Christmas Week dawns clear, bright, cold but snow-less. It doesn't seem quite right.
It's about this time each year that I'm struck with a mindless, manic need to clean house - closets, drawers, forgottten niches that I haven't looked at all year, shelves, cabinets, shoe trees all become targets. I stock up on bleach, trash bags, Pledge and floor polish and attack room by room, brutally tossing out anything I find that serves no purpose, dusting what can't be moved and re-arranging the rest. This is no holds barred, full fledged war against junk and sentimentality. Blinds are ripped from their holders and tossed into a Lysol bath, bookcases emptied and restocked, jewelry matched, pictures windex'd to an inch of their lives, silverware sorted and inventoried. This year even 10 years worth of cd's will be alphabetized and categorized - there's no stopping the energy or dedication that springs from this internal need to organize, weed out, clean up, clear away and start again. It's an exhausting process but at the end the sense of satisfaction is enormous.
The roots of this battle go all the way back to my childhood. When it was time to clean my room, I simply piled everything in the middle of the floor and started in - it was the only way I wouldn't be tempted to cut corners or take half measures. I set no store by old yearbooks or keepsakes, have no interest in keeping pressed flowers or prom dresses. I like each year to be a clean slate with as little history as possible and an uncluttered future. All this purging has side effects, as if by showing no mercy to the physical, my emotional housekeeping seems to get done as well and I feel clearer, stronger, more grounded and in touch, adequately armed and ready to face a new year. The past year is put in its place, fenced in and forgiven.
Optimism and reality always seems to be at odds within me but as the new year approaches, I like to think it will be a turnaround year.
This is the year, I tell myself, that my friend Henry will find work - respectable, living wage work that he will come to like and do well. He will regain his confidence and humor and purpose. This is the year that my friend Liv's baby will come into the world and her life will be forever changed, I hope for the better. This is the year that my friend Trisha will become pain free, my friend Sammy will find sobriety, my cousin Linda will be published and my musician friends will prosper. This is the year my photography will pay off.
Well, perhaps. But if not, other things may turn around - and even if they don't, we keep on keepin' on.
It may be the idea rather than the reality of a fresh start that inspires us to do better, to be better. At the very least, I will begin with uncluttered closets and organized silverware.
They came for turkey and all the trimmings - cornbread and cranberry sauce, hot coffee, music and warmth. Mostly men, mostly older, mostly black, many disabled - they came through the door and got in line for a meal, shuffling and hobbling, but all with a shaky smile. It was the day after Christmas and the kitchen was open.
There were the veterans, the homeless, the unemployed. Some walked on their own, some with canes, more than one or two in wheelchairs. Those that could help others did so respectfully, there was no pushing or shoving for a place in line. Just before the food was served, a woman's voice, strong and clear, spoke a prayer and every other voice joined her in the "amen". Sunshine streamed through the red curtained windows, a tiny Christmas tree sat on each table, and the men gathered in small groups with plates piled high, while local musicians played "Goodnight, Irene" and "Sweet Relief". There was talk of the old days when the likes of Chuck Berry and Hank Williams had stopped by, when Elvis had played just down the street, when there had been work and a prosperous red light district in walking distance, this last drawing a frown or two from the serving staff but nothing more. When they finished, the men left, some with foil covered paper plates carefully balanced in one hand, and each with a tiny, colored Christmas package in the other. As Christmas celebrations went, I suppose it wasn't much, but for those who have so little, it might have been everything.
I wondered about all the things I didn't know - did they have homes to go to and families waiting, where had they spent Christmas, how had they gotten to this place in their lives and at what cost. How did they fill their days and keep warm, who - if anyone - cared for or about them. What memories went with them and what lay ahead for these forgotten and unimportant people that are everywhere in this city and who we try so hard not to see or think about, or worse, dismiss as undeserving.
There was a lesson here, about charity and openheartedness, about hands reaching out to help with no strings attached, about dignity and fate and true Christmas spirit. In charge of it all was a diminuitive, elfin-looking, soft spoken and very old black woman wearing an apron and a hairnet. She passed out plates and hugs with equal efficiency, cleared tables and refilled coffee cups, knew everyone's name. First, she said to me, You have to feed their bellies, then you can worry about their souls.
