Then I grab, but too late. There is Cat, out on the parkway between the lanes of cars, trying to figure which way to run.

"Pop!" I yell. "Hold it! Cat's got out!"

You know what my pop does? He laughs.

"Hold it, my eyeball!" he says. "I've been holding it for half an hour. I'd get murdered if I tried to stop now. Besides, I don't want to chase that cat every day of my vacation."

I don't even stop to think. I just open the car door and jump. The car's only barely moving. I can see Cat on the grass at the edge of the parkway. The cars in the next lane blast their horns, but I slip through and grab Cat.

I hear Mom scream, "Davey!"

Our car is twenty feet ahead, now, in the center lane, and there's no way Pop can turn off. The cars are picking up speed. I holler to Mom as loud as I can, "I'll go back and stay with Kate! Don't worry!"

I hear Pop shout about something, but I can't hear what. Pretty soon the car is out of sight. I look down at Cat and say, "There goes our vacation." I wonder if I'll be able to catch a bus out to Connecticut later. Meanwhile, there's the little problem of getting back into the city. I'm standing alongside the parkway, with railroad tracks and the Pelham golf course on the other side of me, and a good long walk to the subway.

A cat isn't handy to walk with. He keeps trying to get down. If you squeeze him to hang on, he just tries harder. You have to keep juggling him, like, gently. I sweat along back, with the sun in my eyes, and people in cars on the parkway pointing me out to their children as a local curiosity.

One place the bulrushes and marsh grass beside the road grow up higher than your head. What a place for a kids' hideout, I think. Almost the next step, I hear kids' voices, whispering and shushing each other.

Their voices follow along beside me, but inside the curtain of rushes, where I can't see them. I hear one say, "Lookit the sissy with the pussy!" Another answers, "Let's dump 'em in the river!"

I try to walk faster, but I figure if I run they'll chase me for sure. I walk along, juggling Cat, trying to pretend I don't notice them. I see a drawbridge up ahead, and I sure hope there's a cop or watchman on it.

The kids break out of the rushes behind me, and there's no use pretending anymore. I flash a look over my shoulder. They all yell, "Ya-n-h-h-h!" like a bunch of wild Indians, but they're about fifty feet back.

I grab Cat hard about the only place you can grab a cat, around one upper forearm, and I really run. The kids let out another war whoop. It's uphill to the bridge. Cat gets his free forepaw into action, raking my chest and arm, with his claws out. Then he hisses and bites, and I nearly drop him. I'm panting so hard I can't hardly breathe anyway.

A cop saunters out on my approach to the bridge, his billy dangling from his wrist. Whew—am I glad! I flop on the grass and ease up on Cat and start soothing him down. The kids fade off into the tall grass as soon as they see the cop. A stone arches up toward me, but it falls short. That's the last I see of them.

As I cross the bridge, the cop squints at me. "What you doing, kid? Not supposed to be walking here."

"I'll be right off. I'm going home," I tell him, and he saunters away, twirling his stick.

It's dark by the time I get to the subway, and most of another hour before I'm back in Manhattan and reach Kate's. I can hear the television going, which is unusual, and I walk in. No one is watching television. Mom and Pop are sitting at the table with Kate.

Mom lets loose the tears she has apparently been holding onto for two hours, and Pop starts bellowing: "You fool! You might have got killed jumping out on that parkway!"

Cat drops to the floor with a thud. I kiss Mom and go to the sink for a long glass of water and drink it all and wipe my mouth. Over my shoulder, I answer Pop: "Yeah, but if Cat gets killed on the parkway, that's just a big joke, isn't it? You laugh your head off!"

Pop takes off his glasses and scratches his head with them, like he always does when he's thinking. He looks me in the eye and says, "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have laughed."

Then, of all things, he picks up Cat himself. "Come on. You're one of the family. Let's get on this vacation."

At last we're off.



11



ROSH HASHANAH AT THE FULTON FISH MARKET



We came back to the city Labor Day Monday—us and a couple million others—traffic crawling, a hot day, the windows practically closed up tight to keep Cat in. I sweated, and then cat hairs stuck to me and got up my nose. Considering everything, Pop acted quite mild.

I met a kid up at the lake in Connecticut who had skin-diving equipment. He let me use it one day when Mom and Pop were off sight-seeing. Boy, this has fishing beat hollow! I found out there's a skin-diving course at the Y, and I'm going to begin saving up for the fins and mask and stuff. Pop won't mind forking out for the Y membership, because he'll figure it's character-building.

Meanwhile, I'm wondering if I can get back up to Connecticut again one weekend while the weather's still warm, and I see that Rosh Hashanah falls on a Monday and Tuesday this year, the week after school opens. Great. So I ask this kid—Kenny Wright—if I can maybe come visit him that weekend so I can do some more skin diving.

"Rosh Hashanah? What's that?" he says.

So I explain to him. Rosh Hashanah is the Jewish New Year. About half the kids in my school are Jewish, so they all stay out for it, and I always do too. Last year the school board gave up and made it an official school holiday for everyone, Jewish or not. Same with Yom Kippur, the week after.

Kenny whistles. "You sure are lucky. I don't think we got any holidays coming till Thanksgiving."

I always thought the kids in the country were lucky having outdoor yards for sports and recess, but I guess we have it over them on holidays—'specially in the fall: three Jewish holidays in September, Columbus Day in October, Election Day and Veterans' Day in November, and then Thanksgiving. It drives the mothers wild.

I don't figure it'd be worth train fare to Connecticut for just two days, so I say good-bye to Kenny and see you next year and stuff.

Back home I'm pretty busy right away, on account of starting in a new school, Charles Evans Hughes High. It's different from the junior high, where I knew half the kids, and also my whole homeroom there went from one classroom to another together. At Hughes everyone has to get his own schedule and find the right classroom in this immense building, which is about the size of Penn Station. There are about a million kids in it—actually about two thousand—most of whom I never saw before. Hardly any of the Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village kids come here because it isn't their district. However, walking back across Fifth Avenue one day, I see one kid I know from Peter Cooper. His name is Ben Alstein. I ask him how come he is at Hughes.

"My dad wanted me to get into Peter Stuyvesant High School—you know, the genius factory, city-wide competitive exam to get in. Of course I didn't make it. Biggest Failure of the Year, that's me."

"Heck, I never even tried for that. But how come you're here?"

"There's a special science course you can qualify for by taking a math test. Then you don't have to live in the district. My dad figures as long as I'm in something special, there's hope. I'm not really very interested in science, but that doesn't bother him."

So after that Ben and I walk back and forth to school together, and it turns out we have three classes together, too—biology and algebra and English. We're both relieved to have at least one familiar face to look for in the crowd. My old friend Nick, aside from not really being my best friend anymore, has gone to a Catholic high school somewhere uptown.

On the way home from school one Friday in September, I ask Ben what he's doing Monday and Tuesday, the Jewish holidays.

"Tuesday I got to get into my bar mitzvah suit and go to synagogue and over to Brooklyn to my grandmother's. Monday I don't have to do anything special. Come on over with your roller skates and we'll get in the hockey game."

"I skate on my tail," I say, because it's true, and it would be doubly true in a hockey game. I try quick to think up something else. We're walking down the block to my house, and there's Cat sitting out front, so I say, "Let's cruise around and get down to Fulton Fish Market and pick up some fish heads for my cat."

"You're a real nut, aren't you?" Ben says. He doesn't say it as if he minds—just mentioning the fact. He's an easygoing kind of guy, and I think most of the time he likes to let someone else make the plans. So he shrugs and says, "O.K."

I introduce him to Cat. Ben looks him in the eye, and Cat looks away and licks his back. Ben says, "So I got to get you fresh fish for Rosh Hashanah, huh?"

Cat jumps down and rubs from back to front against Ben's right leg and from front to back against his left leg and goes to lie down in the middle of the sidewalk.

"See? He likes you," I say. "He won't have anything to do with most guys, except Tom."

"Who's Tom?"

So I tell Ben all about Tom and the cellar and his father disappearing on him.

"Gee," says Ben, "I thought I had trouble, with my father practically telling me how to breathe better every minute, but at least he doesn't disappear. What does Tom do now?"

"Works at the flower shop, right down there at the corner."

Ben feels around in his pockets a minute. "Hey, I got two bucks I was supposed to spend on a textbook. Come on and I'll buy Mom a plant for the holidays, and you can introduce me to Tom."

We go down to the flower shop, and at first Tom frowns because he thinks we've just come to kid around. Ben tells him he wants a plant, so then he makes a big thing out of showing him all the plants, from the ten-dollar ones on down, so Mr. Palumbo will see he's doing a good job. Ben finally settles on a funny-looking cactus that Tom says is going to bloom pretty soon.

Ben goes along home and I arrange to pick him up on Monday. I wait around outside until I see Tom go out on a delivery and ask him how he likes the job. He says he doesn't really know yet, but at least the guy is decent to work for, not like the filling-station man.

