Losing Clementine (34 page)

I petted him. I'd already given him a good brushing, and his thick coat was shiny and soft. I petted him all over, running my hands down his whole body and the length of his fluffy tail. He rubbed his face against my hand, marking me with his scent. “Mine,” he said. “Mine, mine.”

“I am yours,” I told him. “I promise. You're going to hate me, but I swear it's for your own good. You're going to be so happy with your new people.”

Huge tears rolled down my cheeks as hot as bathwater. They rolled down my neck and dripped off my chin.

Meow. Meow
.

Chuckles put his two front paws on my leg.

Meow
.

None of this made any sense to him. He didn't know what was happening or why. This whole month had been confusing for him. And things, as far as he could see, were going from bad to worse. That was the worst of it. He wouldn't understand why he was in a new house, where I had gone, and why I hadn't come back for him.

I picked him up and buried my face in his fur, and for once, he let me. I breathed him in, loose fur and all. He smelled like cat, like my cat, and when I pulled my face away, he reached out a paw and pushed it into my cheek. “Weirdo,” he said.

I laughed, and it made him jump down. Then there was a knock on the door. Once again, someone had left the street entrance propped open. I rubbed my face dry with the back of my hand and went to look through the peephole.

It was them. I knew it would be.

I opened the door.

They looked like such nice people. That's why I'd picked them. They were in their early thirties. The wife worked part-time at a children's museum, and the husband was a city engineer. He wore a lot of golf shirts.

My face was red and blotchy, and the wife reached out and squeezed my wrist. “Oh, I know you're sad, but it's going to be okay.”

It was the voice I imagined she used with small children who had been separated from their teacher on field trips, and it made me sob all over again.

The husband didn't know what to do with his hands, and Chuckles was hanging out in the kitchen, unsure of this new development but not quite ready to hide.

“We'll have to put him in the carrier,” I said. “He'll meow a lot on the way home. He doesn't like it, but don't worry. He's not like that all the time.”

“It's okay,” she said, patting my back and rubbing it in little circles. “We know.”

She was a foot shorter than I was, and it seemed so silly to see her there taking care of me like I was in grade school, but my shoulders were shaking, and tears were splashing on the front of my T-shirt. My mouth was gummy. I had a hard rubber ball deep in my throat that made it hard to talk, but I kept pushing the words out because there were so many things they needed to know.

“He gets lonely, and he really likes the wet food so give it to him sometimes, okay? And the catnip, but not too much because he'll eat the whole thing if you let him. And his fur gets dirty and you have to brush him a lot or he'll get tangles. He likes to watch you in the shower sometimes, and he eats bugs. Sometimes they make him sick, so be careful. I wrote down the name of his vet. It's in the bag.” I took a ragged, wet breath. “And just love him, okay? Love him very much, and tell him he's a really good cat because I don't want him to think he did anything wrong.”

“We are going to love him so much,” she said. “I promise.”

The husband held Chuckles while I buried my face in his neck one more time, then helped me put him in his carrier. “I love you,” I told Chuckles. “You're a very good kitty, okay? A really good boy.”

Meow
.

And then they hugged me, and Chuckles wailed, and I cried harder. And then they were gone. I looked down at the white fur all over my black T-shirt, and I left it there and wondered if I had made a horrible mistake.

I went to the worktable and pulled out the folded bits of leather I'd bought at a craft and sewing supply store on Pico Boulevard. I had light browns and medium browns and red browns and browns that were so dark they looked black. I laid the pieces out next to each other and moved them around and around looking for just the right composition, the whole process like a shell game on a New York City street. Where's the ball? Where's the ball? Where it stops, nobody knows.

I kept my hands busy, moving as fast as they could. My heart began to beat too hard and too fast, and I refused my mind permission to roam. This and only this, I told myself.

When I had it, I started to cut. Using patterns I'd traced from the painting onto thin, transparent paper, I made the same shapes out of the leather. The pieces that made the body of the centaur looked like a butcher's map of the cuts of meat. And when I'd done that, I took out my tackle box of tools. It was the same tackle box with my name written on the outside in Sharpie marker that I'd bought my freshman year of art school. I'd dropped out as a junior, but I kept the box. I'd been adding to it for twenty years.

I found the wooden-handled awl and a small hammer. Not worrying about the worktable underneath, I lined up the awl on the strip of cut leather and whacked it with the hammer. The pointed tip went through and lodged into the table. I wiggled it free and punched the next hole. I kept punching, keeping the holes equidistant from each other and lining them up with the holes on the neighboring scrap. I went all around the edges like I was tin-punching a pie safe.
Whack-whack-whack
.

The line I'd bought to stitch with was something between twine and yarn, dark red and far too thick to go through the eye of any needle I might have. I found the lighter in a drawer and held the end of the string in the flame. The fibers burned and melted, and the tip cooled quickly into a hard nub that I pushed through the holes with my fingers, whipstitching the quilted body together.

When the pieces were assembled, I took a pot of rubber cement off the shelf and tried to open it. The lid was glued shut, and for a moment, I panicked. What if I couldn't get it open? What if the glue was bad? I didn't have a car, and I had to finish this before Carla's funeral that night. My heart picked up speed again and my fingers got clumsy. I set the jar down on the table, pulled a screwdriver out of the toolbox, and whacked the edge of the jar with the heavy plastic handle.

