Jerry's Vegan Women. Ben Shaberman
the guys on my hall go to. Maybe a fifteen-minute walk from campus. Get the cat and I’ll meet you in the lobby and we’ll go.”
“OK. I’ll put him in the carrier and meet you downstairs,” Sarah said. “I really appreciate it, Jerry. Really.”
After Sarah left, he jumped out of bed, put on his jeans and t-shirt, and began brushing his teeth at the sink. “It’s about time I did something productive,” he said with a mouthful of toothpaste foam. “I’ve been with security for the whole damn year, and except for calling in a few plastered frat boys, I haven’t done a damn thing.”
When Jerry reached the bottom of the stairs and saw Sarah in the lobby holding the carrier, he realized he had forgotten his cigarettes. “Fuck,” he muttered to himself, but decided not to go back to get them. There was no time to waste.
Jerry and Sarah stepped out of the dorm just as the sun rose. The campus was desolate, because most of the students were on spring break. The morning was cool and cloudless, unusual weather for New Orleans in early April. Sarah handed him the cat carrier. To Jerry, Francisco’s howls sounded horrific, but Sarah said that he always got upset when transported in the carrier, so it might not be as bad as it sounded. But then again she wasn’t sure.
Walking as fast as they could toward the pet hospital, they didn’t say much to each other — focusing rather on the task at hand. Jerry felt a sense of responsibility and purpose he hadn’t felt in a long time, if ever. For the first time, he was trying to save a life. He didn’t want this cat dying on his watch. He tried his best to keep the carrier as steady as possible, to keep Francisco comfortable.
During their mile journey, they saw virtually no one as they passed through two neighborhoods — the first of mansions and spacious, finely manicured lawns, and the other of shacks made of loose and peeling wood boards. Whenever he went through these sections of town, he felt like he was in some third-world country. The juxtaposition of wealth and poverty unsettled him. How could these communities exist right next to each other? This wasn’t middle-class Cleveland suburbia.
As Jerry had hoped, the animal hospital was empty, so a vet tech, a young, blonde woman in green scrubs, took Francisco right away. Sarah went back with them while Jerry sat in the waiting area. The hospital looked like a typical doctor’s office, its walls painted light blue with a few requisite photos of its canine and feline patients. It smelled like it had just been cleaned, which relieved Jerry, because he didn’t have his inhaler. All that dog and cat dander could trigger his asthma and end up sending him to the human ER. Wouldn’t that be ironic?
Jerry was surprised how concerned and anxious he felt about the cat and Sarah. He wanted Francisco to be ok, not only for the cat’s sake, but for Sarah’s, as well. She loved her two short-haired black cats; they were like her children. Jerry had only seen them a couple of times through her open door. To him, they looked like two little panthers, prowling the dorm room. And even though Jerry’s transportation of Francisco had been the most interaction he’d had with either one of the cats, he was becoming attached to them.
When Sarah first met Jerry and Rosie, she told them how a few years earlier her family had taken in a stray female cat, which turned out to be pregnant, and Francisco and Gino were from that litter. They became Sarah’s, and she couldn’t stand to be separated from them, even for a few hours in the evening. Jerry suspected that the dorm’s resident advisor knew Sarah had cats, which was a major violation of the student housing code, but let it go knowing that Sarah would likely have a conniption without them.
After about fifteen minutes of waiting, Sarah walked out of the examining room by herself. She was sniffling, her eyes red and swollen. She looked overwhelmed. Jerry got up out his chair and walked toward her, but she couldn’t make eye contact with him. “The vet said they were going to try a procedure to unblock his urethra and give him antibiotics. He said there were no guarantees, but he was hopeful. He said it was a good thing we got him in here as quickly as we did.”
“Well, I guess overall that’s good news,” Jerry said as he put his hand on her arm. A few seconds later, Sarah broke down. Jerry hugged her as she sobbed on his shoulder. “He’ll be ok, he’ll be ok,” he said, trying to be reassuring. Then he walked over to the check-in desk and pulled a few tissues from a dispenser and handed them to her. As she wiped her eyes, the vet tech came out and told them that the doctor suggested they go home and relax, that he’d call in a few hours with an update. “He’s in good hands,” the young woman said confidently.
As they walked back to campus, the city came to life. They passed several black families heading to church. The women wore funky, broad-rimmed hats topped with arrangements of feathers and flowers. The children were in suits and dresses of yellow, pink, lavender, and powder blue, which shone brightly in the morning sun. Some of the little girls carried straw baskets filled with bunnies and painted eggs in artificial grass. For Jerry, it was surreal to see people so beautiful and well-dressed living in such impoverished conditions. Back in Cleveland Heights, the faithful were Orthodox Jews who uniformly wore heavy black attire — the men and boys with fedoras and yarmulkes on their heads — when they walked to Friday night and Saturday morning Sabbath services.
“So do you celebrate Easter like that back home?” Jerry asked Sarah, trying to make light conversation to take her mind off of Francisco.
“Not really,” Sarah answered with a quick half-smile. “My mom comes from a Buddhist family, and my dad, well, he doesn’t practice anything. Well, except golf.”
Jerry chuckled. “So are you headed back to San Francisco after the semester ends?”
“Yeah. And I’m not coming back to Tulane next year. In case you couldn’t tell, I hate it here. I may just stay near home next year or at least on the West Coast.”
“Well, your grades are good, so you should be able to transfer pretty easily.”
“I guess.”
“In case you didn’t know, Rosie and I aren’t staying here either. Even if we wanted to, we can’t, because our GPAs are so shitty. We’d need to go to summer school full time to have a chance of returning, and, well, that ain’t happening.”
“Sorry,” Sarah said, turning to Jerry.
“Well, we just really fucked up. That’s all there is to it.”
Jerry was hesitant to talk further about his future with Rosie, namely because he wasn’t sure what Rosie had already said to her. He also didn’t know what Rosie was really thinking about their future.
Two days later, Jerry and Sarah went back to the animal hospital to pick up Francisco. He was doing well; the swelling in his urethra was gone and he was urinating and eating normally again. And though he was still on antibiotics, they were just a prophylactic measure — the doctor didn’t think there had been an infection. He howled as Jerry lugged him in the carrying case back to campus. Sarah kept reassuring Jerry that he was fine. She was touched by his concern, smiling when he commented about it.
When they arrived back at the dorm, Jerry hung out in Sarah’s room for a few minutes to see for himself how Francisco was faring. The cat scampered out of the carrier as soon as Sarah opened it, and then stopped and looked around to get its bearings. Gino strolled over, and the cats began sniffing each other, happy to be together again. They were handsome animals — trim, sleek, and jet black, except for a white spot on Gino’s left paw. They both had hypnotic, bright-green eyes. Unlike other cats Jerry had come into contact with, Gino and Francisco weren’t hyper or skittish. They didn’t mind their new guest.
“Hey guys, this is your Uncle Jerry,” Sarah said. “Say hello to him. He’s your buddy.” Jerry kneeled down a couple feet from Gino. The cat walked over and sniffed around him, checking him out. Jerry slowly reached out and scratched Gino on the top of the head. The cat pushed its head into Jerry’s hand, purring in approval.
“He likes you. You’re good with him,” Sarah said as Jerry scratched under the cat’s chin.
“Yeah, I like him, too, but I can’t do this for long. I have really bad allergies