My mother’s sister was almost Catwoman. Once, she showed me her kitty ears and a pointy little mask she wore for a Spandex audition in the sixties. It was down to her and one other woman, she said. She was floating off to Key West with some guy she met at the store and missed their call. Since then, she’d had eight lives – whiskers of them included us. She didn’t need more. She had something, she had it, a wow no one could put their finger on.
Strictly, Judy wasn’t my aunt, more of a fraction of an aunt, a slither. She was Mom’s half-sister, the bad half or the good, depending on how you feel. They didn’t meet until Mom was nineteen. Mom stood with a red carnation in her hat. Judy stepped off the train in crocodile shoes, a waft of perfume and a dizzying laugh. Later, Mom had to tell me it all in slow motion. The man in the raincoat propping up a weepy girlfriend looked over her shoulder. The conductor loosened his grip on a ticket-dodging kid and watched Judy slink past. She only had eyes for red carnations.
The women stared at each other like a before and after on a makeover show. Mom looked at Judy and saw her future, if she was a different sort of girl. And Judy saw what she could have been like when she was young, if she’d never learned to walk in heels. Walking right is something ‘a girl shouldn’t learn till she’s twenty-one’, Judy said. Mom never got the hang of it, so she married a surveyor.
I was nothing like either of them. I wanted to be Catwoman, but my posture sucked. I didn’t think I’d ever be someone who always wears heels – what happens when you have to run?
Every Christmas I sent Judy cards of snowmen and nativity scenes with kitty ears and masks drawn on in magic marker. She sent us postcards of red buses and monkeys in temples. She was part of our family like a cat who comes and goes, but mostly goes. We left a hole in the door all the same.
When my grandfather died, Judy returned from what Mom called ‘swanning about’. Her pale hands fluttered over her black dress with white ribbon on the trim. The inside of her purse winked at me, a glint of satin, pink as a kitten’s mouth. Cosmetics sparkled like foil-wrapped candies.
‘Do you want some?’ she said, offering lipstick.
I took off the cap, stared at the bullet of the tip.
‘Judy, what are you thinking? She’s only seven,’ Mom said. She glared as if red was tattooed to my mouth. ‘Lana, go scrub your face!’
I smeared my glamorous mouth into the Joker in the mirror.
‘There’s no harm in it,’ Judy said. ‘Shouldn’t us girls look our best for Dad one last time?’
Nothing bothered her: worry belonged to a whole other species of women who didn’t paint their nails. They’d both known different fathers, I think. Judy’s was a man with a sandy quiff and a wink, popping to a bar to sell electrical appliances without a warranty, and not popping back when she was ten. Mom’s father was older. He huddled in a retirement village. Women waved Mom over in aprons they wore to make packet soup or watch The Price is Right. They were inconsolable.
‘Your dad’s chucked me,’ an English lady called Pisky said.
Mom wasn’t sure what to say. Later, she told me my grandfather was no longer going to the seventy-four-year-old woman’s house for tea. He’d switched to mango juice and pruning the little ball-shaped trees outside the door of a woman of seventy-two.
I was listening to it all, figuring things out. Judy, me and Mom had the same eyes, but Judy’s were cat’s eyes on a highway. Mom’s were quiet as lamps that aren’t plugged in. Everyone said Judy was like her father, while Mom took after her mom. Who I was wasn’t clear. ‘She’s so like her mother!’ they said, when I organised my dolls by hair colour on the shelf. ‘She’s just like Judy!’ they said, when I laughed in the wrong place or refused to wear nylon because I got scratchy. I didn’t like how people said it. It was like they were squeezing me into a hand-me-down leather suit, tattooing on a cat mask I’d be stuck with for ever, even if I became a dentist. I fought it, doing my best not to be Mom or Catwoman, and just be me. Whatever that was.
For a while, that was some sort of GI Jane. Studying for my exams, I wore boots and combat pants like a get-out clause. I walked and Judy winced. Mom frowned at the sound of me, like the Hulk clunking downstairs for coffee and muffins. I wasn’t ladylike, they agreed, whatever that means. For Mom, ladylike was running water into the sink so no one would ever hear her go to the bathroom. For Judy, it was wiggles and frills. Even when she had to walk with a cane she wrapped the handle in lace and wore satin gloves so no one saw the veins in her hands stand to attention as she leaned on the stick. Another thing in her ladylike package was her laugh. That husky purr. Even as an ageing woman, if you heard her, you’d turn around expecting to see a girl practising for the sexiest laugh contest. Mom didn’t approve.
