| HOUSEBROKEN by Barbara Leith |
They got the kitten because Molly hated coming home from the office to empty rooms. Hated the long nights alone when Hank was off studying at the law library. She wanted a dog, but dogs weren't allowed in the apartment building. Neither were cats, but who was to know? Actually she disliked cats. Hank was the cat lover; his mother bred Burmese and showed them as well. Bench shows, they were called. Life in a cage. This seemed to Molly the most unnatural existence imaginable for a pet and added to her grudging dislike of Hank's mother in particular, and by association, of cats in general. Secretive creatures, cool and unapproachable. Hank disagreed. He argued their inapproachability was a virtue, a clear sign of their superiority to dogs. "Self-respect," he told her. "You'll never catch a cat fawning on you like a pooch does. Totally self-reliant, cats are. I admire them." The day they brought the kitten home, he told Molly he was allergic to cats. They gave him asthma. "Now you tell me," she said. She was layering a carton with old towels. The carton was the last of the wedding gift boxes and still had the frilly white excelsior packing—perfect for a mattress, she had exclaimed, feeling very domestic. But he said to put toweling on top or else the kitten would mistake it for kitty litter. He sat on the floor cradling the kitten against his chest. It was a tabby, a tawny gray and gold—seven weeks old and full of spunk, a girl kitty, he announced. Now he looked at Molly and smiled. "It's ok though. My asthma days are long gone." "How do you know?" "Haven't had an attack since you and I met, have I now?" "No." "Well, then?" He had his lawyer Q.E.D. look on his face, impatiently expectant, leaning forward with a hard little glitter in his eyes. "But we haven't had a cat, either. Until now," she said, not sure what he was driving at here. These Socratic question and answer games irritated her. Granted, she wasn't logical. Inductive, deductive reasoning, who cares? She had told him this on their first date nine months ago. And he said he adored her for her illogic, that he had a lot to learn and she could teach him. But three months into the marriage, and he was still as rational as ever. More so, if anything. And she felt backed into corners when they discussed things, even something as simple as this asthma business. So, now she decided to ask what he meant. Trying to second-guess him was where she usually got into trouble. "What do you mean exactly, Hank?" And with a little private thrill of entitlement —of having turned the tables on him—she reached to take the kitten away from him, place it in its snowy featherbed. The kitten mewed. Molly picked up the old alarm clock and wound it, then nestled it down under the towels. The ticking was supposed to simulate the mother's heartbeat. Stave off loneliness. Time would tell, she thought, maybe even literally do the trick. She wished she could purr. He was explaining now, "Psychosomatic in origin, childhood asthma," he was saying. "Tensions at home, that type thing." She thought about that a moment. "You mean leaving home cured you?" she asked. And wondered if she were leaving herself wide open. But he said with a laugh, "Leaving home and meeting you." He looked at her. "What you want to hear, correct?" She laughed too, and they left the kitten in its box and went into the bedroom and made love, but the whole time they lay there, what she really wanted to have him say over and over again was: I love you, I love you, I love you. They had big arguments about this. At first he would simply observe, mugging a little, "I married you, didn't I?" "But I want to hear you say the words," she told him. "The evidence isn't in the words, silly. It's easy enough to mouth off, it's harder to show it. The way we treat each other. In our behavior, our actions." "Please don't stand there and give me lectures." He always looked surprised when she got annoyed that way. "But I'm not lecturing you, I'm telling you what I think," he said slowly. "And I'm telling you what I need. I need to hear it, darn it all.” "You can't demand love," he'd answer. And then he'd look sad. His mouth would tighten and she could see what he was going to be as an old man, the sharpness of the nose, the stubborn knob of the chin. The clean lines of his bones became harsh; the firm expression hardening into the smug obstinacy of the self-righteous—a hard-featured stranger, in fact. "Cotton Mather," she told him once. He stared at her. His eyes were so cold she almost shivered. One night he told her, "Stop beating on me, for God’s sake!" She threw off the bedcovers and went into the living room. Then she groped her way back along the walls until she reached the linen closet. She got out a brand new blanket, a wedding present so new it was still in the original plastic. Ripping the plastic open sounded very loud in the dark. She rolled herself up in the blanket and lay down on the couch. It was the first night they had spent apart. The kitten jumped up on the sofa. It wanted to play. It put its cold paw on her cheek, then