My grandmother - of whom it could be said, was neither a frequent church goer nor a noticeably devout Baptist - did usually succumb to an act of charity during the holidays, making large donations to Goodwill or the Salvation Army, sometimes both. Sitting beside her in the cavernous old Cambridge church one Sunday, I watched her listen to the new minister - young, fiery, eloquent - and passionate about the plight of orphans at Christmas. Nana's eyes sparkled when called upon to share her blessings with these poor, unwanted, homeless children and after services she sought out the new minister and volunteered her money, her time, and the members of her family to the cause of providing these unfortunate orphans with a proper Christmas.
The family's reactions were mixed to this. My daddy agreed without a second thought, offering up the old Mercury station to deliver food and gifts while my mother looked on in distaste at the suggestion that she participate but my Aunt Helen was appalled. Orphans? she asked, her delicately plucked eyebrows arched in surprise, Certainly not! I have no time to spare for illegitimate urchins! Not to mention that I have my position to consider! Lock jawed and grim faced, Nana glared at her. Helen, she snapped, It's an orphanage, for heaven's sake, not a brothel! Her sister-in-law flushed but gave not an inch, It's out of the question, Alice, she said firmly, Edgecomb and I have already made plans. Out of town, she added as an afterthought.
Noblesse oblige, my dear, my Uncle Eddie smoothly intervened while pouring martinis and Aunt Helen's mouth dropped open in shock, We'll be delighted to help, Alice, just tell us where and when. He handed his wife a glass, steadying her hand at the same time and saying none too quietly, Close your mouth, dear, you'll catch flies.
Stricken at this betrayal and the potential horror of having to deal with the lower classes, my Aunt Helen was momentarily speechless.
Turkeys were bought by the shopping basketful, canned vegetables amassed at an amazing rate. Plans were made for fresh bread to be baked and gallons of milk to be collected, fudge and brownies were to be made and toys, games and books were to be gathered. Nana's back porch overflowed with dolls and puzzles and toy dump trucks, all of which were wrapped - green foil for girls, red for boys - Nana's lodge friends donated stuffed animals and coloring books, cable sweater sets and denim overalls, wool socks and cartoon underwear. There was a music box, a half dozen snow globes, a lighted makeup mirror, a monopoly game. Each night we wrapped and ribboned gifts while Nana planned out the menu and made endless lists of who had given what and who was supposed to be where, when and doing what. That Christmas morning dawned bright, cold and snowing moderately. My grandmother briskly organized the caravan of cars from her upper class Belmont home and led the way to The New England Home for Little Wanderers. We were all present and accounted for, even my Aunt Helen came although once we reached the old building in not the most prestigious Boston neighborhood, she thought better of carrying her purse and insisted that Uncle Eddie lock it in the trunk of the Lincoln.
Hearts were mended that day and untended souls were nourished. Perhaps that of my Aunt Helen was among them if only for a brief time. It was, after all, Christmas.
Ruthie's doll collection took up most of her room and she treasured each one, the damaged ones more so than the intact ones. After her father's death, she had quietly packed each and every one in boxes stuffed with straw and moved them to the basement where they remained until she married and moved to East Ferry. Then, one by one, they began to reappear.
There were ragdolls and baby dolls, dolls that cried and wet and blinked their eyes, costumed dolls and ones that said Mama if you pressed their bellies. Some were missing arms or legs or eyes, some wore torn clothing, one had been sliced open and jaggedly restitched with red thread - the scar went from throat to thigh - and each had a name and a history. Ruthie had swept and dusted and painted a room in the attic, put up curtains and built shelves, added a rocking chair and a small tea table with two mismatched chairs, a day bed with a gingham cover. Here she arranged and tended her dolls, repairing what she could, covering what she couldn't, and remembering. It was a room built on pain and intense, overwhelming sadness, buried memeories of incest and alcoholic rages and helplessness, of a child's inability to fight back and a mother's failure to protect. It had ended with a death and a secret burial but for Ruthie the abuse remained fresh, the damage had been done. She had salvaged what she could of her childhood and her dolls and tried to start again but as little as a raised voice - if only in exasperation -
could take her back and she would run to the attic in tears, run for the safety and sanctuary of her dolls and the illusion of being happy. Her husband and daughters were troubled by her behavior and mystified at her refusal to talk about it - they learned to let her be and work through it alone but they watched and worried, fearing that one day she might not want to return from the doll room.