* * * * *

I sleep late Monday and go over to Peter Cooper about eleven. A lot of kids are out in the playgrounds, and some fathers are there tossing footballs with them and shouting "Happy New Year" to each other. It sounds odd to hear people saying that on a warm day in September.

Ben and I wander out of the project and he says, "How do we get to this Fulton Street?"

I see a bus that says "Avenue C" on it stopping on Twenty-third Street. Avenue C is way east, and so is Fulton Street, so I figure it'll probably work out. We get on. The bus rockets along under the East Side Drive for a few blocks and then heads down Avenue C, which is narrow and crowded. It's a Spanish and Puerto Rican neighborhood to begin with, then farther downtown it's mostly Jewish. Lots of people are out on the street shaking hands and clapping each other on the back, and the stores are all closed.

Every time the bus stops, the driver shouts to some of the people on the sidewalk, and he seems to know a good many of the passengers who get on. He asks them about their jobs, or their babies, or their aunt who's sick in Bellevue. This is pretty unusual in New York, where bus drivers usually act like they hate people in general and their passengers in particular. Suddenly the bus turns off Avenue C and heads west.

Ben looks out the window and says, "Hey, this is Houston Street. I been down here to a big delicatessen. But we're not heading downtown anymore."

"Probably it'll turn again," I say.

It doesn't, though, not till clear over at Sixth Avenue. By then everyone else has got off and the bus driver turns around and says, "Where you two headed for?"

It's funny, a bus driver asking you that, so I ask him, "Where does this bus go?"

"It goes from Bellevue Hospital down to Hudson Street, down by the Holland Tunnel."

"Holy crow!" says Ben. "We're liable to wind up in New Jersey."

"Relax. I don't go that far. I just go back up to Bellevue," says the driver.

"You think we'd be far from Fulton Fish Market?" I say.

The driver gestures vaguely. "Just across the island."

So Ben and I decide we'll get off at the end of the line and walk from there. The bus driver says, "Have a nice hike."

"I think there's something fishy about this," says Ben.

"That's what we're going to get, fish," I say, and we walk. We walk quite a ways.

Ben sees a little Italian restaurant down a couple of steps, and we stop to look at the menu in the window. The special for the day is lasagna, and Ben says, "Boy, that's for me!"

We go inside, while I finger the dollar in my pocket and do some fast mental arithmetic. Lasagna is a dollar, so that's out, but I see spaghetti and meat balls is seventy-five cents, so that will still leave me bus fare home.

A waiter rushes up, wearing a white napkin over his arm like a banner, and takes our order. He returns in a moment with a shiny clean white linen tablecloth and a basket of fresh Italian bread and rolls. On a third trip he brings enough chilled butter for a family and asks if we want coffee with lunch or later. Later, we say.

"Man, this is living!" says Ben as he moves in on the bread.

"He treats us just like people."

Pretty soon the waiter is back with our lasagna and spaghetti, and he swirls around the table as if he were dancing. "Anything else now? Mind the hot plates, very hot! Have a good lunch now. I bring the coffee later."

He swirls away, the napkin over his arm making a little breeze, and circles another table. It's a small room, and there are only four tables eating, but he seems to enjoy acting like he was serving royalty at the Waldorf. When we're just finished eating, he comes back with a pot of steaming coffee and a pitcher of real cream.

I'm dolloping the cream in, and it floats, when a thought hits me: We got to leave a tip for this waiter.

I whisper to Ben, "Hey, how much money you got?"

He reaches in his pocket and fishes out a buck, a dime, and a quarter. We study them. Figure coffees for a dime each, and the total check ought to be $1.95. We've got $2.35 between us. We can still squeak through with bus fare if we only leave the waiter a dime, which is pretty cheap.

At that moment he comes back and refills our coffee cups and asks what we will have for dessert.

"Uh, nothing, nothing at all," I say.

"Couldn't eat another thing," says Ben.

So the waiter brings the check and along with it a plate of homemade cookies. He says, "My wife make. On the house."

We both thank him, and I look at Ben and he looks at me. I put down my dollar and he puts down a dollar and a quarter.

"Thank you, gentlemen, thank you. Come again," says the waiter.

We walk into the street, and Ben spins the lone remaining dime in the sun. I say, "Heads or tails?"

"Huh? Heads."

It comes up heads, so Ben keeps his own dime. He says, "We could have hung onto enough for one bus fare, but that's no use."

"No use at all. 'Specially if it was yours."

"Are we still heading for Fulton Street?"

"Sure. We got to get fish for Cat."

"It better be for free."

We walk, threading across Manhattan and downtown. I guess it's thirty or forty blocks, but after a good lunch it doesn't seem too far.

You can smell the fish market when you're still quite a ways off. It runs for a half a dozen blocks alongside the East River, with long rows of sheds divided into stores for the different wholesalers. Around on the side streets there are bars and fish restaurants. It's too bad we don't have Cat with us because he'd love sniffing at all the fish heads and guts and stuff on the street. Fish market business is done mostly in the morning, I guess, and now men are hosing down the streets and sweeping fish garbage up into piles. I get a guy to give me a bag and select a couple of the choicer—and cleaner—looking bits. I get a nice red snapper head and a small whole fish, looks like a mackerel. Ben acts as if fish guts make him sick, and as soon as I've got a couple he starts saying "Come on, come on, let's go."

I realize when we're leaving that I don't even notice the fish smell anymore. You just get used to it. We walk uptown, quite a hike, along East Broadway and across Grand and Delancey. There's all kinds of intriguing smells wafting around here: hot breads and pickles and fish cooking. This is a real Jewish neighborhood, and you can sure tell it's a holiday from the smell of all the dinners cooking. And lots of people are out in their best clothes gabbing together. Some of the men wear black skullcaps, and some of them have big black felt hats and long white beards. We go past a crowd gathering outside a movie house.

"They're not going to the movies," Ben says. "On holidays sometimes they rent a movie theater for services. It must be getting near time. Come on, I got to hurry."

We trot along the next twenty blocks or so, up First Avenue and to Peter Cooper.

"So long," Ben says. "I'll come by Wednesday on the way to school."

He goes off spinning his dime, and too late I think to myself that we could have had a candy bar.



12





THE RED EFT



Ben and I both take biology, and the first weekend assignment we get, right after Rosh Hashanah, is to find and identify an animal native to New York City and look up its family and species and life cycle.

"What's a species?" says Ben.

"I don't know. What's a life cycle?"

We both scratch our heads, and he says, "What animals do we know?"

I say, "Cat. And dogs and pigeons and squirrels."

"That's dull. I want to get some animal no one else knows about."

"Hey, how about a praying mantis? I saw one once in Gramercy Park."

Ben doesn't even know what it is, so I tell him about this one I saw. For an insect, it looks almost like a dragon, about four or five inches long and pale green. When it flies, it looks like a baby helicopter in the sky. We go into Gramercy Park to see if we can find another, but we can't.

Ben says, "Let's go up to the Bronx Zoo Saturday and see what we can find."

"Stupid, they don't mean you to do lions and tigers. They're not native."

"Stupid, yourself. They got other animals that are. Besides, there's lots of woods and ponds. I might find something."

Well, it's as good an idea for Saturday as any, so I say O.K. On account of both being pretty broke, we take lunch along in my old school lunchbox. Also six subway tokens—two extras for emergencies. Even I would be against walking home from the Bronx.

Of course there are plenty of native New York City animals in the zoo—raccoons and woodchucks and moles and lots of birds—and I figure we better start home not too late to get out the encyclopedias for species and life cycles. Ben still wants to catch something wild and wonderful. Like lots of city kids who haven't been in the country much, he's crazy about nature.

We head back to the subway, walking through the woods so he can hunt. We go down alongside the pond and kick up rocks and dead trees to see if anything is under them.

It pays off. All of a sudden we see a tiny red tail disappearing under a rotten log. I push the log again and Ben grabs. It's a tiny lizard, not more than two or three inches long and brick red all over. Ben cups it in both hands, and its throat pulses in and out, but it doesn't really try to get away.

"Hey, I love this one!" Ben cries. "I'm going to take him home and keep him for a pet, as well as do a report on him. You can't keep cats and dogs in Peter Cooper, but there's nothing in the rules about lizards."

"How are you going to get him home?"

"Dump the lunch. I mean—we'll eat it, but I can stab a hole in the top of the box and keep Redskin in it. Come on, hurry! He's getting tired in my hand I think!"

Ben is one of those guys who is very placid most of the time, but he gets excitable all of a sudden when he runs into something brand-new to him, and I guess he never caught an animal to keep before. Some people's parents are very stuffy about it.

I dump the lunch out, and he puts the lizard in and selects some particular leaves and bits of dead log to put in with him to make him feel at home. Without even asking me, he takes out his knife and makes holes in the top of my lunchbox. I sit down and open up a sandwich, but Ben is still dancing around.

"What do you suppose he is? He might be something very rare! How'm I going to find out? You think we ought to go back and ask one of the zoo men?"

"Umm, nah," I say, chewing. "Probably find him in the encyclopedia."

