Love Saves the Day

15



Prudence





THERE’S A TALL GREEN PLANT THAT LIVES NEXT TO THE LIVING ROOM window leading to the fire escape. The sunlight through the window today is brighter than usual, so bright I have to squint my eyes. That doesn’t make the game any less fun, though. This is Sarah’s and my favorite game.

Sarah is walking from the bedroom to the kitchen. She passes my hiding place inside the plant, and the rustling sound of leaves as I crouch lower makes her head start to turn. The movement is so small only a cat would notice it. I know she knows I’m here, but she keeps walking.

Just as she passes the plant, I leap out and pounce on her ankles. Sarah pretends to be very surprised by this. She thinks I don’t know that she knew I was about to pounce, but pretending is what makes this game fun for both of us. Now my paws are wrapped around her right ankle, my teeth on the skin of her heel (although I don’t press down in a real bite). “Oh no!” she cries. “It’s the deadly attack kitty!” I switch and wrap my paws around her left ankle. But Sarah knew I was going to do this, because she’s already bending to her left to scoop me up in her arms. “Who’s the vicious kitty?” she says, in the voice she only uses when she’s talking to me. “Who’s my brave little hunter?” She brings my face closer to hers, and I press my forehead against hers. She knows I don’t like being held in the air for very long, though, so she puts me back down on my own legs. She shakes off some of my fur that got onto her hands and says, “I think somebody could use a good brushing. What do you think?” From a drawer in the kitchen, she takes out the special brush that’s only used for brushing my fur, and the two of us settle on the couch with me in her lap.

The brush-bristles against my skin feel nice, and Sarah’s hand following the movement of the brush down my back feels nicer. Sarah’s smell is even more wonderful in my nose than it usually is. I knew you weren’t really dead! I think. I knew you’d come back to me! I don’t know why I think that, though. Whoever said anything about Sarah being dead?

“Don’t leave,” Sarah says. “Please don’t leave us.” Her voice sounds different, a little deeper than normal maybe, and I wonder why she’s asking me to stay. Where would I go? And why is she saying us? There’s only one of her. When I look up at her, her eyes are full of sorrow. The skin of her forehead puckers just a little above the inner corners of her eyebrows. But the brush feels so comfortable, and Sarah smells so warm and safe, that my eyes start to close before I can think any more about that. I feel a purr start in my throat, spreading its warmth into my chest.

That’s when Sarah starts to sing. Her singing voice also sounds different, like maybe it’s the voice of someone I’ve heard talk before, but who I’ve never heard sing. This is strange, because singing is almost the first thing I ever heard Sarah do. The voice is Sarah and not-Sarah at the same time. Still, it’s a voice I know I could listen to forever and be happy. It sounds the way love feels.

Prudence, the voice sings, open your eyes. I don’t want to open them, though. I’m too comfortable and sleepy. But the voice keeps singing and saying, Dear, dear Prudence … won’t you open up your eyes? My little love. It’s so insistent that I have no choice. I have to fight with my eyelids, which have become heavy and stubborn. There’s a powerful light over my head, hurting my eyes and pushing my eyelids down. I finally pry them apart, and it takes a moment to focus and see things around me clearly.

When I look up, it’s not Sarah’s face I see. It’s Laura’s.

“Dr. DeMeola!” Laura cries. “She’s awake!” The blurry shape of a familiar-looking woman drifts through my vision, somewhere behind where Laura is standing. Laura’s smiling, and there are tears in her eyes. I don’t realize I’m on my side until I feel her hand start to rub gently behind my right ear, the one that isn’t pressed against whatever it is I’m lying on. There are bad smells in this place—scary smells—but Laura’s Laura-smell is stronger than they are as she continues to stroke behind my ear and down the length of my body. I try to lift my backside the way I usually do when my back is scratched like this. But my body won’t move when I tell it to, so I blink once at her, slowly, instead.

Laura brings her mouth close to my ear and murmurs, “Don’t scare us like that again, little girl. We need you to stay with us. Can you do that, Prudence?” Her eyes look into mine, and I recognize her expression. It’s the one I used to see on her face sometimes when she looked at Sarah. I used to wonder what that look meant, but now I know. Her eyes are filled with love.

My throat is raw and scratchy. It feels like something bad happened to it. But I’m still able to answer with a faint Mew.

