“I’m finally getting what I need,” Tiffany says. She strokes the stem of her wine glass and elegantly extends her pinkie finger as if she were sipping tea with the Royal Family, instead of drinking with me at our regular bar. Then, Tiffany tilts her head back, opens her lips to the rim of her glass and shakes the last reluctant drops of Chardonnay into her mouth. I pretend not to know that when Tiffany is at home, she drinks wine straight from the bottle, if she thinks no one is watching her.
I nod, shifting my weight on the hard red bar stool, trying to relax. Tiffany is a big talker. Her favorite topic is herself and how no one pleases her. Intriguing to wonder who has finally satisfied Tiffany. Really, though, I am only waiting for my wine to seep in, take me over. I focus on my small triumph tonight of receiving wine in a red wine glass, a glass with a wide generous bowl. Until three years ago, I drank red. But glasses of red always tipped over, leaving scarlet stains on my clothes as if I had survived some terrible accident. I fixed things by changing to white wine, even though white is usually served in stingy, narrow bowls.
Tiffany paws through her huge brown leather handbag until her pill bottles rattle. I do not understand why women saddle themselves with handbags the size of grocery sacks. I mean, who can fill up something so big? Myself, I carry neat square clutch purses. They make me look organized, in control.
“Here,” Tiffany thrusts her cell phone at me. There is a photo on the screen.
I blink. Maybe Tiffany started drinking long before we met up at the bar. She does that. When she slurs after ordering her first glass of wine, I pretend not to notice. “This is a picture of a cat,” I say. Something stops me from making one of my smart-aleck remarks.
“Isn’t he handsome? His name is Clarence.” Tiffany is beaming. I have never seen Tiffany look at Phil, her husband, like that. I study the photo. An Egyptian-looking black cat with impossibly long slender legs is posed like a statue on Tiffany’s bookshelf. The cat’s back is ramrod straight with dignity, his sleek head turned away from the intrusive camera.
I look at Tiffany. She is glowing, waiting for me to marvel at the regal-looking creature on top of her bookshelf. One of the reasons Tiffany and I are friends is that I usually just say I agree with her about everything. Yes, her boss is crazy not to appreciate her more. And those co-workers of hers are all morons. If Tiffany weren’t the office bookkeeper, the entire office would have closed years ago. She doesn’t talk much about her husband, Phil, but I understand
that in a life filled with regrets, Phil is Tiffany’s most crushing disappointment. Sometimes, after a night of drinking, Tiffany will announce that she needs more sex from Phil. Phil will roll his eyes but stay quiet. Phil stays silent around Tiffany. Most evenings, Phil packs Tiffany in their car and takes her home by 11 after her head starts to bob over her collection of empty wine glasses. Phil is usually back at the bar in minutes. It’s wise to drink at bars close to home.
In the five years of our friendship, which is held together by slurry barroom confidences, I couldn’t remember ever once congratulating Tiffany. Tonight when she is happy, I don’t know how to act. “How did this… royal-looking creature come into your life?” I say, hoping I had hit the right note.
At first, I think Tiffany hasn’t heard me. I suspect Tiffany of rarely listening when I talk. The background music is particularly deafening tonight. Time for a cool mouthful of white wine. I hold the wine in my mouth, savoring its snap before swallowing, enjoying the burn. I pace my drinking, count my drinks. Tiffany drinks faster than me. Once she drains her glass, I can rely on her to wave both arms at the bartender as if she were flagging an ambulance. When the bartender ambles down all curious like he can’t imagine why Tiffany is waving so frantically at him, I prefer my glass to be half full. “Might as well have another now,” I shrug. “Save you a trip.”
“Last Monday Phil was outside grilling hamburgers,” Tiffany begins. “You know how he likes to do that,” Tiffany says as if she were accusing Phil of something quite awful. “Maybe it was the smell of that expensive hamburger Phil buys, but this scrawny old Mama cat shows up inside our fence at the edge of our yard. This Mama cat was skin-ny. She had these saggy teats that nearly drug the ground. Sorriest-looking cat I’ve ever seen. Hurt me to look at her,” Tiffany says as if the Mama Cat’s existence was yet another example of how life always disappoints her.
I wince to show I am listening and wonder where this is going. Tiffany takes forever to get to a point. After my third glass of wine, it’s much easier to listen to her without showing impatience.
“Phil is a dog person,” Tiffany says as if that were yet another dreadful fact about him. “But there was something about that skinny old Mama cat that even Phil threw hamburger in her direction. Then, what do you know?” Tiffany pauses, looking at me.
“What?” I raise my eyebrows. I know this next part is important to Tiffany.
In the excitement of her story, Tiffany has forgotten to drink her wine. I would have to slow down. “After Phil throws hamburger at the old Mama cat, this sleek young black cat pops out from behind her. I think the little cat had been hiding behind the Mama cat the whole time. The Mama cat never took a bite, she just moved aside and watched Clarence.”
“Who’s Clarence?” I ask.
“My new cat,” Tiffany says. “The one in the picture I just showed you,” she speaks slowly as if I just arrived from a foreign country. At that moment, I was another in the long line of people who regularly fail Tiffany. Most times I manage to say what Tiffany wants to hear. And I pretend to care about her stories. It’s good to have friends. I wish that someone would pretend like that for me, though, even if they only did so after they had had a few drinks. I was more comfortable when Tiffany was sad; the new happy Tiffany was so demanding.