Ben squats on a log, and the log rolls. As he falls over backward I see two more lizards scuttle away. I grab one. "Hey, look! I got another. This one's bigger and browner."

Ben is up and dancing again. "Oh, boy, oh, boy! Now I got two! Now they'll be happy! Maybe they'll have babies, huh?"

He overlooks the fact that I caught this one. Oh, well, I don't want a lizard, anyway. Cat'd probably eat it.

Ben takes it from me and slips it in the lunchbox. "I'm going to call this one Big Brownie."

Finally he calms down enough to eat lunch, taking peeks at his catch between mouthfuls. As soon as he's finished eating, he starts hustling to get home so he can make a house for them. He really acts like a kid.

We get on the subway. It's aboveground—elevated—up here in the Bronx. After a while I see Yankee Stadium off to one side, which is funny because I don't remember seeing it when we were coming up. Pretty soon the train goes underground. I remember then. Coming up, we changed trains once. Ben has his eye glued to the edge of the lunchbox and he's talking to Redskin, so I figure there's no use consulting him. I'll just wait and see where this train seems to come out. It's got to go downtown. We go past something called Lenox Avenue, which I think is in Harlem, then Ninety-sixth Street, and then we're at Columbus Circle.

"Hey, Ben, we're on the West Side subway," I say.

"Yeah?" He takes a bored look out the window.

"We can just walk across town from Fourteenth Street."

"With you I always end up walking. Hey, what about those extra tokens?"

"Aw, it's only a few blocks. Let's walk."

Ben grunts, and he goes along with me. As we get near Union Square, there seem to be an awful lot of people around. In fact they're jamming the sidewalk and we can hardly move. Ben frowns at them and says, "Hey, what goes?"

I ask a man, and he says, "Where you been, sonny? Don'tcha know there's a parade for General Sparks?"

I remember reading about it now, so I poke Ben. "Hey, push along! We can see Sparks go by!"

"Quit pushing and don't try to be funny."

"Stupid, he's a general. Test pilot, war hero, and stuff. Come on, push."

"QUIT PUSHING! I got to watch out for these lizards!"

So I go first and edge us through the crowd to the middle of the block, where there aren't so many people and we can get up next to the police barrier. Cops on horseback are going back and forth, keeping the street clear. No sign of any parade coming yet, but people are throwing rolls of paper tape and handfuls of confetti out of upper-story windows. The wind catches the paper tape and carries it up and around in all kinds of fantastic snakes. Little kids keep scuttling under the barrier to grab handfuls of ticker tape that blow to the ground. Ben keeps one eye on the street and one on Redskin and Brownie.

"How soon you think they're coming?" he asks fretfully.

People have packed in behind us, and we couldn't leave now if we wanted to. Pretty soon we can see a helicopter flying low just a little ways downtown, and people all start yelling, "That's where they are! They're coming!"

Suddenly a bunch of motorcycle cops zoom past, and then a cop backing up a police car at about thirty miles an hour, which is a very surprising-looking thing. Before I've hardly got my eyes off that, the open cars come by. This guy Sparks is sitting up on the back of the car, waving with both hands. By the time I see him, he's almost past. Nice-looking, though. Everyone yells like crazy and throws any kind of paper they've got. Two little nuts beside us have a box of Wheaties, so they're busy throwing Breakfast of Champions. As soon as the motorcade is past, people push through the barriers and run in the street.

Ben hunches over to protect his precious animals and yells, "Come on! Let's get out of this!"

We go into my house first because I'm pretty sure we've got a wooden box. We find it and take it down to my room, and Ben gets extra leaves and grass and turns the lizards into it. He's sure they need lots of fresh air and exercise. Redskin scoots out of sight into a corner right away. Big Brownie sits by a leaf and looks around.

"Let's go look up what they are," I say.

The smallest lizard they show in the encyclopedia is about six inches long, and it says lizards are reptiles and have scales and claws and should not be confused with salamanders, which are amphibians and have thin moist skin and no claws. So we look up salamanders.

This is it, all right. The first picture on the page looks just like Redskin, and it says he's a Red Eft. The Latin name for his species is Triturus viridescens, or in English just a common newt.

"Hey, talk about life cycles, listen to this," says Ben, reading. "'It hatches from an egg in the water and stays there during its first summer as a dull-green larva. Then its skin becomes a bright orange, it absorbs its gills, develops lungs and legs, and crawls out to live for about three years in the woods. When fully mature, its back turns dull again, and it returns to the water to breed.'"

Ben drops the book. "Brownie must be getting ready to breed! What'd I tell you? We got to put him near water!" He rushes down to my room.

We come to the door and stop short. There's Cat, poised on the edge of the box.

I grab, but no kid is as fast as a cat. Hearing me coming, he makes his grab for the salamander. Then he's out of the box and away, with Big Brownie's tail hanging out of his mouth. He goes under the bed.

Ben screams, "Get him! Kill him! He's got my Brownie!" He's in a frenzy, and I don't blame him. It does make you mad to see your pet get hurt. I run for a broom to try to poke Cat out, but it isn't any use. Meanwhile, Ben finds Redskin safe in the box, and he scoops him back into the lunchbox.

Finally, we move the bed, and there is Cat poking daintily with his paw at Brownie. The salamander is dead. Ben grabs the broom and bashes Cat. Cat hisses and skids down the hall. "That rotten cat! I wish I could kill him! What'd you ever have him for?"

I tell Ben I'm sorry, and I get him a little box so he can bury Brownie. You can't really blame Cat too much—that's just the way a cat is made, to chase anything that wiggles and runs. Ben calms down after a while, and we go back to the encyclopedia to finish looking up about the Red Eft.

"I don't think Brownie was really ready to lay eggs, or he would have been in the pond already," I say. "Tell you what. We could go back some day with a jar and try to catch one in the water."

That cheers Ben up some. He finishes taking notes for his report and tracing a picture, and then he goes home with Redskin in the lunchbox. I pull out the volume for C.

Cat. Family, Felidae, including lions and tigers. Species, Felis domesticus. I start taking notes: "'The first civilized people to keep cats were the Egyptians, thirteen centuries before Christ.... Fifty million years earlier the ancestor of the cat family roamed the earth, and he is the ancestor of all present-day carnivores. The Oligocene cats, thirty million years ago, were already highly specialized, and the habits and physical characteristics of cats have been fixed since then. This may explain why house cats remain the most independent of pets, with many of the instincts of their wild ancestors.'"

I call Ben up to read him this, and he says, "You and your lousy carnivore! My salamander is an amphibian, and amphibians are the ancestors of all the animals on earth, even you and your Cat, you sons of toads!"



13





THE LEFT BANK OF CONEY ISLAND



Columbus Day comes up as cold as Christmas. I listen to the weather forecast the night before, to see how it'll be for the beach. "High winds, unseasonably low temperatures," the guy says. He would.

I get up at eight-thirty the next morning, though, figuring he'd be wrong and it would be a nice sunny day. I slip on my pants and shirt and go downstairs with Cat to have a look out. Cat slides out and is halfway down the stoop when a blast of cold wind hits him. His tail goes up and he spooks back in between my legs. I push the door shut against the icy wind.

Mom is sitting in the kitchen drinking her tea and she says, "My goodness, why are you up so early on a holiday? Do you feel sick?"

"Nah, I'm all right." I pour out a cup of coffee to warm my hands on and dump in three or four spoons of sugar.

"Davey, have you got a chill? You don't look to me as if you felt quite right."

"Mom, for Pete's sake, it's COLD out! I feel fine."

"Well, you don't have to go out. Why don't you just go back to bed and snooze and read a bit, and I'll bring you some breakfast."

I see it's got to be faced, so while I'm getting down the cereal and a bowl, I say, "Well, as a matter of fact, I'm going over to Coney Island today."

"Coney ISLAND!" Mom sounds like it was Siberia. "What in the world are you going to do there in the middle of winter?"

"Mom, it's only Columbus Day. We figured we'd go to the aquarium and then—uh—well, fool around. Some of the pitches are still open, and we'll get hot dogs and stuff."

"Who's going? Nick?"

"Nick wasn't sure—I'll stop by his house and see." I'd just as soon steer clear of this "who's going" business, so I start into a long spiel about how we're studying marine life in biology, and we have to take some notes at the aquarium. Mom is swallowing this pretty well, but Pop comes into the kitchen just then and gives me the fishy eye.

"First time I ever heard of you spending a holiday on homework. I bet they got a new twist palace going out there."

I slam down my coffee cup. "Holy cats! Can't I walk out of here on a holiday without going through the third degree? What am I, some kind of a nut or a convict?"

"Just a growing boy," says Pop. "And don't talk so sassy to your mother."

"I'm talking to you!"

Pop draws in a breath to start bellowing, but Mom beats him to it by starting to wheeze, which she can do without drawing breath.

Pop pats her on the shoulder and gives me a dirty look. "Now, Agnes, that's all right. I'm not sore. I was just trying to kid him a little bit, and he flies off the handle."

I fly off the handle! How do you like that?

I give Mom a kiss. "Cheer up, Mom. I won't ride on the roller coaster. It's not even running."

