Love Saves the Day

Finally Laura stands and says, “Everybody be quiet!” The whole table gets silent as they all turn to stare at her. Laura’s face is a bright, bright red. It’s as red as the little tomatoes that were on top of the salad bowl that got knocked over. Her hands are shaking a bit, but she nevertheless strokes the back of my neck calmly. Then she scoops one hand underneath me and lifts me up the way you’re supposed to pick up a cat when you absolutely have to, and she puts me on the floor, very gently. For a moment, I can’t move. I feel the shock of human hands touching me for the first time in so long. Hands that aren’t Sarah’s. Hands that are warm and not cold the way Sarah’s always were the last few months I lived with her. The table that was so beautiful with food only a little while ago now looks like a pack of dogs ran over it.

This time I don’t run to hide under the couch. This time I run as fast as I can upstairs and into the back of the closet in my room with the Sarah-boxes, burrowing deep beneath the dress with the Sarah-and-me-together smell. I twitch my back muscles so hard I almost give myself a cramp.

I don’t think anybody has ever been treated as cruelly as I’ve been treated tonight. Whenever Sarah used to be upset about something bad that happened to her, she would cheer herself up by saying, Worse things have happened to better people. But I don’t think anything worse than this has ever happened to anybody. Even that long story about what the Hebrews went through seems like nothing in comparison.

I hear Laura’s footsteps coming up the stairs, but they pause when Josh follows her. “I just want to check on Prudence and make sure she’s okay,” she tells him in a low voice.

“I’m sure she’s fine,” Josh says in an equally low voice. “She’s just a little rattled. Come back down and help me straighten out the table.”

“I will,” Laura tells him. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

Josh’s footsteps start to go back down the stairs when I hear Laura say, “Josh?” She’s silent for a moment. “I’m sorry about this. I really wanted everything to be perfect.”

“It is perfect. Well,” Josh adds, “maybe we got a bit of unexpected dinner theater.” He chuckles. “But everything can be salvaged. No harm done.”

“I know, but …” Laura falls silent again. “It’s the first time we’ve had your parents over for dinner,” she finally says. “I don’t want them to think that … I just don’t think Prudence knew any better. Letting her eat on the table is exactly the kind of thing my mother would’ve done.”

“Prudence is a cat, Laura.” Josh’s voice is gentle when he makes this (obvious) statement. “Of course she didn’t know any better. Nobody thinks it reflects on you or your mother.”

As if I were the one with bad manners!

“I’ll be down in a minute,” Laura says again. Her footsteps continue up the stairs and down the hall until she’s standing in the doorway of my room. “Prudence?” her voice whispers into the darkness. “Prudence, are you okay?”

I can tell she’s waiting for me to meow in response, but I have nothing to say to Laura right now. “Prudence?” she whispers again. I turn around three times in Sarah’s dress and wait for Laura to leave so the room will be silent and I can fall asleep—even though I never did get anything to eat for dinner except for the dried chicken soup I lick off my left hind paw.

5

Laura

LAURA DYEN’S FAVORITE PLACE IN THE WORLD, WITH THE EXCEPTION of her own bed on a Sunday morning, was found on the forty-seventh floor in the Midtown offices of Neuman Daines. The forty-seventh floor was assigned to the Corporate group, and Laura frequently had a quick lunch of deli sandwiches with her fellow fifth-year associates in what was grandly referred to as the forty-seventh-floor conference room—although in truth it was no more than a smallish meeting space. They’d spread newspapers and legal pads over the surface of the round table, where reflected globes of white light from the overhead fluorescents floated like water lilies in its cherrywood depths.

Often they used these group lunches as an opportunity to solicit one another’s unofficial input on opinion or adversary letters they were working on. But the lunches were primarily about camaraderie. Once they’d been a group of thirty first-years who’d started out as summer associates together. Now they were eight, the rest having left for other firms. Laura had gotten the same early-morning phone calls from recruiters as the others—still got them, in fact—but she’d also understood, in a way few people her age did, that those who jump around early usually end up jumping around forever. All she’d had to do to recognize the truth of this was look at her mother.