As I wrapped the cat clock in tissue, I wished for nine lives. Then I decided that was selfish, so I cut back. Nine lives were a luxury. One was poverty. Three lives…three lives would be perfect. One for me with my normal children. One for me with Leatrice. And one for me with me. Just me. Not torn between four with the biggest chunk going to one. Or torn between five, if I was to count myself. And it was time, I thought, to count myself. In my head, I assigned everyone their number.
One, Leatrice, always Leatrice, my special girl, now twenty-four years old.
Two, Annie, my little girl, twenty-eight.
Three, Christopher, my man of the house, thirty.
Four, Leonard, my husband. Ex-husband, although it was never official.
And last, me.
I thought about the middle three, no longer around to be counted anymore. Because they thought they didn’t count.
Leonard left when Leatrice was three. He said he couldn’t handle it anymore, he was sorry. Off he went to Arizona, sending rubber cacti for Christopher and Annie, rubber checks for me and nothing at all for Leatrice. I always found a few spare dollars for little toys for her, telling her they were from Daddy. She tossed them across the room and went on playing with the toilet paper rolls, the paper towel rolls, empty tissue boxes.
Christopher and Annie each left when they were eighteen, off to attend the University of Arizona and to stay with their father, they said because he gave them attention. His cacti counted as attention. Christopher left without a word, but Annie looked sad and said, “Mama, we understand. She’s a lot of work. But sometimes, it makes us wish we were a lot of work too.”
So then there were just two to count. First, Leatrice, always Leatrice. And now, finally, me, about to send my last child, my forever child, to a residential facility.
Then there would be just me. I would be number one. But my heart would be broken in two.
I just closed the packing box when Leatrice lumbered into the kitchen. She was still in her flannel nightshirt, her favorite, red plaid with torn-out underarms. When I came back this afternoon, it would be the first thing I threw away. I couldn’t send it with her; what would they think of a tattered nightshirt? For a minute though, as I stood there, watching her stretch, seeing the underarm holes lengthen and narrow, flashes of her flabby skin peeking through, I thought how lifeless the nightshirt was going to be that night, when I got back. How it was filled out now, with her, with all her parts and curves and messes and sudden sweetness. And I wondered if tonight, after all the lights were out, after I was supposed to be in bed, asleep, for the first time in twenty-four years without the constant hum of the baby monitor on my dresser, the constant drone of Leatrice’s congested pug-nosed snoring, I would get up, pull the nightshirt out of the garbage and place it, carefully, next to me.
“Mama?” Leatrice said. “Key Cat?”
“Your kitty cat’s safe in this box,” I told her. “You can hang it up in your new room this afternoon. Someone will help you.” I wondered who. Leatrice just stared at me, her mouth hanging slack, then she wandered away. I listened to her steps, tracking her as she returned to her room. “Mama?” she said, staring, I knew, at the empty spot above her light switch. “Key Cat?”
“Time for a bath, Leatrice.” I went into the bathroom and began to run the water. Alerted by the sound, Leatrice appeared in the doorway, her arms upraised for me to take off her nightshirt. As I exposed her bare body, womanly, tubby, rounded and rolled, I saw that I should probably shave her before she left. Then I shook my head. Leatrice hated being shaved. I wanted this last morning to be peaceful. In the cool air, her nipples matured and swelled, round pink buttons that looked ripened to bursting.
I helped her into the tub, pushing her heavy body down into a squat, then a sit. She squealed the way she always did when the hot water hit her bottom and then she began to splash and kick. I never expected motherhood to include bathing a grown woman.
It used to be easy. In the tub, she was almost an ordinary child, splashing with her hands and feet, laughing, getting soapsuds in her eyes and nose. I pretended during those times that she was normal, that one day she would be just like her big brother and big sister.
It was hard to pretend when the little girl had fully-developed breasts and lacy brown pubic hair and legs so long, she couldn’t sit Indian style in the tub anymore.
I sank to my knees and began to wash. She was oblivious, as always, just moving her busy hands up and away while I soaped. “Leatrice,” I told her. “You’re going to your new home today. Remember? A home with lots of kids like you.” And a new mama, I wanted to say. A new mama to take care of you, who doesn’t run out of energy by early afternoon. But I couldn’t choke out the words.
