Page 46 of Kitten

“It’s not that I don’tlikethe photos. It’s that my motherlovesthem.” Isabelle looked at me with such chagrin that I felt terrible for having misunderstood her. “It’s unfair, she doesn’t do it with my brother. See, there’s him a year ago, graduating high school.”

She finished her glass then looked at mine, still half full. I downed it. She topped us off. At a loss for how to respond, I changed the subject. “Your house is really beautiful.” I expected the compliment to please her the same way it wouldJames, but Isabelle only gave a small nod. A silence formed around us, mutual unwillingness to discuss what the other wanted.

Bruno marched into the kitchen, his nails clicking against the floor while Silver stumbled behind, producing no sound. I wondered if animals had egos. I hoped not, for Silver’s sake. When Bruno broke away to greet Isabelle, Silver sank to rest on her belly. Her back rose and fell.

“She still seems sick,” I said. At the same time, Isabelle said, “I had a mental breakdown last year.”

“Sorry.” She looked at me with a hungry expression. I registered with discomfort that she was drunk. “James told you, right?”

“A little bit.”

“It wasn’t a big deal,” said Isabelle. “I’m better now. But I’m here, and not in the city with my friends. So you can see how I don’t relate to this house in the same way that other people might.”

“That’s okay,” I said. I was still worried for Silver. She didn’t move to meet my finger when I lowered it by her face.

Isabelle looked troubled. “Do you think I’m spoiled?”

“No,” I said. It was the truth. “I don’t.”

“I don’t want you to think,” she said, “that I don’t know how lucky I am. I’ve had every resource in the world, and I haven’t done anything with it.”

“What do you mean, what should you have done?”

“Something that would reflect all of this.” She gestured around her. I looked at the walls, the empty sinks.

“One of my friends got married this year. I couldn’t go because, well, I wasn’t there. Another just started acompany. Like, a real company. I’ll be twenty-seven soon, all my friends are turning into people, and I’m still here. I’ve given up on everything I’ve ever tried.”

I blinked. Isabelle wanted to start a company? But there were already so many companies. She cocked her head, resting it on the head of the chair. Through half-shut eyes she looked at me, watchful, as if waiting for me to confess something similar. Or, even better, tell her she was correct, that she was pathetic and irredeemable.

“I don’t have a job, either,” I said.

She laughed dryly, looking so much then like Mrs. Hartley. “I know I’m very privileged to even be here.” Her finger traced the rim of her glass before she emptied it in one gulp. I had a feeling she would regret this in the morning, but there was no way to stop her now. “But being in this house, it’s like, nothing changes. It’s the same furniture and decoration and photos from when I was a kid. And I remember everything. I remember my mother telling me I was going to do big things with my life. And I remember the way I used to sit by that very window behind you and look at the garden.”

I turned. It was the height of the afternoon, the glass white with sun. The figures of people working outside barely registered through the glare. You had to squint to see them.

“God,” she said. “I would watch the people cutting our grass, and I would feel bad for them, because they were in the sun and I was in the shade. I felt proud of myself, for some reason. I was proud of being the person in the shade. When I sit there now and look at the gardeners, I still remember that feeling. It’s a horrible thing to feel. But I can’tunfeel the things I used to feel in every room in this house. At this point, I can’t even tell if my childhood was good or bad. I guess it doesn’t matter. It was bad, so I’m probably screwed. But it was good, too, and I’ll always want it back.”

James was right, I understood Isabelle. She reminded me of my mother. Yes, I could picture it clearly, Isabelle and my mother talking over our dining table. Isabelle holding my mother’s hand, nodding seriously while she spoke about her precious and distant memories. Eventually, though, they would both fall silent. Looking back could seem like a way out of the present, but the only thing it gave you was the short comfort of a familiar unhappiness.

“Don’t you think,” I said, “it would be good for you to move out?”

“James keeps saying that. But I don’t know. Even though I hate it here, it’s basically the only place I feel even half okay.”

I worked hard not to break eye contact, anxious that at any moment she would start crying. If she did, I would certainly follow. There was a familiar tug to Isabelle’s suffering that evoked my last memory of home. My mother waiting for me in the car. The morning air turgid with our resentment but also smelling the way it always did after the rain, clean gravel and dewy grass. The house shrinking in the rearview, my sense that I was leaving the only place I belonged.

“I don’t think you’re the only person who feels that way,” I finally said.

“Maybe.” Isabelle looked over my shoulder, at the window.

Next to my chair, Silver and Bruno lay in a box of light. The yellow bandage around Silver’s arm had come slightly undone. Her eyes were closed.

“Do you think she’s still sick?”

“She’s probably just dehydrated.” Isabelle poured water into a steel saucer and set it by her face. “Hey.” She clasped my hands. “What do you say we get stupid drunk. Forget about everything. I have shrooms.”

It seemed to me that we were already stupid drunk, and I wasn’t sure about the shrooms, but I didn’t want to disappoint her. We finished the wine and went to Isabelle’s bedroom. It smelled like cinnamon and looked a complete mess, with clothes strewn over the ground and stacks of empty mugs and glasses on every surface. Isabelle pushed her clothes from one side of the mattress to the other, gestured for me to sit, then put on some unfamiliar French music.

It was my first time doing shrooms. I didn’t feel much at first, but my mind latched on to Isabelle’s insistence from last night that Lou and I loved each other. Worn down by the repetition, or just tipsy from luxurious wine, I messaged Lou.