Chapter 22.

Josh drove away from Coastal Canine with Erica’s words echoing in his ears: “Do not show up here with a cat ever again. If I wasn’t so desperate for help, I’d tell you never to show up again.”

Why was it all Josh’s fault? How about putting some of the blame on Tricia and Mad Dog Murphy? Oh, wait—the customer is always right.

A global insight lit up Josh’s brain: He’d been under the illusion that life was about becoming his best self: trying to make his marriage work, striving toward excellence in teaching, managing his moods with the List. When actually, if he had lots and lots of money, he’d be on a whole different plane. Other people would strive to please him, to keep him in a good mood, to make things work for him.

“That’s it, old girl!” Josh called to the backseat floor. “Lots of money, fuck the List.” If only he could get his hands on a chunk of money to invest. Because investment: that was the way to make money, not saving the minuscule leftover from each pathetic salary check.

Without thinking about what he was doing, Josh had driven as far as Old Farm Road. Now he realized it would make more sense to get some takeout before he went all the way back to the cottage. He made a U turn—no, wait! This was the evening he was meeting his sister for dinner. In the chaotic ending to his work day, Josh had almost forgotten. He swerved into a more sudden U turn, meanly glad to see the cat almost lose its balance on the back shelf.

Good thing he’d remembered, Josh thought a few minutes later, rooting through the bags in his car for his sport coat. But too bad he hadn’t remembered earlier, because it seemed he was out of clean underwear.

Hurrying into the cottage, Josh scooped up a pile of clothes from beside his bed and dumped them into the cottage’s rusty washing machine. He’d dry them when he got back from dinner—it was almost time to meet Vicky at the Harrison House Inn. The black and white cat was meowing in a demanding tone, in spite of all the trouble it had caused; he’d feed it later, too. Josh pulled on chinos and sport jacket, jumped into the car, and tuned the radio to the Red Sox station. He was just in time for the first pitch of tonight’s game with the Tampa Bay Rays.

The Harrison House Inn, a historic nineteenth-century resort hotel, was the one semi-fancy dinner place in Mattakiset. Vicky had booked a room for herself, she’d told Josh, so she wouldn’t have to drive back to Boston tonight. Josh climbed the steps of the inn’s spacious front porch only fifteen minutes late, which he wouldn’t count as really late, but probably Vicky would.

In the dining room Josh found his sister sitting at a table for two with a half-full martini glass, looking only slightly annoyed. He greeted her with a hug, and she hugged him back, although she remarked, “Time to get your sport jacket cleaned.”

“You don’t understand how I’m honoring you.” Now he was slightly annoyed, but he tried for a light tone. “This is the first time I’ve worn a sport jacket since—” He was going to say, “since I left teaching,” but instead he finished with “since June.”

The waiter quickly supplied Josh with a glass of cabernet, and Vicky raised her glass. “So—Happy birthday, Josh!”

He leaned across the table to clink with her. “This is really nice of you, Vic.” He meant it, in spite of the crack about his sport jacket. No point in explaining that any unwashed scent came from his underwear, not his jacket.

Studying the menu, Josh was glad to sense the wine melting the tension he always felt with Vicky: a mixture of wanting to please his big sister, resenting her authority over him, and being annoyed with himself that he even had these childish feelings. It was his birthday, and he should just relax and enjoy sitting in the dining room of the Harrison House with a linen napkin in his lap.

Josh asked how his nephew and niece were doing at their respective colleges. “They’re fine,” sighed Vicky. “Except I’m not crazy about Zach’s girlfriend. She sounds very clingy. But Paul and I, paying two college tuitions at once—don’t ask!”

Josh didn’t ask, because his sister was smiling, and he was fairly sure that Vicky and her husband could afford their expensive offspring. In fact, Vicki could probably afford to stake him to a real estate investment, if he explained it to her the right way. “How’s Mom?” he asked. “She seemed pretty good when I visited her the other day.” (Or was it two weeks ago?)

“She’s about the same.” Vicky’s forehead creased, and she stabbed at her salad. “But give her a call. She’d like to hear from you.”

Trying not to react to the implicit reproach, Josh nodded. The entrees arrived, and over their pan-seared bluefish and grilled bay scallops, he entertained Vicky with edited sketches of his current life. He got her smiling, then laughing, at his landlady’s quirks, and a day in the life of a doggie day care attendant, and the social scene at Soule’s Market, and the cat that colonized his car and almost lost him his summer job.

Josh paused to emphasize how glad he was to be in Mattakiset, thanks to Vicky, and she beamed at him across the table. “You look so much better than the last time I saw you.”

That seemed like a backhanded compliment, but Josh went on with the entertainment, turning his brief fling with Rune into a humorous story, with the joke on him. The dog obedience class, too, was good for laughs. “The owners didn’t have a clue. It was so frustrating, because I could teach the dogs in a heartbeat. Like Tucker, this big Lab mix. One of his owners likes him, but she’s too timid in handling him; the other one is strict, but he doesn’t have any kind of rapport with the dog.”

Vicky smiled. “Maybe next class, you should bring treats to reward the owners, not the dogs.” “You’re right!” exclaimed Josh. “What do you think—Cheez-Its?”

“No, chocolate truffles, absolutely.” Vicky grinned at him. “You’re funny, Josh. You’re such a natural teacher, you know? You can’t help yourself. You try to quit teaching, and here you are again—teaching.”

