The Cat Lady
a woman has been missing, conspicuous, and frozen in place.
The woman whistles, piercing the still, warm air of the nascent autumn afternoon, stirring the parkgoers from the siesta they had slumbered into. Before anyone can be fully disturbed, however, she whistles again and stray cats wiggle their way out of numerous hedges and run to follow the woman at the heel. Every person seems to have paused in their lethargy to take in the spectacular sight. The woman continues whistling, cats continue to emerge and scurry into her ranks. She exercises a control over them that, adjusted for scale, would rival that of a persuasive dictator; they are the shadow of the long black shadow cast by her tall slender body.
She wears a long trench coat with geometric shapes embroidered on its sleeves; underneath she wears a white T-shirt, a black velvet tie, and flared sequined pants whose multiple colors change shades when glinted by the sun’s light. Atop her head is a straw hat made of woven palm fronds that she got on a trip to a beach in Faro some years back. Black boots crunch lightly on the gravel path.
In at least two of her coat’s many jumbo pockets (six total) there’s a novel about something or another; she’ll read any book, but she won’t ever discard it; amassing a nearly insurmountable weight of volumes is her method of mitigating discovery. The woman is very well-read, you see, but she reads out of a fervent desperation, rather than passion. She believes, lined on the pages of each book, is the key to her identity, the definitive guide of who she should be, the cipher by which to decode a convoluted life. If she can keep close to her every book she’s read, that has shined a light on her motivations, inspirations, and dreams, then no one will be able to uncover who she is.
Maybe the woman is overly paranoid. After all, she had already been missing for thirty years, nearly all of which had been passed on another continent, tucked into a small Mediterranean village where she boasts the strongest command of English. Logically, she knows no one will find her now, because all efforts in that direction have been permanently paused. But there’d been a time, (twenty-seven years ago, she’ll note out of a stubborn diligence) when she’d been cocky and had to relearn the incumbent importance of hiding herself. It was during this time, when she was living in Boston, secure in an obscure anonymity, that she’d had to reevaluate that attitude.
It was three years into her disappearance by then, marked by relief and only the faintest echoes of a once thundering paranoia, and she had been walking down Newbury Street. That day, the woman had more energy than usual, influenced by the women with long flowy hair and loose skirts chatting excitedly as they walked arm-in-arm down the street; the new Miles Davis album could be heard drifting out of a tiny record store nearby, floating above the heads of a group of college kids drunkenly laughing and hollering as they left a bar and walked past in their bellbottoms. A buzz of excitement and idealistic optimism electrified the summer air, sustained by news of the recent moon landing.
But just as soon as this spark of joviality ignited her sense of good will, it vanished. The woman had sat down on a nearby bench to further immerse herself in the palpable excitement by reading The Boston Globe’s coverage of the event when she found herself stunned by a small blurb on the cover of the front page: the report of a development in a case that, though cold, had drawn significant national attention. The case was one the woman had been following closely, because it was that of the woman’s disappearance.
Back in the small country town in Ohio where she had resided only three years prior, a local radio host had gone to the public library and by chance had taken off the shelf a book whose inside jacket contained a circulation card with the woman’s name on it. It was a mystery novel about a detective who is driven to insanity while attempting to solve the abduction and murders of a pure-hearted housewife and her three daughters. The radio host couldn’t believe his stroke of luck and, spurred by investigative rigor, requested the woman’s entire file to see the catalog of books she had checked out in the year leading up to her disappearance.
The records showed the nearly one hundred books the woman had devoured–– what else was there to do? The man she shared a house and a marriage with was constantly gone and there were only so many solitary tasks one could complete before they failed to distract from the prickly hurt of existential disappointment. Almost all of which contained some kind of violent or elaborate plot; in one, a thin and beautiful model finds herself pregnant. Desperate to maintain her status as the muse of an influential photographer, she attempts an at-home abortion that ultimately goes haywire. When the photographer returns later that night, he finds the woman freshly dead, splayed on her back, with blood stained on her inner thighs and streaked along the wooden floor. He can’t resist, he rearranges the girl’s hands, shines a light on her forever pained face, ponders the sight, takes a photo. When he finally calls the police, the crime scene is now a staged set, useless to the official investigation, but evocative in the photographer’s resulting photos.