If it had been twenty or thirty years later, Ruthie might have found a counselor or a therapy group or a friend who had similar experiences and who would understand. She might have confronted her demons and beaten them back but she was a rural and poorly educated woman from a tiny island community that kept its secrets well. Appalling as her childhood had been, no one would have welcomed her making it public. So she kept her doll room, even after her daughters were grown and raising families of their own, even after her husband had given up and turned into little more than a bewildered but companionable stranger.
Ruthie died in her doll room one late summer night. Alone and without ever having found the strength to speak of her abuse, she simply climbed the attic stairs, gathered her most loved dolls, and swallowed a bottle of sleeping pills. The letter she left for her husband told it all - everything she had kept secret for all her life spilled out in graphic detail. I love you and I'm sorry, she wrote, but surviving has gotten too hard. Throw the dolls away, they don't work anymore.
After two hours of being lost in a sea of noise and festivity, I began to feel a familiar feeling of suffocation - over a hundred people had gathered in the small bottle shop and they were overflowing with wine and good cheer, trendy fashions and the latest gossip. I began to watch the clock, trying to will the minutes away.
I've never done well in crowds, the pushing and shoving and shrieking laughter, the invasion of space and lack of breathing room bear down on me like weights. Even among friends and friendly faces, the urge to flee comes on strong, overcoming what few social instincts I have with an overwhelming need for quiet and solitude. I watch the crowd closing in on me like a swarm of angry bees and their faces dim, their smiles twist into leers. The noise and the chatter escalate as more and more people arrive and soon everyone is shoulder to shoulder - I think you could walk across them and not fall through. At the counter, a short and chubby little man takes a roll, piles it with roast beef and spreads it liberally with horseradish, then after a cautious look around, slips it into his jacket pocket. The silliness of this small act eases some of my tension and I can't help but laugh - the laughing helps me realize that I'm overreacting and I relax, take a second look at the crowd, and regroup. The swarm of insects slowly turns into a roomful of innocent party goers, a little careless, a little loud, a little too packed together, but harmless.
Even so, at the stroke of eight, I find a path through the revelers and make for the door, the cold night air, and the emptiness of the parking lot. Here there is stillness and room to move about, here there is quiet and dark and open space where I can hear my own thoughts and smile at my own faults and prejudices. Away from the crowd, I find myself again and am glad to see me.
Nana's cellar made a perfect playroom.
Divided into three parts, one finished and two not, it was always cool and furnished with cots and chairs, a piano, several tables, and dim lighting. The finished space was enormous and ideal for any manner of childhood games. You could run the length of it in a game of tag, practice dancing on the smooth tiled floor, play shuffleboard. You could safely make noise and disturb no one. Between the spaces there was a bar reached by a crawlway - here there were glasses and crystal decanters, containers of swizzle sticks, jars of olives and onions, neatly stacked six packs of Canada Dry Ginger Ale and enough liquor to float a boat. My grandfather had partied here, well and often, entertaining who knew what crowd of aquaintances and associates with poker games and bourbon, stag films and even strippers. Nana never came down here except to do laundry, claiming the place had a bad feel to it. Unpleasant memories, my daddy said with a wrinkle of his nose and a queer look of distaste, Best forgotten.
I didn't know then about the nights my grandfather had come home falling down drunk, had no idea of the infidelities, the backroom deals and the gambling. He was well known and admired by many, feared by some, and respected by most. He had friends in influential places and was partial to keeping everyone under his thumb and controlled by his decisions. My grandmother had never been known to openly disagree with him, never as much as raised her voice to him, and my mother maintained a subservient nearly timid demeanor with him. He had put his family second to work and friends, had little use for children or animals, and was all in all, a brute of a man with a nasty temper and a need to be obeyed. Only my daddy in his role of heir apparent seemed able to meet any of his expectations or earn his trust - it was the price of not having a son to take over, my daddy had been heard to tell close friends, and a burden.
From time to time I considered my mother being raised by a man who had little use for her, a raging alcoholic who offered no kindness, no acceptance, no love - a man who taunted her with reminders of her illegitimate half sister and spared no criticism of her appearance, her choices, her friends, her abilities. He withheld praise and affection, barely acknowledging her existence and making no secret of his disappointment in her. It hadn't been easy being his wife or daughter, my daddy confided to me years later, he had been a hard man to his family, cold, cruel and thoughtless.
You might think about what that did to your mother, he once suggested to me gently, It could help.
