Now you have a morbid fascination with news shows. You get up, dress, flick on the TV, sit in front of it with a bowl of cereal in your lap, quietly curse all governments everywhere, get into your car, drive to work, wonder how the sun has the nerve to show its face, wonder why the world seems to be picking up speed, even old ladies pass you on the highway, why you don't have a single erotic fantasy that Moss isn't in, whether there really are such things as immunity-boosting vitamins, and how would you rather die from cancer or a car accident, the man you love, at home, asleep, like a heavy, heavy heart through your day.
"Goddamn slippers," says Morgan at work.
12/10. the cat now likes to climb into the bathtub and stand under the dripping faucet in order to clean herself. She lets the water bead up on her face, then wipes herself, neatly dislodging the gunk from her eyes.
"Isn't she wonderful?" you ask Moss.
"Yeah. Come here you little scumbucket," he says, slapping the cat on the haunches, as if she were a dog.
"She's not a dog, Moss. She's a cat."
"That's right. She's a cat. Remember that, Trudy."
12/11. the phone again. The ringing and hanging up.
12/12. moss is still getting in very late. He goes about the business of fondling you, like someone very tired at night having to put out the trash and bolt-lock the door.
He sleeps with his arms folded behind his head, elbows protruding, treacherous as daggers, like the enemy chariot in Ben-Hur.
12/13. Buy a Christmas tree, decorations, a stand, and lug them home to assemble for Moss. Show him your surprise.
"Why are the lights all in a clump in the back?" he asks, closing the front door behind him.
Say: "I know. Aren't they great? Wait till you see me do the tinsel." Place handfuls of silver icicles, matted together like alfalfa sprouts, at the end of all the branches.
"Very cute," says Moss, kissing you, then letting go. Follow him into the bathroom. Ask how rehearsal went. He points to the kitty litter and sings: "'This is my box. I never travel without my box.'"
Say: "You are not a well man, Moss." Play with his belt loops.
12/14. the white fur around the cat's neck is growing and looks like a stiff Jacobean collar. "A rabato," says Moss, who suddenly seems to know these things. "When are we going to let her go outside?"
"Someday when she's older." The cat has lately taken to the front window the way a hypochondriac takes to a bed. When she's there she's more interested in the cars, the burled fingers of the trees, the occasional squirrel, the train tracks like long fallen ladders, than she is in you. Call her: "Here pootchy-kootchy-honey." Ply her, bribe her with food.
12/15. there are movies in town: one about Brazil, and one about sexual abandonment in upstate New York. "What do you say, Moss. Wanna go to the movies this weekend?"
"I can't," says Moss. "You know how busy I am."
12/16. the evening news is full of death: young marines, young mothers, young children. By comparison you have already lived forever. In a kind of heaven.
12/17. give your cat a potato and let her dribble it about soccer-style. She's getting more coordinated, conducts little dramas with the potato, pretends to have conquered it, strolls over it, then somersaults back after it again. She's not bombing around, crashing into the sideboards anymore. She's learning moves. She watches the potato by the dresser leg, stalks it, then pounces. When she gets bored she climbs up onto the sill and looks out, tail switching. Other cats have spotted her now, have started coming around at night. Though she will want to go, do not let her out the front door.
12/18. the phone rings. You say hello, and the caller hangs up. Two minutes later it rings again, only this time Moss answers it in the next room, speaks softly, cryptically, not the hearty phone voice of the Moss of yesteryear. When he hangs up, wander in and say, blase as paste, "So, who was that?"
"Stop," says Moss. "Just stop."
Ask him what's the big deal, it was Sonia wasn't it.
"Stop," says Moss. "You're being my wife. Things are repeating themselves."
Say that nothing repeats itself. Nothing, nothing, nothing. "Sonia, right?"
"Trudy, you've got to stop this. You've been listening to too much Tosca. I'm going out to get a hamburger. Do you want anything?"
Say: "I'm the only person in the whole world who knows you, Moss. And I don't know you at all anymore."
"That's a different opera," he says. "I'm going out to get a hamburger. Do you want anything?"
Do not cry. Stick to monosyllables. Say: "No. Fine. Go."
Say: "Please don't let the cat out."
Say: "You should wear a hat it's cold."
12/19. actually what you've been listening to is Dionne Warwick's Golden Hits — musical open-heart surgery enough for you. Sometimes you pick up the cat and waltz her around, her purr staticky and intermittent as a walkie-talkie.
On "Do You Know the Way to San lose," you put her down, do an unfortunate Charleston, while she attacks your stockinged feet, thinking them large rodents.
Sometimes you knock into the Christmas tree.
Sometimes you collapse into a chair and convince yourself that things are still okay.
When Robert MacNeil talks about mounting inflation, you imagine him checking into a motel room with a life-size, blow-up doll. This is, once in a while, how you amuse yourself.
When Moss gets in at four in the morning, whisper: "There are lots of people in this world, Moss, but you can't be in love with them all."
"I'm not," he says, "in love with the mall."
12/20. the mall stores stay open late this last week before Christmas. Moss is supposed to be there, "in the gazebo next to the Santa gazebo," for an Amahl and the Night Visitors promotional. Decide to drive up there. Perhaps you can look around in the men's shops for a sweater for Moss, perhaps even one for Bob as well. Last year was a bad Christmas: you and Moss returned each other's gifts for cash. You want to do better this year. You want to buy: sweaters.
The mall parking lot, even at 7 p.m., is, as Moss would say, packed as a bag, though you do manage to find a space.
Inside the mall entranceway it smells of stale popcorn, dry heat, and three-day-old hobo urine. A drunk, slumped by the door, smiles and toasts you with nothing.
Say: "Cheers."
to make your journey down to the gazebos at the other end of the mall, first duck into all the single-item shops along the way. Compare prices with the prices at Owonta Flair: things are a little cheaper here. Buy stuff, mostly for Moss and the cat.
In the pet food store the cashier hands you your bagged purchase, smiles, and says, "Merry Christmas."
Say: "You, too."
In the men's sweater shop the cashier hands you your bagged purchase, smiles, and says, "Merry Christmas."
Say: "You, too."
In the belt shop the cashier hands you your bagged purchase, smiles, and says, "Come again."
Say: "You, too." Grow warm. Narrow your eyes to seeds.
in the gazebo next to the Santa gazebo there is only an older man in gray coveralls stacking some folding chairs.
Say: "Excuse me, wasn't Amahl and the Night Visitors supposed to be here?"
The man stops for a moment. "There's visitors," he says, pointing out and around, past the gazebo to all the shoppers. Shoppers in parkas. Shoppers moving slow as winter. Shoppers who haven't seen a crosswalk or a window in hours.