scooted down under the blanket. She lay very still. It jumped down on the floor, started batting the ping pong ball, its favorite toy. The ball skittered across the kitchen floor. More scrabbling noises. Out in the bathroom, in the litter box. Then silence. She pressed her nose into the scratchy tweed of the couch. Should she go back and get a pillow? Then she heard Hank say, "Goddamn it, cat!" The light came on. He was standing there in the doorway. He was holding the kitten who had its spiky wild-eyed look which meant they were in for a long night. "Please, Molly," he said. "Come back to bed." He put the cat down on the rug, turned off the hall light. She said nothing, just curved herself deeper into the sofa cushion. In the dark she could hear the sound of his breathing, a harsh sound as if he'd been running. Or making love. Then he was touching her. But she stiffened, pulled away from his hand. "Leave me alone," she told him, and she felt excited inside, scared that he'd go, but at the same time triumphant that she had managed again to turn the thing around so that he was the one who was begging her for a change. His voice cracked. He started telling her not to do this, not to rupture the thing, the thing was too precious, couldn't she see how precious?" Please don't do this, don't, Molly," he was saying at the end, and he sounded in the darkness as if he were almost crying, his voice choked and thick. "Go away," she told him, and, finally, after a long while, he did. They never discussed this night. But she could tell something had been damaged. Forever. He had seen for the first time that she wanted to hurt him. From this they both learned to put their love at one remove. She never asked him any more if he loved her. Sometimes though when they were going somewhere or doing something fun, playing chess, playing with the kitten—she forgot. "I can't help it, I love you," she would tell him. He'd nod, pull her close to him. Once in a while he'd say, "Hey, Mags, we got a good thing going." But did they? How could it be a good "thing" if the relationship itself was off limits as far as discussion went? "Talk's cheap," he told her more than once. She didn't know how to respond when he said things like that. "But I’m not?" Or: "Love's expensive?" What the hell? When she lost her temper or did something that annoyed him, or hurt him, she would sit on the edge of the sofa armrest, run her fingers up the back of his neck to where the soft hairs grew, then under his ear, back along the jawbone to his mouth. "I'm sorry," she'd say. "Please, Hank. Really. Forgive me." But he didn't seem to understand the concept of forgiveness. He nodded absently, changed the subject. He took her hand and held it still against his chest. He smiled at her. But the words of forgiveness he couldn't say any more than he could say "I love you." They sat quietly and watched the kitten scoot along the floor. He called it a "cat-ten" now, six months old, long and rangy. Its coat was thick, silky to the touch. When it dozed on the windowsill in the late afternoon sun, the black stripes of its face looked like worry lines leading straight up from the ridge above the eyes, disappearing over the top of the head. They had named the cat Scooter. They took her everywhere. She loved riding in the car, in the very back, down in the deep well between the back seat and rear window. It made a perfect cave. As soon as they got in the car, Scooter jumped down into her cave and went to sleep. Even on long trips. Even when they went camping, they took Scooter along. Or just for a walk in the city park. She trotted behind them like a dog. The same thing in the apartment. When they moved from one room to another, she was right behind them, trying to pounce on the heels of their shoes. This is how they got the idea for playing hide and go seek. She held the cat. He hid in the bedroom closet. He called, "Scooter, come kitty!" The cat leaped off Molly's lap, flashed to the hall, pausing for a micro-second at the bathroom door, then disappeared into the bedroom. Meanwhile, Molly hid somewhere, usually behind the drapes in the living room. Then she heard glad cries from the bedroom and Hank and Scooter came racing out to the living room. "Go find her!" he said. Silence. Molly could hear him panting—and she could sense Scooter was getting close, but who can hear a cat padding on a carpet? And then she felt the prick of claws through the nubbly fabric of the drapes. She swept them aside, swooped the cat up in her arms. Sometimes when the cat slept on the windowsill, they both tiptoed out of the room, hid in the tub, behind the shower curtain. Molly tried not to giggle; he put his hand over her mouth. She licked at his palm. The cat sensed their absence almost immediately. Not more than a couple of minutes went by. They huddled in the tub, and sure enough, the shower curtain started to twitch, and then the long front leg was snaking around the curtain, and they started laughing, and the cat sat on the edge of the tub, licked its paws carefully, gold eyes regarding them with polite disdain. Then they ran—all