Kitten

Chapter 3

I woke to an assortment of fresh bagels and a pot of cream cheese waiting for me on the dining table.

A few feet away, James packed a tote bag with Silver’s things.

As I chewed on my bagel, Silver jumped onto the table and began to lick the cream cheese.

It was the first time I noticed her tongue, thin and sharp as the tip of a flame.

I glanced at James. He was folding a blanket with his back turned.

“Are you allowed to do that?” I whispered to her.

Silver paused to look at me, then continued to eat.

Impressed by her audacity, I decided not to tell James.

Even through headphones, his music was so loud I could hear it from the table.

My mother always warned against turning the volume above the halfway point.

I watched James through her narrowed eyes, wondering what she would make of him.

Almost certainly she would find him foolish.

As soon as this thought came to me, it gained the resoluteness of belief.

It didn’t matter that the belief wasn’t my own; knowing it would be my mother’s was enough.

In that moment, James looked foolish to me.

James was my first boyfriend. I’d had crushes before, but never seriously pursued them.

What went on in my brain, I believed, didn’t have any business manifesting into real life.

Even as a kid, I refrained from speaking to classmates I liked.

My mother always said that other children didn’t understand me.

But that was okay, because the other mothers didn’t understand her, either.

She had no wrinkles and never contributed a dollar to the PTA.

“They don’t need my money,” she said. “They just want us to feel poor.” Most of my classmates’ fathers, I learned, made a lot of money, which explained our situation.

The first time I asked about my father, she grinned, tight-lipped and mischievous.

Then she held me close so my lips pressed into the hollow of her throat, her cheek velvety like the skin of a plum.

“Girls like us,” she said, and I so loved her smell, warm yeasty breath against crisply perfumed collarbone, “are meant to be with each other. Nobody else. Otherwise, it would be too much, wouldn’t it?

” I couldn’t imagine loving someone else the way I loved my mother.

If I had a father, he would be very lonely. He would suffer.

Watching James wiggle his shoulders to the music, I felt a sting of guilt, like I was spying on a stranger. Then he turned to face me. My lips curved into a smile before I registered that the guilt had faded; I was happy to see him. He took off his headphones.

“You’re a slow drinker,” he said. I’d barely touched my coffee. “Want milk and sugar?”

“Okay,” I said, because he’d already taken my mug. “Lots.”

On my next sip, the coffee was so milky and sweet that I spat my mouthful back into the mug.

Silver sniffed the rim, then gave me an expectant look.

James had returned to packing. I knew she liked milk, and I didn’t want James’s effort to go to waste, so I slid the mug over for her to taste. She lapped at it feverishly.

When she was done, I peered inside the mug and was shocked to see that she had finished it all. “I won’t tell,” I promised her. Silver nodded. Then she jumped off the table, the thump of her feet turning James’s head.

“You ready to go?” he asked.

I gave him a confident thumbs-up.

—

We took the train a few stops to a car-rental station.

Silver sat hunched in an enormous backpack with a clear plastic screen and holes on the top for breathing.

I begged James to let me wear it. I strapped the bag against my belly, wrapping my arms around the bulging window that showed Silver the world.

Beneath her feet sat a stack of cotton pee pads so thick her head squished against the roof of the bag.

James said she struggled to hold her pee on long journeys.

It was a more dignified solution than a diaper, but I still felt a little sorry that she was essentially being carried in a DIY toilet.

Throughout our journey, a lot of people turned to look at us.

Their expressions were beatific and stupid.

I pointed this out to James as proof that many people hadn’t seen a cat before, but he said that was how everybody responded to a cat in a bag, even those who were familiar with the concept.

“Cat people are easy to please,” he said.

“I thought most people were dog people.”

“You can be both.”

While James chatted with the car person, I bounced my body up and down, holding Silver’s backpack steady, and peered out the window at the bay.

James’s apartment was in the Financial District, next to Battery Park.

I liked this area of Manhattan because the height of the buildings destroyed your cell signal.

If you got lost, you couldn’t call someone.

They would simply have to come and find you.

