I Can See Your House From Here

1 0 9 R I C A N S E E Y O U R H O U S E F R O M H E R E J E A N M c G A R R Y Delia lived on the second floor of Eldorado Street. She’d had it all to herself since the day Charlie tripped on the cat and bled to death, his nose broken, face-down on the pantry floor, where she found him on Ash Wednesday. There was still a stain on the linoleum, a grid of black and white squares. The stain was now brown, but had started as almost a pink foam. She’d lifted his head, but refused to look at the sopping wet and foaming eyes, nose, and mouth. ‘‘Poor old Chas,’’ she said, dropping the head and calling the police. An ambulance followed the patrol car, and Charlie Abernathy was carted away in his bathrobe and slippers. He was in the process of fixing himself a short one before breakfast and Delia’s return from the 8 o’clock mass. Delia declined the o√er of riding in the ambulance to St. Joe’s. She made some co√ee, filled a pail, then refilled it twice, with ammonia and bleach, and took the string mop to the foaming floor. She turned o√ the light so she wouldn’t have to see. When she opened the broom closet to fetch the mop, she caught sight of the cat’s eyes. He’d stu√ed himself into a corner behind the rag bag, the broom, the carpet sweeper, and all the things that had fallen from the shelf. ‘‘Get outta there, you!’’ she said, but Tu√y 1 1 0 M c G A R R Y Y didn’t move or even blink. It was only later that day, at cocktail hour, spotting Tu√y scraping against the bars of the radiator, that she put the story together. The cat’s feet were sticky and coated with something that had to have come from Chas, the person he loathed for the vile kicks and snubs that came his way, ever since he arrived at the doorstop of Eldorado and wheedled his way in. Delia loved cats more than anything, even this overweight bastard of a marmalade with double feet. Life without Chas started with funeral preparations. Delia had gone to so many wakes she knew just what suit (blue with pinstripe ), tie (repp), and shirt (pearl white with French cu√s) to bring to Clancy McCarthy, an old friend of Chas’s from the Dominican academy on Atwells Avenue. Clance was just a hair under sixty and had been a Doughboy recruited at the last minute and mustard gassed, so all there was for him was the father’s business on Chalkstone Avenue, a firm the older brother took over and resented having to share, but family is family, and blood thicker than water, being the pressure applied to the eager-beaver Thomas F. Clancy welcomed Delia (Daley that was) into his cubby, shook her hand, and pushed across the desk the box of Kleenex with the paperwork. (Delia had always been a quiet mouse, but when the jabbering Chas had gone, the first word out of her mouth was ‘‘Peace!,’’ which the cat heard and relaxed his bones in the closet, almost releasing his bowels, but no, he could hold it, as he had for the first two hours since breakfast. His bowl had been filled, as usual, and wetted with a dash of hot co√ee, as Delia, his mother, always shared her first cup of instant with him.) The reward for traipsing all the way to Academy Avenue to attend mass was stopping at the A&P for a pound of freshly ground 8 o’Clock co√ee and bringing it home to Chas. They drank co√ee all day long and it transformed each interval of the day into something like a party, for Chas was retired, but used to a day with intervals, because of his job at the New Haven RR on Exchange Place. Interval one was a morning kiss. Of course, she missed it...