spa awning.Ē

ďShe and Anise were roommates.Ē Lauraís voice sounds like she doesnít really want to talk about this. ďBefore Evil Sugar moved out to LA.Ē

Itís funny to hear Josh call her ďAnise Pierce,Ē because Sarah always calls her ďAniseís to Pieces.Ē Back before Anise was famous, crazy things always seemed to happen to her. Sarah teases Anise that she couldnít even go out to buy a can of tuna for her cats without getting hit by a caror having her purse stolen or a tree branch fall right onto her head, or making some poor guy fall desperately in love with her at first sightóand usually all those things would happen in the same day.

ďThis was my favorite album in junior high,Ē Josh says. ďI was obsessed with that whole generation of New York bands recording at Alphaville Studios.Ē He laughs. ďI was devastated when Anise Pierce married Keith Amaker. Thatís when I tried to convince my mother to buy me a drum set. I figured if drummers got girls like Anise Pierce, then Iíd be a drummer, too.Ē Josh turns the cardboard cover over in his hands. ďI never realized how tiny she was until I saw her standing next to your mother.Ē He looks up at Laura, his eyes shining with excitement but also looking confused. ďHow could you not tell me your mom knew her?Ē

ďIt never came up.Ē Laura shrugs. ďCome on, letís get these chairs down to the dining room before weíre late for work.Ē

Josh seems reluctant as he puts the black disk back into the box with the others, but he walks with Laura over to the black chairs that live in the corner without saying anything else.ďThereíll be seven of us tonight, right?Ē Laura asks.

Josh puts one hand on her shoulder.ďItís not too late to call it off,Ē he says gently. ďMy parents would understand if you werenít ready yet for a houseful of people.Ē

ďDonít be silly. Weíve been planning this forever.Ē Laura turns her head around so she can smile up at him, although her nostrils widen slightly the way humansí do when theyíre irritated. ďAnd I keep telling you, Iímfine. Honestly.Ē

Laura carries one chair and Josh carries two as they pick their way around all the boxes on the floor. This is the only room Laura didnít clean yesterday. She still doesnít like coming in here, and I notice how her eyes donít look into the Sarah-boxes on her way out, just around them to make sure she doesnít bump into anything.

I think about that man Sarah talked about onceóthe one who lost his cat and all his reminders and didnít want to be alive anymore after that. I wonder why Laura doesnít want to look through these boxes and remember Sarah with me, so both of us can make sure she has a reason to come back.

The day seems to go by more slowly than usual while I wait for Laura and Josh to come back so tonightís wonderful holiday dinner can get started. I try to pass the time by sleeping in the places I donít get to sleep in when Josh is home, like the cat bed on the desk in Home Office and the spot on the couch where Josh likes to sit and watch TV sometimes while he waits for Laura to get home fromwork. Iíve learned, though, that if I roll onto my back and pretend to be deeply asleep, Josh isnít as likely to make me move. ďShe looks so comfortable,Ē he says to Laura. ďI feel guilty.Ē Whenever he says this it makes me feel sorry for humans, who are forever doing the wrong thing and then having to feel guilty about it.

Iím also drawn again and again into the kitchen, even though none of the holiday foods have started cooking yet. I should probably spend more time here, because kitchens are where some of the best things live. In Lower East Side, the kitchen was where I sometimes found things that are lots of fun to practice my mice-fighting with, like the twisty-ties that keep bread closed in its bag,or the plastic straws that Sarah sometimes uses to drink her sodas through. (I could never make Sarah understand what straws are really supposed to be used for, although I tried to show her many times. Finally I started hiding my straws under the refrigerator or the couch, so she wouldnít try to take them back from me to use the wrong way.) And there are delicious things to eat and drink in the kitchen even when there isnít a holiday dinner, like tuna fish from a can, or the thin pieces of turkey meat that live inside crinkly paper in the refrigerator. Sarah had to stop keeping things in the kitchen like cream for her coffee and cheese when the doctor said dairy products would be bad for her heart. Maybe if I come in here more often when Laura and Josh are here, I could get some of those little treats again.

The day may havefelt long, but I can still tell that itís much earlier than usual when I finally hear Lauraís key in the lock. It isnít even dark outside yet. I knew Laura was anxious about tonight, but I didnít realize she wasso anxious that it was worth leaving work early for.

Laura and Josh did something this morning to the dining room table to make it long enough to fit seven chairs. Now Laura reaches up to the highest cabinet in the kitchen for cloth mats (which are much nicer than the rubber mat she put underneath my food and water bowls and donít have insulting cartoons of smiling cats all over them). Then she goes to the front-hall closet and drags out two huge, heavy boxes. From these she starts taking out fancy plates and glasses that are nicer than the plates she and Josh usually eat off of. Lauraís hands move slowly, and she lingers to look at each plate as she sets it out. Once everything is on the table, she looks out the tall windows behind the table and watches the coffee-colored pigeons across the street. She stares at them so long that I turn to stare, too, but as usual the pigeons arenít doing much of anything except flying in pointless circles.

It isnít very long until Josh comes home. He comes up behind Laura to give her a big hug. ďI canít believe you got home so early!Ē he says happily.

ďPass Over is a time of miracles and wonders,Ē Laura tells him, using her ďdryĒ voice.

Josh goes upstairs to wash his hands, and when he comes back he starts helping Laura, pulling platters down from the higher cabinets and taking bottles out of the refrigerator while Laura turns the oven on.ďDo you think your mother will be offended we got all the food from Zabarís instead of making it myself?Ē

Laura sounds worried, but Josh laughs.ďSheíll respect you for it. Zelda hasnít cooked voluntarily in years.Ē

The air in front of the oven isnít even hot yet, which means itís still going to be a while before the food is ready. I decide that napping in the closet upstairs is the best way to make the time shorter between now and when I can eat. As Iím leaving, I hear Josh tell Laura, ďIím going to vacuum in the spare bedroom. I was noticing this morning how dusty it is in there.Ē

ďSounds good,Ē Laura says, in a distracted-sounding voice. My Prudence-tags ring softly against my red collar as I climb the stairs, and I hear the dull thud of Joshís footsteps following me.

Iíve just settled down comfortably in the back of the closet when Josh flicks on the light in the ceiling. Thereís so much extra light all of a sudden that I canít see muchójust the blurry shape of Josh standing in the doorway, pushing what looks like a tall triangle with a handle at the topand a flat square thing on wheels at the bottom. Itís attached to a leash, which Josh plugs into a socket on the wall right next to the door.

My eyes adjust to all the new light, and now I see Josh leave this strange object so he can walk over to the Sarah-boxes. He starts moving them around and pushing them into arrangements different from the one theyíre supposed to haveóthe arrangement Iíve spent days memorizing. I rush out from the closet to leap onto the boxes, thinking that maybe the extra weight of my body will make them too heavy for him to move. But I donít slow him down at all. He just says, ďCome on, Prudence, out of the way,Ē in what he probably thinks is a friendly voice, nudging me gently on my backside with his foot until Iím forced to jump out of one box after the other.

Once the boxes have been lined up in two rows on either side of the floor next to the rug, Josh goes back to the strange thing standing in the doorway. He kicks its base and a white light comes on. Then it begins to scream!

It screams and screams without stopping even to catch its breath. It doesnít scream like something in pain, but like something thatís vicious and wants to hurt somebody. Maybe even a cat! Itís a monsterójust like the monsters Iíve heard about in TV movies that everybody says arenít real. Except this one is! It roars in anger because Josh holds tight to its neck and wonít let it get free, even though it gnashes and pushes itself back and forth trying to break away from himóglaring fiercely right at me from its one awful eye that lights up near its mouth. It gobbles up all the spilled litter from my litterbox and the little bits of my fur that have rubbed off over the last few weeks. It has to move over the litter a few times before it gets it all, but it sucks my fur right up. Itís trying to find me! Itís not satisfied with just the scraps of my furónow it wants to eat a whole cat!

I knew Laura didnít like having all the Sarah-boxes up here, but I never thought sheíd send Josh tokill themóand me at the same time. I try bravely to defend at least one row of Sarah-boxes from this terrible monster. I puff up all my fur, to make myself look much bigger than I really am, and I hiss at it and rake its smooth head with my claws as a warning. Humans are usually intimidated by this, but The Monster is obviously much stronger than any humanóexcept Josh. He just says,ďShoo!,Ē waving his hand in my direction as if I were a dog he was chasing away. That he can control this horrible beast withonly one hand must mean heís the strongest human in the entire world. Finally I give up and run to hide deep in the closet, my heart racing. I can hear The Monster roaring near the closet door, but it doesnít come in after me. Probably it canít see very well because it only has the one eye. Still, I donít know how well it can hear, and my heart is beating so loud! I concentrate on trying to quiet my heartbeat, and soon I hear The Monsterís roar get fainter and fainter, until I know itís gone to look for cats in another room.

I wait until I canít hear it at all anymore before I dare to creep out of the closet again. None of the Sarah-boxes seems to be hurt, although everythingís in the wrong place.

I crouch in my upstairs room for a long time, so long that the sun is coming in low through the windows the way it does when it will be dark soon. The aroma of meat cooking in the oven is what finally draws me down the stairs again.

I walk cautiously through the living room and dining room. The meat-smell in the kitchen is so powerful that I hardly know what to do with myself.

