"Bob, can I get you a drink?" I asked.
"Yes, please," he said. He seemed to be having a bit of trouble getting his mouth to form the words. His hand moved up to his mouth in a curious gesture, and I realized it was just like my cat Tina's movement when she had raised her paw to lick it before she used it to groom herself. Bob realized what he was doing and lowered his hand abruptly.
I thought about bringing him milk in a bowl but decided that would be insulting. I brought him some iced tea instead. He gulped it but made a face.
"Sorry," I said. "I should have asked if you like tea."
"I do like tea," he said, and stared at the glass as if he'd just connected tea with the liquid he'd had in his mouth. "I'm just not used to it anymore."
Okay, I know this is really awful, but I actually opened my mouth to ask him if he wanted some kibble. Amelia had a bag of 9Lives on the back porch shelf. I bit the inside of my mouth, hard. "What about a sandwich?" I asked. I had no idea what to talk to Bob about. Mice?
"Sure," he said. He didn't seem to know what he wanted to do next.
So I made him a peanut butter and jelly, and a ham and pickle on whole wheat with mustard. He ate them both, chewing very slowly and carefully. Then he said, "Excuse me," and got up to find the bathroom. He shut the door behind him, and stayed in there for a long time.
Amelia and Octavia had come in by the time Bob emerged.
"I'm so sorry," Amelia said.
"Me, too," Octavia said. She looked older and smaller.
"You knew all along how to change him?" I tried to keep my voice level and nonjudgmental. "Your failed attempt was a fraud?"
Octavia nodded. "I was scared if you didn't need me, I wouldn't get to visit anymore. I'd have to go stay all day at my niece's. It's so much nicer here. I would have said something soon, because my conscience was bothering me something awful, especially since I'm living here." She shook her gray head from side to side. "I'm a bad woman for letting Bob be a cat for extra days."
Amelia was shocked. Obviously, her teacher's fall from grace was an amazing development to Amelia, clearly overshadowing her own guilt about what she'd done to Bob in the first place. Amelia was definitely a live-in-the-moment kind of person.
Bob came out of the bathroom. He marched up to us. "I want to go back to my place in New Orleans," Bob said. "Where the hell are we? How did I get here?"
Amelia's face lost all its animation. Octavia looked grim. I quietly left the room. It was going to be very unpleasant, the two women telling Bob about Katrina. I didn't want to be around while he tried to process that terrible news on top of everything else he was trying to handle.
I wondered where Bob had lived, if his house or apartment was still standing, if his possessions were somehow intact. If his family was alive. I heard Octavia's voice rising and falling, and then I heard a terrible silence.
Chapter 21
The next day I took Bob to Wal-Mart to purchase some clothes. Amelia had pressed some money into Bob's hand, and the young man had accepted it because he had no choice. He could hardly wait to get away from Amelia. And I couldn't say as how I blamed him.
As we drove to town, Bob kept blinking around him in a stunned way. When we entered the store, he went to the nearest aisle and rubbed his head against the corner. I smiled brightly at Marcia Albanese, a wealthy older woman who was on the school board. I hadn't seen her since she'd given Halleigh a wedding shower.
"Who's your friend?" Marcia asked. She was both naturally social and curious. She didn't ask about the head rubbing, which endeared her to me forever.
"Marcia, this is Bob Jessup, a visitor from out of town," I said, and wished I'd prepared a story. Bob nodded at Marcia with wide eyes and held out his hand. At least he didn't poke her with his head and demand to have his ears scratched. Marcia shook hands and told Bob she was pleased to meet him.
"Thanks, nice to meet you, too," Bob said. Oh, good, he sounded really normal.
"Are you going to be in Bon Temps long, Bob?" Marcia said.
"Oh, God, no," he said. "Excuse me, I have to buy some shoes." And he walked off (very smoothly and sinuously) to the men's shoe aisles. He was wearing a pair of flip-flops Amelia had donated, bright green ones that weren't quite big enough.
Marcia was clearly taken aback, but I really couldn't think of a good explanation. "See you later," I said, and followed in his wake. Bob got some sneakers, some socks, two pairs of pants, two T-shirts, and a jacket, plus some underwear. I asked Bob what he'd like to eat, and he asked me if I could make salmon croquettes.
"I sure can," I said, relieved he'd asked for something so easy, and got the cans of salmon I'd need. He also wanted chocolate pudding, and that was easy enough, too. He left the other menu selections up to me.
We had an early supper that night before I had to leave for work, and Bob seemed really pleased with the croquettes and the pudding. He looked much better, too, since he'd showered and put on his new clothes. He was even speaking to Amelia. I gathered from their conversation that she'd taken him through the websites about Katrina and its survivors, and he'd been in contact with the Red Cross. The family he'd grown up in, his aunt's, had lived in Bay Saint Louis, in southern Mississippi, and we all knew what had happened there.
"What will you do now?" I asked, since I figured he'd had a while to think about it now.
"I've got to go see," he said. "I want to try to find out what happened to my apartment in New Orleans, but my family is more important. And I've got to think of something to tell them, to explain where I've been and why I haven't been in touch."
We were all silent, because that was a puzzler.
"You could tell 'em you were enchanted by an evil witch," Amelia said glumly.
Bob snorted. "They might believe it," he said. "They know I'm not a normal person. But I don't think they'd be able to swallow that it lasted so long. Maybe I'll tell them that I lost my memory. Or that I went to Vegas and got married."
"You contacted them regularly, before Katrina?" I said.
He shrugged. "Every couple of weeks," he said. "I didn't think of us as close. But I would definitely have tried after Katrina. I love them." He looked away for a minute.
We kicked around ideas for a while, but there really wasn't a credible reason he would have been out of touch for so long. Amelia said she was going to buy Bob a bus ticket to Hattiesburg and he would try to find a ride from there into the most affected area so he could track down his people.