Chapter 7 #3
“Lou.” I must’ve pressed her contact, which sat just above my mother’s, by mistake. My chest felt empty. I wasn’t sure whether the sensation was relief or disappointment. “I’m sorry, it was a butt-dial.”
“Okay,” said Lou. A pause. “Are you lying?”
“I’m sorry.” I began to blabber. “About the utilities. Tell Anna I just need a few more days. I really don’t want to have to ask James.” I swallowed to avoid crying. I’d never cried in front of Lou, though she often cried in front of me.
“It’s fine,” Lou said curtly. “I covered you. Just pay me back when you can.”
“Oh.” I paused to take this in. “Thank you.”
“It’s fine,” she said again. “I felt bad about how I left things.”
“I was being difficult. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
Another pause. Lou spoke up. “So how’s James?”
I cleared my throat. “He’s good. Great. And his place is really nice. But I feel weird, I don’t know what’s wrong. He’s been good to me.”
“If he’s being good to you, then what’s the matter?”
“Nothing.” I considered my words. “Just, is this normal? Am I in a normal situation?”
“Who cares. You’re in his house. You’re not paying.”
“But it’s really awkward. I feel like everybody treats me like they don’t want me here, and only James can’t tell.”
“He probably can tell,” Lou said. “It just doesn’t matter to him. What makes you think everybody cares that much about you anyway?”
“The people on the street look at me.” I sniffed. “So do waiters. Even the babies.”
Lou snorted. “You can only see someone looking at you if you’re looking at them.”
“They look first. And”—I hesitated—“harder.”
“Okay,” Lou said. “You’re going crazy. Keep this to yourself.”
“Okay.” I nodded.
“You’ve been together for, what, half a year? Yeah, that’s fine. Still honeymoony enough for James to look past all your red flags. No offense. Aren’t you two so in love, anyway? You were all bug-eyed after your first date.”
“I wouldn’t call that love.”
“Call it what you want,” said Lou. “Is that all?”
“Yes,” I said. “Sorry for the butt-dial.”
“I know it wasn’t a butt-dial, loser,” she said, and hung up.
I returned to the tub, grateful for Lou’s unwillingness to entertain sop.
In college, whenever I was depressed, she microwaved meals and left them outside my door.
If I bailed on a plan with a passable but false excuse, she only ever reacted with a thumbs-up emoji.
And when I returned to campus after my fight with my mother, she hugged me for two full seconds before pumping me with vodka Cokes.
I considered trying my mother again. But the more I hesitated, the more frightened I felt.
And beneath that fear was another feeling.
Less sharp, but more suffocating for it.
Something stuck in the bones: sadness. Scrolling through my call history, I confirmed what I already knew.
I hadn’t misremembered her number. She had rejected my call.
The bathwater grew cold. Flakes of pastry floated on the surface. From the door, there was a scratching sound.
“James?”
The door opened. It was Silver. I straightened. “How’d you do that?”
Silver propped her paws on the rim of the tub.
They were puffy and shapeless, little balls of dough.
I thumbed the smooth padding of her feet.
When I pressed down, her toes flared so the space between them became visible, the fur fine as strands of cotton candy.
Why were people always warning about claws on cats? Silver didn’t have any claws.
My hands looked ashen and two-dimensional in the bath. I turned the tap to let more hot water fill. Hearing the rush, Silver wiggled her hips in preparation to jump.
“No,” I said. “Don’t—” But she leapt. It was a small leap, graceful and calculated, barely making a splash. I turned off the tap. The water was so high now that any movement would spill it over.
Silver waded into my arms. Against my bare chest, her body was soft and slimy, the texture of wet food.
I rubbed my lips over her silken head. I wished I could eat her, keep her shrunken and warm inside me.
I sank lower in the bath, letting the water rock us, and thumbed off the new gunk that had gathered in her eyes.
“There we go,” I whispered. “Now you can see.”
Silver blinked slowly, then began to purr.
How lovely to be so helpless. In my hands, her face felt tiny, barely the size of an apple.
I was certain that if I pressed down hard enough, I could break through the bones.
One of her ears slanted back while the other, the one with the missing tip, remained perked.
I ran my finger across its thin, hard line.
I was overcome with awe for all that she must have endured out at sea, and for how she’d found James.
“How did you survive all by yourself? And where did the rest of your family go?”
Her whiskers shook. I pinched them between my fingers. “You’re a perfect little thing,” I said. “A very lucky girl. Who knows where you’d be if you weren’t here.”
Silver squirmed out of my grasp and swam across the bathtub.
Her tail snaked over my knees, the satin tickle of algae.
My phone balanced on the rim, flecked with soapy water, the screen still black.
This was it, now I knew: my mother did not want to speak to me anymore.
I still felt sad, but it was a vague kind of sadness, like I was carrying the feeling on behalf of somebody else.
Silver continued to do laps around the bath while I closed my eyes, imagining that I was a very good and important person, that this bathtub belonged to me.
At the same time, I felt like a piece of coal shrinking in fire, numb and dumb to the world, like I had yet to be born.