by Jan Carson
One morning, whilst young Miranda was shuffling through her Saturday piano lesson, the original Mr Fluff had moved, against his express will, to Sacramento in a U-Haul van. Mr Fluff never gave Sacramento a proper chance. He passed away three weeks after the move. The heat had been manageable but the cheap Mexican cat food disagreed with his delicate east coast innards. Miranda had cried herself livid on the curb for days. When the natural tears ran out she dabbed Vicks VapoRub beneath each eye and coerced an extra week out of her sadness.
Twenty years later, and reasonably married, Miranda continued to swear blind that all her adult issues (chronic anxiety, exaggeration and shoplifting, not to mention the teenage pyromania) were directly related to the fact that Mr Fluff had not bothered to say goodbye. Of course she’d grown up. She no longer blamed the cat. A cat was a cat, and capable though he’d been, the original Mr Fluff had lacked the opposable thumbs necessary to send a goodbye postcard. The blame belonged to his owner now, and to her parents who had forced her into unwanted piano lessons, and the whole sprawling, conspiratorial state of Massachusetts. The closer adult Miranda got to moving the more anxious she began to get about the cat. By the beginning of November she was drinking a quart of whiskey, distilled into her evening Nesquik, just to get to sleep.
Miranda was unhinged but seldom cruel. She was not a happy person yet devoted an unhealthy amount of time to worrying about the happiness of complete strangers. Anxiety on another’s behalf seemed somehow less selfish. Lately, Miranda had been reminiscing. She’d begun to wonder if there might be some child in the neighborhood who loved her cat as much as she’d loved the original Mr Fluff; a child who’d be inconsolable if Mr Fluff left without saying goodbye; a child who’d grow up, get the hell out of California and carry this loss like a dead leg all the way to adulthood.
This was a terrible thought. It kept Miranda anxious and insomniac for weeks on end.
When she was positively wide-eyed with the worry and all her thoughts were needles and pins, she would poke Pete in the left bicep and cry, ‘What are we going to do about Mr Fluff?’ Very rarely did Pete respond or even acknowledge her prodding. Miranda had only acquired one husband so far but if she was fortunate enough to gain a second she planned to seek out a lighter sleeper. When her skin had turned a funereal shade of gray, and her throat a cactus, Miranda came to a decision. The only thing to do, she concluded, was to bundle Mr Fluff back into the plastic carrier from whence she had come and lug her from door to door offering a farewell to every child on the cul-de-sac.
‘That’s ridiculous,’ Pete had insisted. ‘We’ll be the laughing stock of the whole neighborhood. No one needs to say goodbye to a cat.’
‘Best to do these things in person,’ Miranda replied, but Pete did not understand. He’d never been a lonely child propping up a sidewalk. He’d been blessed with appropriately aged siblings and two-story homes and pets chosen from actual pet stores for their good looks and character.
‘Dammit, Pete,’ Miranda said, surprising herself with the enormous sound which came out of her belly, ‘I’m going anyway.’ This statement had instigated their first, last and loudest argument.
Miranda had a face like the weather: one moment infinitely approachable, the very next, raging like a mudslide. She walked the line daily, wobbling between striking and downright ugly. She was more than used to people staring in the grocery store. Miranda took her tree-frog face into consideration every time she ventured outside. As she considered the reality of lugging Mr Fluff from door to door, it seemed sensible to accentuate the ordinary. On this occasion she wished to be the all-American neighbor; the cookies and milk woman who lives next door; the woman you might phone in an emergency and say, ‘Sweetheart, I’m so, so sorry to impose but we’re having an emergency here and I was wondering if you could keep an eye on the kids while John and I nip out for half an hour. I wouldn’t normally leave the kids with just anyone but I know you’ll do great with them. Everyone knows you’re a natural.’
The situation was not unlike Halloween. Miranda was dressing up as an ordinary lady with very ordinary problems. She pulled her hair into an absolutely average ponytail. She wore a Christmas sweater even though California was sweltering and still five fat weeks from the big day. (Miranda operated under the mistaken assumption that all sweaters were inherently maternal.) She wore reading glasses to hide her too-close, tree-frog eyes. She considered bringing cookies but it would take both hands just to manage Mr Fluff and the plastic carrier. Once Miranda felt good and homely, she lifted Mr Fluff into her plastic carrier, zipped herself into the most momsy jacket she owned and pulled the apartment door behind her.
