CHAPTER FOUR

The world looked like something thrown together in the dark.

A man on a roof garden in the distance set out a white table and white chairs. They were heavy; he had to drag them into place. When he was done he stood and looked at the sunrise, hands on his hips, like the sun was barely on time.

The sounds of orderlies and nurses saying good morning made me dress quickly, a plaid blouse I never wore, with mother-of-pearl snap buttons, and tight stretch pants, the kind that look like black leotards. Mom had brought the clothes the evening before, and I wondered what she thought of what I usually wear.

The room had an almost perfectly square mirror framed in stainless steel. My face looked back at me, gray eyes. From the front I couldn’t see the bite taken out of my head. Even when I turned my head, I couldn’t make out the rat bite in my scalp.

Dr. Breen made her one-knock entrance, wearing dove-gray pants and another scarf, silver-blue silk, and something expensive under her white coat—russets and port blues.

“How was your night?” she asked.

“Good,” I said. Even when I had slipped into sleep, nurses had awakened me, in and out of the room all night, making sure I knew where the call button was, “If you need to tinkle.”

I felt like my skull was floating in midair, but I was sure if I said so Dr. Breen would send me downstairs to have my head fastened securely. The bed had a little wing, like a desktop, that swung into place if the patient wanted to eat or rest her elbows. The wing had locked into place, and I had been forced to squirm my way out of the sheets.

“If you can wrestle one of our world-champion beds,” said Dr. Breen, “you can’t be doing too badly.”

“It’s policy,” said the orderly. “I know you can walk, you know it. But policy says I wheel you down to the lobby.” It was a chrome wheelchair, thin gray rubber wheels. There was a traffic jam—gurneys, wheelchairs, piles of laundry. The orderly pushing me said, “Beep beep,” and another one said, “Beep yourself.”

“I’ll tell Dad about my accident,” I said as Mom drove down the Fruitvale Avenue off-ramp. I meant: Don’t you tell him.

Mom made one of her nonlaughs, not ha so much as puh. Meaning: I wouldn’t dream of interrupting his honeymoon. Although the idea must have had its appeal. Mom preferred to communicate with Dad through her attorney, a long-legged woman who looked like Bugs Bunny without the ears. Still, Mom was probably tempted by the idea of calling Dad away from bodysurfing to let him know his daughter was expected to live.

The living room looked unfamiliar, as though I had been gone for months. I felt like a prospective buyer: My, all this space. It’s the color scheme, pale as possible. Mom never uses the fireplace. It’s painted white, too, inside and out, even the andirons—Baroque white, the most expensive latex on the market.

The house was populated with cherry-colored heliconias in the dining room, and slick green monstera in the hall. On the landing of the stairs there was a broad-leafed philodendron that looked like a meat-eater. It always left a drool of water on my arm as I brushed by.

“Myrna tried to climb inside my dresser,” Mom was saying, “and she tried Grandma’s old cedar chest, and she tried the garage.”

“It’s a miracle she knows what to do,” I said.

“She doesn’t,” said Mom.

Myrna’s mother, Katie, had given birth to Myrna’s litter in a drawer full of screwdrivers and rusty nails, and my mom’s family had once kept a cat who gave birth on the engine of a Chrysler. Grandpa had been experiencing a bad oil leak in the car and had a habit of checking the dipstick, or a terrible thing could have happened.

I was just in time. Myrna was in my bedroom closet, in a box Mom had put in among the sandals and worn-through running shoes. Myrna looked up at me as I made the little tsk tsk noises my family makes at cats. Even my dad does it—a habit he kept from his marriage with Mom. Our family never calls “kitty kitty” or whistles or calls a name. We make the crisp sound people make with their tongues against their teeth, the sound that usually means shame, shame.

Myrna usually rose up to meet my touch, a calico cat with tobacco-gold and brunette patches and a white underbelly. Now she arched her back, radiant with whatever feline hormones rush through a cat when she goes into labor. This was her first litter, and she put a forepaw against the side of the sagging Green Giant creamed corn box, bracing herself.

Pink cat water blotted the towel at the bottom of the box. Mom says cats are dumb as doorstops, but she is the one to give Myrna chicken liver. Myrna’s flanks heaved. I murmured encouragement, wondering what reassurance she could possibly derive from a member of an entirely different species telling her everything was okay. Myrna made what sounded like a song, or a mating moan. And then she would relax, purring so loudly you could hear it all the way across the room.

I told myself I felt good, and I did, but a ringing in my ears made me sit at the edge of my bed. I talked to Myrna from where I sat, and she made a gentle trilling noise through her nose.

Audrey was asleep in her cage, a white hump almost entirely covered by cedar chips. Rowan had rescued her from a snake wholesaler, the subject of a video his dad had made. Audrey was a female white mouse and had been scheduled to be a python’s lunch. Every time I came home I checked to make sure Myrna had left the mouse alone.

Newspaper articles about Dad decorated my bulletin board along with my Wild Creatures of Africa calendar and pictures I had photocopied from books, the 1912 Olympics, the first year women divers had competed. The black-and-white divers—gray and light gray—smiled out at our world, carefully posed photographs. Even the photo of Sarah “Fanny” Durak, the best swimmer of her era, was a shot the cameraman had arranged with care, the swimmer pretending to be about to leap from poolside in her cap and boxy bathing suit. She had scandalized the world by wearing a one-piece—before then, women swam in a kind of skirted, layered outfit. The only action photo from that period was a blur, an unnamed diver in what looked like a simple forward-dive tuck, her momentum and the early photographic equipment turning her into a ghost.

“Record Award in Cracked Foundation Suit” was tacked to the board beside “Out of Court Settle in Landslide,” a headline I had never thought made as much sense as it should. If a house tumbled downhill in record rains, or a cellar filled with long-stored fuel oil, Dad was there to help the owners get what they deserved.

One celebrated case was featured in the most time-yellowed of the articles, Dad standing with his hands on his hips, his suit jacket hanging over one arm. His hair was longer then, mussed by the wind. He was always unknotting his tie, rolling up his sleeves, or putting more clothes on, whatever he could to keep going. “Harvey Chamberlain surveys lead-poisoned land,” read the caption. Kids had been playing in the dirt for generations. Dad sued the oil company that owned the land, and dozens of families shared the multi-million-dollar settlement.

It had been so sudden, Dad announcing that he was marrying his secretary, that he would be back in ten days, say hi to my mother. Even Mom, always ready to make some ironic noise or shake her head like she was in on another one of life’s jokes, was quiet for a long time. And when she spoke about it at all, it was to say, “He’s marrying her,” in disbelief.

Everyone talks about new life, how precious it is, but sometimes I wonder. The first kitten looked like a dark sock soaked in snot. Myrna got to work, washing, preening away the umbilical thread.

I found myself sitting with my head crooked to one side, making sure nothing fell out.