Love Saves the Day

Today I found two white boxes while I was looking for things to show Laura—a smaller one and one that’s bigger, like the kind clothing comes in when one human is giving another human a present. When Laura comes to sit next to me on the floor, wearing sweat-clothes, it’s the smaller box she opens first. “Let’s see what you found today,” she says. Her voice, which was hoarse for days after she yelled at that man across the street about the pigeons, sounds normal again. When Josh asked her about it, she told him she was in a loud meeting at work and must have strained her throat. Josh has been so busy with his own work lately that he didn’t narrow his eyes the way he does when he can tell Laura is saying something not-true. Maybe he didn’t even notice how her cheeks changed color. I don’t know why Laura wouldn’t want to tell him what she did, though, because even things as stupid as pigeons deserve to have a place to live—and they spend so much time on that rooftop that it must be covered in their smell by now. Who was that strange man to try to make them leave? I was proud of Laura for defending them, even though it turns out they came right back without her help to where they’re used to being.

The inside of the small white box is lined with cotton fluff. Wrapped into the fluff is something made of a smooth, dark-white material that Laura says is called ivory. The bottom part of it is made up of five long teeth, and the top part is shaped like a fan with all kinds of curls carved into it. “It’s a comb,” Laura says. “My mother had this way of twisting her hair up and holding it with a comb. She looked so elegant and glamorous, I couldn’t believe she was really my mother.” Laura’s face used to get so tight whenever Sarah was mentioned, but now it wears a soft kind of smile. Her voice is soft, too. She holds the comb up to the light and says, “I don’t remember ever seeing this one, though.”

Of course I can’t talk and tell Laura so, but I remember seeing this comb. Sarah showed it once to Anise. She told Anise that Mrs. Mandelbaum had given it to her years and years ago, to give to Laura on her wedding day. She wore it at her own wedding, Sarah said. She said it was only fitting that Laura’s “something old” should come from her. Sarah told Anise she’d thought about giving it to Laura the day she got married, but ended up losing her nerve because Laura always got so upset whenever the Mandelbaums were mentioned. Anise looked sad for Sarah, and she told her, You can’t spend the rest of your life waiting for a perfect moment to say the things you want to say. You have to do the best you can with the moments you actually get. It’s funny—when I think about the Sarah I remember and compare her with the Sarah in Laura’s memories. I remember a Sarah who always knew exactly the right thing to say to me. Laura remembers a Sarah who talked and talked but never said the thing Laura really wanted to hear.

Now she puts the comb back into the little box, and puts that back into one of the big Sarah-boxes, although not the one I found it in. As the days go by Laura seems to be organizing the things we look at together. Some go into boxes with things she probably wants to keep, like this comb, and others go into boxes of things she’ll bring to Trash Room someday, like old ordering slips from Sarah’s record store, or the funny little drum on a stick with strings attached.

The bigger white box I found is trapped shut with clear tape, and Laura has to slide her fingernail around the edges to get it open. There’s lots of crinkly tissue paper (perfect to play in!), and inside of that are tiny clothes, far too small for even the littermates to wear—little knitted sweaters and hats, tiny denim jackets covered in silver safety pins and neon-colored spray paints, and teeny skirts and dresses and ripped T-shirts decorated to match the jackets. The sweaters have the very, very faint aroma of another cat, along with a bit of Sarah-smell and another scent that’s probably what Laura smelled like when she was younger.

“Oh God.” The look on Laura’s face is amazement. “Mrs. Mandelbaum knitted these sweaters for my Cabbage Patch Doll. And Anise made her these little rock-star outfits.” It’s when she says Anise’s name that I notice something like anger dart behind Laura’s eyes and fade again, just as quickly. “I told my mother to get rid of these when I was eleven.” She laughs a little. “I insisted, actually. I wanted her to know I wasn’t a baby anymore.” Laura’s smile is wobbly. “I can’t believe she kept them all these years.”