From the air, before the plane banks and turns, I can see my condo building, the Cooper River, the bridge like some mythical creature with its gleaming white skeleton, and as we ascend, the harbor and the shimmering Atlantic, the network of creeks and rivers on the west side of town, where Tony is pouring his first cup of coffee in the little house, the dogs circling the kitchen, waiting to be let out. Beatrice doesn’t like the dogs’ commotion—all that juvenile eagerness—so she’ll remain in his bedroom, on the unmade bed or the chair, until the kitchen is quiet again. Then she’ll pad out, rub her back against his calves while he fixes her breakfast, talks to her.
He talks to the dogs, too, but with them he’s relaxed, his monologue a gentle, easy patter, or, if they’re being stubborn or loud, a mild half-joking reproach. With Beatrice he’s more reserved. “We’re just getting to know each other,” he said when I pointed that out. “I don’t like to be presumptuous.”
“But you call her ‘honey,’” I said.
“She doesn’t mind a little affection,” he explained, “as long as it’s respectful.”
I miss him already, miss the menagerie, the sweet chaos of his cottage, but could I live with him there—or anywhere? It isn’t just the logistical challenge, the merging of two people with busy careers. There’s also my mother, and the teenager I haven’t even met. The thought of all of us together, even for a weekend, unnerves me. We’ll work it all out, Tony says. Maybe he’s right, but that’s almost exactly what Joe Baynard said before our wedding, when I panicked that his family wouldn’t like me. I realize now what I didn’t understand then: What I really feared was that I couldn’t be the wife Joe needed, and that we were both fooling ourselves to think I could be.
* * *
The man next to me—young, smelling like last night’s whiskey—has fallen asleep, his mouth open. When his head flops onto my shoulder, I shift assertively in my seat, and he wakes up. “Oh, sorry,” he says groggily. And then, “You from Charleston?” I nod. “Going to the big city for some fun?”
“Business,” I say, reaching for my briefcase.
Gina has made a copy of what she calls “the cat diary” so that I can finish reading it. I’m accustomed to reviewing documents, scanning them for relevant information, making notes for later reference. But this is so unlike anything I usually come across in my files, these observations of a woman in the guise of her beloved pet, a woman who seems to inhabit the soul of her cat:
My favorite view is from the east window of the parlor. Up here, I can see the brick path down to the river, the two big oaks on either side, the moss hanging from their limbs, the lawn and the water beyond. The windowsill’s just wide enough for me (yes, I’ve put on a little weight) to lie comfortably, and on a sunny day this spot is so warm it puts me to sleep. But the best time for spotting birds is at dusk, when my vision is keenest. Ah, this is heaven! She’ll call me soon, coax me down to the basement apartment, where I’ll sit in her lap while she reads me a story.
And this cat’s a student of history:
Sometimes I can smell the sweat of the ones who toiled here, the human beings who lived in the one-room cabins (long gone) behind the “big house,” who bent over the rows of cotton from dawn to dusk; the women who cooked in the old kitchen—some drunk Yankee burned it down during the war, but you can see the remains of its foundation in the side yard—and hauled the food up to the dining room; the girl who made the beds and swept the floors and once got a whipping for sampling the French perfume on her lady’s dressing table.
Such elegance. And such untold suffering, to maintain it.
And the cat observes her owner with cold objectivity:
Hard to imagine she was once a beauty, this bony old woman with the whispy white hair she doesn’t bother to cut, bundled in a sort of bird’s nest with bobby pins.
But in the last few entries of the diary, Lila Mackay abandons the voice of the cat. The notes are disjointed, the words spilling down the pages as if the author’s falling, the ink smeared:
Make peace with myself. Mistakes. Worse than. Done is done.
Useless, looking back. But the ghost? Lila, he says. Lila. Abandoned trust.
In the end, what’s left of love? Beatrice. Warm weight in my lap.
Before I close my eyes the plane soars into the clouds, an infinite blankness. Down there, I know, Delores reminds my mother to use her napkin, coaxes her to eat another bite of scrambled eggs. Gina sweats on the treadmill, running with all her might, imagining herself with thinner thighs, a tighter butt. My friend Ellen dresses for a day in court—dons a new suit, adds a scarf. Looks in the mirror expecting to see a prosecutor and sees, instead, a grandmother.
And there’s Beatrice. What’s left of love.
Those yellow eyes, so steady. Are they accusing me?
Abandoned trust.
* * *
The lobby of the hotel is white marble and mirrors, minimalist. A couple of chairs on one side, more like sculptures than furniture—nothing you would want to sit in—and the reception desk along the opposite wall, an expanse of gleaming marble. Too clean, I think, for commerce. A young woman stands behind it. She’s as exquisite as the white orchid in the vases behind her. I give her my credit card. She smiles a marble kind of smile. “Your room overlooks the park,” she says.
I can hear Gina: It’s just for one night, so you might as well live it up. And there’s great shopping right next door. I unpack, hang my things in the closet. I’ve brought too much, and in the elegant simplicity of this room all my clothes seem dowdy. Maybe I should go shopping. Gina again: Why don’t you treat yourself, just this once?
I set out with good intentions, but once inside the Time Warner Center I panic, rush past the ground-floor shops—Hugo Boss, Cole Haan; not in my league—and take the escalator to the second floor, where the offerings are less expensive but the stores more crowded. I try on a few things, reject all but one, buy it—more because I don’t want to admit defeat than because I like it. On the way back down, my new dress practically screams from the bag: What were you thinking? It’s cherry red, a slinky knit, too short for court, too loud for an interview with a poet.
