Read Online Like Life by Lorrie Moore - Free Book Online Page B

house, got a job first at Karen’s Stout Shoppe, which sold dresses to overweight women, then later at the cheese store in the Marshall Field’s mall.
    For a short time she mourned him, believing he had anchored her, had kept her from floating off into No Man’s Land, that land of midnight cries and pets with too many little toys, but now she rarely thought of him. She knew there were only small joys in life—the big ones were too complicated to be joys when you got all through—and once you realized that, it took a lot of the pressure off. You could put the pressure aside, like a child’s game, its box ripped to flaps at the corners. You could stick it in some old closet and forget about it.
    Jane pulled into the vet’s parking lot at ten after eight. She lifted the cat up into her arms, pushed the car door shut with one hip, and went inside. Although the air of the place was slightly sour—humid with animal fear, tense with medicine,muffled howls drifting in from the back—the waiting room felt pleasant to her. Hopeful with ficus trees. There were news-magazines on the tables, and ashtrays made from Italian glass. There were matted watercolors on the wall and a silk-screened sign in a white metal frame saying, ANIMALS MUST BE LEASHED OR HELD . Jane walked up to the large semicircular counter ahead of her and placed the cat down on it. Behind her was a man seated with a leashed and lethargic golden Labrador, and Jane’s cat peered around back at it, shivering a little. On the other side of the waiting room was a large poodle with the fierce look of a Doberman. His ears were long and floppy, uncut, and his owner, a young woman in her twenties, kept saying, “Come here, Rex. Lie down, baby.”
    “Can I help you?” asked the woman behind the counter. She had been staring at a computer screen, tapping at a keyboard and bringing up fiery columns of numbers and dates.
    “I’m here to bring my cat in for grooming,” said Jane. “My last name is Konwicki.”
    The woman behind the counter smiled and nodded. She tapped something into the computer. “And the cat’s name?” she asked.
    “Fluffers,” said Jane. She had once thought she would name the cat Joseph, but then she had changed her mind.
    The woman rolled her chair away from the computer screen. She picked up a large silver microphone and spoke into it. “Fluffers Konwicki here to be groomed.” She set the microphone back down. “The groomer will be out in a minute,” she said to Jane. “You can wait over there.”
    Jane pulled the cat to her chest and went and sat in a fake leather director’s chair opposite Rex the poodle. A woman and her two children came in through the front entrance wheeling a baby carriage. The woman held open the door and the little boy and girl pushed the carriage through, all the while peeringin and squeaking concerned inquiries and affectionate names. “Gooby, are you OK?” asked the boy. “Gooby knows he’s at the doctor’s, Mom.”
    “You kids wait right here,” said the mom, and she approached the counter with a weary smile. She brushed her bangs off her head, then placed her hands flat out on the countertop and stared at them momentarily, as if this had been the first opportunity all morning to observe them empty. “We’re bringing a cat in for surgery,” she said, looking back up. “The name is Miller.”
    “Miller,” said the woman behind the counter. She tapped something into the computer. She shook her head, then got up and looked at a clipboard near the cash register. “Miller, Miller, Miller,” she said absently. “Miller. All righty! Here we are!” She smiled at Mrs. Miller. The world was again the well-oiled machine she counted on it to be: All things could eventually be found in it. “You want to wheel the cat back around here?”
    Mrs. Miller turned toward her children. “Kids? Wanna bring the kitty back around here?” The little boy and girl pushed the baby carriage forward, their steps