More fiction: “Solstice in the Jardin du Luxembourg” | "Curio"
“Strays”
It began with the marmalade tabby Paul found in a dumpster outside his restaurant. He heard her wincing meow, then pulled her from beneath the cardboard boxes and rotting produce. Paul feared some terrible injury, but except for a cut on her left hind leg and a swollen belly, she seemed okay. Cradling her in his arms, he hurried home through darkening streets lined with sherbet-hued row houses, their sun-scorched lawns pocked with the massy cactus intended to keep trespassers away; until he reached Twenty-First Street where the houses were softened by earth-toned palettes, and flower-etched lawns beckoned beneath canopies of live oak. There was a slight breeze that evening, and it carried with it the spicy, soothing scents of lavender and rosemary. Paul loved these scents, for they brought with them the sun-warmed drift of calm.
Later, curled in a tight ball on a wicker chair on Paul’s back porch, the cat’s whiskey eyes watched him open a can of tuna. He placed a dish of water beside it, even brought out a favorite afghan. Only after the cat had examined it thoroughly did she nest herself inside its folds. It was then he realized he’d settled on a name. Alley.
In the morning, the veterinarian cleaned out the wound and prescribed a high-nutrient cat food. “She’s young,” the vet said. “A year and a half at most. But the swollen belly’s not due to malnourishment.”
Paul stared at the cat. “What’s wrong with her?”
“Pregnant. The kittens should be born within the week.”
Instantly, Paul found himself reminded of how Richard would have reacted. “See, that’s why we stick to gardening. With certain plants, roses, for example, you can never have enough blooms. As for mint and Virginia creeper, when they threaten to encroach on the other plants, you simply cut them back, or pull them out by the roots.”
Yet Richard himself had known that life really was never that manageable; for before Richard came out, he had been married to Cynthia. There was a child. Rebecca was now sixteen.
Four summers ago, Richard’s daughter came to Lubbock and stayed in the dotted Swiss-curtained guest room. Over the course of three weeks, Paul and Richard took Rebecca to Prairie Dog Town and Caprock Canyon. When the winds gusted carried in the fragrance of manure and cotton seed oil, they drove out to see the kaleidoscopic play of windmills on display in a field; or they spent long afternoons in the velvet dark of a restored 1950s movie theater. And most nights, they listened to Buddy Holly and the Flatlanders and ate chile-heavy enchiladas at the canopied table in the yard.
There was a tearful parting at the airport, and a flurry of rainbow-papered letters and phone calls that lasted all through the autumn. But Rebecca didn’t make another visit.
Until she stood beside her mother wearing a black crepe dress and chunky Doc Marten’s at her father’s funeral. Somehow, she’d acquired Richard’s habit of running her tongue along her top teeth when she was nervous. Paul noticed this when he asked Rebecca to say something during the service. “I wouldn’t know what to say,” she told Paul. “I mean, I hardly knew him.”
On the fourth morning, Paul saw that Alley had dragged the afghan into the recycling bin. By sundown, there were three wet kittens in the bin with her. Two were pitch black. The other was marmalade.
The boy showed up soon after. His hair was the color of paprika, and he wore an over-sized Are We Having Fun Yet? t-shirt with chartreuse high tops and ravaged jeans. His eyes were whiskey-colored like the cat’s.
“These yours?” the boy asked, when Paul found him sitting Indian-style on the back porch, Bathos, the surviving black kitten, and six-toed Marmalade playing with his shoelaces.
“Yes.” Paul tried to make his lanky frame seem menacing. “If you steal one, I’ll track you down and shoot you.”
The boy’s eyes flickered over Paul’s face, but he didn’t flinch. “You got a gun?”
Paul scooped up Marmalade and told the boy to leave.
But the boy just motioned to Paul’s flowers and said, “I like your place. The plants and shit.” He walked over to the most fragrant of the old hybrid roses, now weighed down with a dozen dusky pink blooms. “What’s this called?” he asked, lifting a heavy branch.
“Early Blush,” Paul said, his throat tight. While waltzing together in the starry garden, Richard would often pluck one of the blossoms, then bring it very close to Paul’s face. “If I could choose the form I’d come back in during my next life, I’d take the form of a rose,” Richard liked to say. “This rose. Paul’s Early Blush…”
“How old are you anyway?” Paul asked, wondering not just how the boy had gotten past the six foot fence, which he always kept locked; but how the boy had gotten past the one hundred and twenty pound-mastiff on the other side.
“Eleven.” The boy worried a gray tooth with his tongue.
“What’s your name?”
