CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Myrna’s six kittens were all dark and long haired, and looked like very furry hamsters. Gradually they turned into cats—acrobats, climbing the living room drapes, boxing the grape ivy, thundering up and down stairs. I sat and watched them, calling them the way my family does, that little noise with my tongue. Still, it was obvious that Myrna would never lose her obsession with her litter. She would remain a single-minded, frantically devoted mother forever, huge cats hanging onto her nipples.

All Mom had to do was flash a few Polaroids at her customers, and when someone said, “What darling kittens!” it was easy to find new homes. We kept one, a gray-blue male Mom called Bucket. When all the other kittens were gone, Myrna didn’t notice. Maybe she couldn’t count.

Mom attended the sentencing, dressed in a somber wool skirt and jacket she rarely wore. She sat with Georgia and me at the back of the courtroom. We had never discussed whether or not she would come along. When the morning came, she said that she would drive us, and it was plain that she intended to sit there, too, whatever happened. I was wearing a new navy-blue skirt and a white blouse, no jacket; I looked like a stewardess on a hot day.

Dad wore a suit, a new gray three-piece. Cindy wore a sherbet outfit thing, with a yellow scarf, and a costume jewelry insect on her breast, like someone auditioning for hostess at a pancake restaurant. I almost said something to Georgia about what awful clothes, but Cindy had drawn on her lipstick badly, one point of her upper lip higher than the other, and sat straight up in her chair, no one to either side of her.

Montie Carver and Jack spoke before the judge arrived, quiet, heads together, nodding. Jack had grown a mustache, and it made him look heavier, years older. Montie had a tiny Band-Aid on the bridge of his nose.

When the judge arrived we all stood. She had a new pair of glasses, glittering gold frames.

I heard what was said, but the words sounded unreal to me. The sounds of shoes squeaking on the polished tile floor and the tiny whirring of the computers were much more loud and clear than the lumbering sounds of human speech.

When the judge read the sentencing agreement, people in the audience turned to each other with satisfied expressions, and a couple of people clapped.

I didn’t expect what happened next and would have fled the room, except I couldn’t rise from my chair, and I had to sit there, unable to make a move.

Even afterward, in the fish restaurant in Berkeley, I was numb and caught up by tiny details, the salt on the crackers, the purple cabbage in the coleslaw. The restaurant had a view of San Francisco Bay. I felt it was wrong to be here, as if we were celebrating, even though I know that mourners often treat themselves to decent food; life is hard enough, they might as well enjoy the chowder.

Georgia and my mother made conversation about a stilt or a shearwater, some sort of bird, hunting lunch at the edge of the bay. Georgia liked wildlife, but Mom rarely commented on the behavior of nature. This particular waterfowl got a lot of comment, dodging persistently among the lapping waves far below the restaurant. “I’m not one of those people who would like to be a bird,” Mom said.

“Paul said to send his best,” said Georgia as the plates arrived, as though the commencement of serious eating was somehow ceremonial. The waitress got us all set, tartar sauce in little paper cups, and then Mom and Georgia picked up their forks.

If I had said anything at all, I would have said how surprised I was. I had not expected the handcuffs—the way he walked hunched beside the bailiff, suit jacket buckled outward from his chest.