Page 22 of Kitten

“You’re being childish, can I say that? If I’ve done something wrong, tell me. I can fix it.”

“There’s nothing you can do.”

“If that’s your attitude.”

I hadn’t expected for him to call me out and it felt terrible, completely foreign. I wanted to yank open the door and just start running, but I wouldn’t know where to go. Instead, I went upstairs. James didn’t follow.

In the bedroom, Silver lay in the fetal position at the foot of the bed. Seeing me, she sat up. I could tell from her pitying expression that she’d heard everything. I curled up next to her. Her eyes were soft: she felt sorry for me. I let myself cry, knowing that I was acting selfish and strange, but feeling gravely maligned all the same. I wondered if Silver everfelt like running away, whether she knew the difference between this room and the world. But, of course, she didn’t need to know. She belonged everywhere and knew nothing and every day, someone would kneel and feed her.

Silver put her nose to mine, sniffed, and then opened her mouth, licking at the snot that had crawled down my lip. Her tongue was cold and grooved, like the rim of a coin. I imagined that each lick scrubbed off bits of my pores and features, my face slowly becoming unidentifiable, smooth. That calmed me.

I met her eyes. She blinked. Dots of gunk sat gathered in the inner corners. I’d read about how obsessively cats liked to clean themselves; her eyes were the one place she couldn’t lick but needed to most. I experienced a rush of protectiveness for her and reached for her face. She flinched.

“Calm down, I won’t hurt you,” I said in a hushed voice. I licked my thumb and rubbed it gently over her eyes. She accepted this. Then she dipped her head toward mine and began to lick my eyes, too, the outer corners and the bags, where my tears trickled. We kept on in the dark until my eyes were dry and hers were clean.

7

My lack of a generous instinct had always troubled me. My mother said I was born with clenched fists, as if I took something from her.

Other children could sense it in me, this absence of goodwill. Every day after school, they’d gather on the top of the building steps, trading objects, while I sat at the bottom and waited for my mother. I couldn’t understand how casually they parted from their things, some of them truly glorious: a scented gel pen, a key chain from another state. I’d count my fingers until the scratched nose of my mother’s gray Mazda pulled up in front of me. Each time I saw her behind the window, I had to press my lips together to keep from smiling. Back then, my mother was often the only person I talked to. I didn’t like talking to anyone else.

I cherished these car rides home. My mother let me sit in the passenger seat and hang my arm out the window. Her hands seemed to touch everything but the wheel, tousling her hair and pinching my cheek and beating the air to the rhythm of her speech. Those were the good moods in which she’d swear to quit the lab, or get us painting lessons, or buyme that nice dress she liked because I was special, I was a very nice girl, and never mind what the other kids thought because I wasn’t meant to be understood by everybody, she understood me, never mind the fact they didn’t look like me, she looked like me, didn’t she, and if I moved to turn the music down she’d only crank it up louder.

In bad moods, she was quiet and belittling. She’d clasp her hand over mine and ask if they were wrinkled, to which I’d say no, the other mothers’ hands are like paper bags compared to yours. She’d fiddle with the rearview mirror, angling it to reflect her forehead, craning to squint at her cheek, its invisible new moles. Sometimes she’d turn it to me, say, look at yourself, you’re so little, aren’t you, look at your skin, we don’t have the same nose at all, don’t we, you’re lucky, you’re lucky to be so young, she said, because it won’t be that way forever.

Even though it was said in passing, being young again, I understood, was my mother’s most honest desire. The idea of it happening began to disturb me. I worried that nobody would pick me up from school again. I worried that the lab would close. And I worried that if we went to school together, she would not talk to me.

Later, I realized how crucial these car rides were for our relationship. By the time I got my driver’s license, she’d stopped painting, stopped eating. The devoted hush of the library became more welcoming than the stagnant silence of home, and eventually we went days without speaking, my school day and her lab schedule tacitly arranged around the other.

My guidance counselor told me my mother’s neuroseshad nothing to do with me, but I knew we’d be closer if only she could pick me up from school again. “She was happy once,” I said. “And now she’s not.” To which my counselor said, “You can’t prioritize her happiness over your own.” I didn’t know how to explain that they were the same, or they would be eventually. My mother bore her unhappiness with the resigned seriousness of a messenger delivering a warning: this is what happens when you grow up.

“Put it this way,” my counselor said. “If you had a child, would you blame it for becoming a teenager?” I said no, knowing it was the right answer. But she’d made things worse by voicing my fear: even if it didn’t make sense, I was to blame. I took something from my mother by being born, both her youth and her future, and every day it became harder to give it back.

—

Silver lay on my chestwith her limbs splayed out like a fur rug. James was still asleep. I tried to pace my breathing to match Silver’s, but I quickly ran out of breath. At the stutter of my inhale, her eyes blinked open. She yawned, her sharp teeth flashing in the dark of the room, and I let go of a sneeze I’d been holding in. James’s hand reached toward me. I let it find Silver instead, let him tousle her fur as if it were my hair.

“Good morning!” I felt abnormally awake. I didn’t remember falling asleep last night, but it must’ve happened when Silver and I were soothing each other. TheMamma Mia!incident felt like a distant dream, experienced by an outdated, more selfish version of me.

“Oh my God, Katie, your eye,” James said.

“Is it worse?”

“It’s totally healed.” He switched on the bedside lamp. The light was harsh. “That’s incredible. A miracle.”

I caught my reflection in Silver’s pupil: my eye was perfectly white. She blinked. I felt a small rush. So it was true, spit was the only antibiotic you needed.

“And it’s a Wednesday,” said James. “Apple turnover day.” Apple turnovers were James’s favorite pastry. On our second date, he spent ten minutes dissecting the perfect ratio of flake to filling. The best ones, he’d said, were from the local pastry shop in his childhood home, which only sold them on Wednesdays.

“What if I go and buy you the turnovers for breakfast, while you stay in bed?” I was impressed by the stroke of generosity that appeared in my head, like it had been dispatched by a considerate God.

“You sure?” James looked hesitant. “You have enough—you know where to go?”

“Just off Main Street, right? That little green shop? You’ve been so good to me all week. I feel like I’ve been leeching off you.”

“Don’t say that, you’re not a leech.”

“Lou says it’s one of my core personality traits.” She was three lychee martinis in and claimed it was a joke, but still.