Love Saves the Day

I still couldn’t bring myself to listen to my music. But I could no longer stand the silence, either. I started watching a lot of TV. And I went out for long, roaming walks. I felt like a ghost haunting the neighborhood. It was odd to see how much things had changed in eight years. The building where Anise and I used to live was now a luxury high-rise where a one-bedroom apartment started at four thousand dollars a month for only five hundred square feet. A tall silver box divided into dozens of smaller silver boxes, none with any more personality than the other. Lofts the size of the one Anise and I shared now sold for three million dollars, which struck me as something beyond madness. The SRO where Mr. Mandelbaum died was now a high-end boutique hotel. Its lobby bar was thronged at night with young girls who were beautiful and looked very expensive.

But there are still traces of the place I once knew. The DIE YUPPIE SCUM! graffiti on the occasional brick wall. Chico’s Loisaida mural on Avenue C. Walking through these streets I used to know so well is like running into a girl you once knew at your twentieth high school reunion, some girl who’s had a lot of plastic surgery. She looks older and yet she also looks younger. Like herself and also like a different person from the one you remember.

One day I found myself walking down Stanton Street, where Laura and I used to live. It was raining, and maybe that was what drew my feet in that direction. Where our building had been was now a construction site littered with cement blocks, stacks of lumber and steel beams, and a silent crane. Gaily striped banners proclaimed that luxury lofts were being erected.

I stood there in the rain and looked at it for a while, the way I’d stood in the rain that night, watching our old building come down. I couldn’t remember the name of Mr. Mandelbaum’s cat anymore, that cat Laura had loved so much she’d been willing to risk her life for her. I tell myself all the time that I’m too young to be so forgetful, even though I have a grown daughter. I’m not even fifty yet. But my memory has become full of holes.

This day wasn’t rainy as that other day had been. After one intense, tropical burst, the clouds cleared and the sun was beating down again. Just as I was preparing to leave, I saw something move near one of the cement blocks scattered on the ground.

It was a kitten. A tiny little thing. Probably no more than a few weeks old, cowering behind something solid. The creature looked soaked through. She was trying hard to remain unseen, and for a second I did consider leaving her to her privacy. And yet—surely this was some kind of miracle, wasn’t it? That I should find a kitten—one who looked so much like how I remembered the Mandelbaums’ cat—on this spot, in this place? She had the same green eyes, the same black tiger stripes and little white socks on her paws. Surely I was being offered a second chance, to save now what I hadn’t been able to save for Laura all those years ago.

And didn’t I also need saving? Didn’t I also need someone to love? It was meant to be, a voice in my head whispered.

I crouched down, holding out my hand. “Hey, kitty,” I whispered. “Are you lost?” The kitten shrank back, afraid. Poor thing! I thought, and something in my chest that had been hard and frozen for years began to loosen. I reached out to her again, and she seemed to draw herself inward until she was a tight ball of watchful fluff, just beyond the reach of my fingers. It was probably prudent, I told myself, for such a young kitten to be wary of a strange human. As this thought crossed my mind, I remembered Anise’s cats, all named for Beatles songs, and I smiled. “Prudence?” I said. “Is that your name?”

The kitten looked at me with enormous, fearful emerald eyes. And then, without thinking about it, I began to sing. For the first time in fourteen years, I found my voice. “Dear Prudence,” I sang softly. “Won’t you come out to play?”

At first the kitten looked bewildered. I wasn’t surprised. My voice sounded scratchy, and it was deeper than it used to be. I didn’t even sound like me anymore. But as I sang, my voice gained strength and I started to recognize it again. “The sun is up, the sky is blue … it’s beautiful, and so are you …”

Timidly, cautiously, the kitten crept out from the shadow of the cinder block. She sniffed my fingers, inching forward, and allowed me to lift her. She was soaking wet, and I bundled her under my jacket, against the warmth of my chest. She pressed one paw, tentatively, softly, to my cheek. I noted what looked like a funny little extra toe.

“Let’s go home, Prudence,” I whispered. The kitten responded with a series of cheeping mews, as if she were trying to sing back to me.