I grab a sweater and gloves and money and get out before they can start anymore questions. On the subway I start wondering if Mary will show up. It's almost two months since we made this sort of crazy date, and the weather sure isn't helping any.

Coney Island is made to be crowded and noisy. All the billboards scream at you, as if they had to get your attention. So when the place is empty, it looks like the whole thing was a freak or an accident.

It's sure empty today. There's practically no one on the street in the five or six blocks from the subway station to the aquarium. But it's not quiet. There are a few places open—merry-go-rounds and hot-dog shops—and tinny little trickles of music come out of them, but the big noise is the wind. All the signs are swinging and screeching. Rubbish cans blow over and their tops clang and bang rolling down the street. The wind makes a whistling noise all by itself.

I lean into the wind and walk up the empty street. My sweater is about as warm as a sieve. I wonder if I'm crazy to have come. No girl would get out on a boardwalk on a day like this. It must be practically a hurricane.

She's there, though. As soon as I turn the corner to the beach, I can see one figure, with its back to the ocean, scarf and hair blowing inland toward me. I can't see her face, but it's Mary, all right. There isn't another soul in sight. I wave and she hunches her shoulders up and down to semaphore, not wishing to take her hands out of her pockets.

I come up beside her on the boardwalk and turn my back to the ocean, too. I'd like to go on looking at it—it's all black and white and thundery—but the wind blows your breath right back down into your stomach. I freeze.

"I was afraid you wouldn't come on a day like this," I say.

"Me too. I mean I was afraid you wouldn't."

"Mom and Pop thought I was crazy. I spent about an hour arguing with them. What'd your mother say?"

"Nothing. She thinks I'm walking alone with the wind in my hair, thinking poetic thoughts."

"Huh? What for?"

Mary shrugs. "Mom's like that. You'll see. Come on, let's go home and make cocoa or something to warm up, and then we'll think up something to do. We can't just stand here."

She's right about that, so I don't argue. Her house is a few blocks away, a two-family type with a sloped driveway going down into a cellar garage. Neat. My pop is always going nuts hunting for a place to park.

Mary goes in and shouts, "Hi, Nina! I brought a friend home. We're going to make some cocoa. We're freezing."

I wonder who Nina is. I don't hear her mother come into the kitchen. Then I turn around and there she is. Holy crow! We got some pretty beat-looking types at school, but this is the first time I've ever seen a beatnik mother.

She's got on a black T-shirt and blue jeans and old sneakers, and her hair is in a long braid, with uneven bangs in front.

Mary waves a saucepan vaguely at us both and says, "Nina—Davey—this is my mother."

So Nina is her mother. I stick out my hand. "Uh—how do you do?"

"Hel-looo." Her voice is low and musical. "I think there is coffee on the stove."

"I thought I'd make cocoa for a change," says Mary.

"All right." Nina puts a cigarette in her mouth and offers one to me.

I say, "No, thank you."

"Tell me...." She talks in this low, intense kind of voice. "Are you in school with Mary?"

So I tell her I live in Manhattan, and how I ran into Mary when I had Cat on the beach, because that makes it sound sort of respectable, not like a pickup. But she doesn't seem to be interested in Cat and the beach.

"What do you read? In your school?" she asks, launching each question like a torpedo.

I remember Mary saying something about her mother and poetry, so I say, "Well, uh—last week we read 'The Highwayman' and 'The Wreck of the Hesperus.' They're about—I mean, we were studying metaphors and similes. Looking at the ocean today, I sure can see what Longfellow meant about the icy...."

I thought I was doing pretty well, but she cut me off again.

"Don't you read any real poetry? Donne? Auden? Baudelaire?"

Three more torpedoes. "We didn't get to them yet."

Nina blows out a great angry cloud of smoke and explodes, "Schools!" Then she sails out of the kitchen.

I guess I look a little shook up. Mary laughs and shoves a mug of cocoa and a plate of cinnamon toast in front of me. "Don't mind Mother. She just can't get used to New York schools. Or Coney Island. Or hardly anything around here.

"She grew up on the Left Bank in Paris. Her father was an artist and her mother was a writer, and they taught her to read at home, starting with Chaucer, probably. She never read a kids' book in her life.

"Anything I ever tell her about school pretty much sounds either childish or stupid to her. What I really love is science—experiments and stuff—and she can't see that for beans."

"Our science teacher is a dope," I say, because she is, "so I really never got very interested in science. But I told Mom and Dad I was coming to the aquarium to take notes today, so they wouldn't kick up such a fuss."

Mary shakes her head. "We ought to get our mothers together. Mine thinks I'm wasting time if I even go to the aquarium. I do, though, all the time. I love the walrus."

"What does your pop do?"

"Father? He teaches philosophy at Brooklyn College. So I get it from both sides. Just think, think, think. Father and Nina aren't hardly even interested in food. Once in a while Nina spends all day cooking some great fish soup or a chicken in wine, but the rest of the time I'm the only one who takes time off from thinking to cook a hamburger. They live on rolls and coffee and sardines."

Mary puts our cups in the sink and then opens a low cupboard. Instead of pots and pans it has stacks of records in it. She pulls out West Side Story and then I see there's a record player on a side table. What d'you know? A record player in the kitchen! This Left Bank style of living has its advantages.

"I sit down here and eat and play records while I do my homework," says Mary, which sounds pretty nice.

I ask her if she has any Belafonte, and she says, "Yes, a couple," but she puts on something else. It's slow, but sort of powerful, and it makes you feel kind of powerful yourself, as if you could do anything.

"What's that?" I ask.

"It's called 'The Moldau'—that's a river in Europe. It's by a Czech named Smetana."

I wander around the kitchen and look out the window. The wind's still howling, but not so hard. I remember the ocean, all gray and powerful, spotted with whitecaps. I'd like to be out on it.

"You know what'd be fun?" I say out loud. "To be out in a boat on the harbor today. If you didn't sink."

"We could take the Staten Island ferry," Mary says.

"Huh?" I hadn't even thought there was really any boat we could get on. "Really? Where do you get it?"

"Down at Sixty-ninth Street and Fourth Avenue. It's quite a ways. I've always gone there in a car. But maybe we could do it on bikes, if we don't freeze."

"We won't freeze. But what about bikes?"

"You can use my brother's. He's away at college. Maybe I can find a windbreaker of his, too."

She finds the things and we get ready and go into the living room, where Nina is sitting reading and sipping a glass of wine.

"We're going on our bikes to the ferry and over to Staten Island," Mary says. She doesn't even ask.

"Oh-h-h." It's a long, low note, faintly questioning.

"We thought with the wind blowing and all, it'd be exciting," Mary explains, and I think, Uh-o, that's going to cook it. My mother would have kittens if I said I was going out on a ferry in a storm.

But Nina just says, "I see," and goes back to reading her book. I say good-bye and she looks up again and smiles, and that's all.

It's another funny thing—Nina doesn't seem to pay any attention to who Mary brings home, like most mothers are always snooping if their daughter brings home a guy. Without stopping to think, I say, "Do you bring home a lot of guys?"

Mary laughs. "Not a lot. Sometimes one of the boys at school comes home when we're studying for a science test."

I laugh, too, but what I'm thinking of is how Pop would look if I brought a girl home and said we were studying for a test!



14





EXPEDITION BY FERRY



As we ride through Brooklyn the wind belts us around from both sides and right in the teeth. But the sun's beginning to break through, and it's easy riding, no hills.

This part of Brooklyn is mostly rows of houses joined together, or low apartment buildings, with little patches of lawn in front of them. There's lots of trees along the streets. It doesn't look anything like Manhattan, but not anything like the country, either. It's just Brooklyn.

All of a sudden we're circling a golf course. What d'you know? Right in New York City!

"Ever play golf?" The wind snatches the words out of my mouth and carries them back to Mary. I see her mouth shaping like a "No," but no sound comes my way. I drop back beside her and say, "I'll show you sometime. My pop's got a set of clubs I used a couple of times."

"Probably I better carry the clubs and you play. I can play tennis, though."

We pass the golf course and head down into a sort of main street. Anyway there's lots of banks and dime stores and traffic. Mary leads the way. We make a couple of turns and zigzags and then go under the parkway, and there's the ferry. It's taken us most of an hour to get from Mary's house.

I'm hoping the ferry isn't too expensive, so I'll have plenty of money left for a good lunch. But while I'm mooning, Mary has wheeled her bike right up and paid her own fare. Well, I guess that's one of the things I like about her. She's independent. Still, I'm going to buy lunch.

The ferry is terrific. I'm going to come ride ferries every day it's windy. The boat doesn't roll any, but we stand right up in front and the wind blows clouds of spray in our faces. You can pretend you're on a full-rigged schooner running before a hurricane. But you look down at that choppy gray water, and you know you'd be done if you got blown overboard, even if it is just an old ferryboat in New York harbor.

The ferry ride is fast, only about fifteen minutes. We ride off in Staten Island and start thinking where to go. I know what's first with me.

