Photo by Ahmed Rizkhaan on Unsplash
He was a dead thing with eyes like fresh paper cuts.
I was almost certain I smelled him in passing, days before we pulled him from the closet, his body lost between forgotten shoes, his scent masked within mothballs and old Christmas wreaths. I thought about leaving him there at first, covering his body with gift wrap, and perhaps the jacket hanging from the tiered hook, the one Pappy used to wear in the good ol’ days. The scent of decay would eventually dissipate, I thought, or weave into the cotton of old sweaters, yet I knew my mother would come eventually, and sniff him out like an old country hound, web-like drool forming at the corners of her mouth. So I told her, and watched as she got down on all fours, tearing through the old closet, her spine poking through the pale pink fabric of her nightdress. Her fingers grazed his trunk tenderly, steadily, before she snatched him up and into her arms. He had been her favorite cat, I thought, although she had many, and I watched as she manipulated his rigid body, like a holiday turkey, stuffing him into her handbag.
She left as quickly as she came, furry limbs poking out of the mouth of her leather tote. I would see him again, of course, as I always did in these situations.
Twenty years later, he was still stiff. Not stiff as in the drinks I threw back earlier, but stiff as in dead, or stuffed, or better yet preserved - I guess you could call it that. The cat sat upon the middle shelf of a tall bookcase, on display between old picture frames, and Betty Boop figurines. His hind legs were permanently seated, and his chest was distended slightly, like an overfed belly, suggesting a hint of masculinity, although it wasn’t obvious that he was male- it was how she requested him to look. The dark orange patches of fur glued above his eyes were fixed, resembling deep forehead wrinkles that made him appear distinguished, or possibly even concerned, maybe even a bit confused. And his eyes, painfully centered just above his nose, were like amber marbles glued too close together. His coat, a rusty shade of orange, had grayed a bit since the last time I saw him, and I wondered if dead fur could still age. I ran my fingers down his coat, brushing the sheath of dust from him, feeling a bit silly as the particles blew across my face, and illuminated in the fractured sunlight drawn from the old attic window.
My mother always named her pets after men she desired. His name, the stuffed cat, was Charlton, as in Charlton Heston, the American actor. She had a thing for men that always looked constipated and I wondered if she explained this to the taxidermist when she brought Charlton in. I had never shared my mother’s interests in the unnatural stuffing of things, nor did I share my mother’s interest in men. Charlton sensed this about her, I thought, and slept at my feet for years before he retired in the closet, unlike the other cats that stretched out like discarded garments across her bed. He too was afraid of my mother’s unnatural obsession with viewing things the way one would regard a holiday pie, stuffed to her liking.
I always drank after a phone call with my mother; it was the reward for tolerating her distaste in my lifestyle choices as a thirty-something lesbian, or her distaste as a whole. Our last conversation had been brief and to the point. Liz, let’s get straight to the point, she said, and requested that Charlton be brought back to be with his siblings; her collection of (dead) pets would not be complete without him. Because she managed a conversation without hinting at her bizarre displeasure of my being, I made it a priority to retrieve the cat from her summer home and deliver it to her, although I still opened up the bottle of whiskey; it was out of habit, a lifetime of being served the same dish each night, chasing down the remnants with the slow burn of amber.
Our relationship had always been complicated, or impossible, rather. She had me at forty by accident and had no desire to be a mother, but my father had become elated by the idea and she felt pressured into it, like what those no-good cars salesmen do to young women! She was too far along to abort, anyway, and she wouldn’t have liked the looks those clinic ladies give, passing judgment and all. I was born six weeks early from all the stress I put on her, although she admitted on more than one occasion that she induced her own labor with a clothing wire- one of those velvet lined hangers you get from Saks. I spent my childhood with a nanny named Cynthia, as my mother cared for her twelve cats and three dogs, all mummified versions of their previous selves now resting on various mantels of her home. It wasn’t until my father died that she forced her way back in, parading around like a unfortunate widow, leaving behind pink lipstick stained tissues and glasses in my father’s home. They had been divorced for five years by then, but you couldn’t tell her that. In the years that followed we remained in the shadow of one another, lost somewhere in the pages, but never on the same one.
My father died when I was ten and my mother had insisted that we both view the body before he was to be put on display at the funeral home. He was on his back like all dead people were before their own wake and I wondered if he was comfortable that way. His face was slightly caked in makeup, and as I studied it for the last time, I heard my mother gasp. I looked to her mouth which was slightly agape like a trout, noting the round circles of pink blush against her cheeks. Her eyes narrowed, creating deep wrinkles across her temple, as she glared at him intently. She then turned to argue with the mortician.