Leatrice ignored me and continued to play. I sat back, letting her vigorous splashes rinse her body. I remembered once, right before Leonard left, him squatting on the floor in front of Leatrice. “Look at her, sweetheart,” he said. “She’s just a lump. She looks like a potato.”
“What do you want to do then, cook her?” I asked. “She’s your daughter. Same as Annie.”
“She’s not the same as Annie,” he growled, poking Leatrice in the stomach. “Don’t you ever say so. Don’t you ever insult Annie that way.”
I got between them, between his poking finger and my special girl. She didn’t even look up at him. Nor at me, to be fair. And I always tried to be fair.
Christopher and Annie were the same way. When I placed Leatrice in their little circle, telling them to play with their sister awhile, they looked at each other and then just handed Leatrice a pile of newspapers, a hairbrush, an old envelope. Whatever was handy. When I glared at them, Christopher said, “Mama, she just sits there. It’s not like she’s going to play Scrabble with us. She doesn’t even know the alphabet.”
Now, I looked at Leatrice, suddenly sitting still in the water. She had that blank look on her face again. Her bath was over. “C’mon, sweetheart,” I said, taking her arm and pulling her to her feet. “We have to get dressed. We’re going bye-byes.”
“Bye-byes!” she shouted and stumped off naked down the hallway. I followed after her. I used to close the curtains, attempt to hide her adult body from passersby, but I didn’t bother anymore. It was too hard living in the dark. Even Leatrice needed sunshine.
“Mama?” Leatrice called from her room. “Key Cat?”
I didn’t answer. I was just too tired to explain it away.
On the way home, I kept glancing at the empty passenger seat. I didn’t know how long it was since I last drove in the car alone.
At the residential facility, a nice cheerful rehabbed Victorian home with knocked-out walls and so many windows, I only barely noticed the bars and alarms, I explained to Mary, the housemother, the new mama, about the cat clock. “I bought it when I was pregnant with her,” I said. “Her whole nursery was done up in kitty cats.” White crib, comforter with rainbow kitties grinning and winking. Stuffed kitty cats in every corner. A special pink sleeping kitty I called Boo-Cat sitting in the crib. Leatrice never took to it and I had it now on my own bed. Kitty curtains, kitty wallpaper border. “I found the clock in an antique mall. It’s supposed to be Felix the Cat, remember Felix?” Mary, her eyes fixed on Leatrice as she wandered around the living room, nodded. Leatrice didn’t touch anything, just walked from corner to corner. Good girl, I thought. “It’s hung in her room ever since. Every morning, she says hello to Key Cat and every night, she says goodbye.” I thought of her saying goodbye to Key Cat that night, without me there to echo, “Goodbye, Key Cat, goodbye, Leatrice.” I never could get her to say goodnight.
Mary shifted her glance to me. “Key Cat? I thought it was Felix.”
I nodded. “It is. But Key Cat is Leatrice’s word for kitty cat.” The kitty curtains and wallpaper border were still in Leatrice’s room, a little worse for wear. Her bed was a twin size now, with a purple bedspread covered with black and white cats. I liked the rainbow kitties better.
I wondered what I would do with it now, that kitty cat room.
Then I left my daughter. I left her behind. I kissed her on the cheek as she sat on the bed in her new room with Mary next to her, holding her hand. Leatrice just stared when I said goodbye. Though when I walked out the door, I thought I heard her say, “Mama?” followed by Mary’s soft, “Shhh.”
I said goodbye to Leatrice, goodbye for a month because Mary said I shouldn’t visit until a month passed. She said it would help Leatrice adjust if she was on her own. She’s not on her own, I wanted to say. She’s alone. There’s a difference. But I nodded, kissed my daughter goodbye, a hard and long kiss, enough to last us both for a month, and walked out the door, thinking I heard her say, “Mama?”
