by Cat Mann
Chapter 17
Dinner
“Baby? I’m home!”
Max giggled loudly from the back deck and then followed the laugh up with a pitchy squeal.
“Hey! We’re out here,” she called to me through the screen.
“Are you two ready to go?”
“Almost!”
“I’ll grab a quick shower and change and then we need to get going if we're going to make our reservation.”
“K!” she yelled and Max darted across the sun porch and down the deck steps with another happy laugh.
The walls in the house were bare and cold and I no longer left my shoes on the mat by the door. Slivers of glass were still cropping up here and there – shocking reminders of what had happened. The vast, open space felt lonely without Ava’s happy, glossy smile matted, framed and hanging every few feet. Our house looked as if new owners were still in the process of settling in and making memories of their own. Our bedroom had seen the worst of the mess. No more pictures of the two of us together knotted close and in love. Just the bed and its attendant chair and night tables remained. A piece of glass, long and sharp, glinted in the evening sunlight and I plucked it from the area rug and tossed it in the garbage can with a clatter.
The hot shower did little to relax me. Max and Ava’s voices carried up from the living room. They chirped in excitement and I could hear words like “soft,” “furry,” and “so cute.”
“Oh crap, an animal.” I slammed off the hot water faucet.
“Please, Mama? Puhlleeese?”
Oh, shit, an animal. And Max is begging to keep it.
“I dunno, Max. It’s up to Ari.”
“No, no, no, no, no!” I yelled frantically, grabbing a towel and wrapping it around my waist as I raced down the steps to put a stop to the bringing in of any stray pet.
“Ah! You let it in the house! Never let them in the house!” I skidded to a halt in front of Ava who had a tiny, black, fur ball of a kitten on a blanket in a laundry basket set in the living room. Max giggled and petted it over and over again. The mewing continued unabated.
“Ari?” She flashed me a hopeful smile.
“No guys. No, Max. No, Ava. No cats, no dogs. No.” My nose itched and tingled at the mere sight of the kitten.
“Daddy!” Max’s eyes immediately filled with great big wet tears.
“Ari!” Ava scolded me. “You don’t need to be a jerk!”
I softened, but only a little. “Max, Buddy, I’m sorry. We can’t keep him. Cats make Daddy sick -- like crazy-wanna-rip-my-eyeballs-out sick. Where did it come from? Take it back.”
“Max found him trapped under our deck. He rescued the poor kitty all by himself. It’s kind of sweet actually…”
“Ava, let’s get real; you don’t even like animals and I am seriously allergic to most of them. Especially cats. That animal cannot be in our house.”
Meanwhile, Max had taken the kitten from the basket and had it curled around his neck like a scarf.
“Ah! Max, no!” I heard myself shriek, sounding, even to myself, a lot like a girl terrified by a spider.
“You never told me you were allergic.”
“Deathly,” I assured her, indulging in a bit of overstatement.
“What was I supposed to do, Ari?” her teeth clamped around her bottom lip. “Max has already named it. He wants to call it Fluffy Kitty.”
“No! Not a name! Never name them!” My fingers raked through my dripping wet hair and I pulled at the ends with clenched fists. “Just tell me that you didn’t feed it. You didn’t give it any food, right?”
Ava shrank back and gave me a half frown, half smile. “He was hungry…”
“Ava! You cannot be serious right now! We have to go or we'll be late to the club and we cannot keep the cat for a second longer. If you feed them, they never leave,” I yelled, and at my words, her half smile turned to a full frown. “Max, Buddy, the kitty -- he can’t stay here. I'm sorry.”
I peeled the kitten from Max’s probably too tight grip before he could bond with it any more than he already had. Tiny, razor-sharp claws dug into my bare skin as the animal tried to scale my torso and nuzzle my neck. Itchy cat hair stuck and matted itself to my dampened skin. I threw open the back door and shut it behind me. From the kitchen window, the sound of Max doing his best wailing sliced through the air. I carried the cat down the path, away from our house, ripped its claws from my bloody flesh and dropped it discreetly behind a bush in the neighbor’s yard, hoping they would find it and take care of it.
“I cannot believe you just did that,” Ava said after I got back into the house. Her arms were crossed tightly over her chest and Max was still screaming. His face was blotchy red and wet from rolling tears. Then the sneezes started, with itchy nose and watery, inflamed eyes close behind.
“We need to never do that again,” I said, and sneezed. Max bellowed more loudly and called out for his “fluffy kitty.”
