The Old Lady Cat

 

The old tabby cat jumps lightly onto the love seat and settles herself next to me. It seems she has several things to say and with her face just an inch of two from mine, she stares intently, as if trying to read my mind. It was a little disconcerting when she began doing this several months ago but I’ve gotten accustomed to it and I stare right back. It’s all terribly serious and her eyes never waver. When she speaks, it’s short and to the point. I scratch her ears and after a series of retaliatory head butts, she curls up, tucks her paws beneath her body and drifts off to a cautious sleep.

She’s an old lady these days, well into her teens and having the expected old lady ailments. She doesn’t much like the Purina UR prescription catfood and she doesn’t always make it to one of the litter boxes in time. I clean up after her a few times every week - sometimes once or twice a day, sometimes not at all – and I don’t scold. I keep a careful eye on her but so long as she’s eating and drinking and not in pain, I’m not ready to let her go. She’s still active and agile and alert. Mild and intermittent incontinence isn’t much of a price to pay.

Perhaps one day someone will feel the same toward me.

My Mother's Child

 

He was every inch my mother’s child.

By the summer my brother turned 10, he was a vandal, a petty thief and a consummate liar. I hated him with every fiber of my being and avoided him whenever possible. Like my mother, he was short, stocky, and slovenly. He had a lazy eye and wore a perpetual smirk, was mean to the dogs, and liked throwing rocks, plugging up toilets and setting small fires. He was grimy and dirty and usually smelled of rotting food and stale sweat. Like all bullies, he terrorized everyone he could but at heart was a coward and a low fighter and never took on anyone who might break him. He was what my grandmother dismally called “a nasty piece of business” with no conscience, no empathy, no thought for others and no remorse for whatever harm he did. When I was young, he terrified me. When I was older, he repulsed me.

That particular summer, he’d been grounded for stealing cigarettes and selling them to the younger Albright kids and then re-grounded for trying to kill Aunt Lizzie’s chickens with a stolen pellet gun. In retaliation, he and the Sullivan boys poured bleach into her well and then set her barn afire. Uncle Shad and Uncle Willie saw the smoke and the volunteer fire brigade arrived within minutes but it was too late to save the barn – it and several chickens perished and why the fire hadn’t spread to our house next door or to Ms. Mary’s on the other side was entirely due to favorable winds and happenstance. It was all too much for my grandmother and the day after the fire, she had my mother pack a suitcase and ordered her and my brother home for the rest of the summer. There was a terrific quarrel but Nana refused to relent.

“I won’t have it, Jan,” she told my mother, “Boy’s dangerous and got no more sense than God give a fence post. He goes and you go with him!”

The scandal rocked the tiny village and cost my grandmother a pretty penny to have the barn rebuilt and the chickens replaced. Most everyone believed it had been intentional but nobody could prove it so there never were any consequences although Nana stayed very angry for a very long time.

Not all that long ago, I happened to find out that my brother died a few years ago. I don’t think he had much of a life but I couldn’t find it in me to either mourn or celebrate. I cared as much as I might care about a stranger who I didn’t know even existed and who died a half a world away.

He may have been my mother’s child but he was never anyone I knew.

Family Fraud

 

“Quelle surprise!” my Aunt Helen exclaimed, reverting as she often did to French when she was feeling particularly condescending.

Nana and her sister, my Aunt Zelma, had worked most of the day on the birthday cake and produced a masterpiece of a 3 tiered lemon cake, complete with perfectly lathered on pink icing and a discreetly inaccurate number of candles.

“How lovely of everyone to remember,” Helen added with one of her patented superficial smiles, just as if she hadn’t been dropping unsubtle reminders for the past two weeks and insidiously putting the fear of God into us all lest we forget.

“Oh, for pity’s sake, Helen,” my Aunt Zelma said impatiently, “Just cut the damn cake.”

Aunt Zel was a tiny woman but all 4’10 and 90 pounds of her was feisty. She had been born with a club foot and had to wear a specially built up orthopedic shoe but even so she tended to a serious limp and often had to drag her bad foot behind her. It caused her considerable pain and did nothing for her disposition – she wouldn’t tolerate an ounce of pity from anyone – but she could also be demanding about getting her own way and more than a little sarcastic with her tone. She’d never cared much for her brother’s choice of a wife and it was no secret that she and Helen were frequently at odds.

The house slept ten comfortably, twelve if pushed, but we were busting at the seams that particular birthday with nine adults, five kids and to my grandmother’s great distress, an extra dog – my cousins had brought Twinkle, a high strung, nervous, spindly legged chihuahua with the disposition of pirhanna, perpetually underfoot and on all our last nerves.

“His vet says he has separation anxiety,” Aunt Elaine said apologetically, “We didn’t have the heart to board him.”

“I declare, Elaine,” Aunt Zel said sharply, “If I trip over that nasty tempered, little overgrown rat once more, I’ll fall and break my damn hip and then I’ll show you both some real separation anxiety!”

“Mother!” Aunt Elaine protested and promptly burst into tears.

“Here, what’s all this,” Uncle Les said, glancing up from his checkers game with Uncle Herb,

“Damn, I wish you women could get along.”

“Oh, shut up, Lester,” Aunt Zel snapped.

“Zelma!” Uncle Herb said loudly.

Uncle Eddie, normally the most mild mannered of men, rattled his newspaper and peered over it with a frown. “Gettin’ so’s a man can’t read a paper in peace,” he muttered. The remark drew Aunt Zelma’s wrath and she turned on him immediately with a scowl. “Mind your business, Edgecombe,” she said harshly, “Nobody asked for your opinion!”

“Really, Zelma!” Aunt Helen chimed in, “There’s hardly a need to be rude.”

Aunt Zel turned slowly, limped to the doorway of the living room and glared fiercely at the entire room, most especially her pristine sister-in-law. Aunt Helen paled under her perfect makeup and actually took a half step backward, one hand nervously fingering her pearls. I saw surprise, a hint of dread, and for a fraction of a second, she nearly withered. We never did learn what my diminutive aunt planned to say because at that moment, my grandmother laid a hand on her shoulder and pulled gently.

“Bread needs to go in the oven, Zel,” she said firmly. Simple words but enough to bring about a de-escalation of a potentially explosive moment. Aunt Zelma returned to the kitchen and Aunt Helen fled upstairs. The checkers game continued, Elaine dried her eyes, and Uncle Eddie returned to his newspaper. Nana sent me and my cousins out to pick blackberries and Twinkle dutifully trailed after us. Just another day in the life of a family who sometimes got tired of pretending.