It didn't then and doesn't now. Passed down or taught, learned or imitated, hate is hate. Understanding it may make it more clear but it brings no forgiveness and no forgetting.
His name was Willie and he was about three feet long with bright yellow stripes and plastic whiskers. Of all the stuffed animals in my small room, he was the one I loved the best.
You can tell a toy tiger all manner of secrets in safety, cry into his fur and be comforted by his warmth, knowing he will tell no one, knowing he will always be ready to listen, suspecting he might be the best friend you have in your small, ten year old world. I whispered to Willie all the things I couldn't say aloud about a mother gone mad, brothers that scared the daylights out of me, a father who's protection was tenuous and intermittent at best and a grandmother who could love and hate, give and deny, shelter and evict, all in the same breath. Willie kept my secrets, wisely never answering but never turning me away. Even in his old age - patchy, stained, losing his stuffing and missing half his tail - he remained a guardian and a confidante.
When I left home the first time, I expected he would still be there when and if I came back but my mother decided to clean up after me, throwing away my books, pictures, clothes, and my tiger, moving the sparse furniture to other parts of the house and turning the tiny room into a storage space. She took to telling people she didn't have a daughter although never in earshot of my daddy or grandmother and delighted in the belief that she had won, enjoying the concern and attention this brought, exploiting the sense of triumph. She was stricken and unaccountably surprised when the stories made their way back to my daddy, furious and out of control when he made several trips to the discount furniture store in Central Square to bring back a sleeping cot, a chest of drawers, a rickety night stand. Later there was a trip to Goodwill for a radio, a lamp and a wall mounted although cracked mirror. Nana took me on an all day shopping spree at Walmart and said yes to everything, even curtains for the window, and a tiny portable tv, rabbit ears and all. The following September I made the cautious decision to go home and try again.
It takes more than second hand furniture, toy tigers and good intentions to make a home and we didn't have what it took, not that time or the times that followed. I think that somewhere inside of us all, somewhere we didn't want to look, we knew it. Toy tigers are safer than real ones.
Miss Lydia had left the island at eighteen, determined to make her way in the world and make a difference. She took a small suitcase, a bible, and some forty dollars in factory wages. She wasn't sure what she was looking for and had no clear destination or plan but she was possessed of a brave and curious spirit, a willingness to work, and a rich streak of optimistic faith.
She met the man that would be her undoing in St. John, a handsome and smooth talking young preacher with a flair for embezzlement, con games and naive young women. In short order, Lydia's innocence, wages and the preacher man were in the wind - she woke in a shabby motel, alone, ashamed, and badly hungover. She might have given up and gone home that very day, had she had the fare, but instead she showered, dressed, and walked to the sleazy front office to ask for a job and start over again. She worked as a maid, a waitress, a shopgirl - hating every minute and saving every penny, bound and determined to make enough money to leave St. John and make a new start. The baby was born in the convent of The Sisters of Charity where she had found not only shelter but kindness among the sisters, and no recriminations for her mistakes, no reserve against her Baptist upbringing. She was welcomed and taken in, cared for and given work, self esteem, and child care. The story of the preacher man was not new to the sisters. Lydia began to listen to the nuns and their patient advice - pray, forgive, have charity and move on. She even thought briefly of converting but the sisters wisely shook their heads at this notion, counseling more prayer and self examination before such a step.
And so it was that at twenty-five, Lydia found herself - due to adversity, regret, the responsibility of a child and the kindness of the nuns - coming back to herself. It was then she met her second preacher man, a widowed pastor from Long Island, with two boys and a small congregation, a gentle and dedicated country minister who tended to see the good in everyone and cared little for her past. She became a preacher's wife that same year, in a small ceremony held at the convent with all the good sisters attending. There were tearful goodbyes as the preacher man looked on smiling, one arm comfortably around the shoulders of his newest son.
And that, Aunt Pearl finished, giving the fish chowder a vigorous, swirling stir, is how Lydia and James and the boys come to be here on the island and how we got us a minister way back in '46. Behind Pearl's back, Aunt Vi added a surreptitious tea spoon of salt and a finger pinch of pepper to the chowder. That's so, she said agreeably,
Takes sin and redemption to keep it all in balance, I reckon.
