by Olivia Clare
“Do you want sausage?” I said. “Do you eat sausage? Organic sausage?”
“Oh, sure,” he said, thumbing and scrolling on his smartphone. “You’re a lamb.”
“I’m a what?”
“You know.” He looked down at his phone.
“You heard him,” Shannon mouthed to me, amused. “A lamb.”
Cullen licked his knife to the top and then knifed out more grape jam from the jar. I stopped myself from scolding, which I wouldn’t know how to do. That would be his jar he used, only him. He scraped jam on a pancake and then licked the knife blade from bottom to tip.
“You know,” he said, “that cat you’ve got in there’s a real winner. She’s a beaut.”
“Cat we’ve got in where?” I said.
“In my room,” he said, looking up. “At first she didn’t like me. She was pacing around, so I called her a scaredy-you-know-what. Finally I got her to snuggle under the covers, around midnight.”
“We don’t have a cat,” said Shannon.
“No?” said Cullen.
“No!” I said. “No cat. What are you talking about? Did you have the window open? Did a cat get in the house?”
I didn’t wait and ran up to my Asking place. Clothes heaped on the bed and floor, Cullen’s shirts, socks, boxers, cashmeres, and plaids. I looked into piles, under piles, the bed, the quilts and covers, in the closet, no cat. Baby, I thought, where’s the cat? There were Cullen’s things on the bedside table, magazines for car racing and video games, crossword puzzle books, and a thick, checked black book with a red elastic cord around it. Girls’ numbers or some lines of poetry. O Diary, I’m a naughty boy.
“There’s no cat up there,” I said, coming downstairs. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Shannon blew his nose into his napkin, stalling. Then he said, “We don’t own a cat. You must’ve had a dream. We’re good at interpreting dreams if you want to tell us.” It wasn’t true. This was how Shannon tried to right it all.
“No?” said Cullen. “Well, she probably got out.”
“Did you have the window open?” I said.
“Oh, no. It’s been shut this whole time,” said Cullen. “Who the Christ knows where the little lady went? She’ll pop up later.”
Shannon-the-Gentle kissed me a swift goodbye and said, twice, he loved me. He always said it twice in our fourteen years together, and that was how I knew he meant it. I put on a coat and sat in our yard, absorbing straight sun in a particular spot, watching a mound of decolonizing ants. What little mess and wild I could find in weeds and thorns. I toed the grass, looked up for cloud colors of near rain. No frog or bird here, no hopping thing. It was April and cold. Sun righted me. My family’s company made ovens. Shannon said maybe that’s why I liked the sun. How I could sit there for so long. My mother had been that way. My sister, too. We could take it. Late in the day it did rain.
The next morning, Shannon made apple batter toast with eggs. Cullen stuck his knife in the middle of the butter block, then licked the knife, then knifed the butter in mid-block again. It was his butter, I told myself, I wouldn’t touch it. His to put his mouth on if you please. If I’d been younger and met him at a party, my sister and I would have called him a brute.
“How’d it go?” I said. “At the interview?”
“Oh, that,” said Cullen. He had on a striped shirt almost identical to yesterday’s. Someone had taught him. “The same runaround. Like I’m an imbecile. Not what we’re looking for now, but we’ll get back to you. That stuff.”
“Well,” I said. “I’m sure you were a lamb.”
“Well,” said Cullen, licking his goddamn knife, thinking, deciding I’d said a good thing, “I suppose I was.”
I looked at Shannon. That morning I’d woken from a dream he’d gotten younger and hated the sight of me. He’d shrunk to the age of a toddler. I kissed him on the mouth and he placed his hands on my eyes and spit on me. It was the kind of dream I didn’t tell. Shannon asked after Cullen’s mother, whom Shannon had once idolized, but Cullen’s father had won the race. Cullen shrugged and looked into his phone, a hunched creature over it, indifferent to the place.
I’d almost gotten away, about to go in my spot of sun before they could leave the table, when Cullen said, “She slept with me last night. Under the covers, again. Hey,” he said to me. “What’s her name?”