“Maybe that old Mama cat was Clarence’s mom. Maybe she was trying to find food for him because she was too sick to feed him any longer,” I suggest.
“That’s what I told Phil!” Tiffany’s eyes shine at me, the way they do when I tell her that if her boss wasn’t married to his boss’s daughter, Tiffany would be in charge. “After all,” I often tell her, “You do all the work, keep everything running. What does your boss ever do?” Sometimes after Robbie, my husband, and I drop Tiffany off after a long night of drinking, Robbie marvels that Tiffany can keep her job at all, given how much she drinks. “Being a bookkeeper has got to be easy,” Robbie has concluded. Robbie is very certain about things. He works as a computer programmer, except he tells everyone he is a computer engineer. If I introduce Robbie to new people, I say he is a computer programmer, just to annoy him.
“So Phil, for once, does the right thing and throws more hamburgers in their direction. Little Clarence creeps up on the hamburger like he’s stalking a wild animal. When Clarence gets close to the hamburger, he hunkers down, sways from side to side and then leaps on top of the hamburger like he expected it to run away. He was starving. You’ll never guess what Clarence did next,” Tiffany gives off a pretty tinkly laugh. Her laugh always makes me start; it’s so full of hope.
“What?” I ask even though I doubt Tiffany is listening. She is too engrossed in her story, too engrossed in herself.
“Clarence walked over to Phil, rolled over on his back and showed Phil his belly.”
I start to remind Tiffany that Phil doesn’t like cats, but think better of it.
“That’s just what Barney, that old beagle of Phil’s always did,” Tiffany says. “Barney was forever rolling over, showing Phil his belly, wanting a belly rub. And there, Clarence did the very same thing. Phil said he’d never seen a cat roll over and show his belly.”
“Clarence sure knew how to win Phil over,” I try.
“Right!” Tiffany’s eyes light up. “After that, every time I looked in the back yard, there was Clarence staring at our house. As soon as one of us opened the screen door, Clarence would rush up like he hadn’t seen us for days. I told Phil we had to let him inside. Now Clarence sleeps in the bed with us every night,” she pauses, “On top of my head.” Tiffany laughs her tinkly laugh but doesn’t look at me. Tiffany lost all her hair after being diagnosed with lupus. Now she wears wigs. No one is supposed to know she is bald. I only found out when I opened the bedroom closet Tiffany shares with Phil and saw all Tiffany’s wigs lined up on the top shelf. Tiffany has each of her wigs on a Styrofoam head with a face that looks right at you when you open her bedroom closet. It’s spooky. I wonder what Clarence likes about sleeping on Tiffany’s bald head.
I never once heard Tiffany complain about Clarence. Not even when she came home from work to find her prized drapes in shreds or pointy teeth marks in the collar of her favorite silk blouse. Tiffany finally had something that pleased her. The night Tiffany was diagnosed with cancer, Robbie and I went over and stood around, not knowing what to say. But Clarence never moved from Tiffany’s lap. Tiffany stroked Clarence from his head to tail over and over again while conversation faltered. When Tiffany died, Clarence stopped coming home for a long while, as if he blamed Phil for Tiffany’s absence.
The year after Tiffany died, Robbie and I split up. I asked Phil if Clarence could come live with me, at my new place. Phil never cared for Clarence. When I came to get Clarence, Phil shoved him head first in my travel bag, zipping him inside like he were an old shoe. As soon as Clarence was in my car, I let him out of the bag. He purred while we drove to our new home. That first night and nearly every night after, Clarence sits on my lap while I drink my wine. At first it annoyed Clarence that I got up so often to refill my wine glass. But I fixed things by buying large tumbler size wine glasses so I don’t get up to refill as often. After the first few sips of my freshened drink, when the wine is scalding my throat, all I have to do is pat my lap, plead a little and I can count on Clarence to jump up, knead my legs, turn around a time or two and settle back down on my lap. In no time at all, Clarence and I got in the habit of watching television shows about single women who get murdered by ex-husbands or former boyfriends.
Two years after Tiffany died, Phil moved away. Then, Clarence and I started moving a lot. Clarence liked all the places we moved. Now Clarence and I live in a one-bedroom apartment, but I think we’ll be moving soon. Clarence and I still sit together at night while I drink wine from a tumbler. We still watch our detective shows. I scratch his ears the way he likes. Now that it’s just Clarence and me, I don’t have to count my drinks. But one night when it was late and I had been drinking a good while, I got to feeling sorry for myself, wondering why Clarence has been more of a comfort to me than any human in my life.
I refilled my tumbler and thought maybe it’s that with Clarence I don’t have to always try and say the right thing. Or maybe it’s how Clarence is happy wherever we are, happy with himself, happy with me, not always disappointed in everything. If I go to bars when I am depressed, no one notices anything is wrong with me; they go on talking and talking about themselves. But Clarence senses when I am sad. He sits on my lap and lets me pet him until I
feel better. I thought about Clarence a lot that night, and marveled at what a comfort my royal black Egyptian cat has been to me. I can’t say that I have figured Clarence out, though. Like I said, now that it’s just Clarence and me, I drink wine from a tumbler and have stopped counting drinks.
This article appears in Mar 19-25, 2015.