A Cat Tells Two Tales (2 page)

“Right. Gave me. Just like that. He gave me one million, five hundred thousand dollars to put on three plays next year. That’s half a million a production. Do you know what that means to us? I’ve been putting on productions for the past three years with peanut butter jars and milk cartons.”

“What are you planning to do with it?”

“The first production is
Romeo and Juliet
—next fall. And guess who we got to direct.”

“Grotkowski,” I quipped.

Carla laughed and clapped her hands, remembering the ferocious arguments we used to have about the Polish director when he first expounded his theories in America.

“No,” she said, “not Grotkowski, but close. Guess again.”

“I give up.”

“Portobello,” she said.

“Giovanni Portobello?”

“None other.”

“That’s wonderful,” I said. And it was. I had heard Portobello lecture at Hunter College. He was a tiny, misshapen man who spoke so quietly you could hardly hear him. But his ideas were exciting. He believed, for example, that Shakespeare was so familiar, had so entered the popular consciousness, that his plays were no longer theater; they were like sing-alongs. His idea for presenting Shakespeare was to maintain absolute historical integrity in the costumes and language—while at the same time changing radically one of the main characters; deforming that character, in a sense, with bizarre costume or accent, to present the audience with an intellectual jolt in the midst of an otherwise standard production. Thus, two of Lear’s daughters would be dressed like Berlin whores in an otherwise impeccably Elizabethan production. And that was only the beginning; he took his theories much further.

“I’m glad you approve, Alice,” she said.

“You never needed my approval before,” I noted.

“True. But now I do. Because I want you in the play.”

I didn’t respond at first. It was something I had never expected. I felt strange, like a bug was crawling up my arm. “Are you hungry yet?” I asked.

She held up the bottle, indicating that she would prefer to finish her beer first.

I got up and walked to the far window. The street below was ice-crusted. The enormity of what had happened was beginning to become clear. My eyes flooded with tears. When I had been a young girl on a Minnesota dairy farm dreaming of the theater, all my dreams focused on one part: Juliet. There has never been and never will be another part like that. It is love and death and eros and repression all rolled up into one body. I didn’t want Carla to see my tears, although she, of course, would understand them. How could one be an actress without being Juliet? Dialogue began to course through my head. What an astonishing gift Carla was offering to me.

Then I heard her say, “The Nurse is a wonderful part, Alice. And you can make it very special.”

The disappointment was so sudden and savage that I had to hold on to the window frame. Not Juliet for me. The Nurse. Then shame at my arrogance and my delusion flooded through me. Had I become demented? How could a forty-one-year-old woman seriously believe that she was being offered the part of Juliet?

Turning toward Carla, I said in the brightest, cheeriest voice I could muster: “Let’s eat now, Carla.”

2

The Christmas-morning trip began poorly. Just as I was about to leave the apartment for the Long Island Rail Road, I realized that I could not handle two valises and two cat carriers. So I unpacked the valises and shoved the stuff into a large duffel bag I could carry slung over my shoulder, leaving each hand free to handle an imprisoned cat.

That duffel bag was an old friend. An aunt, one of those truly bizarre women one finds only in farm communities, had given it to me years ago when I had first enrolled in acting classes at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis. It had gotten so beat up over the years that I had started bringing it to the Laundromat once a year to get it bleached.

Penn Station was crowded with old women carrying shopping bags full of wrapped presents, clinging couples who seemed to have severe hangovers, foreign-speaking groups who sat on their luggage and proudly displayed Dunkin’ Donuts paper bags, and hundreds of homeless people who had come in out of the nine-degree cold and were sprawled along the walls of the terminal in ironic celebration of the holiday.

I purchased my ticket, located the gate, and waited for the 8:22 to Hicksville. Bushy was beginning to act up in his carrier, as usual—scratching, meowing, complaining. He hated traveling. Pancho, on the other hand, was quiet, reflecting in his cage, staring straight ahead.

When the train pulled into the station and we were able to board, I chose one of the double seats at the end of the car so that I could place the two carriers facing each other. That quieted Bushy down somewhat—he could at least stare at Pancho when he was upset.

The train pulled out and I settled down in the warmth of the car.

