The Kitty Committee

by Kathryn Berla

  “Okay, let’s try something else,” Carly said. “Unless you guys just want me to talk about myself, which I’ll gladly do.” She popped another tiny ball of muffin into her open mouth. I remembered that mouth so well—the places it had been. The things it had said.

  “Why don’t you do that, Carly?” I invited. “We’d love to hear all about you.” Sarcasm had become my passive-aggressive weapon, but it was useless against Carly.

  “So why the psychology major?” she asked. “Trying to save the world, are we?”

  “It seemed like a good idea when I applied,” I said. “It’s something I’ve been interested in for a while.”

  Because of you, I wanted to say. To shout.

  “What are your plans after graduation?” Carly asked.

  Maggie’s legs were crossed one over the other. Her raised foot jiggled. She drummed the tabletop rhythmically with her fingertips whose nails had been bitten to below where a nail should naturally end. Carly stared right through her, waiting for my answer.

  “I haven’t thought that far ahead. Do some advanced studies maybe. Maybe do social work or private practice. I haven’t learned enough to figure out exactly what I want to focus on, but I’m sure I will by the time I graduate.” I glanced nervously at Maggie. She was like a whistling teapot in danger of boiling over.

  “That’s going to come sooner than you think,” said the girl who’d already planned the next twenty years of her life. “Also, I hope you realize there’s no money in it.”

  I went back to twisting the napkin I’d been holding since Nathan left. Just like that, my future seemed bleak and pointless. Money, which had never mattered to me before, suddenly seemed like the pinnacle of happiness.

  “I think it’s great, Grace. Really.” Maggie picked up her glass and took several small sips of water. But her words didn’t have the same impact as Carly’s. I knew Maggie would cheer me on no matter what, but it was always Carly’s judgment that affected me most.

  “Guess who I saw at a money manager internship interview last week in New York?” Carly said. She’d gotten the better of me and was now ready to pivot back to idle chatter.

  Maggie and I stared blankly.

  “Guess,” she repeated, a smile inching its way toward her dimpled cheeks.

  “I have no idea, Carly. Who did you see?” She had just unraveled my future in less than ten words. I was angry with her but even angrier at myself.

  “Someone you both know. Someone from the old days. Guess! You guys are no fun.”

  “Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer.”

  “You’re such a great wit, Grace. Truly.”

  “You said from the old days. Just trying to be fun, like you said.”

  Maggie laughed, and I was proud I’d brought back the smile to her face, no matter how fleeting.

  “Anyway, I saw Tim LeClerc. Remember him?”

  Timothy. My stomach clenched. All of it came rushing back. The herpes report. His naked shame. The rest of it.

  “Uh, yeah,” Maggie said. “Is he still at Harvard?”

  “Of course, silly girl. Where else would he be?”

  “What’s he like these days?” Maggie asked. “I hope he’s doing okay.”

  “He’s surprisingly not hideous. I guess the East Coast has been a positive influence for him.” As if just remembering, Carly picked up her now cool hot chocolate and downed the contents in a series of gulps. She set the empty mug down in front of her. “What’s wrong, Grace? Don’t you like your hot chocolate?”

  I picked up my cup and took a taste. It had grown cold but was rich and creamy. I drank half the cup, leaving a film of melted whipped cream on my upper lip. I wiped my mouth with the twisted napkin. Why did she have to bring up Timothy?

  “I meant what’s he like?” Maggie insisted. “Did you talk to him?”

  “Yes, we talked. I told him I was going to see you guys this week, and he said to say hi.”

  “Are you kidding me?” The irritation that had been simmering within me was now too much to contain. “Why would Timothy say hi to us?” I often thought that ninety percent of what came out of Carly’s mouth was nothing but lies, but I was normally reluctant to challenge her. Life was just easier that way.

  “You’re not going to believe it, but we were both interviewing for the same internship,” Carly said, ignoring my question.