“I asked that his eyebrows be more pronounced, Bob!”
“I’m a funeral director, Sue, not a plastic surgeon.”
She dug aggressively through her small black purse until she found a makeup pencil. The mortician saw this as his exit point, and stopped only long enough to wave his hands in the air as if to say something, but instead left us alone in the room. I watched curiously as my mother began to draw over the coarse white hair that once was my father’s brow. His head stirred slightly as she meticulously worked the arches upward; it was not the response of a breathing man, but a response of a poorly manipulated, stiff man; a shell with the creature long since gone. She pulled her black, knee length pencil skirt up her thighs before raising her right leg over the casket and up around his waist, her elbow resting on his hair as she hummed, incoherently at first, until her murmurs molded into the tune of Mr. Sandman. I watched as the grey strands of his ponytail, which were positioned to the left of his head, moved like freshly trampled grass, an attempt to acquire its natural place on his shoulder.
She liked men with tails, I gathered.
I picked Charlton up from the shelf, half expecting his front and hind legs to weigh him out like an old metal scale, but he was no more than a block of wood, smoothed over with a bed of ginger fur. I moved quickly to exit her summer home, passing the tufted couches with feline embroidered pillows, the wine stained and rose patterned carpets, and the knick-knacks that lined every surface and filled every shelf: Porcelain Marilyn’s, Russian nesting dolls, crystal Persians, twin Siamese figurines, and more.
He was small upon the passenger seat of my car. It was silly, but he looked alive in a way at least, much like those cats you find in Asian inspired stores, or tourist shops in trendy beach towns.
We drove together in silence, my eyes fixed on the road, complicated by passing cars and the sun descending on the line of the horizon. His silhouette caught my peripherals from time to time; a reminder he was there and then not at all.
I approached the tolls on the Mass Pike, our bodies moving and then slowing to the flow of traffic. The toll woman took my cash, but her eyes moved past me to the small mass on my seat, and I watched as her gaze transformed in microseconds, the lines of time softening around her
eyes. She smiled and touched my hand, holding it a second too long.
“You have a wonderful day, love.” She said.
I realized as I drove away that she felt sorry for me. I had a deep need to turn the car around just to explain myself to her, starting from the beginning, but I fought the urge and carried on. The toll lady had pitied me, I thought, and I found pity to be worse than most things. I read somewhere that toll workers have the highest rate of suicide apart from dentists and there she was, taking pity on me, when she had mathematics against her. The rest of the ride to my mother’s was done in deep thought, replaying and analyzing the toll woman’s touch and the frequency in which the words left her mouth, only becoming vaguely aware that my hand was gently stroking the descent of Charlton’s back.
I kept at it until the tires of my car rolled onto her stone driveway.
***
My mother looked the same as she always did, which was the same as she looked twenty years ago: a combination of surgery and strong will. You wouldn’t guess by looking at her that she had only half of her lungs and was suffering from a fine arrangement of chronic illnesses. She always hid her oxygen tank when I arrived, afraid it was an accessory that would make her look weak.
I found her on the couch, her small frame tucked into the arm, her lips pursed, eyes lit up like a torch.
“Oh, well! Look what the cat dragged in! Lorna! Get some tea! Elizabeth decided to show her face today!” She said.
I sat on the adjacent chair, the legs of which had been used as a scratching post, shredded and splintered. The table between us was covered in small hills of fashion magazines, and unopened mail. A basket of fake fruit sat in the middle; a center piece of sorts.
She mumbled words like ungrateful and privileged and interchangeable variations, but it wasn’t until Lorna brought in the tea that she addressed me, and filled a week’s worth of complaints into the long hour we sat together. I watched my wrist watch like a hawk or an owl, perhaps even a cat - waiting for the slightest movements of small arms.
She frowned when the hour bell rang somewhere in the distance, and I raised and stretched my legs.
“Don’t leave just yet, Elizabeth. You have plans in town at eight,” she said.
I exhaled purposefully, my hands finding themselves on the top of my head, “Not this again, mother. Please.”
“Don’t mother me. You should be grateful I know a fine array of suitors that are willing to date you.”
I drop my hands, my body filling with irritation, a slight tremor embedding itself within my chest, “I’m in a relationship -you already know this. You just choose to pretend it doesn’t exist.”