The car James chose was dark blue and shiny.

“Do you have to pay more for a nicer car?” I asked.

“Not that much more.”

I felt sorry for the cars that weren’t chosen just because they were uglier, even though they cost less.

If I ever rented cars, I would pick the one nobody wanted.

I imagined walking up to the counter and demanding the ugliest car, then laughed aloud at the thought.

The car person caught my eye. I realized I’d been looking at him.

“I wasn’t laughing at you,” I said hastily.

“I was just thinking about something funny in my head.”

“You’re good,” he said, though he didn’t seem to mean it.

—

The drive was long. I grew bored and overly warm. The rain made loud popping noises as it hit the car windows. In the backseat, released from her bag, Silver hopped around. “She’s acting kind of weird,” said James.

“I guess,” I said, remembering the coffee.

Two hours into the drive, I fell asleep and dreamed that I was watching Silver take part in a tap-dancing competition.

When I woke, I had Silver’s performance score in my head, a distinct and jittery tune that I recognized as Mozart’s “Rondo Alla Turca.” “Rondo Alla Turca” was the first piece of music I’d heard live, performed by a classmate at my middle school talent show.

Afterward, I spent weeks scouring the internet for a rendition like hers, but each was too polished or slow.

My classmate played like she was running away from something, the notes crowding against each other like extra teeth.

The sound of the music clips aggravated my mother.

She was in one of those quiet spells that increasingly possessed her as I grew older.

When I asked for piano lessons, she said I was too old.

Also, everybody knew the local tutor was a pervert.

Still, I loved the piece; I continued my search on the desktop situated in the hallway next to my mother’s room, my cursor poised over the mute button in case her door creaked open.

“Can I put on a song?” I asked.

James handed me his phone. “Finally, you’re awake. Can you check on Silver? She’s acting crazy.”

I turned to see Silver jumping militantly up and down the backseat. She could definitely win a tap-dancing competition. “Maybe she’s feeling claustrophobic.”

“You think so? I don’t know if cats get claustrophobic. It’s kind of their whole thing to love small spaces.”

“Oh.” It was time to confess. “Okay, I might’ve accidentally given her some of my coffee earlier, back at your apartment.”

“What? You’re kidding.”

“No,” I said seriously. “I’m serious.”

“How much?”

“Maybe the whole cup. I’m sorry.”

“Jesus.” James craned his neck back to look at Silver. “It’s okay, it was an accident. Just, can you keep an eye on her?”

I nodded. It surely wouldn’t be productive to admit it hadn’t been an accident, so I decided to just play my video. A crackling sound broke through the car speakers, followed by the muffled beat of applause. “What’s with the quality?” James asked.

I was playing a YouTube video of some random nine-year-old playing “Rondo Alla Turca” in a 2003 Christmas recital.

This recording was the most similar to my classmate’s performance, underlaid with a steady, old-timey hum and frequently punctured by the sound of coughing. “I like live music,” I said.

James laughed. I liked when James laughed at what I said, even when I didn’t mean for it to be funny. In the rearview mirror, Silver continued to dance.

—

Things took a turn in the last hour of the drive. The rain grew more intense, and the windshield wipers moved so frantically I feared they’d fly off. Traffic had slowed to a stop. I needed badly to pee, but we were far from a gas station. Silver, at least, had finally calmed.

James asked to put on a podcast. The episode he chose was about the flag of Kyrgyzstan.

Specifically, it interrogated whether the squiggly rays extending from the sun looked like a sunflower, and the cultural implications of that image.

James minored in foreign relations in college, even though he had no intention to become a diplomat.

I felt embarrassed about my total lack of interest in foreign relations.

Maybe some people were simply born more curious about things that had nothing to do with them.

Ten minutes in, the podcast was interrupted by a phone call from James’s manager, Tom. James made a displeased nose and disconnected his phone from Bluetooth. Tom’s voice squeaked tinnily from James’s phone. James nodded with more vigor than normal.

“He can’t see you nod,” I said. James shushed me quietly, and Tom stopped speaking. My bladder pulsed against the seatbelt.