Iím usually in perfect control of everything I do, but today the meatís will is stronger than my own. It uses its scent to pull me to the spot right in front of the oven and hold me there, with so much power that I couldnít resist it even if I wanted to.

So this is where I curl up and fall into only a half sleep. I want to stay at least a little alert, because as soon as that meat comes out of the oven, Iím going to demand that Laura or Josh feed some of it to me. Otherwise I wonít get any, just like with the eggs.

I had thought that Iíd be able to circle around the food until it was ready, the way all my instincts are telling me to do. But it turns out that I wonít get to. Thatís because the moment Joshís family finally gets here, Iím forcedómost rudelyóout of the kitchen.

Joshís family are his mother and father. Theyíre older than any humans Iíve seen in real life (other than on TV, I mean). They drove a car here from a place called New Jersey. Joshís sister also comes and brings her litter with her, a small girl and an even smaller boy. Theyíre theyoungest humans Iíve ever seen up close and not on TV.They took a train here from Washington Heights. I know this because when Josh opens the front door, everybody says how funny it is that they all got here at the same time, even though they came from different places.

ďChag Pesach,Ē Josh says as he kisses them all on their cheeks. Then he says to the little girl and boy,ďThat meansHappy Pass Over in Hebrew.Ē

The little girl says,ďIknow,Ē in a voice of such offended dignity that, for a moment, I think Iím going to like her. ďThey taught us that in Hebrew school. Actually,Ē she adds, ďyouíresupposed to say,Chag Pesach sameach.Ē

ďDuly noted.Ē Josh sounds amused. ďI keep forgetting how smart ten-year-olds are these days.Ē

I decide the little girl is like meósomebody whose intelligence is underestimated by humans just because sheís small. But when she and the little boy walk past the kitchen and spot me guarding the food, they squeal, ďOooh, akitteeeeee!Ē Then they both run at me with their hands outstretched, not even giving Josh achance for an introduction. And when I turn and flee from this attack, the little wretcheschase after me! I race for under-the-couch as fast as I can. The two of them kneel and plunge little hands that smell like fruit juice and snack chips after me, trying to grab at my tail and bits of my fur!

Iím in so much shock from this display of horrible manners (hasnobody bothered to teach these littermatesanything?) that I can think of no better way of handling the situation than to hiss and swipe at their hands with my claws. My breath becomes loud and rapid as my fur twitches, what Sarah calledďchuffing.Ē I donít like reacting this way, but the whole thing is simply more than dignity or patience can bear. Finally, Joshís sister says, ďAbbie! Robert! Leave the kitty alone. Sheíll come out and play with you when sheís ready.Ē

Not likely, I think, twitching my tail back and forth as I try to calm down.ďIím sorry,Ē Laura tells Joshís sister. ďPrudence isnít really a Ďpeople cat.í†Ē Hearing Laura try to pass this story around again just makes me madder. If she was telling the truth, what sheíd say is,Prudence will only play with humans who have good manners.

Joshís parents come into the living room where Laura stands in front of the couch pouring wine into glasses. ďThereís my gorgeous daughter-in-law!Ē Joshís father says in a loud voice. They each hug her, and Joshís mother murmurs, ďWeíre so sorry your mother couldnít be here with us tonight.Ē Laura hugs them back a bit stiffly and says, ďThank you,Ē in a polite but brief way that means she doesnít want to talk about Sarah right now. Then she and Joshís sister kiss each other on the cheek.

The couch has a long side and a short side, and Iím crouched beneath the shorter part. The littermates come to sit right above me, kicking their legs and playing with a kind of small black plastic box that has buttons and moving pictures all over it. Sometimes they try to grab it away from each other, saying things like,Youíre taking too long, or,Itís my turn now.

Josh and his father sit all the way on the other side of the couch, where I can just see their faces if I peek out far enough. Joshís father wears shiny black shoes with laces on top and black socks that slide down his ankles when he crosses one leg over the other. Laura is sitting between Joshís mother and Joshís sister on the other side of the coffee table. Joshís mother is sparkly all over with more jewelry than Sarah ever wears. The rings on her hand catch the light as she keeps grabbing Lauraís arm while she talks, which makes Laura look uncomfortable. Sarah once said that Laura and I were alike, because neither one of us could stand being petted unless it was our idea first.

I notice how carefully Laura is watching everybody. Itís like she wants to make sure nothing happens that she isnít prepared for or doesnít know how to react to. I realize that Laura grew up in Lower East Side with Sarah, where holidays were celebrated differently than they are in Upper West Side. Lauraís an immigrant, like I am. She must alsobe trying to understand the way things are done in this country.

Not that I feel any sympathy for her. She did, after all, send Josh upstairs with The Monster to try to destroy me and the Sarah-boxes.

Iíve never been in a room with so many humans at one time, and with everybody talking at once itís hard to hear everything. I canít tell what Joshís mother is saying, but I do hear Josh and his father talking about Joshís work. Joshís father sighs and says he never understands what youngpeople do anymore, so Josh explains (in a voice that sounds like heís explained this to his father already) how he does something called ďmarketing and public relations,Ē which means he talks to reporters and writes sales presentations for humans called ďadvertisersĒ and helps create awareness so other humans know they should buy the magazines his company makes.

ďEh,Ē Joshís father says. ďThatís too complicated for me. I still donít know what it is you do all day.Ē

Josh laughs a little and says,ďYou know, your job seemed pretty complicated to me when I was a kid.Ē

ďWhat complicated?Ē Joshís father answers. ďI sold electrical supplies. I had the electrical supplies, I sold them, and then the other guy had supplies and I had money.Ē Joshís father sighs again. ďThat was when you could describe a manís job in one word. Salesman. Contractor. Accountant.Ē From underneath the couch, I can see the tips of his fingers as he gestures in Lauraís direction. ďNow, alawyer,Ē he says. ďThatís a job I can understand.Ē

ďReally, Dad?Ē Josh sounds amused, but also exasperated. ďYou know what lawyers do all day?Ē

ďHow should I know what a lawyer does all day?Ē Joshís father replies. ďIf I knew that,Iíd be a lawyer.Ē

If Sarah had ever talked to Laura like this, Lauraís face would have gotten tight, and she would have left Sarahís apartment without saying another word. But Josh bursts out laughing and says, ďOne of us sounds crazy right now, and Iím honestly not sure which one it is.Ē

ďItís your mother,Ē Joshís father says. ďShe always sounds crazy. I think we should rescue Laura.Ē

ďWhatís that?Ē Joshís mother calls from the other side of the coffee table. Her voice is loud and what Sarah would call ďraspy.Ē ďAre you two talking about me?Ē

ďWe were just wondering what the ladies were talking about,Ē Joshís father says.

ďI was telling Laura and Erica about Esther Bookman. Sheís getting married again, you know.Ē

ďAh, Esther Bookman!Ē Josh exclaims. ďThe sexual dynamo of Parsippany. What is this, husband number five?Ē

ďOh, stop,Ē his mother says. ďYou know perfectly well this is only her third marriage.Ē Turning to Laura, she adds, ďDo you see how they make fun of me?Ē

ďOne time, when I was nine or ten, I had to call Mrs. Bookmanís son Matt about a school project,Ē Josh tells Laura. ďMrs. Bookman answered the phone and I asked to speak to Matt. After I hung up, my mother said,Did Mrs. Bookman answer the phone? I said yes, and then she said,Well, did you say hello, Mrs. Bookman, how are you? I said no, and she told me,You call her back right now and apologize for being so rude.Ē Josh laughs again. ďIreally didnít want to. I begged and cried, but Zelda was relentless. Finally, after an hour of fighting, I called Mrs. Bookman and saidĒóJosh pretends to sound like heís cryingóďIím s-sorry I ddidnít say hello, how are you, Mrs. Bookman.Ē

Laura laughs, too.ďAt least I know why Josh is so polite,Ē she tells Joshís mother.

Humans arenít nearly as good at being polite as cats are. But even I have to admit that it was very smart of Joshís mother to try to teach him the proper way to greet someone by her name. I wonder why he didnít remember that the first time he met me.

ďI have no idea what heís talking about,Ē Joshís mother says. ďHeís making that up.Ē

Laura just smiles.ďWould anybody like another glass of wine? More soda?Ē

ďYou donít need another glass of wine, Abe,Ē Joshís mother says, before his father can answer Laura.

ďItís a holiday,Ē Joshís father says. ďI can live alittle, for Godís sake.Ē

ďA seventy-five-year-old man shouldnít drink so much,Ē she tells him.

ďMother loves reminding me how old I am.Ē I see his hand reach for the bottle on the coffee table. ďAs if she wasnít only five years behind me.Ē

ďFive years is five years,Ē she says. I wonder why some humans, like Joshís mother, like to talk so much that they think they have to point out perfectly obvious things.

ďHow old are you, Mom?Ē Itís the little boy who asks this.

ďIím forty-two,Ē Erica answers.

ďAnd how old is Uncle Josh?Ē

ďThirty-nine,Ē Erica says.

Now Abbie speaks up.ďHow old is Aunt Laura?Ē

ďA lady never tells,Ē Joshís mother says. But the corners of Lauraís mouth twitch into a smile, and she says, ďThatís okay. I just turned thirty.Ē

With everybody talking about their ages (I had no idea they were all so oldóIím onlythree!), this seems like the perfect opportunity for me to creep out from under-the-couch and into the dining area without the littermates noticing me. The food smells unbearably delicious, and everybody else must be able to smell it, too. I even hear the sound of a human stomach growling. It canít be too much longer before they eat.

