“You know, you could always just call Rudy and tell him you have his cat,” John said.
He’d put his feet up on the rungs of Pru’s chair, rather possessively, she thought. McKay was looking at her, she could feel his interest and delight, his brain working out this new equation: Pru plus John equals . . . She finished the cheesecake, feeling slow and languorous, in the stretch of this moment, when nothing was happening except the contemplation of John’s comment, the anticipation of what would be said next, the living vibe between the three of them. Who could go back to work when there was this, John’s feet under her chair, McKay to process it all with later, when they were alone? I could spend all day doing nothing but this, she thought.
“Well,” she said aloud, “that certainly puts it in perspective.”
“YOU KNOW HE’S GETTING A DIVORCE,” SAID MC KAY, when John Owen had left the table to return to his usual spot behind the counter. The batwings over McKay’s eyes moved up and down, suggestively.
“Forget it,” said Pru. “He’s totally unavailable. It’ll be years before he gets over Lila.”
“Please,” McKay said. “No, it won’t. You need to give him a little motivation, that’s all. Why don’t you ask him out?”
“Oh, okay,” she said, “I’ll just ask him to the Sadie Hawkins, after social studies. What’s his wife like?”
“Nothing special,” said McKay. “I’ve only seen her a few times. She’s pretty.”
“Pretty pretty? Or just pretty?”
“She’s pretty, Pru.”
“You should hear him talk about her. He makes her sound, I don’t know, like Sophia Loren or something. All alluring and mysterious and un-havable and perfect.” She chewed her bottom lip thoughtfully. “That’s it. I’m too havable. There’s no real challenge here.”
“You don’t have to sleep with him, you know. Just go to a movie together. See what it’s like to date a nice guy.”
She shook her head. “I’m not ready to date. All that hope and expectation, I’m not ready for it yet.”
“Right,” McKay said.
“I’m serious.”
“Honey,” he said, “tell that to your uterus.”
When they were leaving, he picked up the napkin with the pet therapist’s phone number on it and tucked it into the back pocket of Pru’s jeans. “Don’t forget this,” he said. “Show me the good person I know you really are, inside.”
Seven
Dr. Bond’s waiting room was like a spa, with its soothing, dark green walls and a little trickling fountain. Pru went to the receptionist’s desk, where she was given a thick clipboard of papers to fill out. She sat on a modern white plastic chair next to two other “parents,” a lawyerly-looking woman about her age and an older gentleman, both with dogs straining at their leashes. In the cage at her feet, the cat spat and hissed at the dogs. It took her forty-five minutes to fill out the forms she was given, even though she had to skip over most of the “demographic” information. When she came to the daily diary, where she was supposed to list the cat’s minute-to-minute activities, she was a bit light-headed as she wrote: 2:00-5:00 AM—HOWLING, FLINGING SELF AT DOOR, WAKING UP PRU, ETC. 2:00 PM—EAT SWEATER, PEE ON BOOKS, NAP.
“You didn’t put the cat’s name on here,” the receptionist said, taking the clipboard back from her. “What’s the cat’s name?” The receptionist wore a loud turquoise-and-black outfit, with turquoise jewelry. She had pictures of a curly-haired puppy, with red eye in every photo, covering the walls of her area.
Pru glanced back over her shoulder at the cat, who was still emitting low, threatening growls from his cage. She never called him anything. What came to mind, looking at him, was big. Big Whoop, she thought. For the entire year that Patsy was in seventh grade, every other word was “Big Whoop,” accompanied by a shrug, a hair flip, or a sneer. “It’s Big Whoop,” she said to the receptionist, who made a note on a folder she’d slipped all the sheets into.
Of course, Pru had had pets as a kid—a series of dogs that ran away or got hit by cars. Only one cat, though, a stray her mother had found on Bearswamp Road. They called the cat Annie Bearswamp. Every night when Pru was eleven years old Annie Bearswamp slept curled up in the crook of her neck. One day Annie Bearswamp simply disappeared. Months later, Leonard took Pru and Patsy down to the basement, where he showed them what he’d found: a pile of dainty white bones, behind the dryer. Not a lesson in personal responsibility, or anything like that, dead-cat bones; but a fascinating and educational discovery, in his opinion. Patsy had cried, and written a prayer to recite over the shoe box they buried the bones in. It wasn’t even Patsy’s cat. “It wasn’t even your cat,” Pru had said. She wondered about the smell. Shouldn’t they have smelled it decaying? Nadine had given them ice cream that night before bed.
That was when she’d understood. She was lying in her bed, looking up at the swirls in the ceiling plaster, and decided she would never give one of her children something that would decay and die. What was the point? Pets were too expendable to love. Let them roam around outside, but don’t tell them your secrets. Don’t get used to them on your pillow. Better you should love only things that will last forever, like the color blue and swimming and Little House in the Big Woods and Steve Martin records.
The receptionist called out,