  “Why wouldn’t we believe it? You two were always competing for the same things.”

  “No way he’s getting this one over me.” Maggie and I exchanged a look Carly couldn’t have missed. “You’ll see,” she added.

  “I should go,” Maggie said. “I shouldn’t be here.”

  Carly pushed a blueberry muffin across the table. It loomed large in Maggie’s space—a soldier reporting for duty. Maggie shrank back into her seat.

  “C’mon, Maggie. Eat it,” Carly said.

  Maggie extended a skeletal arm and pushed it away.

  “Eat it, Maggie. Enough with the game you’re playing.”

  With her head angled down, Maggie lifted her eyes to Carly. “You think this is a game?”

  “It’s all in your head. You can control it. Do you think you’re not getting enough attention or something? Okay, you’ve got my attention. You’ve got Grace’s attention. Now stop being so stupid and eat.”

  “Shut up, Carly!” I hissed.

  “No, you shut up! You’re just enabling her. Do you think you’re going to cure Maggie with what you’ve learned in Psychology 101? Please.”

  “No, you shut up!” I was fourteen again. “Do you have to ruin everything? Everyone? When are you going to be happy and stop? When’s it going to be enough?”

  I was embarrassed to realize I was crying. How had that happened? I wiped away the tears with the filthy twisted napkin. Maggie and Carly stared at me with open mouths. The geo-political literati in the corner table were no longer waving their hands in emotional gestures worthy of Tolstoy. Their animated discussion was no longer animated. They were looking right at us. Even the hissing espresso machine was still, the barista suspending his work to check out the table where three girls were at loggerheads, eyeing each other across the table with hateful, spiteful, daggerlike gazes. With tear-stained eyes. How loud had I been? I knew I’d never return to this place again.

  “Can you just take me back?” Maggie said. “I really don’t want to be here anymore.”

  “Sure.” Carly stood, pushing her chair with the back of her thighs so abruptly it tipped into the table behind us. “You have the muffin, Grace. Although you probably don’t need it.”

  We were all silent on the way back. I insisted on walking Maggie through the alley, so Carly came too. The door was locked. We went around to the front, and they buzzed Maggie in. She’d prepared a story about walking down the alley to the street for a smoke. We hoped the open door wasn’t discovered too soon after we left. A few hugs, a few promises to talk soon, and then she disappeared through the door, leaving Carly and me snarling at each other like two hyenas fighting over a carcass.

  “Best thing we could have done for her,” Carly said, making me both complicit and an ally in one stroke.

  “Is that why you snuck her out, because you thought you were going to cure her in thirty minutes over a cup of coffee by bullying her into eating?”

  “Hey, nobody’s bullying anybody. You have your ways, and I have mine. I’ve just never seen anyone get anything they really wanted by being coddled along the way.”

  “Coddled? That’s what you think it is? Maggie’s ill, Carly. This isn’t something she woke up and decided to do one day just to annoy you. Just because nothing else was going on in her life.”

  “Or is it? Isn’t this just an avoidance technique so she doesn’t have to grow up and face the real world? Has it ever occurred to you that if something was actually going on in her life sh
e wouldn’t be where she is? You might think about that yourself. Life’s a bitch, and if you’re not strong, everyone’s going to roll right over you.”

  “You’re right about one thing,” I said. “Life is a bitch.”

  And so are you, I thought. I remembered when we were kids in the movie theater, and one of the boys behind us called Carly a bitch. It seemed so wrong at the time. So crude. A pathetic attempt to match Carly’s power through the use of a disgusting word.

  “C’mon, I’ll give you a ride. Where’re you headed?” Her voice suddenly softened.

  “Nowhere. I’m going to walk, thanks anyway.”

  We’d stopped by her car. She looked at me with that direct and disarming gaze I remembered from the first time I laid eyes on her. “Hey, I’m sorry about saying that thing with the muffin—that you didn’t need it. You look great, really. I swear you do. I was just mad at the way you were undermining me with Maggie.”