Laura must be thinking the same thing, because she puts her glass of wine down and says,ďWhy donít we head over to the table?Ē

ďHooray!Ē the littermates yell. They run over so fast that I have to crouch down into the shadow next to the couch to keep them from seeing me. Joshís father and mother struggle a little when they stand up from the couches, but soon everyone is at the table. My mouth has so much water in it that I have to lick my whiskers a few times while I wait for the eating to begin.

I was sure that, once everybody was sitting in their places, the food would come out of the kitchen right away. Any smart cat knows you should eat the food you like as soon as itís available, because who knows what might happen later to prevent you from eating?

But now I understand that a Seder, which is the meal weíre having tonight, is a very specific thing thatís different from other kinds of dinners. (I know because at one point Robert had to read something called the Four Questions, and the first question was,Why is this night different from all other nights?) A Seder takes a long time, and a lot of things have to happen in a very specific order before youíre allowed to eat. And even though Iím so hungry for that wonderful-smelling meat by now that I can hardly stand it, I understand how important it is to do things the exact right way, especially when it concerns food.

First they have to say something calledďblessingsĒ over the wine theyíre drinking and a kind of flat cracker. Then everybody around the table takes turns reading from a book that tells the story of a group of people called the Hebrews, who were forced to be slaves in a place called Egypt. A man named Moses tried to convince another man called Pharaoh to let the Hebrews go live someplace else. Every time Pharaoh said no, athird fellow, called God, made bad things happen to Pharaoh and his humans. Each time a bad thing happened, Pharaoh decided to let the Hebrews leave. But then (and this is the part Ireally donít understand), God would force Pharaoh tochange his mind and make the Hebrews stay, just so Moses could go to all the trouble of asking him again to let the Hebrews go, and God could go to all the trouble of making one more bad thing happen to Pharaoh. They went through this back-and-forthten whole times!

This just goes to show that humans arenít nearly as smart or efficient about figuring things out as cats are. Anise liked to say that a cat might touch a burning stove once, but after that sheíd never touch any stove ever again.

At long last, when all the cracker-eating and storytelling are finished,finally Laura and Josh start bringing out the food. Thereís the delicious-smelling meat (called ďbrisketĒ) that Iíve been salivating for all day, and a soup made from chicken, and something called chopped liver that looks and smells so wonderful, I canít believe Sarah never thought to have it in our old apartment. There are lots of other things, too. Everything looks beautiful and perfectly arranged, like on one of those TV shows that tell humans how to cook things.

Of course, as soon as the food is out I jump onto the table, ready for Laura or Josh to put together my little Prudence-plate of food. Sarah always sets aside some food for me when she eats at the kitchen table, so I can eat with her. I put one paw lightly on the brisket, which is the food I want to try first, so that Laura and Josh know thatís the first thing they should serve me.

Well! Never in your whole life have you heard such a commotion! Laura and Josh yell,ďPRUDENCE, NO! Get down!Ē And Joshís mother yells, ďWhat is thecat doing on the table?Ē in the same kind of voice a human might use if they found a cockroach in their food. And the littermates shout, ďItís thekitteeeeee!Ē and lunge at me again with their sticky hands while Joshís sister tries to hold them back.

Thereís so much yelling and confusion that even all that good food-smell isnít enough to keep me here. The only problem is that I canít find a place to jump down from the table. Everywhere I look, thereís a human trying to touch me or grab me. I turn in fast circles, looking for an empty spot I can slip through and escape, and I hear a glass tumble over. ďMom, the kitty spilled on me!Ē Robert cries. I try backing away, but my left hind paw steps into something hot and liquid. Itís Joshís fatherís bowl of soup, and when he jumps up and says, ďHey!Ē I pull my paw back so fast that the entire bowl flips upside down. Now the table is slippery and wet. Iím skidding around, and the more I try to run the more things I knock into. My ears and whiskers flatten against my head and my fur puffs up, and when somebody stabs their finger right at me and yells,ďStop it! Bad cat!Ē I hiss and whap at it with my claws, because the rudest thing in the world is when somebody puts their finger in your face.

Finally Laura stands and says,ďEverybody be quiet!Ē The whole table gets silent as they all turn to stare at her. Lauraís face is a bright, bright red. Itís as red as the little tomatoes that were on top of the salad bowl that got knocked over. Her hands are shaking a bit, but she nevertheless strokes the back of my neck calmly. Then she scoops one hand underneath me and lifts me up the way youíre supposed to pick up a cat when you absolutely have to, and she puts me on the floor, very gently. For a moment, I canít move. I feel the shock of human hands touching me for the first time in so long. Hands that arenít Sarahís. Hands that are warm and not cold the way Sarahís always were the last few months I lived with her. The table that was so beautiful with food only a little while ago now looks like a pack of dogs ran over it.

This time I donít run to hide under the couch. This time I run as fast as I can upstairs and into the back of the closet in my room with the Sarah-boxes, burrowing deep beneath the dress with the Sarah-and-me-together smell. I twitch my back muscles so hard I almost give myself a cramp.

I donít think anybody has ever been treated as cruelly as Iíve been treated tonight. Whenever Sarah used to be upset about something bad that happened to her, she would cheer herself up by saying,Worse things have happened to better people. But I donít think anything worse than this has ever happened to anybody. Even that long story about what the Hebrews went through seems like nothing in comparison.

I hear Lauraís footsteps coming up the stairs, but they pause when Josh follows her. ďI just want to check on Prudence and make sure sheís okay,Ē she tells him in a low voice.

ďIím sure sheís fine,Ē Josh says in an equally low voice. ďSheís just a little rattled. Come back down and help me straighten out the table.Ē

ďI will,Ē Laura tells him. ďIíll be back in a minute.Ē

Joshís footsteps start to go back down the stairs when I hear Laura say, ďJosh?Ē Sheís silent for a moment. ďIím sorry about this. I really wanted everything to be perfect.Ē

ďItis perfect. Well,Ē Josh adds, ďmaybe we got a bit of unexpected dinner theater.Ē He chuckles. ďBut everything can be salvaged. No harm done.Ē

ďI know, but†ÖĒ Laura falls silent again. ďItís the first time weíve had your parents over for dinner,Ē she finally says. ďI donít want them to think that†Ö†I just donít think Prudence knew any better. Letting her eat on the table is exactly the kind of thing my mother wouldíve done.Ē

ďPrudence is acat, Laura.Ē Joshís voice is gentle when he makes this (obvious) statement. ďOf course she didnít know any better. Nobody thinks it reflects on you or your mother.Ē

As ifI were the one with bad manners!

ďIíll be down in a minute,Ē Laura says again. Her footsteps continue up the stairs and down the hall until sheís standing in the doorway of my room. ďPrudence?Ē her voice whispers into the darkness. ďPrudence, are you okay?Ē

I can tell sheís waiting for me to meow in response, but I have nothing to say to Laura right now. ďPrudence?Ē she whispers again. I turn around three times in Sarahís dress and wait for Laura to leave so the room will be silent and I can fall asleepóeven though I never did get anything to eat for dinner except for the dried chicken soup I lick off my left hind paw.

5

Laura

LAURA DYENíS FAVORITE PLACE IN THE WORLD, WITH THE EXCEPTION of her own bed on a Sunday morning, was found on the forty-seventh floor in the Midtown offices of Neuman Daines. The forty-seventh floor was assigned to the Corporate group, and Laura frequently had a quick lunch of deli sandwiches with her fellow fifth-year associates in what was grandly referred to as the forty-seventh-floor conference roomóalthough in truth it was no more than a smallish meeting space. Theyíd spread newspapers and legal pads over the surface of the round table, where reflected globes of white light from the overheadfluorescents floated like water lilies in its cherrywood depths.

Often they used these group lunches as an opportunity to solicit one anotherís unofficial input on opinion or adversary letters they were working on. But the lunches were primarily about camaraderie. Once theyíd been a group of thirty first-years whoíd started out as summer associates together. Now they were eight, the rest having left for other firms. Laura had gotten the same early-morning phone calls from recruiters as the othersóstill got them, in factóbut sheíd also understood, in a way few people her age did, that those who jump around early usually end up jumping around forever. All sheíd had to do to recognize the truth of this was look at her mother.

As much as Laura appreciated the fraternal spirit of these impromptu lunches, it was the early-morning or late-evening hours, when the conference room was empty, that she enjoyed most. She could look through the windows and all the way down onto the silent diorama of the city streets below, and the very silence of it soothed her. The Empire State Building was more than ten blocks away, but the illusion created by the height of her own building made it seem as though she were level with its peak. On hot summer nights, Laura would watch as its pinnacle was repeatedly struck by heat lightning, a display of kinetic energy rendered mute by the thick, reinforced windows of her office building. Sheíd grown up in a neighborhood loud with the twenty-four-hour cacophony of dance music blared from boom boxes, of police sirens and domestic arguments and glass shattering on pavement, the all-night hum of after-hours partiers that gave way each morning to the rumble of overcrowded buses and the metal clank of store grates rolling up. In the five-story walk-up she and Sarah had lived in, these sounds had been a constant assault, even with the windows closed. And theyíd been intensified by the noise from their own building, babies wailing and neighbors flushing toilets or walking on the floors overhead.

