Cat Pictures Please and Other Stories

by Naomi Kritzer

  But I’m a fraud. How was I supposed to make decisions for her? I barely knew her. I was only beginning to realize how little I knew about these people. I can’t do this.

  “Don’t be silly, Robert,” my mother said. “I don’t have anybody else.”

  “But I don’t know what you’d want.”

  “Use your common sense. If you wouldn’t want it for yourself, you can assume I wouldn’t want it, either.”

  “I’d want it all, Mom. I’d want every minute of life I could possibly have. If they could keep my body breathing, my blood pumping, I’d want it.”

  “No you wouldn’t,” she said. “Only if there were some hope of recovery.”

  “There’s always hope. Where there’s life, there’s hope. I bet I could find you a dozen stories of people who were supposed to be brain dead who went on to walk out of the hospital.”

  “If I’m not in there anymore, Robert, let me go.”

  “How am I even supposed to know that?”

  “You’ll know.”

  There was always the Banshee. I signed the paper. Better me than a stranger.

  *

  The infection kept Doreen in the hospital for weeks. Even after she seemed to have recovered they wouldn’t discharge her—her blood count was too low, they said. She wasn’t tolerating chemo well. Worse, the treatments didn’t seem to be working. The tumor wasn’t responding to the chemo and radiation the way it was supposed to.

  Maggie and I fell into a routine. I worked Wednesday through Saturday. Saturday nights, we drove together to Brainerd. Maggie stayed with me on Sunday, then drove back down Sunday night, since she had to work on Monday. I stayed until Tuesday evening, then took the bus back to Minneapolis.

  I had a lot of time to think on the bus, which wasn’t good. What I thought about most was my elder brother telling me I would regret following Maggie. I don’t regret following Maggie. I’ll never regret following Maggie. I just wish I’d chosen a healthier mother. Or told Maggie I was an orphan.

  One night the bus was late, and I thought about making a door to Minneapolis. What am I doing riding around on a bus like a mortal? I am Fey. I don’t need to do this.

  And then a darker echo of the thought. I am Fey. I don’t need to do any of this.

  I could go home. It was what we were supposed to do, after all. Woo the mortal maid, then leave her. Or lure her back to our own banquet hall. I would miss her, but I would get over her. Or so my brother would assure me. Time moved differently there. I’d settle back down at the feast, and before I knew it, it would be too late anyway. She would have moved on with her life, married a dentist, had three children . . .

  It began to rain.

  I didn’t want to leave Maggie. I didn’t want to leave Doreen, either. I don’t have anyone else, she had said.

  She’s not your mother, the dark echo whispered.

  Maybe not, but I’m her son.

  The bus arrived, finally, and I climbed on, feeling my exhaustion like a weight on my shoulders. Maybe next weekend I would go back with Maggie and get some extra rest.

  I didn’t, though. The next Saturday, when we arrived at the hospital, Doreen gave us her smile of gratitude and desperation, and I knew I’d stay until Tuesday, just like always.

  Doreen remained stubbornly optimistic for weeks. She endured the sickness and covered her bald head with soft cotton hats that Maggie crocheted for her. Her favorite was canary yellow with rainbow threads stitched through. She wore it so often, Maggie bought more of the yarn and made her two others.

  One evening, I went out to get sandwiches for us, and came back to hear my mother telling Maggie a funny story about my childhood. I’d colored with my crayons in a book, apparently, and then claimed the dog did it. “I remember blaming my sister for something like that when I was a child, but the poor boy had no brothers or sisters, so he tried to blame the dog. I’ve never met a dog who could hold a crayon, but apparently he thought it would be worth a try . . .”

  I could see it all, as she described it: the defaced book open in the middle of the kitchen; the spilled crayons; the guilt-stricken child. My mother glanced up when she heard me in the doorway, and gave me a fond smile.

  “What was the book he colored in?” Maggie asked.

  “You know, I can’t remember.”

  “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” I said, settling into the other visitor’s chair and handing Maggie a sandwich. “I think I thought it needed some illustrations.”