‘Is it really suitable for a woman your age?’ she said, as Judy bypassed the thermals in the outlet store for the silk camisoles. None of us were sure how old she really was. (Judy said ‘a lady never reveals her bust size or her age’.)
‘If you don’t feel like a lady in your underwear, how can you expect to act like one?’ she said to the underpants in the packet.
Mom came back alone to buy a plaid bathrobe for Judy’s birthday. We found it over the canary’s cage with instructions to sit the cage by the window and let the bird fly once a day. Judy had flitted off again, migrated to Spain with a man who had a theory it was cheaper than heating his house in Colorado all winter.
Mom often said it was a pity Judy never found ‘the one’ and settled down. She had to: she married a man who began most of his sentences with ‘actually…’ I don’t think Judy felt she missed out. I only heard her mention marriage once. She’d been seeing some widower for a while. Mom was doing backflips.
‘Do you think you’ll get married?’
Judy’s laugh meowed as if she’d caught her tail in a mousetrap.
‘Married? If you love cake would you want only Twinkies for thirty years?’
I started thinking of red velvet cake, baked Alaska, whoopie pie…
Catwoman had something, a secret that didn’t make marriage necessary. No one could figure out how, even on her eighth life, Judy always had boyfriends. That’s what she called them, boyfriends. We’d stop by her apartment to find her pouring coffee, old men blushing, laughing, like being a boyfriend flushed the years away. I’d never called anyone a boyfriend myself. Once, when I was seven, I punched this boy in the face, POW! He showed up at my door the next day, asking me to play.
‘She’s so like Judy,’ Dad said.
‘Go away. You smell like candy apples,’ I said, slamming the door in the boy’s face. I can’t remember his name, but I remember his smell, sticky sweet, like if I licked him I’d get toothache.
In my senior year, I got married, at least mentally, to a boy in my class called Noah. I wasn’t Catwoman. I didn’t go on dates. Noah and I only spoke in English, and not to each other. We spoke via Much Ado, The Great Gatsby, one comment laid on top of the other, agreeing, sparring, intertwined. His cold-looking hands fidgeted under a gangly jumper. I looked at him and promised to see him, only him, when I saw movies. I was Superman; he was Lois Lane. He was Rhett Butler, I was Scarlett. I promised to impose only Noah’s face onto every movie kiss and advert.
I doubted Catwoman ever felt such devotion. Judy hopped from one boyfriend to another. She found them all over, even where people only talk to say they have the wrong change or don’t need a bag – supermarkets, petrol stations, restaurants, the timber place Mom called when the fence wanted fixing.
‘How much did you pay for it?’ Judy asked.
Mom told her. Judy shook her head. ‘I could have got it cheaper,’ she said.
Whatever Mom bought, her sister said she could have got it cheaper with her ‘blonde discount’ – the bathroom sink from the plumbing place, shingles for the shed. Mom refused to take her to the builders’ yard EVER again. Every time Judy giggled, twining her smile around the guy behind the counter like a silky tail on a leg. She always got things at cost.
‘It’s embarrassing on a woman her age. There’ll come a day when that discount of hers will run out,’ Mom said.
It didn’t. Catwoman’s lives ran out just in time, and her secret was mine.
On the Saturday before she died, Judy sat by the window like she was soaking the sunlight into her skin for later. She invited me around for tea, just me. It was unusual enough to seem important, like she was going to leap off the rooftop and show me she really had been Catwoman all along, but when I got there she just poured Earl Grey, feathers on the cuff of her cardigan dipping into her china cup. I sipped, wondering how long I should stay. I liked Judy, but if I liked her too much Mom would think we were forming some sort of gang against her.
‘So, you’re not courting?’ said Judy.
‘No, I haven’t time.’ I was glad of study. Books were camouflage for a girl who didn’t know how to stand out.
Judy nodded, like she heard beyond words. The red in my cheeks ratted me out.
‘I have something for you, if anything ever happens to me: an inheritance. It’s for you. Only.’
‘Don’t be stupid! Nothing’s going to happen,’ I said.
My laughter wafted over the fact she was getting on, and ‘if anything happens’ meant when.
Judy would have loved her funeral if it hadn’t been, you know, her funeral, and Mom hadn’t picked out her clothes. Mom insisted on a suit jacket and blouse buttoned to the neck, like Judy might have some sort of interview at the pearly gates and these clothes could stop her getting fresh with St Peter. I thought we should let Judy wear the kitty ears and cat mask, but Mom said it was too sad, to be dressed forevermore as someone she almost was.
