The Final Confession of Mabel Stark: A Novel (An Evergreen book) (21 page)

This living arrangement lasted until the manager complained his
chambermaids were afraid to go near our room, so we rented a furnished apartment on Pacific Avenue overlooking the ocean. From the
rental office you could hear waves and gulls, sounds I'd learned to associate with California and being between seasons and having time to collect myself. The manager's name was Randall, and after asking our
names he gave us an application form. In the space where it asked about
pets, Louis looked at me with a smirk and, in a rare display of wit,
wrote: one.

We moved in that day, me with a lone circus trunk, Louis with
boxes and boxes of clothes, equipment, medals and memorabilia. His
collection of whips and crops alone took the better part of a steamer
trunk. That night, he went back to the lot and returned with Rajah
mewing pitiably in a leather duffel bag. We opened the bag. Rajah
poked his head out. To show his displeasure at being transported thusly, he stepped onto the carpet and micturated like a Roman fountain.

Using this same bag, I'd smuggle Rajah out of the building and
down to winter quarters, where I'd play with him for hours, rolling him
on the turf and scratching his ears and teaching those little teeth how to
chomp down without breaking skin. When we tussled, I'd squeal like a
child, something that made people stop and watch for I wasn't the sort
of woman known for making sounds of delight. If Rajah forgot about
his claws, I'd purr to him, or I'd rub him low on the belly and say,
"Now, Rajah ..." until lie learned to be gentle as possible with me.
Around this time, I rewarded the nanny goat for loyal service by weaning Rajah, figuring it was only a matter of time before he disembowelled her as well.

That day was the first day I gave Rajah a shank King had completely cleared of meat. Rajah sniffed the bone a few times before putting a paw beneath it and a paw above it and chewing on the joint, tilting skyward. He licked his lips and started to purr afterwards. The next
day I gave him another bare shank, and this time he learned the trick of
snapping the bone in two and getting out the marrow by turning his
tongue into a dipping spoon. When his teeth and stomach had strengthened, I started giving him bones with a little horse left on, which is
exactly how a mother tiger weans a kitten, though in the middle of the
night I still had to give him a bottle brimming with heated goat's milk
or he'd cry something horrid. Problem was, this necessitated fumbling
with a hot plate and metal spoons, and no matter how quiet I was the
clinking would wake Louis. He'd sit, remove his eyeguard and hiss
"For Christ's sake, Mabel! Can't ze fucking tiger sleep elssver?"

Then.

Was just after the New Year, 1917, a time when it seemed everything was changing. The country was gearing up for war and Dixieland
music had come north and for the first time baseball games were played
on Sunday. Mary Pickford was big, as was Charlie Chaplin, who made
a million dollars a year, unheard of then-even John Ringling didn't
make that much. Communists were fixing on taking over Russia, and the Charleston was all the rage. I knew all this because Louis loved the
papers, loved riffling through them while shaking his head and saying
ffffffft whenever he saw something that riled him. Oddly enough, it was
the same sound he made at the height of his physical affections; were I
to make a list of the things I remember most about Louis Roth, that
sound would be on it, along with his drinking, his fussiness, his accent
and his wee privates.

Which brings me to the night I'm recalling. After midnight, we
were all in bed, by which I mean Louis and me and Rajah, who by this
point was the size of a golden retriever, though much stronger and with
a beauty no dog's ever going to possess. Louis came awake with one
thing on his mind and started to nibble my ear, a sensation like being
bothered by a horsefly, but one I pretended to enjoy for Louis was a
man and like all men insecure in the lady-pleasing department. This
progressed to kisses on the neck and one of his big hands sneaking over
my body and taking hold of a breast and squeezing it like he was testing an avocado for ripeness. After a bit more fondling, that hand travelled downward and took hold of the hem of my nightie. He pulled it
up, with me adjusting myself so he could get the hem over my hips,
until it was rolled up around my armpits like a life preserver.

This gave Louis free roam, and because I was his wife and had
duties I whispered encouragement, nothing too specific but words
promotional in tone. I felt him rooting and rubbing and generally
causing friction in places men think women enjoy their friction.
Throughout, I had my back to him, the front of my body facing Rajah,
who was sleeping and licking his lips and making little high-pitched
tiger snoring sounds.

Louis's hand landed on the inside of my left leg. He applied a little pressure, indicating he wanted that leg bent and lifted. I complied,
and a minute later felt him ease his thumb-sized manhood on inside.