I sat back down. Shannon-Dear had told me if this happened, not to let anything show. Cullen was strange and tragic and a bit undone, but fine. We’d decided.
“Now, Cullen,” said Shannon. “If you see a cat in your room, that’s very odd. Because we don’t own a cat. There is no cat in this house. This whole house.” Shannon looked around the room to suggest the entirety of the house. “We would know. We live here.”
“Well, she thinks she lives here,” said Cullen. “She trots around the room like she does. And she doesn’t have a name?”
“Are you listening, Cullen?” Shannon folded his hands in front of him with the calm of a sphinx. He was a lawyer for a national bank and had a way of explaining. “I swear to you. Listen here. There is no cat.”
“The trouble is,” said Cullen, “I never know what to call her.”
They left. I went, not to my sun, that righted and clarified, but to my Asking room. I put out a foot when I opened the door, in case a cat should run out. In sunlight, on the bedside table, an empty soda can, a plastic mouth guard pitted with brown. Under the bed, in the closet, on the shelf of the closet, in a bramble of wool and tweed and ties, inside the drawers of the bedside table, between the bed and the wall, between the bedside table and the wall, beneath the chair, between the slipcover and the chair, within the sheets, no cat. There were his crossword puzzles, that thick black checked book with the cord around it; I couldn’t stop. I slid the cord off. I opened the book. Five blank pages at the beginning, the silence of a dummy-dumb dolt. I closed it without looking at the rest.
Baby, I said aloud. Let me be happy. Just let me.
And, Baby, let Shannon be happy.
And, Baby, I said, before closing the door, if there’s a cat in here. You show me.
I waited four seconds. I counted in my head. Shut the door. Baby, I said to myself. Let me.
Shannon phoned Cullen’s parents and talked to the mother. He thrummed his top lip while he listened as if tapping out a message. Patient. He’d been a Boy Scout. “Cullen’s fine,” said Shannon. “Oh, yes, we expect big things for him, too. Margaret and I—yes—Margaret and I, we’re so happy for you all.”
“Just so you know, your son’s a punk,” I said over Shannon’s shoulder but so Mother-Lamb wouldn’t hear.
“She’s getting fat,” said Cullen. “She starts messing the covers up, and I can’t take it. Damn cat!” He took pleasure in damn cat.
I’d made him get his own cereal and spoon and told him it was his spoon, only his. Let him lick.
“I have a name for her now,” he said. “It’s Olivia. Is that all right with everyone?” He looked at Shannon and me, as if he were beginning a board meeting. He’d chosen a sugary cereal my sister had bought with her children on their last visit. “Because, really, this is something we can decide together. I understand if you don’t like it. I don’t know if I like it,” he said. “A lot of cats are named Olivia.”
“What interviews do you have today?” said Shannon-the-Calm, Shannon-the-You-Must-Stop, unfolding the newspaper, because we believed in the importance of paper newspapers. We read the paper every morning with such contentment.
“Oh, it’s at Delacroix, Lee, and Pinkle, or something like that.”
“Your parents are very proud of you,” said Shannon.
But Cullen was taken in by his phone, scrolling, tapping, his tongue to one side, a dark pink slug come out of his mouth, planted just above and right of the lip.
“One
thing, though,” said Cullen, looking up to Shannon from his phone, gesturing with his phone-scrolling finger. “I did want to mention. Olivia’s been leaving little turds on the floor. I’ve been handling them with a tissue and hurling them out the window, but it can be a real fucking mess. They’re soft turds,” he said. “I’m getting worried about her. You think she’s all right?”
“I appreciate that,” I said.
Shannon and Cullen looked at me.
“Pardon?” said Cullen.
“I really appreciate you taking care of Olivia that way,” I said. His canary hair was an avian wonder. Surely it had been dyed.
“I mean it,” I said. “We’ve just left her in there, and sometimes I feel so terrible about it. I’m sure she needs you,” I said. “I’m sure she can’t wait for you to get home. I’m sure she can’t wait to get under the covers.”
