Sleeping with Cats (39 page)

The cats are hardly the only animals we see. Deer come on our land sometimes. I have said we exercise in the mornings. I use free weights, a bicycle and a treadmill, although I confess I find all except the weights boring. Ira uses a NordicTrack. But some mornings we walk instead on local sand roads. Nine times we have seen coyotes. The first time I saw one, something in me said
WOLF
and the hair stood up on my arms. They are handsome but unmistakably feral. When I encountered one in late afternoon in the subdivision where I live, it simply yawned and trotted away, but usually they vanish into smoke. In the blink of an eye, they disappear, leaving you wondering if you actually saw an animal. Occasionally foxes visit, but since the area between us and Pole Dike Road was built up, we no longer have them on our land. I have watched fox kits playing, I have watched adults catching alewives in the streams, I have watched them eating wild grapes. When I was younger and had more leisure time, I would sit in the woods and observe marvelous things by remaining quiet. Perhaps as I age, I will have that time again. I trained myself to be utterly still. Meditation helps. I am not by nature a still person. Every year I do
tashlich
—at the Jewish New Year, it is customary to toss bread into outflowing waters on their way to the sea to cast with it your sins—which I interpret to be those aspects of my behavior, my thinking, my actions I need to change. Every year I try to throw away impatience. I have not yet succeeded. Like Efi, I want everything now. If
I am no longer ruled by sexual passion, it is only because I am satisfied with my lover, not because I became any less needy or any wiser. I have great discipline in my work, but in my life, I have often made a mess and overflowed onto the scenery, attempted too much, thrashed around and bumped into everyone in sight.

After the death of Jim Beam, Oboe became top cat. Suddenly he began to treat the orange kittens with paternal kindness. Dinah was still hostile, but Oboe had his ideas about how he would rule his newly acquired domain. He is perfectly able to chase off intruders without getting into a fight. He makes hideous noises and blows himself up, but basically, it's just strength of character. He took a particular interest in Malkah. She began to sidle out from hiding and curl up with him. Max and Malkah grew rapidly, from tiny fist-sized creatures to big beautiful cats. I believe they had an orange tabby mother. In Max you can see the Siamese, his long lean body, his long legs and tail, his aquamarine eyes. Malkah has a round face, huge round amber eyes, longer fur. He is darker orange and his belly and the tip of his tail are creamy. Her belly is snow white, and her stripes are a paler, milkier apricot. A starving kitten grew into a cat who does not like to see anybody's good food go to waste. If you give her a gourmet treat, she purrs as she nibbles.

At the cattery where we acquired Efi, we did not meet her mother, never a good sign. Efi went into heat for the first time when she was four months old. Three weeks later, she went into heat again. She was in agony, driving the other cats insane. Max hated to come in the house, as she had selected him as her sex object and flung herself on him, bowling him over in spite of her tiny size. I called the vet and tried to get them to alter her, but they said she was too young. After she had been in heat for eight days, I called again and insisted. My brief time as a breeder gave me the understanding that something was wrong. Indeed, she had an infected womb. She was burning up with fever and almost died. When we got her back, she was so weak she could not stand. Getting baby food into her was a major task. Malkah wrapped herself around Efi, keeping her warm. Within a week, she recovered. Efi is a being of immense energy. She is forever flying through the house about six inches off sur
faces, skimming like a hovercraft. Crash. There goes Efi. There went Efi. Clatter, bang.

A couple of years ago, we began our press. It is mostly Woody's—he does 80 percent of the work. The press has an office in town, for he needs a place to meet with people, and the press needs more office equipment than we have room for. I like having the house to myself on the days my assistant does not come in, to be free of conversation and interruptions and Woody's recurrent moodiness. He does not deal well with rejection, with obstacles, with disappointments, and sometimes his depression feels to him global and requiring much attention from both of us, even while I know that in a week, he will not remember he was in despair. As I grow older, companionship is precious to me and so is solitude. We are always working to balance them. Many friends have dropped away as time has gone by. There are periods in my life that have blown down friendships like the wake of tornadoes leaves a swath of broken and upended trees. My intense involvement in the antiwar movement was one such period; my early militance in feminism was another; my blind period was another. Friendships of many years vanished with my disability, but I have retained several deep friendships and made new ones. Some friends live on the Cape, but many of our best friends live elsewhere, and we must make appointments to get together or rely on e-mail. I have more friends who are poets than those who write fiction, although Ruthann Robson does both: Diana der Hovanessian, Martin Espada, Elizabeth McKim, Celia Gilbert. With all those women, I exchange poems regularly. That feedback is vital to me. Etheridge Knight was a friend too, still sorely missed, as is May Sarton, whom we used to visit every August at York, Maine, bringing her a bottle of the champagne she loved and a jar of my jam. But other friends are naturalists, scientists, fishermen, carpenters, women judges, Web-masters, theater and radio people, academics, lawyers, shellfish farmers, a lobbyist, a cook, a chief of police, other publishers of small presses, journalists, painters.

Leapfrog Press has forced Woody to learn new skills, and he relishes the knowledge and ability he has gained. I would never have started a press, knowing how much time reading manuscripts takes from other
reading I would rather be doing, but I believe in the importance of small independent presses and I am delighted with his success. After we had begun the press, we learned gradually that almost all the small presses we most admired had inherited or otherwise earned money behind them. We go hand-to-mouth and have no idea how long we can afford to carry on, but it still feels good.

