PAUL BECKMAN

GET OFF THE COUCH, ANN LANDERS!

     Out of the corner of my eye, while I am reading, I see Ann Landers
creeping alongside the living room wall. Move a bit—stop, move a
bit—stop. She glances my way, and my gaze locks on her green eyes.
She freezes in place, staring back. Finally, tired of the game, she
turns her head and continues on—on behind the couch, where she
stays for a few minutes, before springing up and curling herself into
a ball on the throw pillow resting on the couch seat.
     About six months after my mother died, Ann Landers, my calico
cat, took on her persona. Mother is tiny with large patches of brown
and black over her white body. Her tail is all white except for a black
spot right at the bend, midway.
     “Get off the couch, Ann Landers!”
     Mother doesn’t move.
     When she was only Ann Landers she’d have leapt off the couch
before I finished the sentence, but now that she’s part calico and part
Ida Moscowitz, she does as she pleases. And that includes no longer
using the litter box when I’m in the same room. She will face it and
wait patiently until I leave the mud room where it is kept, before
doing her business. Now she needs privacy.
     She wants to go outside; there’s no doubt about it. Mother has
tried several times to make a quick turn to get out when an open
screen door has presented itself. Ann Landers was an inside cat from
day one, and this new phase is unnerving.
     My name is Brian Moscowitz, and I am not crazy—my world is.
I am thirty-eight years old and a conductor on Amtrak’s Boston to
Washington run. I am divorced and live in my own house in a New
Haven suburb. My mother never approved of my working for the
railroad. She wanted me to go into the family business, but I had no
desire to work in a factory all day long churning out baster bulbs.
I’ve loved trains my whole life, and even while I was going to college
studying business administration, I knew that after graduation
I’d become a railroad man.
     When I put on my uniform to go to work, Mother hisses at me
and then turns her back and saunters away. B.M. (before mother),
Ann Landers would see me taking my conductor’s hat and coat from
the closet and she’d sit and watch until I’d picked her up and rubbed
her belly. She purred her goodbyes knowing that I’d be gone for two
days, and she purred me welcome home on my return.
     I don’t tell people that Ann Landers is now inhabited by Mother.
I know what they would think. I’d be no different if someone told
me the story—how it happened one night while eating dinner in my
kitchen. I watched Ann Landers sitting on a chair at the table. Then I
felt Mother’s presence and saw her face in Ann’s little hairy one. Not
her whole face, that would indeed be bizarre, but Ann Landers had
taken on aspects of Mother’s looks and facial expressions. I opened
a package of Twinkies for dessert and placed them on the same plate
my meat loaf had been on. I used my knife and fork to cut the Twinkies
and savor the small pieces. Mother looked at me with her look. There
were other signs. Ann Landers now hissed when I picked my nose or
farted. She had never done that before. And she made me feel perverted
if I picked her up and rubbed her belly.
     I never had any such experience when my father died five years
ago. I mourned. I still miss him, but I don’t see him in my cat or
anywhere else. This is different. My relationship with Mother was
always strained, unlike her feelings towards my sisters, who married
well and gave her grandchildren. Why she chose me and not them to
end up with is a mystery. Could she have been thinking rehabilitation?
     I had a cook-out and invited my sisters and their families. They
came, and no matter how many times I asked them about Ann
Landers’s behavior or looks, they kept telling me it was the same old
cat they always knew.
     “Have you noticed that Ann Landers has taken on some human
expressions?” I asked. They laughed and teased me. My nieces and
nephews played with Ann Landers off and on during the visit and
acted as if she were just any old cat and not their grandmother.

* * *

     I am hypersensitive to things that other people probably would
not feel. My grandfather was a house painter, and he would take me
with him when I was little to be his helper. I was in the service when
he died and couldn’t come home for his funeral. I got home just as
the family was cleaning out his house for the new owners. “Take
what you want, Brian,” they said. “Any memento of Gramps you
want is okay with us.” They had picked the house clean, but in the
garage I found a six-foot wooden step ladder splattered with paint. I
wanted that ladder. To my wife’s dismay, I kept it open in the living
room using the steps and the fold-down paint can holder to hold
plants. I did this to disguise the real reason.
     I felt my grandfather’s presence in this piece of wood that had
been part of his life for so long. He was there, amongst the dripped
paint and splintered wood, and I often talked to him while resting
my foot on one of his rungs.
     When I was still married, I had the family over for a birthday
party. I left to go to the store, and while I was gone, one of the kids’
helium balloons broke loose from her grip and floated up to the ceiling.
My brother-in-law took the plants off the ladder and climbed it
to retrieve the balloon for his crying daughter. As soon as he got hold
of the string, the ladder leg broke, and he landed hard, but still held
on to the balloon. He was okay; the ladder wasn’t. My wife had them
toss the pieces into the garbage can, and when I came home, my
niece told me about her balloon, and I ran to the living room and
then to the garbage can and pulled out the ladder. I hugged the broken
ladder pieces, sniffed the paint and the wood, but I no longer felt
my grandfather’s presence. I put it back together, but left it unused in
the garage after that.

* * *

     My mother made her escape from the house. Ann Landers would
never have considered it. I looked for hours, but to no avail. I had a
rough night sleeping, worrying about a house cat suddenly out in the
wilds of suburbia. Mother or no mother, Ann Landers was not ready
for this. While shaving, I heard the screeching of brakes and looked
out the window in time to see Ann Landers running for all she was
worth into the neighbor’s yard across the street. I went outside and
ran up to the woman who was behind the wheel, visibly shaken. She
was an older, white-haired woman, a sweet grandmother type. “What
happened?” I asked.
     “I almost killed a cat. It ran right in front of my car, and I was
barely able to stop.”
     “Probably mine,” I said. “My calico’s been missing.”
     I smiled my thanks, and she said, “I should have run it over just
to teach you a lesson. People like you shouldn’t have pets.” She drove
off.
     I did a yard-by-yard search and finally found Ann Landers a few
houses away on a neighbor’s back deck. She lay curled and contentlooking
with the morning sun beating down on her. I climbed the
stairs, and she let me pick her up and carry her home. On the walk,
Ann Landers rolled over in my arms and purred, exposing her belly
for me to rub. Mom wouldn’t have done that.

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