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Weighed down by a duffel bag stuffed with the contents of her work locker, Pearl scaled the last flight of stairs to her apartment in time to find the landlord tacking an eviction notice to the door. The building was being demolished, he coldly announced, then ducked around the corner to her neighbor's. In a daze, Pearl stuffed the bad news in her jacket pocket and stepped inside the dark cubbyhole she'd called home for the past ten years. She shuffled into the kitchen, absently reached for the box of cat food, poured some nuggets into the empty bowl next to the stove, then sat down at the table and held her throbbing head in her hands.
The downstairs buzzer sounded several times before she forced herself over to the kitchen window. A stranger stood in the middle of the sidewalk waving frantically. Pearl shook her head and pulled down the ragged shade. She opened the fridge and drank the remains of the orange juice. On her way from the kitchen to the couch, a sharp rap on the door stopped her in mid-stride. Grumbling, reluctantly she opened up, leaving the chain firmly engaged, just in case.
"How'd you get in?"
"The manager let me in."
"He had no right," Pearl snapped and started to close the door.
"No! Please! I have your cat, and..."
"You what?"
"He must have gotten out when the demolition crews came today. I'm so sorry--he was run over."
The last words never registered. Pearl bounded out into the hall and flew down the stairs with the stranger in hot pursuit. In the dark foyer, a hand landed lightly on her shoulder, but Pearl recoiled and flung open the heavy front door. She bolted down the front stoop into the glaring afternoon sunlight, calling her cat's name, looking under empty crates, up telephone poles, even in garbage cans and dumpsters for her only friend. There were whispers about insanity, snickering in doorways, while the pitiful spectacle played itself out.
When Pearl finally sat down exhausted on the bottom step of the stoop, the stranger cautiously re-approached.
"Let me take you to him," she quietly urged, reaching for but not touching Pearl's shoulder.
Like a small funeral procession the two women walked down the littered sidewalk. Pearl let herself be led through an iron gate and down a narrow stairway to an ivy-covered door. The misanthrope declined the invitation to come inside, preferring instead to fixate on the pattern of marble stone under her flour-dusted work shoes.
"I saw the whole thing. He died instantly," the gentle voice said as the cardboard box slid into view, propelled by a delicate hand.
Pearl dropped to her knees. She scooped the still warm limp bundle from inside the makeshift coffin and held it close.
"I do wish you'd come in. No use giving the neighbors more to gawk at," the woman said, lightly patting the top of Pearl's shaggy head. With misted green eyes, she watched helplessly as devastated, Pearl rocked silently back and forth. Then, without a word, she placed the body back inside the shoebox and left with it tucked under her arm.
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Pearl Gray was probably not the first person ever to lose her job, her home, and best friend all in one day, but as far as she could tell, life was at an end. An only child of simple shopkeepers, she'd never been much of a believer in anything other than hard work. For decades, her parents ran a small bakery and sold out to `Donut Heaven' just after their daughter's high school graduation. Pearl was the first in line to apply for work when the conglomerate finally opened its massive stainless steel doors.
Back then, almost everything was done by hand. Essentially, each donut was an original, unique to its maker. Over the years, Pearl excelled in the more exotic and difficult varieties, such as jelly or coconut cream with extra feathery textures. Eventually, she was made chief designer in the jelly division. She came up with winning recipes for which she was featured in the company rag, but she never asked for or received a bonus or promotion.
Although she had her chances and sure could have used the money, Pearl shied away from anything resembling a management position. Pearl was not a people person. It wasn't uncommon for her to go for days without speaking a word to co-workers. More than anything in the world she loved to sequester herself deep in the bowels of the giant mixers, where she plunged her bare arms to the elbows into the churning batter, until, alas, the whistle blew. Sometimes she couldn't believe she was being paid to do what she loved; while co-workers watched the clock, Pearl avoided it. If it weren't for her cat, she would have asked for double shifts.
In spite of her incredible dedication, however, one day it was decided that only machines should interface with the raw ingredients. "Much more efficient and sanitary" the floor manager smugly told her. He offered her a higher-paying position dreaming up new designs and recipes on a computer monitor, but Pearl vehemently refused, and, to everyone's dismay, took to arguing against automation every chance she got. Her shrill tirades attracted outside union organizers, which, needless to say, did not please her bosses, who claimed she was destroying worker morale. As punishment, she was the first to get a layoff notice during the inevitable downsizing.