Not coincidentally, when the police had arrived at the crime scene staged by the woman the day of her disappearance, the photos they released prompted journalists around the country to marvel at the perfection and general neatness of the event. The woman, similar to the photographer, hurt to sacrifice a chance for beauty, and, propelled by an unexpected surge of creativity, had crafted an elaborate scene with elegantly dropped lamps, artful displays of distress, and minimal blood painted onto a knife and smeared on the floor. No one could believe it was a real crime scene and at first, the woman thought she had overblown it and soon everyone would see through her charade. However, staged or not, as the crime scene offered no clue to her whereabouts and she remained missing, the general consensus came to be that she’d been abducted and brutalized by a precise but psychotic criminal; she’d been the perfect image of a loving mother, a dutiful wife, an accommodating person, a helpless victim. No other alternative seemed conceivable.
She had taken pains to dissolve herself of that perfect image, adopting a daily wardrobe of brightly patterned knee-length dresses and regularly applying heavy makeup to her eyes, but now, reading an optimistic quote from one of the investigators on her case, the woman feared her jinx would be up. She worried that, having glimpsed into the stories that had been her only intellectual refuge, the only place she would have been able to develop or evolve her ideas, to glimpse into potential lives beyond her own and paths to obtain them, the investigators would be able to track the movements she’d formulated in the heat of mimetic desire, in her anxiety to be a character in a compelling story. They would arrive at this busy street corner to take her back and ask her irrelevant questions–– or worse, they would choose to do so at the Boston Public Library, ready to track her down and crush the serenity she’d long cultivated in her little corner of Bates Hall, all to further compound the humiliation of being found.
She’d chosen Boston because it was the setting of so many stories, the home of so many writers, and she saw in it the key to a life worth a legacy. But once the police found her, the notoriety and intrigued fascination that once inflected the tones of those recounting her story on national television would soon turn sour with disdain and unforgiving judgment for the woman who left her children at the neighbors and, rather than being attacked, had instead faked her disappearance and abandoned them without so much as a note, all so she could live in a city and play the fool who aspired to a life greater than the one her humble position had allotted her.
Livid and sick at what she felt was an inevitable outcome, the woman returned to the little room she rented in an all female boarding house near Kenmore Square. And in that hot and stuffy room she stayed, sweating, constantly in a state of panic that any voices she heard in the hall, any footsteps or loud bangs, meant that they had come for her, ready to deliver her back to the country house in Ohio.
But no one came.
A few weeks later she emerged again and with trepidatious steps she made her way along the Charles River toward Beacon Hill. There were significantly less people out, and those that were on the street hastened into their monied homes, casting suspicious glances at strangers and adamantly shutting the curtains in their windows. The woman looked at a newspaper; there was no mention of her case (the worrisome development hadn’t been fruitful, then), but she saw that Sharon Tate and friends had been murdered in Los Angeles. Her eyes flitted through the story, which contrasted Tate’s wealth and beauty with the bloody brutality of her death; it emphasized the mystery of the heinous crime with a tone that sowed distress and paranoia into anyone, specifically those who might have been similarly privileged.
The woman empathized with the people shutting themselves into their old money houses. They had lived so comfortably, just as she had during those three years, and now they, too, knew what it was like to live in a paralyzing anxiety that the next knock on a door, the next loud noise, the next inquiring stranger, was in actuality a force intended to violently upturn their lives.
She flipped through the newspaper more and saw a short report of a local conspiracy theorist who had first gained notoriety for his doubt in the Apollo 8 journey the past year and was now generating attention for his disbelief in the Apollo 11 mission. Inside, the woman couldn’t help but laugh. Triumph to tragedy; trust to disavowal. Victory is never the permanent companion it first appears to be.
Like a gasp, the woman became minutely aware of the sticky New England humidity. Watching beads of sweat drip down the arms holding the newspaper, she knew it was time to leave. She returned to her room, quickly packed a bag, and got in a cab headed to Logan Airport, where she bought the first ticket to Europe, and slowly traveled around until settling in a remote village an hour inland from the southern coast of Spain. Unable to speak the language, immersed in the raspy sounds of unfamiliar accents, exposed to the bewildered though ultimately uncurious gazes of the residents, the woman felt content.
Over the years, nestled in her isolation, the woman kept tabs on her case, which had come to a delicious, long-lasting halt shortly after that most recent development. Regardless, she was pleased to see that the case continued to weigh heavy on national consciousness, and had even taken on a life of its own, reproducing itself as urban legends, conspiracy theories, and heated debates related to what had actually happened. Some thought it truly had been a violent murder and abduction–– but why was there so little blood? Others believed maybe a domestic dispute gone wrong –– but there was proof the man she shared a house with had been away, and, besides, no one knew too much about her personal and familial life to make a compelling argument. And there were still others, a minority, who, encouraged by the discovery of those illuminating library records, believed she had staged it all and escaped–– but that theory had quickly been refuted by local police and no official authority had considered it seriously since.