Across the street, the park’s a refuge. It’s cold, but the sun has snapped the day alive with runners, babies in strollers, people walking their dogs, all the adults zipped up in practical black and gray, the babies and the fancy little dogs in fashionable outfits.
“Some people have too much money for their own good,” grumbles the old man at the other end of the bench.
I smile a noncommittal I don’t really feel like talking smile, but he’s determined: “There are children in this city who don’t have enough to eat, and look at that!” He points to a fluffy little dog sporting a plaid vest, prancing ahead of its owner. “What a country!” He takes equal offense at the cell phone ringing in my purse. “And those things! It’s an insult to the peace-loving populace!”
I get up, walk away, fish for the phone. “Gina?”
“What’s that noise?” she asks.
“I’m in Central Park.”
“I hate to bother you, but they want to do an interview.”
“Who wants to do an interview?”
“You remember that reporter from the Post and Courier who did the story about pet custody cases? She wrote a follow-up—about the cat case—in this morning’s paper. I guess you didn’t see it.”
“How does she know about the cat case?”
“They’re doing a profile of Judge Clarkson, I guess because he’s retiring, and he was talking about the unusual cases that come through the Probate Court, and he mentioned the cat case. So the reporter called here, and you were busy with a client, so I gave her a little background. She left a message for you, but I forgot to give it to you before you left and—”
“Slow down.”
“And now there’s this guy calling from CNN.”
“I’m not getting this.
“She—the reporter from the paper here—asked me if you were developing a specialty in animal law. And I must have said yes.”
This stops me in my tracks. “Oh, sorry, miss,” says the woman who runs into me with a stroller.
“I knew you’d be mad,” says Gina, “but I don’t see how this could hurt anything.”
“Send me the article. And what were you saying about CNN?”
“The guy who called is in Atlanta, but when I told him you were in New York, he said, great, he’d arrange the interview—”
“Absolutely not.”
“I gave him your number.”
“We’re going to have a talk about this when I get back.”
“What are you doing in the park, anyway? Dr. Freeman’s expecting you at five. Who goes to the Big Apple and hangs out in a park?”
“It’s nice here. Lots of trees.”
“You like the hotel?”
“It’s fine.”
“Pretty cool to have a TV in the bathroom, huh? You can take a bath and watch a movie.”
“I don’t take baths.”
* * *
But when I get back to the hotel that’s exactly what I do. On the bathroom counter there’s a collection of fancy soap, shampoo, and lotion. Lavender body wash, bath oil in little lavender-colored pods, a loofah, a miniature pumice stone. A coupon for 15 percent off on a $300 full-body massage.
I sink into the water, close my eyes, breathe the steam. The warmth takes me back to the apartment with Joe, such a long time ago, the second-floor apartment in the old house on Rutledge Avenue, the claw-footed tub in the dingy bathroom. We both preferred showers, but there was only a handheld sprayer, and the shower curtain wouldn’t close all the way, so we took turns sitting in the tub, one of us bathing while the other aimed the spray. And when I’d had an especially stressful day in court he’d run a hot bath with bubbles, settle me in it, bring me a glass of wine. That bathroom was so small the toilet was practically under the sink, but he made it seem like a palace.
Once, just before our divorce, when we were arguing all the time, he said, “Maybe you should take a hot bath.”
“If you could go back, do it over, would you?” Ellen asked me once a couple of months ago.
“I’d still be me, and he’d still be Joe.”
“Which wasn’t so terrible, was it?”
“Things would have gotten a lot worse if we’d stayed together,” I said.
“Maybe you’d have matured. You’re both decent people with lots of love to give.”
“He still wants what he always wanted. The house on Meeting Street, the Yacht Club, etc. I would have made him miserable.”
“And Susan makes him happy?” Ellen said.
“That has nothing to do with it.”
“I’m just saying—”
“What are you saying?”
“Just that, you know, relationships evolve,” she said. “And you know what I think? I think all your nonsense about not making him happy is … well, it’s just not honest. It’s a cop-out. What you really mean is, he wouldn’t have made you happy. You married him, and then you changed your mind.… Am I onto something?”
“Let’s drop it, okay?”
* * *
The hot bath has made me pleasantly woozy, so I stretch out on the bed, close my eyes. But the noise of the city won’t let me rest, the sirens, the horns, all of them setting off my mental alarm: Is Beatrice okay? And what about Mom? When my cell phone rings, the familiar sound is a relief.
It’s CNN, someone named Jillian who sounds very young, very nervous. It’s such a lucky coincidence, she says, that I happen to be in the city at the same time she’s working on “this in-depth, really fascinating piece about lawyers who advocate for animals,” and when I stop her, explain that my experience in this area is really quite limited, she doesn’t seem at all disappointed, she prattles on and on—“We just want a human face behind the story”—until before I know it I’ve agreed to “a very quick video session that won’t take more than ten minutes,” tomorrow morning. Do I mind coming to the studio? It’s not far from the hotel. I want to say, No, I’m sorry, I don’t have time, but her voice is so plaintive—she wants this so much, she needs it, this young woman at the beginning of her career—that I agree.
Just before I hang up she says, “Oh, and when you come to the reception desk, ask for Brian Hancock. He’ll be doing the interview. I’m just an intern.”