But Pearl was not about to go quietly. One day, she and two line workers sabotaged the giant mixers by dumping in green dye. Since it was close to x-mas, they proudly confessed to the prank, brazenly predicting it would only improve sales. As it turned out, they were right. Nevertheless, the boss fired all three on the spot without benefits or severance pay. The contents of their lockers were stacked in conspicuous piles near the front loading dock, and pink slips, like little flags, perched atop each as a clear warning to anyone else with bones to pick.
On her way out the gate that day, she painstakingly folded her pink slip into a paper airplane and flew it up into the one and only tree that stood next to her boss's window. When she spotted him glaring down at her, she flipped him off.
Pearl sputtered epithets the entire twenty-block walk home, shaking her fist in the air and kicking whatever piece of litter or innocent tin can got in her way. Neighbors were dismayed to see the always mouse-quiet tenant in such a state and figured she'd finally lost her marbles. For, like most loners, Pearl was viewed as a bit on the crazy side--her agitated behavior merely confirmed longtime predictions that sooner or later she'd end up in the nut house.
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From inside the shock of loss, Pearl vowed to spend the rest of her days in her mother's rocker clinging to the shoebox on her lap. Burial of its contents hadn't occurred to her, for she was firmly in the grip of false hope, where she stayed throughout the night. Just before dawn, the undeniable urge to pee, however, forced her to the toilet, where she'd sat a good half hour before the loud persistent knock pierced her self-imposed stupor. Carrying the seemingly attached cargo under her arm, she made her way to the door and opened it just a crack. She could see no one. A passing glance revealed a cloth-like object on the hallway floor, but she wasn't curious enough to investigate. The world outside no longer had meaning inside the refuge of her demented plan to let thirst claim her life.
Seated once more in her mother's rocker, she knew she had three weeks before eviction--plenty of time, she thought, to dehydrate without anyone noticing. Her parents wouldn't call until the beginning of next month to check on her, so the timing couldn't be better. She breathed a sigh of relief over what passed for a sense of control over destiny. A weight lifted from her stooped and narrow shoulders; everything beyond the perimeter of the braided rug under her feet faded to a blur, for she had found refuge on that narrow ledge between winning and losing, where a weary soul could at last ponder the odds of going to heaven versus its opposite.
Inside the fog of her despair, Pearl heard her mother's voice repeatedly drone "the best laid plans are always dashed to smithereens." Suddenly, the outside world in the form of an unidentifiable noise entered by way of her left ear.
"He's alive!" she cried out, lifting the box lid. She reached inside, but found a cold stillness.The feline's remains were stiff as a board. Pearl screamed and jumped to her feet, scattering the coffin and its contents. It was too dark to see where the dead cat ended up, so she stumbled over him and fell against the front doorknob. Dazed, she heard another strange sound. Expecting any moment to see a demon, or less likely an angel, she listened breathlessly. It came to her again, this time louder, more resonant, and vaguely familiar.
"Can't be," she half-whispered. By now, a definite squawk emanated from the keyhole, followed by another and another, until curiosity would not be denied. Holding fast to the knob, she pulled herself up, but fell again when the room began to spin out of control. Shrieks of protest echoed from the hallway as the seductive voice of despair once more lured its weakened prey back to sweet surrender. As Pearl's heavy eyelids shut out the first light of a new day, the protester outside the door burst into song.
Memories of Spring floated across her mind like incandescent feathers in the dark. A hot tear pooled in the corner of her eye, spilled across the bridge of her nose, and dripped warm onto her cold hand.
Variations of the alluring theme continued to pour out of the keyhole, but when Pearl peered through it, she saw nothing. The aria continued, its singer cleverly varying the pitch and tone. Once more, curiosity won out. She pulled herself to her feet, released the triplet of dead bolts, and flung the door open wide.
The singing abruptly stopped. Pearl listened for a moment to the rhythmic squeaking. Cautiously, she lifted the paisley fabric and let it fall to the floor. Swinging wildly in the center of a bamboo cage was a bright yellow fluff whose shiny black orb locked onto Pearl's bloodshot browns. She had to giggle at the sight of the tiny creature capable of such musical fury. The frightened canary flew chaotically against the bars, losing several feathers in the process. One of them floated up and tickled Pearl's goose-fleshed arm.
"Where'd you come from?" she half-whispered and peered into the cage. The unfamiliar face drove the bird under the plastic seed cup. "Let's get a better look at you," she said, and brought the cage inside, but promptly stumbled again over the body of her dead cat. Shrill whistling drove the her to the kitchen, where she unceremoniously deposited the distraught captive on the table right next to the box of cat crunchies-- whose bigger-than-life picture of a hungry feline promptly sent the singer into a seizure of shrieks that didn't subside until Pearl found the good sense to remove the box from view.