Josh’s face warmed, as if he’d been caught doing something embarrassing. “I’m not condemned to teach, no matter what.” He thought of the property waiting to be flipped, for big bucks. He had an impulse to tell Vicky, but he decided to wait. “I’m looking into some promising business opportunities.”

Vicky shook her head. “Josh. I hope you aren’t thinking of risking your retirement funds. And why do you want to throw your teaching career away? Why are you even talking about ‘business opportunities’? Face it, you don’t have any head for business.”

For a moment Josh couldn’t answer. His head tingled, as if it were about to explode. “Wait a minute! What gives you the right to evaluate my business sense?”

“Other than spending my adult life analyzing stocks, you mean?” Vicky sighed. “All right, I’ll back off. You’re an adult; it’s your life, etc. Want to split a dessert?”

Josh had an impulse to stomp out of the restaurant, but decided he could last through one more course. They ordered the local specialty of Indian pudding with vanilla bean ice cream, with two spoons, and sought out their respective restrooms.

The men’s room was just off the bar. Coming out of the restroom, Josh paused to check the baseball score on the TV. Tampa Bay Rays 4, Red Sox 2, bottom of the sixth. He groaned.

The man on the nearest barstool looked over at him. “Yeah, what’re we gonna do about those Sox?” He gestured at the empty stool next to him.

“I can’t stay,” said Josh, half-sitting. The Red Sox were up with two outs, the bases were loaded, and a power hitter was stepping up to the plate. He nodded toward the TV screen. “What happened? They were way ahead in the second.”

The man shrugged. “Pitching, what else?”

“Oh shit—right over the plate,” Josh told the Red Sox batter. “What’re you waiting for?”

They watched the batter take another strike, then hit three foul balls. Out of the corner of his eye Josh noticed a couple of U. Mass. Dartmouth students coming out of the women’s room. Vicky must be taking her time in there. Unless she’d somehow gotten past him to the table? He should go check. But the lure of a possible grand slam held him on the barstool until the batter finally flied out to right field.

Back at the table, Vicky greeted him with a stony look. Judging from the precisely divided half-full dessert dish, she’d eaten her share of the Indian pudding. There was a candle on his half. And uh-oh, she’d finished a cappuccino and started on a brandy.

“I’m sorry, Vic. The Red Sox caught my eye . . . I was watching for you, but—”

Vicky cut him off, waving a hand at the dessert dish. “I had them come out singing ‘Happy Birthday.’ I felt like an idiot.”

“I feel like a jerk,” said Josh. “Let me pay for dinner.”

Vicky put up her hand. “Nope. Already done.”

Of course, Josh thought. She’d had time to go to the restroom and come back, eat her Indian pudding, order coffee, order brandy, sign the credit card receipt, and get thoroughly pissed at him. Although she seemed more upset about it than he would have expected. “I guess this wasn’t one of your better dates.”

Vicky just stared at him.

Josh continued, hoping to get on better footing, “But not quite as bad as that ‘date’ Mom told me about? This geezer at Northport Commons asks her to go for a walk with him, so she gets her hat and her three-pronged cane and meets him at the front door. Then halfway down the front walk he says, ‘Wait, I’d better go to the bathroom first.’ And she waits for twenty minutes . . . but he never comes back.” Josh ended with a chuckle.

Vicky didn’t chuckle. “Yes. That’s our mother’s life now, what there is left of it. She tries to be brave.”

Josh sighed and hung his head. “Vicky, I’m sorry I kept you waiting. And look, I know you spend more time with Mom than I do.”

His sister looked at him soberly. “I’m just not sure you realize . . . she doesn’t have that much longer.”

“No, I do realize it.” A vivid memory struck Josh, and he leaned across the table. “The last time I went to see her, this new feeling came over me. Like a wall on the horizon. I mean, I always knew my life wasn’t going to go on forever, but now I felt it.” In fact, he felt it again, right at this moment.

Vicky’s eyes filled with tears. For a moment Josh thought they had really connected. Then she said, “So you thought death was optional, for you?” He flinched at her sharp tone. She continued, “This is not about you. This is about Mom. She’s the one at the Wall, to use your poetic metaphor.”

“I’m sorry,” said Josh. Too late, it occurred to him that dinner with Vicky had been an invitation for him to pay attention to her. “Seriously, I know I’ve been pretty self-involved for the last year. But from my side, it was like being hit over the head with a two-by-four—three times. Molly dying, breaking up with Tanya, the year from hell at school . . . I felt like I was being crushed. Like I’d never get up again.”

Vicky dried her eyes on her napkin. She looked at him as if from a distance. “Well, you weren’t crushed. It’s time to get back in the game.” She tossed back her last sip of brandy. “I’ve had a really long day. I’m going to bed.” Pushing her chair away from the table, she walked out of the dining room.

Oh, shit. As Josh dug into his half of the dessert, he was glad that at least he hadn’t mentioned to Vicky his idea of borrowing cash to invest from her. Or worse, from their mother. And maybe it wasn’t the best idea. Something Vicky had said about his savings . . . yeah, he should have thought of that. He could take the money out of his retirement fund.

On his way out of the restaurant, Josh paused in the bar. The other baseball fan was still on his barstool, and Josh squinted past him to read the score on the TV screen. The Red Sox were still losing.

 

 

 

 

Man and cat each have active ways of communicating that do not involve what we normally refer to as language.

Roger A. Caras, A Cat Is Watching