The boy shifted his weight from one leg to the other, as if they were on the basketball court. “Matthew.”
“Well Matthew, if I find you on my back porch again, I’m going to call the cops.”
“Gotcha,” Matthew said. Then he used the branch of the stately Dutch Elm to give himself the necessary leverage to hoist his body up and over the fence.
“But the dog?” Already Paul anticipated the mastiff’s fierce growl.
“A Sominex-packed hot dog always does the trick.”
The next day, Paul came home to find the boy sitting on the front stoop. He had the kittens in his lap, and the corgis were barking at the living room window, stout paws pressed against the glass. “What the hell? I thought I told you—”
“You told me to keep off the back porch, and I did,” the boy said.
“But the kittens. They could run into the street and get hit by a car. A stray dog could come around—”
The boy’s smile was lazy, his posture relaxed. “Can’t you see I’m taking care of them?”
Paul noticed an open milk carton nearby. “They’re still nursing.”
“Wake up. I brought the milk for the mother. She’s awfully skinny.” Matthew’s whiskey eyes and Alley’s seemed suddenly accusatory. “You feeding her enough?”
Paul grinned, and the pupils of the boy’s eyes got very wide. His friend Susan’s daughter once said that horses’ eyes dilate when they’re glad to see you. Did the same hold true for human beings? Paul now wondered.
“You owe it to yourself to find out what this kid’s situation really is,” Susan said a few days later as they sat drinking tart margaritas in the evening cool of the garden. “He could say you touched him, and they’d have the cops on you.”
“I just don’t believe Matthew capable of that sort of thing,” Paul said, then went on to tell Susan about the way he always arrived with some sort of present for the animals. “At first he only brought something for the cats: a new toy fashioned out of string or bits of old fabric. But pretty soon he began bringing Denta Bones for Harpo and Lady, telling me that they were developing tartar buildup. A kid who worries about my dogs’ teeth is not going to accuse me of molestation.”
Susan just shook her head. “You can’t be so sure. One word out of this kid, and it could ruin your business, not to mention your life.”
Paul refrained from reminding Susan that his life had already been ruined. Susan had been there the morning Richard woke up no longer able to control his bowels. She and Paul had been making scrambled eggs in the kitchen when they heard Richard’s almost animal moan.
“It take you long to walk home from here?” Paul asked Matthew the next Sunday as they worked together in the garden. It surprised Paul that an eleven-year-old boy would find value in the fact that you couldn’t water a zinnias leaves, or they would yellow and die; whereas cosmos and evening primrose loved to be soaked from blossom to root.
“Not too long,” Matthew said, carefully transplanting the nasturtium seedlings from a tray into a patch of newly-watered earth.
“And your school? Is it nearby?”
“Sort of.”
Paul patted the soil down around the seedlings. “You need to give me a little more than that.”
“Why?” Matthew met Paul’s eye. “You don’t see me poking into your life, do you?”
Paul suppressed a grin. “That’s debatable. I mean, you did just install yourself on my property.”
“But I didn’t gun you down with questions.”
“No, you didn’t,” Paul said, more quietly. “Still, I don’t really know anything about you.”
“You know I’m good with the cats and dogs,” Matthew said. “You know I learn fast when it comes to the garden.”
It didn’t matter that Paul had repainted the bedroom a tranquil shade of blue that Susan said would help him sleep. Most nights Paul woke from dreams of Richard. About a month after the boy first showed up, he found himself dreaming about the week he and Richard spent in Paris, their last big trip. The last time Richard had been completely well. In the dream he and Richard walked hand-in-hand along the Seine, watching the barges, and admiring the decks of houseboats filled with red and pink geraniums in terra cotta pots. With seagulls soaring overhead, Paul felt only contentment.
Until his sleeping self registered that something was wrong, then struggled to figure out what it was. When Paul turned to face Richard, he saw that he had no eyes. Soon, Richard’s mouth was missing also. Paul awoke tangled in the sheets and sweating.
That’s when he heard the pounding on the front door.
Paul opened the door to Matthew’s tear-streaked face, his first look both a challenge and a plea to Paul not to mention that he’d been crying.
Minutes later, Paul stood at the old gas stove stirring cocoa and sugar into a saucepan of milk. “Be honest,” Paul said. “Does your family have any idea where you are?”
Matthew’s whiskey eyes were wide and perhaps a little afraid. “You don’t know shit about me, do you?”
“And whose fault is that?” Paul stared. “I don’t even know your last name.”
“I’ll tell you,” Matthew fixed his gaze on the stained glass chandelier, “if I can stay overnight.”