Shannon balanced his spoon on top of his grapefruit and looked at me and brought his hands together. I worried him with my reactions. He was my lookout. We’d agreed we’d be calm. I was calm as calm as calm.
“Yeah,” said Cullen, bewildered. “I’m sure.”
That night he came into the living room in his velvet bathrobe tied in a true bow at his fragile waist, white cream dotting his cheeks.
“What is it?” said Shannon. We’d been watching TV.
“She’s not doing so well,” said Cullen.
“Oh, Jesus,” I said, putting down my glass of wine.
“Olivia doesn’t seem very happy,” he said. “I just wanted to inform you.”
“Thanks, Cullen,” said Shannon. “Thank you for that.”
He was like a child standing there, wanting more.
“You go to sleep,” I said. “Olivia doesn’t need you worrying about her.”
“Yes,” Cullen said. “I’ll be going to bed now. Early interview.”
Shannon saluted him.
“He doesn’t stop,” I said, when Cullen was upstairs.
Later I was woken by noises at the door. Something tapped down the hall. A muted door opening, shutting. Shannon snored beside me. I’d forgotten and remembered the existence of our houseguest all in one moment. I couldn’t sleep if I thought about Cullen. I soothed myself, told myself Shannon and I were alone, or as near to being alone as we could be, the thought putting me to sleep again.
“Well,” said Cullen, his head down, no phone in his hand this morning. He had on an oxford blue shirt cuffed sharply. “I’m afraid I’ve some very bad news.”
“Oh, swell,” I said, putting pancakes on my plate.
“About Olivia,” said Cullen. “Olivia passed away last night.”
“She died?” I said.
“Yes.” He was matter-of fact, not looking at anything but his third shirt button.
“Where is she?” said Shannon.
“Well,” said Cullen. “Well. I buried her.”
Shannon set down his newspaper.
“You what?” said Shannon.
“I buried her, sir.” It was the first time Cullen had called Shannon that. Cullen looked at me. “I buried her in the yard where I saw you sitting once, Mrs. Vaughn. I thought maybe you liked that place.”
Shannon folded his newspaper in careful fours. Within it were much more terrible things in the world. “You little shit,” said Shannon.
“Sir?” said Cullen, backing up.
“Don’t call me that, you little fuck,” said Shannon.
“Jesus Christ, Shannon!” I said.
His face was red, his jaw shaking to summon or shake the Earth. I’d never seen him that way. Never this rage. Addled by coffee, his eyelids flicked and pulsed. He rose. I rose.
“If you talk about that cat one more time—”
“Shannon, stop it! She’s dead,” I said. “It’s over. The cat’s dead.”
“If you talk about that cat one more time.” Shannon picked up the fork I’d set by his plate and pointed it in the air. “I’m going to take this fork and stick it up your rear,” he said. His hair was caked to his forehead except for a lock in the back, vertical as a gray antenna. His face ready to burst.
“Well,” said Cullen, looking at me, I believe, about to cry. “Well,” he said. “Well.”
I ran upstairs. I couldn’t watch a word. The Asking room was neat, clothes packed and leveled in his suitcase on the bed. His crossword puzzles and black checked book on the top. His shoes on the floor. Baby, let us be happy.
Let me be happy.
Let Shannon be happy.
I looked out the window to my spot in the sun where Cullen must have seen me, where he buried the cat, he said. And let her be happy.
Let Olivia be happy. Please, Baby, let her.
Quiet! Quiet!
The daylight had stalled, as it does for children. We lay on our backs in the grass. You were counting—twenty-four thousand grass blades, you said—when the wind came, and your shirt was a sail. I’d be twelve, and you ten, by October. When I looked toward the Atchafalaya and away from you, I played a game I’d win if I held my eyes open to the sun while I said your name, and then my name. My shirt was a sail.
Melanie slept between us, straight as a snake sunning itself, her eyelids quivering. That summer she was eleven. I put some dirt in her hand.
“Stop it,” you said.
“But she’s dead,” I said. “See?”
