26: The Muu-Muu

Originally emailed on Jun. 3, 1999

Imagine my surprise last week when I stopped to pick up my dry-cleaning and the clerk handed me two of my suits, four blouses, my dressy blue dress for special occasions, a suit of Ed's, and an altar boy costume. "That's not mine," I said, handing the altar boy outfit back.

The clerk handed it back to me. "I'm sure it is," she said. "I was here when your husband dropped it off yesterday."

"He's not my husband," I corrected irrelevantly.

"Well, that's probably why you don't recognize his dry cleaning. But he sure dropped it off with the rest of that stuff. Look," she said, showing me the receipt with its handwritten list. Sure enough, the list read: two women's suits, four blouses, one dress, one men's suit, and vestments.

"Vestments," I muttered.

"I wrote 'muu-muu' at first," the clerk said, "but he made me change it."

I paid her, and went home. "Ed," I said as I was hanging the clean clothes in the closet, "why did you have your muu-muu cleaned?"

"It's not a muu-muu," he said, "it's--"

"I know what it is," I said. "Why did you have it cleaned?"

"Bob asked me to preach the sermon at his church next week. Didn't I tell you?"

"No, you didn't mention it," I said. "How can you preach? I thought you weren't a minister anymore."

"I am. I just don't have a church or an active ministry."

"But you can still preach?" I asked.

"Sure," he said. "Anybody can get in the pulpit and preach. But I can also baptize babies, marry people, bury people, and perform miscellaneous clerical duties as needed."

"Why does Bob want you to preach?" I asked.

"He thinks it's important for me to re-claim my identity as a minister as part of healing from the trauma of having mis-handled that poor boy's counseling so badly that he killed himself. And he's going to be out of town fishing the day before and won't have time to prepare a sermon."

I thought about that for a minute. "Are you going to be a minister again for real?"

Ed shrugged. "God only knows," he joked.

"But I thought you liked teaching."

"I do," he said. "I like it very much. But who can say what the future holds? Maybe there is a way for me to be a minister again, and maybe I'd like that. Maybe it's been wrong of me to turn my back on my call the last few years. It's a sin to ignore a call from God, you know."

I squirmed the way I always do when he starts talking church-talk. "I hate that word sin," I said. "A concept like that does nobody any good."

Ed shrugged again. "Call it what you will. I'm just saying that it might have been a mistake to run away from the church."

I thought about that for a minute. "And if you go back to the ministry, what becomes of me? The preacher's wife is celebrated in song and story, but I've never heard one word about the preacher's live-in girlfriend."

Ed laughed. "We don't need to cross that bridge now," he answered. He gave me a little kiss. "You look worried. There's nothing to worry about. I'm just going to preach a little sermon a week from Sunday, and then I'm going to spend the next six months to a year in counseling with Bob hashing over how it felt to be in the pulpit again. Nothing drastic is going to happen any time soon, I can guarantee you that."

The phone rang and spared me from expressing how completely discombobulated I felt at the prospect of Ed exploring, however casually, a return to the ministry. When I answered, Nona was on the line. "Louella, will you do me a favor?" she asked. "I'm at the vet with Harriet. Speedball's sick. I came right from work, and I'd like to get out of these greasy clothes, but Harriet doesn't want me to leave her to go home and change. Will you swing by our house and get me something clean to put on?"

"Sure," I said. "I'd be glad to. I hope it's nothing serious."

"It is," she said. "That old cat's hanging on by one toenail."

"I'm so sorry," I said. "I'll be there as quick as I can."

"Miriam knows you're coming," Nona said. "She'll have the clothes ready."

Ed and I piled the boys and Hot Rod into the car and headed out. Harriet's grandma met us in the driveway and handed me a paper sack. "Thanks, Miriam," I said. "I brought Ed and the boys to keep you company."

"Good," she said. "I could use it. C'mon in and you can eat Harriet and Nona's dinners. I fixed pork chops."

At the vet, I was shown into an exam room. I found Nona flipping through an old Family Circle magazine, and Harriet staring morosely at the floor. I handed Nona the bag. "Where's the speedy cat?" I asked.

"They've got her in the back," Harriet said. "She's on an IV and they're running some tests."

"What happened?"

"She's been sleeping more and more the last few days. And then today she wouldn't get out of bed to eat. Not even when I offered her tuna. I should have brought her in sooner." Harriet started to cry.

Nona, half dressed, put her arms around Harriet and made little sympathy noises. "Do you want me to stay?" I asked.

"No, you don't have to," Harriet said. "But maybe you could go stay with Grandma. She's worried, too."

"Ed and the boys are with her," I said. "She's giving them dinner."

"It would be nice if you stayed, then," Harriet said. "As long as Grandma's not alone."