Every time I went to the Starobins’ I felt like a little girl going to collect a birthday present. The Starobins were a wonderful old couple. Harry was seventy-nine with an enormous shock of snow-white hair, a face so lined it looked like it had been ravaged by a garden rake, and a long, lean, often brittle body. He was a combative old man who loved cats and horses and butterflies and all sorts of strange creatures. He was a noted cat-show judge and he knew more about cats than any person I have ever met in my life. To watch him play with his flock of Himalayans was a rare, giddy treat. Whenever I thought about Harry Starobin for any length of time, I realized that deep down in my perfidious brain I longed for him as the good father/bad father I never had. It was disconcerting.

As for Jo Starobin, well, she was Harry’s match. A tiny, hyperactive woman with cropped white hair, she gleefully attacked and argued with Harry in public and made up with him publicly. They were the only senior-citizen couple I ever met who seemed to be enjoying sex as much as they did when they were young.

As for the Starobins’ estate, it was as though someone had plunked a nineteenth-century Russian farm into very posh Old Brookville. Their buildings were crumbling; their paint peeling; their carpets thinning; their horses old or dead; their livestock nonexistent; their heat cut off; their phone off the hook. They obviously were very land rich and very cash poor, and it didn’t seem to bother them in the least. It usually took them six months to pay me in full for the cat-sitting job—but then again, their fee was very generous. Everything about the Starobins was generous.

Then I fell asleep. When I awoke I thought about Carla’s offer to play the Nurse in her Portobello production. I had told her I would think about it, and I intended to. Noticing that Bushy was becoming obnoxious in his cage, I drummed my fingers on top of the carrier to comfort him.

Finally, an impersonal, bored voice announced, “Hicksville.” I gathered the duffel and the cat carriers, exited the train, and walked down the high platform steps, crossed the highway, and entered the parking lot where Harry Starobin always waited for me.

Harry was not there. I waited five, ten, twenty minutes, but there was no sign of Harry or his beat-up station wagon. I went over the instructions in my head to make sure I had done nothing wrong. Take the 8:22 to Hicksville on Christmas morning. Exit on the east side of the station. Go to the north supermarket parking lot across the highway from the station. That’s exactly what I had done. Where was Harry?

At ten fifteen I hired a cab to take me to the Starobins’. It wasn’t easy because I didn’t have his address. I knew how to find the place once I passed a certain gas station and then passed an overhead traffic light, et cetera, et cetera. Because of this, the cabdriver had to go slowly and make numerous detours. By the time we finally arrived, the cabdriver was so angry that he dumped me and the cats on the road right next to the Starobin mailbox.

I looked around. Everything was the same. I walked over the rise and stood at the beginning of the gravel driveway which led to the main house. The old long-haired handyman whose name I always forgot was chipping ice with a shovel. He stared at me, then went back to work. He was an odd duck. The decrepit barn was still standing to the left of the house, accessible by its own path. An ancient carriage horse was being groomed in front, steam billowing out of his nostrils. The young woman brushing him waved at me. I waved back. That was the stable girl, Ginger, I remembered.

The cottage I stayed in was to the right of the main house, reached by a narrow path. I picked up Bushy and Pancho and started toward it. The path had been recently cleaned, but there were patches of ice that had to be negotiated carefully.

As I inched forward, I saw Harry’s station wagon was in the garage next to the main house. So Harry was in. He must have just forgotten about my coming out. The thought infuriated me for a moment, but I mellowed quickly. After all, he was an old man, and when I reached his age I probably wouldn’t be able to remember even my cats’ names.

I reached the steps of the small frame cottage with a brick chimney and left the two carriers on the porch. The door was unlocked as usual, and when I pushed, it opened reluctantly. It was an old cottage, low-ceilinged and dank. As I walked in, I smiled. The Starobins had cleaned it up for me. The floor was freshly swept. The cot had obviously been newly made, and even the pillows were fluffed. I looked in at the small kitchen. They had put in a new overhead light fixture and someone had shined the chrome fixtures in the sink.

I walked back outside, brought the carriers in, and opened them. Bushy flew out and leapt onto the cot, rubbing himself against the newly fluffed pillow. Pancho walked out slowly, evaluating the new terrain for possible enemies and flight paths. I picked up the duffel bag and laid it on the cot next to Bushy, ready to unpack.

Then I turned to shut the door.

Harry Starobin was there! He was right there—staring at me!

I laughed out loud in joy. “Harry!” I shouted.

I was about to take him to task, both for sneaking up on me and for forgetting to pick me up at the station, when I realized that I was staring at a corpse. Feeling suddenly weak, I sat down quickly on the edge of the cot.

