CAT ON A BAD COUCH
Lee Martin
I’ll admit I was drunk when I bought it, so I shouldn’t blame anyone else for my error in judgment, my lack of taste, my total disregard for the aesthetics of fabric and color and design necessary to what my wife, Vonnie, used to call the healing home. She got that from a book she read, one that encouraged her to use aromatherapy, light, feng shui, color, and natural materials to create a space where she and I would feel connected to earth, air, and each other. It was our last chance, though of course we didn’t know it then. All we knew was that we’d started to lose sight of what first brought us together—I couldn’t even have said what that something was—and still we were tongue-tied and dumb. If there were words that might have made a difference, we were having trouble finding them.
“A healing home is a happy home,” Vonnie said one day, and I agreed I’d give it a shot.
Then we got Henry, and everything went to hell in a hurry.
He showed up at our house in late October, just as the days were starting to cool and winter was in the air. A long, skinny tabby with a notch bitten out of his ear, a limp to his roll, a smirk on his face—yes, I swear a cat can smirk—and the most pitiful meow you’d ever want to hear. A croak that made Vonnie fall in love.
“Poor baby,” she said. “Where’s your house? Do you have a house?”
He was winding himself in and out around her legs, tail straight up in the air, as she stood on the front porch, petting him. I was inside watching through the storm door, and when I opened it to step outside, he saw his chance; he shot the gap, and presto, he was inside.
“Hey,” I said, but it was too late.
He’d already curled up on the window seat, smack-dab in the middle of the ramie-covered cushions Vonnie had purchased from IKEA earlier that morning. In an instant, he was asleep. Vonnie and I could see him through the front windows, and I could tell from the way she looked at him there’d be nothing I could say to convince her that a bit-eared, gimpy, smart-mouthed stray was nothing but bad news.
“Oh, my.” I heard her intake of breath. She touched me on the arm, and it was one of the few times in more than a year—yes, it had been that long—that we’d touched at all. “Lex,” she said to me. “Sweetie, he looks so peaceful there.”
I knew then that this scruffy-assed junkyard cat, soon to be named Prince Henry Boo-Boo Ca-Choo, had taken his last fall and landed in the gravy.
He’d been looking for us, Vonnie would say that night as he made himself comfy on our bed, stretched out longways between us, his claws pricking my back. He was home.
But I was telling you about my couch. I bought it one night when I’d been drinking at the Rusty Bucket, drinking more than I should have because it was easier to do that than to go home to Vonnie. What was our problem? I don’t imagine there’s any way to say it was this or that; it was more a combination of things, one of them being time and what it can do to romance. We’d been together since we were eighteen, and somewhere along the line the thrill went away, and then we were left with the people we really were—I mean the people we were deep down inside—and maybe what we were finding out was that we didn’t really like those people. They just didn’t match up. That’s the best I’ve been able to do, at least in the time I’ve had to think about it. People fall out of love. I didn’t mean for that to be the case with Vonnie and me, nor I imagine did she, but that’s what happened, and maybe—just maybe—the start of the end was when I ducked into the discount furniture store that evening all because that couch, which I could see through the display window, caught my eye.
I walked in, and the salesgirl, a pretty girl with her eyes just a little too close together, asked if she could help me find something.
Lord, the questions people ask, not having any idea what they can mean to a person. This girl was a pleasant sort who smiled a lot and had dimples in her cheeks, and she was so eager to help me find exactly what I needed, I almost told her the truth. I almost said, Please, help me find my way.
Instead, I said I’d spotted that couch. “That one.” I pointed to a harvest-gold couch with a high back, and a plaid pattern formed from brown and green lines, and kick-pleat skirting around the bottom. “The one with the kick-pleat skirting,” I said, and the girl’s smile got even wider.
“You know your material, I can see that.” She gave me a wink of one of her too-close-together eyes. “I’ll have to be on my toes with you.”
The store was nearly empty that near to closing. Somewhere toward the back, a radio was playing, some old big-band tune from the forties, a time, if the movies I’d seen were any evidence, when men and women believed in love. I took a glance behind me out the plate-glass display window, and I saw that in the little bit of time that had passed since I’d stepped into the store, the dusk had faded to full dark. It could happen like that. In fact it did every night. In the wink of an eye.
“‘Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered,’” I said, and the girl gave me a puzzled look. “The song,” I said, and then I sang along. I was wild again and beguiled, etc.
And I was too loud for the mostly empty store—I was singing too loud and I was too full of booze—and for the first time, I saw a look of concern pass over the girl’s face, as if she feared I might grab her and throw her down and have at her on that couch, which I already knew I was going to buy if for no other reason than to make this all up to her.
She glanced toward the back, looking, I assume, for a coworker, hoping someone would come to the front of the store so she wouldn’t have to be alone with me.
That’s when I nearly lost it, knowing I’d caused a nice girl like her alarm, and I said, “I’ll take it. The couch. It’s exactly what I’ve been looking for.”
The next morning I woke up and went outside to retrieve the Dispatch from the front step. That was the first time I saw Mr. Mendes, the man who would become my neighbor across the street.
He was moving in. The HER Realty sign was leaning against the maple tree in the front yard. The previous owners, a Mr. and Mrs. Zambesi, had raked the last of the fallen leaves before bidding the neighborhood fare thee well. No one had been sorry to see them go. They were, in short, a disruption to the generally tranquil cul-de-sac. They were people with tempers, and more than once their arguments had escalated to the point where some of us had called the police. It wasn’t uncommon to hear shouting in the middle of the night, doors slamming, glass breaking, car tires squealing. “You’re no one I care about,” I heard Mrs. Zambesi scream one night. “Do you hear me? No one!”
Our expectations for Mr. Mendes, then, were high. It didn’t matter to us that he was a single man. In fact, that was a plus. A single man who led a pleasant and quiet life. At least that was our hope.
The house was a four-bedroom two-story with a brick façade halfway up the front and vinyl siding the rest of the way. The siding was light yellow and the window shutters were green.
A house that said howdy-do and welcome.
The front door was wide open that morning, and a couple of men in sleeveless T-shirts were unloading furniture from a white truck that said TWO MEN AND A TRUCK on the side. Truth in advertising. There they were: two men and their truck.
Mr. Mendes had parked his red Volvo wagon along the curb in front of my house—such a cheery color, red—and was easing a birdcage out of the back. He had a cockatiel inside—a gray-feathered cockatiel with a yellow head and a bright orange spot on each cheek. The bird was whistling and clicking to beat the band, singing and trilling like he was the happiest Gus on this old planet Earth. Mr. Mendes looked quite chipper himself, dressed in crisply pressed navy slacks and a shirt the color of a robin’s egg. The crowning touch? A cardigan sweater of white, violet, and sky-blue stripes—vertical stripes along the front and back, and short horizontal hatches on the sleeves. On this day, when the trees were bare and the sky was leaden and there was just enough bite in the air to remind us that soon we’d settle into winter, he and his bird were a glorious sight.