We teach workshops together when we can, separately if I am doing poetry; we give readings, usually separately but sometimes together. I spent a lot of effort learning to perform well, but I do not really want to come across as a performer. I don't want the audience to focus on me but on the poem. My voice is my instrument. Woody and I wrote a novel together in 1996–1997,
Storm Tide,
the first time we had collaborated since 1977, when we wrote our play. This was a smoother collaboration. It's easier to write with someone than alone, if you respect each other and communicate well. But editors don't like it. Serious novelists, like poets, are supposed to work alone—as opposed to the theater, film, opera, where you are expected to work as part of a team. Now we are collaborating on
So You Want to Write,
a craft book that comes directly out of the forty or so workshops in fiction and personal narrative we taught together.

Writing about my life has been strange. I have always considered myself a good friend, but I see how many people have fallen out of my life or been pushed. I also recognize that frequently I have not inspired loyalty or deep affection. I think of friends who have dismissed me, used me, treated me as a resource. Then I think of others who have stood by me in emotional and physical trouble, who have given of their own precious time and scarce resources to succor me, and I am grateful and delighted to have such friends. I think of those willing to read manuscripts and give feedback in busy lives when nobody really wants to read a manuscript, no matter how eagerly they may read the book it becomes.

Memory is such a tricky baggage. Sometimes it comes unbidden and shakes me. I will hear my mother's slightly husky alto voice. I will see my grandmother letting the braid of her hair down like Rapunzel as she sat on the bed's edge, the rickety sagging double bed with the maple headboard that we shared. I remember the pattern in the curtains that hung
over us—cacti in blue and gray, what I now know to be the saguaro cacti I have seen in the Sonora Desert. The taste of sheep's cheese or mango or pâté brings into focus an adventure in Crete or Cuba or the Dordogne. I put on a pair of silver snake earrings and remember a party and the giver. But my mind is a rough sieve and much escapes. It dissolves in time as in running water and rushes away, lost. The bad times blur and fade. I remember the pain but few particulars.

I am always wanting to learn things. I would like to refurbish my Greek, unused for thirty years. I have enjoyed the Internet since it existed, long before the ease of the Web. I had to learn klunky protocols, Kermit, X, Z, to get into sites that fascinated me, then all text. I look forward to faster and more powerful computers that enable me to do more and more research and explore more connections. I could not tell you how many friends I communicate with by e-mail—far more than I ever did by regular mail. I love e-mail, the quickness of it, the back-and-forth, the lack of compulsion to fill a page. You have one sentence to say? Fine. You have a whole page? Okay. It's 6
A.M.
and none of your friends are up? Great. You can send them a message they can open at noon or midnight.

Writing is a task ever fresh. Things that once were laborious now are second nature, but there is always another mountain higher and more beautiful, visible only when I have climbed this one. I am always discovering new poets and sometimes new fiction writers to delight in. Discoveries come weekly. There is so much I will never come to learn before I die that I would love to investigate and saturate myself in. I read more poetry than fiction, and a great deal of nonfiction, usually what I am researching for the next or the current novel.

I imagined that writing a memoir would be easy; I was mistaken. It has proved as hard as eating bricks for breakfast. I have been aware of huge segments of my life brushed past or detoured around. Every day I am aware I can see but might not be able to in the future. No day goes by that I am not thankful I live in a beautiful place and have so far been able to make a living without leaving here for longer than a week or two at a time, with rare exceptions when I go broke. This is not easy—living where I want and surviving economically. The Cape is not your best place to earn money.

I have to say honestly I have never regretted staying childless. My privacy, my time for work and our time for intimacy are precious. I feel my life is full enough. There is a lot I regret—opportunities I missed or stomped on, friends I have lost or mislaid or offended, money wasted here and there. There are things I wish I had: more time, a pied-à-terre in Boston or Cambridge, more money. People read me and cherish my work—it is deeply meaningful to many of them, both the fiction and the poetry—but I do not have the kind of reputation that squeezes prizes out of the network that grants them. I would like very much not to have to work so hard, but I see no sign I will be recognized in that way until I am dead. Lots of academics use my work and produce interesting criticism, but they are not the ones who control free money. Therefore I give a great many readings, lectures and speeches, workshops, and hit the road as often as any other traveling salesman. I dream of a slower life, but I don't see it coming.

Recognizing that more than half my life is over, I try to gain some perspective and wrest some wisdom from my journey. I know I am an intense, rather angular passionate woman, not easy to like, not easy to live with, even for myself. Convictions, causes jostle in me. My appetites are large. I have learned to protect my work time and my privacy fiercely. I have been a better writer than a person, and again and again I made that choice. Writing is my core. I do not regret the security I have sacrificed to serve it.

No day passes that I am not grateful I live with a man who finds me attractive, who loves me, who looks out for me, whom I can trust, whom I can care about passionately and deeply. That means a great deal to me, peace in the center of my domestic life. I did not have it before I lived with Ira. It isn't that we do not disagree or fight or become irritable with each other. We're volatile and strong-willed people. But we are each other's best friend and each other's proper mate. We continue to interest each other. We make a good unit here on our land with our visitors and fellow residents—deer and birds and raccoons and possums—and our family of cats.

I want you for my bodyguard,

to curl round each other like two socks

matched and balled in a drawer.

I want you to warm my backside,

two S's snaked curve to curve

in the down burrow of the bed.

I want you to tuck in my illness,

coddle me with tea and chicken

soup whose steam sweetens the house.

I want you to watch my back

as the knives wink in the thin light

and the whips crack out from shelter.

Guard my body against dust and disuse,

warm me from the inside out,

lie over me, under me, beside me

in the bed as the night's creek

rushes over our shining bones

and we wake to the morning fresh

and wet, a birch leaf just uncurling.

Guard my body from disdain as age

widens me like a river delta.

Let us guard each other until death,

with teeth, brain and galloping heart,

each other's rose red warrior.