Meena told me about Karthik, her white mouse, and I talked about Mister Cat—or I did until my throat started to tighten up again. So Meena changed the subject without seeming to change the subject, which is something she’s very good at. She said, “But what a palace he’ll be coming home to, your Mister Cat. So much space, so many shadowy corners to investigate, so many interesting new sounds… I’d love to be a cat in this house.”
“You don’t know the half of it,” I said. “Other people have cockroaches—we’ve got gnomes, or boggarts, or something.” I told her about the voices in my bathroom, which I hadn’t told anyone, and about the rooms Julian wouldn’t go into, and the things the carpenters and electricians had said. The longer I went on, the crazier it sounded, but Meena listened without laughing or interrupting once.
When I got through, she said, “Well, Julian was right—you definitely do have a haunted house. Dollars to doughnuts.” (Meena’s crazy about American slang, and sticks it in every chance she gets.) “In India we’ve got haunted houses all over the place—we’ve got haunted apartments, haunted gardens, even haunted garages. Our old house in Madras had a poltergeist, one of those spirits that breaks things, throws everything around. I saw her a few times as I was growing up.”
I’m glad it was dark, so maybe she didn’t see my mouth hanging open. “You saw it? Her? The poltergeist?”
“Oh, yes,” Meena said. “Not very often, though. A little girl, about Julian’s age, with a scar down one side of her poor face. Like a burn scar. Maybe that’s why she was a poltergeist, who knows? We felt so sorry for her.”
“What did you do? Do Indians have, like—I don’t know—like with a priest? An exorcism?”
“Yes. In a way.” Meena half laughed, but there was a little catch in it, too. “But Jenny, she lived there, she’d lived in our house longer than we’d done. What could we do?” Then she giggled outright and said, “Besides, she scared away a lot of relatives I couldn’t stand. And she left my room alone, except once or twice. I think sometimes she almost liked me.”
I thought about that for a while, and finally I said, “Well, whatever’s in our house, it doesn’t like us all that much. Not the way those nasty little voices sounded. I’d rather have a real flat-out ghost, if we’re going to have anything. I’d rather even have a pooka.”
Meena wanted to know what a pooka was, so I told her what Evan had told us, and about boggarts and the Wild Hunt. She said, “I don’t see why you couldn’t have both—boggarts and ghosts. I bet you do. It’s just the sort of house that would.”
I said thanks, I really needed to hear that, and Meena laughed a real laugh this time. “When you grow up with old houses, the way I did, you grow up with ghosts, too. They’re people, they’re always drawn to places where people have been living for a long time. You don’t get ghosts in shopping malls.”
“Great,” I said. “I hope the ghosts at least run off the boggarts, that’d be something.”
We didn’t say anything for a while, and I was starting to think Meena was asleep. Then I felt her hand reaching down from the bed, bumping around to find mine and taking hold of it. She said, “When you go to get him. Your Mister Cat. I could come with you, if you like.”
I didn’t know what to say. I just squeezed her hand and mumbled, “Sure, I guess, okay.” I think we fell asleep holding hands like that, but I don’t remember.
It was a beautiful day when we drove to Goshawk Farm Cattery for the last time. You have to be careful with English springs—you can’t ever turn your back on them, because they’ll drop thirty degrees and start thundering and lightning while you’re taking your shirt off. I know for a fact that the poet who wrote “Oh, to be in England, now that April’s there” was living in Italy at the time.
But this one early April day stayed warm and clear all the way to Dorchester. There were pink and white blossoms on the trees, and daffodils everywhere, and new lambs in the fields with big red numbers painted on their sides. People were out on tractors, plowing and harrowing, and the car’s front windows were partway open, so in the backseat I kept smelling raw turned earth from every direction. Not that I was paying any attention to it, or the lambs, or to Sally asking Meena more school questions in the front. I just hunched up around the pain in my stomach and tried not to think about how I used to imagine the way it would be, bringing Mister Cat home at last.
When we got to Dorchester, I was wishing Meena wasn’t with us, because then I could have just waited while Sally went in and picked up Mister Cat. But they were all happy and excited, so there wasn’t any choice. I still remember how heavy my legs felt, and how long it seemed to take to climb out of the car.
We went in, and Sally told us, “I’ll handle the paperwork, you two go get the big guy.” I was going to argue about it—he’s my cat, I’ve handled every damn miserable bit of this all the way, I’ll be the one who finishes it—but Meena grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the cat runs. So I couldn’t stall even a minute longer.
Okay. This is hard, this is what I mean about trying to write how another person felt at one particular moment, six years ago. I may not be that same person anymore, but I’ll never forget how it was for her, having to run with her new friend to find her best friend and bring him home, even though she already knew he wasn’t going to speak to her or even look at her again. And she had to go through with it, there wasn’t any way out, and the cat runs kept getting closer. And there was Martin, the nice guy from the airport, unlocking Mister Cat’s run, and smiling at her, saying, “This is my favorite part of the job.” And throwing the gate wide.
He didn’t come out at first. He stood in the doorway and he stretched his front and then his back, the way cats do, and he yawned like a hippopotamus while he was doing it. I heard Meena say, “Oh, he’s so lovely!” but she sounded somewhere far away. I knelt down by the gate, and he did look at me with those orange eyes of his. I said, “Please. I’m sorry.” I don’t think anybody heard me.
Mister Cat lowered his head and bumped it against my chin. Then he put his front paws around my neck and made a little sound he makes sometimes, which is always like a question I don’t know the answer to. I picked him up.
“Oh, he missed you,” Meena said. “Look at him.” She stroked his back, but he didn’t turn to look at her. He kept pushing his head against me and purring. I tried to say, “Come on, kid, we’re blowing this joint,” but the words wouldn’t come out.
He didn’t like the farm at first, I’m sure of that. He won’t ever admit that anything’s too much for him, but after a whole life in a New York apartment, and then six months in a cat run, he just couldn’t handle it all, and he didn’t want to. The first couple of days, he stayed in my room—under my bookcase, mostly—and he hissed at everybody except me, even Sally. Julian was really hurt about that, because he’d practically planned a whole welcoming party, with decorations and cat treats. I had to say something, so I told him that in another day or two he’d be able to pick Mister Cat up and wear him around his neck like a mink stole, so he felt better after that. Julian.
The third day was a Saturday, so I was home. Mister Cat woke me walking on my face, patting gently at my eyes. He’s done that since he was a kitten, once he figured out I’m awake if my eyes are open. As soon as they were, he ran to the door, which usually means litter-box time. The box is in my bathroom, but that wasn’t what he was after. Today, exactly like Julian, he was waking me up to go exploring.
“After I wash,” I said. “After I eat something. Give me a break here, all right?” Same thing I was always telling Julian. So Mister Cat went off and used his box, and then he had something to eat, and a quick bath himself, and he was ready when I was.