One of her sisters took a trip, then married the man. Gloria sulks. A cat rubs against Hale’s legs. He has to feed the cats. From a dark corner, small green eyes stare.
*
“You don’t really love me. Why do you want to take this trip?”
“I love you. I really love you. I can’t go on a trip and leave you.”
“What would I do with my cats?”
“We can take them. We’ll just put them in the car.”
“Some of them won’t ride.”
“What do you mean they won’t ride?”
“They’re scared. They meow and walk all around the car.”
“We’ll put them in a box.”
“Cruel.”
“Gloria, it’s cats. Just cats.”
“I want to tell you something, then. I wasn’t going to tell. Once I was a cat. You have to know that I am reincarnated.”
That’s the biggest word he’s ever heard her use. He questions her to find out if she knows what she just said.
“I went to a fortune teller, and she said what I thought was right. Once I was a cat, and I think I lived somewhere very, very cold. I don’t remember too much.”
“You really think you were a cat?”
“I know I was a cat”
“Well, what does that have to do with our going across country?”
“I can’t put a cat in a box. What if somebody put me in a box? How would I like it?”
“We’ll leave it out of the box.”
“Two would have to be in boxes.”
“You conducted experiments with these cats or something?”
“I’ve tried to ride with them. Two won’t ride.”
“When they get to the Grand Canyon they’ll love it. How many cats get taken to see the wonders of the world?”
“Why don’t we go see my sister and then she wouldn’t be so unhappy? It would only take eight hours of driving to see my sister.”
“Your sister isn’t one of the wonders of the world.”
The plans for driving to the Grand Canyon are going badly.
*
He gives her a new kitten, hoping that now she will love him enough to take the trip. Instead, she loves the cat. She tries out names, strokes it, shields it from the other cats’ curiosity.
She tells Hale that once she was a cat who sat on a velvet cushion in some cold room, maybe in Russia the fortune teller said, and was tended by some beautiful woman, maybe a princess, who wished she would become human. And now that she has, she imagines that the beautiful woman is dead, or that this all happened in some far country that she will never find again. The story puts her to sleep as she tells it, night after night, her own personal fairy tale. He shudders to think that before he came to live with her she probably told the story to the cats. He knows it. But there is something about Gloria that reminds him of an animal. When he thought of her as a skunk maybe he was close to seeing her as a cat. He doesn’t believe or disbelieve the idea of reincarnation. He just wants to go to the Grand Canyon.
In the afternoon, while Gloria is out looking for a job, he drives to Paula’s house to see if there is any mail for him. There is a letter from his mother and an advertisement from a record club. He fills out the record-club form with Paula’s name, checks the “Country Favorites” category, checks “please bill me,” does not check that he wants the free calendar he is entitled to. Wait until Paula opens that box and sees Country Charlie Pride grinning at her. He puts the blank in Paula’s mailbox to be picked up. He opens the letter from his mother. It contains many exclamation points regarding his unwillingness to write, his unwillingness to take advantage of the educational opportunities his father etc. etc., and the news that a girl he went to high school with just got married to a man with leukemia and she knew it!!! He pockets the twenty dollars that is in the letter. He buys a postcard on the way to Gloria’s and writes: “What a surprise to get your treat. Thank you!!!” and drops it in a mailbox. With the money he buys a cage. He drives home. Gloria is still out looking for a job. He rounds up as many cats as he can and tries to lure them into the cage. They will not walk into it, so he puts them in, closes the door, and peers in. They don’t like it. He wants to go to the Grand Canyon.
Gloria comes home. She has found a job working in a department store. He tells her she must get away from such jobs, stop being taken advantage of, go West with him. She asks how people looking for thread and buttons exploit her. She sees the cage. She hates it. She does not want to go to the Grand Canyon. Go alone! He doesn’t even love her. She is going to sell buttons to people. He can leave her anytime he wants. Her eyes are larger, imagining her abandonment. Wasn’t that what her sisters’ husbands were always doing?
He tells her that the cats will get used to the cage, and at night they can be free in the car. He thinks the trip could be accomplished in two weeks, allowing them time to really see the Grand Canyon. She puts her hands over her ears, complaining that she can’t stand any more talk about the Grand Canyon. In bed, she huddles on her side. It is strange that anything that big can huddle. She weighs the mattress down on her side, pulls the covers over her head to get away from him. Hale thinks that she may put him out. He doesn’t want that. He wants them both out together, on their way West. He thinks about what he could do that would be nice for her, reaches over to stroke her arm. She squirms. All right, then. He will get her another cat.
*
He goes to a house where kittens are being given away. The house is near the university, and several hippies look at him long and hard before they even show him the kittens. The kittens are in a box of rags. The girl lifts them out gently. He says he would like all of them. “Wow,” she says, “there’s only one more we want to get rid of.” She gives him a funny look. She also gives him a kitten. He buys a ribbon for its neck and takes it to Gloria’s house and drops it on the sofa. Hale is depressed; soon summer will be over, the best time to see the Grand Canyon will have passed, the kitten will have grown into a cat, and here he will be, still waiting.
Gloria sees that he is sad when she comes home from work. Good. She begins to feel guilty because she won’t go along with his plans. Good. She says that she has been thinking it over and that soon she will have reached a decision about the trip. As she talks, she sees the new addition. “Pretty little baby,” she exclaims, and mothers the kitten, who has been sleeping on the sofa. She thanks Hale, says that she loves the little thing. He decides to turn the tables on her. She loves the kitten, but she doesn’t love him. This makes her mad. She does love him. She sits on his lap — she is incredibly heavy — swaying her feet like a petulant little daddy’s sweetheart, getting her way. She just needs a little more time to think, because her sisters all did things that were crazy and they were so unhappy, and she does not want to have to go to unhappiness meetings at night and let everyone know how unhappy she is. She kisses his neck, promising that tomorrow night she will tell him. Right now she is going to fix him a nice dinner, to show him that she loves him. She goes into the kitchen. One of the cats follows her, and as it passes his chair he gives it a shove with his foot. The cat runs after her. That’s it! He’s been doing this all wrong. He should be getting rid of the cats instead of bringing them home. He should round up all the damn animals and get rid of them, and then in her grief she would agree to do things his way. Hale decides to give Gloria one last chance to come through, and then he is going to start doing in her cats.
*
Gloria sits on his lap again. She says that she thought all day long while she was selling buttons, and as she looked at the customers she thought that those women were all loved and that she wasn’t. She just couldn’t agree to a trip with a man she felt didn’t love her. Desperate, he assures her that her feelings are wrong. And when she leaves the room he grabs a cat to strangle, but realizes that she’ll know he killed it — it has to be more subtle.