Curiosity Killed The Cat Sitter

“She’s waiting for you,” she chirped, as if my visit were a magnificent gift. I suppose in a retirement home, all visitors are considered a magnificent gift.

Cora had opened her door a crack again, and I rapped on it with my knuckles and pushed it open. No lights were burning, and the apartment had the dreary look of space where sunlight had recently withdrawn its warmth. Cora was sitting in a wing-back chair by the glass doors to the sunporch, still in her nightgown, her wispy white hair sticking up in the gloom like apparitional floss. I switched on a lamp and sat down in a chair at an angle to her. Neither of us said anything for several minutes, just sat there in the half-lit room and breathed in and out.

After a while, Cora sighed. “They say God never gives us more than we can handle, but sometimes I think God has overestimated what I can take.”

I said, “Have you eaten anything since this morning?”

She looked startled, as if the idea itself was foreign. “Well, hon, I don’t remember if I did or not.”

I got up and went in the little kitchen, switching on fluorescent lights that made harsh reflections on the white countertops. I found a can of vegetable soup, and while it heated, I made a pot of tea and got out cups and saucers for two. I poured the soup into a pretty blue pottery bowl, added crackers and butter, and carried the supper tray to the living room.

Cora eyed the tray with a flicker of interest. “There’s a TV tray behind the sofa there,” she said. I put the tray down on a lamp table and looked behind the sofa, where a wooden TV tray was folded flat. I pulled it out and set it up in front of Cora’s chair, put a napkin in her lap, and arranged her meager meal.

“You’d make a good waitress,” she said.

I poured myself a cup of tea and sat down and watched her take a few tentative spoonfuls.

“It’s good,” she said. “I didn’t think I was hungry, but I guess I am.”

For a few minutes, the only sound was the click of spoon against bowl and Cora’s faint slurping noises. She ate the entire bowl of soup and several buttered crackers before she pronounced herself full.

I removed the TV tray and poured us both another cup of tea. Her color was better now and her eyes had lost some of their stunned dullness.

I said, “Cora, do you know an attorney named Ethan Crane?”

“Well, I did, Dixie, but Ethan’s been gone now for a good while, a year maybe. Did you know him, too?”

“No, but his grandson called me today and asked me to stop by his office. It seems he has taken over Mr. Crane’s practice. His name is also Ethan Crane. Do you know the grandson?”

“No, I can’t say as I do. He’s taken over Ethan’s practice?”

“That’s what he said. He had a living trust that his grandfather had drawn up for Marilee. Do you know about that?”

She frowned. “A living what?”

“A trust. It’s a kind of will. According to the younger Mr. Crane, Marilee had two trusts, one for you and this other one that he talked to me about. Do you know about the trust she set up for you?”

“Oh my, yes, I know all about it. I have a copy of it. It’s personal, dear, so I won’t tell you what’s in it, but I won’t ever have to worry about running out of money.”

Her face crumpled and she sobbed quietly with her hands over her face. I waited, knowing that tears would come like that for a while, just spring out when she least expected them, as if there were a well of tears inside her that had to pour out on their own time. When she was cried out, I got up and got Kleenex for her from the bathroom and sat back down.

“Cora, the trust that Mr. Crane wanted to talk to me about was different from the one Marilee had for you. This one was for her cat.”

Cora stared at me wide-eyed. “Her cat?”

“The cat that I take care of when Marilee leaves town. His name is Ghost. She made this trust about a year ago, right after I started taking care of him. I didn’t know anything about it until Mr. Crane told me, but she put her house and car and everything in her house in this trust.”

Cora looked as if she was about to smile. “For her cat?”

I nodded. “For her cat. And she named me the trustee.”

Cora put her head back against the chair and laughed. Then she looked at me. “This is the truth? Marilee left her house and car to her cat?”

“It’s the truth.”

She laughed again, a girlish laugh of pure delight. “That’s Marilee,” she said. “Lord, that girl was always dragging home every stray cat she saw. She wanted to give a home to all of them, and some of them didn’t even want a home, they’d rather be roaming the alleys. But no, she couldn’t stand it, she had to take care of all of them.”

“It’s an awful lot of money, Cora.”

“Well, don’t worry about it, hon. Marilee must have trusted you to take good care of her cat or she wouldn’t have named you that whatchacallit.”

“Under the terms of the trust, when the cat dies, all the money that’s left goes to me.”

“And it should. Cats live a long time. You ought to get paid for all that time.”

“But I don’t want it, and I’ll get somebody else to take care of Ghost.”