“Deal,” Paul said more gently.
“My last name is Orr.” Matthew traced the lip of his mug with his finger. “My mom’s name is Celia. My dad’s Bruce, but he’s not around.”
“Your parents are divorced?”
“You live in a romance novel or something? They were never married.”
“Do I know your parents?”
“Not Bruce. He’s in Houston. At least I think he is.” Matthew frowned. “But Celia comes into your restaurant sometimes. She likes seaweed, tofu, shit like that.”
“Is she a redhead like you?” Paul recalled just one redhead from the restaurant. She wore her shiny hair in a pageboy and always showed up in twin sets and pearls. No matter how hard he tried, Paul couldn’t possibly picture her with this paprika-haired kid with his ratty t-shirts and chartreuse high tops, the laces so frayed Matthew only managed the first three rows.
“Nah, Celia’s hair is black. She dyes it. She does hair for a living, you know?”
The black hair didn’t ring a bell with Paul in a town where too many teenagers and more than a few adults rode around with inky hair and dog collar jewelry. Was Matthew’s mother one of those?
“Does she know you’re here?” Paul asked once they’d padded down the long, oriental-carpeted hallway to fetch sheets and pillows from the linen closet. There was a spider’s web high up on the top shelf, a sign that he hadn’t used these sheets—or had a guest—in ages. Their friends had found it awkward to come and visit since Richard’s death. As for any new friends, well, there really weren’t any. Excepting, Paul realized now, the boy.
“She couldn’t,” Matthew’s voice wavered. “See, she hasn’t come home the last two nights. But you can’t tell anybody, okay?”
“Where is she?” Paul couldn’t resist asking, certain now that child services was involved.
“Probably at some guy’s.”
Outside the Swiss-curtained guest room, Matthew paused, but Paul shook his head and pointed to the living room, relieved that the boy didn’t ask why he couldn’t sleep in the bed that Paul had made up after Richard’s death, and never looked at afterwards.
In the morning, sunlight poured through the lace curtains to create fleur-de-lis patterns on the boy’s body outlined beneath the white sheets. It had been so long since Paul had seen anyone asleep other than Richard who, towards the end, had always looked least like himself with his shrunken cheeks collapsed against a pillow, his bony arms and legs tucked close to his body.
Staring at the boy, Paul suddenly understood. The situation had gone too far.
Susan would have told him to contact the authorities; but what made sense to Paul was going to the source: finding Matthew’s mother. So, in between mixing up a vat of ratatouille and preparing the dough for the next day’s bread, he set about telephoning hair salons in town, finally tracking Celia down at Déjà vu, a trendy place on Buddy Holly Avenue. When the receptionist said, “Hair cut and style?” he made an appointment for five o’clock and asked Diane to close up the restaurant.
Celia wasn’t anything like the person Paul expected. The real Celia was in her mid-thirties, and her clothes—distressed black leather mini-skirt and demure ivory silk blouse—a cross between faux Chanel and thrift store chic. Sure her hair was obviously dyed, but the glossy blue-black color suited her pale skin. And her eyes were a startling shade of violet, the brows tweezed to finely arched lines.
After neatening Paul’s sideburns, Celia swiveled the chair around and handed him a small mirror. “Does it work for you?”
“Sure,” Paul said.
Celia placed a hand on the back of his chair, and her eyes met Paul’s in the wall mirror. “Come on, why are you here?”
Paul felt the heat rise to his cheeks. “Sorry?”
“I’ve been cutting hair for too long not to know that your last cut was maybe two weeks ago.” Celia’s voice was sharp. “I get the sense you’ve been watching me. On a first take, I wouldn’t say you were into women, but I’ve been wrong before—”
“It’s your son Matthew,” Paul interrupted, determined not to hear anything more along the lines of a proposition.
“So you’re his Paul.” Celia shook out her inky hair as another stylist turned to stare. “It used to be basketball, especially since Bobby Knight came to Tech, but now all I get is Paul and his pets. “Listen,” an unexpected spaciousness came into her voice, “my next client’s not coming for half an hour. How about going across the street for a drink?”
In the brick-lined courtyard of a deserted wine bar, Paul sipped iced cappuccino and watched Celia gobble the half dozen overripe strawberries the waiter had added to her daiquiri without her even having to ask. After ten minutes, Paul knew that she was smart, self-absorbed, and absolutely capable of negligence on a child-sized scale.
“Matthew spends a lot of time at my house.” Paul chose his words carefully. “Mostly, he turns up late in the day to play with the animals. But when he showed up at midnight, he’d been crying.”