The goodbyes did not go well. The neighbors on either side were out of town for the holiday weekend. Two doors down, the mother answered the door.
‘Hey,’ Miranda said. ‘We live two doors up with the swing set in the front yard.’
‘Oh,’ the mother said. ‘How old are your kids?’
‘We don’t have kids … I mean, we can’t have kids … I mean, look, it’s kind of complicated. The last owners left the swing set behind. We do have a cat though.’
She side-stepped neatly to reveal Mr Fluff in her carrier. The two doors down mother looked horrified.
‘Ummmm,’ Miranda muttered, suddenly overcome with embarrassment. ‘We’re moving next week and I kind of thought maybe our cat could say goodbye to your kids so they’re not sad or something when he just disappears.’
‘Why would they be sad? They don’t know your cat. We don’t let them play outside the back yard.’
‘Oh, well could I possibly see your kids anyway, just to be on the safe side?’ Miranda elevated Mr Fluff’s carrier, giving her an angle to peer down the hall into the kitchen.
‘I don’t think so,’ stated the mother bluntly and slammed the door on the toe of Miranda’s very ordinary shoe. She stood there mortified, considering the outside of two doors down’s front door and their sign, which read, ‘Happy Thanksgiving from the Mastersons’. Mr Fluff could feel Miranda’s unhappiness settling down like rain.
This first front door conversation proved to be a rehearsal for a series of very similar interactions all the way down one side of the street and back up the other. By the time Mr Fluff and Miranda arrived at the Blues’ home Miranda was just about ready to give up and get drunk in her pajamas.
The Blue house looked like an open invitation. Every light in the building was white, hot and beaming. The house was telling lies with its well-lit windows. It had been several months since the Blues last had a visitor and this visitor, far from slipping his work shoes off at the door, had spent an uncomfortable twenty minutes bolt upright on a dining room chair, reciting a pre-prepared liturgy of life insurance quotes.
Miranda was exhausted. She thought nothing of the lights. She stomped all over the tastefully printed welcome mat. She barely noticed the Swedish-designed doorbell. It had been a mile of a morning and she no longer expected success. ‘Once more on to the breach,’ she muttered and poked the doorbell twice, squarely in the eye with malice.
Behind the door Miranda heard feet, one foot first and then a second. Foot, foot, foot, faster foot, foot, gaining momentum as they approached the door. She expected another judgmental mother so she held Mr Fluff in front of her chest, half peace offering, half shield. ‘God, help us both,’ she thought, as she braced herself for the ridicule. ‘Why am I subjecting us to this again?’ The door opened into itself like a nervous smile.
A five-year-old Soren James Blue stood behind the door. She was yet to experience the growth spurt which would leave her towering over the little boys on the first day of second grade and could easily have passed for a four-year-old. She was wearing a full set of grubby-looking Fraggle Rock pajamas. One hand rested on the door handle while the other clutched a yellow plastic bowl which was overflowing with soggy-looking Cocoa Puffs. The milk from her cereal – already turning an over-familiar shade of brown – had formed a rivulet from Soren’s open mouth, do
wn the bridge of her chin, to the smallest Fraggle who crouched, ready for action, just above her belly button.
‘What do you want, lady?’ Sorry asked.
‘Umm,’ Miranda stalled. ‘Is your mommy around?’
‘Nope. She’s at the office place.’ Sorry took a huge, dribbly spoonful of Coco Puffs, the majority of which abandoned ship halfway to her mouth, landing like small shit mountains at her naked feet.
‘What about daddy? Is he home? Or do you have an older brother or sister or someone looking after you?’
‘I’m looking after me. The cleaning lady was supposed to come but she didn’t,’ the child replied. ‘It’s OK. I have a gun.’ And with this Sorry fished around on the telephone table, emerging seconds later with a fully loaded plastic rifle.
‘Impressive,’ Miranda said. She had that creeping, fingers on her shoulder feeling she normally got when someone was watching her on closed circuit TV. ‘Maybe I should come back another time,’ she said hesitantly. Then she stepped over the welcome mat and into the Blues’ house.
‘What’s in the box, lady?’