  “I took away your crayons for weeks after that,” my mother said, a bit nostalgically. “But you were a good boy, most of the time. Nearly always.” She glanced at Maggie.

  “You taught him well,” Maggie said, saluting her with a sandwich.

  *

  The night after the doctor suggested we call hospice, I sat with Doreen until long past midnight. When I thought she was asleep, I gathered up my coat as quietly as I could and started to leave.

  “I always knew,” she said, as I put my hand on the door.

  I turned back. In the darkness of the hospital room, a mortal wouldn’t have been able to see her face, but I met her eyes squarely, and she met mine. “Knew what?” I asked.

  “I knew. When you knocked on my door that day and greeted me as mother, you were a stranger. Your magic, or whatever it was, it worked on Bob. But I knew.” Her eyes glittered with tears. “We wanted a child. Years, we tried. Once I even got pregnant but I lost the baby a few weeks later . . . These days you read in the paper about drugs, fancy procedures, but back then we had nothing. My mother told me to relax, take a vacation . . . nothing worked. It almost killed me.” She let out a harsh sigh. “I would have adopted, but Bob wouldn’t hear of it. And to tell you the truth, I was afraid of adopting. I was afraid I wouldn’t love the baby as my own, and if I couldn’t be sure, maybe better not to. I know Bob wanted a child, but he didn’t feel the loss like I did. Or if he did, he didn’t let on.”

  I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out.

  “Then you came. And took us as your parents. Oh, Robert.” Tears trickled down her cheek. “I’m sorry. If I’d known what this would lead to, if I’d known the burden I’d become, I’d have closed the door.”

  I sat back down, my coat in my lap. “You know I could leave, Mom,” I said. “And I choose to stay. With you.” I squeezed her hand.

  “You’re a good son,” she whispered.

  A few minutes later, I thought she’d fallen asleep, but she stirred and spoke again. “I have something I want to give you. I can’t change the will—anyone could challenge it if I changed it now. But I can give you this before the cancer steals what’s left.” She tugged loose the heavy ring from her right hand. “This is for you, my only son. Give it to your Maggie when you’re ready to get married.”

  “I can’t—”

  “You can.” She closed my hand over it, and I felt the power in it burn against my palm. The ring stolen by Vikings. Ah. It came from Ireland, surely. “I always knew,” she said again. “This is for you.”

  *

  That was probably the last of the good days.

  I called hospice; Doreen wanted to die at home, so we moved her home. I worried it would only depress her with Bob gone, but even without Bob she took comfort from her house. Hospice nurses came for long spells during the day. I tried to stay with her the rest of the time. Sometimes Maggie gave me breaks.

  I wore the ring on a leather cord under my shirt. I couldn’t think about marrying anybody right now; it was too hard to think about anything but Doreen’s next dose of morphine, the next visit from the hospice nurse, Maggie’s next trip to Brainerd.

  One night about two weeks after the night in the hospital, Maggie and I sat in the living room of my mother’s house. Maggie sat by the reading light, knitting a two-headed stuffed bunny with a red fringe around its wrists and ankles, and a little heart on its chest. We could hear the tick of the mantel clock. I had thought Doreen was sleeping, but from her bedroom, I heard her moan
. I stood up and looked in on her. She seemed to be sleeping again, so I went back to the living room and sat down.

  In one of those strange tricks of light and shadow, for a moment Maggie looked old. Then she shifted in her seat, and was twenty-three again. She twisted her knitting around to look at it, flicked back over the pattern, and picked out a few stitches. She glanced up at me, gave me a sweet, tired smile, then started knitting again.

  She would be old, someday, like my mother. I would never be old. But Maggie would.

  *

  There is no time in the faerie hill. Mortals think they’ve spent a night there, and go home a hundred years later, but to us, it’s like a party that never ends. No cares and no pain. Nothing that matters.

  I wanted you. All of you. I wanted to share your mortality.

  The night Doreen died was when I knew what that meant.