three—out to the kitchen. June came. Hank graduated with high honors, and more to the point, a job waiting for him in San Francisco. They had a month of freedom, so decided to drive back east, spend a week at the beach, then up to her parents for a short visit. Her roommate was getting married in August, so she would fly to join Hank after the wedding. Her husband, the lawyer! The day they moved out of the apartment, the Wilsons from downstairs came out to the driveway to say goodbye. They were a middle-aged couple who pretty much kept to themselves except for friendly nods at the mailboxes or cheerful comments on the weather on the way out to work in the mornings. Mrs. Wilson smiled as Hank fastened the last box on top of the car. Mr. Wilson cleared his throat. "Been nice having you folks on board," he said. His wife laughed. "Honeymooners and all, we didn't quite know what to expect." He finished it for her. "Wild parties and what have you." "But you all were so quiet, we hardly knew the place was occupied," the woman added, still smiling. Mr. Wilson grinned, nudged his wife in the elbow. "Got a chuckle though," he said. "Hearing you play those games up there last couple a months. Chasing each other, I said to the wife. A good sign." They all shook hands, and as they drove away, Molly said to him, "Oughtn't we have told them? It was Scooter?" He shook his head, chuckling. "Hell, no. Give them a kick, hey, hon—remember those crazy honeymooners we had back then. Can't you just hear 'em?" She wanted to add—make it a joke actually—that it was pretty weird it took a cat to get him into the chase mood. But she knew that wouldn't go over, so she held still. He didn't like talking in the car much; it was fine if she talked, just chattering on. But mainly he liked to concentrate on the road, staring straight ahead, hands light on the steering wheel. The silence felt like criticism to her. She knew this was dumb when they started on the trip. But by the time they got to the ocean a week later, she wasn't so sure. His profile against the window looked angry. When she wanted to stop at stores or historical sites, or even a decent restaurant, his mouth went tight. "We got a month's vacation here, you want to fritter it away on junk like that?" he kept saying. Finally, she simply said nothing. She watched the telephone poles and the road ahead, and how the white line got swallowed by the blue hood of the car, a long white tapeworm that occasionally broke into segments but mainly stretched unbroken down the monotone gray of the road surface. And she understood why the cat always slept in the car, what else was there to do, caged and muzzled this way? She climbed into the back seat, curled up into the shape of a pretzel and slept. Something warm was settling under her chin; it was Scooter, also pretzel-shaped. Molly dozed, lulled by the smooth hum of the car and the purring of the cat, a sound as comforting to nuzzle against as listening to the sound of rain falling outside, a cozy sound, a reassuring murmur of contentment—that’s all she wanted from him. Would he label purring as cheap talk? No, he'd say it was natural vocalization, and she could come right back, hunch her shoulders forward, and bark out in appropriate prosecutor style, "Precisely! and your behavior appears as unnatural to the defendant here, you stinker, say you love her, love her, luvver, luvver...." "Hey, lover, we're here!" She jumped. They were on the island. There were no other cars around, the causeway behind them totally empty. They passed abandoned house lots, the foundations showing, the streets laid out and even brave street signs—Ocean Drive, Beach Haven Road—but the sand drifted over concrete pilings and it was clear this was a beach development that wasn't going to happen. "Why?" she asked him. She had her chin on the back of the front seat, her left elbow poking into his shoulder. "It's a ghost town." "Ran out of money, maybe?" he said. They stopped the car about four miles down, when the paved road gave over to hard-packed beach grass and not much else. They set up the tent at the foot of the bluff, in a little hollow protected from the wind. He enjoyed putting up the tent, securing the stakes, making the whole thing shipshape. He sent her to gather driftwood for the fire. The cat stayed in the car until they began cooking dinner. Then she tiptoed out onto the sand, lifting one fastidious paw at a time, giving it a little shake with each step. He laughed. "She thinks it's the world's biggest litter box." Molly flipped the hot dogs over in the skillet. "Hadn't thought of that. Hope she uses discretion." "Discretion? You bet," he said fondly. "You gotta remember this is the Queen of the Cats we got ourselves." The cat hunched in close to Molly's thigh. Hank reached over, stroked Scooter's back. Her pupils narrowed as she studied the flames; she began meowing. He cut off small chunks of raw hot dog, put it on a paper plate. Scooter ate quickly, crouched over the plate as if the wind might snatch her dinner away, her tail lashing back and forth. While they finished eating, she groomed