Chapter Two: “The Snow Finds the Clod of Earth” — Part One
We never kept one, but there was a cat at the old house.
Whether it belonged to a neighbour or not I never knew, but I often watched it walking unhurried along the top of the wall visible from the sitting room. In the warmer months it would sometimes curl up there and sleep. Its fur was black to the tip of its tail, and its eyes were a polished-looking green.
I used to feed the cat sometimes, in secret from my family. Secret might be overstating it — my mother had probably seen through me entirely. I would put food out along its route around the time it usually passed. That was about all small-me could manage, and I had no particular wish to befriend it or anything like that.
But the cat’s eyes were beautiful, and I loved the moment it turned them toward me, so I kept putting food out.
That black cat stopped appearing one day without any farewell, as a matter of course.
After several days of not seeing it, missing it, my mother told me it had probably moved away somewhere. Young as I was, I believed her.
I didn’t understand what moving away really meant until considerably later, and I think the hollow it left in my chest that day has never quite filled. The cat is surely gone now.
But I also thought, sincerely, that I hoped it was living happily somewhere all the same.
I woke up walking that borderline between memory and dream, carrying a quiet sadness.
I had never done much for it, and yet the grief came fully formed.
Now that I knew the source of that feeling of recognition toward Kai’s eyes, I looked out the bedroom window, but there was no cat to be found.
“Mama… shall we take a morning walk?”
“Are you fond of that particular phrasing?”
“Reasonably.”
He was presumably aiming for the kind of dashing movie-dad you found in Western films. He had a long way to go.
As we were each getting ready in the morning, my husband stood looking steadily at my head, my hair. I reached up to touch it, wondering whether my natural colour was showing through, and he gave a slow shake of his head.
“I was thinking that you’re beautiful with black hair too.”
“Thank you.”
My husband had only ever known me with black hair, as far as I was aware.
That same husband danced toward me, or less danced than spun in circles as he approached, the strange man, took my hand and put his arm around my waist, and swayed slightly.
“I spun too much.”
“Plan your spinning more carefully.”
I ended up swaying with him. Once that passed, my husband tilted my chin up with his fingers.
Just the two of us, inside the house, and what was the other one… the conditions were met.
I found myself thinking it was strange that we never kissed somewhere as convenient as the bedroom, and as I registered my husband’s lips drawing close, something surfaced unbidden like rainfall, wetting my face. Beyond the rain, the inside of a car at night.
Why that, I thought, indignant.
It was unpleasant. Of all things to be conjured by a kiss, in front of my own husband — that middle school girl.
I felt a disloyalty toward him. That a piece of mischief like that could make a person behave so dishonestly toward someone else, and the feeling wouldn’t settle.
“Is something wrong?”
It must have shown on my face. My husband paused, lips almost touching mine.
“Oh… ah, footsteps.”
“Hm?”
“Morning… oh — oh, oh oh.”
Our daughter, coming downstairs, walked in on her parents embracing and spontaneously began to sing. Setting the mood, perhaps.
With our daughter now present, I pushed my husband’s chin firmly back.
“Unfortunately, the conditions can’t be met.”
“Good morning, daughter!”
My husband redirected his momentum elsewhere, bouncing over to greet her.
“Sorry to interrupt!”
“It’s fine. It’s all fine, my daughter… and please forget you saw anything.”
“I’d appreciate the same.”
“Heh heh heh.”
Our daughter was embarrassed too, laughing nervously and wriggling her feet.
“Maron, shall we say good morning with a kiss? Shall we? Oh, lick lick.”
I watched Maron enthusiastically licking my husband’s nose and laughed to cover my own embarrassment. The simple, clean shame of having our daughter walk in on us about to kiss.
The time it took the three of us to each digest our own variety of mortification was silly, and yet, somehow, rather refreshing.
On top of all that, I rubbed my cheek with the back of my hand. Over and over, as if to undo something.
The rain in my memory had stopped entirely, but my wet cheek still needed time to dry.
Washing the car is so fun, I let slip a few times to myself, but my enthusiasm didn’t really rise to meet it. I liked looking at the result from a distance once it was clean, but the process itself didn’t particularly appeal. Something like enjoying looking at a painting without any interest in painting one. Though that didn’t quite capture it either.
Running a hose over everything until the surrounding air cooled down, that part wasn’t bad. Breathing in that cold air had a bracing quality I didn’t dislike. A kind of cleanliness to it.
My husband was at work as usual, and last I’d checked my daughter was sprawled on the living room sofa like a seal washed up on a beach. She would leap up in protest if I told her so.
“Washing the car is super fun!”
A futile attempt to rouse my own spirits. My spirits, naturally, were lying down like my daughter.
“Is it really?”
“Pardon?”
My heart leapt up, panicked, and threw itself against the window glass.
A small voice and a figure seemed to tap me on the shoulder, and I turned around.
“Oh.”
“Hello.”
The sound of water from the hose spreading across the garage floor reached my ears with strange clarity.
It was Chitaira Kai. Sunday, and she was in her school uniform again, school bag and all.
Haven’t you come to the wrong place, I was about to say.