Now, there're adjectives that can always be applied to a man's
lovemaking style, and the ones describing Louis Roth's were frantic, silent and tireless. Went at it like a muffled piston motor, he did, not a
sound escaping his lips, working himself to such a frenzy the bed started
to squeak and buck something rabid. Meanwhile, all of Louis's plunging pushed me forward, so the front of me started rubbing up against
Rajah, and when I say front of me understand it was the front of me
that counts, the sensation made all the more notable by the fact a tiger's
coat is covered in oil, and that oil was rubbing off and turning me slick
and warm as an oyster fried in butter. Soon as this happened, I found
I couldn't catch my breath, my discovering for the first time how safe
and wonderful not catching your breath can feel: I was practically
dripping in tiger oil, and other effluents besides. Meanwhile, Louis
was pistoning and Rajah was snoring through his nose and I was
between the two of them, though at the same time I didn't particularly
care who or where I was, for until that point I'd always considered
my body a necessity, a thing that carries you around and nothing
more. That night I discovered it was also something that can give you
a ride, like the ceramic horse on a Carry-Us-All, and that when this
happens if you close your eyes your body will let you go and you can
soar. The sensation built and built, to the point I was starting to wonder
if I was about to explode-not a bad way to go, if you ask me-and
as this question got posed louder and louder inside my head I
clenched my eyes and saw an image of a bed containing a man and a
woman and a tiger, a frenzy of motion beneath the blanket, the
women opening her mouth and groaning in a way that would've
made a longshoreman blush.

Which woke Rajah.

He sprung ceilingward. In mid-air his entire body revolved, so
that he landed claws down, hissing and growling and taking swipes at
Louis, though he really couldn't do much given I was between them,
and it would've defeated Rajah's purpose of defending me if he'd
scratched me to ribbons in the process. Course, Rajah's fury was nothing compared to Louis's, as his pistoning had been disturbed and if there's anything that'll turn a man nasty it's disturbing that. So he
hisses, "Oh for Christ's sake I haff had it," and he gets out of bed and
seizes Rajah by the tail and pulls hard enough I thought the tail might
come away in Louis's hands.

Rajah's belly hit the floor with a splat, and the sound of his nails
being dragged toward the door set me to screaming, "No no no, please
Louis you're hurting him," to which my husband replied, "Ziss cat is
out of control." Then he opened the apartment door and, swinging
Rajah by the tail, pitched him into the hallway. I lay there for less than
a second, listening to my baby yelp and yowl and generally sound terrified, before I jumped out of bed and ran into the hallway, gravity
pulling my nightie back down into place.

Rajah was cowering in a corner and peeing. I went to him.
Reached between his hind legs and tickled his pleasure spot.

"You just never mind about him. He was in the army so he has
ideas about orderliness that don't include sleeping with his wife and a
tiger. That I'm saying is, it's his fault, little tiger, not yours...."
Hearing this, Rajah snuggled into my arms like he used to do as a punk.
Shaking like a leaf, he was. I lifted him and stood, a movement requiring all my leg power and then some, as he was up to maybe 150 pounds.
At this point, I heard voices and footsteps, and I could tell by their
urgency that the people making those noises were not in any way
relaxed. So I did the only thing occurring to me, which was to step
inside the communal washroom and sit in a darkened cubicle and cradle Rajah, the whole while saying, "That's all right, baby. Don't you
worry-nothing's going to bother you, not while I'm here, baby...."

Well. You wouldn't believe how many people come running
when you throw a live screeching tiger out of your furnished room in
the middle of the night. Police. Firemen. Randall, his hair standing on
end and a pair of pants pulled on over his pyjamas. Neighbours, all
looking sorely aggrieved, as if we'd started a grease fire in danger of
spreading. Emergency-type people with thick denim gloves and axes in hand. Reporters with little flip pads and hats marked Press. A dog
catcher holding an oversized butterfly net, who took one look at Rajah
when I emerged from the bathroom and said, "Holy shit," before turning tail. Even the odd drunk and insomniac wandered in off the street
to see what all the noise was about. Was a scene and three-quarters, and
the best thing I could think to do was carry Rajah back to the room and
hold him and whisper into his ear. Meanwhile, Louis stood outside, a
foreigner with a thumb-shaped impression in the front of his long
underwear, trying to provide some sort of reason why we shouldn't be
arrested for disturbing the peace and endangering the public and generally living like wild gypsy animal hostellers.