“Sorry, I meant to say I agree,” James said, the words coming out in a rush. “I mean, even though it’s not ideal.” The squeak of Tom’s voice grew louder. James nodded even more. I had a bad feeling.

My phone notified me that I had under fifty dollars in my bank account, but I hadn’t made any recent purchases.

The charge turned out to be from the university library for two outstanding books.

The first was a book about Roman architecture I’d checked out for Lou because she’d ghosted the guy who worked the front desk.

The other was The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton, borrowed for the literature class I’d spontaneously enrolled in because Lou said people who didn’t read were more likely to be sociopaths.

It was my first and last brush with the English department.

Most of the readings bored me and I had nothing insightful to say.

I found The House of Mirth mostly incomprehensible until the end, when Lily Bart kills herself after her failed stint as a hatmaker.

I wept myself to sleep and proposed an essay on the tragedy of aging.

My professor said I’d missed the point of the novel.

“Okay, Tuesday.” James said. “Until Maddie’s back.”

I turned to check on Silver. I was suddenly afraid that she’d died, that I’d killed her with the cream cheese and the coffee. The backseat was empty.

“James,” I said. The car behind us honked in short bursts, like the driver felt unentitled to his emotions. We inched forward, the strap of the seatbelt pressing into my stomach. I clenched my legs together and tried to convince myself that I’d held my pee for longer before.

When James finally hung up, my body felt like it had been pumped full of hot water and was about to burst. “Silver’s disappeared.” My voice was shriller than I’d intended. “She’s nowhere.”

“What? No, she’s probably just under the seat.” It was clear I was distracting him from something more important. “Listen, that was Tom. I’m really sorry about this, but I’m going to have to go back to the city next Tuesday. They need me at work.”

“What?” My legs slackened. My bladder kicked me, indignant.

“I’m sorry,” said James. He genuinely sounded sorry.

“I really don’t want to have to do this.

I can’t fucking believe it, they know it’s my first vacation this year.

But Patrick quit last month, and it’s a busy time for the team, we have this huge pitch coming up.

I’ll be back on Thursday, so it’s just Tuesday to Thursday next week, just three days. ”

“I have to pee.”

“What?”

“It’s fine, James. I really have to pee.”

James looked around. If he was surprised by my sudden switch in tone, he didn’t show it. There wasn’t an easy exit, he said, and I started to cry. “I have to go.” Tears rolled down my cheeks and broke between my lips.

“Katie.” James looked shocked. “It’s okay. Do you want me to—”

Silver meowed. She was sitting by my feet.

“Silver,” I said. Silver meowed again and jumped onto my lap.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” said James.

“You were in the middle of a call.”

“I could’ve stopped.”

“It didn’t matter back then, I didn’t need to go that badly.”

In the side of my vision, things began to blur.

The car reconnected to James’s Bluetooth and said in a solemn voice that the sunflower was a symbol of servility.

Without warning, the traffic cleared, and everyone started to speed up.

Silver pressed her front paws into my stomach.

Behind us, the driver had grown in confidence, his honks vibrating through my swollen belly.

The baby, I thought, even though there was no baby.

“Go faster,” I said. James pressed down on the gas.

I squeezed my eyes shut. I was certain I was going to pee myself.

I thought: I am going to pee inside this beautiful new car.

This beautiful new car will smell like pee and nobody will want to rent it anymore, which will at least be good for all the uglier cheaper cars.

Then Silver butted her head straight into my bladder.

James braked hard, narrowly missing the car before us.

My stomach spasmed, the seatbelt burned against my neck, and then I really was peeing myself, hot and strong and fast, feeling mortified but also, it could not be denied, very good, relieved.

The honking paused, as if the driver knew what had happened and felt sorry for me.

James said, “Oh, Katie,” with a sad look on his face.

Finally I was done and everything was quiet and my jeans were soaked through.

Silver looked at me with her eyes big and incredulous, like: I didn’t know you were capable of something so terrific.

One final, extended honk rang through the silence, and then the car swerved past us and disappeared into the current of the road.