People talked about the views to be had on higher floors, but Laura knew it was the silence, the serenity of heights, that one paid obscene sums for in a city like New York. Noise was one of a thousand indignities visited upon the poor. Money was the only thing that could buy the illusion of peace.

Perry had learned to look for Laura in the forty-seventh-floor conference room when the rest of the office was quiet. It was here that she came to think, to give her mind the break from computer screens and buzzing BlackBerrys and allow it to formulate creative solutions to knotty problems.

Perry poked his head in now and said,ďItís almost nine oíclock. You should get home to your husband like a good newlywed.Ē

Laura turned her face from the window.ďI canít. Clay just dumped this project for Balaban Media on me.Ē Clayton Newell was Neuman Dainesís managing partner, and a figure of terror to all the firmís associates. ďHe says he needs it turned around by seven oíclock Monday morning.Ē

ďYes, but you and I both know Clay wonít be in Monday before ten thirty. Itíll keep.Ē Perry smiled. ďThe key to having a life in this business is training people to expect the best of you, not all of you at once.Ē

Perry Steadman was Lauraís ďrabbi,Ē a senior partner who had recognized Lauraís potential early on and taken her under his wing. He was a short man in his fifties with thinning hair and a laid-back approach to his practice and his negotiations that belied the sharp mind at work behind them. And even though Perryís ďrabbiĒ designation was strictly metaphorical, he had a true rabbiís fondness for quoting the Talmud.ďTwo cripples donít make one dancer,Ē heíd told Laura more than once. ďEverybodyís a cripple to some extent. The trick is never putting together two parties who are equally crippled, or crippled in the same way. Otherwise youíll be up to your eyeballs in paperwork when they realize they canít dance together.Ē

Not every associate was fortunate, or strategic, enough to find a rabbi, particularly one as influential within the firm as Perry. Perry was an acknowledged rainmaker, a partner who landed large corporate clients for the firm and then distributed the work to Corporate group associates. Heíd noted Lauraís quick mind and rigorous approach back when she was still a summer associate, and when she was a first-year heíd made a point of routing her way the more complex of the memos and briefs first-years were expected to spend the majority of their time hammering out. Laura, who hadattended Hunter College and Fordham Law in the city, noted with inward satisfaction how much more quickly she was rising than some of the Ivy Leaguers sheíd started out with, although she was careful never to let her sense of her own success show outwardly.

She had come to specialize in contracts, and she was more at home among the language of contracts than anywhere else. There was something profoundly comforting in having all worst-case scenarios accounted for and resolved ahead of time, nailed down in the black-and-white precision of a signed and witnessed document. In a perfect world, Laura thought, all of lifeís surprises would be anticipated and disposed of with equal ease.

It was Perry whoíd decided a little over a year ago that Laura was finally ready to go to client meetings. Sheíd met Josh at the first of these meetings, which had lent the early days of their romance an air of the clandestine. Sheíd known how it would look to the rest of the firm, and to Perry in particular, if the fact that she was dating a client became general knowledge. Sometimes Laura wondered if maybe sheíd agreed to marry Josh after only a few months of dating because marriage recast the whole thing in an indisputably respectable light. When sheíd announced her engagement, Perry had hugged her warmly and said, ďWhen love is strong, a man and a woman can make their bed on a swordís blade. May your love always be as strong as it is now.Ē It had sounded nice at the time, although later Laura thought it was rather more portentous than an expression of congratulations ought to be.

Now, in the face of Perryís admonishment that she finish up for the night, Laura found she wasnít as eager to return home as sheíd been in the earliest days of her marriage, only six months ago. Sarahís thingsómostly items salvaged from the record store sheíd owned and then sold sixteen years agoóremained unpacked in the boxes stored in their spare bedroom. Still, the smell of old records and yellowing newspapers, the smell of Lauraís childhood, had invaded the entire upstairs of their apartment. Even the faint odor of a litter box threatened to unearth long-buried images and associations.

This displacement betweenthen andnow created an ever-present sense of unease, like a low-frequency sound she couldnít hear clearly enough to identify, but that was disturbing nonetheless. Laura found herself using the downstairs guest bathroom whenever possible and avoiding going upstairs to bed until the moment when she literally couldnít hold her eyes open anymore. Even so, her sleep was restless these days, leaving her almost more exhausted when she woke up than sheíd been when sheíd gone to bed.

She knew how eager Josh, a self-described music geek, was to go through all of Sarahís posters and listen to recordings of songs on their original vinyl that hadnít been available in nearly a generation. Josh was in love with the past. Stored in their home office were stacks of photo albums and summer-camp swimming awards and school report cards and even the twenty-year-old fraternity roster listing all the names and phone numbers of his pledge class. Laura knew he was wondering why she hadnít looked through everything yet, even though over a month had passed since theyíd cleaned out Sarahís apartment. So far, however, he hadnít pressed the point.

The only one who had spent any time going through Sarahís things was Prudence. That her mother, of all people, should have decided to adopt a cat was something Laura still couldnít understand. But it was clear that Prudence missed Sarah terribly. The cat had spent her first days with them both refusing food and vomiting, and her obvious distress had made Laura wonder if theyíd made the right decision, or if perhaps Prudence would be happier living in a more cat-friendly household someplace else, despite her motherís will. Only some deep reluctance to part with this final living link to Sarah had held her back.

At their Passover Seder three nights earlier, when Prudence had made such a mess of their carefully laid table, Laura had felt both deeply embarrassed by Prudence and deeply sorry for her. Like Laura, Prudence had been raised by Sarah. How could she be expected to understand the way normal families behaved at a holiday dinner? It had taken Laura years of careful observation as an adult to figure it out herself.

Still, it had been nice, these last few weeks, to see Prudence finally begin integrating herself into the general flow of life in their apartment. Digging out one of Sarahís old dresses from the bag sheíd salvaged from the trash room at the last minute had been the right idea. Prudence was starting to act like a normal cat again (as if, Laura thought wryly, there was any such thing as ďnormalĒ when it came to cats). Laura couldnít help watching her, couldnít help smiling at the way Prudence sprawled out on her back sometimes, four white paws in the air, in the patches of sunlight that fell through the windows. What would it be like, she wondered, to give yourself over so entirely to something as simple as that, to have no thought in your mind beyond,This sunlight is warm. It feels good.

Laura had noted Prudenceís fascination with the same flock of amber-and-white pigeons across the street that she found herself watching at times. Such unusually colored birds would have been prized in the neighborhood sheíd grown up in, would have been kept and coddled in rooftop coops and eyed wistfully by young boyswho would have tried to steal a few. Once, when she was twelve, Laura had sneaked onto the rooftop of the apartment building next to her own to cradle a young pigeon under the watchful eyes of its owner. The world before her was an uneven patchwork quilt of white cement and black tarpaper roofs, seamed by heavily laden clotheslines. Laura had never touched the warm feathers of a living bird before, never felt the intricate symmetry that molded the soft fluff into a resilient shell. The only feathers sheíd touched were those found on sidewalks. Sarah had been furious when sheíd found out Laura had gone onto the roof next door; two weeks earlier, a fourteen-year-old boy had plummeted to his death trying to leap from one rooftop to another.

Laura liked to watch Prudence looking out the window. At such moments, she wanted to stroke Prudenceís fur, to breathe in the cinnamon-and-milk smell of her neck and hear the low rumble of her purring. It had been a long time since sheíd sat with a cat and listened to it purr, or felt the kind of peace that comes when a small animal trusts you enough to fall asleep in your lap.

But whenever she reached out to Prudence, she sawóno matter how hard she tried not toóan old man in tears, kneeling on a cracked sidewalk and crying out,Sheís all I got! There was a terrible danger in loving small, fragile things. Laura had learned this almost before sheíd learned anything else.

Laura knew her face must have taken on a faraway expression, because now Perry was repeating,ďYou should go home for the night.Ē And then, with a look of concern that was almost harder for Laura to bear than a direct reprimand would have been, ďI wish youíd taken some time off when your mother died.Ē

ďIt wasnít the right time,Ē Laura said. ďIíd just taken off three weeks.Ē In fact, it was Perry, claiming that the directive came straight from Clay (who sometimes tried to mitigate his own capriciousness with equally random acts of generosity), whoíd insisted that she take a full three weeks for her honeymoon. ďAnd, anywayĒóshe paused to smile in a way she hoped would be convincingóďIím fine. I really am.Ē

It had been a Tuesday in March, the first legitimately gorgeous spring day of the yearóand an illusion of sorts, because the following week would be as cold and rainy as the depths of Februaryówhen Laura had gotten the call from her motherís office. Even though Sarah had worked as a typist for the small real estate law firm in the East Thirties for over fifteen years, Laura had never met any of her motherís co-workers. So when sheíd heard a voice other than Sarahís on the other end of the line, sheíd known instantly that something was wrong, known it even before the womanís hesitant voice had said, ďIs this Laura? I worked,work I mean, with your mother†ÖĒ Sheíd known before the woman went on to say things likeheart attack anddidnít suffer.