“Good,” Laura murmurs, and she kisses my forehead.


From the cage they make me sleep in (I have to sleep in a cage!), I can smell nervous cats all around me. They stand and pace, hoping to find some warm new corner or a way to get out they haven’t discovered already. Their movements disturb the air and make my whiskers tickle. At night, when most of the humans who work here have left, some of the cats cry out, wanting their own humans to come and take them home. But I never cry. Sarah is never coming back for me.

There are whole chunks of pink skin showing on my front paws, where my beautiful white fur used to be. One of the stabbing people here shaved the fur off so they could attach dripping tubes. Sarah was the first one who ever said my white paws looked like human socks. Now, with so much of the fur missing, they don’t look like socks at all. I lick and lick at the spots where fur is supposed to be and think, This is what happens when the human you love dies. Pieces of you go missing.

But Laura will always come back for me. I saw it in her eyes when she sang to me and woke me up. When I think about Laura singing the Dear Prudence song, the hole in my chest from missing Sarah begins to fill. There’s something growing there. Soon it will fill up the whole space.


For three days I’m forced to live here, and every day Laura and Josh come to visit me. A woman with curly hair unsticks my front paws from the tape that fastens dripping tubes into them, and then she wraps me in a strange blanket that doesn’t even smell like me and carries me into one of the smaller rooms where Sarah brought me once a year to get stabbed with needles. The room smells like the metal of the high table where needles get stuck into cats. It also smells like Laura and Josh fresh from being outside, sweating slightly under their coats and forced to stand too-close when the stabbing lady comes in to tell them how I’m doing. She says I’m not really sick, that they’re making me stay here “just as a precaution.” A precaution against what? It’s being locked in a room with sick cats all the time, away from my own food and special Prudence-bowls, that’s going to make me sick if anything will. I try showing Josh and Laura how little they should trust the stabbing lady by hissing at her every time she comes near me, but that just makes them laugh and say things like, Look how feisty Prudence is! She’ll be better in no time, won’t you, little girl?

I recognize this stabbing lady—she’s the same one who once agreed with Sarah that my front paws looked like socks. Josh keeps standing, but Laura sits cross-legged on the floor next to me and strokes my back while I lick. “It’ll grow back, Prudence,” she says gently. “It’ll all grow back.” She hums the Dear Prudence song while she pets me. Her humming voice sounds so much like Sarah’s that I stop licking my paws and walk into her lap, sitting on my haunches and pressing the whole side of my face against her chest. Her arms come around me and one hand rubs the good spot underneath my chin until I purr.

“Sweet girl,” she murmurs. “Who’s my little love?”

Sarah’s eyes looked sad in my dream because she knew she had to stay in that place, without me, just like I have to stay here without her. But Laura’s eyes smile as she looks down at me now. “You can come home with us tomorrow,” she says, as her fingers keep finding good places beneath my chin. I know now that “home” is wherever I live with Laura.

I don’t think I’ve ever been happier to get into my carrier than I am the next morning when Josh and Laura come to pick me up. The humans at the Bad Place remember to put my red collar and Prudence-tags back on me before I leave, and there’s no more tape on my front paws. Just the faintest little fuzz of white on the pink skin. Even from inside my carrier and cuddled up with the old Sarah-shirt that Laura put in here with me, the air outside feels cold and scrapes against my furless spots. It hasn’t rained since the day I got sick, but the little patches of dirt around the trees in the sidewalk still smell damp. This is the time of year when leaves change color and start to fall off trees. Sometimes Sarah would come home with red and orange leaves clinging to her hair or coat, and she would put them on the floor for me so I could roll around on them while they made crunching sounds and broke up into little pieces. The pain in my belly when I think of Sarah flares again, until I look through the bars of my carrier and see that Laura and Josh are holding hands.

Laura is the one who holds my carrier as we leave the Bad Place. I’ve been living high in the air in Upper West Side for so long, I’d almost forgotten how things look and smell down here on the streets. Laura must have stepped right near where a pigeon is sitting, because one flutters up past the bars of my carrier with a gurgling coo. I can hear the squeaks of mice, too high-pitched for humans to notice, burrowing into soft dirt, and cars speeding by on the streets. A woman walks quickly past, talking into a tiny phone. Her voice goes up at the end of every sentence even though it doesn’t sound like she’s asking any questions. So I said to him? I was, like, if you think you can treat me that way? You’ve got the wrong girl.