  I looked away. I was a good two inches taller than her by then. I no longer looked up to her, at least in the literal sense.

  “No problem. I didn’t take it that way. I no longer strive to be unhealthily thin.”

  But I did take it that way. And it did hurt. Carly knew that.

  “So, this is bye-bye? I’m flying back in a few days, and I won’t be coming back to the city.”

  “This is bye-bye, then.”

  “I don’t want any more frantic calls if another letter comes, okay? Suck it up, I’m just saying. Be strong, Grace. I worry about you.”

  “Aren’t you ever curious about who’s sending those?” I asked. “You never even wonder?”

  “Nope.”

  “You’re crazy.” I tried to keep any hint of admiration out of my voice.

  “If I’m crazy, how do you know I didn’t send them?” Her smile was cold.

  I don’t, I thought. She wouldn’t, would she? What could possibly be in it for her?

  Carly leaned forward to give me a hug, but I froze in her arms.

  “Grace?” she called after me as I was walking away.

  I stopped mid-step and turned my head reluctantly. The fog was coming in, and I wanted to get lost in it. Postpone the time until I got home and had to face Nathan. I wanted it to swallow me up and spit me out on my first day at Indian Springs High. I would double-check my class schedule that day. I wouldn’t wander into the wrong classroom. I wouldn’t become ensnared in the seductive gaze of a green-eyed girl who would turn out to have brown eyes. Alice and I would have discovered poetry or riding bikes or going to the movies. We would never have gone to the community pool that day or any other day. Alice would have remained my friend throughout school, in spite of our gap in age. I would have graduated from high school, then joined Mom and Dad in Madagascar, assisting them in their good works, even if I couldn’t bring myself to help them spread the word of God.

  “What?” I said.

  “What happened to Bob . . . your kitty?”

  “I gave him to Luke when I moved to the city,” I said. “He’s happier there.”

  The grand argument I was prepared for never happened. Nathan didn’t say a word when he crept into our bedroom late that night, the sleeplessness of his work and studies revealing themselves in tiny crinkles around his eyes those days. Normally, he betrayed his presence one way or another when he came home after I’d already gone to bed. A dropped shoe, a soft cough—testing for my response. Most nights it was enough to wake me from sleep. We’d talk for a few minutes about our day, make love, and then drop off to sleep together. But that night, Nathan stole into the room like a cat burglar, silent, stealthy, without adding a single sound to the stillness of the night. That night I was already awake, my back turned against him. I was prepared to face what I suspected was coming. I wanted to get it over with.

  “Hi,” I said once he was under the covers. I rolled over to face him. “Busy day?”

  He didn’t reach for me the way he usually did, even when he was too tired to do anything but sling an arm around my shoulder and cuddle.

  “Yep,” he yawned. “Have fun with your friends?”

  “Yeah, oh . . . not really. Hey, sorry I didn’t invite you to sit with us. It wasn’t a lot of fun. Believe me, you wouldn’t have thought so.”

  “That’s fine,” he said. “I couldn’t have stayed anyway.”

  But I knew it wasn’t fine, although it would take me a while to have that confirmed.

  A month later, it was my turn. I came home from work, expecting to have the place to myself since Nathan was normally still at school at that hour. But when I walked through the door, I found him sitting on our sofa, an overly familiar distance away from an overly attractive female.

  “Grace, this is Alisa.” He smiled as warmly at me as if I was a visiting auntie. “We’re taking a break from the library to do a little studying at home. We won’t get in your way, will we?”

  Get in my way? They were in my way before I even opened the door and knew they were there. I grunted politely and walked to our bedroom, shutting the door behind me. About thirty minutes later, the murmuring between them, muffled by the closed door, ceased, and I heard our front door open and close. A few minutes later, Nathan came in with a mug of coffee in his hand.

  “Want some?” he asked. “I just made a fresh batch.”

