Love Saves the Day

The dining room table has been set up with a huge mound of bagels in a straw basket I didn’t know we had, along with containers of soft cheeses and platters of different kinds of smoked fish. After the last holiday, I know better than to jump onto the table and demand some—no matter how tempting all that wonderful fish smells. I look up anxiously into Laura’s and Josh’s faces as everybody piles their plates with food to take back into the living room. (Josh’s father doesn’t pile his plate quite as high as everyone else, because Josh’s mother tells him, “Abe, remember what Dr. Stern said about your cholesterol.”) I even rub my right cheek hard against the table leg, carefully scraping my teeth against it to get them extra clean, so everyone can tell by my scent that this is my food place right now. But nobody seems to notice how politely I’m waiting. At least the littermates are better behaved than they were the last time. Robert bends down to put his face (too) close to mine and, holding out one hand, says, “Here, kitty. Can I pet you?” But the hand he’s holding out doesn’t have any fish in it, so I flinch away in disgust, raising my right front paw with the claws extended as a warning.

Once the littermates have their food arranged on plates (and why should they get to have fish before I do?), they race upstairs to eat and watch TV in Laura and Josh’s bedroom. Normally food is never allowed upstairs. “That’s what I asked them to give me for Mother’s Day,” Erica says drily. “One quiet meal with grown-ups.” Then she sighs. “I was hoping Jeff might send some of the money he owes so I could swing camp for them this summer.” She looks at Josh, who’s now sitting next to Laura on the couch, but not so close that their arms touch. “Remember how much we loved Pine Crest?”

“Eight weeks in the mountains away from our parents.” Josh smiles. “What could be better?”

“Eight weeks in the suburbs with no kids,” Josh’s mother says, and everybody laughs.

Josh turns to look at Laura. “Did you ever go to summer camp?”

“Me?” Laura seems surprised. She scrunches her eyebrows and turns up one side of her mouth, as if she thinks this question is foolish. “Lower East Side kids didn’t go to summer camp. Unless you count roller skating through an open fire hydrant as camp.” She grins. “We used to call it urban waterskiing.”

“So what did your mother do with you when school was out?” Josh’s mother asks.

Laura shrugs. “Mostly I helped out at her record store, or stayed with neighbors in our building. Some mornings she’d take me with her to the thieves’ market on Astor Place to buy back records shoplifters had stolen. Then we’d go to Kiev for chocolate blintzes. That’s only until I was about nine or ten,” Laura adds, in a way that makes it seem like she wants to change the subject. “After that I started taking summer classes to help me prepare for the tests to get into Stuyvesant.”

Josh’s father’s eyebrows raise and he lets out a low whistle. My ears prick up at the sound, thinking maybe he’s calling me over to give me some fish. I run to stand next to the chair where he’s sitting and rub my cheeks vigorously against its sides. But all he does is say, “Your mother cared about your education. Stuyvesant’s one helluva prestigious high school.”

“Believe me, I know.” Laura gives a short laugh. “Those tests were not easy.”

“So, wait,” Josh says. “You would have been nine in, what, ’89?” When Laura nods, he says, “That must have been a great summer to hang out in a record store. You had Mind Bomb by The The, Paul’s Boutique, the Pogues’ Peace and Love.”

Laura’s face as she looks at him is perplexed but also affectionate for the first time in a long time. “How can you possibly know all that right off the top of your head?”

Josh grins. “You knew you married a geek.”

“Hey,” Erica interrupts. “Didn’t Bleach come out that summer?”

“That’s right!” Josh turns to face Laura again. “What did your mother think of early Nirvana?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” Laura takes a bite of her bagel, and I watch enviously as the fish goes into her mouth. But when nobody else says anything, waiting for her to answer, she swallows and tells Josh, “She wasn’t all that interested in them at first. It wasn’t her kind of music. But Anise came into town and dragged her to see them at the Pyramid Club. It was the first time they’d played New York, and Kurt Cobain got into a brawl with one of the bouncers. That was on Tuesday night.” There’s a kind of unwilling respect in Laura’s smile. “Wednesday morning she called her distributer and had him overnight her a gazillion copies of Bleach. By the time the store closed on Sunday she’d sold out.”