The Cat Who Got Married by Neil S. Plakcy

Author:Neil S. Plakcy [Plakcy, Neil S.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction & Literature
Goodreads: 11487261
Publisher: Neil S. Plakcy
Published: 2011-04-14T00:00:00+00:00

The Cat Who Got Lost

I called my mother just before I left work. The late summer sun was slanting in my office window, reflecting off the glassy towers of Manhattan, but I could already smell the salt air of the Jersey shore. “I’m going to catch the 12:30 bus,” I said. “I should be in Sea Isle City by 4:30.”

“That’s fine, Susan.”

Something in her tone told me she wasn’t all there.

I looked at my watch. I still had a few minutes to chat before I had to leave for the Port Authority bus terminal. I worked for a fashion magazine as a clothing stylist, and the latest issue had been put to bed the day before, so I was at loose ends until we started the next month’s. “What’s the matter?”

“What? Oh, it’s probably nothing. I can’t find Rajah anywhere.”

A year before, my mother had adopted Rajah, a sleek black Burmese she found through a friend who did cat rescue. In no time at all, Rajah had come to rule my parents’ house with a regal disdain fitting any Eastern potentate.

In the background I heard a slight jingle as my mother twisted her gold bangle bracelets back and forth, as she always does when she’s nervous. “They were pouring a new sidewalk next door, and I’m just worried he got into the concrete truck. I’m going to keep looking for him, but I’ll pick you up when you get in. What time did you say?”

“Four-thirty. If you haven’t found Rajah by then I’ll help you look.”

Yuppies in business suits on their way to the last summer home beer blast of the season jammed the bus, and at every roadside stop, Eastern European grandmas waited next to produce stands of Indian corn and pumpkins for a ride down a few miles of highway. Their heads were wrapped in scarves, and they held the edges of ratty winter coats together against the cool fall breeze coming off the ocean only a few miles to the east.

It was a trip I had made many times, going home. I knew how the land flattened out and the endless horizon loomed over the scrub pine and sandy lawns, and the fast food chains got farther and farther apart, and the faded neons of roadside motels and tacky diners took over. It was a psychological thing for me, as I left the noise and the traffic of the city behind for the country roads and truck farms of my childhood. That journey down the shoreline always held a lot of significance for me, as if I was shedding my Manhattan executive skin and becoming a Jersey girl again.

My mother picked me up in the center of Sea Isle City, faithful as always in her station wagon with the fake wood along the sides. I once asked her why she drove that tank of a car, when she had only one child who could have fit easily into the back of a subcompact, and she told me that as a child growing up in the city those station wagons had symbolized the country to her.

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