The bricks from the buildings here smell older than they used to, and I can’t decide if that’s because I’ve been away from Lower East Side for so long, or because I’ve gotten used to the newer, bigger buildings in Upper West Side. I realize that I’m not an immigrant anymore—that Upper West Side is the country where I live now. Laura stops in front of one building and says to Josh, “This is where my mother’s record store used to be.” The vibrations from her chest when she speaks travel down her arm and make the walls of the carrier hum. The shop she points to has tiny clothes in the window, probably for human infants.

“This is a nice block,” Josh says.

“It always was. The guy who used to own this place sold chess sets he made”—Laura points to another window—“and there was a candle shop next to that.” Her arm sweeps back, to her left. “And down there, on Second Avenue, was Love Saves the Day.” She’s silent for a moment. “I think I heard it’s a noodle place now.”

Josh puts an arm around her shoulders, bringing my carrier closer to the side of her leg. “Did you want to pick up some lunch there?”

“Nah,” she tells him. “Let’s get something Prudence likes. Maybe tuna sandwiches.”

They walk to the end of the block, and Josh puts his arm in the air until a yellow-colored car pulls over next to us. All three of us get into the backseat and Laura settles my carrier onto her lap. I think about tuna sandwiches the whole way home.





It’s funny how a place you know well can feel so different when you come back after a long time. Part of it is realizing how bad I smell now (like the Bad Place) after smelling all the things at home with my regular Prudence-smell. But the whole apartment looks bigger in some places and smaller in others, and just odd in general. Maybe it was being with Sarah in our old apartment while I was sleeping that makes everything around here seem different than it used to, and like I was away for longer than I was. Still, it’s good to be home. First I spend long moments re-marking my scratching post (I didn’t have anything to scratch on at the Bad Place). My Prudence-bowls are filled with food, exactly where I left them. I’m even happy (only for a moment) to see that awful blue mat with the fake-happy cats resting beneath them. When I jostle the water bowl, it’s because I can only drink moving water, not because I’m angry about the mat anymore.

Laura and Josh must have gone shopping while I was staying in the Bad Place, because now the living room floor is crowded with store-bought cat toys. There are little toys that look just like mice—with fur and everything—that squeak when I bite them, and balls with tiny bells that roll in all directions and remind me of the jingly toys Sarah brought home when I first went to live with her. Josh and Laura remembered to save the big paper bag the toys came in, and I crawl all the way into the back of it, holding one of my mice in my teeth and swiping out at their feet with my front paws whenever they walk past. There’s also one toy that’s like a long stick with feathers—like the ones from Sarah’s bird-clothes—dangling from a string at the end. Laura holds the end of the stick over my head and drags it around while I try to catch the dangling feathers. She laughs when I stand up on my hind legs and bat at them with my front paws, until I wonder who’s supposed to be enjoying this toy—her or me?

They also brought home something called catnip, which looks a little like the cooking herbs Sarah used to make our food with but smells so much more wonderful. Josh sprinkled some on the living room floor, and at first I was just breathing its smell in and noticing how nice it was. Then, the next thing you know, I was rolling around on my back and all I could think was, This is sooooooo gooooood. This, of course, is not a dignified way for a cat to behave. I was able to recover a little bit of dignity when Laura walked by while I was rolling around, and I leapt at her ankles. She seemed as delighted with this display of feline hunting skills as Sarah ever had. She even scooped me up the way Sarah used to and asked, “Who’s my happy girl?” I rubbed my forehead against hers just the way I used to with Sarah when we lived in Lower East Side.

Days pass, I’m not sure how many. Laura doesn’t go to her office during the day, and she doesn’t read any work papers at night. Now she spends a lot of time napping, and I nap with her. Sometimes we nap together in the big bed upstairs, and sometimes we fall asleep on the couch until Josh comes to throw a blanket over us. He’s always very quiet, trying not to disturb us. He seems concerned about making sure Laura is getting enough rest, even though she isn’t getting sick in the mornings anymore.