Harry was hanging on the back of the door, a rope fastening him by the neck to the clothes hook. His eyes were wide open. His face was bruised and distorted. Blood spotted his white hair.

I could not look at him anymore. I grabbed Bushy tightly and buried my face in his coat.

3

Only the Christmas tree in the main house had escaped destruction. With all its ornaments and limbs intact, it stood in front of the fireplace, surrounded by slashed cushions, broken lamps, ripped-up carpets. Jo Starobin sat in her rocking chair, her face as white as her hair.

A detective from Nassau County Homicide named Senay stood in front of the tree fingering an ornament. He was holding his crushed wool hat in one hand, along with a checker-lined raincoat. Wearing a blue flannel shirt with a red tie, he was a tall, heavyset, oddly unbalanced man.

The Himalayan cats were wandering in confusion around the wrecked living room, sniffing the broken items. From time to time one leapt up onto Jo for a moment and then leapt off. She ignored them. What beautiful cats they were—essentially Persians with Siamese coloring—a profusion of long-haired colors dancing across one’s eyes. They were looking for Harry.

Jo started babbling bitterly to no one in particular: “Where was I? I’ll tell you. I was playing cards in Smithtown. Playing cards while Harry was dying! I was playing cards and poor Harry was dying!”

She started to rock furiously.

I closed my eyes. I couldn’t stand watching her despair. My stomach was still queasy from the night before. I still had the shakes. And I could not get the image of Harry Starobin hanging grotesquely on that door out of my mind.

Detective Senay left off fingering the ornament and began to pace, making sure he avoided the cats. “Mrs. Starobin,” he said, “we are going to need an inventory of valuables.”

“What did you say?” Jo barked, staring at him like he was a lunatic.

“An inventory. We have to know what they took.”

“What who took?”

“The ones who did this, Mrs. Starobin. The ones who murdered your husband. They were looking for something—money, gold, antiques. We need an inventory of what you lost.”

Jo laughed shrilly and rocked even more furiously. Then she mocked him savagely: “Money? Gold? Antiques? We have it buried beneath the floor. We have it buried under the fireplace bricks. We have it buried under the bathroom tiles.”

Then she collapsed in tears, and when she recovered, she whispered to the detective, “We have no money. We have nothing but this place and our cats.” She closed her eyes, stopped rocking, and dropped her head onto her chest.

Detective Senay looked at her, realized she was overcome, and walked over to me, standing next to the sofa. He had already questioned me about the night before: why I was out there, how I had found the body. “We need that list,” he said to me in a low voice.

“I can’t give it to you.”

“But you’re her friend. Talk to her.”

“I’m her cat-sitter. I come out here once a year. Besides, she said they have nothing of value. From what I know of the Starobins, she’s telling the truth.”

“Listen, those thieves beat that old man to death slowly. They were trying to get information from him. They were looking for something. He died from a crushed skull inflicted by a blunt instrument; then they hung him up. If we get a list, we’ll get them.”

He paused, then leaned over me in a solicitous manner and asked, “How you doing?”

“Fine.”

“Rough scene. You were in shock last night,” he noted. He switched his hat and coat to the other hand and sighed warily. “What else can you tell me about Harry?”

“He was a wonderful old man.”

“Yeah, I heard that. I mean something important.”

“Like his shoe size?” I asked nastily. Senay’s mode of discourse on Harry was beginning to irritate me.

One of the Himalayans leapt up beside me, rubbing against my arm. I scratched her gently.

“I never liked cats,” Senay said, then asked: “You make a living doing this?”

“Doing what?”

“Looking after cats.”

“More or less,” I replied. He arched his eyebrows in disbelief. I was about to tell him that I was an actress as well as a cat-sitter, but was interrupted by a blast of frigid air from the front door.

It was the stable girl, Ginger. She shut the door behind her and walked quickly toward Jo. She was obviously agitated.

“Mrs. Starobin, Veronica and her kittens are gone! Vanished!”

She caught her breath and pulled at her thick, long red hair. She was wearing several sweaters, making her normal huskiness even more pronounced.

“I thought maybe she had been frightened by all the police cars and ran into the woods. But I’ve been looking for hours. She’s gone! Vanished! Her and all her kittens!”

Her tone was pathetic: frightened, guilty, seeking absolution for something that she clearly considered her fault.

Jo opened her eyes and stared at the stable girl. Then she suddenly leapt up out of the rocking chair and screamed, “Shut up!”

It was such an explosive, violent exclamation that the Himalayans scattered to all points of the room looking for places to hide.