  *

  I was sitting with Doreen when she died. She had been truly failing for several days: not speaking, not opening her eyes. Her breath had slowed and become more shallow, and for a full twelve hours I didn’t leave her, thinking that every breath would be her last. She didn’t want to be alone when she died. Maggie brought me sandwiches and coffee, and I sat by her bed.

  The room was very quiet when she was gone.

  Mortals tell stories about Death coming with a scythe to take their soul; they tell stories about angels escorting them home, and tunnels of light. When Doreen died, I saw nothing but her cluttered bedroom, and heard nothing but the silence after her breathing stopped.

  I stood up and stretched. It was four in the morning. I stepped out of her bedroom. Maggie was sleeping in a chair in the living room, curled up, her knitting in her lap. I put my hand out to wake her, then thought the better of it. I wanted to take a walk.

  I thought about Doreen, walking along in the cold wind near the river, and felt a dark emptiness, and a faint guilty relief that the bedside vigil was over. And a less-guilty relief that her pain had ended.

  Nothing but grief, my brother had said when he warned me to turn away from Maggie.

  Maggie was young. We had years yet—probably. But someday she’d be old, and I wouldn’t. She would be sick, and I wouldn’t. I would have to go through this again—the hospital, the uncertainty, the suffering, the loss. I would have to go through it with Maggie.

  I pulled out Doreen’s ring and looked at its yellow gleam under the streetlight. If I marry Maggie, if I really do it, I have to stay. I can’t promise her my loyalty and then run away like Bob. If I’m going to do that, better to leave now.

  I thought about Maggie’s death. Would it be cancer for her, too? Or the dark theft of her mind from dementia? Or something quick, like a heart attack, with neither lingering pain nor time for goodbyes? Maybe it would be a car accident at twenty-five. Whatever it was, I’d have to be there for it. I’d have to sit with her, moisten her lips with a swab when she couldn’t swallow, hold her hand. Bury her body. Say goodbye.

  It was the price I would pay for loving a mortal.

  I unknotted the leather cord and slipped the ring into my pocket. Then I turned back towards my mother’s house.

  *

  I take you, Margaret. As Gaidion, my true name, I take you; I vow to you with the vow I cannot break.

  With this ring, I pledge myself.

  If you will have me, I will live with you for the whole of your mortal life. I will love you. I will stay with you. And someday, I will bury you. Because I love you. And I will pay the price without regret.

  SCRAP DRAGON

  nce upon a time, there was a princess.

  Does she have to be a princess? Couldn’t she be the daughter of a merchant, or a scholar, or an accountant?

  An accountant? What would an accountant be doing in a pastoral fantasy setting?

  The people there have money, don’t they? So they’d also have taxes and bills and profit-and-loss statements. But he could be a butcher or baker or candle-stick-maker, so long as he’s not a king.

  No, I suppose an accountant might work. Very well. Once upon a time, there was a young woman—the daughter of an accountant—who had two older sisters. The oldest of these young women was clever, the middle was strong, and the youngest was kind.

  What if she wanted to be the strong one? The youngest, I mean. And what if the oldest wanted to be the nice one? It’s not fair.

  I didn’t say the youngest wasn’t strong or that the oldest wasn’t kind. But everyone knew that it was the middle daughter who was the strongest, and the youngest who was the sweetest and most innocent.

  Maybe they just thought she was sweet and innocent.

  Maybe. They lived in a palace—or rather, in a large and comfortable house, and if they were princesses I could give the youngest one a fabulous bedroom with a drawbridge—

  She can have a drawbridge anyway. Maybe her parents built it for her just because it was cool.

  Okay. But the important thing is that, because she was so kindhearted, animals trusted her. They would seek her out, and when she found one in need, she would try to help it.

  That would be really inconvenient.

  Being trusted by animals?

  Well, if they’d seek you out. I mean, you’re out for a walk and a stray cat comes up to you and won’t go away—

  Maybe it’s a really nice cat.

  Or maybe it’s a cat that will yowl at four in the morning every day and wake you up.

