I turn to face her. “Keep what?” And I see that she’s holding a tiny kitten in her hand. It’s not much bigger than a small can of soup. “Where did you get that?”
“We found it in the woods. It just walked right up to us,” Eli explains.
Sam passes it to me, and I hold it up to look into its eyes. They are green and bright. And the cat lets out a meow to end all meows as it stares at me.
I hand the cat to Eli. “I’d like to see you keep this alive for the next month.” I pull Sam in front of me and lay my hands on her shoulders. “Sam can help you.”
“You want me to keep it?” Eli squawks.
“For a month.”
Eli stares at me. “For a month?”
I shrug. “Call it a test run.” I glare at him until he gets it.
“A test run,” he says slowly. “For a month.”
“One month.” I hold up a single finger.
“Then what happens to it?”
“That’ll be up to Sam.”
Sam claps her hands and dances in place. “I’ll help you take care of it.”
“Well, you had better,” Eli says. “It’s your cat.”
Sam dances in place again. “What do we feed it?”
Eli raises an eyebrow at her. “You want to go google it?”
“Can we?”
“I think we probably should.” He motions for Sam to follow him. He still has Miles strapped to his chest, but he looks pretty content. They leave together.
Kerry-Anne is with Trixie and Katie. Sam and Miles are with Eli. “I’m hungry,” I say as I start to look through Jake and Katie’s cabinets for food.
“Toaster pastries are in the other cabinet,” Mr. Jacobson says. He points to the left.
I reach up to get one, rip open the package, and take a bite. “It doesn’t taste like ass,” I say around a mouthful.
“I kind of like the taste of ass,” Mr. Jacobson says with a grin.
“Now I know where Jake gets it from,” I mutter and swallow. But I’m also smiling as I sit down at their kitchen table to finish my toaster pastry.
“Feel better now?” he asks after a few minutes of silence.
I don’t give him more than a nod. Katie walks back into the room.
“I was a jerk,” I blurt out.
Katie freezes. “Okay.”
“I’m sorry.”
She gives one sharp nod of her head. “Okay.”
“Thanks for letting me sleep in.”
“You’re welcome.” She walks over and makes a move like she’s going to place a kiss against my forehead, but instead she gives me a raspberry. She blows long and loud, and she leaves me with a wet spot on my skin. She picks up my hand and looks at it. “Jake gave you boobs,” she says. She licks the pad of her thumb and wipes it across the ink. “And it’s permanent.”
Then she starts to laugh and walks back out of the room.
14
Bess
I stand, dumbfounded, in the tiny kitchen of my tiny cabin and watch as Eli walks in through the front door. He has a baby strapped to his chest, a twelve-year-old girl following close at his heels, and she’s holding a little silver-furred kitten in the palm of her hand. He goes to the end table and picks up my laptop, opens it, enters the password, and sets it on Sam’s lap. She tucks the kitten between her neck and shoulder and starts to type. I hear them murmur to one another as he watches over her shoulder.
“We’ll need to get a litter box.”
She points at the screen. “We could use this and teach it to pee in the toilet.”
“What?” Eli asks, his brow furrowing. “Cats can’t pee in the toilet.”
She points to the screen again. “This says they can.”
“Well, order one of those, and we’ll have it delivered.” He takes out his credit card and hands it to her.
I feel like I have stepped into an alternate universe. One where everything is topsy-turvy and upside down, and no one cares that the lamp is on the ceiling or the fireplace poker isn’t in its stand. Everyone just carries on. Business as usual.
I stand there and watch them as Eli makes a list of things they need to buy for the kitten. Sam calls out items and he writes them down. A litter box, kitten food, toys, a pen light… Those are all things that Eli adds to the list, and then some.
“You want to run to the store with me?” Eli asks Sam.
“Can we take the kitten?” Sam says.
“I don’t see why not.” He shrugs. He points to the baby strapped to his chest. “What do we do with this?”
She shrugs this time. “We can take him with us. My dad takes him everywhere.”
“Doesn’t he need a special seat or something?”
“It’s in my dad’s van.”
“Do you know how to hook it up?”
“My dad leaves the keys in his van. Can we just drive that?”
“Works for me.” Eli grabs the diaper bag from the floor, and they leave together.
I stand mute, unable to do anything but stare at the door they just walked through. I keep expecting somebody to scream “Gotcha!” at me and burst into laughter.
The door flies open and Eli steps back inside. “Hey, if you see Aaron, will you tell him that I took Miles and Sam to get cat supplies?”
No “Gotcha!” then. I nod. “Sure thing.”
He grins at me. “Thanks.”
I don’t even know this man. It’s like I never knew him at all. We’ve been married for eighteen years, and I didn’t know that he could do all the things he’s doing right now.
I wash a few dishes and stare around the cabin. I had planned to spend a day packing and then go back home, but now I’m committed to taking Aaron to chemo every other day this week, so I’m no longer in a huge rush to pack. I pick up my camera, which is now out of film. I need to develop what’s on it. Then I remember the shack and that it needs to be cleaned out. I might as well work on that.
I walk out the back door and head for the shack, but I realize that the door is open when I get to it. I step inside and I see that the interior is spotless. The room is small and the building made of shabby materials. You can see streaks of light through the cracks in the siding, but it always got the job done for my mom because she kept the cracks filled with crumpled newspaper. But the last time I was out here, this room had been full of old bikes, some blow-up water floats, and various other lake toys. Now it’s completely empty, aside from the developing table, and someone has set up my trays for me.
“Hey, Bess?” I hear someone call from my front porch.
I step out of the little shack and yell back, “Out here!”
Aaron walks around the corner of the house and stops when he sees me. “Have you seen my van?” he asks as he jerks a thumb in that direction.
“Eli borrowed it.” I start to remove the chemicals from the shelves so I can set up my trays. But the jugs are old and nearly empty, and some of them are rusty. I’ll need to order more if I want to develop my pictures.
“Why didn’t he take your car?”
“Yours had the car seat.”