“Who is Veronica, Mrs. Starobin?” Senay asked.

Jo sat back down, shaken. “The barn cat,” she mumbled.

Then she exploded again at the girl: “Harry is dead and you come in here crying about the barn cat. For all I know, she’s under the barn with her kittens or on top of the barn. Don’t you know Harry is dead?”

The stable girl could not face the old woman’s rage. She turned and ran from the house.

“I have to go upstairs,” Jo mumbled after she had left. “I have to lie down. I have to think.”

She left the chair, woozy at first, then walking more steadily. We heard her clump up the wooden staircase.

Detective Senay sat down in the rocker. He seemed to be relieved now that Jo had left. It was rapidly becoming dark outside. The cab would pick me up at six and take me to the train station. I wanted to avoid the cottage until the last minute, but I didn’t relish sitting there with the policeman. It dawned on me that I disliked him. But why? I had also disliked the police officers I had met in Stony Brook when I was out there concerning my friend’s alleged suicide. I resented the way they went about things, I decided. They chose a script and they played it out no matter what. This one’s conviction that Harry’s murder was primarily a robbery seemed to me peculiarly at variance with the Starobins’ obvious poverty.

Detective Senay was now rocking just as Jo had. The shock of discovering Harry’s body was beginning to wear off me—I realized I was becoming confrontational. “I find the whole thing difficult to understand,” I said to him.

He looked at me quickly, stopped rocking, and then played silently with his hat.

“I mean about thieves breaking in to find gold coins or Tiffany lamps.”

“Who said gold coins? Who said lamps?” Senay asked.

“Whatever.”

“These kinds of break-in murders happen all the time. This is a neighborhood of rich people. Break into any house in the area and the odds are you’ll find something salable.”

“They couldn’t just have picked this house by chance,” I said.

“Why not?”

“Because this is the one house for miles around that a thief wouldn’t enter. It’s run-down. It looks like a slum compared to all the houses around it.” My comment irritated him.

“Look,” he said, speaking to me very simply, as if I were some kind of idiot, “it could have been a random break-in or it could have been premeditated. We’ll never know until we find them, and we’ll never find them if we can’t trace what they stole, and we can’t trace that stuff if Mrs. Starobin doesn’t give us that inventory list.”

We sat together in silence until Jo came down again. I said good-bye to her, nodded to the detective, and started back to the cottage to collect the cats and the luggage. The cab would wait for me on the main road.

When I reached the door of the cottage, I heard the most peculiar sound. At first I thought it came from within—that the cats were carrying on. But it came from outside, from the rear of the cottage, in the clump of pin oaks. It sounded like a hurt, crazed animal.

What could it be? I didn’t really want to find out. There was nothing about the cottage inside or out that I could approach without fear. Harry’s corpse had guaranteed that. But I couldn’t leave it either. The sound was too pathetic.

I started moving around the cottage carefully, quietly. The wind was picking up, scattering dry twigs. The sounds stopped. I stopped. They started again.

When I turned the corner, I realized what I was hearing—someone weeping so hard that the whole body seemed to resonate. It was the stable girl, Ginger. Her hands were braced against the back of the cottage as if she were too weak to stand without support.

She heard me approaching, but she couldn’t compose herself. I stopped two feet or so away. I had never seen anyone weep like that.

I didn’t know what to do. But I had to do something. I placed my hand on her wrist and squeezed. “They’ll find the kittens, Ginger,” I said.

She screamed at me, gasping for breath: “Fuck the kittens. I hate the kittens,” and then she just collapsed.

I knelt beside her, trying to cradle her body against me. But she was thrashing about.

“Harry,” she started to whisper again and again with a desperate persistence: “Harry, Harry, oh God, Harry.”

Then she grabbed me and held on. We huddled there on the ground in the dark cold. Finally, she started recovering her composure.

Her behavior perplexed me. Why had she sought out an isolated place to weep? Jo was weeping. Weeping was acceptable; almost demanded. A much-loved man had been murdered. Obviously Ginger didn’t want someone to see her weeping. But who? And why?

I helped her up. She couldn’t speak, but merely nodded her thanks. It had to be Jo Starobin from whom she wanted to hide her horrendous grief. But why hide grief from Jo? Jo, above all, would understand.

Unless, of course, it was the grief of a lover.

As I walked Ginger to the front of the cottage, holding tightly to her arm, I realized with astonished certainty that this young girl and old Harry Starobin had been lovers.