"Sorry 'bout that," she chuckled and raised the kitchen window shade for some morning light.
She couldn't remember the last time she was genuinely amused by anything. Her cat didn't have much of a sense of humor, and the recluse certainly wasn't known for hers. In fact, humor, for all practical purposes, never existed in her family. It wasn't that her parents were unhappy, just content with the way things were, unwavering in their dedication to pleasing people's sweet teeth.
Pearl was mystified by how easily the midget virtuoso could tickle the funny bone she never knew she had. She wondered if it was a trick of the mind, yet an alien part of her insisted it was a dream coming true. She sat down on the one and only chair and peered into the cage. The canary jumped from his swing to the edge of his empty seed cup, where he warily preened.
"How long has it been since you ate?" Pearl asked, as if she expected an answer. The canary fanned greenish-yellow feathers into a mohawk top knot and launched into another beautiful aria that reminded his astonished host of scratchy opera records grandmother Rose played non-stop on her mahogany victrola.
"Bravo, Caruso!" she shouted, as Rose would have done at the end of the avian performance. The singer stretched his wings and gave his semi-captive audience the eye. He excitedly hopped from his feeder to the swing and back again, which she took as her cue to rummage through virtually bare cupboards. As luck would have it, she found one stale honey graham, which she crumbled through the top of the cage. Like a vulture, the bird descended upon the exotic offering. When Pearl reached inside the cage for the water basin, he had the nerve to peck her finger.
"Hey! You're not s'posed to bite the hand that feeds ya?" she scolded, grinning ear to ear.
Caruso practically took a bath as he drank, which further delighted her. Her giggling grew to sustained laughter. But the loud creak of the open front door put a quick end to the fun. With her heart in her throat, the ever-cautious tenant of apartment 4C darted across the living room and was about to lock up, when she spotted the cage cover still lying in the hallway. As she picked it up, a note fell out into her free hand:
"To ease your grief. He eats most anything, especially sesame seed and lettuce. I can't take him where I'm going. Good luck. A friend" she read aloud.
Without a thought for her safety, Pearl practically fell down the three flights and out onto the street, where a wrecking ball was slamming relentlessly against the top floor of the building next door. Ignoring the explosion of gutter language from the demolition crew, she snaked through the debris and thick dust down to the ivy-covered door. Frantically she pounded on it, even though she had to know the stranger was long gone. A hard-hat swooped down the narrow stairway and grabbed the trespasser roughly by the arm. "Are you friggin' nuts, lady?!" he yelled above the ear-shattering jack hammers.
Pearl broke his grip and bounded back up the stairs, dodging falling bricks and chunks of concrete as she made her way to her front stoop. A neighbor coming home from a graveyard shift at the nearby hospital stopped and inquired, "Miss Gray, are you all right?"
Pearl said nothing.
"They sure ain't wastin' any time," the neighbor said and unlocked the front entrance. "You comin' in?"
She nodded and followed. Standing in the wide open doorway of Pearl's apartment, the neighbor ventured, "I heard about your cat. I'm awful sorry." Pearl shrugged and stared at the floor. As if on cue, her cheery new roommate launched into a poignant lilt.
"Well, ain't that the most beautiful thing I ever heard," the neighbor said, peering in.
"You want him? I can't take care of no bird," Pearl, again in the grip of bitter despair, grumbled.
"No way. My three cats would make quick work of him, that's for sure," the neighbor said and ducked inside her apartment across the dark hallway.
Triple-locking herself in, she pulled down the window shade, and sank once more into her mother's rocker. The canary continued to sing his heart out until the last light of that day deserted the grimey kitchen window.
Shivering in the dark from a recurring bad dream, she turned on the floor lamp and tiptoed to the kitchen table. The precious yellow fluff was roosting one-legged on his swing, his head tucked under a wing. Bathed in the silvery glow of a Full Moon rising over the mountain of bricks and debris, reverently, she placed the paisley cover over Caruso's cage.
BIO: After earning a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology at SUNY Buffalo, Judith worked as a psychotherapist for more than twenty years. Now retired, she has been writing fiction for the past twelve years, with two novels (the most recent a saga), several short stories, and two full-length screenplays featuring strong female characters to her credit. Currently at work on a memoir, she resides in Portland, Oregon, her home for the past thirty years. |
