Page 40 of Kitten

My mother and I were very close when I was a girl, and then, against our best wishes, I grew older. It happened without my noticing, as if in some secret hour a crack in my brain widened and never again would I reach for her little finger. I started high school, learned I was good at it, and painted less. I made a few friends. Even so, I felt they knew something I didn’t, like the crickets that sang below my mother’s window.

When she was thirty-seven, my mother began to talk about her mother, who was the same age when she left. “I don’t blame her,” she said, “stuck in a place like this.” Or: “I used to think thirty-seven was so old, like there was nothing left to want. But I still want so many things.”

To be young? To be special? To be talented? But my mother was still all those things. If I were a girl, I would’ve wriggled into one of her too-big dresses and made her laugh. Or I would’ve put lipstick over my face until she yelled, afterward hugging me anyway and transferring the color onto her cheeks, us two sad clowns. But I was no longer a girl, and even my mother had outgrown her mother.

That following summer, the one before I applied for college, was different. Quieter, no crickets. There were a series of small fires at the university, one of which damaged the lab and forced a monthslong closure. My mother became more restless than ever. She disappeared for longer stretches,spent whole days driving to neighboring towns and back. I grew two inches and needed new jeans. But these weren’t the main things. They were the things that happened after the real thing did, one Tuesday in early June on a warm and ordinary afternoon.

I was sick with period cramps. A kind classmate drove me home during lunch. The beat of the radio music made my stomach churn, and I rolled down the passenger window in case I threw up.

When I let myself in, the house was mostly quiet. Small noises came from upstairs: the creaking of irregular footsteps, the unmistakable sound of my mother.

My mother stood in my bedroom in front of my mirror. Piles of clothes I hadn’t worn in years scattered the floor. She did not notice me. On her hips draped a wrinkled navy skirt, part of my old middle school uniform. Her small breasts hung loose in my old training bra. The bra was once white, but years had turned it gray, and there was a tiny dark stain on the strap. Then my mother caught my reflection, and through the mirror we looked at each other.

Finally, in a soft impassive voice, as if discussing the weather, my mother said, “My clothes don’t fit me anymore.” I receded to the bathroom so she could get dressed. I swallowed three painkillers for the cramps, though I usually took only one. And then I returned and put the clothes away, focused on the task of it, horrified by the feeling that came over me, at once brand-new and wholly familiar, as if it had for years sat curled in my body, waiting to be noticed. Pity for my mother. It hurt to feel.

I looked on my hands and knees for the training bra butcould not find it. I wanted to wash it, get rid of that ugly little stain whose source I could not remember but whose color grew darker in my mind until I was certain it was black, permanent. That night, I fell asleep with the dot burning in my mind like a laser. When I opened my eyes the next morning, it appeared everywhere in my periphery, poking holes in the back of my eyelids. In the days following, the dot surfaced on the back of my wrist, down the slant of my mother’s cheeks, between the cracks in the walls of our shower. I searched and searched for the bra until eventually I made myself stop. And then I stopped thinking about the incident altogether.

I would not think of it again until my last visit home. My mother and I fought. I booked my return flight. That evening, I stepped inside the garden. The sky was dark blue. There were no more roses, no more birds. So much pollen had gathered on the chairs that I could no longer see their original color. I blew, the pollen drifted, and I felt something inside my body drop, like I’d swallowed a stone that was alive and wanted out, and I remembered our summers in the garden and the paintings in the dresser, my mother in the mirror and the dot on her shoulder, how the light hit our kitchen windows and made all the dust particles dance, which I’d always found beautiful until in adolescence I discovered it meant the house was unclean, and I understood finally that the reason I could not find the training bra was that she had it still, she never took it off.

12

Tuesday in Holme brought a lethargic heat. The bed felt oddly big. Silver wasn’t in it. Briefly I wondered if I’d made everything up; maybe James had taken her to New York after all. My relief at discovering her curled in the cool darkness under the bed was diminished only slightly by shame over what I’d done.

My phone reported a few new messages: one from James and the other, a surprise, from Isabelle. James’s message came in at one in the morning.

Hey, home safe.

I’m not angry with you, really want to talk this through

Call when you get the chance

Isabelle’s was sent two hours ago, just after eight.

Hi! It’s Isabelle. James gave me your number. I thought it’d benice to grab coffee or something. Let me know!

I ignored them both.

In the kitchen, I refilled Silver’s water and food bowls, moving slowly to pass the time. The day felt too long to get through. When I returned upstairs, Silver was still sleeping. It was well past the time she usually woke.

“Hello, sleepy.” I knelt and poked her. “Come on. We have the whole day to ourselves.”

She gave no response. I lowered my cheek to the floor. “Hey. Wake up.”

Nothing. I took a breath and blew into her face. She snapped up, hissing. Finally. “Are you mad at me?”

She yawned, her tongue a lighter pink than normal. I wet my finger with water from the bathroom sink and held it for her to lick. “See,” I said. “I know how to take care of you. I bet by the time he’s back you’ll wish we had more time to ourselves.”

Silver put her head behind her paws.

“Fine, if that’s your attitude.” While walking out of the room, I made sure not to look back to show her I did not care. But then I was in the hallway, and she hadn’t followed me, and everything felt worse.

—

I spent most of themorning trying not to count the hours until bedtime. Last night’s events felt unfamiliar, as if executed and experienced by somebody else. Had I really done that? I began to feel some regret, but the regret soon slippedinto something colder, more distant. Defensiveness. The idea of being back in New York with James and without Silver seemed more ridiculous than the reality that I’d trapped us in Holme.

Eventually, I lay back in bed, but it wasn’t yet noon, and anyway it was too hot to sleep. I opened a window, closed it. I pictured James’s bed in the city: queen-size, navy sheets. Navy was a stupid color, just a prissier version of black.

Every time I pictured moving in with James, I felt a distant yet growing dread. But James had been so excited. It pleased him to tuck me into the navy sheets of his life. He said he loved me. Did I love him back? I became antsy if he was away too long, like on his five-turned-nine-mile runs. When we showered drunk together, I knew that if I wanted, I could pass out and wake up clean and dry in bed. I could soil his car and stain his sheets and be sick on his furniture and still he would give me his home. Was that love? Or was that something else, something I actually wanted more?