Stammering and incoherent with rage, my mother confronted me with my diary, the decorative little lock pried open and several pages ripped from the binding. You'll pay for writing this! she screamed at me, You just wait and see! Hatred had made her wild-eyed and fueled by an afternoon's worth of drinking she had become a force to be reckoned with. In the interests of self preservation, I lunged for the little book, snatched her it from her and made for the front door. She stumbled after me but I was young, sober, and driven by fear. She reached for me but I was already gone, running through the yard and up the sidewalk as fast as a 12 year old can move. When I was sure she wouldn't follow, I eased up and caught my breath, tucked the diary inside my sweater, and headed for the sanctuary of the library, powerfully afraid but also incredibly angry, feeling the invasion of privacy almost like a physical violation. Nothing was safe from her, I realized, no thought or emotion, no act, no need. I refused to think about the consequences that were sure to follow, couldn't bear to think about the things I had written and she had read - wishing for her to suffer, to be inflicted with pain and isolation, to die, hateful things that welled up and had to have an outlet otherwise they would have suffocated me. The world became a blurry place that cold afternoon.
Parenthood had never been kind to my mother. She openly blamed her children for her unhappiness, her loss of freedom and spending money, her being tied down, her inability to sustain a happy marriage. We had, she complained, literally driven her to drink. No one was exactly sure what she had expected from marriage or having a family, but clearly we weren't it - she was, so she liked to say, undermined at every turn, betrayed and unloved, treated badly and deprived. She insisted she'd played no role in any of this but was rather a victim, martyred by the needs and wants of offspring she'd never wanted in the first place, condemned to a role she found thankless and demeaning. No closet crammed with evening wear, no pink convertible or 3 month summer vacations, no middle class comforts were enough to offset her resentments of motherhood. Through the years she grew old and fat and more malicious on little but her own bitterness and discontent, at the last not even able to find solace in alcohol. Her body would eventually turn inward on itself from cancer while her mind evaporated from dementia and whiskey soaked brain cells. And still remembering, among so many other things, my diary, I could not find the slightest hint of compassion or regret for her.
My daddy, knowing that I would seek the refuge of fiction, found me at the library. I watched him walk in slowly, hat in hand, gray faced and raccoon-eyed with weariness and resignation. He sat across from me, a daughter who was on the road to becoming a stranger, and gave me a slight, sad smile. How do we make this right? he asked me. I put aside my H. Allen Smith satire, always my first choice for such times, and told him the truth, We don't. It may have been the closest I'd ever come to actually speaking what I knew was true but my daddy - ever the peacemaker, ever the first to craft a compromise and calm troubled waters - just shook his head. We'll find a way, he told me, it's not as bad as it seems right now. But of course it was and continued to be. He was to keep looking until the cancer overtook her but he never found the elusive way.
We should have more respect for what children see - happy faces don't fool them for long and their vision is often far clearer than our own.
First, so the saying goes, the man takes a drink. Then the drink takes the man.
From the sidelines, I watched my mother and then my husband tumble into the depths of alcoholism, free falling into a haze of blackouts and abuse, constant denials and hidden bottles, secret drinking and erratic often self destructive behavior. There were tears and violent fights, threats and broken promises, silences so profound that nothing could have survived. For those who seek relief in addiction, there is no free will, no breaking away, no awareness of the damage they do to themselves and those around them. The disease takes all and leaves only tragic, broken people. Addiction is a dark place of deception, slow suicide, immeasurable pain and self delusion - it knows no limits, no boundaries, no hurt-free zones. It offers no choices. Caught in its vicious, secondary web, we struggle and the harder we struggle, the more securely we are ensnared. Addiction defies logic and reason, flaunts common sense, makes a mockery of rational thinking. From the sidelines, we can do little more than watch and try to keep out of the way. Nothing will make you crazier, faster than being caught up in a relationship between an addict and his drug and nothing is so seductive as the temptation to believe you can fix it. Contrary to popular opinion, insanity can be contagious.
I have since watched others sink into the depths - a kind and animal loving young lawyer, a talented musician, friends and lovers, ordinary people all, quietly overtaken and overwhelmed, some to their death and only a precious few to recovery.
From the sidelines of collateral damage, I've learned to celebrate success without interfering, encourage but not meddle, help but not enable. Higher powers are at work here and they will work in their own ways without my aid. My job is to care for my own sanity and my own needs, to detach and step back to a place where I can examine my own motives, to not get caught up in the struggle of others and still care. It is, so I've learned, just as for the addict, an everyday effort. Despite what we may want to believe and are willing to work so hard to achieve, we cannot cure, fix or change anyone but our own selves. Whether we're playing the game or just watching from the sidelines, the hardest battles are still fought within.