  But the animals trusting her is supposed to show you what she’s like inside. She’s not just nice on the surface; she’s a good person.

  Well, I like animals better than princesses. She can have animals following her around, that’s okay.

  One day, word came to their city that a grave threat faced them. The city was near an extinct volcano—or rather, a volcano that had been thought extinct. But a powerful and evil sorcerer had raised the spirits of the volcano, and it was now threatening to erupt. If the sorcerer continued prodding the volcano with his malicious magic, the volcano would spew forth fire and lava and the city would be utterly destroyed.

  Volcanoes erupt because of tectonic forces, not spirits.

  This was a magical volcano.

  Look, if the sorcerer could manipulate tectonic forces, why would he bother threatening the city with an eruption? He could wipe them out just as well with an earthquake.

  Fine. It wasn’t a sorcerer with a volcano. It was a dragon, a vast and powerful dragon that could breathe fire and took up residence in the crater of an extinct nearby volcano but threatened, if not supplicated with gifts of gold and treasure, to burn the city to ash.

  But I like dragons. Dragons are cool.

  Well, so? I like the French and France is cool but that doesn’t mean I like Jean-Marie Le Pen. French people aren’t all good or all bad and neither are dragons.

  Okay. I guess that’s fair.

  So, the city was under threat by the evil dragon, and if you’d let me make this person a princess she would have a reason for feeling personally responsible for saving her city. But she’s not a princess. So I suppose the King—

  Couldn’t they live in a democracy? Even an Athenian democracy is better than a King.

  —the Council of Democratically-Elected Representatives of the People offered a reward to anyone who could defeat the dragon. But more than that, they begged for all those who were brave or strong or clever to do what they could to save the city. If it had been a King, he could also have offered the hand of one of his children in marriage, but you can hardly marry the son or daughter of a Council of Representatives so let’s just say they pointed out that anyone who succeeded in saving the city would be a very hot romantic commodity indeed.

  Arranged marriages are kind of creepy. But marrying someone who was only interested in you because you’d defeated a dragon also seems kind of creepy.

  No one’s going to have to marry anyone they don’t want to marry. Anyway, the eldest tried first. She set out to learn all she could about dragons—first
at the library nearby, then, when she had exhausted its resources, to a larger city some days’ journey away. She sent home letters when she could, sharing everything she’d learned, but it was a vast library and she thought it would be years before she’d learned everything there was to know.

  So the second sister decided to set out to confront the dragon directly.

  And she never returned.

  What do you mean she never returned?

  I mean that she died on her journey. There were people who said that the dragon had eaten her—

  But I don’t want her to be dead. It’s not fair.

  No, it isn’t. Death isn’t ever fair.

  But I liked her!

  Yes.

  The people I like aren’t supposed to die.

  No.

  So can she just be sleeping, if you need to take her out of the story?

  No. She died, and so the youngest—

  I don’t think I want the youngest to try to defeat the dragon. She might get eaten, too.

  But she’s the city’s only hope.

  I don’t care. I want her to stay home where she’s safe.

  That’s what her parents said. “We’ve lost one daughter already. Let someone else lose a daughter next time.”

  And she’s the nice one.

  Yes.

  How is she supposed to defeat a dragon by being nice?

  Other people said that, too, sometimes even where she could hear them. So the youngest daughter—whose name was Heather—decided that for now, she would stay home.

  Heather had a book of blank pages, and she took all the letters her family had gotten from her eldest sister, with the diagrams of dragons and ancient philosophy regarding dragons and information about their nesting habits and lairs and so on, and began to organize it. Because, she thought, even if she could not herself defeat the dragon, perhaps she could provide a useful set of information to someone else.

  But sometimes she would flip the book over, and from the back, she began creating a book about her sister, the one who had died. She had pictures that she had drawn, but she put in all sorts of things that made her think of her sister. There was a scrap of cloth from her sister’s favorite dress, and a flower she’d pressed, and when Heather found a poem her sister had written she copied it out in the book. The funny thing was, her sister had loved dragons.