She and Josh talk and watch movies and go out to lunch on days that aren’t even Sundays. Last night, they went out together to celebrate some sort of word-writing about that building on Avenue A. “We got a story!” Josh kept saying. “A story in The New York Times!” But he didn’t say how many times, or times what, so it was hard to know why it was such a big deal. It must have made more sense to Laura than it did to me, because she put her arms around Josh and said, “I’m proud of you.” The skin on her forehead didn’t even tighten the way it used to whenever Josh mentioned that building.

Later that night, after they came home, Laura told Josh a story about when she was fourteen, and the apartment building she and Sarah were living in got torn down. I was lying on the back of the couch, behind Laura’s head, and she reached one hand back to press my face close to hers when she talked about what happened to Honey the cat.

Josh was sitting at the other end of the couch. His eyes never left her face, and he moved closer when she got to the part about Honey and Mr. Mandelbaum, taking her hand and squeezing it tight. “I’m sorry,” he said when she was finished talking, and pressed her face to his shoulder. “Oh, Laura, I’m so sorry. But you must know,” he squeezed her hand harder, “you have to know that nothing like that is ever going to happen to us.”

“How can you know that?” Laura’s voice sounded like she was ready to cry, even though she didn’t. “How can you possibly know what’s going to happen to us?”

Josh exhaled loudly through his nose and let go of her hand, running his own back and forth across the top of his head. “You’re right. I don’t know for sure. There could be a fire or a flood. Or a freak tornado could flatten New York. But we have resources. And we have each other.” Laura was staring down at her hands while Josh said all this, and he fell silent until she looked up into his face. “Nothing like that is ever going to happen to us, or to our child.”

Laura didn’t say anything. She leaned her head back against the couch, her hair brushing against my whiskers, and Josh put his arm around her again. He held her until her eyes closed, and she and I both settled into a peaceful sleep.


Two days later, at breakfast, Josh’s forehead is knotted, like he’s thinking hard about something. He fiddles with the twisty-tie from the loaf of bread he made his toast from, and when I stretch up one paw to reach for it, he drops it onto the ground in front of me so I can pick it up and toss it into the air. I chase it into the corner behind the kitchen table, where it tries to hide from me. Laura and Josh watch. “I have to tell you something,” Josh finally says.

Laura’s body stiffens a little. “Okay.” Her voice sounds deeper than usual, the way a human’s voice sounds when they’re nervous but trying not to sound that way.

“I’ve been getting a lot of calls since the Times article came out,” he tells her. “Magazines and other papers that want to do follow-up stories, things like that. I’ve also been hearing from a lot of the artists who’ve recorded in the music studio over the years. Some of them are pretty big names.” He pauses. “Anise Pierce called last night after you went to bed. She read the article, too. She wants to come out here and help.”

Laura’s left hand, which has been resting in her lap, rises onto the table. She drums two fingers against it. From underneath the table, where I’m sitting with my twisty-tie, I can hear the light thump thump of fingers against wood. “Anise,” she repeats. “Anise Pierce wants to come here, all the way from Asia, to help save a music studio she hasn’t set foot in for thirty years.” I think Laura may be asking a question, although I can’t be sure. Her voice doesn’t go higher at the end of what she says the way human voices usually do when they’re asking a question.

“She’s in California now,” Josh tells Laura. “She got back a few weeks ago. To be honest, I think she wants to come out here to see you more than Alphaville.”

Laura doesn’t say anything right away, although I can see her toes curl up inside her socks. At last she says, “You said yourself that all kinds of people have been coming forward since the Times article ran. Do you really need Anise’s help?”

“Maybe it would be good for you to see her again,” Josh says. “How many people knew your mother as well as she did?”

“Let’s talk about it later.” Laura pushes back her chair and stands. “Right now I want to do some grocery shopping, and I’m not sure I have anything to wear outside that still fits me.”

Laura has been getting fatter lately, probably because she sleeps a lot more and stopped drinking coffee. She pauses in the doorway and, without turning around, says to Josh, “You can call Anise and tell her to come if she wants.”

Laura walks up the stairs, and I follow her. If she’s unsure about what clothes to wear, she’ll want my opinion, the way Sarah always did.


