“Cat Norman!” Norman said, and the cat turned to look at him, flicking his tail.
“What?” I said.
“Found him!” Norman yelled out.
“Did you?” said the voice from inside.
“You should take him in to her,” Norman said to me. “She’ll love you instantly.”
“I don’t like cats,” I said, trying to dislodge the monster from my lap. He was purring now, a loud, rumbling noise that sounded like a chainsaw.
“Cat Norman?” Mira called out. “Come here, you terrible thing, you!”
“Take him in,” Norman said again. “She’s waiting.” He started slowly down the steps. I noticed he moved everywhere slowly.
I stood up, the cat in my arms. He weighed about thirty pounds, as much as an entire set of KikiBell weights.
“I’ll see you later,” Norman said, already walking around the house, toward the backyard.
“Colie?” Mira said. Through the screen, I could almost make out a shape in the hallway. “Is he with you?”
I walked toward the door, the cat curled against me. “We’re coming,” I said, and I stepped inside.
The first thing I saw when my eyes adjusted was the TV in the next room. It was tuned to a wrestling match, and at that moment some huge man in a cape and a blindfold was leaping to flatten another man in purple spandex, who was writhing on the mat. As the caped man took off, his arms spread, you could see behind him rows and rows of people, aghast, as he fell fell fell toward his victim. Splat.
“Cat Norman!” my Aunt Mira said, stepping right in front of the TV and opening her arms to both of us. “And Colie. Hello!”
Mira was overweight, just like my mother had been before she became Kiki Sparks. She had a wide face and long red hair piled up on her head, like she’d done it in a hurry—a pencil and a pen were sticking out of it. She had on an old, deep green kimono patterned with dragons, a big white T-shirt, black leggings, and flip-flops. Her toenails were painted bright pink.
“Colie!” she cried again, and before I knew it she had wrapped her arms around both me and the cat. She smelled like a mix of vanilla and turpentine. “I’m so glad to see you. You look different, all grown up. And skinny! Your mom’s program must work then, right?”
“Right.” A piece of cat hair blew up my nose, and my eyes started watering.
“Bad, bad Cat Norman,” she said to the cat, who was mashed between us, still purring. “I wonder what kind of trouble you found on this adventure, huh?”
The cat sneezed. Then he wriggled out of my arms, pushed off, and landed with a thud not unlike the wrestler’s. He was obviously not a cat who did a lot of jumping; it was at least a second before his considerable girth caught up with him.
“Oh, you’re terrible!” she scolded as he walked off, taking his time. Then she looked at me, shaking her head. “He’s the light of my life, but he’s in his terrible twos right now and going through a real distant phase. It’s just breaking my heart.”
“The cat,” I said, verifying.
“Norman,” she corrected me.
“Oh, Norman,” I said, looking outside where I’d last seen him. “He does seem kind of spacey.”
“He does?” She raised her eyebrows. “Well, it is summer. The heat gets to him, you know. You should see the hairballs he coughs up.”
I looked back outside. “Norman does?”
“The cat,” she said. “Cat Norman.” She pointed under a chair by the door where he’d settled himself and was now licking his back leg, loudly.
“Oh,” I said. “I thought you meant . . .”
“Oh, Norman,” she said, and then she burst out laughing, one hand covering her mouth. She had deep dimples, like a child’s. “Oh, no, not that Norman. I mean, he might have hairballs, with all that long hair of his. But I’ve never seen him coughing anything up. . . .”
“I just didn’t know,” I said in a low voice, and I had that sudden flash that I was fat again, could feel it on me, like I always did when someone laughed at me.
“Well,” she said, linking her arm in mine, “it’s an honest mistake. Cat Norman was, after all, named after Norman Norman. They are so much alike in temperament. Not to mention they both move slower than molasses.”
“Norman Norman,” I repeated, as we stepped into the back room. It was big and sunny and, like the porch, ran the length of the house. On the TV another match was in progress, with two small redheaded men in black trunks circling each other.
“But I need them both desperately,” Mira said dramatically, glancing at the TV and then back at me. “If Norman Norman didn’t live downstairs I’d have no one to open jars for me, and Cat Norman is my baby.”
“Norman lives downstairs?” I said.
“Oh, yes,” she said easily, sitting down in the overstuffed chair across from the television and folding the kimono neatly over her legs. On the wall was a large painting of Mira and Cat Norman sitting on the grass in front of the house. In the painting she had on a white dress and pink sunglasses shaped like stars; she was smiling. Cat Norman was beside her, his back arched as her hand brushed over him. “He stays in the downstairs room. He’s no trouble. I forget he’s there half the time.”
As I sat down I took in the view of the ocean, the water blue and sparkling. There was a path that led down to the beach, and when I craned my neck I could see an open door and then Norman, dragging one of the headless mannequins. To the right of the path I could see a smaller house, painted the same white as Mira’s. There was a clothesline beside it, with a row of brightly colored clothes flapping in the wind.