I ask Mary, "What do you like, hamburgers or sandwiches?"

"Both. I mean either," she says.

The first place we see is a delicatessen, which is about my favorite kind of place to eat anyway. I order a hot pastrami, and Mary says she never had one, but she'll try the same.

"Where could we go on Staten Island?" I say. "I never was here before."

"About the only place I've been is the zoo. I've been there lots of times. The vet let me watch her operate on a snake once."

This is a pretty surprising thing for a girl to tell you in the middle of a mouthful of hot pastrami. The pastrami is great, and they put it on a roll with a lot of olives and onions and relish. Mary likes it too.

"Is the vet a woman? Aren't you scared of snakes?"

"Uh-un, I never was really. But when you're watching an operation, you get so interested you don't think about it being icky or scary. The vet is a woman. She's been there quite a while."

I digest this along with the rest of my sandwich. Then we both have a piece of apple pie. You can tell from the way the crust looks—browned and a little uneven—that they make it right here.

"So shall we go to the zoo?" Mary asks.

"O.K." I get up to get her coat and mine. When I turn around, there she is up by the cashier, getting ready to pay her check.

"Hey, I'm buying lunch," I say, steaming up with the other check.

"Oh, that's all right." She smiles. "I've got it."

I don't care if she's got it. I want to pay it. I suppose it's a silly thing to get sore about, but it sort of annoys me. Anyway, how do you maneuver around to do something for a girl when she doesn't even know you want to?

The man in the deli gives us directions to get to the zoo, which isn't far. It's a low brick building in a nice park. In the lobby there are some fish tanks, then there's a wing for birds on one side, animals on the other, and snakes straight ahead.

We go for snakes. Mary really seems to like them.

She says, "The vet here likes them, and I guess she got me interested. You know, they don't really understand how a snake moves? Mechanically, I mean. She's trying to find out."

We look at them all, little ones and big ones, and then we go watch the birds. The keeper is just feeding them. The parrot shouts at him, and the pelican and the eagles gobble up their fish and raw meat, but the vulture just sits on his perch looking bored. Probably needs a desert and a dying Legionnaire to whet his appetite.

In the animal wing a strange-looking dame is down at the end, talking to a sleepy tiger.

"Come on, darling, just a little roar. Couldn't you give me just a soft one today?" she's cooing at him. The tiger blinks and looks away.

The lady notices us standing there and says, "He's my baby. I've been coming to see him for fourteen years. Some days he roars for me beautifully."

She has a short conversation with the lion, then moves along with us toward the small cats, a puma and a jaguar. She looks in the next cage, which is empty, and shakes her head mournfully.

"I had the sweetest little leopard. He died last week. Would you believe it? The zoo never let me know he was sick. I could have come and helped take care of him. I might have saved his life."

She goes on talking, sometimes to herself, sometimes to the puma, and we cross over to look at two otters chasing each other up an underwater tunnel.

"What is she, some kind of nut?" Mary says. "Does she think this is her private zoo?"

I shrug. "I suppose she's a little off. But so's my Aunt Kate, the one who gave me Cat. They just happen to like cats better than people. Kate thinks all the stray cats in the world are her children, and I guess this one feels the same way about the big cats here."

We mosey around a little bit more and then head back to the ferry. I make good and sure I'm ahead, and I get to the ticket office and buy two tickets.

"Would you care for a ride across the harbor in my yacht?" I say.

"Why, of course. I'd be delighted," says Mary.

A small thing, but it makes me feel good.

Over in Brooklyn I see a clock on a bank, and it says five o'clock. I do some fast calculating and say, "Uh-oh, I better phone. I'll never make it home by dinnertime."

I phone and get Pop. He's home early from work. Just my luck.

"I got to get this bike back to this kid in Coney," I tell him. "Then I'll be right home. About seven."

"What do you mean this bike and this kid? Who? Anyway, I thought you were already at Coney Island."

I suppose lawyers just get in the habit of asking questions. I start explaining. "Well, it was awfully cold over in Coney, and we thought we'd go over to Staten Island on the ferry and go to the zoo. So now we just got back to Brooklyn, and I'm downtown and I got to take the bike back."

"So who's 'we'? You got a rat in your pocket?"

I can distract Mom but not Pop. "Well, actually, it's a girl named Mary. It's her brother's bike. He's away in college."

All I can hear now is Pop at the other end of the line, laughing his head off.

"So what's so funny about that?"

"Nothing," he says. "Nothing. Only now I can see what all the shouting was about at breakfast."

"Oh."

"O.K. Now mind you get that girl, as well as the bicycle of the brother who goes to college, home safe. Hear? I'll tell your mother you narrowly escaped drowning, and she'll probably save you a bone for dinner. O.K.?"

"O.K. Bye."

Him and his jokes. Ha, ha, ha. Funny, though, him worrying about me getting Mary home safe, when her own mother doesn't worry any.

We start along toward her house slowly, as there's a good deal of traffic now. I'm wondering how to see Mary again without having to ask for her number and phoning and making a date. Something about telephoning I don't like. Besides, I'd probably go out to a pay phone so the family wouldn't listen, and that'd make me feel stupid to begin with.

Just then we start rounding the golf course, and I whack the handle bar of my bike and say, "Hey, that's it!"

"What's it?"

"Golf. Let's play golf. Not now, I don't mean. Next holiday. We've got Election Day coming up. I'll borrow Pop's clubs and take the subway and meet you here. How about ten o'clock?"

"Hunh?" Mary looks startled. "Well, I suppose I could try, or anyway I could walk around."

"It's easy. I'll show you." The two times I played, I only hit the ball decently about four or five times. But the times I did hit it, it seemed easy.

We get to Mary's house and I put the bikes away and give her back her brother's jacket. "I guess I'll go right along. It's getting late. See you Election Day."

"O.K., bye. Say—thanks for the ferry ride!"



15





DOLLARS AND CATS



Wednesday night before Thanksgiving I go down to the delicatessen to buy some coke, so I can really enjoy myself watching TV. Tom is just finishing work at the flower shop, and I ask him if he wants to come along home.

"Nah. Thanks. I got to be at work early tomorrow." He doesn't sound too cheery.

"How's the job going?"

"O.K., I guess." We walk along a little ways. "The job's not bad, but I don't want to be a florist all my life, and I can't see this job will train me for anything else."

That seems pretty true. It must be tough not getting regular holidays off, too. "You have to work all day tomorrow?" I ask.

"I open the store up at seven and start working on orders we've already got. I'll get through around three or four."

"Hey, you want to come for dinner? We're not eating till evening."

Tom grins. "You cooking the dinner? Maybe you better ask your mother."

"It'll be all right with Mom. Look, I'll ask her and come let you know in the store tomorrow, O.K.?"

"Hmm. Well, sure. Thanks. I've got a date with Hilda later in the evening, but she's got to eat with her folks first."

"O.K. See you tomorrow."

"Right."

Mom says it's all right about Tom coming, so I go down and tell him in the morning. Turns out Mom has asked Kate to have dinner with us, too, which is quite a step. For Kate, I mean. I think she would have turned the invitation down, except no one can bear to hurt Mom's feelings. Kate's been in our house before, of course, but then she just came in to chat or have tea or something. It wasn't like an invitation.

She comes, and she looks like someone from another world. I've never seen her in anything but her old skirts and sneakers, so the "good clothes" she's wearing now must have been hanging in a closet twenty years. The dress and shoes are way out of style, and she's carrying a real old black patent-leather pocketbook. Usually she just lugs her old cloth shopping bag, mostly full of cat goodies. Come to think of it, that's it: Kate lives in a world that is just her own and the cats'. I never saw her trying to fit into the ordinary world before.

Cat knows her right away, though. Clothes don't fool him. He rubs her leg and curls up on the sofa beside her, still keeping a half-open eye on the oven door in the kitchen, where the turkey is roasting.

Tom comes in, also in city clothes—a white shirt and tie and jacket—the first time I ever saw him in them. He sits down on the other side of Cat, who stretches one paw out toward him negligently.

Looking at Kate and Tom sitting there on the sofa, both looking a little ill at ease, I get a funny idea. My family is starting to collect people the way Kate collects homeless cats. Of course, Kate and Tom aren't homeless. They're people-less—not part of any family. I think Mom always wanted more people to take care of, so she's glad to have them.

Kidding, I ask Kate, "How many cats at your home for Thanksgiving dinner?"

She stops stroking Cat a minute and thinks. "Hmm, Susan's got four new kittens, just got their eyes open. A beautiful little orange one and three tigers. Then there's two big kittens, strays, and one old stray tom. Makes eight, that's all. Sometimes I've had lots more than that."

"Doesn't the landlord ever object?" Pop asks.

Kate snorts. "Him! Huh! I pay my rent. And I have my own padlock on the door, so he can't come snooping around."

We all sit down to dinner. Pop gives Cat the turkey neck to crunch up in the kitchen. He finishes that and crouches and stares at us eating. Kate gives him tidbits, which I'm not supposed to do. I don't think she really wants to eat the turkey herself. She's pretty strictly a fruit and yogurt type.