Celia shrugged, and for the first time Paul saw the son in the mother’s casual gesture.
“Matthew’s been staying on his own since he was seven. He never pulled any crying stunt before.”
“How would you know if you’re not home?” Paul said, reminded of how small Matthew looked standing in that darkened doorway.
“How?” Celia folded her napkin into a diminishing series of sharp little squares. “At nine, Matthew conned a sales clerk into believing he’d bought the toy he’d stolen. And last May I found him at home during a school day. He’d been calling himself in for a week. Knowing my son,” Celia’s violet eyes glinted, “I’d say he’s playing you.”
Four days went by, and Matthew didn’t show. Then Bathos disappeared. All that week Paul drove over to the animal shelter, but he found no black kittens among the strays. And every morning and evening he traversed the hollyhock-lined alleys calling out Bathos’s name.
Only in the weeks that followed Richard’s death had Paul felt such fierce desolation. How many nights after closing up the restaurant had he walked for miles. Revisiting his history with Richard, he went all the way back to the morning Richard first stepped into his diner in San Antonio. That day Richard had worn a crisp, white shirt and neatly-pressed khakis. And he strode right up to the counter and ordered two eggs, over easy, and cactus salad with buttered toast. “But you haven’t even looked at the menu yet?” Paul said.
“No need,” Richard said, “I always know what I want.”
Two weeks later Bathos was still gone, Matthew still hadn’t turned up, and Paul was running a fever. When the fever hit one hundred and two, Susan came over with chicken soup and Sprite. “I don’t drink soda,” Paul said, sweating, even though the air conditioner was set on sixty-five.
“It’ll settle your stomach,” Susan told him. “Besides, you need to stay hydrated, and the sugar will help your system fight back.”
Paul was about to protest, but again he remembered how much Susan had done when he’d needed help with Richard. Not even when Paul asked her to go and buy the diapers did she try to offer sympathy or worse, suggest that Paul take Richard to the hospital. And after the funeral, once the friends had gone, and the colleagues, it was again Susan who checked in on Paul; sometimes just sitting with him in the garden or on the back porch.
He drank the Sprite right down.
On the third day of the fever, Paul woke to mid-afternoon sun pouring through the curtains, the pale blue of the bedroom walls, and Matthew’s grin. The gray tooth was gone, leaving a gaping hole and red gums. “You look like shit, man,” Matthew said, his paprika hair a disheveled halo.
Paul felt a lop-eared joy rising within. “Where’ve you been?”
“Around.”
“So, why haven’t you come over?”
“You met with Celia behind my back,” Matthew said, worrying the space where the tooth used to be. “Why?”
“I wanted to know more about you,” Paul said, too weak to think through a more calculated response.
“Oh,” the boy said.
When Paul asked if he’d seen Bathos, Matthew said, “Downstairs. Celia wanted to keep her, but I knew you’d need her back.”
“Your mother wanted a cat?” More than anger, Paul found himself stuck in that image of himself casing the alleys while all along the missing kitten had been with the missing boy.
“Yeah, see, we had a kitten once, a little tabby with red streaks in her fur. A firecracker, Celia called her. She followed me everywhere, even slept on my pillow.”
“Where’s she now?” Paul said, regretting the words as soon as they were out.
“She got hit by a car. Smashed her spine.” Matthew’s voice wobbled. “We tried to fix her, but the vet said her insides were all shot.”
Reminded of those last weeks with Richard—the diapers, the foul smell, the overwhelming grief—Paul said, “Go downstairs or go outside or something, but leave me alone for now.”
Matthew ran his fingertips along the edge of the blanket. “You want me to make you mac and cheese or something?” His voice came out almost pleading. “I make a really good mac and cheese.”
“Not now,” Paul said, turning towards the soothing blue of wall.
In the morning Paul woke to a headache, but at least the fever was gone. He took the stairs slowly, reminded of his conversation with Matthew. But really, what else could the boy have expected? He’d taken Bathos, and then there’d been that terrible story about the red-flecked tabby. Her insides were all shot.
In the bathroom, Paul showered, and although still dizzy, he didn’t slip on the slick black tile Richard had begged him to replace. “A last request,” Richard had said. As if slippery tile mattered in the face of his dying. “But it does matter,” Richard insisted. “If you slipped and I wasn’t here, who would find you?”
After orange juice and toast, Paul dressed in one of Richard’s old shirts, a white one threaded with traces of blue that still bore a trace of his lemongrass scent. Then Paul drove over to the restaurant, not sure if it was only relief he felt when he learned that Diane and the part-time cook had managed to run the place smoothly without him.