herself. But not as thoroughly as she did inside the house...or the car. He commented on this. They decided it was her version of roughing it. He smiled. "We're anthropomorphizing like crazy, you realize." "So?" she said. "Isn't that what pets are for? To get all sentimental over?" He didn't answer. He took handfuls of sand and put out the fire. "Why can't we let it just die down, be so pretty to watch," she argued. She was already in the sleeping bag and in a mood to watch embers glow, watch the first stars come out, listen to the moan of the surf. "Sack time," he said. "Always put your fires out at sack time. S.O.P. Standard operating procedure." He closed the flaps of the tent. The cat had followed him inside and crawled into the very bottom of the sleeping bag. Molly touched her; the fur was soft and warm against bare toes. Hank was taking off his jeans, his sneakers. She could sense the shape of his body against orange tent walls gone totally black now, sense it more than actually see it. A black shadow in a black shadow-box sealed up tight. Air-tight, you might say. "Know what? I've just about had it with S.O.P.," she said, teasing him, but she was tired of the drill instructor quality to his commands; camping across the country with him made her feel like a rookie recruit. It was just that Hank was so damn capable at everything. Even his patience when she did something dumb, inept, felt like a rebuke, as if he were dealing with a slightly retarded person. His good will when she was clumsy. The little aphorisms: "Better safe than sorry." Or: "No point in crying over spilt milk." "Once burned, twice shy." Or this latest quote: and she wondered how after ten months of marriage, he had become a stranger, more strange to her now, more alien in his maleness, his resolve, his withdrawals into pained silence, than anything she could have dreamed of a year ago. S.O.P. my foot, she thought; SOB’s more like it, and she let the tears slide out of the corner of her eye and then, as he wriggled in beside her, more tears came, and she could feel him stiffen, roll away from her, turn his back. And then she started crying harder so that the sleeping bag jiggled around her shoulders, and after a while he said, "Shit, I don't need this," and got dressed and went outside. In the morning they drank their coffee in silence. The sun came up at 5:30; they could hear gulls crying. The wind had shifted, an on-shore breeze now. Scooter was chasing fiddler crabs down to the lower part of the beach. Then she raced back to the tent to make sure they still sat there. Back down, this time to stalk a small bird, a sandpiper with bright yellow leggings. They watched the cat. She neutralized their hostility; it was safe watching her play. After a while she stopped, sat back on her haunches, and began to scratch, moving her head back and forth with quick jerks. Then she jumped up, flinched, and came streaking back up the dunes. She was meowing. And then they saw the flies. They were all over her, a cloud of them. There were places on her face and ears they could see blood. Big green horseflies. Hank got out the repellent, began spraying it over the cat, on them, on the walls of the tent. They dripped 6-12 all over their jeans; so much, the fabric was soaked. Scooter disappeared inside the tent, into the sleeping bag. But the flies bit so hard, they decided to escape into the ocean, not the tent—saltwater seemed the only place left to hide. They flung towels over themselves, ran fast down to the surf, through the breakwater, and dived deep into the water. They swam out to where it was over their heads. Looked back. It looked so peaceful back there, the tent up on the slope of the hill. Nothing but sand and sky and their car a blue dot way up by the beach grass on the crest of the big dune. "Why?" she asked him. "Where on earth did they come from?" "From the wild horses. Over on Chincoteague." "Will they go back?" "If the wind changes." "Look, Hank!" She pointed toward the shore. "I can't believe it," she said. Scooter was standing at the water's edge, her mouth opened, and they could almost imagine they could hear her crying. She sat down, stared at them, then in one smooth motion, she rose and started walking right into the surf. Molly grabbed him by the arm. "Cats can't swim, can they?" "This one sure can, by God." "She'll tire, she's only a kitten, she'll drown!" But by then Scooter was well launched, and swimming towards them, her head disappearing under a wave, then bobbing back up. They started towards her, she looked like a drowned rat at this point, her eyes bulging out of the wedge-shaped face, her mouth drawn back to show the sharp canines as she gulped for air. The ears pricked forward like triangular black sails in distress, poor darling kitty. They reached her, but he said, "Hold it…she'll scratch." He picked her up by the neck and she hung from his hand like something paralyzed. When they waded into shore, he put her down on the beach and she shook herself but then she began to wind in and around their feet, and they could hear her purring even over the noise