The Dud Avocado - Elaine Dundy [81]
So like it or not we now have this house chat all over the place making it clear in no uncertain terms what he likes and doesn’t. He rewards our cooking efforts by hanging around inside the house—we can’t keep him out, he knows the place so much better than we do, probably owns it—making exaggeratedly hammy and wholly unconvincing but totally unnerving leaps into the air to indicate “mousing.” There aren’t any mice here except for his. But then I don’t think he’s really a cat either.
He was gone yesterday.
I think he leaps out of bed in the morning, zips himself into his old fur cat-coat, gets the mouse out from the box under his bed and goes to work in the area.
If he comes into my room I shall scream.
Saw something funny today that I got a big kick out of. I mean it made me laugh and laugh.
The chat was looking longingly at this stupid little sparrow perched on one of the stone jars and he finally made a melodramatic lunge at it and this idiot bird flew himself smack into a telephone wire. I mean he must have been flying for years, he ought to know his way around the air by now.
Hate birds. Hate cats too. Wish every bird would meet every cat and then every cat meet every dog. Don’t like dogs much, either.
May 11
Saturday
Still raining.
Larry and Missy just don’t appear any more, except occasionally for meals.
Here is the story of Bax’s life: he was born in Canada. He was raised in Canada. He went to Toronto University and has never been out of Canada before. He doesn’t know what he wants to do, but would like it to be something artistic.
May 12
Sunday
Bax loves everything in Europe, he says, because it’s so old. Look at those walls, look at that door, he keeps saying when we drive around the old village. He’s crazy about their texture. He keeps taking pictures with his new Rolleiflex in the pouring rain. Perhaps, he says, he’ll become a photographer.
Larry is painting Missy now. Looks about like what you’d expect it to. This Master of all Arts kick he’s on isn’t coming off at all.
Jim now.…
Started to write to Jim the other day. Couldn’t think of anything to say so I tore it up. But I think maybe I do really love him. If I still love him as much in a couple of days I’m going to phone him and tell him I’m coming back to Paris.
May 13
Monday
Rain.
Breaking point.
May 17
Friday
On Monday the 13th, thirteen days after our arrival, at exactly 9 P.M. (the grandfather clock in the hall had just struck), I was staring wildly at the carcass of a chicken we’d eaten for dinner and I suddenly went berserk.
I picked up the carcass and threw it across the room at the cat (hit him too), and then I bit the top off a pear and flung it against a wall like a hand grenade, and then I kicked over Larry’s easel. I noticed them all standing well back watching me uneasily, more in sorrow than in anger sort of thing, and this annoyed me so much that I broke a couple of plates as well. Then I started to laugh. So then they all got really worried and Larry shoved me down into a chair, pinning my arms tightly to my sides, and asked me what the hell was the matter.
I said I wanted to get the hell out of there and he said they all did and that we’d get out just as soon as it stopped raining and I said, “And then what are we going to do?” And he said we were going to do exactly what everybody else did on vacation—go down to the beach and swim and sunbathe and take it easy and I looked at each of them and said, “Is that all you want to do?”
Larry: Yes.
Missy: Yes.
Bax: Yes.
Me: No ! ! !
So they all asked me what did I want to do, and I said I didn’t know—gaiety, laughter, song-and-dance, shoes in the air. And they asked me what that meant and I said, “Oh, just have a good time.” And they said how, and I said I didn’t know