There were men outside the church just shuffling around with no one to laugh at their jokes or ask interesting questions about the responsibilities their jobs must entail. Who these men were, we had no idea. Mom said Judy always landed on her feet, except the day she fell down the stairs. No matter what, she always landed herself a man. And here they were, jammed into a room with silk flowers after the service. I’d never seen so many stages of frowns on middle-aged men. Their whole faces looked like they’d never recover from the downturn.
‘Incredible woman,’ one man said to another. It sounded like it had a capital I and W like a superhero: the Incredible Woman, thwarting bad guys with her laugh, the toss of her hair like a cape.
‘Amazing,’ said the man opposite him.
The men didn’t look each other in the eye, two strangers raising a toast to a woman who, I supposed, both had shared their beds with.
Later, I heard one man say ‘catnip’.
‘First time I met Juju, I didn’t think she was that pretty, you know, no prettier than any other woman – but she had something about her, like catnip,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t keep away.’
‘Who could?’ the other man said. ‘To catnip.’
Chink chink. Two raised glasses met.
We drove to Judy’s apartment later to clear out her stuff and claim my inheritance. I pictured a boatload of stolen cash wrapped in red ribbon, a velvet pouch full of diamonds and a signed confession she’d been a spy. ‘Inheritance’ sounded like a big deal: formal, important. Judy told me like she had some sort of cat sense she was dying, though she couldn’t have. It was sudden, she slipped on a juice box outside. There was a note taped to an ottoman in the bedroom.
Lana’s Inheritance, it said.
‘Inheritance!’ Mom said. ‘Would you get a load of that!’
The stuff Mom once said about her sister with a sigh now had exclamation marks and a smile, happier in the past tense. She opened Judy’s wardrobe and slung clothes in a sack. I opened the ottoman, filled to the brim with oil paintings, the real Mona Lisa… who knew that? It was full of perfume, that’s it: all identical, dozens of old-fashioned glass bottles Judy would have said held ‘cologne’. I opened a cap and sniffed. The perfume didn’t smell like much, not romance or moonlight, or some girl chasing a balloon in Paris like adverts wanted me to believe. It wasn’t spicy or flowery or anything in particular, but inhaling it I remembered Judy instantly, so vividly I could have been on a train with her on the way to the zoo, ice cream on my fingers washed with her handkerchief and spit. I closed the lid and stashed the bottles in the closet in my room when I got home. I didn’t know what to do with them, but I felt like an ass throwing away anything called an inheritance.
It was almost Christmas when I considered the perfume again. There was a costume party. Everyone had to go as a dead poet. I hadn’t a clue who to be. I clawed through boxes of clothes in the attic, raking up what Judy wore when she was young: a cat mask, miniskirts, circle dresses, cottony prints that believed life was as simple as daisies. It seemed like a start – the clothes had the look of a more lyrical time. I hung the dresses on the hook on my door and was overcome by the scent – a draught of my aunt wafted into the room. I missed her, suddenly, so hard I had to sit down.
I put on a dress I couldn’t imagine Catwoman in. It was covered in poppies, rippling like a field. I walked into the party alone. It was just like I thought – random. There were a few Allen Ginsbergs covering zits with fake beards. There was a guy in lederhosen for no reason I could name. The girls took it more seriously: poetry books poked out their purses, but other than what the jackets said it was impossible to tell who they were. Amazingly, one girl spoke to me. Stephanie. She walked over in a black flapper dress, beads jittering.
‘Razors pain you…’ she said. ‘I love your costume, it suits you.’
I shrugged, not really anyone (at a push I’d say Anne Sexton or Plath).
Stephanie smiled, hanging, like she wanted to say more but didn’t know what.
‘Who do you think I am?’ a tall Ginsberg interrupted.
‘I have no idea.’
‘How about me?’ Another Ginsberg, a short one, was at my side. Then another. Then a kid in a sheepy sweater I think wanted to be Ted Hughes. They were all offering me drinks and desperate to hear my opinion of who I thought they were. I thought about Judy, her giggle squeezing through a crowd. Is this what she felt like? I was having a hard time not laughing myself. I looked through the poets. The boy from English was dressed in pyjamas and a hunter hat. Kurt Cobain/Noah watched me from across the room.
It wasn’t Catwoman who looked back at me in the mirror in my bathroom. I didn’t have a giggle or a purr, more of a snicker muffled by one hand. Yet, something was different. I looked the same, but guys who never usually spoke to me all wanted to give me a ride home. On Monday, I paid attention to my clothes. I couldn’t wait for Noah to look at me like Kurt Cobain again. He was in the library, so were a couple of Ginsbergs from the party – except now they just had names like Aidan or Chris. I browsed the shelves. Noah looked up, and turned back to his book. No one else even glanced.