  “No thanks.” I lay on the bed holding the same book I’d been holding since I came home. My eyes were foolishly scanning the same few sentences that I’d been scanning for the past thirty minutes. “Who’s Alisa?”

  “Someone from school. I’m sure I told you about her before.”

  “If you did, I’m sure you neglected to describe her in detail.”

  “And that’s supposed to mean what?”

  “You tell me.”

  I didn’t have to look up to know his face was changing in the way it did whenever he was mad at me. The slightly aggressive tilt of his head. His mouth agape. His eyes burning with indignation.

  “I don’t get what you’re driving at, Grace. Are you suggesting I’m cheating on you?”

  “I’m not suggesting anything. I just . . .”

  I was suggesting.

  “You just what?”

  “Nothing.” I stared at the book. My eyes stung from holding back tears.

  “Okay. Nothing. Great.” He turned to walk back to the living room, and I closed the book with a loud clap.

  I took my first real look at him since coming home. I checked for any telltale clues—a misbuttoned shirt, messy hair, sockless in our cold apartment. I saw nothing like that.

  “I just feel it was inappropriate,” I called out to his back. “I also feel like maybe you haven’t been totally honest with me. Maybe you’re holding back something.”

  Nathan pivoted slowly, the steaming mug held steady in his hand.

  “I’m holding back, Grace? Isn’t that your specialty? Carly. Maggie. I’m not supposed to ever come into contact with them? Did they even know about me before I walked in that day? Do they even really know about me now?” The color that rushed to his face highlighted the furrows between his brows, etching his features into a hostile mask.

  “That’s not the same,” I said. “They’re my friends. And Alisa’s a—how’s that even the same?” My voice trembled in preparation for battle—for the snappy comebacks I was usually better at than Nathan. At that moment, righteousness felt like it was on my side.

  “You tell me, Grace.” He seemed sad. Resigned. “You’ve met everyone in my family. All my friends. And I’ve met Luke.”

  I didn’t have a comeback for that. It’s true I could have pointed out that my parents were halfway across the world, but he already knew that. I didn’t want him to ask if I talked about him in the letters I sent regularly to Mom and Dad. I wouldn’t be able to lie to him and, even if I did, he’d know. I didn’t want to open up the su
bject of Carly again. So I said nothing.

  He left the room, and a few minutes later, he left our apartment. When he came back late that night we avoided speaking. I feigned sleep, and he made no sound to announce his arrival. He slept on the sofa.

  Over the next few days, we avoided each other as much as possible, and when we couldn’t, we were cordial but nothing more. He was sleeping in our bed again, but we slept back-to-back, as far away as possible without falling off the edge. By the end of the week, we were being kind to each other again, although more familial than anything else. It took us two weeks before we resumed our lovemaking, but it didn’t feel the same. I wasn’t sure whether something had changed in me or in Nathan, but something was different. He wasn’t my Nathan anymore, he was just Nathan. We became roommates with benefits.

  Was I capable of making anything in my life work out in a healthy way? Carly’s words stayed with me, reinforcing the notion that my education was a futile pursuit. School now felt like a selfish endeavor. If I’d been trying to save the world, like she suggested, at least I would have that. But I wasn’t, so I didn’t. My relationship with Nathan was a poorly written play in which we were nothing more than two actors walking across the stage and reciting our lines from memory. I felt nothing and began to question if I had ever really felt anything or if I had just been looking for a place to hide—a safe space. If I really loved Nathan, why didn’t I let him in? Why did I light a match to a long fuse I knew would eventually blow up and then do nothing to prevent it from happening?

  I spent weeks lashing out. At myself. At Nathan. At Carly. Of course, all of it was done without a word being spoken. All of it was done when I lay in bed at night staring at the wall. When I sat in the library at school, pen in hand but nothing on the paper. When I settled myself into the molded plastic seat of a streetcar, lurching from stop to stop.