After dinner Tom leaves to meet Hilda, and I walk home with Kate, carrying a bag of scraps and giblets for her cats. While she's fiddling with the two sets of keys to open her door, the man next door sticks his head out. "Messenger was here a little while ago with a telegram for you. Wouldn't give it to me."

"A telegram?" Kate gapes.

"Yeah. He'll be back." The man looks pleased, like he's been able to deliver some bad news, and pulls his head in and shuts his door.

We go into Kate's apartment, and cats come meowing and rubbing against her legs, and they jump up on the sink and rub and nudge the bag of scraps when she puts it down. Kate is muttering rapidly to herself and fidgeting with her coat and bag and not really paying much attention to the cats, which is odd.

"Lots of people send telegrams on holidays. It's probably just greetings," I say.

"Not to me, they don't!" Kate snaps, also sounding as if they better hadn't.

I go over to play with the little kittens. The marmalade-colored one is the strongest of the litter, and he's learned to climb out of the box. He chases my fingers. Kate finishes feeding the big cats, and she strides over and scoops him back into the box. "You stay in there. You'll get stepped on." She drops Susan back in with her babies to take care of them.

The doorbell rings, and Kate yanks open the door, practically bowling over an ancient little messenger leaning sleepily against the side of the door.

"Take it easy, lady, take it easy. Just sign here," he says.

She signs, hands him the pencil, and slams the door. The orange kitten has got out again, and Kate does come close to stepping on him as she walks across the room tearing open the telegram. He doesn't know enough to dodge feet yet. I scoop him back in this time.

Kate reads the telegram and sits down. She looks quite calm now. She says, "Well, he died."

"Huh? Who?"

"My brother. He's the only person in the world I know who would send me a telegram. So he's dead now."

She repeats it, and I can't figure whether to say I'm sorry or what. I always thought when someone heard of a death in the family, there'd be a lot of crying and commotion. Kate looks perfectly calm, but strange somehow.

"Has he been sick?"

Kate shakes her head. "I don't know. I haven't seen him in twenty years."

There is silence a moment, and then Kate goes on, talking half to herself and half to me. "Mean old coot. He never talked to anyone, except about his money. That's all he cared about. Once he tried to get me to give him money to invest. That's the last time I saw him. He has an old house way up in the Bronx. But we never did get along, even when we were kids."

"Did he have a wife or anything? Who sent the telegram?"

"He's had a housekeeper. Just as mean as him. She'd buy him day-old bread and dented cans of soup because they were cheaper. She suited him fine—saved him money and never talked to him. Well, she'll get his money now, if he left any. That's what she's been waiting for. She sent me the wire."

Twenty years, I think. That's a long time not to be speaking to your own brother, and him living just a ten-cent phone call away. I wonder. She couldn't just not give a hoot about him. They must have been real mad at each other. And mad at the whole world, too. Makes you wonder what kind of parents they had, with one of them growing up loving only cats and the other only money.

Kate is staring out the window and stroking the old stray tomcat between the ears, and it hits me: there isn't a person in the world she loves or even hates. I like cats fine, too, but if I didn't have people that mattered, it wouldn't be so good. I say "So long" quietly and go out.



16





FORTUNE



"I always wondered if the poor soul had any relatives." That's what Mom says when I tell her about Kate's telegram. "And now she's lost her only brother. That's sad."

"I think it's sad she never talked to him for twenty years. All these years I've wished I had a brother," I say.

"If it's her only brother, she's going to have to do something about his estate," says Pop. That legal mind, it never rests. I guess he's got a point about this, though. How is Kate going to deal with lawyers, or undertakers, or anyone? She can't hardly stand to talk to people like that.

"What'll she have to do?"

"Maybe I better go see her tomorrow," says Pop. "There can be lots of things—see if he left a will, if he owes any taxes, if he has property that has to be taken care of or sold. You can't tell."

"Kate said he was a miser. Maybe he left her a million. Say, that'd be great!"

"Don't be a dope!" Pop snaps, and he really sounds angry, so I pipe down.

The next morning Pop tells me to go over and see how Kate is. "The way she feels about people, I don't like to just barge in. I'll come by in ten minutes, like I was picking you up to go to a movie or something."

I saunter round the corner onto Third Avenue and stop short. There are two newspaper cars pulled up in front of Kate's building, one red and one black, and a sizable knot of people gathered on the sidewalk. I move in among them.

"That crazy cat lady ... he musta been a nut too ... left her about a million ... a lotta rich cats, how d'ya like that...."

So I guess he did leave her money, and all of a sudden I see it isn't "great." It's going to be trouble. I push through the people and go upstairs without anyone stopping me. When I open Kate's door, old stray tomcat shoots out. He's leaving, and I can see why.

Kate's room is tiny, and it looks like it's filled with a mob. Maybe it's only half a dozen guys, but the photographers are pushing around trying to get shots and the reporters are jabbering.

Orange kitten sticks his head out of the box. Then out he comes, into the sea of feet. I drop him back in and try to get across to Kate. She's pretty well backed into a corner and looking ready to jump out the window. She has her arms folded in front of her, each hand clenching the other elbow, as if to hold herself together. A reporter with a bunch of scratch paper in his hand is crowding her.

"Miss Carmichael"—funny, I never even knew her last name before—"I just want to ask one or two questions. Could you tell us when you last saw your brother?"

"No, I couldn't," she snaps, drawing her head down between her shoulders and trying to melt into the wall.

"Watcha going to do with the money?" a photographer asks. He picks up a cat, one of the big stray kittens, and dumps it on Kate. The cat clings to her and the photographer says, "Hold it now. Just let me snap a picture."

He takes two steps back.

At the first step the room is silent. At the second step a shattering caterwaul goes up. He has stepped on the adventurous orange kitten.

The scream freezes us all, except Kate. She shoots out of her corner, knowing instantly what has happened. The kitten is jerking slightly now, and bright, bright blood is coming out of its mouth. With one violent, merciful stroke Kate finishes it. She picks the limp body up and wraps it neatly in a paper towel and places it in the wastebasket.

The room is still silent for one congealed instant. Kate seems almost to have forgotten the crowd of men. Then two of them make hastily for the door. The photographer shuffles his feet and says, "Gee, m'am, I didn't mean ... I wouldn't for the world...."

Kate whirls and screams at him: "Get out! Get out, all of you! Leave me and my cats alone! I never asked you in here!"

At that moment my pop comes in the door. Of course he doesn't know anything about the kitten, but he takes in the general situation and herds the two remaining newspapermen to the door. He gives them his card and home address and tells them to look him up a little later.

My knees suddenly feel weak and I slump onto the sofa, and my eyes swivel round to the little package in the wastebasket. It would be the strongest one. I really never saw anything get killed right in front of me before. It hits you.

Pop is trying to calm Kate down. She's facing him, grabbing each sleeve of his coat. "What am I going to do? What can I do? I don't want his money. I don't want anything from anyone. I just want to be let alone!"

"Take it easy, Kate, take it easy. You don't have to let anyone into your apartment. About the inheritance, well, I'll have to look into that." Over his shoulder Pop signals to me to go home and get Mom.

I go home and explain the situation to Mom, and she comes back with me. One photographer and a couple of reporters are still hanging around, and the guy snaps a picture of me and Mom at the door. Mom scoots on up. Bad as I feel, I still get a charge out of getting my picture taken for a paper.

"Hey, kid," one of the reporters shoves in front of me, "about this Miss Carmichael. Does she act pretty strange, like talking to herself on the street and stuff?"

I see the story he's trying to build up. While it's true in a way, if you really know Kate it's not. Anyway, I'm against it. I say, "Nah. She's all right. She's just sort of scared of people, and she likes cats."

"How many cats she got?"

There have been up to a dozen on a busy day, but again I play it down. "She's got a mother cat with kittens. Sometimes a stray or two. Don't get sucked in by all that jazz these dumb kids around here'll give you."

"She gets all that money, you think she'll buy a big house, set up a home for stray cats?"

I shrug. "I don't know. She doesn't want the money anyway. She just wants to be let alone."

"Doesn't want the money!" the photographer chips in. "Boy, she must be really nuts! I'm going back to the office."

The reporter says he's going to wait and talk to my pop, and I go on upstairs to see what's doing.

Kate is sitting on the sofa, sniffing and wiping her eyes and muttering, but looking calmer. Mom is making tea. Pop is looking out the window, scratching his head.

Kate gulps and draws a big breath. "Tell them I don't want his old money. Tell them to give it to someone else. Tell them to leave me alone. I just want my own place and my cats. They can't make me move, can they? I've lived here thirty years. I couldn't go anyplace else."

She gulps and sniffs some more, and Mom brings her a cup of tea. The stray kittens jump up to see if it's anything good and nuzzle into her lap. Kate takes a sip of tea and asks Pop again, "They can't make me move, can they?" This seems to be what worries her most.

"No-o," says Pop, "it's only...."

