“We don’t have a catyet. He’s black. His name will be Rainbow.”
I don’t even know if Dario likes cats. Or if he’s allergic. But I have a feeling he’d figure out a way around either issue. I stand at the counter and look at this drawing for a long time. Opal knew he was our person from the start. I really should start listening to her better.
I take the drawing to Dario’s office.
He’s on a call. He holds up one finger, and I wait in the doorway, watching him. He’s in the chair he uses when he’s working rather than the one he uses when he’s thinking. When he’s working, he sits forward. When he’s thinking he leans back. Each chair has its use.
Right now, he’s forward, taking notes on a legal pad, listening to something he finds interesting. He hangs up, and I walk in and set the drawing on the desk in front of him without saying anything.
“You drew me a picture? You shouldn’t have.”
I snort. “Look what she drew.”
He looks at it for a while, reading each label, focusing on the cat. “We don’t have a cat.”
“We don’t have a cat yet. Apparently, she’s named our cat Rainbow.”
“He’s black.”
“I am aware.”
He picks up the drawing and looks more closely. He reads the text underneath the cat. He sits with it for a moment longer. “Where do you get a good cat?”
“Couldn’t tell you. Any animal I ever had came from a shelter.”
“I’m going to find out where to get a good one. There has to be a store with designer cats.”
I snicker. “I’m not sure if you can find designer cats?—”
“There’s designer everything.”
Two days later, I find a small folder on the kitchen counter with three pages of printed research on Maine Coon cats, their temperament, their appropriate diet, and the top-rated veterinary practices within four miles. The cat hasn’t been acquired yet.
I can’t believe he’s taking it this seriously. But it also warms my heart that he’s so determined to get this right for Opal.
She finds the folder on the third day. She sits at the counter and reads it with great seriousness, annotating in the margins in crayon. She adds a question mark next to Maine Coon and writes in her big block letters “OR JUST A REGULAR CAT, HE DOESN’T HAVE TO BE FANCY.”
Over after-dinner wine, post-Opal’s bedtime, Dario asks, “Is she mad that I wanted to get a nice cat for her? I can’t tell.”
“No. I’m pretty sure she just wants a cat and sees all of this hullabaloo as time between now and when she has her cat.”
He considers this. “So some things require the best version, and other things, less so?”
I nod. “A regular black cat named Rainbow would make her happy.”
“I’ll have to adjust my expectations. Can you help me with that?”
“Whenever I get the chance.”
He takes the drawing and tapes it to the wall behind his desk, above the stack of other drawings Opal has been producing and leaving around the apartment since the first week she moved in. A small accumulating archive—crayon and colored pencil and the occasional marker, the proportions improving steadily with every iteration, the stories they tell getting more complex.
Our family, as interpreted by a five-year-old who has been right about all of it from the beginning and has the artistic documentation to prove it.
I start looking at wedding venues that weekend. Not obsessively—I have a job, a degree program, and a child who has decided she needs to know everything about flower girl traditions across different cultures before the day arrives. I open a tab on my laptop at the kitchen counter on a Saturday morning while Opal is at Bea’s house.
Dario reads over my shoulder at some point. He studies the list for a moment, his coffee in one hand. “Pick anywhere on earth.”
I laugh. But he frowns. “Wait, you were serious?”