You had your ear to her chest. I remember her green-checked dress, your hand on her stomach.
“She’ll wake up,” I said. “Wake up!”
You said you didn’t hear a thing, with your ear on the place her heart was, and I told you her blood had stopped, because girls don’t like blood.
“Kiss me,” said Melanie, with closed eyes. “Then I’ll wake up and I’ll kiss you.”
“Who?” you said.
“Both of you!”
Instead I ran to the twisted tree half-dead from fire or rot and counted to a number I can’t remember. Among leaves on the ground, I found a pair of lensless glasses with black, square rims, and when I came back I was wearing them.
“Look!” I said. “Who am I?”
But you were looking at two boys across the river doing cartwheels in a line in a windmill rhythm. You knelt, hands on your knees. If I had been your brother, I’d have looked like your mother, from St. Landry Parish, who had lines around her eyes as intricate as a Dürer woodcut, and who said she’d been too pretty too young too often. I would have been handsome. And I would have asked you, What is it you need?
Where are you? Not in the grass near the Atchafalaya where everyone looked. Where didn’t I look? Where you are.
The boys across the river started another windmill line of cartwheels.
Melanie sat up. She was taller than both of us. “I see their peckers,” she said.
“You’re an asshole,” I said. “An ass-lip.”
“Please don’t call her that,” you said.
Melanie said to me, You’re a stupid boy. She told me my fly was unzipped, and I checked and it wasn’t. She had looked not at my fly but at my eyes. I saw you check your fly. She said she’d put pepper on us, pepper all over both our peckers.
From the road a man came with his thigh-high dog, headed toward the river. The man held a hat; the dog ate flowers and pushed its nose in the dirt. We had a game—I made my hands a cup, and you’d pour in dirt, and I’d unlace my hands until the dirt poured out a small hole at the bottom. The game was called Hourglass.
The man with the dog sat on a cleared patch of ground, and the dog ate flowers, and I got up and sat on the side of you nearest the dog, and the man talked to the dog and said hello to us, and we, not being the kind of children who’d been brought up to be more civil than necessary, said nothing. Wolf in the grass—a dog and a man with a hat in his lap—and I told you, He will go away soon, and you said,
I know.
Melanie took a crushed pack of gum from her pocket. She put a piece in her mouth and swallowed.
“Give me a gum?” you said. And she did, so sweetly; she wanted you as hers. You were small, someone we could all agree on, vulnerable and somber. The kind of child my parents liked, in a way that made me envious, without resenting you.
The man was there, staring at nothing, his dirt-nose dog making tracks in the dirt in circles. Later I would tell the police and parents I thought it was the man who sold January fireworks, and then I took that back, because I was bad at remembering strangers’ faces and their dogs, and then later, I said it was that man again. The adults didn’t like this. Some of them stopped being kind to me. You should never try to unsay anything.
You wiped snot from your nose with the back of your hand and ran to the river.
“He’s a baby,” Melanie said, taking out a little tube of something pink to put on her lips. “What a baby-baby-baby. Oh, baby-baby-baby.”
She watched me watch you.
“He could be our baby,” she said.
“He’s got brown hair,” I said. “He looks like me, not you.”
“He still could be. Baby-baby-baby.”
You were taking off your shoes to shake out the sand at the river. They were cracked, with muddied soles, though your father made money.
“Want to pretend he’s our baby?” She laughed. “Maybe he’s like our little soft smelly baby-baby, huh?”
“Quit!” I said. I blew in her face and ran to the river. The man with the dog glanced over as if he’d been trying to sleep and we’d jolted him awake. I did as you did, feet in the water. You talked to yourself without looking at me.
Then Melanie was yelling for us. She was standing on her hands, her green-checked dress flipped in a tent over her head. “Five . . . five-and-a-dime . . . five-and-a-half . . . six . . .”
She was trying to walk on her hands—belly button, ribs like a comb, white panties with stripes. You watched. I asked you in my head to turn away. She repeated the trick. She was at the age when girls start to know they’re being looked at, watching herself watching us, and that man watching her.