Julia's Daughters

I hear Izzy scream and my head snaps in the direction of her voice. She’s standing at the car hollering for me and I get this weird chill that scares the shit out of me. I drop my backpack on the sidewalk and run toward her, darting in front of a car. The car toots its horn; I ignore it and keep running.

“Izzy!” I don’t know what’s wrong. She’s standing there so she can’t be hurt. “Izzy?” Is it Mom? It can’t be Mom. I just saw her in the lobby.

“Haley! Help me! Mr. Cat got away!” Izzy shrieks, shaking her hand.

I cut between two rows of cars in the hotel parking lot. I’m still running toward her. It seems like it’s taking forever to get to her. “Do you see him?”

“He got out.” She’s blubbering now. I can hardly understand her. “He got out of his kennel! I don’t know how it happened. I don’t know how the door opened! I put him on the ground and—”

I reach out to her and put out both of my hands to rest them on her shoulders. I look right into her eyes. “Did you see which way he went?” I ask her, calmly, even though my heart is pounding and I’m breathless from running. I was afraid she was hurt. It’s just the cat. You can replace a cat. You can’t replace a sister.

“I—I don’t know. That way!” She points in the direction of the highway that has three lanes running in each direction.

I look, but I don’t see him. I just see cars and the busy traffic beyond the parking lot, out on the highway. “You’re sure he went that way?”

She rubs at her runny nose with the back of her hand. “I think he went under that white van.” She points. “But I don’t know! I don’t know. He disappeared.”

I turn to the van she’s pointing to. It’s in the next row, closer to the street. “Okay. You go that way.” I point. “I’ll go this way.”

She takes off.

“Don’t run! You might scare him!”

She slows down, but she’s still trotting.

I move quickly, cutting between the rows, a couple of cars down from the van she pointed out. I keep dropping down to the pavement and looking under the cars. There are cars moving everywhere in the parking lot. People are checking out of their rooms, heading to their destinations. I wonder what will get Mr. Cat first, a car in the parking lot or one on the highway.

I can’t believe Izzy didn’t latch the kennel.

I drop to my knees and look in every direction. No cat. No damned cat. I get up and dart between two more cars.

How could she have not latched the door on the kennel? She loves that cat. Oh, God, she’ll be devastated if he gets killed in this parking lot. I’m still not running, but I move faster. “Do you see him?” I holler to her. “I don’t see him!”

A car goes past me way too fast for a parking lot.

“Slow the hell down,” I yell at the car as it passes me.

“There he is!” Izzy screams. She’s jumping up and down. She’s one row behind me and eight or so spaces over. “That blue car!”

The parking lot is full of blue cars. I drop to my knees yet again and the loose gravel on the pavement hurts. “Which blue car?” I call to her, coming to my feet again. I see paper cups, I see a hair tie, I even see a sock under a car. But no cat.

Izzy’s jumping up and down again. She’s wearing jeans that are too short and a King Tut T-shirt; it occurs to me that I should help her dress better. Not that I’m a fashionista, but she could look way cuter than she does.

“That blue one next to the white one!” Izzy hollers.

I follow her line of vision and I see the car she’s talking about. I drop flat to the ground in front of a parked car.

And I see Mr. Cat. He’s next to the right rear wheel of the blue car.

I jump up and walk as fast as I can without running. And the damned cat shoots out from under the car like he’s on fire.

“Kitty! Kitty! Mr. Cat.” Izzy is calling his name and sobbing as she runs around another car, coming at the cat from the opposite direction as me.

The cat stops right in the middle of the lane between two rows of parked cars and I immediately slow down. “Kitty, kitty, kitty,” I say softly. “That’s a good boy.”

His tail is twitching. He sees me.

“Good kitty. Good boy,” I croon.

Then he takes off and I run after him, cutting between cars to try to head him off before he gets to the highway.

I lose sight of him.

“Haley!” Izzy screams.

As I come out from between the cars into the next row, I catch movement out of the corner of one eye, while spotting the cat out of the other. Izzy screams. The car is going to hit the cat.

I react before I think. The car is so close to me now that I can feel the heat from the engine.

I bring the palm of my hand down on the hood and the car slams on its brakes. “Slow down! Who drives fifty in a parking lot?” I holler at the driver as I cut right in front of his car.

