The Cat Sitter's Pajamas by Blaize Clement

Author:Blaize Clement
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Mystery
ISBN: 9781410446428
Publisher: Minotaur Books
Published: 2012-01-02T18:30:00+00:00

13

While we ate, Michael filled me in on his last twenty-four-hour hitch. A fire had broken out in a mall restaurant kitchen during the night and threatened to spread to its neighbors. It had taken several hours to get it completely extinguished, then more time to get their equipment back on the truck. Then just as they got back to the station, another call had come in, for a residential fire. It had taken the rest of the night to get that put out and to make sure no sparks had drifted to the tinder-dry vegetation in a wooded area behind the house. Following that, there’d been a kitchen grease fire that had singed some cupboards before they got there.

Out of the blue, I said, “Michael, do you remember how Mom used to dress?”

His eyes narrowed. “I remember the times she was too drunk to get dressed.”

“I mean her sense of style. She had great taste, you have to give her that. Things like when to stop with the jewelry, or the handbag that matches the shoes. No matter how carelessly she might have seemed to choose what she wore, it was all carefully considered so nothing was done to excess and everything looked fresh and original. That takes an innate sense of style.”

“You think that makes up for everything else?”

I took a deep breath. Michael has more bitter memories of our mother than I do because he bore the brunt of her alcoholic carelessness.

“I talked to a dressmaker today who knew Mom when she was young. She said Mom was just desperate to get away from here.”

“Well, she got away.”

I could tell Michael was in no mood to talk about our mother and how she had deserted us. To tell the truth, I was surprised that I was having softer feelings toward a woman who had walked out on us when we were already reeling from the loss of our father. Of course, she had been reeling, too, from the loss of a husband.

Unlike my fashionable mother’s, my own wardrobe tended to consist of whatever was clean, comfortable, and available. I had always liked the idea that my mother would have wept if she’d known how little she had influenced me, but perhaps she had influenced me more than I realized. Who knows whether our choices are inspired by unconscious desires to emulate or to reject? I wanted to think that I was past adolescent rebellion, but it occurred to me that I might be as stuck in contrariness as my mother had been stuck in a backwater town with nobody to admire her taste in fashion except the snowy egrets and the steely-eyed herons.

I said, “Were you able to get any sleep after you came home?”

Michael’s face relaxed. “Some, but I’m beat. I’m going to bed early.”

I did an internal debate. I’m a grown woman, and I can come and go from my own apartment any time I please, thank you very much. But I’m also a member

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