TULIP AND KATIE
Tulip was the dog on our street. She belonged to a neighbor farther down on the same block, but she roamed free and soon learned to visit our house every day as soon as her master left for work. A wise, plump and beautiful dog, she had clients all up and down the street who liked to feed her because she was so friendly and polite.
Katie Gray was an elderly woman who lived across the street in a modest white frame house even smaller than ours She brought us part of a cake. Said she made it for when her stepson came to visit, and it was too much for her to finish. She was there and gone in a flash. She returned to the house across the street.
A couple of days later, on a Saturday morning, I went over to return the plate, and Tulip followed me. Katie came to the door and asked me in. I patted Tulip, and excused myself to her.
“You can bring her in," Katie bellowed in a high, scratchy voice from the dark inside, and she pushed the screen door out. "You can bring her in.”
I said, "She’s not my dog."
"I know. She’s a pretty dog.” It sounded like ‘purty.’
“She can come in." Katie said. "Set down a spell.”
Katie lived alone, and when she laughed she cackled. She led me through a bed-sitting room and a small kitchen to a screened-in back porch.
We began in praise of Tulip, and then discovered that Katie was exactly the same age as my mother: both were born in 1911. Moreover both Katie and my mother had married late, at the age of twenty-nine, and both had married Army officers named Bill.
Katie was sharply inquisitive. Your daddy was in the military, she said. What did he do in the military? I told her he was in the Transportation Corps. Bill Gray was in the Army Corps of Engineers.
When I called her Mrs. Gray, she said to call her Katie. She had a feral cat named Little Star. The door to the attached garage stood half-open. I could just make out a small black form and a tiny patch of white. Katie had never touched Little Star, who watched from the darkness as Tulip helped herself to cat food.
Katie asked me a few more questions and then, satisfied that I didn’t especially want to talk about myself, told me the story of her own life.
She was born in Ballinger, moved to Corpus Christi with her family during the depression, studied nursing in Temple and worked as a nurse for years before marrying Major Gray. After the war they settled in this little house, but four years later he died of a brain tumor. Her sister lived with her for a while, but then she went into a nursing home and died. Katie had been living here alone ever since.
She wasn’t complaining.
“There’s a lot worse things than being lonesome,” Katie said. “And one of them is being saddled with a fussy old man.”
A useful thought for any woman facing old age alone.
She finished up with some general reflections on old age and death. She wasn’t too keen on the former, and didn’t fear the latter. Next