She laughs, “Your woman friend? Nonsense. You will meet my friend at Italiano downtown for eight.” Her lips curve as she crosses her bone-thin legs over one another, “You can go now, Elizabeth.”
I walk to the car, consumed with raw anger, forcing it out in short bursts of air and choice words. My fingers grasp and pull open the car door, and I watch as the keys leave my hand in one swift motion, hitting Charlton on the side, knocking him over. I had forgotten to bring him to my mother, and she had never mentioned it in her hour long rant, although I wasn't surprised. She always had other plans.
***
“Elizabeth, I presume! After the incredible Elizabeth Taylor might I add!”
Paul Cohn grasped my hand tightly as he studied my face. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that my mother named her only daughter after a woman she despised.
“Nice to meet you,” I said, reeling back the fingers he held in his moist palm, “Paul, right?”
“Yes - and a dear friend of your mother! I’m so genuinely happy you agreed to meet me tonight.”
Paul was a portly man with kind eyes, about ten years my senior, who was all of eighteen days single. His wife of nearly thirty years had taken off with the family dentist; she probably hadn’t heard of the suicide statistics. He immediately filled me in on the details as we studied the menu and I felt sorry for the guy, both because he was kind of a lost soul, and also because this date was a lost cause. I only did it to please my mother, as I always did, to keep some sense of peace, but also because she had the pull of inheritance, and it loomed over me like a dark cloud.
The waiter hovered, smiling politely at us, his eyebrows raised.
"Oh," Paul said, suddenly aware of him, "I'm going to get the stuffed shells, and two of the quahogs- and whatever the lady wants." He gave a tight smile, waving his hand towards me.
I closed my menu, "Just the garden salad- with house dressing is fine." I smiled, handing it to the young waiter.
Paul watched the boy as he trailed to the next table. "You don’t eat much, huh? Your mom said you were thin."
I shrugged, "I don’t like the feeling of being full." Never did- although I didn't say that to him. My mother had always been so full of shit that I did my best to keep from over consuming most things. I refused to be a hollowed out version of myself, filled or replaced, done purposefully to meet someone else's expectation.
Some time passed, the bare plates before us were eventually replaced with dishes filled excessively with food. I watched the corners of Paul's mouth as they became stained with remnants of the meal he shoveled into his mouth, all the while listening to the rambling of his current situation.
“...so when your mother had stopped in, I had informed her of the divorce and she immediately mentioned that you weren't involved at the moment. I was really kind of flabbergasted because, well, wow- I’m almost embarrassed to say it, but you guys are from old money and usually don’t date the commoners.” He laughed thoughtfully at his last word and pulled his eyes away from his nervous fingers and towards my face.
I smiled tightly, but struggled to find any response.
“Well anyway, enough about me. So tell me about yourself, Elizabeth! If you’re anything like your mother, I bet you like cats! I have a few myself.”
“There’s not much to tell apart from what my mother probably already told you, but yeah, sure I like cats.”
“Do you have any?” He asked, his fork pushing a pus-like mound of ricotta across his plate.
My answer should have been no but I couldn’t help but think about the dead, orange little tabby sitting on my seat. “Yes actually. I just got one. He’s a shy guy. He’s also rather old so he doesn’t move much.”
“Oh, that’s a shame! Let me know if you have to put him down soon. Your mom always tells me when she’s expecting one of hers to kick the bucket. Actually, you must have heard about her dear cat Elvis that she had to put down.”
“Yep, I did. Too bad, I really liked him.”
And I had liked him. He had these deep sapphire eyes that had always been big and wild, replaced now with a marble or a bead, painted to resemble to real thing.
“He was young, much younger than the others.” I added for lack of anything else to say, before I realized that Paul was back talking about his ex-wife.
“.....she was my bookkeeper for the business stuff. I haven’t even figured that part out yet. I have too much pride to ask her for help now, but don’t think I haven’t thought about it.”
“Right, that’s unfortunate. I’m sorry Paul, what is it that you do again?”
“Oh, I hadn’t even mentioned it because I thought you knew already. I’m a taxidermist.”
Whit Howlett lives in Providence, Rhode Island, and works as a software analyst, writing in her free time. She has a BA in Speech, Language, and Hearing Science from Rhode Island college, and is working on several strange but comical short stories and a dystopian novel. Sent from my Sprint Samsung Galaxy S7 edge.