After the lunch rush, Paul stood outside and stared at the asphalt lot, reminded of how much Richard had longed for no more than this—a return to health. How many possible remedies had they tried, from acupuncture to herbs to therapeutic massage. Each time they wanted to believe that this last remedy would be the one, but Richard only got worse, until his immune system was unable to stave off even a common cold.
Towards sunset, Paul drove out to the canyon, the place he and Richard had so loved, especially during those last months when the gnarled mesquite and hunched cactus seemed to reflect back their own tenuous circumstances.
Along the low path that led to a sheltered place among the circle of cotton-woods, a sweet-smelling place where you could actually find small pools of water after it rained, Paul thought back to the evening some nine months ago when he scattered Richard’s ashes here. Then there had been a light dusting of snow and a quiet air of solemnity.
Now desert sage put forth its pink flowers, and even the yucca was in bloom.
A breeze picked up, and Paul lay down and breathed in the golden fragrance of dusk’s prairie grasses. A pair of kites circled far above the earth. A hummingbird moth almost alighted on his shoe.
On the first day of December it would be a year since Richard’s death, and Paul would still be here. Wind-swept west Texas wasn’t really home, not in the way of San Antonio with its rolling hills and lush greenery, not to mention its greater tolerance. Still, he’d managed to build a life here. It wasn’t exactly a joyful life, but there was the joy of the garden and the animals. And the restaurant was so much easier to run here in a town where good food served in a vibrant atmosphere was a rarity. And then there was Susan, whose office had been next to Richard’s in the university art department. And now there was the boy.
Again, Paul thought about what Matthew had said about the little tabby cat he’d loved. It was the one time he’d tried to tell Paul something really important. And Paul had told him to go.
The days passed, and Paul found himself on the constant lookout for a paprika-haired boy in chartreuse high tops. At home, the slightest noise startled him. That third afternoon he worked himself into such a state he went so far as to phone the salon just to make sure that Celia hadn’t left town, taking Matthew with her.
That evening Paul found Matthew lying on his belly in the back yard. He had his nose in a book, and he’d kicked his high tops off to the side. The kittens were playing with his shoe laces.
“Had a lot going on this past week?” Paul asked.
“Why?” Matthew said, avoiding Paul’s gaze. “You miss me?”
“Yes, and I worried about you. What gives?”
Matthew shrugged. “I was thinking.”
Paul waited for him to say more, but Matthew just rolled over and looked up at the cerulean sky.
“About what?” Paul finally asked.
“You and Celia.”
Unsettled, Paul nearly lost his balance. “I don’t understand.”
“When I found out you went to see her, I thought you two might get together.” Paul tried to interrupt, but Matthew said, “It’s happened before, and for a little while I’ve got someone. But the guy always takes off.”
Reminded of the way Celia sipped the daiquiri laden with all that overripe fruit in the wine bar courtyard, Paul wondered how often she met men there. Who knows? Perhaps the bartender was even a lover. And then there were those trips to Las Vegas she mentioned. Surely, she didn’t go alone.
“But you won’t ever get together with her, right?” Matthew’s whole body seemed to arc towards Paul, and his lower lip trembled. “Because you’re gay.”
Paul swallowed hard. “Don’t tell me you just figured that out.”
“No, but I had to make sure.” The boy’s tenuous expression showed the beginnings of a smile. “So we’re safe, right?”
The word propelled Paul back to that first night beside the dumpster. Again he heard that cry. And into Alley’s cry, he heard his own cry the morning he stepped into the guest room with Richard’s honey-sweetened green tea. Even before Paul said a word, he knew that Richard was gone.
What did safe mean when the person you most loved could suddenly be gone, leaving behind a lemongrass scent that lingered on clothes and bedding and drifted in through the dotted Swiss curtains you once swore you’d pull down…
Sure, Paul could tell Matthew that they would continue to meet in this garden that he had begun with Richard; a garden the two men believed would thrive and reflect back a mature beauty they would need as they aged. He could tell him that they would continue to care for the animals; and for each other.
But it wouldn’t last forever.
A wind picked up and ruffled the pages of Matthew’s book. When the kittens pounced on it, Paul thought he might laugh.
But Matthew kept his eyes on Paul.
“Come on,” Paul said. “Let’s go inside and make something to eat. I brought cornbread home, and I’ve got chicken in the fridge.
“Or better yet,” he looked towards the house, “maybe it’s time you teach me how to make that mac and cheese you say you do so well.”
“Alright.” Matthew’s voice was lighter now. Still, he seized hold of Paul’s hand.