But the kiss ran out. The next morning, after I tucked Leatrice’s red plaid nightshirt under my pillow, I nearly drove back to bring Leatrice home. My day wasn’t right, not without her walking into the kitchen, babbling over her cereal, splashing in her bath. I didn’t know what to do. I sat at the table and drank a whole cup of coffee, straight through. It didn’t even get cold. Then I reached for my keys and was almost out the door when Christopher called out of the blue. My Christopher. A voice I hadn’t heard in almost twelve years. “Hello, Mama,” he said. “I know what you did, Annie told me. And I wanted to tell you you did the right thing.”
I couldn’t catch my breath. I wanted to talk to him, to tell him it wasn’t right, but all I could make was gagging noises into the phone.
“Mama? Mama, it’s all right. Really. She’s being taken care of. Annie told me the name of the place and I checked it out. It’s one of the best. She’ll be fine.”
I began to cry, but I nodded. I wasn’t sure if I was crying over leaving Leatrice behind or getting Christopher back.
“Mama, I thought we’d come out this weekend. Me, Barbara and Jimmy.”
First the daughter-in-law and then the grandson I never met. Because Christopher didn’t want them to meet Leatrice and I wouldn’t meet them without her. “Oh,” I said. “Oh, Christopher…” I wanted to ask if he’d actually gone to Leatrice’s new home. If he’d seen her. Or if he just talked to someone about the place, about Mary. I told myself that even if he just talked to someone, it was worth counting. I told myself to breathe deep, to slow my heart down, to sit and hold on to the edge of the table with my free hand.
“We’ll be there Friday night, okay? And leave Sunday, after supper. See you then.” He paused a moment. “Love you, Mama,” he said quickly, and hung up.
And suddenly, there was something to do. I walked down the hallway to Leatrice’s room. I could sleep in there Friday and Saturday night, I decided. Christopher and Barbara could have my room, Jimmy could have Christopher’s. When the phone rang again, I ran to it. It was Annie.
“How’d it go, Mama?”
I poured myself another cup of coffee and sat down and told her all about it. As I talked, my body braced, ready to run at a crash, a whimper, a startled, “Mama!” But the interruption never came.
I hung up the phone and sat there, thinking. I wasn’t supposed to feel this way. My baby girl was in a residential facility for the rest of her life. I didn’t want to put her there. I should be crying. I should be in my car, heading for her rescue.
And I did feel it. My arms trembled, my hands became fists, and for a moment, I beat the table, making my empty coffee cup bounce up and down and finally topple over the edge and crash on the floor. But then, it was done. I shoved the whole mess of my life away. Sweeping up my cup, I threw away the pieces, saying, “That’s that. It’s over.” And it was. I gathered all my cleaning supplies together and went to the kitty cat room. I had a lot to do before Friday.
All weekend long, Leatrice’s name was never mentioned. I played with my three-year old grandson, just played and played, tickling his ribs, whispering in his ear, reading him stories. Annie came along and at night, I sat at the kitchen table with her and with Christopher while Barbara got Jimmy ready for bed. I found out how Christopher loved his job, but felt like he never made enough money. Annie told me about John, her new boyfriend, how he treated her right and she thought she might marry him. Jimmy’s upper left center tooth came in really crooked, Christopher said, but the dentist showed them how to apply pressure to it, and it finished out straight. Annie tried dying her hair red, but it looked, she said, like lipstick and felt like fingernail polish. I laughed and smiled and talked and nodded. Every now and then, I touched them, their hands, their cheeks, their hair.
I wondered silently about Leatrice, about what she was doing in her new home. I nearly brought her name up, but stopped when I saw my kids’ faces, so open, so clear, like they were six and four again. That night, in the kitty cat room, I pictured Leatrice, sitting on the floor in a corner of the kitchen, playing with her toilet paper rolls, while I talked with Christopher and Annie. But I couldn’t get the picture to come in clear.
There were no more kitty cats. The walls in this room were yellow now, a crayon yellow, the yellow of a child’s sun. I bought yellow and white checked curtains on special at Shop-Ko and hung them at the window. The comforter on the bed was white with yellow tulips splashed all over it. Christopher and Annie helped me pick it out when they brought me on Saturday afternoon to a furniture store, to choose a new queen-sized bed. They insisted I be the first to sleep on it, in this brand new guest room. It was a spring room, a sunshine room, and I tried to be happy in it. But I thought I saw traces of rainbow kitties in the corners.