For days Laura attacks our apartment. She moves everything around on counters so she can scrub every little corner, pushes rugs out of the way to sweep away whatever bits of dust might be hiding there, and stands on ladders so she can wipe shelves and the tops of furniture too tall for a human standing on the floor to see anyway. Blue liquid from a spritzy bottle makes rainbows in the sunlight when she stands near the window to clean, but it smells fake sweet and falls onto my fur when I get too close. I squint my eyes and let my mouth hang open, trying to keep the stink of it from invading my nostrils. Even The Monster gets taken from its special closet. I hide in Home Office—which is the one room Josh told Laura she isn’t allowed to clean—until The Monster is safely back in its cave.

“Maybe we should hire someone to do all this,” Josh says.

Laura is lying on her belly on the floor of their bedroom, half underneath the bed as she tries to get rid of something called “dust bunnies.” I see little balls of fur and human hair, but nothing that looks like a bunny. “We don’t need to hire somebody,” Laura says. “It’s not like I’m busy doing anything else these days.”

Josh has been standing in the doorway to the bedroom watching Laura chase the invisible bunnies. Now he turns to leave. “Anise Pierce isn’t going to look under the bed,” he says over his shoulder.

“Yeah? Thanks for letting me know,” she says in her “dry” voice.

By the time the doorbell rings the next night, the apartment is so clean it doesn’t smell like anybody lives here. I’m busy rubbing my Prudence-smell back into the living room couch when Josh opens the door. Laura is seated on the couch with her back straight and her hands folded in her lap. After spending a lot of time deciding what to wear, she finally put on a pair of jeans and a soft, light blue sweater that’s big enough to hide her growing belly. I think the color of the sweater looks beautiful with her eyes.

There’s the sound of Josh saying hello and Anise’s familiar voice, deep and raspy, answering him. Then she walks into the room behind Josh. Seeing her face again and smelling her Anise-smell makes memories of Sarah and our old apartment fill my mind so fast, I have to lie down for a moment and feel the cool wood of the floor against the skin of my belly. I see Sarah and Anise singing along to black disks and talking about The Old Days, Sarah telling Anise about Laura and Josh back before I knew that, someday, Laura would become my Most Important Person. I remember Sarah holding me in her lap while she told Anise there was something wrong with her heart, and Anise saying, You should tell Laura, Sarah. She’d want to know. She loves you more than either of you realizes.

Laura stands, and Anise and Laura look at each other for a long moment. I can tell from the way Laura’s eyes widen that she’s remembering things, too. “My God,” Anise finally says. “You look just like her. I’d forgotten.”

“Not the eyes,” Laura replies. “She always said I had my father’s eyes.”

Anise’s laugh is loud and hoarse-sounding. “We won’t hold that against you.” She crosses the room in only three long steps and wraps her arms around Laura. She seems to grow taller, so that all of Laura is folded up into her hug. “I’m sorry, baby. I’m so sorry. It’s a terrible thing to lose your mother, especially when she was so young.” Anise’s eyes over Laura’s shoulder are shiny with water. “I still can’t believe she’s gone.” She pulls back to look at Laura. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be here for her funeral.”

Laura takes a step back from Anise. “I know how hard it can be to reach you when you’re overseas.”

“I have a cell phone now,” Anise says. “I don’t think you would have had trouble reaching me, if you’d really wanted to.”

Anise looks at Laura, who seems to shrink a bit until it looks almost like she and Anise are the same size. Anise’s words sound like an accusation, but then she smiles and adds, “You must have gotten your stubbornness from your father, too.”

Laura doesn’t seem to know what to say to this. Josh, who’s been standing there watching them asks, “Anise, what are you drinking?”

“Just some tea with lemon, if you’ve got it,” she tells him and Josh disappears into the kitchen.

“Have a seat,” Laura says, and Anise perches on the shorter end of the couch. Now that she’s closer to me, I realize how familiar she smells. There was a hint of this same smell on the bird-clothes Sarah kept in the back of her closet.

Anise notices me sniffing her leg and grins. “Prudence!” Putting one hand beneath my nose, she says, “It’s a long time since I’ve seen you, baby doll.” She begins petting me almost before I know what’s happening, but her fingers are so skilled they find all the good places behind my ears and under my chin that I’m helpless to protest. I fall to the ground and flip onto my back, sad when Anise pulls her hand away too soon. “Look at this apartment,” she says, her bright eyes darting around the room. Then she laughs. “Sarah must have hated this place.”