He's interrupted by a knock on the door, and I go open it a crack. A guy says he's the landlord. As soon as Kate hears his voice, she yelps at him, "I paid my rent, first of the month like always. Don't you come bothering me!"

"It's about the cats," he says. "People outside saying you got a dozen cats in here. There's a law, you know."

He's a seedy-looking, whining kind of a man, and he looks real pleased with himself when he says there's a law about cats.

Kate jumps right at him. "I'm not breaking any laws. I know you. You just want to get me out of here and rent the place for more money. You leave me alone!"

The man whines, "There's a law, that's all. I don't want no violation slapped on my building."

Pop comes over and tells the man there's just a mother cat with kittens. "There's a couple of strays here, too, right now, but I'll take them home with me."

"There's a law, that's all. Also, I got a right to inspect the premises." Pop shows no signs of letting him in, and he shuffles and grumbles and goes away.

"Lock the door," Kate snaps. "I keep it locked all the time."

Pop says he's going home to make some phone calls and try to figure out what's going on. He takes down the name and address of Kate's brother and asks her if she's sure there are no other relatives. She says she never heard of any. Pop goes, and Kate insists that I lock the door after him.

She gets up and starts stirring around getting food out for the cats. She buys fish and chicken livers for them, even though she hardly eats any meat herself. She listens at the back door a moment to make sure no one's out there, then opens the door and puts out the garbage and wastebasket. There goes the adventurous kitten. You got to hand it to Kate. She has no sniffling sentimentality about her cats. Kitten's dead, it's dead, that's all. She doesn't mope over the limp mite of fur. In fact, anything to do with cats she's got sense and guts. They're her family. I don't know that I could have put that kitten out of its misery.

Just as long as the world doesn't throw any stray fortunes at her, Kate does fine. But when people get in her way, she needs someone like Pop.

Mom says she'll stick around a while and tells me to take the two stray kittens home, just in case the landlord comes back trying to make trouble.

"O.K., great—Cat'll have some company!"

Kate sniffs. "He'll hate it. Cats don't like other cats pushing into their house."

She's right, of course. I put the kittens down at home, and Cat hisses at them and then runs them under the radiator in the kitchen. Then he sits down in the doorway and glowers at them, on guard.

Things simmer down gradually. Mom and I and sometimes Tom, who's right at the flower shop on the corner, take turns checking on Kate and doing shopping for her, or going with her so she doesn't get badgered by people. But pretty soon everyone in the neighborhood forgets all about her and her inheritance. They see her buying just the same old cat food and cottage cheese and fruit, and they probably figure the whole thing was a phony.

It wasn't though. Pop finds out her brother did leave a will. He lined up his funeral, left something to his housekeeper, something to a little restaurant owner way downtown—apparently that was his one big luxury, a decent meal twice a year when he went down to buy more stocks—and the rest to Kate.

Pop says it may take months or years to clear up the estate, but he says Kate can get her share all put in trust for her with some bank, and they'll take care of all the legalities and taxes and just pay her as much or little as she wants out of the income. And she can leave the whole kit and caboodle to a cat home in her will if she wants to, which will probably make her tightwad brother spin in his grave. I asked her once, and she said maybe she'd leave some to the Children's Aid, because there are a lot of stray children in New York City that need looking after, as well as cats. She's getting to think about people some.



17





TELEPHONE NUMBERS



There are some disadvantages to not getting a girl's phone number. This sort of date I had with Mary for golf on Election Day fell through. In the first place, I was sick in bed with the flu, and Mom wouldn't have let me out for anything, and secondly, it was pouring rain. Without the phone number, there wasn't any way I could let her know, and I didn't even know a street address to write to later.

By the time I got finished with the flu, we were into Thanksgiving and then all the trouble with Kate. Time passed and I felt rottener about standing her up without a word, and I couldn't get up my nerve to go out to Coney and just appear on her doorstep. I could have found the house all right, once I was out there.

The first week of Christmas vacation the phone rings late one afternoon and Pop answers it. He says, "Just one minute, please," and I know right away from his voice it isn't someone he knows.

"Young lady on the phone for you, Dave," he says, and he enjoys watching me gulp.

"Hullo?" a rather tight, flat little voice asks. "Is this Dave—uh, Mitchell—uh, I mean, with Cat?"

I recognize it's Mary, all right, even if she does sound strange and scared.

"Oh, hi!" I say. "Sure, it's me! I'm awfully sorry about that day we were going to play golf. I was in bed with the flu, and then I didn't know your phone number or...."

"Oh, that's all right," she says. "I wondered what happened."

There's a slight pause, and I see Pop grinning and pretending to read his paper. I turn around so I won't see him.

"Where are you now, out in Coney?" I ask Mary.

"No, as a matter of fact, I'm in Macy's." Her voice trails off a little, but then she starts in again. "As a matter of fact, that's why I called. You see, I was supposed to meet Mom here at five, and she hasn't come, and I bought all these Christmas presents, and I forgot about the tax or something, and this is my last dime."

She stops. I see now why she sounds scared, and I get a curdled feeling in my stomach, too, because what if the dime runs out in the phone and she's cut off? I'll never find her in Macy's. It's too big.

"Pop!" I yelp. "There's this girl I know is in a phone booth in Macy's and her dime is going to run out and she hasn't anymore money. What'll I do?"

"Get the phone number of the booth and call her back. Here—" He gives me a pencil.

What a relief. Funny I never thought of that. You just somehow don't think of a phone booth having a number.

Mary sounds pretty relieved, too. I get the number and call her back, and with Pop making suggestions here and there we settle that I'll go over to Macy's and meet her on the ground floor near Thirty-fourth Street and Broadway at the counter where they're selling umbrellas for $2.89, which Mary says she can see from the phone booth.

"O.K." I say, and then I sort of don't want to hang up. It's fun talking. So I go on. "Look, just in case we miss each other at Macy's, what's your phone number at home, so I could call you sometime?"

"COney 7-1218."

"O.K. Well, good-bye. I'll be right over. To Macy's, I mean."

I grab my coat and check to see if I've got money. Pop asks if I'm going to bring her home for dinner.

"Gee, I don't know." I hadn't given a thought to what we'd do. "I guess so, maybe, if her mother hasn't come by then. I'll call you if we do anything else."

"O.K.," Pop says.

I go out and hustle through the evening rush-hour crowds to the subway. The stores are all open evenings now, for Christmas, so the crowds are going both ways.

I get to the right corner of Macy's, and I see Mary right away. Everyone else is rushing about and muttering to themselves, and she's standing there looking lost. In fact she looks so much like a waif that the first thing I say is, "Hi! Shall we go get something to eat?"

"Yes, I'm starved. I was just going to get a doughnut when I found I'd run out of money."

"Let's go home and you can have dinner with us then. But what about your mother? Won't she be looking for you?"

Mary shifts her feet and looks tired. "I don't know. Probably if she came and I wasn't here, she'd figure I'd gone home."

I try to think a minute, which is hard to do with all these people shoving around you. Mary starts to pick up her two enormous shopping bags, and I take them from her, still trying to think. At the subway entrance I see the phone booth.

"That's the thing," I say. "Why don't you call your house and see if your mother left a message or something?"

"Well...." Mary stands by the phone looking confused and in fact about ready to cry. I suddenly decide the best thing we can do is get home and sit down where it's quiet. Waiting fifteen minutes or so to phone can't make much difference.

We get home pretty fast and I introduce Mary to Mom and Pop. She sinks into the nearest chair and takes off her shoes.

"Excuse me," she says. "I just bought these heels, and it's awful wearing them!"

She wiggles her toes and begins to look better. Mom offers her a pair of slippers and Pop passes some potato chips.

Mom says, "Poor child, did you try to do all your Christmas shopping at once?"

"Well, actually, I was having fun just looking for a long while. I have two little cousins that I don't really have to get much for, but I love looking at all the toys. I spent quite a while there. Then I did the rest of my shopping in a rush, and everything is so crowded, and I got mixed up on my money or the sales tax and only had a dime left, and I missed my mother or she forgot."

She stretches out her toes to touch Cat, who is sitting in front of her. "I couldn't think what to do. It's so hard to think when your feet hurt."

"It certainly is," agrees Mom. She goes out to the kitchen to finish fixing dinner, and Pop suggests Mary better phone her home. She gets her father, and her mother has left a message that she was delayed and figured Mary would go home alone. Mary gives her father our address and tells him she'll be home by nine.

We must have hit a lucky day because we have a real good dinner: slices of good whole meat, not mushed up stuff, and potatoes cooked with cheese in them, and salad, and a lemon meringue pie from the bakery, even.

After dinner we sit around a little while, and Pop says I better take Mary home, and he gives me money for a cab at the end of the subway. When Mary gives the driver her home address, I say it over to myself a few times so I'll remember.

Suddenly I wonder about something. "Say, how'd you know my phone number?"

"I looked it up," she says simply. "There's about twenty-eleven Mitchells in the Manhattan phone book, but only one in the East Twenties, so I figured that must be you."

"Gee, that's true. You must have had an awful time, though, standing in the phone booth with your feet hurting, going through all those Mitchells."