Miranda set the plastic carrier on the hall carpet, opened the lid and watched helplessly as Mr Fluff sprung out, stretched her back and planted his ample backside on the child’s feet.
‘Mr Fluff!’ cried Sorry, bending to scratch the back of Mr Fluff’s neck. Bent double and scratching, she looked happy as a pickled onion.
‘How do you know his name?’ Miranda asked.
‘She told me.’
‘You just read it off his collar. Or maybe your mommy read it for you. I’m guessing you don’t read so well yet.’
‘I read awesome, lady. I’m nearly six. I didn’t read her name though. She told me. She tells me lots of stuff.’
‘Like what?’ asked Miranda, humoring the child.
‘Like how you cry all day and dress her up in baby clothes,’ replied Sorry indignantly.
Miranda was horrified. For the first time in her adult life she felt herself capable of strongly disliking a child.
‘Also,’ Sorry continued her verbal assault, ‘she feels shitty cos you keep telling everybody she’s a boy. How would you like it if everyone thought you were a boy?’
Sorry stopped to shovel an enormous spoonful of cereal into her open mouth, dragging the back of her hand, like a makeshift napkin, across her dripping chin.
‘He is a boy cat,’ mumbled Miranda defiantly.
‘S’not,’ Sorry continued, unceremoniously turning Mr Fluff upside down to expose her private parts, or lack thereof.
‘Well I suppose you’re technically right. It is a girl cat. I … I mean my husband and I, just decided he should be a boy cat because we liked the name Mr Fluff.’
‘That’s not very fair. I’m a girl and I’d be really mad if someone told me I had to be a boy and have a stupid name.’
With this Soren James Blue poked Miranda once, hard, in the ribs, with the snub end of her plastic rifle. The Cocoa Puffs, having made their escape from the bowl, had formed a muddy brown river down the leg of her pajama pants. The child had the hometown advantage. Miranda was intimidated. She had never before encountered a child so obnoxiously confident. Filthy, shock-haired and defiant as a fifty-foot pylon, Sorry cut the shadow of a wild, feral creature.
‘Listen, I don’t have to stand here and be lied to,’ Miranda said, releasing a judgmental, waggity finger for emphasis. ‘It’s my cat. His name’s Mr Fluff and tomorrow he’s moving to Kansas. I only brought him round to say goodbye.’
‘She’s not moving. She doesn’t like Kansas,’ Sorry fired back. ‘I got her a book from the library and she says it looks shit; nothing but flatness and sheep. She said she wants to stay here in California and I asked my mom and she says it’s cool for Mr Fluff to move in so long as she doesn’t eat the curtains again. She can live in the fridge. Mr Fluff likes it in our fridge.’ The part about asking Magda Blue’s permission was one hundred percent imagined. The rest, unbelievable as it sounded in the recount, was God’s honest truth.
Despite herself, Miranda admired the child’s bravado. Sorry exuded a confidence she had always aspired to. She liked the child and simultaneously disliked the child and was unsure where to file such a maelstrom of competing emotions. This would be a battle of good sense over emotion.
‘Look here, kiddo. I don’t care if the cat told you he wants to be Prime Minister of England. He’s moving to Kansas in the morning so say your goodbyes and let us leave.’
Soren James Blue glared at Miranda. Miranda glared at Soren James Blue. The inside of her nose began to twitch irritatingly. Sorry glared back, unflinching as a corpse. Sorry won. Mr Fluff, bored with the standoff, uncurled himself from Sorry’s shoulder, slid down her spine and wandered nonchalantly into the Blues’ kitchen.
Technically the cat still belonged to Miranda and this, she assumed, gave her permission to traipse after Mr Fluff. Soren James Blue followed at a distance, dragging her plastic rifle across the terracotta floor tiles.
The entire ground floor of the Blue house was as open plan and unencumbered as architecture would allow. The living area contained two uncomfortable-looking white sofas and a mammoth entertainment system large enough to accommodate God and all his Friday night buddies. The kitchen itself appeared to be fashioned from the leftover parts of downtown skyscrapers. Most every surface was flawless, black marble. The remaining wall was windowed, the fixtures and fittings a heavily foiled chrome. Standing in the centre of the kitchen, Miranda could see herself reflected – a homely, pink blob – upside down, occasionally upright and projecting from every inch of the room.