Laura laughs, too, in an unthinking way that seems to surprise her. “You’re right,” she tells Anise. “My mother said buildings like this look more like hotels than homes. But then,” she adds, “I remember her complaining about how hard the stairs in her building were on her knees whenever it rained.”

“It stinks getting older,” Anise agrees cheerfully. The little lines around her eyes crinkle as she smiles again. “Your whole life you’re young, and that’s all you know how to be. That’s all you remember being. Everything anybody says to you starts with, You’re young. You’re young so you don’t know any better. You’re too young to know what being tired feels like. And then one day they stop saying it. You realize it’s been years since anybody called you young. These days everything people say to me begins with, At our age. At our age, who has the energy to run around Asia with a rock band?” Josh has returned with two cups of tea, handing one to Anise and the other to Laura. Anise sips at hers and says, “I don’t think I’ll ever be the grown-up your mother already was at nineteen, but she also had a gift for staying young. That’s tough to pull off. I appreciate it more every day.”

Laura drinks from her teacup, too, but doesn’t respond to this. Josh walks across the room to fiddle with something next to the TV, and music fills the room. Anise is also silent for a moment, then says, “Is this Sarah’s copy of Country Life?”

Josh looks surprised. “It is,” he tells her. “How did you know?”

“Because I gave it to her.” She puts her teacup down on the coffee table. “Before I moved to California. You always recognize the crackle of your own records.”

“We have a bunch of her records and things upstairs,” Josh says. “You guys should look through them.”

Laura’s face tightens. But Anise says, “I’d love that, if it’s okay with you?”

She looks over to Laura, who hesitates before nodding and putting her teacup on the table next to Anise’s. Standing, she says, “Come on. I’ll show you where everything is.”


My fur prickles as I follow everyone into the room with the Sarah-boxes. I haven’t been in here since before I got sick. Even now, knowing that it doesn’t matter if everything in them stays in the right place because remembering things won’t bring Sarah back, it’s hard for me to watch Anise take things out.

Still, it’s nice to hear her talk about Sarah. She has memories that are different from Laura’s and mine. She exclaims over the box of matchbook toys (I can’t believe she kept them all these years!) and tells Laura stories about the places she and Sarah used to go and the things that happened to them there. She also tells Laura stories that Laura is too young to remember. “We had your fourth birthday party at Ear Wax. You wouldn’t stop trying to rip up record covers, and it drove your mom nuts. She was always so patient with you, though. More patient than I would have been.” She looks through Sarah’s collection of black disks like they’re old friends. “I remember you!” she exclaims a few times. Laughing, she pulls something from one stiff cardboard holder. It’s not a black disk, but a colorful one that looks just like Anise except smaller! The cut-out is Anise holding a guitar and throwing her head back with her hair flying around behind her. There’s a hole right in the middle that lets you put it on the special table Sarah had, just like the black disks. “I always told your mom these picture disks would never be worth anything,” she says to Laura. “But she insisted on holding on to them.”

“She put most of this stuff into storage when we moved into the apartment on Stanton.” Laura shakes her head. “I could never figure out why she kept it all.”

Anise’s eyes narrow in confusion. “Why does anybody keep anything? To help you remember.” Then she looks around this room, which is still empty except for the Sarah-boxes, and doesn’t say anything else until she sees the black garbage bag with the bird-clothes. “No way!” she says happily. “Look at all these! I made most of these for your mom, you know. We had disco outfits for when we went to her kind of clubs”—Anise makes a face—“and all these little punk-rock-girl clothes for when she came with me to the places where I played.” She holds up a shirt that looks like it’s been clawed up, held together with silver safety pins. “Did you know your mom was a drag king for about thirty seconds back in the day?”

Laura has been sitting cross-legged on the floor with me in her lap, watching as Anise looks through everything but not doing much herself. I feel her surprise in the sudden slight movement of her arms and shoulders as she says, “Wait, what?”

Anise laughs. “Nobody wanted to give a girl DJ a break back then. It used to kill me to see Sarah spending so many hours at Alphaville, making audition tapes nobody would listen to. So one day I came up with the idea of dressing her like a guy. Neither of us had much in the way of a chest”—Anise looks down at her own skinny shape—“and she was so tall anyway that all it took was some clever needlework. In the clothes I made, and with her hair up under a hat, she looked like a very pretty boy.” Anise’s smile is gentle. “I never saw anyone as beautiful as your mother who was so completely unaware of how beautiful she was. Like it was nothing. The first time I met her was in a store where she was trying on dresses. She came out of that dressing room looking like a model, but you could tell just by looking at her that she didn’t see it when she looked in the mirror.” Anise makes a funny face and sticks out her tongue. “I thought somebody should tell her what a knockout she was.”

