22
Saturday evening, Garner Remke and Trey Bateman sat at Cat’s dining room table in the apartment over her doctor’s office. The trio was finishing a simple meal of wild salmon, which Cat liked to have shipped in from Seattle for special occasions, a lemon and fennel salad, and homemade rye rolls that Cat had made especially for Garner that afternoon. Rye was his favorite. A fortunate coincidence.
Trey ate none of the bread. He said something about preferring to avoid gluten, and Cat thought he meant to mock her. And so she said, “Far be it from me to step between a man and his lifestyle. You are perfectly healthy, after all.”
It was just as well. She hadn’t been expecting this kid when she told Garner to bring a friend, and she wasn’t interested in an outsider hanging around. It was Garner she was trying to keep close. She had been hoping that Dotti would come.
Garner was saying, “You really ought to patch things up with Nova, Cat. She’s a sweet girl. You’re the same age. I bet you have a lot in common.”
“She’s pregnant,” Cat huffed. If Nova didn’t want Cat to be her doctor, there was no doctor-patient privilege to worry about.
Garner stopped chewing his bread for a minute. “Yes, I heard something about that. I’ll have to concede you don’t share that status. But when did you decide to dislike pregnant women?”
“I don’t dislike them. But Nova won’t let me manage her prenatal care,” Cat said. Then, realizing that she might have revealed her feelings too pointedly, she clarified, “She refuses to see any doctor.”
“Is that so?”
Garner folded his hands in his lap. “Far be it from me to insert myself into a female argument, but I heard her tell Hank’s wife she’s got herself a good OB down in Salida. Though I suppose it’s possible she made that up to keep people from pestering her.”
Cat blinked. If this was true, Nova’s rejection wasn’t philosophical after all. It was worse. It was deeply personal, and Cat had done nothing to deserve that. She twisted the cloth napkin in her lap. “Good then. Good. I’ll be able to sleep again after all.”
She turned to Trey. “So, Garner tells me you’re a conservationist,” she said. Her thoughts felt oddly disconnected from her words, like she was speaking underwater.
“I’ve been a conservationist since I was old enough to sort the recyclables,” Trey said. “But I’m studying wildlife biology as I can afford to.”
“Do you plan to work at a zoo?”
Trey raised one eyebrow in Garner’s direction. “If tourism isn’t a zoo, I don’t know what is. But my actual aim is for the outdoors. Field research. Specifically in regard to mountain lions and their habitats. Did you know cougars are one of the least researched predators in America? It’s harder and more expensive to catch them, track them.”
“That’s a cat for you.” Garner chuckled and raised his water glass in a toast to the doctor.
“Very funny,” Cat said.
“Human encroachment is a significant problem,” Trey said, “but it’s surmountable. I believe God designed men and animals to live together.”
“But not women.” Cat couldn’t help herself.
“Of course women. So I’m helping to document the cougars’ territorial habits, population density, food supply, that sort of thing. The long-term goal is to reduce their confrontations with people. We use tracking collars and, if you can believe it, hound dogs.”
“Hunting dogs?” Garner said. “That’s surprising.”
“I know. It’s archaic, right? But very effective. And cameras—I’ll be downloading data and doing a little maintenance on some cameras this weekend.”
“I almost feel inspired to pull out my checkbook and make a donation,” Cat said wryly.
“I recommend the Rocky Mountain Cat Conservancy,” Trey said.
If he had caught wind of her sarcasm, he was using it against her. She disliked him more and more.
Cat cleared her throat. “I’ll make a note of it.” She pushed back from the table and fetched two plastic bags for the remaining rolls, which she gathered up from the neat basket in the middle of the table. “You had better take the rest home with you,” she told Garner. “Freeze a bag if you like.”
“Delighted to. I don’t believe I’ve ever tasted such a fine bread.”
“If it agrees with you, I’ll give you the recipe.”
“I’ll leave the baking to you, Cat girl. It’s easier to garden at this altitude than to bake. How do you manage it?”
“It’s all in the ingredients. I suppose I do better at plant biology than animal biology,” she said.
“You grow your own grains?” Trey’s question was loaded with disbelief.
“Maybe that’s what accounts for the unusually good taste,” Garner said.
Cat smiled and set the bags next to the door. Garner’s praise seeped into her like a silky lotion on dry skin. She could simply not get enough of it. Was it so wrong to want to be loved, and by someone who seemed so overflowing with kindness?
“I don’t have the space to grow my own here,” Cat said. “But I know where to find the good stuff. You boys go on into the living room. I’ll make some tea.”
Garner obliged, but Trey followed her into her tiny galley kitchen with his arms full of dirty dishes. After stacking them on the sink he leaned against the yellow-tiled counter while Cat filled her electric kettle with water and opened a cupboard. She rushed to put away the bag of rye flour left out on the counter. It was all very annoying.
