Flowering Judas and Other Stories: A Library of America eBook Classic by Katherine Anne Porter

Author:Katherine Anne Porter [Porter, Katherine Anne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781598533309
Publisher: Library of America
Published: 2014-03-24T23:00:00+00:00

The Cracked Looking-Glass

DENNIS heard Rosaleen talking in the kitchen and a man’s voice answering. He sat with his hands dangling over his knees, and thought for the hundredth time that sometimes Rosaleen’s voice was company to him, and other days he wished all day long she didn’t have so much to say about everything. More and more the years put a quietus on a man; there was no earthly sense in saying the same things over and over. Even thinking the same thoughts grew tiresome after a while. But Rosaleen was full of talk as ever. If not to him, to whatever passer-by stopped for a minute, and if nobody stopped, she talked to the cats and to herself. If Dennis came near she merely raised her voice and went on with whatever she was saying, so it was nothing for her to shout suddenly, “Come out of that, now—how often have I told ye to keep off the table?” and the cats would scatter in all directions with guilty faces. “It’s enough to make a man lep out of his shoes,” Dennis would complain. “It’s not meant for you, darlin’,” Rosaleen would say, as if that cured everything, and if he didn’t go away at once, she would start some kind of story. But today she kept shooing him out of the place and hadn’t a kind word in her mouth, and Dennis in exile felt that everything and everybody was welcome in the place but himself. For the twentieth time he approached on tiptoe and listened at the parlor keyhole.

Rosaleen was saying: “Maybe his front legs might look a little stuffed for a living cat, but in the picture it’s no great matter. I said to Kevin, ‘You’ll never paint that cat alive,’ but Kevin did it, with house paint mixed in a saucer, and a small brush the way he could put in all them fine lines. His legs look like that because I wanted him pictured on the table, but it wasn’t so, he was on my lap the whole time. He was a wonder after the mice, a born hunter bringing them in from morning till night—”

Dennis sat on the sofa in the parlor and thought: “There it is. There she goes telling it again.” He wondered who the man was, a strange voice, but a loud and ready gabbler as if maybe he was trying to sell something. “It’s a fine painting, Miz O’Toole,” he said, “and who did you say the artist was?”

“A lad named Kevin, like my own brother he was, who went away to make his fortune,” answered Rosaleen. “A house painter by trade.”

“The spittin’ image of a cat!” roared the voice.

“It is so,” said Rosaleen. “The Billy-cat to the life. The Nelly-cat here is own sister to him, and the Jimmy-cat and the Annie-cat and the Mickey-cat is nephews and nieces, and there’s a great family look between all of them. It was the strangest thing happened to the Billy-cat, Mr.

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