Laura’s voice is hesitant. “So why did she stop? Being a DJ, I mean,” she adds, when Anise looks confused. “She talked about it sometimes, and even when I was a kid I could tell how much she loved it. Why did she give up the way she did?”

Anise’s eyes widen. “Because of you,” she says. “Because once you came along, nothing else was more important. Not even her music. She used to say you were her music.”

Laura’s fingers have been stroking my fur, and the pressure from the tips becomes a bit harder, as if her fingers are curling up. I start to purr, hoping it will ease her tension. “But then, why did she have that record store? Why did she raise me in that neighborhood?” Laura is starting to sound angry. “Why did we live the way we did if I was more important to her than anything else?”

“Go sing that sad song to your husband. My mother didn’t love me enough.” Anise looks as mad as Laura just sounded. “You forget—I was there. What kid was ever happier than you were? What kid ever had a mother who adored her the way your mother adored you?” Anise’s hands rise into the air and start making gestures. “Your mother gave you a family,” she insists. “She gave you a life. Isn’t that what every parent wants, to give their children what they never had? Do you think I can’t tell what you’re hoping to give your children just by looking at this apartment?”

“You haven’t seen me in fifteen years.” Laura’s voice is low and sharp. “You don’t know anything about me or what I’m trying to do.”

“Don’t I?” Anise’s voice doesn’t get louder, exactly, but it sounds more powerful. “I know you’ve been letting one horrible day roam around in your head like a monster you can’t kill and won’t ever let die. And yes, I know how bad that day was for you,” she adds when Laura takes a breath as if she’s about to interrupt. “Bad things happen and people spend months and years trying to recover because they don’t get the kind of help from friends that your mother did. Help she didn’t get from those grandparents of yours, who you don’t even remember because they never cared enough to meet you. You had the Mandelbaums for grandparents and that girl who lived upstairs—what was her name? Maria something?—for your sister, and Noel from the store and everybody in the neighborhood your mom made a point of knowing so they’d all look out for you. You had a mother who picked you up at school every afternoon and built an entire life around being able to spend time with you. And she was lucky, because not everybody has the chance or the resources to do what she did.”

Laura doesn’t say anything when Anise’s rush of words stops. I look up and see the skin of her throat tightening, like those times when she wanted to say something to Sarah, but couldn’t.

“Look,” Anise says. “It’s not my place to tell you what you should think of your mother, Laura. But don’t ever think she didn’t give you enough. Sarah gave you everything. She gave you a family. And here you sit—smart, successful, and happily married, so she obviously did something right. I don’t think you’ll ever know”—Anise leans forward and touches Laura’s hand—“how proud of you she was.”

Laura’s touches the tips of her fingers lightly to Anise’s, then moves them through my fur again. I press my forehead against her arm and think about what Anise said, about Laura and Josh, and about how Sarah gave me a family, too.

When Laura speaks, her voice sounds almost as hoarse as Anise’s laugh. “I still haven’t cried for her.” She raises one hand to run fingers through her hair, just like Sarah used to. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. But I can’t. I haven’t been able to.”

The inside corners of Anise’s eyebrows rise, making her face look softer. “Sarah would have been proud of what you and Josh are doing for Alphaville and the people who live in that building.”

“It’s just Josh.” Laura clears her throat. “I haven’t done anything.”

Anise smiles and tilts her head to one side. It’s the way she used to look at Sarah sometimes. “You will.”


Later that night, after Anise has left and it’s just Josh and Laura and me sitting together in the living room, Laura tells Josh, “I’d like to help with what you’re doing for this building on Avenue A.”

The corners of his eyes push up in a smile. “Really?”

Laura starts to smile, too, and her voice sounds casual, but her eyes are still serious. “Why not?” she says. “Sleeping twelve hours a day is completely overrated.”

Just when I finally think I have humans figured out, I realize again what mysterious creatures they really are.