of the breakers. They shut her up in the car, un-pegged the tent, rolled up all the gear. They worked fast. The horseflies got in their hair, they stung everywhere, and by the time they drove away, they had so much blood running down their arms and legs, she had to take a damp beach towel and blot the blood off. First him, then her. "What a disaster," she said finally. He wouldn't talk; it was because, she knew, he was disappointed. And he was angry. Whether at her or not, it didn't matter any more. They drove straight through to her family's house. The trip took eleven hours, and the whole time they hardly said more than a dozen sentences to each other. He was polite to her parents. He laughed at her father's jokes. He complimented her mother on the fried chicken, the coffee mousse. He teased her mother, he talked politics with her and baseball with her dad. He really enjoyed them, she could tell; he let his guard down with them. They made no demands was why; they required nothing of him emotionally. In bed, they slept far apart, and the cat had to go from one side of the bed to the other, alternating warm nests every couple hours. Hank stayed three days, then left for the new job while she stayed on for her college roommate's wedding—ostensibly to join him later. She didn't want to think about what might happen after next week; it was still too raw, the separation that existed now and turned them into smiling strangers, careful not to touch. He took the cat with him. He wanted companionship driving across the country. And anyhow, her mother hated cats and made no bones about it. Losing Scooter was what really hurt; learning how to love her, learning now to let her go. This was what growing up was all about, what was meant by maturity, and she wanted none of it. She wanted to go hide in the dark somewhere and cry forever. Instead, she had to dodge her mother's questions: "When will you be joining him?" "Where will you all be living in San Francisco?" The real questions she tried to blank out, the unspoken ones alternating with her mother's voice, the ones like: How do you get a divorce? What do I tell everybody? Where should I work, here or go back to Denver? Or what? She didn't let him into her mind. She blanked him out; a black shadow against the black tent, that was the way she pictured him. Then one night very late the phone rang. She answered it before it could wake her parents. It was Hank. He was calling from somewhere in Arizona, collect from a pay phone. He asked how she was, how her folks were. How the roommate's wedding was shaping up. Then there was nothing but the hum of telephone wires. When he spoke again, his voice sounded cracked and at first she thought it was a bad connection. He sounded as if he had bruised his windpipe. "I lost her, Molly," he said. "Who?" "Scooter." And then he began to make awful noises—as if something were clawing out of his throat, painful and raw. He said they had been camping in the desert, way north of Tucson somewhere. And Scooter loved the desert, loved scampering out of the car to stalk sand lizards. He spread the sleeping bag out on a ground tarp in the sand; she curled up at the bottom as usual. In the morning she was gone. He spent five hours driving up along the buttes, climbing down in the arroyos calling her. But he never found her. She was gone. Finally she said in a low voice, "Do you think she ran away or what?" "I don't know, honey. I tried. I mean she loved the desert the way she got used to the beach that time, she was happy." "Did something get her, eat her, I mean?" He didn't answer for a minute. "No," he said finally. "We've got to think she's just fine out there somewhere, hightailing over the dunes after some critter, some juicy lizard she just can't turn down." Then she began crying. "The worst part's...." she said, "I mean...I can't bear to think of her missing us. Of her trying to find us." He began talking right through that last part, "I know, I know ," he said as if he couldn't bear hearing her say what he felt. "I know you loved her, Mag, I loved her, too, I couldn't say it, I should've said it, I love you, Molly, I need you here, I love you, God, what was my problem anyhow? You—." She listened to him say the words. She cupped the phone close under her chin as if it were a face caressing hers, and she wondered as he kept on talking if love always came sheathed in pain, in loss, and how many times would this lesson have to be learned? Or maybe it was never learned? Maybe just glimpsed sideways, the same way you see a gray-gold paw come sliding around a curtain. And retracted claws start to hook out from feathery toes and what was seconds ago all velvet softness now cuts as swift and sharp as a razor blade. But what's remembered is the feel of soft velvet. Or a cat poised at the water's edge. But now was not the time to tell him. He knew it anyhow. He knew it long before she did. So she simply sat there, cradling the phone—and listened to him talk—and to the way his voice sounded. The words, she realized, didn't really matter.
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