The poppy dress swayed on the back of the door, not smelling of ice cream, daytrips or Judy, just detergent. There was a flatness in my stomach, the feeling I had at the party ironed out. Catwoman never had this problem; men saw her and purred her name in her ear. I sat in my room thinking about Judy, wishing I knew her secret. I took out a bottle of her perfume and dabbed it on my wrists before I went to the Korean for snacks.
The shopkeeper watched me like I might slip something in my pocket.
‘Anything else?’ he said.
‘No.’
‘Are you sure? Look…’
He came around the counter to show me the vegan stuff he’d just started stocking, the soy milk and herbs. He kept talking, grabbing things off the shelves, showing me like he couldn’t let me leave before I approved.
I dabbed on the scent the next morning. Noah pulled out my chair in the canteen, a few of the guys from the party watched. Some guy called Chris stopped by our table to invite me to a party, the others smiled over, all eyes. Judy would have approved.
‘I’m sorry, I’m busy, maybe next time,’ I told Chris. I laughed for no reason, it fizzed out of me like shaken cola. I was fizzing from everyone looking at me so hard. It was a rush.
Noah pulled his sleeves over his dermatitis. The museum was a birdcage of a building full of crawling and still things, wood-boring bees under glass and stuffed animals behind velvet ropes: dead foxes, perched crows, a lion with bullet holes in its back. We looked at sad holes in the lion’s flank. Noah took a Band-Aid out his pocket, crossed the velvet rope and stuck it on the stuffed animal’s wounds. I kissed him. Who wouldn’t? He tasted milky sweet like rice pudding. We left holding hands.
It was raining. Walk/Don’t Walk smeared orange light on the wet street like jelly. We crossed to a café and sat behind some college guys. They all looked sort of the same: handsome and sure and clean. They looked at me and huddled. One came over. I wasn’t good at this, navigating how to be polite to some guy while still making the one beside me feel like no one else existed. WWJD – What Would Judy Do?
‘Sounds like a cool party, I’ll see if I can make it,’ I laughed. Where did it come from? I was one of those girls, laughing all over the place. I couldn’t keep it in. Noah fidgeted with his sleeves and went to the restroom. He came back to find some guy sat in his seat talking, talking, as I laughed and laughed. Noah hovered at the counter, unsure how to come back. I wanted to stand up and go over, but I didn’t. The college guy was looking at me so much, listening to everything I said.
‘I’ve got a surprise for you,’ Noah said outside.
He rolled up his sleeve to show me L A N A, my name scratched into his arm, bloody, indelible, a series of cat scratches. I didn’t know what to say. Why did he do that? We stood outside the café, college guys pressed to the window breathing on the glass, drawing hearts in their breath. One drew a penis. I laughed. Noah rolled down his sleeve.
‘Call me when you get home?’ he said.
In the reflection of the café window I saw myself smile vaguely, random guys and Noah all looking. I wanted to kiss him, lay my hand on his red scars, something, but I didn’t, I was just looking. It felt like a weight, everyone looking for something from me to make their day. How did Catwoman manage it? I couldn’t recall Judy ever looking troubled. Sad stuff happened and she sat by the window, closed her eyes and let the sun bounce off her, Catwoman to the bone. I didn’t think I could ever be like that. Noah looked so sad, lost. I imagined my name scarring him all his life, something to be explained to whomever he married, doctors, swimmers, holiday-goers, coroners, next of kin. I was an identifying mark. I’ll throw away the perfume when I get home, I decided. I visualised unscrewing silver lids, pouring bottle after bottle down the toilet, flushing it into the ocean to make irresistible fish or something.
‘Later,’ I said, walking towards Mom’s car pulling in on the corner.
I turned around. The college guys were piling out of the café and looking in my direction; so was Noah. I stood a little taller and put on a wiggle so as not to disappoint them. I imagined Catwoman twitching a tail, slinking into the night. It was less than a block to the car, Mom and a trip to the mall – shoes on sale, a shirt to be returned, it was a long walk. I felt those guys watching me, right now, all of them. The image of myself tipping the perfume away disappeared faster than my breath in the cold. I just couldn’t see it. Catwoman would get it, maybe no one else does. Their eyes felt like sun on my skin. I felt their eyes on my hips wind my walk into a tick-tock. Who can fight what they inherit? I used it. Sure, there’d be other boys, sad boys, desperate guys, men showing off, scars, bad tattoos; I tried not to think about it. Not yet. I couldn’t imagine walking through life knowing no one was watching me walk away.