The woman was satisfied with the intrigue garnered by the story she had concocted, despite its somewhat cliché undertones, and she felt gratified by the alluring position she occupied in the minds of so many. But life had to go on; no matter how much she wanted to, she couldn’t languish forever in the glow of her accomplishment. After having built up a reputation of mystery and compelling lure, she now wanted to see how simple it could be to command love and adoration.
The woman was familiar with the town’s stray cats, who sunbathed in the middle of the street, forcing cars to drive around them; she was humored when a cat passed her on the sidewalk without even sparing her a glance, as if it, as an official member of the village’s society, had places to be. Her general knowledge of cats, however, was limited only to that classic refrain of having to earn their respect and trust. To achieve this, she started taking long walks up and down the town’s paseos; she went during the quiet, still hours of siesta to ensure the cats heard her melodic whistling as she inspected the little gardens surrounded by thick bushes or threw bits of kibble and tuna fish onto patches of grass.
Initially, roused from their afternoon naps, the cats spared only quick looks full of a languid curiosity toward the woman who had started bringing them food everyday. But it wasn’t long before they became utterly devoted to her. Very quickly, they were lining up behind her, uttering earnest mewling sounds to catch her attention, emitting motorized purrs when her nails scratched their ears, and jumping high into the air to catch the treats she’d throw.
Similar to the cats, the residents didn’t know what to do with her at first. But as the years, and then decades, passed, they became more enamored with how the cats, consumed by an increasingly frenzied desire, responded to her almost despotic care and attention. The woman still couldn’t adequately communicate with the residents, but that made it easier for her role in the village to be solidified; she brought a foreign charm to the tranquil streets that entertained the retirees and enchanted the young children. People saw her and waved, smiled; the lady at the fruit shop always threw extra oranges into her bag; the men at the local bar sent a free beer to the lone table she occupied. She’d lost her anonymity, but her person remained tangled and interpretative to those around her.
She still boasted a fascinating allure, but it had more to do with her charismatic aura and intentional care, whereas the dark intrigue cultivated from her past was one typical of most violently tragic mysteries. In essence, the cat lady and the disappeared woman were two separate entities, two different characters from novels with nothing to do with one another. And it was exactly how the woman liked it; she was able to step back and take a clear, categorical perspective of her storied life. She pondered the beginnings, climaxes, expositions, and endings of both characters she’d concocted, reveling in each one’s personal dramas, stories, and evolutions. Despite her twisted histories being possible only through decisive fissures of identity, the woman delighted in what she accomplished and emitted a laugh resplendent with complete self-assuredness.
Years later, but not too long ago in fact, the woman had been in Budapest for the holidays. She spent her trip bundled in an oversized black coat, exploring the Christmas market at St. Stephen’s Basilica or walking through City Park. If the sun deigned to break through the cloudy sky, it did so only to reflect the metallic glimmer of the large pearl earrings stretching down her earlobes, or the tangled mass of pearl necklaces applying heavy pressure on her chest, or the long strands of pearls adorning the length of her arms.
There came a night when, despite heavy snowfall, the woman decided (with the assistance of four bottles of wine and maybe a little absinthe) to take a walk along the Danube river, on whose banks she elegantly danced, allowing the streetlights to properly glimmer off the hoard of jewelry still adorning her long body. Then she was twirling and soon she was moving so fast she looked to be nothing more than an unstoppable swirl of yellow and silver light, a confusing mass that was both soft and sharp. Then, without warning, she collapsed and the night was dark again.
The next day her frozen jeweled corpse was found making a deep impression in a pile of snow. Her eyes were closed as if in a peaceful slumber and a gloved hand was locked in a gentle caress of her cheek. She was so cold that when snowflakes landed on her serenely expressionless face they didn’t melt. Instead, hoards of the city’s stray cats, for some inexplicable reason, had arrived to lick them off.
For years the city’s habitants talked about the delicate snow angel delivered to the Danube just days after Christmas. No one knew who she was, or where she’d come from, and they definitely didn’t know enough to connect her to the eccentric cat lady in the Spanish village or even to the disappeared woman who still remained the topic of various true crime reporting. The only person who could have ever made that connection was cremated anonymously in a Hungarian morgue.
Title photo is a drawing by Santiago Licata (that I saw on Tumblr lol).