I’ve read of Herculean feats in literature and that’s what it feels like as I cross the last couple of feet to the cat. I know he’s going to take off. I know he’s going to run right for the highway and I know he won’t make it all the way across. I’ll be at the front desk of the hotel asking if they have a shovel so I can extricate Mr. Cat from the pavement in front of the Wendy’s across the street.

But somehow I reach him. For some reason he doesn’t bolt this time. Not his day to die, I guess.

I scoop him up into my arms and I pull him to my chest and I have no idea why, but all of a sudden I’m crying. I could hardly cry when I splattered my sister all over the road and now I’m crying over a stupid cat. A second later, Izzy is in front of me. She’s a sobbing, snotty mess.

She puts her arms out to me and I lower the cat to her. “Hold him tight,” I tell her, wiping my nose with the sleeve of my shirt. “His heart’s beating a mile a minute.”

“Mr. Cat, Mr. Cat, I’m so sorry,” Izzy blubbers.

I hear a car tap its horn and I look up to see the car that almost took out Mr. Cat. I look at the driver really evil-like. Then I put my arm around my little sister and I move her out of the middle of the lane so the car can get by.

We walk together back to our car. I have the key in my pocket. Mom was going to the bathroom one more time before we hit the road, so she gave it to me when I saw her in the lobby.

I hit the unlock button. “Get in,” I tell Izzy. “I’ll get your stuff.”

She’s still crying, but not as hard. She gets into the backseat and closes the door and I open the hatch and put her bag and the cat kennel in quickly, afraid that if Mr. Cat has a death wish, he might come over the backseat and I’ll be running through traffic again.

“Haley?”

I hear Mom’s voice as I close the hatch. I turn around.

“Is this your backpack?” she calls from the sidewalk in front of the hotel. She’s holding it up.

“Yeah,” I call back to her.

I wait for her at the car.

“Why did you leave your—”

“I’ll tell you in a minute,” I say. I take my backpack and her bag from her.

She looks at me and I feel stupid because I know she can tell I’ve been crying. I wipe at my face with my sleeve, enjoying the moment when my arm hurts from the friction. “Just get in,” I whisper.

She stands there looking at me for another second and I see that she looks better than she did a couple of days ago. She still needs to dye her hair and she’s too skinny, but her face doesn’t look so . . . haggard. It actually seems like there’s some color in her cheeks. Maybe this trip is doing her some good.

“Are you okay?” she asks quietly.

I open the hatch. “I’m fine. Let’s just go.”

Once we’re in the car, headed for the interstate, Izzy relates the whole tale of the escaping cat. We go through a doughnut drive-thru place and Mom and Izzy get breakfast sandwiches. My stomach still feels sick from the near cat-astrophe, but I order an iced coffee and Mom gets some of the sour cream doughnuts I like. For later.

“Poor Mr. Cat,” Mom says as we pull away.

She’s handed me all of the stuff from the order and I pass Izzy her sandwich and juice and I start unwrapping Mom’s sandwich for her.

“You’re just lucky your sister was there,” she tells Izzy. “I hope you told her thank you.”

There’s a deafening silence from the backseat. Izzy even stops balling up the paper from her sandwich.

“Izzy Mae,” Mom says. “Your sister saves your cat’s life and you can’t even tell her thank you?”

“Mom.” I say it quietly. I don’t need Izzy to tell me thank you. I’m just glad I was able to save the cat. I’m glad that for once I could do something right. Something that didn’t make people cry. “It’s okay.”

Mom glances at me. “It’s not okay. She can’t keep this up. I won’t have it.”

I meet her gaze. “Let it go,” I say. “Just give her some time.”

Mom opens her mouth to say something and then closes it. Thank God.

A few minutes later we’re on I-90.

“Ninety-five miles to South Bend, Indiana,” I say, and I sip my iced coffee. “Association game or disassociation?”

I glance into the backseat.

Izzy’s still holding the cat in her lap; I can hear him purring.

She meets my gaze and for once she doesn’t look away.

Thank you, she mouths.

I smile at her and for the second time this morning, tears come to my eyes. You’re welcome, I mouth back.