Page 55 of Kitten

“I don’t know. I wasn’t thinking.”

A humorless laugh, awful. He couldn’t meet my eye. “You let me talk about Arthur and IKEA and Arabella for half an hour. You heard me talk about her litter box and you still didn’t say anything.”

“I’m really sorry.” It was a pitiful statement. James did not respond. I counted his breaths, five full ones before he spoke, a catch on the sixth.

“I have so many things to say, but what I really can’t stop thinking about is the fact that you didn’t tell me. Why didn’t you tell me, Katie?”

I thought about the fight with my mother. Silver eating the paints. Lou moving out. James’s expression was solemn, almost angry. “I don’t tell you a lot of things,” I finally said.

“But why?”

“I guess I don’t think they’re important.”

He looked at me, incredulous.

“I guess I don’t think you’d care,” I said. But I knew he did care. It was why I was with him—he cared too much.

“Of course I fucking care. Of course I care about you. Of course I care about Silver.”

“I care about Silver, too.”

He gestured at the fur in the tub. “You call this care?”

“This is why I didn’t want to tell you,” I said quietly. A heavy feeling, swelling. Some things I wanted for myself.

“When you don’t tell me something like that, it’s a choice,” James said. “And if you still stand by a choice like that, then I don’t think we’re in an actual relationship.”

I let the words echo. He spoke again. “I’m sorry if that hurts your feelings.”

“A little bit.”

“Yeah, well. We’re supposed to share things. We’re supposed to be equals, Katie. But you don’t treat me like one.”

My nails dug into my palms. I’d never imagined what it would be like for James to be my equal. He had revealed the terrible idea that he was like me, that he could suffer—I could make him suffer. I looked at James’s stricken face with a gross kind of satisfaction. To finally discover what I was capable of. To meet myself like this.

“It’s good,” he said. “That now I can bury her. We can bury her.”

I stiffened.

“We have to bury her now, Katie. We can’t keep her here.”

I thought about running to the bedroom and shutting him out again. Throwing myself under the covers and holding Silver tight as the days passed and she shrank into nothing. Staying in Holme, talking to nobody, drifting forever inthe sea. “I don’t understand,” I said, “how you can still be so logical about this.”

“You want to keep her here? What next? Take her back to the city tomorrow? Carry her on the train, then up the elevator, to my apartment?”

“I won’t leave. I’ll stay here.”

“You can’t.”

“I don’t want to go.”

“You have to.”

It was the first time James raised his voice at me. I hoped for a second that he might do something dramatic, like hit me or throw something. But with his legs still crossed he took my hands and said, “I’m trying with you, I am. But sometimes I think you want to be miserable. Maybe it’s hard because we’re from different worlds, or I’m a bit older. But I don’t think so. Because we could work through that, but you don’t want to. You just want things to stay the same, even when they’re as fucked up as this.”

He let go of me and walked out of the bathroom. I remained where I sat next to the tub, feeling caught and released at the same time.

Time passed. James didn’t return. For a second I thought he’d gone to bury Silver without me, a fitting punishment. But as soon as the fear arose, it was quelled by the certainty that James wouldn’t do that. The trust was a radiating thing, transmitting possibility. If James could withhold punishment for me, now, when I deserved it most, then maybe love could be simple, more forgiving. My heart felt very small and hot. The moment passed. I went to the bedroom.