Laura must have told a co-worker, must have told somebody what happened and where she was going, although afterward she could never remember. The next thing she knew, she was squinting in too-bright sunshine.I should have worn sunglasses today, she thought, and then wondered if she ought to be thinking about sunglasses now. Women in unbuttoned winter coats and men in suits with their ties loosened, people whose mothers hadnít just died, walked at a more leisurely pace than they had in the brisker weather of the day before. They strolled past small caf?s where people whose mothers hadnít just died sat outside for the first time in months, and past the Mister Softee trucks that always seemed to spring up like fresh grass the instant the thermometer climbed above sixty-five. Laura had a sudden flash of memory, of Sarah bringing armfuls of fresh fruit on breathless summer nights to the hookers who walked Second Avenue, Laura hiding behind Sarahís legs as the hookers thanked her and bent down to tell Laura,Ainchou a pretty girl.

By now Laura was aware that her scattered thoughts were a way of distracting herself, of avoiding the knowledge of her new reality (I have no parents) even as she hailed a cab and directed it to the morgue at 32nd and First, deep beneath the ground mere blocks from the desk where Sarah had died, high in a glass tower not unlike the building Laura had just left.

It was on a day much like thisówhen Laura had been, what, six? seven?óthat Sarah had picked her up outside of her elementary school one Friday afternoon and announced, with a kind of happy mystery, ďI got Noel to cover the store. Weíre going someplace else today.Ē And Laura, still wearing her red backpack with the Menudo pin sheíd begged Sarah for at the Menuditis store, had clasped Sarahís hand and followed her to Eldridge Street and Adam Purpleís Garden of Eden.

There were dozens of community gardens on the Lower East Side in those days, but the Garden of Eden was far and away the grandest of them all. Adam Purple, a squatter and neighborhood eccentric, had spent a decade reclaiming what had been five lots of burned-out tenement buildings with plant clippings and compost he made himself by filling wheelbarrows and grocery carts with manure he collected from the horse-drawn carriages of Central Park. The result was a fifteen-thousand-square-foot formal garden bursting with roses, pear trees, climbing ivy, flowering bushes, and hundreds of other plants Laura couldnít begin to name. At its precise center was an enormous foliage yinĖyang circle.

Laura, with the limited perspective of childhood, had thought sheíd known everything there was to know about New York City, especially her small corner of it. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, there wasthis! She felt staggered by the realization of how much beauty, unsuspected by her, had lived hidden within the bleak, shabby cityscapes she saw daily.

The afternoon sun had played mischievous tricks in Sarahís hair that day, crowning her in a red-gold blaze. To Lauraís dazzled eyes, her mother had never seemed more beautiful. She looked like a fairy queen from one of Lauraís much-loved picture books. What magic was this that her mother had conjured? One moment theyíd been walking down a glass-and-rubble-strewn urban street, picking their way carefully over crack vials and crumpled soda cans, and then suddenly they were overwhelmed by the spicy-sweet scent of roses and crocuses. Feral cats lazily opened and closed their eyes in the sun-dappled shadows beneath fruit trees, too serene to bother with the birds chattering in branches overhead. Laura thought ofThe Secret Garden, a book she had just begun to struggle through. Surely, she told herself, this very spot must be the most enchanted place in the entire world.

ďMost people, people who live in other places, only think about dirt and noise when they think about New York and where we live,Ē Sarah had said as the two of them strolled, still hand in hand, through the alternating coolness and warmth of the garden. ďThey donít know it like you and I do.They donít know that we live in the most wonderful place in the world.Ē In an echo of Lauraís earlier thoughts, Sarah had winked and added in a stage whisper, ďItís our secret.Ē

They were standing beneath a cherry tree that had not yet begun to blossom, and Laura stopped Sarah to pull a sheet of paper from her backpack. Her teacher had made everyone in the class write a poem about springtime that day, and Laura was suddenly moved to read hers aloud to her mother. Blushing, because Laura hadnít been a child who ďperformedĒ for adults, she read:

Winter is over

Gone is the snow

Everythingís bright

And all aglow

Birds are singing

With greatest cheer

Expressing their joy

That spring is here

Animals awaken

From their long winter sleep

Spring is like a treasure

We all wish to keep

Sarah had been charmed.ďThat is the most beautiful poem Iíve ever heard,Ē sheíd said. ďDid you know that some of the best poems are songs?Ē And Laura, who hadnít known that but did know that her mother knew everything about music and songs, had nodded with what she hoped passed for the solemn wisdom of somebody much older, perhaps ten or eleven. ďI think your poem is a song,Ē Sarah had told her. Then she and Laura had practically run all the way back to Sarahís record store, where Sarah had selected a few albums from her enormous personal collection and made a phone call to a friend. Then theyíd walked over to Avenue A and entered what looked like a perfectly ordinary twenty-story apartment building.

But it turned out there was a recording studio in the basement. Funny-looking block letters etched into the glass-door entrance proclaimed it Alphaville Studios, and Sarah said it was a famous place. A man Laura had never seen before, with a scraggly long beard and deep dimples, appeared from some hidden back office and greeted Sarah with a hug and a warm rubbing of cheeks.ďItís been a long time since weíve seen the likes of you around here, girl.Ē He sneaked them into an unoccupied recording studio where Sarah put her records on a kind of machine that let her filter out the vocals until all they could hear was the music. Laura had been deeply impressed with Sarahís knowledge of this complicated-looking equipment. Clearly, sheíd spent a lot of time here once. With this realization came the insight, always shocking for a small child, that Sarah must have had an entire life all her own before Laura was born.

Sarah played around with various knobs and buttons until the percussion was a heavy, insistentthump thump-thump thump. That was when she had started to sing Lauraís poem. Sheíd made Laura sing along with her. And even though, in Lauraís opinion, it wasnít a very good song, there was little in the world more delightful to her in those years than the sound of her motherís singing.

Sarah had made a tape recording of the two of them singing together in the studio, which theyíd listened to again at home that night before Sarah ceremoniously placed the cassette in a small metal box sheíd shown Laura once, claiming it held her most treasured personal belongings.

The City bulldozed the Garden of Eden a few years later, and the metal box disappeared in 1995, the day Laura and Sarah lost their apartment. And now, Laura thought, there was nobody left except her to remember what Sarah had sounded like when she sang, nobody left alive who even remembered (because Laura realized that she didnít) what Lauraís own voice had sounded like when she was a child.

Where did tapes go when they died? Did they go to a Tape Heaven? Laura felt herself on the verge of a giggling fit as this idea weaved through her thoughts, but she quelled it because by now she was standing in the lobby of the Morgue. Above her head was a motto inscribed in Latin. Laura drew on the Latin sheíd picked up in her law studies to translate.

Let conversation cease, let laughter flee. This is the place where death delights in helping the living.

Perry wasnít the only one who thought Laura hadnít taken enough time to grieve. She was starting to feel like one of those dolls, the kind with a string in its back that, if you pulled it, forced the doll to repeat the same litany of phrases.Iím fine, sheíd said when sheíd returned to work the next day.Iím fine, sheíd said after coming back from the half day she took for her motherís funeral.Iím fine, sheíd been repeating to everybody, to Perry, to her fellow fifth-years, to the hard-faced blond woman who answered her phone and filed her papers.Iím fine. Iím okay. You donít have to look at me that way because I really am fine.

She remembered when she was younger and had started noticing that seemingly every pay phone in New Yorkónot just the ones on the Lower East Side, but all the way up to Grand Central and beyondóhad the words WORSHIP GOD etched into its metal base. Laura had wondered about the person whoíd poured so many hours and daysómonths, evenóinto seeking out each and every pay phone in Manhattan. Had it been religious zeal? A sincere, if skewed, belief that repeating those two words so many times would actually induce others to worship God? Or had it been that the whole weight of this personís soul had come to rest on those two words, endlessly repeated, and the act of inscribing them was the only way to exorcise the thought?

Laura was inclined to think it was the latter, because if sheíd been able to take one of the dozens of paper clips she systematically unfurled over the course of a workday and use it to scratch the words IíM FINE on every desk, phone, and wall in the office, she would have done so. She appreciated everybodyís concern. But the burden of appearing to be fine, so as to keep others from worrying about her, was almost worse than simply allowing herself to feel bad would have been.

She was especially glad now that she hadnít told anybody when, unexpectedly (and despite taking the appropriate precautions), sheíd found herself pregnant only two months into her marriage. Of course, it wasnít strictly necessary to tell anybody right awayóin fact, it was accepted that you werenít supposed to tell anybody until your first trimester was safely behind you.

Josh had been overjoyed at the news; heíd actually had tears in his eyes. But Laura had to spend a few hours composing herself before she could even get the words out, because her own first reaction had been panic. The best time for her to have gotten pregnant would have been four years ago, when she was a first-year associate and therefore more expendable to the firmóor it would be seven years from now, when she would (hopefully) have made partner. The fifth year was the worst possible time to take maternity leave. Now was the time to put in the hours, to take on the caseload, to wine and dine clients after hours and cultivate the relationships among partners that wouldóafter a grueling, decade-plus slogólift her to the heights of success sheíd always striven toward. Sheíd seen other female attorneys whoíd gone on reduced schedules once they had children. The idea was something of a grim joke among women in the firm, because what a ďreduced scheduleĒ meant in reality was that you ended up doing the same amount of work for less money. Most of them never regained their pre-pregnancy standing in the firm. Laura realized, too late, that questions like when theyíd have children, and how many children theyíd have, were among a million things she and Josh hadnít discussed before rushing into marriage.