Cruel is fate
when it's power and its might
to the guilty and innocent are shown - Jed Marum
Sitting on hold and feeling my life slip away minute by minute, I listened to the opening strains of the "Four Seasons" and wondered yet again, what is it about Vivaldi? Do voice mail systems come with a requirement that this and only this can be the recorded music? They never play much expect the beginning of "Spring" but they play it over and over and over and over. Would the world end if there was a little Mozart or a hint of Rossini? Possibly even Beethoven or a few notes of "Kill the Wabbit"? Too much of anything, even Vivaldi, will dull the senses, which is probably the objective of the insurance companies - soothe and sedate with music and hope for the best.
In addition to jazz and blues, my daddy loved classical music - what my mother called that longhair crap - and he played it for me often from his collection of old, vintage albums. I didn't appreciate it much then, preferring his Pete Fountain records to Chopin, but beautiful music tends to grow on you and by the time I reached college, I'd discovered Debussey and Handel, and was coming to love all the classical composers. You couldn't sing along with Mitch but The Messiah stirred my soul and to this day I remember each note of the soprano part of The Hallelujah Chorus, perhaps my all time favorite work next to Mozart's "A Little Night Music", the second most preferred voice mail selection. I studied to "Ave Maria" and "Claire de lune" and Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata", sometimes losing my focus for stopping to listen.
If there was one love in my daddy's life, it was music. He listened to it, played it, appreciated it, and passed it on to me and I think of him often whenever I hear a hot New Orleans trumpet, a ragtime piano, a gospel quartet or a classical orchestra. Music was in his heart as it is in mine, as I hope it is in all of ours.
Rock on, Antonio.
Russell's cat, a mammoth beast well over 40 pounds but as agile and quick as a mouse, had the unfortunate name of Tommy, Russell's first born son. This was a constant irritation to Tommy's mother who had argued against it til she ran out of words but her husband was adamant - the cat, he pointed out, had been there first and was entitled to keep his name. It's a matter of first come, first serve, Norah, he told her calmly, And the cat came before the boy. Norah took to throwing things at him - a bowl of soup, a flower pot, an eggbeater - but Russell's instincts were much like the cat's and he dodged each flying object. Norah soon gave up the practice, it was costly and caused the arthritis in her shoulder and elbow to flare up with each pitch. Besides, she complained to Nana, I can't hit the broad side of a barn even in daylight.
No one knew the actual origin of the cat. Russell had discovered him while hunting in the woods behind the lighthouse and though not normally a man known for his compassion to animals - not that he was cruel, he simply considered them extraneous and on the whole unnecessary - he had taken pity on the scruffy little thing and tossed it into his shoulder pack, thinking that perhaps it might make a decent mouser for the barn, if it survived. And survive it did, reaching 20 pounds before it was a year old and becoming somewhat of a legend around the village.
One of the summer doctors even speculated that it might be some kind of a crossbreed, certainly no one had ever encountered a cat of that magnitude and who knew what might be lurking in the woods. The cat continued to grow and thrive, becoming largely self sufficient, earning its keep as an unparalleled mouser and sometimes as a tourist attraction. All muscle! Russell would declare proudly, Not an ounce of fat on him! And it was true, Tommy was enormous but trim and tight and as healthy as a thoroughbred. Russell made a small but steady income by renting him out to mouse for neighbors and by taking him to town to sleep in McIntyre's window on Saturdays when the summer people shopped. Tommy was amiable to all the attention and for a nickel Russell would allow the children to hold him, provided they could pick him up without adult help. The huge cat submitted without the first protest, frequently offering up a stunning, vibrating purr that could be heard clear to the front doors.
Norah, having been raised to be independent-minded and clear thinking, had been warned about all the things that might make claim on her new husband's attentions. She had not, however, foreseen having to compete with a cat, even one as well known as Tommy grew to be and it took several years of flying debris and many a harsh word before she came to accept the cat's place in her husband's life. If the cat harbored similar reservations, he kept them to himself - as cats are inclined to do - and in the fullness of time, woman and cat reached a mutual understanding, each allowing the other the illusion of being in control.
Russell was well pleased.