The lid came loose. I unscrewed it and pulled it open. The attached brush was dripping with good wet cement that looked like burnt honey and smelled strong enough to strip chrome off a bumper. I took it to the canvas and started to paint it on, working fast so it wouldn't dry before I was ready. When the canvas was good and coated, I picked up my cowhide of many leathers and, starting at one end, gently pushed and pressed and smoothed it into place.

And then, just like that, I was done. I looked for something else to do, some detail to fix or to add. I stood there with the minutes ticking by loud in my ear. Nothing was ever done. There was always something, a change, an edit. It could be better. It could always be better. But right then, it was done. It was as done as any piece ever was. I could mix more paint, add more cutouts, but I would only make it worse.

I knew this time would come, this time of lasts. The last time I'd wake up. The last time I'd see Richard. The last time I'd use the bathroom or wash my hair. Some of the lasts I saw coming, and some I hadn't. But each time it was there. “This is the last time I'll do this. This is the last time I'll do that.”

I reached out and ran my palm over the tips of my brushes sticking up out of the cup. They tickled my skin like pussy willows. Just one of a hundred little gestures to say good-bye to all the things there were to say good-bye to.

Then I had to turn away and take a shower.

I had arranged all my papers on the kitchen counter in neat stacks. I had already checked them twice, but I checked them again. Will. Yes. Deed to the studio. Yes. Banking information, investments, funeral plans, cemetery plot, copies of last month's bills. Yes, yes, yes. I had written out the names and numbers of people the police would need to notify: Richard, Jenny, the Taylor Gallery, Aunt Trudy and Bob, my lawyer, and my accountant. Jenny could tell Jerry and his wife if she wanted. I was sure she would, but I was leaving it up to her. His name was not on the list.

I had finished my suicide note days ago. Before I could think too much about it or read it again and decide it wasn't right at all, I folded it up, shoved it in a plain white envelope, and wrote Richard's name on the front. I laid it in front of the row of papers on the counter, next to my will. I had decided to leave Jenny half the paintings and Richard the other half. It was the fairest thing I could think of. Jenny got a little something of my investments, too, along with Aunt Trudy. I noted that I had given my car away and left copies of all my keys, in a straight line on top of the will, along with my passport. The cops already had my driver's license.

I felt better doing this. I felt organized and in control. My heart wasn't racing quite so much.

I went over the papers again, thought of something, and added a note to the end of the list: “Chuckles's adopters.” I wrote down their names and phone number. Richard, I said, should check in with them to see how things were going. “Cat reverts to him should adoption fail.”

That made me feel even better.

I took a breath, let it fill up my lungs. It was funny to think about your lungs inflating, how the oxygen got to your blood and then traveled around your whole body like a freeway system. I imagined I could feel it happening. My left hand felt more alive when the new oxygen made it there. Then my left leg got a little stronger. My spleen worked a little better. Each organ was happy to have the new supply. I thought about a little deliveryman leaving milk bottles at each stop. Here you go. Drink up. Then I thought about my brain, which wasn't a good citizen like my spleen but derelict and rundown with rot and holes. I imagined the deliveryman in his white uniform speeding up and throwing the bottles out the window. I didn't blame him. It was scary in that hood.

Speaking of milk, I opened the fridge. There wasn't that much there. I had already thrown out the blue chicken when it started to smell the way it looked. But there were a few other things. A knob of ginger, half an onion that had started to go squishy, part of a carton of eggs, some cheese slices. The cheese slices would probably be okay, but anything that might go bad, I tossed. I didn't want anyone to have to deal with rotting food after I was gone.

I remembered that after my mother died. I never went back, but Aunt Trudy did. She didn't go right away. There had been the funerals to deal with, and they'd hired someone to come tear out the carpet and the drywall and everything else that had blood and brain and bone stuck in it. It took a while for her to go back. She talked about having to throw away cereal and pickles. It felt wasteful. But who would want food that had belonged to dead people? She said that some of it had gone bad. The bacon had been green.

I wouldn't leave behind any green bacon. No, sir.

I cinched up the trash bag and hauled it out.

I checked my watch. I had to hurry. I needed to get my letter to the post office, so it could go out overnight delivery. I didn't want to be late to Carla's funeral. I sat down on the stool with a yellow legal pad Jenny had used to leave me notes.

I double-checked my cell phone and wrote in the next day's date.

That was my little joke.

I added my address, folded it up, and put it in an overnight envelope. I'd already addressed it to the local precinct.

I checked the time again. I really had to hurry. I gathered up my bag and the overnight letter and headed for the door.

Brrrring
.

Brrrring
.

I had my hand on the knob. Did that count as not home? I had to run—literally—to the post office. I had to catch a bus.

Brrring
.

Shit
.

I snatched up the receiver. “Talk fast,” I said.

Jenny's voice sounded like she was two inches underwater, her words coming out in sodden bubbles. “I messed up really bad.”

I should've hung up. I should've hung up right then, because nothing that could come after those words would be something I could handle. If she had simply locked her keys in her car I could have handled it. But, of course, she hadn't locked her keys in the car. I hadn't been that lucky since winning the door prize at a women's charity event in 1992.

Only half of what Jenny was saying made sense. There were gasps and non sequiturs before she could get it all out.