After a bit of sputtering he came up with "Vee are viss the circus.
Vee are viss the Barnes show. Vee are circus people."

Funny thing was, it was an excuse people seemed to buy.

We were evicted again, this time forced to live in our parked Pullman,
which bothered Louis for he'd gotten used to electricity and a flush toilet in the off season. Rajah was relegated to his own cage in the menage,
which made him about as happy as Louis was: soon as I closed him in
he took to pacing in front of the bars and crying. When I went to check
on him the next day, I noticed a few spots on his body that weren't quite
bald but were coming close: up high on his right shoulder, in the middle of his forehead, two-thirds of the way down his tail. Next day, more
hair fell and the next day more still; within a week his thin spots had
graduated to full-fledged bald spots, poor Rajah now more skin than
coat. Two days after that, when he'd lost pretty much all the fur God
had given him, I leashed him and walked him across the lot to the Holt
car. I knocked, and Dan let me in.

Al G. was inside, smoking a cigar and looking pleased as punch
about his latest acquisition, a mountainous blond vaudevillian named
Leonora Speeks. Tall as a giraffe, she was, for she wore heels and bundled her hair atop her head in a wilting celery arrangement she referred to as a "waterfall." To achieve this effect, her hair was pulled so tightly away from her forehead it tugged on the corners of her eyes, giving
her a look that was vaguely Shanghai. I suppose exotic was the word for
Miss Speeks. When she walked, her whole body looked like jelly set in
motion during a faultline tremor.

She was the first to speak when we entered Al G.'s car, and by this
I mean she took one look at Rajah and jumped to her feet and squealed,
her palms thrust upward like a holdup victim's. It was mostly effect,
this, Miss Speeks taking any opportunity to jump up and down in those
high teetering shoes, a movement that set her bosom to bobbing in a
way was practically dangerous.

"What on earth is that?" she cried while throwing herself into Al
G.'s lap and wrapping her arms tightly around his head, all of which
had the net effect of pressing Al G.'s face in the cavern formed by Miss
Speeks's chest, a bit of theatre causing Dan and me to look at each other
and roll our eyes. Al G. said something, though I couldn't make out
what it was, given the muffling job still being performed by the endowments of his latest wife.

Now, you'd think any man would be embarrassed at having such
a nitwit for a companion, but of course here I'm thinking like a woman;
when Miss Speeks finally rose from Al G.'s lap and straightened her
dress, he looked like he'd conquered an ocean, by which I mean redfaced and beaming. Course, this expression didn't last long, for he was
finally able to take a good long gander at Rajah. His blue eyes widened.

"Jesus, Kentucky. That poor animal." He rose from behind his
desk and walked up to Rajah and crouched and let Rajah sniff his hand,
and because Al G. had the gift you could practically see Rajah relax. Al
G. sat there a minute, thinking, until finally he said, "Attention,
Kentucky. Some TLC. It's about all I can think of."

That afternoon I took Rajah for a walk along Pacific Avenue. Every
five minutes or so kids would come running up to see what unusual breed of hairless dog I had, stop within ten feet and get scared and run
off, a rejection poor Rajah sensed. He'd start arfing, and I'd get on one
knee and hug him and say, "You pay those kids no never mind. You'll
get your hair back, trust me, and heads'll start turning." To this, he'd
start panting and his ears would come forward, a signal he could live
with that promise for the time being.

Every morning I'd give him an egg bath, something he didn't
enjoy but seemed to tolerate, for I told him over and over how it'd help
grow his fur back. I gave him sulphur for his blood, lime water for his
stomach and cod liver oil so if his coat did come in again it'd come in
thick and glossy and worthy of stares. On Sundays he got milk instead
of meat, which is good for a cat as it gives the digestive tract a rest. I
washed his eyes out with sugar of lead whenever I could get him to
hold still, a treatment that makes the whites of their eyes as white as
clouds, and whenever I put Rajah back in his cage I gave him a little
treat, like pig knuckles or the soft end of a rib, so he'd start associating
his bars with things pleasant, something we all have to do when you
stop to think about it. With these ministrations Rajah's coat started
coming back, oddly enough, in places where humans have hair: the top
of his head, under his arms, in a soft tuft covering his loins. For a while
he looked like a cross between a tiger and a clipped French poodle.