I go over to play with the little kittens. The marmalade-colored one is the strongest of the litter, and he’s learned to climb out of the box. He chases my fingers. Kate finishes feeding the big cats, and she strides over and scoops him back into the box. “You stay in there. You’ll get stepped on.” She drops Susan back in with her babies to take care of them.
The doorbell rings, and Kate yanks open the door, practically bowling over an ancient little messenger leaning sleepily against the side of the door.
“Take it easy, lady, take it easy. Just sign here,” he says.
She signs, hands him the pencil, and slams the door. The orange kitten has got out again, and Kate does come close to stepping on him as she walks across the room tearing open the telegram. He doesn’t know enough to dodge feet yet. I scoop him back in this time.
Kate reads the telegram and sits down. She looks quite calm now. She says, “Well, he died.”
“My brother. He’s the only person in the world I know who would send me a telegram. So he’s dead now.”
She repeats it, and I can’t figure whether to say I’m sorry or what. I always thought when someone heard of a death in the family, there’d be a lot of crying and commotion. Kate looks perfectly calm, but strange somehow.
Kate shakes her head. “I don’t know. I haven’t seen him in twenty years.”
There is silence a moment, and then Kate goes on, talking half to herself and half to me. “Mean old coot. He never talked to anyone, except about his money. That’s all he cared about. Once he tried to get me to give him money to invest. That’s the last time I saw him. He has an old house way up in the Bronx. But we never did get along, even when we were kids.”
“Did he have a wife or anything? Who sent the telegram?”
“He’s had a housekeeper. Just as mean as him. She’d buy him day-old bread and dented cans of soup because they were cheaper. She suited him fine—saved him money and never talked to him. Well, she’ll get his money now, if he left any. That’s what she’s been waiting for. She sent me the wire.”
Twenty years, I think. That’s a long time not to be speaking to your own brother, and him living just a ten-cent phone call away. I wonder. She couldn’t just not give a hoot about him. They must have been real mad at each other. And mad at the whole world, too. Makes you wonder what kind of parents _they_ had, with one of them growing up loving only cats and the other only money.