And sheíd had deeper fears even than that. There were an infinite number of ways to be unhappy. Laura had learned from Sarah that marriage and children were no guarantee of avoiding any of them.

Still, it was impossible to ignore Joshís happiness or remain untouched by it. One Sunday afternoon theyíd painted the walls of their spare bedroom a soft, sunny yellowóperfect, as Josh had noted, for a boy or a girl. She thought about this peanut-sized thingósomething made of her and Joshótraveling with her wherever she went,a secret sharer who sat in with her on meetings and rode with her on the subway and inhaled the same smoky-sweet smell of early winter that she did. She felt a kind of tender pity for it sometimes, so small and defenseless.Poor thing! she would think, and then wonder why she pitied it so much.

So the pregnancy had remained their secret, hers and Joshís, which made things infinitely easier when, one Friday night in mid-February and just before the official end of her first trimester, the pain had started in her lower back and blood began to flow.

Sheíd returned to work on Monday, a bit pale and tired but otherwise not noteworthy in any way to her co-workers. Because she hadnít told anyone she was pregnant, she didnít have to go through the ordeal of telling everyone she no longer was. Not even Joshís parents had been told. (ďLetís give Abe and Zelda a couple of months before they drown us in parenting advice,Ē heíd said.) The only exception theyíd madeóor, at least, that Josh had thought theyíd madeóhad been telling Sarah. ďOf course youíll want your mother to know right away,Ē heíd said. Laura hadnít bothered to correct him, because what could be more expected, more perfectly normal, than a young woman, pregnant for the first time, sharing the experience with her mother and leaning on her for advice and support?

But Laura hadnít said anything to Sarah. She wasnít sure why. Maybe it was because when you told your mother you were pregnant with your first child, she was supposed to tell you how you donít even know what love is until you hold your baby for the first time, or how youíll never love anything in life the way youíll love your child. Except that Laura already knew this hadnít been true in Sarahís case, and Sarah knew that Laura knew. So what could Sarah have said?Youíll love your baby, but only as much as you love some things and less than you love others?

Perhaps if Laura had told Sarah about her pregnancy, Sarah would have told Laura about the bottle of nitroglycerin pills Laura had found when sheíd cleaned out Sarahís bathroom. Sarah had been keeping her own secrets. And even though Laura was angry now, angrier than she allowed herself to realize, she could guess that Sarahís reasons for saying nothing to Laura about her heart condition had been similar to Lauraís reasons for saying nothing about her pregnancy to Sarah. Because when your mother told you she was sick, you were supposed to tear up and hug her and beg her to do everything the doctor said because you absolutely couldnít bear to lose her.

Sarah must have known that Laura couldnít and wouldnít have said any of those things. Not because they werenít true. But because she and Sarah had already lost each other years ago.

Josh never tried to get her to talk about the miscarriage. But he did keep trying to get her to talk about Sarah, to remember things. When theyíd driven down to the Lower East Side to clean out Sarahís apartment, heíd insisted on a ďnostalgia tourĒ like his parents had always given him and his sister when they used to drive through Brooklyn as a family. ďCome on,Ē heíd urged. ďTell a sheltered boy from Parsippany what itwas like growing up in Manhattan. How often are we down here?Ē

And Laura had tried. She tried to re-create for him the open-air drug markets that had flourished on Avenue B and 2nd Street, ignored by the authorities for far too long because what could be done in the face of such large-scaleóand lucrativeódedication to vice? When they drove past Tompkins Square Park, with its cheerful playgrounds, flowered pathways, and pristine basketball courts, it was impossible to make Josh visualize the Tompkins Square Park sheíd grown up with, taken over almost entirely by tent cities erected by junkies and the homeless, and frequented by punked-out teenagers in dog collars and Sex Pistols Tshirts. Million-dollar condos and trendy restaurants had once been burned-out tenements where squatting artists lived, or SRO hotels that, for all their seediness, were still preferable to the violent squalor of the cityís official homeless shelters. ďAndóoh!óright there.Ē Laura pointed to a spot on the pavement. ďThatís where my friend Maria Elena and I used to play Skelzie with bottle caps. Whenever we went out to play together, her mother would yell after us,Cuidado en la calle!Ē

The whole time she was talking, Laura found herself wondering why Sarah all those years later, had moved back to the Lower East Side. Had she thought she could rewrite the past? Play out the same scenarios but tack on a different ending? Hadnít she realized that the Lower East Side sheíd haunted these past few years had borne only the most passing resemblance to the place sheíd landed in as a teenager, armed with nothing more than her high school diploma and a determination to see the world the way she wanted to?

Nevertheless, Lauraís memories made Josh smile. And nothing had ever made her feel like a whole personóhad given her the same sense of belonging that the intimidating, shiny-haired women she worked with clearly feltóthe way making Josh smile always did.

It wasnít until he insisted on doubling back to drive down Stanton, where Laura and Sarah had lived, that Laura felt her throat tighten. ďMy mom used to pick me up after school every day and bring me back to the record store to do my homework,Ē she told him, ďand I was fourteen when we moved away.I really donít know this neighborhood as well as you think I do.Ē

Joshís interest in all this was to be expected. He was chief marketing officer for a magazine publishing group whose flagship publication was a music-industry glossy, and the Lower East Side had once been ground zero for seminal movements in rock and pop. Of course Lauraís old neighborhood would seem like a theme park called Punk World or Disco Land, where tastefully ďdistressedĒ buildings re-created a semblance of the grittiness of yesteryear, and if you squinted hard enough you could almost see Joey Ramone or Wayne County lugging their gear down the Bowery after a set at CBGB. Laura herself had thought for a fleeting moment that sheíd seen Adam Purple, an old man now, pushing a battered grocery cart filled with compost up Avenue B.

Josh hadnít been one of the people in the meeting that day when Laura had gone to his offices with Perry for the first time, but heíd seen her struggling outside the conference room with two oversized briefcases while Perry lingered behind to schmooze. Josh had hurried to her side and said, ďLet me help you with those,Ē taking the briefcases over Lauraís protests and walking toward the elevator with them. This had embarrassed her; it was an associateís job to carry the briefcases when she went to a meeting, or to court, with a partner.

When heíd called her at her office four days later, she was even more embarrassed. He must have asked someone whoíd been in the meeting what her name was and where she worked. Sheíd refused the first time he asked her out, not wanting to bethat girl who got hit on at the first meeting she went to. But the second time Josh called, inviting her to a party his company was throwing to celebrate their April Latin Music issue, sheíd said yes. She didnít plan on being an associate forever, she reasoned. It couldnít hurt to start showing her face at client events. Most associates who considered themselves partner-track made a point of doing so.

Joshís magazine had taken over SOBís, a Brazilian nightclub in the West Village, and hired a live salsa band. The swoop and swirl of strobes overhead transformed the womenís dresses and flowing blouses into shimmering beacons of iridescent light. Laura felt like an undertaker in the black pantsuit sheíd worn to work that day. Trays of mojitos crossed the floor and she drank three in quick succession near the bar, then felt so light-headed she had to sit down. Gratefully accepting an empanada from a passing waiter, she looked around the room for Josh.

He was in a corner near the back, conferring with underlings in headsets. Laura hadnít remembered, perhaps hadnít realized, how good-looking he was. His hands gestured as he spoke, his long fingers blunt at the tips. Laura ran her own fingers through her hair, trying to remember if sheíd styled it that morning or simply let it hang loose to air-dry. She thought,What am I doing here? Josh looked up then and saw her. She watched him give a final instruction to the people wearing headsets, then lope across the room toward her.ďYou made it!Ē He smiled warmly and lightly bussed her cheek, the crowd behind Laura preventing her from backing up and offering her hand instead for a more decorous handshake. Shouting to be heard over the band, Josh asked, ďDo you dance? Latin dancing is easier than it looksópromise!Ē

Perhaps it was the implied assumption that somebody who looked like her, an island of suit in a sea of business casual, wouldnít know how to dance that propelled her onto the floor when normally she would have refused. At nearly five foot ten Laura was taller than a lot of men, but Josh was just tall enough to make her feel feminine. She found herself acutely aware of the smooth skin of his palm pressed against her own,of his breath on the top of her head whenever he twirled her in before releasing her. It had been fifteen years and at least six inches of height since Laura had last danced like this. She was pleasantly surprised to discover that her hips still remembered how to find the rhythm, that her movementsstill felt as fluid as if sheíd done this only last week. The only difference was that she didnít remember feeling quite this dizzy or short of breath dancing when she was younger.Itís the mojitos, Laura thought, and then she stopped thinking.

They danced through four straight numbers, Joshís questioning look at the end of each (did she need a rest?) met with a reassuring squeeze of her hand (no, no she didnít). She was surprised at what a strong partner he was. Laura knew her own dancing must look as good as it felt, because people were actually standing back to watch the two ofthem bevel their way across the dance floor.

Maybe if she hadnít already been doing so many things that felt unlike her regular self (and yet, conversely, more like her genuine self than any other self sheíd allowed herself to be in years), maybe then the rest of the night would have turned out differently. Maybe she wouldnít have been so quick to tell Josh things she worked to keep hidden from her colleagues who, when they heard sheíd been raised in Manhattan, assumed she meant one of the wealthier uptown enclaves around Park Avenue. Maybe she wouldnít even be married to Josh now. Could a life truly turn on such things? On the electricity of fingertips on the small of her back, or a moment of swift elation that came from knowing a crowd of strangers admired her on a dance floor?

