Page 19 of Kitten

“No, that can’t be it.” I cupped her face in my hands. “What’sreallythe matter with you? Do you not enjoy being alive?” She shook her head. “It’s okay,” I said. “I know how it is. Life is tough and you don’t even have the words for it.” She lowered her eyes. “And all of us act likeyou’rethe lucky one,” I continued, “even though you can’t read, and youpoo in a sandbox.” She gave a forlorn chirp. “We’re just jealous, you know. You don’t have to get a job. Or pay for utilities.”

Silver squirmed, but I held tight. Her meows vibrated through my thighs, the sensation gentle and staticky, like gums numbed after tooth surgery. I looked into her round eyes and saw that she was completely, utterly helpless. So long as I held her, she could not move. So long as I did not feed her, she would be hungry. And once I let her go, she would still want the same things—food, water—she’d wanted since the day she was born. She was, and always would be, a cute thing, the greatest thing you could be, free to be disgusting and terrible and bizarre, free also to die once the best of life was over.

The sound of the door swinging open broke our spell. Silver jumped off my lap.

“Hey, my girls.” James’s face was flushed. The vein branching from the side of his neck to the back of his ear was raised higher than normal. I pictured the blood beating forcefully through, bright and heavy.

“Where were you?”

“Running.” James bent to kiss me. He stunk. “Didn’t you get my text? Why is it so dark in here?” The floor creaked as he strode to open the curtains. Silver darted to the now-open window and raised her paws to the sill.

“You said you’d be back before one.” I tried to swallow my irritation.

“Yeah,” he said. At my silence, he said, “It’s half past.”

“That’s a different time than what you said.”

“Sorry, I got distracted. I ended up doing a few more miles than planned.” This was unusual; James always stuck to a plan. What was next, improvising dinner?

“Did you just roll your eyes?” James laughed. “You just rolled your eyes at me!”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Yes, you did. You just did it again! I can’t believe it. You’re seriously annoyed with me?”

From the window, Silver shot me a pointed look. As if you have any idea what it’s like to be in a human relationship, I thought. Silver bowed her head. I might have been harsh.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m just hungover. Hangry. I have hangxiety.”

“You can tell me if you’re feeling hungry, or anxious,” said James. “You don’t need made-up words.”

“They’re real words,” I said. “You’re being pretentious.”

“Never mind,” said James. “We can talk about it over lunch, okay? Now I’m getting hangry.”

James made turkey and brie sandwiches drizzled with a tart cranberry vinaigrette he “whipped up” at the last minute. When he was setting the table, I peeked inside the refrigerator. It was full. When had this happened? Maybe the kitchen had been pre-stocked for our stay, like the beds had been premade, or else James had snuck out in the middle of the night to shop. In the city, he could become obsessed by grocery shopping.

We ate in silence. Sometimes I caught James looking at me with a worried expression. When he noticed me noticinghim, he’d break eye contact, bowing his head as if I were terminally ill but didn’t know it yet. He confessed he was concerned about my eye, which seemed to be getting worse. “You’re not scratching it, are you?”

I nodded, apologized. The truth was I hadn’t touched it at all, but I wouldn’t tell him that. I suspected he wanted to see that my body was a normal body that reacted in normal ways to agitation. That it was predictable and safe and wouldn’t find ways to self-destruct—like his mother’s did, Lou would’ve added, because she was reading Freud.

“You don’t need to worry,” I said. “I’m very safe and healthy. I’ve always just been slow to heal. Scraped knees, bruises, they last forever on me.”

James frowned, so I backtracked. “But what do bodies matter? Everybody knows the will to live is all in the brain.” I pointed at my head to demonstrate that I had a very strong brain, but it didn’t seem to help. I returned to my sandwich. The tomatoes had glued themselves into the bread, making everything wet and soggy. I couldn’t even time eating a sandwich right. I held it up to the light, then watched it fall apart with a frown.

“I get worried about your happiness sometimes,” James said. “You can break your own heart over a sandwich.”

James’s concern over my happiness made me feel how I imagined parents felt when their children got attached to pet fish. You will be very unhappy if you go on caring about that, I wanted to say to him.

James finished the rest of his sandwich in two bites and downed his glass of water. I marveled at how efficiently reality shifted to his whims, without a halfway trace of whathad been there before. No crumbs, no tomato stain. An empty glass that had, just a second before, been full.

—

On our next swim thatafternoon, trailing Silver was easier, and I swam confidently with her into the deep. There, I tried something new, turning onto my back with my face to the sun. Once I found my balance, Silver crawled onto my belly, lying with her arms splayed out before her. The ocean pressed against my ears, the sound of it like something being gently fried. I couldn’t see or hear Silver, could only feel the soft tickle of her wet fur on my skin. After a while, even that sensation went.

Time passed. My fingers pruned. A thin current of warmth slithered across my stomach: Silver peed on me! I jerked on reflex to right myself, pitching her into the water. When she emerged, her fur was plastered and nearly translucent against the small ball of her skull. I laughed—she looked like such a gremlin—but her eyes were frightened, and then I felt awful. “Sorry,” I said. “It just surprised me, that’s all.” Without a single glance in my direction, she paddled to shore. I swam after her, chastened.

A throng of people awaited us. Perhaps now feeling shy, Silver let me pick her up and wrap her in a towel. “We thought you were in danger,” one of them said. “You were thrashing around like you needed help.” Then, noticing Silver: “Is that acat?”