Kitten

Chapter 19

We left Holme on Saturday afternoon. The car radio played some reality show I didn’t know people still listened to, where the host called up the participants’ boyfriends to see if they’d cheat on them with her. It wasn’t clear whether either of us was really listening.

I attempted to break the silence. “What a dumb show.” My voice came out high and artificial.

James nodded. When I switched the channel, he protested. “I was listening to that.”

“Oh,” I said. “Sorry.”

I flicked through my phone. My mother had sent me fifty dollars in the middle of the night.

I pictured her lying awake, caught in the insomnia that used to plague her when I was a child.

I used to slip into the bathroom and splash cold water on my face to stay up with her, but in the end, I always fell back asleep.

It occurred to me that her insomnia probably didn’t end when I grew up, we’d just stopped sharing a bed.

What was she thinking when she sent me the second batch of money?

She would’ve known the transaction would be time-stamped.

Did she want me to know she suffered? That when I wasn’t thinking of her, she was, as always, thinking of me?

I could picture her saying: Look how much I care, I can’t even sleep because I love you.

But maybe I was being cynical. I remembered what I felt yesterday, sitting alone on the bathroom floor.

Possibility of a love without negotiation.

Humility of being graced. Could I summon those feelings again?

It was tricky, like trying to pin down a floater in the periphery of my vision.

Still, knowing that the feelings existed, that they might creep back into sight, felt like enough.

Maybe my mother was being kind. Maybe she only sent me the money because I needed it.

I had a few new emails. Two of them were automatic rejections to job applications I’d submitted yesterday. I deleted the emails as the sound of a woman’s sobbing aggravated the speakers. Then I opened the last email, saw that I was being offered an interview, and laughed out loud.

“What?” James turned down the volume.

“It’s nothing, I just—” I laughed again. “I applied for some jobs recently, nothing complicated, just those auto-apply things. And one of them got back to me.”

“Oh really? Which one.” This was the first time since Silver’s burial that James engaged in conversation with me, but his voice was still an unusual monotone, difficult to decipher emotionally.

“This arts and culture center in Brooklyn. For some community events position.” I clicked on the listing. “I don’t know. It sounds basically administrative, like scheduling, making itineraries, organizing files, stuff I did at the law library.”

“What’s the pay?”

“Fifty-five to fifty-nine thousand, depending on experience level.”

“So fifty-nine.”

“What? I have no experience.”

“You do, at the law library. You just said.”

I scoffed. What I did at the law library could hardly be considered experience, unless experience meant clicking buttons as quickly as you could in some archaic web platform and picturing ways to hurt yourself with office supplies.

“Congratulations, anyway. Baby’s first postgrad interview. Welcome to the rest of your life.” James laughed humorlessly. Disaffection didn’t suit him, it made me sad.

“The rest of my life,” I said.

“Yep.”

“Do you remember what you asked me on our first night at Holme?”

He shook his head.

“You asked me if there was something I really wanted when I was younger, that I have now. And I said a boyfriend.”

“Yeah.”

“It wasn’t true. I wanted something else.”

“What’s that?”

“To never grow up.”

He smiled. “Condolences.”

“It’s not so bad. My fault for having such a big wish.”

“For what it’s worth, when I was a kid, all I wanted was a pet.” James gripped the steering wheel so tightly that his knuckles were white. His arms wavered, and the car wobbled. I noticed we were going below the speed limit.

“Do you blame me?”

“I know you loved her a lot.”

“But you do blame me?”

“I don’t really think about it like that,” he said. “Blaming you wouldn’t change things. I’d rather just move on. Like how you blame yourself for leaving your mother, but that doesn’t make the situation any different. And the decision was right for you at the time.”

“Sometimes what looks right at the time turns out to be wrong in the future. Like in this instance, obviously.”

James shrugged. He gazed at the road through half-closed eyes. It was a complete change from the way he was at Holme, his breathing labored, his cheeks blotched with emotion. That James just might have said he blamed me.

“Isabelle said you’d do this.” I couldn’t help myself. “Refuse to blame me. Because you like looking after, like, vulnerable people.”

“Sure.”

“Is it true?” I asked. “Are you with me because you like to take care of me?”

“Are you with me because you like being taken care of?”

I said nothing.

“Can you give it a rest?” he said, his voice quiet. “We’re moving in together. That’s why I’m trying my best not to blame you.”

I looked down at my sneakers. There was still sand caked in the ridges of the soles, bits of broken seashell. We were far from the sea now.

“I’m sorry.”

James switched his driving hand.

“I should’ve let you take her back to the city or gone back with you.

But you’re right, I was being selfish. Maybe it was Holme, maybe it was just me, but I loved her, I wanted to be with her.

” I spoke quickly, believing myself to be on the verge of a breakthrough. “I’ve never felt that way before—”

James gave a dry laugh. I stopped myself. “Sorry,” he said. “You can see why I’m thrown.”

I paused. James kept his eyes on the road.

I had nothing to say, confronted with the now-obvious truth that I gave Silver a more honest love than I’d ever given James, and he knew it.

There was a loud and sustained honk. Three cars overtook us in rapid succession.

The speed dial had dropped to thirty miles, but James didn’t notice.

“James,” I said, and then we were going twenty-five, then twenty.

The honking magnified. He remained frozen.

“James,” I said again. As we slowed to a near stop, a steely instinct overtook me.

I pressed hard on his right knee, jerking us into acceleration, and used my other hand to twist the wheel to the right.

There were more honks, then the sudden motion of a dozen cars coming to a halt.

We swung into the shoulder of the highway.

James hit the brakes. The seatbelt burned my neck as I lurched forward.

On instinct, I turned to check the backseat for Silver.

“Are you—” James’s voice was loud. “What the fuck are you doing—” and I said, “James, you were about to stop in the middle of the highway,” and he began to breathe very quickly.