Feeling sorry and a bit like the jerk Ava had said I was, I bent down to Max’s level and tried to talk calmly with him, but Max kept screaming. I saw with my customary astuteness that talking rationally with a three year old after having just dumped his new best friend behind a bush was out of the question. I sneezed again and then again. Fur was everywhere and the closer I got to angry, the more I sneezed. The sneezing continued and got worse, my nose and eyes were raw from my constant rubbing. I took the laundry basket filled with kitty blankets and fur and tossed it out on the front lawn and then threw Max, with cat hair covering his clothes, over my shoulder and ran with him up the stairs, all while he continued to scream like wild. Throwing open the shower door, I hopped with him into a cool water spray, where I rinsed us both off, freeing our skin from dander and allergens. He screamed even harder. And even harder still when I dried him off and yanked on clean clothes.
“We are going to be late. Let’s go.” I hollered at Ava but she didn’t make a move towards the door. My hand wrapped around her elbow to lead her to the doorway. Then I sneezed and then sneezed again. “Did you touch it?” I sneezed again.
“Yeah…”
I sneezed again. “Go shower … now! Wash your hair, too! Hurry up.”
“We won’t have time for all that.”
“We have time if you do it now! Hurry.”
“Ugh!”
“Ugh my ass! This sucks! Cats suck!” I hollered at Ava as she walked slowly off to the shower. “Baby, hurry, please! We have to go!”
She tossed her long, wavy hair over her shoulder with the flick of her wrist.
“Max?” I sat beside him and sunk into the soft cushions.
“Grrrr.” He shoved his face into a throw pillow, muffling the angry noise.
“Max, sweet boy … I am sorry.” I rubbed his back and he dug his big toe into my leg and tried to push me away from him. Then, I really made him mad by tickling the bottom of his foot. He laughed despite his anger, then shoved his other big toe into my leg even harder and then made the angry growl again.
Not sure what to do or how to make him happy, I sat with Max and allowed him to thrust his toe into my leg, causing a small bruise for me and some slight satisfaction for him. Ava walked down the stairs in record time, clean and cat-hair free, but she had traded her pretty, navy eyelet dress and chic flats in for yoga pants, a ribbed tank top and bare feet. Her hair was soaking and still ratty with wild tangles. “What are you doing? We need to go now. Come on and change. Seriously, Ava!”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“But I made reservations.”
“Your assistant made reservations.”
“So? What difference does that make?”
“Ari, I am in no mood to go to that snooty Yacht club with you.”
“Why? Because of the cat? I am allergic, I can’t help it! C’mon.”
“No, not because of that silly cat.”
“Then why?”
“You are acting like a jerk and you never te
ll me anything. I had no idea you had allergies…”
“You’re kidding me right? I tell you everything!” My fingers ripped through my half-dry, uncombed, messy hair. “You’re the one keeping something, Ava. Let’s get real. You and I both know that whoever broke into our house and ripped our lives to pieces didn’t pick us out by accident. We know it was because of you… because of who you are. You are having nightmares and crying as if you have lost everything you love and you won’t tell me anything about what frightens you. You're having anxiety attacks again and you won’t tell me what the trigger is. Christ, you were at Phillips’ office for two hours! You know someone is after you. So just tell me already. Just come clean, get it out! Tell me what we have to do to keep us safe again. Whatever it is, I’ll do. Just please tell me. I hate it when you lie!”
A twinge of guilt scratched at the back of my mind with a distant flicker of my own frightening nightmares.
“I’m not lying!”
“There you go again. One lie after another. ”
“You think I’m lying? You’re the one keeping secrets, Ari.”
My stomach churned. “Stop it, Ava. Now.”
“No. I won’t stop. Tell me, Ari. Tell me who you are. I deserve to know.”
“Who I am does not matter. This is about you. Not me.” I felt dizzy.
She stared at me, defiantly and an overwhelming surge of panic coursed in my bloodstream.
My jaw tightened. I only stood there and stared back at her with feelings of growing anger, guilt and fear. Neither of us was going to talk. My eyes shot for the door and then back at her and I walked away. I could not, would not, have this talk. The who am I garbage that was supposed to define me. And so, I waved a lazy, asshole, see ya later wave in the air and left the two of them, Max with tears streaking his round, baby boy cheeks.
A coward, I slipped onto the beach and I walked up the shore, straight to Julia.