When they eventually collapsed, breathless, into a banquette, Joshís blue eyes glowed. ďYouíreamazing. Whereíd you learn to dance like that?Ē

ďI grew up on the Lower East Side, and there was a huge Puerto Rican community,Ē she answered. ďThereíd be these enormous block parties with music and food. My mother says the first time she brought me to one, I was three years old and I slipped away from her in the crowd. It was an hour before she found me, in the middle of a group of older kids teaching me the steps. Everybody would dance, from little kids to grandmothers.Ē She smiled. ďIt was nice, seeing different generations dancing the same dances and enjoying the same music like that.Ē

Josh had been impressed.ďWhen I was a kid, I wouldíve given anything to grow up in the city,Ē he told her. ďLiving here was all I ever wanted. I had it all planned out. I was going to write music reviews for an alt-weekly and live in one of those shabby old downtown tenements with a futon on the floor and milk crates for furniture.Ē

His self-deprecation had made her laugh.ďSomehow it doesnít seem like thatís how things turned out for you.Ē

ďNo,Ē Josh agreed, in a way that struck Laura as a touch rueful. ďI donít even know if those ratty little apartments I was so excited to live in still existed by the time I got here.Ē

ďI grew up in one of those ratty little tenement apartments. Believe me, thereís nothing romantic about poverty. Or bad plumbing, for that matter.Ē

Joshís eyes took in Lauraís suit, whichófor all its staid proprietyówas clearly expensive. ďWere you very poor?Ē

ďPoor enough. Although I didnít realize it until we†Ö†until I was fourteen.Ē

ďWhat happened when you were fourteen?Ē

ďOh, you know.Ē Laura made a vague gesture and felt her cheeks grow warm. What was wrong with her? Why couldnít she just chatter and flirt like any other woman talking to an attractive man in a nightclub? ďOne day you have to grow up and understand how the world really works.Ē

The band, having launched into a Celia Cruz number, sounded louder in the momentary silence that fell between them. Laura smiled in recognition and, wanting to dispel the solemn mood that had sprung up, said,ďI love Celia Cruz. The family that lived on the top floor of our building used to play her records all the time.Ē

Joshís face caught Lauraís smile. ďSo it wasnítall terrible.Ē

ďOf course not.Ē She was relieved that the conversation had resumed on a lighter note. ďI mean, the heat and the plumbing never quite worked the way they were supposed to. Our building went up at the turn of the century, so things were always breaking, but there was also always this sense of how many people had lived in our apartment before we did. My mother and I would find things from time to time, like a scorch mark on the floor from an old flatiron. Or once when we were scraping off wallpaper, we found out that one room had been papered in nineteenth-century sheet music. My mother was very into music, and she was a bit of a romantic like you are, so she forgave a lot of what was sometimes uncomfortable about living there.Ē

ďAnd you didnít feel the same way?Ē he asked.

ďI liked the people,Ē Laura said. ďI thinkthat part of it was actually a lot like what you used to imagine. We had a few performance artists as neighbors. The family upstairs had five kids, and their daughter who was my age was my best friend. And then there were the Mandelbaums in the apartment right above ours. They used to watch me sometimes when my mother was busy.Ē Lauraís smile held a hint of sadness. ďThey were married for over fifty years, and they were madly in love right up until the end.Ē

ďTrue love!Ē Josh exclaimed. ďWas it love at first sight?Ē

ďOh no.Ē Laura laughed. ďThey met through a mutual friend one summer at Rockaway Beach. Mr. Mandelbaum was short and already balding, but very hairy everywhere else. Although supposedly he had quite a way with the ladies.Ē Laura found herself slipping into the cadence and phrasing that Mrs.Mandelbaum had always used when telling the story.Max used to go with Rockettes before he met me, she would say, still proud some fifty years later of having vanquished these statuesque rivals for Mr. Mandelbaumís affections. ďMrs. Mandelbaum was only eighteen and eight years younger than he was. So when their friend tried to fix them up, Mr. Mandelbaum said,Iím not going out with that child! AndMrs. Mandelbaum said,Iím not going out with that hairy baboon! But somehow they let themselves get talked into it, and they had anawful time. He took her to a roadhouse and left her sitting by herself in a corner while he danced with every other woman there. But later, when he was walking her home, he felt so sorry for the way heíd treated her that he started talking to her. They didnít stop talking until they got to her door. Mrs. Mandelbaum used to say,And thatís when the love bug bit us both!Ē

Laura fell silent. She was inexplicably happy to talk about them now, with Josh, but lingering beneath the memories was always the pain she felt when she thought of the Mandelbaums. She was lost so far in the past that she was almost startled when Josh asked,ďDid they have any children?Ē

ďA son, Joseph. He was killed in Vietnam. They had a picture of him in his army uniform that they kept next to his Purple Heart in their living room. When I was little I used to think he looked so handsome, just like a movie star.Ē Laura looked down at Joshís hands. ďHe looked a little likeyou, actually.Ē

The corners of Joshís mouth turned upward in a way that accepted the compliment while also turning it aside. ďDo any of the people you knew still live there?Ē

ďNo.Ē Laura would have given anything to sound less abrupt, but she couldnít help it. ďThe building was condemned and we all had to move.Ē

Another silence fell. Josh lifted his drink to his lips, and Laura blushed deeply as she realized she was wondering what his mouth would taste like, or how it would feel to have him press her back against the plush of the banquette and put his hands on her. He slung his arm casually across the top of the banquette, and to Laura he smelled like rum and shampoo, like the warmth of dancing in a crowded room and freshly laundered clothes that could bear the strain. Lauraís nose even caught something that reminded her of the spikenard flowers Sarah had once tried unsuccessfully to cultivate in a small box hung from their apartment window. She found herself leaning subtly closer to him, the edge of his sleeve brushing against the back of her neck.

He looked at her then, and their eyes held.ďWhy donít we grab some food?Ē Josh asked. ďRaoulís is somewhere around here.Ē And when Laura started to protest, thinking decorum demanded his presence until the party was over, he added, ďIíve been here long enough. They can wrap things up without me.Ē

They were together nearly all the time after that first night, whenever they werenít working. Josh worked as hard as Laura did, although his hours werenít as long. Since finishing law school and going to work for Neuman Daines, Lauraís first and only commitment had been to the firm. But now she found herself ducking out as early as seven oíclock some nights, because she literally couldnít wait to see Josh. Life in the office, with its demanding hours and crushing workload, had started to feel like her real life, and everything else was just the blurry stuff around the edges. With Josh, though, her after-hours life suddenly stood out in sparkling relief. She remembered what life had felt like before sheíd entered high school, when everything had become about thenext test, thenext grade, thenext accomplishment. Josh had an easygoing charm, a goofiness so at odds with his good looks. His ability to make her laugh felt like a tonic for things she hadnít even known were wrong with her.

Laura had always struggled to suppress an inner conviction that she was an imposter in this life sheíd built for herself. A long time ago, when sheíd still lived with Sarah, things had happened to them that would be unthinkable to the people she knew now. Things like the nearly unbearable humiliation and heartbreak of being fourteen and watching your mother pick through a waterlogged mountainof personal belongings flung into the street for the world to gawk at, in the hope of findingsomething, anythingóa pair of underwear, a shredded childhood diaryóthat had been yours and private only the day before. Was it possible that anything like that could ever happen to Perry? Or to the other fifth-years at her firm? Or even to Mrs. Reeves, the woman who sat behind the firmís mahogany reception desk where sheíd answered phones and greeted clients in undisputed authority for the past thirty-four years?

Sometimes Laura imagined what Sarahís life would eventually become, shuffling alone among the flotsam and jetsam of her former life crammed into that small, overheated apartment. The sadness she saw in Sarahís face, whenever she brought herself to make one of her increasingly rare visits, made her feel both guilty and terrified.She felt like yelling at Sarah,Itís not my fault that youíre sad now, that youíre lonely. You made your choices. It took both of us to make our relationship what it is.

But the things Laura imagined might someday happen to herself, or to Sarah, were things that would never happen to Josh. One only had to look at him, to spend five minutes in his presence, to know that he was one of the anointedóhim and all those belonging to him. Meeting Joshís parents and sister for the first time in New Jersey over Sunday brunch, Laura had said politely,Itís nice to meet you, Mrs. Broder. And Zelda Broder, formidable in chunky diamonds and frosted hair, had grasped Lauraís hand and exclaimed in her raspy voice,Josh, sheís lovely! Laura had looked around at the comfortable faces, listened to the loud conversations about work or eager exchanges of gossip that werenít about the quixotic sorts of things that had formed the background of her early life with Sarahódiscussions about the meaning of art in music, or painting banners for rallies that proclaimed HOUSING IS A HUMAN RIGHTóand sheíd thought,This is where I belong.

Josh was simply a person who enjoyed his life and his work. He was passionate about music and books, the way Sarah had been, but he viewed them as smaller gifts that made everything else better rather than ends in themselves. He could make something as minor as a spontaneous afternoon movie or midnight pizza order seem like a holiday, a treat theyíd earned by working so hard. For Laura, the idea of hard work being rewarded with anything other than money and the security of knowing more work and money would follow was so foreign as to come as a revelation.