I realized with a jolt that he was having some sort of panic attack, switched off the ignition, and reached for his hands.

He let me hold them. He kept his eyes shut until his breathing calmed, and then he opened his door and stepped outside.

I joined him on the side of the road. “Hey.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“Has that happened to you before?”

“A long time ago. I used to get them when I was a kid, but—” James swallowed. “It’s not like I’m actively anxious. It’s more like I’m just blank, and then suddenly full of something.”

“Do you want me to drive?”

He looked surprised. “You can drive?”

“Of course,” I said, then felt a little bit bad about it. “I’m from a place with absolutely zero public transportation.”

“You, driving a car,” James said. “I don’t know why I assumed you couldn’t.”

“Probably because I wanted you to.”

James gave a small hm but said nothing else. I reached out my palm, where he cautiously placed the keys. We walked back to the car on opposite sides. I brought the seat closer to the wheel, then connected my phone to Bluetooth, playing the podcast I knew he liked.

—

On the subway ride home, after we dropped off the car, I received a message from Lou.

you’re back!

also i got the money. thanks

drinks tmrw?

I’d forgotten I shared my location with Lou. I didn’t even share it with James, which to her was criminal. Apparently it betrayed an aversion toward intimacy. I texted Yes right away.

The station was crowded. It was half past five in the evening, the after-work rush.

A man in a full business suit slammed into me and scoffed.

I was wearing Silver’s cat backpack, which, I was willing to admit, gave me an inconvenient bulk.

But just because the backpack was empty didn’t mean it wasn’t important.

I considered yelling that after the businessman, but James looked exhausted, and I didn’t want to cause any more trouble.

Before we left, he’d wanted to throw the backpack away, which seemed both violent to her memory and wasteful.

We deliberated extensively, but the second I brought up how it would be offensive to Silver’s memory, James shut down and said: “Fine, Katie, do whatever you want, I don’t care. ”

The first thing I noticed when we returned to James’s apartment was the familiar smell of fresh laundry.

I wanted to bury my face in the cramped bristles of the rug, even though the scent was probably not coming from there.

I felt a resigned sadness that I recognized as nostalgia, my body without my consent categorizing James’s apartment as a thing of the past, even though I was presently standing inside it.

I hung my coat carefully on the rack while James nudged his shoes off with his feet.

“I’m really tired,” James said. “Will you be okay if I just go lie down for a bit?”

“Aren’t you hungry?”

“Not really.”

“Well, I’m a bit hungry.”

“Okay.” He gestured to the kitchen. “I think everything’s probably gone bad, but there are some frozen meals.”

“Which one do you want?”

“I don’t want anything. I’m just going to the bedroom.”

I followed James inside. The room was dark, the curtains drawn.

Unfamiliar shadows hovered by unfamiliar shapes: the new dresser James purchased for me, a blob on the bed.

My heart leapt—Silver—but it was only BL?HAJ, the shark from IKEA.

James put BL?HAJ on the floor. I felt sorry for him.

It wasn’t BL?HAJ’s fault that there was this new psychic hole in our lives.

He looked awkward down there, oversized and unwanted.

I curled on the bed next to James, close enough to smell his breath. “How do you feel?” I asked.

“I can’t believe I have to go to work on Monday.”

“You can call in sick.”

“Maybe. I do feel kind of off.”

“That’s normal.”

“I just thought I’d feel better here.”

“Back in New York?”

“Yeah.” He sighed. “Now I wish we could’ve stayed a little longer, like you wanted.”

“I think it was right to leave.”

James nodded. In that moment, he looked ready to accept anything I said. I felt like a fairy or a mother, able to disperse words of wisdom that, even if untrue, would make his eyes flutter closed, a wound kissed.

“I feel really bad,” I said. “I’ll feel bad about it forever. But it’s my fault. You didn’t do anything at all.”

James tucked his chin so his forehead touched my mouth and his mouth touched my collarbone. His hair smelled like sweat and eucalyptus shampoo. I experienced a surge of feeling for him deep inside me, unfamiliar and hard like a new bone.

“I need to tell my parents.”

“Don’t you think you maybe shouldn’t think about that right now?”

“Maybe.” After a moment, he spoke again, almost shy. “Can you touch my ear,” he said, “like you did yesterday?” I did. He made a satisfied noise. Below his lips, my neck grew damp. Then he took off my sweater, his fingers cold. “Sorry,” he said.

“No, that’s okay,” I said and unbuttoned his shirt.

I ran my fingers down his goosebumped skin.

He pulled me closer. We held each other like that, heads slotted over opposite shoulders and bellies touching but not pushing, like lips touching but not kissing, the contact enough to make me want, the stillness itching to be broken but not yet.

Thin skin of his stomach, belly button hollow and long.

Mine soft, protruding, something you could cut off.

We held each other for a long time. I could feel my body growing warm from the inside until the heat reached my skin.

For the first time in a while I just wanted him closer, I wanted to sleep together without any of the antics I’d put on in the past, and finally when he went inside me it felt gentle and normal.

“It feels so good,” I said. “What are you doing?” He said nothing, he was doing nothing.

My fingers in his hair, his hands on my back, moving only slightly, we kept as we were.

“This is nice,” he said, and we stayed like that until eventually, and without much fuss, we finished at the same time.

I was ready to fall asleep then, thoughtless and pleased, breathing in his smell.

And if I closed my eyes, I could convince myself we were back in my old bedroom on the night we first met, drawn in by a closeness neither of us could explain, lying nose to nose like animals without a single memory of guilt or shame.

A few minutes later, James broke away to go to the bathroom and shower. I stretched my legs out on the sheets and listened to water fall from the other room, my arm slung over the pillow like it was a creature I loved.