As they left Sunday night, Annie looked over her shoulder and said, “Oh. Dad said to say hello.”
I swallowed and leaned forward into her words. I didn’t know what to say. “Oh,” I said finally. “Tell him I said hello back.” Then nothing else came. It seemed like enough.
Almost three weeks after I moved Leatrice out, I woke up one morning with sun lighting up my bedroom. I looked at my clock; it was ten, half the morning gone already. I was always up at six o’clock, always, for twenty-four years.
I stared at the ceiling, felt the sun hitting my bed, warming my skin, my bones, making me melt into my sheets.
There was no hurry, no catching-up to do. I pulled on my bathrobe and went into the kitchen, planning on reading the paper with my first and second cups of hot coffee.
The package arrived five days before I was due to visit Leatrice. I ripped it open and found Felix the Cat, staring up at me with one eye and one empty socket. The note said, “I don’t know if this can be repaired. However, I think it’s best that Leatrice not have it here. It seems to make her angry. Perhaps it would be a good idea if you waited another couple weeks before coming to visit. Mary.”
I stared at that disfigured cat. I could hear Leatrice’s voice as she bellowed goodbye to the clock, to me. I heard her voice often, all my life, during the day and in my dreams. I held that poor cat and remembered the first day I called the residential facility, pleading for a tour. Leatrice was bellowing then, “No! Mama! No! Mama!” behind the closed door of the bathroom.
She played on the kitchen floor that morning, got into my cupboards where she knew she wasn’t supposed to go, and dumped flour and sugar all over herself. All over her big grown body. I hauled her into the bathroom for a second bath, a bath she didn’t want. We struggled, but I got her stripped and into the tub. I bent down to scoop up her clothes, throw them in the hall and out of the way, when she grabbed me by the shoulders and pulled me into the tub with her. My head went under and my face pressed against the drain. My arms were straightjacketed by my sides and she hit my back and I could only breathe water. Then she paused for a moment and I heaved with my back and neck, heaved like a great whale, so hard my muscles pulled and ached for days after. I ran out of the bathroom and shut the door, because Leatrice never learned how to use a doorknob.
She could die in there, I knew. But I could too.
Dripping wet, my daughter’s voice echoing in my ears, I made that phone call. Now I looked down at that battered cat and I heard Christopher say again, “Mama, it’s all right. She’s being taken care of.”
But it was me. I was being taken care of.
I looked through the box, but I couldn’t find the cat’s missing eye. Looking closer, I saw that the eyes were all one part, going back and forth in the cat’s head. The eyepiece was broken in half, the missing eye apparently shattered. I stroked the kitty for a moment, wishing I could fix it, then headed down to the sunshine room. Right above the light switch, in its accustomed spot, I hung the cat again. It didn’t work anymore, it just sat there, looking out at the room with its one good eye, a smile still on its face.
A reminder, I thought. A reminder that Leatrice once lived here. A reminder to Christopher and Annie that they had a sister. A reminder to me that I had a special girl.
And a reminder that it was all right. We were all being taken care of. It was the right thing.
I thought of my coveted three lives and looked at the clock and realized I already lived two and was now starting on the third. There was the life before Leatrice and the life with Leatrice. Now, it was time for the life despite Leatrice.
I touched the cat’s tail, set it to swinging, but the empty eye socket spooked me so much, I had to stop it. I thought about planning my day.
My day.
First, I would call Mary, make sure Leatrice was okay, and arrange my visit for two weeks from now. Then maybe I’d call Leonard. “Hello back,” I would say.
Or maybe I would call Christopher’s house and talk to Jimmy, hear his laughter sing over the phone line. Or I could call Annie and invite her for the weekend, a special mother and daughter time. We could snuggle together in my room and she could whisper secrets about John.
Or maybe I would take a walk around the duck pond at the park, Leatrice’s favorite place, then come back here and take a nap in the sunshine room. Just because I could.
It was all up to me.