I stayed, and we waited. Periodically, a vet tech came in and reported Speedball's condition--no change--and suggested that we might go home, as there was nothing we could do for her. But Harriet wanted to stay, so we did. At eight, I finally left to collect my family from Miriam and take the boys home to bed. At 11:30, just after Ed had put out the light in our bedroom, Nona called to say Speedball had died. "They don't know why, but not all the test results were back yet. I think she was just old. Who needs more reason than that to give up the ghost? Harriet's a wreck. She's had that cat since she was twenty-one years old. I didn't want to call you so late, but Harriet wants to talk to Ed. She wants to know whether cats go to heaven." I could practically hear Nona rolling her eyes.

"Ed, you're needed for miscellaneous clerical duties," I said. "Speedball died a little while ago, and Harriet wants to talk to you about whether cats go to heaven. Are you up for it?"

Ed heaved himself out of bed and put on his glasses. "You see, Ella? There's no escaping my calling. I'll take the phone downstairs."

I talked to Harriet for a minute, offering my condolences, and remembering for her how Speedball used to sit on my lap when I visited and purr so loudly I could hardly hear the conversation. Then I heard Ed pick up the extension. "Here's Ed," I said to Harriet. "I'm so sorry about Speedball."

And I was sorry. I cried a little for Harriet and her sweet old cat before I fell asleep. I pretended not to wake up when Ed came to bed a little later; I didn't want to talk to him. Speedball's illness had distracted us from our earlier conversation, but I was still distressed. Ed's religious side isn't my favorite part of him, and it scares me to think of him making it a bigger part of his life. It's easy enough to stay home and read the paper while he goes to church on Sunday, and it's easy enough to pretend that Pastor Bob is just his therapist, and that the counseling they do is just like what I did with Miss Munn. And I usually make sure I'm in the bathroom flossing when he says his prayers before bed. But it's hard to ignore just how religious he is when his dry-cleaning includes the muu-muu, and when he begs off a Saturday afternoon at the zoo, as he did last weekend, to work on a sermon, and when I have to clear the dining room table of bibles and concordances and commentaries before I can set the table for dinner.

The irony, of course, is that when we met he had completely cut himself off from his religion, and I kept saying, "Oh, Ed, there's a part of you I don't know, and I just can't make a commitment until I know it all." I got him talking about his past, and this is the price I pay.

My boys, who normally think about other people only in terms of what can be gotten from them, pooled their allowances to treat Harriet to an afternoon at the zoo to cheer her up after Speedball's death. Since they each get all of four dollars a week, and they never save, I had to supplement their money to stretch it as far as hot dogs and cotton candy, but I was so touched by the gesture that I was glad to do it. Harriet was very moved, too, and did her best to have a good time, but she was still missing Speedball very much, and every animal reminded her of the cat. The lions and tigers, of course, but even the lemurs ("The Speedster had a spot exactly that color on her left ear.") and the boa constrictor in the reptile house ("What would Speedy have thought if she'd run across something like that in the back yard?").

I went swing dancing with Michael again this week. Ron wasn't there, and I must say I watched Michael for signs of disappointment. He affected unconcern, and when I asked, "Isn't Ron usually here?" he said, as if he hadn't thought of the boy once up until then, "Ron? I suppose so." I wasn't fooled a bit. He was just a bit too casual, if you know what I mean. "I'm keeping my eye on you," I told him.

I danced with a woman. Both beginners, we made it through about half a song before humiliation and exhaustion drove us to the bar for something cold. I let her buy me a 7-Up, and Michael teased me about it all the way home. "I'm keeping my eye on you," he said in a falsetto, wagging his finger at me. "No tomfoolery, now, you little hussy. If you won't think of that nice fella you've got at home, I will."

"Believe me," I said, "thinking of that nice fella is about all I do lately."

A Special Note from Su:

This issue is dedicated to the memory of Susie "Speedball" Sienkiewicz, who died on May 25, 1999, after a brief illness. Born to a homeless mother in New Jersey in 1986, Susie and her littermates were rescued from an abandoned construction trailer. Susie lived her first year with the Sienkiewicz family, until allergies forced them to give her up. At that time, she joined the household of Su Penn and her then-lover, who wanted a companion for their kitten Baby. After leaving New Jersey (and the lover) in early 1989, Susie and her family lived briefly in West Palm Beach and Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, before settling in Michigan in December of that year. Since 1990, Susie had made her home in Lansing.

A devotee of Walt Whitman, Susie dedicated her life to perfecting the spiritual discipline of indolence, as described in the poet's great work, "Song of Myself." Taking as her motto a famous line from the poem, "I loafe, and invite my soul," Susie practiced lolling, lounging, and basking on a daily basis. She was widely recognized as a great artist in the field in the years before her death.

Susie is survived by long-time companions Su Penn and Baby, special human friends Scott M. Solik and David Dierauer, special kitty friend Mitch, and the thirteen other animals who shared her home in recent years. Her many friends and acquaintances will remember her especially for her extraordinarily loud purr, and for the love she lavished so indiscriminately on everyone who wandered into her purview. Rest in peace, beloved Glipsy Cat, and go with God.

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26: The Muu-Muu

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