“Didn’t anyone go looking for him?”
“No, honey, that was only for a couple of days. And then he called your father to tell him he was quitting-a middle-aged crisis I guess they’d call it today. Anyway, he just quit, threw it all over of a sudden and left town. It must have been right after that fishing trip, come to think of it. That’s right-your brother was just born, you were moping around and having tantrums at the drop of a hat, your father was even more short-tempered than usual. We thought it really was very thoughtless of Arty, to leave him in the lurch like that, and at such a difficult time. Then a few weeks later the accountant found that Arty’d been siphoning off cash. He was your father’s manager, you remember. Young for the job, but capable. Later the police decided he’d panicked, thinking they were on to him, and that was why he left in such a hurry. He probably moved to Mexico or something-your father had a few phone conversations with him, asking him to take care of some things, but those stopped after a few months.”
“I might have seen something that day he took me on the boat?” Lauren asked, trying to tug the conversation back to where it had begun.
“You might have, I suppose. I wasn’t in any shape to take notice of much right then. I’d had all these stitches, down there, you know, and they were so uncomfortable, and then you were going through this phase of being jealous of your new brother and so kept waking me up at night with your bad dreams and forgetting your toilet training and bursting into tears at the least thing. Which was perfectly normal with a new baby in the house,” she hastened to say, “even if maybe a little extreme. In the end I had to agree with my mother and your father that the best way to let you get over your naughtiness was to ignore it as much as possible. And you did settle down, after a while. In fact, you became a new child, so quiet and obedient. You were always so good with your brother, too.”
Her mother dithered on for a while, recounting in intimate detail the extensive difficulties the stitches had caused, even going so far as to speculate aloud (Does she even remember that she’s got her daughter on the other end of the phone? Lauren wondered) that the lingering discomfort, and at a time when her husband needed her most, what with the embezzlement and Arty’s treachery and all, had contributed to the divorce.
Lauren interrupted desperately, before her mother could go into any greater detail. “Well, think about it, Mother, see if you can remember anything traumatic involving a cat.”
“I’ll try, dear. You could call your father and ask him. I have a number for him somewhere.”
Lauren cut her off, knowing that she was about to take the phone over to the desk and begin a search. She had no intention of asking her father about it; she hadn’t talked to him in so long she’d forgotten the sound of his voice, and she wasn’t about to resume their relationship with a revelation of her psychic distress. Maybe her mother’s approach was best and would work as well now as it had then. Ignore it. and it’ll go away.
Her mother’s approach, to ignore distress. Look at their conversations centering around the cat: She’d been fond of Arty, that was obvious, but expressed neither resentment nor even puzzlement at his abandonment. Then must have come a hellish time-a newborn and a jealous three-year-old, a demanding husband and the first threats of bankruptcy, the revelation that a trusted friend (or more than a friend?) had stolen them blind. Creditors, an abrupt change in lifestyle, a husband fleeing infamy and leaving her behind to raise two children on a secretary’s pay. Lauren’s father, meanwhile, had salvaged enough out of the whole mess to afford a nice house on a tropical island, complete with a twenty-four-year-old “housekeeper.”
Ignore it, and it’ll go away. Only it didn’t. The nightmares continued. Not every night now, but at least every other, she would see the spinning cat with the human face, hear a startlingly loud and completely imaginary thud, and come heart-poundingly awake in the dark. It was beginning to make her angry. And just a little bit worried. Insanity didn’t run in her family, so far as she knew-although come to think of it, her father’s final loss of stability had come when he wasn’t much older than she was now.
Another Friday and Monday in Min Henry’s soothing office, a Sunday and a Wednesday correcting papers and grunting replies while her mother rambled on in her ear, practice three afternoons and the beginning of the season on Saturday, plus her regular schedule of classes. A person could grow accustomed to anything, Lauren said to herself; even being haunted by a cat. Still, regular as clockwork it came: hard bench under her bottom, cold wind on her face, wet fur and the “O” of shock, a thud and the roaring sound of blood beating through her ears in the still house. Then the following Monday, Min Henry tapped the wedge in a little further, with a couple of questions.
“Tell me again about the sound you hear in your dream,” she said in this, their sixth session. “Was it the car behind you hitting the cat?”
“In my imagination, maybe-I didn’t actually hear anything. I couldn’t have, since I know I didn’t hit it, and the car windows were up and the tape player going.”
“Then what is the sound?”
“That is weird, isn’t it? In the dream, it’s the sound that panics me more than anything.”
“You described it as a clunk?”
“Sort of a hollow thud. A little like… Jeez. Is it like…? No, not really. I was thinking it reminded me of the sound of a basketball bouncing, but that’s not it. Other than a sort of hollowness. Brief, final-God, Min, I don’t know. Why does it matter, anyway?”
“Okay, Lauren, take a couple of deep breaths. The tissues are on the table next to you.”
I’m crying, Lauren realized with a shock. Why am I crying? What the fuck is going on, a stupid frightened cat causing some damned psychosis or something. “Why is this so awful?” she pleaded. “I mean, I could understand if I’d watched a person get run down, that would be enough to haunt you, but cats get killed all the time. And it wasn’t even me that hit him!”
One of the things she had always liked about Min Henry was that the doctor actually answered her patients’ questions instead of turning the questions back around. Now she said, “Lauren, you are assuming this scene with the cat has triggered off some traumatic episode or emotion that you’ve hidden from yourself. That may be so, or it may simply represent some state of mind you’re having trouble acknowledging. In either case, the key may lie with that anomalous sound. You say it doesn’t belong with your memory of the actual cat incident; if that’s the case, then it must have snuck in from elsewhere.”
“But where? I told you that my mother had no idea of a trauma with a cat.”
“Could it have been something other than a cat?”
The simple question reverberated softly through Lauren’s mind, stirring up an odd and unidentifiable series of feelings, excitement and confusion and a peculiar stillness, as if she were a rabbit hiding from a circling hawk. She blinked, and found that the therapist was watching her closely.
“We’re running short on time today,” Min Henry told Lauren, “but I can see that sparked something off.”
“I don’t know.”
“Think about it, for next time.”
“How about trying hypnosis?” Lauren blurted out. “This not knowing-it’s making me crazy.”
“Lauren, I’d rather see if your memory can loose this on its own. We can try hypnosis, but let’s give the mind a while longer to work it out.”
“How much longer?”
“Give it a month, two at the most. Your doctor gave you the prescription for sleeping pills, didn’t he?”