This was not the first time Cat had used ergot-contaminated rye flour in her rye bread recipe. The fungus ergot—the source of that wild hallucinogen, LSD—grew on many grains but preferred rye. It wasn’t necessary that the rye and ergot be baked together to sicken a person, though back in medieval times that’s exactly what happened. In its most impressive feat, ergot once killed forty thousand people in southern France. All those poor souls had done to deserve their fate was eat their daily allotment of rye bread.
Even more eye-popping than this plague-like disaster was that the cause of the deaths wasn’t understood for another eight hundred years. Until then everyone thought that ergot, which looked like a dark brown grain of rice, was a part of the grain.
Cat had no intention of killing Garner or anyone else who ate her bread, but she did want to remind the vibrant old man how good she was for him.
The human race eventually figured out how to keep ergot out of its grain crops. On the downside, no ergot-resistant breed of rye had ever been developed. This meant that the fungus was prone to rearing its head from time to time and could, with enough money and the right connections, be purchased for “scientific pursuits” from the proper sources. Ergot did have its medicinal uses, after all.
For a moment Cat worried. She hadn’t factored in Garner’s compromised liver when measuring the ergot. She hoped that wasn’t a fatal oversight.
She opened the cabinet over her sink and revealed several rows of glass jars brimming with loose-leaf teas.
Trey said, “Do you make all these yourself ?”
“Just a few. Most are Garner’s.” She pointed. “The lemongrass, ginger, anise and cardamom, spearmint and rosehips. Those are his. He’s taught me a little, though I can’t say my blends are as satisfying as his.”
“And what have you made?”
The kid’s extroversion was wearing thin on her.
“Let’s see.” Cat skimmed the dried concoctions with her eyes and alighted on one on the top shelf. “He gave me the green tea for that one. I added some jasmine to it.”
“Nice.”
Nice?
“Which kind would you like?” she asked.
“I’m a pretty simple guy. How are you for chamomile?”
Cat pulled down a golden-colored mix with hints of bright red throughout. “Mine has a bit of saffron in it,” she said.
“Why does that sound like you’ve cast pearls before swine?” he said.
“I know. Garner says it’s too much shabby and chic in one jar.”
“Yeah, well, he just says that because he didn’t think of it himself. Let me try some.”
Maybe Trey wasn’t so awful after all. Cat scooped the leaves into tea balls, then hung them inside of the cups on their metal hooks.
A draft around her ankles and voices on the landing outside her door drew Cat’s attention out of her kitchen.
Nova was at the door chatting with Garner. Even if she hadn’t spurned Cat’s skills so tactlessly, she of all people had no business being pregnant. The woman was too old, too skinny, and lived at too high an altitude for someone with those risk factors. This thin air wouldn’t come close to providing the oxygen her expanding blood volume would require. And to top it off, she had no family support. Cat tried and tried not to care, but Nova’s rejection of her was so unfounded that she couldn’t erase the offensiveness of it. The doctor went to the door.
“I have guests,” she said, looking down on her neighbor’s head.
“One of them called me over to ask a question,” Nova said, indicating Garner.
Cat looked to Garner for an explanation.
“I heard Nova open the back door, and it made me recall a book I wanted to order,” he said.
Cat saw right through that ruse. She turned to go back inside. “I see. I’m sorry I interrupted you.”
“I was just telling Nova what a fine meal you made,” Garner said. He rubbed his belly. “Salmon like that do not swim in this state.”
“It does smell delicious.”
Cat was forced to pause and acknowledge the compliment with eye contact. Her ire rose at Garner’s bald-faced bridge building.
“Thank you,” she said. “You’re very kind. I’m sorry it’s gone, or I’d invite you in.”
A terrible idea came to Cat just then, while Nova was standing there at the threshold, suggesting that she’d gladly eat Cat’s food while she turned up her nose at Cat’s medical savvy. To be born to a woman so cold and aloof, so uncaring of others’ feelings, could only be a tragedy. What did Nova think—that books were all a child needed to thrive?
Cat would show her what savvy was.
“Wait. I just remembered.” She turned to the table where she’d placed the two bags of rolls. “Garner, you wouldn’t mind if I gave her one of your bags, would you?” She smiled at him.
“Oh, Nova, these are a treat.” Garner reached out for the bag Cat had picked up. “You have never tasted homemade rye like this.”
“Please, take it,” Cat said, “I insist.”
Nova’s face was stone, but slowly she reached out and took the gift.
“I dare you to eat just one,” Garner said. “I ate four of them myself tonight.”
“Thank you. That’s very kind. I’ll call you when your book comes in, Mr. Remke.”
“Thanks, dear.”
Nova descended, her footsteps lighter than whispering feathers. She didn’t promise to eat the rolls, but Cat figured a small-town bookseller sure wasn’t going to throw away free, nutritious, homemade food. And when she ate enough, she’d come running to Cat for consolation and restoration for sure.