Mr Fluff had already found the fridge.
The fridge was comparable in size and capacity to a small European car, upended. The door had been left barely open, revealing – in an intimate sliver of synthetic light – a good half inch of margarine tub and the tip end of Mr Fluff’s tail, curling round the peanut butter. The rest of the house was so sleek, so very sparse and streamlined, it felt pornographic to catch a glimpse of actual, individual items – tubs and tubes and screw-top jars, brand names offered up for judgment. Miranda found herself inclining towards the fridge, curious to discover what homeowners with minimalist leanings might consume. The peanut butter sprung out at her.
‘What sort of freaks keep their peanut butter in the fridge?’ she wondered, but kept her thoughts politely to herself.
‘You can’t keep a cat in a fridge,’ she observed instead, somewhat loudly, through clenched teeth.
‘Mr Fluff likes it particularly in our fridge. Sometimes she stays the night in there.’
‘Bullshit,’ said Miranda. She was not the kind of woman prone to swearing in front of small children but the situation had unraveled her. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. A cat couldn’t live in a fridge. It would suffocate. Besides, Mr Fluff sleeps at our house. I think we’d know if he was out all night, sleeping in strangers’ fridges.’
‘Bollocks,’ returned Sorry, echoing a sentiment she’d heard on British television. ‘Mr Fluff spends most nights in our fridge. I think she climbs out your bathroom window to escape. She breathes just fine in the fridge. I expect the air gets in through the ice cube dispenser. She doesn’t mind the cold at all.
‘My cat’s not staying in your fridge.’
‘Yes, she is.’
‘No he isn’t! I’m the adult here, and I’m taking Mr Fluff home now.’
‘She doesn’t want to go. She likes it in the fridge, every night she draws pictures in the margarine. You don’t even let her draw with crayons on ordinary paper.’
The cat had shifted and Miranda could now make out a damp black nose, two paws and several whiskers, visible in the fridge door gap. Good sense was beckoning Miranda out the door. It was long gone five. Pete would be arriving home at any second. The dinner was yet to be defrosted. Miranda looked at the front door wistfully. The streetlights had bloomed in her absence. They blushed like lens flare on the dark glass. She imagined them sprouting fro
m the sidewalk; bent-head tulips, highlighting her homeward route. She pictured Pete waiting on the sofa, his forehead folding in consternation. It was months since he’d found himself home alone. He would be worried. Miranda’s feet refused to move. Something strong and obstinate had anchored her into the Blues’ terracotta floor tiles. She could not quit. Neither could she anticipate victory. Children were notoriously difficult to talk out of their affectations and this argument, she suspected, could ricochet for weeks, pinging off the kitchen walls, gaining and losing momentum without ever coming to a satisfactory conclusion.
Miranda found herself uncomfortably wedged between a rock and a hard-faced six-year-old. She decided to humor Sorry, to play along with her story, to prove her wrong and get the hell out of the house before a significant adult appeared. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘You win. Let’s close the fridge door and see how well Mr Fluff likes it in there. If he’s still content after thirty seconds he can move into your house for good. But if he goes crazy in there, he leaves for Kansas in the morning. You say goodbye and you never see him again.’
‘Can she still be called Mr Fluff if I keep her?’
‘Sure thing, you can change his name to Mighty Mouse if you want. I don’t care.’
Soren James Blue considered this proposal for a few seconds, examined the outside of the fridge from all angles, and eventually muttered ‘Deal,’ closing the door to seal the bargain.
Miranda was confident the cat would begin to panic. She stepped closer for a better ear on events.
Together they counted to thirty using the old fashioned method, ‘one thousand, two thousand, three thousand,’ all the way up to thirty thousand, plus another three thousands just for good measure. Miranda had two fingers crossed on each hand, hoping the child’s mother wouldn’t arrive home and find a strange lady had locked a cat in her fridge. The fridge purred on; monolithic, competent and surprisingly calm. Around about twenty-five thousands Miranda began to worry. Mr Fluff might be dead inside, wreaking wild havoc or comatose and slumped against the breakfast juices. She was not concerned about the cat so much as the awkward moment when she would have to explain the situation to other less understanding individuals.