She would think about him all day, imagining Joshís hands and Joshís legs wrapped around her own, and her knees would tremble beneath her desk. Innocuous office talk, like,Laura, could you please come in here? or,The meeting is starting now, reminded her of the urgency of aplease ornow whispered in the dark. In her bed alone on the nights when she didnít see Josh, her legs contracted and kicked restlessly, keeping her up for hours, as if they were desperate to walk away with or without her, desperate to walk back to him.

To fall in love in New York is to walk, and she and Josh spent hours walking all over the city, although when they were downtown Laura made sure they never went any farther east than Soho or the Village. Their long legs naturally took rapid strides, but they deliberately slowed their pace to save their breath for the conversations that went back and forth and around and around, never ceasing, like an endless game of tetherball.

Once, only a few months into their relationship, theyíd walked past a store on the Upper East Side, one of those tiny boutiques whose window mannequins wore heartbreakingly lovely, stunningly expensive gowns. One of the dresses in the window, a floor-length spaghetti-strapped number, was made of silk the exact color of the soft inside of a peach. Laura had stood contemplating it for a moment and said musingly, ďIíve always wanted to wear a dress like this.Ē

ďThen we should go in so you can try it on,Ē Josh had replied.

Laura had glanced down at her faded jeans and light sweateróher typical nonwork uniformóand laughed. ďWhatís the point? Where would I even wear something like that?Ē

ďTrying on isnít buying,Ē Josh had pointed out, and so the two of them went into the shop.

Looking at herself in the dress in front of the storeís three-way mirror, Laura had felt transformed. Her pale skin looked creamy and rose-tinged next to the soft peach of the dress, and her hair gleamed against the delicate fabric like jewels in a velvet case. She didnít look like a lawyer with 150 pages of contracts to read through that night before returning to work in the morning, trudging to the subway with a shoulder bag so heavy that she was already developing back problems. She looked like someone who went whirling across polished floors before collapsing gracefully into a delicate chair with a glass of champagne and perhaps the smallest finger sandwich for refreshment.

ďYou should buy it,Ē said Joshís voice, behind her.

ďAre you crazy?Ē Laura whirled to face him. ďDo you know how expensive Ö?Ē But her protest trailed off when she saw Joshís face.

He looked at her as if seeing some version of herself she hadnít met. It was a look Laura had seen sometimes on Mr. Mandelbaumís face as heíd watched Mrs. Mandelbaum do the simplest things, like stand on her toes to pull a book from a high shelf, or pour boiling water from a kettle into a teacup. It was a half smile, stronger in the eyes than it was around the mouth. And even though Laura was very young when sheíd seen it, even then sheíd thought it was a smile that contained a lifetime of books and teacups, of sleepless nights next to a feverish sonís bedside and clasped hands years later at that same sonís graduation, months when the checkbook refused to balance and years of holiday dinners that were festive nonetheless. But, always, there had been this. This room. This woman.

ďMarry me,Ē Josh said. ďWill you marry me?Ē

He reached out to take her hand, but Laura took an instinctive step back.ďAre you serious?Ē She felt perspiration collect beneath her arms and thought,Well, now I guess I haveto buy this dress.ďDo we even know each other well enough to get married?Ē

ďI know how I feel,Ē Josh replied. ďThis is something Iíve been thinking about for a while.Ē

His voice was firm, his eyes clear as they looked into her own.He really has been thinking about it, Laura realized. A wisp of an idea curled around the edges of thought: That you never knew, truly could never know, what another person was thinking. And yet what was love if not the possibilityóthe promise, evenóof perfect understanding?

ďIíve never been this happy with anybody else,Ē Josh continued, ďand I canít imagine everbeing this happy with anybody else. Can you?Ē His hand remained outstretched. ďIf you can, then I have nothing else to say.Ē

Laura had always known that the world was made up of two types of people. There were those, like Josh (and Sarah, for that matter), who felt that life existed to be enjoyed for its own sake. It wasnít that such people were necessarily irresponsible (Laura again thought of Sarah), but that the point of the responsibility and hard work and worrying over bills and all the rest of it was so that, in the end, you could enjoy your life. If all those things didnít get you to the joy, then all those things didnít matter.

And then there were those who knew that life was something to be battled and survived. If you were very careful, and if you worked very hard, you could get through it without anything truly terrible happening to you. That was the most it was reasonable to hope for.

Laura was the second type of person, but she hadnít always been. She had been happy these few months of dating Josh, had remembered what it had felt like when she was young and any small thingólike the promise of visiting the Mandelbaums and spending long, uninterrupted hours with Honey the cat purring in her lapóhad made ordinary days alive with the promise of joy to come. But sheíd never really expected it to last. Sheíd been shoring up the happy days against the inevitable time when all sheíd have left of them was the memory of what it had felt like, and the reality of struggling forward regardless.

Laura felt a stab of guilt now at the thought of saddling Josh with somebody like her for the rest of his life. But the thought, the half-suggested promise that maybe, just maybe, she could get it back somehowóthat the silly songs Sarah had always listened to and sung about love and happiness and all the rest of it could be true, not just for a moment, but foreverówas too much for her.

ďYes,Ē sheíd said. She let Josh take her hand, and as he pulled her into his arms she repeated against his ear, ďYes, Iíll marry you.Ē

Sarah had finally met Josh, not long after their engagement, over lunch in a small East Village sandwich place. If the suddenness of their courtship had alarmed her, sheíd hidden it well. She and Josh had talked music for a solid hour, and Sarahís eyes shone in a way Laura hadnít seen in years. For the span of that hour, Laura had seen the Sarah she remembered from childhood, the Sarah who spoke confidently and had interesting things to say. Not the Sarah ofrecent years, who chattered at Laura so relentlessly that calling her or going to visit felt like being taken hostage. After so many years of keeping her distance, Laura would think resentfully, it hardly seemed fair.

She had worried what Josh would think when he saw how strained her relationship with Sarah was. (Because how could anyone fail to notice how uncomfortable they were in each otherís presence?) Would he think there was something wrong with Laura? Reconsider the wisdom of entangling himself with someone whose family wasnít as healthy as his own?

But Josh had been enthralled.ďYour mom is thebest,Ē heíd enthused afterward. ďYou have no idea how lucky you were, growing up with a mother who knew so much about music andcared about so many things.Ē

Laura had always imagined that someday, at some hazy point in the future, after she and her mother had forgiven each other for all the unforgiven things that stood between them, they would sit in Sarahís apartment and talk across the battered kitchen table about Josh. Laura would say how falling for him had reminded her of the community pools Sarah had taken her to in the summers of her childhood, when Laura would allow herself to fall backward into the water and sink weightlessly to the bottom, the circle of sunlight reflected on the waterís surface above her expanding as she sank. That was how love felt, like sinking into light.

Sarah would smile ruefully and say something like,Thatís just how it was with your father and me. And then Sarah would tell her what had gone wrong with Lauraís father. She had wanted Sarah to offer some tangible explanation that could be logically applied to Lauraís relationship with Josh, so Laura could say,Well, thatís something that would never happen to us. Sarah used to say that Laura tried to wear logic like an armor, but Laura knew that everything that had gone wrong for Sarah, and therefore for Laura, had been the result of bad logic, a willful ignorance of the basic laws of cause and effect.

Sheíd thought about having a discussion like this with Sarah, but whenever sheíd tried opening her mouth to begin it, it had seemed to her that the inevitable pain and exhaustion, the excruciating dredging-up of things long dormant (what an attorney might call the ďopportunity costĒ), couldnít possibly be worth it. Someday, perhaps, the right moment would present itself naturally.

Except that now, of course, that moment would never come.

Still, it was of some comfort to Laura that her mother had lived long enough to see her wedding. She and Josh had been married on a Thursday morning in the middle of September, in a Tribeca restaurant with only a handful of friends and family looking on. Laura was grateful theyíd kept things small, as she wasnít sure who she would have invited beyond a few co-workers. Perry in his suit and yarmulke, properly restrained and joyful for the occasion, had made her think of Mr. Mandelbaum. How he would have loved to have been at her wedding!My little ketselea grown-up lady! he would have said.

Sarah, now forty-nine, had been as beautiful as Laura had ever seen her, still tall and elegantly slim, the lilac silk dress she wore turning her eyes a vivid shade of indigo. Laura and Josh had both been walked down the aisle by their parents, in the Jewish tradition. While they were waiting for their cue, Sarah had pulled Lauraís arm through her own. Laura could feel it tremble. Sarah looked as though she were about to say something, but instead she looked down at Lauraís bouquet.

ďI carried lilies at my wedding, too,Ē was all she said.

[ ŗūÚŤŪÍŗ: img_3]

Laura heard the sound of the TV from the living room as she pushed open the door of the apartment she shared with Josh, carefully hanging her coat and stowing her bag in the front-hall closet. A bit farther down the hall, she spied Prudence. Although she was lying down, the catís entire body was a coil of tension. She leapt up when Laura entered, took a few steps toward her, and then, seeming uncertain, turned and started back in the direction of the living room. Laura paused to wonder at this, even as she went into the kitchen to pour the two glasses of red wine she brought into the living room where Josh sat watching the TV with fixed attention.

ďSorry it was such a late night again,Ē she said, dropping a kiss on his cheek and handing him a glass. ďHow was your day?Ē