“No, you didn’t,” she said.
“Yes, Barbara, I did. Last month.”
Barbara sat in the dark movie theatre, crying. She didn’t know what she expected, or why she was upset. Her father was married to someone else. It was done. It had already happened. She didn’t even know why it bothered her. She had known forever that he wasn’t coming back.
She didn’t talk to Smoky about it. That night, she just held him and cried. He snuggled against her and purred.
It was hard on her mother, too. It was hard to watch her husband living a fancy life; hard to watch him occasionally (very occasionally, according to Barbara) give her children things she couldn’t afford; hard to watch him find happiness with someone else. The economy in the late 1970s was bad across the nation; in Flint, Michigan, it was abominable. Jobs were disappearing, abandoned houses were burning, and the unemployment rate was spiking above 20 percent. Whole neighborhoods collapsed as General Motors closed assembly lines, and the workers were often on strike. One day, when the family took a rare trip to the Courtland Mall, someone stole the spare tire off their car. That’s how desperate the situation was in Flint. Against this backdrop of despair, Barbara’s mother struggled through community college, while working full-time and raising three children, to earn an associate’s degree in nutrition. She wanted to be in charge of a kitchen instead of just a cook, but her dreams of getting ahead were thwarted by frequent layoffs, increased competition for even the worst jobs, and the closing of one nursing home after another.
Barbara’s mother had little sympathy for the autoworkers. She didn’t like the management of General Motors, which was rapidly moving jobs to Mexico, but she didn’t particularly like the line workers, either. In nursing home kitchens, she was getting paid $3.35 an hour for backbreaking work on early morning and weekend shifts. The GM employees were making five times as much, with health insurance and benefits. The town was rife with rumors of workers who clocked in before going deer hunting, then came back to clock out for their full day’s pay. At the bus and truck plants, people said, inspectors sometimes found vodka bottles inside half-built vehicles. Every time the autoworkers went on strike, half the town was vociferously for them. The other half—a spattering of heartless executives but mostly those unemployed or working bottom-of-the-pyramid jobs—felt like Evelyn Lambert, whose constant refrain was, “What do they have to complain about?”
“I would take that job in a minute,” she said of the autoworkers, with increasing bitterness. “I’d take that pay. I’d take half that pay in a second.”
But you couldn’t get a position in the Shop, as the auto plants were known, unless you knew someone in the Shop, and Evelyn Lambert wasn’t that lucky. So she continued to work long days for $3.35 an hour in the industrial kitchens of Flint. The hours were so long, and Evelyn was so often working multiple jobs, that there were whole weeks when Barbara didn’t see her mother. She’d be at work when Barbara came home from school, and she wouldn’t get home from her last shift until school started the next day. On her days off, she would take long walks. At the time, Barbara thought her mother was trying to escape, very briefly, from her responsibilities and frustrations. Looking back, she realized that her mother always came home from her walks carrying an armload of wood and dragging a bag full of soda cans. The wood was to heat the house in the winter. The cans were worth ten cents each at the recycling center. Between the soda can money, a religious devotion to clipping coupons, and some complicated calculations on exactly when to write checks so they would clear at the bank, Barbara’s mother kept the household afloat. She often went hungry, but everyone else got fed.
That included the cats, which usually numbered about twelve. It’s expensive to keep so many cats, especially when you’re scraping for pennies, but Barbara’s mother would never cut back on their needs, and she would let them leave only for legitimate adoptions. It would be naïve not to think that Evelyn Lambert needed those cats to give her life direction and meaning. Even twelve-year-old Barbara understood that. But she also understood that her mother cared about the cats. She understood and loved each one of them, and that love comforted her. One of Barbara’s favorite memories was seeing her mother relaxing in her favorite chair in one of her rare moments of peace, with big, lovable Harry sprawled on her lap. Harry talked constantly, and he had a great big rolling purr that never seemed to stop. Everybody called him Mr. Happy because that purr was like joy exploding out of him all the time.
Harry was Barbara’s mother’s favorite, a big sweet bear of a cat who always wanted a lap whenever Evelyn Lambert had one to offer. With that sweet personality, everyone assumed he’d be adopted right away. And he was. But two weeks later, the new owners brought him back. There was always an excuse when this happened: It scratched my sofa, it scratched my kid, its litter box stinks, or even, it’s just not like I thought it was going to be. What was the excuse for Harry? Barbara only remembers that big Harry came back.
At that time, a year or two into being a foster parent, Evelyn Lambert let the cats roam freely inside and outside the house. Then one of the cats, Rosie, ate rat poison that had been left outside by the neighbor. Barbara’s mother rushed her to the animal hospital, but it was too late. They had no choice but to put Rosie to sleep. A few weeks later, Harry wandered into the main road and was hit by a van. That was the moment that changed Evelyn Lambert’s mind. Never again did she let any of her cats out of the house. After Harry’s accident, she was a passionate advocate of keeping cats indoors. Now all the rescue agencies advocate this, of course, but in 1978 she was ahead of her time.
Fortunately, Harry survived the accident. A neighbor saw him lying on the side of the road and called the cat lady. Evelyn ran out with a blanket, eased Harry onto it as best she could, and rushed him to the veterinary clinic. Poor Harry had first been abandoned and then hit by a van, but the only effect on this kind soul was that, with a shattered hip, he walked sideways for the rest of his life. When he sat on Evelyn’s lap, her head often bobbing as she teetered on the edge of exhausted sleep, Harry’s leg always stuck out awkwardly to the side. But his injury never stopped those deep, booming purrs.
Barbara’s brother Scott also had a favorite cat. Her name was Gracie, and she was a thin gray kitten less than half the size of Happy Harry. She had been abandoned by her owner because she was incontinent and had trouble making it to the litter box. She had feline leukemia, but back then, there was no such diagnosis; the vet thought she had digestive problems. An incontinent kitten can be an issue in a house full of cats, but Scott and Barbara would do anything for their mother. They loved the cats, of course, but that love was mixed up with their pride and admiration for their mom. The passion she felt for the animals, the way she sacrificed to help them, were the defining aspects of their childhood. Everything they experienced was limited by the twin poles of passion and sacrifice; everything they did for their mother was defined by those poles. Was there a little pity, too? Perhaps. Barbara defended her mother. Always. Whenever anyone called her crazy, she told them, “Well, who else is going to do it? Who else, I ask you, is going to help those cats?”
Not once, even as a teenager, did Barbara think, If it weren’t for all these cats, I could have something more. She helped clip coupons. She went without seconds at dinner. When she was thirteen, she started volunteering at an animal clinic. The Lamberts couldn’t afford regular medical care for their cats, but by volunteering, Barbara earned free emergency care when needed.