Says Mary, "Oh, no. I did it one rainy afternoon at home, weeks ago."

Well, what do you know.



18





"HERE'S TO CAT!"



The two stray kittens gradually make themselves at home. Somehow or other Cat has taught them that he's in charge here, and he just chases them for fun now and again, when he's not busy sleeping.

As for keeping cats in my room, that's pretty well forgotten. For one thing, Mom really likes them. She sneaks the kittens saucers of cream and bits of real hamburger when no one's looking, and she likes talking to them in the kitchen. She doesn't pick them up, but just having them in the room sure doesn't give her asthma.

The only time we have any trouble from the cats is one evening when Pop comes home and the two kittens skid down the hall between his legs, with Cat after them. He scales his hat at the lot of them and roars down the hall to me, "Hey, Davey! When are you getting rid of these cats? I'm not fixing to start an annex to Kate's cat home!"

"I'm sure Davey will find homes for them," Mom says soothingly, but getting a little short of breath, the way she does any time she's afraid one of us is losing his temper.

In fact, one thing this cat business seems to have established is that me and Pop fighting is the main cause of Mom's asthma. So we both try to do a little better, and a lot of things we used to argue and fight about, like my jazz records, we just kid each other about now. But now and then we still work up to a real hassle.

I've been taking a history course the first semester at school. It's a real lemon—just a lot of preaching about government and citizenship. The second semester I switch to a music course. This is O.K. with the school—but not with Pop. Right away when I bring home my new program, he says, "How come you're taking one less course this half?"

I explain that I'm taking music, and also biology, algebra, English, and French.

"Music!" he snorts. "That's recreation, not a course. Do it on your own time!"

"Pop, it's a course. You think the school signs me up for an hour of home record playing?"

"They might," he grunts. "You're not going to loaf your way through school if I have anything to say about it."

"Loaf!" I yelp. "Four major academic subjects is more than lots of the guys take."

Mom comes and suggests that Pop better go over to school with me and talk it over at the school office. He does, and for once I win a round—I keep music for this semester. But he makes sure that next year I'm signed up all year for five majors: English, French, math, chemistry, and European history. I'll be lucky if I have time to breathe.

I go down to the flower shop to grouse to Tom. It's after Valentine's Day, and business is slack and the boss is out.

"Why does Pop have to come butting into my business at school? Doesn't he even think the school knows what it's doing?"

"Aw, heck," says Tom, "your father's the one has to see you get into college or get a job. Sometimes schools do let kids take a lot of soft courses, and then they're out on a limb later."

"Huh. He just likes to boss everything I do."

"So—he cares."

"Huh." I'm not very ready to buy this, but then I remember Tom's father, who doesn't care. It makes me think.

"Besides," says Tom, "half the reason you and your father are always bickering is that you're so much alike."

"Me? Like him?"

"Sure. You're both impatient and curious, got to poke into everything. As long as there's a bone on the floor, the two of you worry it."

Mr. Palumbo comes back to the shop then, and Tom gets busy with the plants. I go home, wondering if I really am at all like Pop. I never thought of it before.

It's funny about fights. Pop and I can go along real smooth and easy for a while, and I think: Well, he really isn't a bad guy, and I'm growing up, we can see eye to eye—all that stuff. Then, whoosh! I hardly know what starts it, but a fight boils up, and we're both breathing fire like dragons on the loose.

We get a holiday Washington's Birthday, which is good because there's a TV program on Tuesday, the night before the holiday, that I hardly ever get to watch. It's called Out Beyond, and the people in it are very real, not just good guys and bad guys. There's always one character moving around, keeping you on the edge of your chair, and by the time it all winds up in a surprise ending, you find this character is not a real person, he's supernatural. The program goes on till eleven o'clock, and Mom won't let me watch it on school nights.

I get the pillows comfortably arranged on the floor, with a big bottle of soda and a bag of popcorn within easy reach. The story starts off with some nature shots of a farm and mountains in the background and this little kid playing with his grandfather. There's a lot of people in it, but gradually you get more and more suspicious of dear old grandpa. He's taking the kid for a walk when a thunderstorm blows up.

Right then, of course, we have to have the alternate sponsor. He signs off, finally, and up comes Pop.

"Here, Davey old boy, we can do better than that tonight. The Governor and the Mayor are on a TV debate about New York City school reorganization."

At first I figure he's kidding, so I just growl, "Who cares?"

He switches the channel.

I jump up, tipping over the bottle of soda on the way. "Pop, that's not fair! I'm right in the middle of a program, and I been waiting weeks to watch it because Mom won't let me on school nights!"

Pop goes right on tuning his channel. "Do you good to listen to a real program for a change. There'll be another western on tomorrow night."

That's the last straw. I shout, "See? You don't even know what you're talking about! It's not a western."

Pop looks at me prissily. "You're getting altogether too upset about these programs. Stop it and behave yourself. Go get a sponge to mop up the soda."

"It's your fault! Mop it up yourself!" I'm too mad now to care what I say. I charge down the hall to my room and slam the door.

I hear the TV going for a few minutes, then Pop turns it off and goes in the kitchen to talk to Mom. In a little while he comes down and knocks on my door. Knocks—that's something. Usually he just barges in.

"Look here now, Dave, we've got to straighten a few things out quietly. Your mother says she told you you could watch that program, whatever it was. So O.K., go ahead, you can finish it."

"Yeah, it's about over by now." I'm still sore, and besides Pop's still standing in my door, so I figure there's a hitch in this somewhere.

"But anyway, you shouldn't get so sore about an old television program that you shout 'Mop it up yourself' at me."

"Hmm."

"Hmm, nothing."

"Well, I don't think you should turn a guy's TV program off in the middle without even finding out about it."

Pop says "Hmm" this time, and we both stand and simmer down.

I look at my watch. It's a quarter to eleven. I say, "Well, O.K. I might as well see the end. Sorry I got sore."

Pop moves out of the doorway. He says, "Hereafter I will only turn off your TV programs before they start, not in the middle."

Just as I get the TV on and settle down, the doorbell rings.

"Goodness, who could that be so late?" says Mom.

Pop goes to the door. It's Tom, and Hilda is with him. I turn off the television set—I've lost track of what's happening, and it doesn't seem to be the grandfather who's the spook after all. It's the first time Hilda has been to our house, and Tom introduces her around. Then there's one of those moments of complete silence, with everyone looking embarrassed, before we all start to speak at once.

"Hilda came to the beach with us," I say.

"I told Tom we shouldn't come so late," says Hilda.

Pop says, "Not late at all. Come in and sit down."

Hilda sits on the sofa, where Cat is curled up. He looks at her, puts his head back and goes on sleeping.

Mom brings coffee and cookies in from the kitchen, and I pour the rest of the popcorn into a bowl and pass it around. Tom stirs his coffee vigorously and takes one sip and puts the cup down.

"Reason we came so late," he says, "Hilda and I have been talking all evening. We want to get married."

Pop doesn't look as surprised as I do. "Congratulations!" he says.

Tom says, "Thanks" and looks at Hilda, and she blushes. Really. Tom drinks a little more coffee and then he goes on: "The trouble is, I can't get married on this flower-shop job."

"Doesn't pay enough?" Pop asks.

"Well, it's not just the pay. The job isn't getting me anywhere I want to go. So that's what we've been talking about all evening. Finally we went up to Times Square and talked to the guys in the Army and Navy and Air Force recruiting office. You know, I'd get drafted in a year or two, anyway. I've decided to enlist in the Army."

"Goodness, you may get sent way out West for years and years!" says Mom.

"No, not if I enlist in the Army. That's for three years. But I can choose what specialist school I want to go into, and there's this Air Defense Command—it's something to do with missiles. In that I can also choose what metropolitan area I want to be stationed in. I can choose New York, and we could get married, and I might even be able to go on taking college course at night school, with the Army paying for most of it."

Pop says, "You sound like the recruiting officer himself. You sure of all this?"

"I'll have to check some more," says Tom. "The recruiting officer, as a matter of fact, tried to persuade me to shoot for officers' training and go into the Army as a career. But then I would be sent all over, and anyway, I don't think Army life would be any good for Hilda."

"I can see you have put in a busy evening," says Pop. "Well, shove back the coffee cups, and I'll break out that bottle of champagne that's been sitting in the icebox since Christmas."

I go and retrieve my spilled bottle of soda. There's still enough left for one big glass. Pop brings out the champagne, and the cork blows and hits the ceiling. Cat jumps off the sofa and stands, half crouched and tail twitching, ready to take cover.

Pop fills little glasses for them and raises his to Tom and Hilda. "Here's to you—a long, happy life!"

We drink, and then I raise my glass of soda. "Here's to Cat! Tom wouldn't even be standing here if it wasn't for Cat."

That's true, and we all drink to Cat. He sits down and licks his right front paw.



Format by Jean Krulis Set in Linotype Baskerville Composed and bound by American Book-Stratford Press Printed by The Murray Printing Co. *HARPER & ROW, PUBLISHERS, INCORPORATED*

THE END