A Lot to Ask

She was going to have to feed the cat. Plucking a sachet from the box of Earl Grey with her bamboo tea tong and dropping it into her favorite cream-colored pot, Laura turned to face the closed bedroom door adjacent the kitchen. She’d opened it briefly the night before to lift the animal out of its crate and place it, him, on the rug, before hurrying out and closing the door behind her. The bag of cat food Carly’s ex, Liv, had given her, along with strict verbal instructions she could hardly remember, was still in the trunk of her car. 

“Do you have a feeding bowl?” Liv had asked. 

“Of course,” She’d replied. Weren’t all bowls, or, rather, didn’t all bowls have the potential to be feeding bowls? She didn’t want something that had been filled with commercial animal food, likely for days on end without cleaning, in her home. She didn’t want smelly cat food pellets in her home. Frankly, she didn’t want Winston in her home, but Liv’s new girlfriend had an allergy. 

Opening the top left cupboard, Laura ran her finger over the tag labeled “Mugs” in deep blue cursive, each letter perfectly formed as though it had been prepared for a ceremonial invitation. She admired her script and the front row of cups, their solid shades of paisley, teal, primrose pink, and celadon green. Toward the back were a few unused gifts including the hideous white bowl-shaped object with dancing flamingos from her mother, technically a mug, Laura assumed, because of its round handle. But she couldn’t feed the animal in something she’d run through the dishwasher. Antibacterial soap was only so potent, and cat saliva was a microbial medley she didn’t want within feet of anything she would eat off of. 

It had been three years and no contact, not even the obligatory, “Hope all is well” message. Then, right before Laura was set to give her year-in financial presentation, the numbers less favorable than she’d hoped, the email popped up on her phone:

Dear Mrs. Kaplan,

I know we haven’t spoken in a long time. I hope you are not upset, and understand that I have needed to move on with my life. I am writing to you now because I am seeing someone. She and I will be moving in together, and, unfortunately, she is very allergic to cats, so I won’t be able to keep Winston anymore. I didn’t want to give him away without letting you know as you know how much Carly loved him. Please let me know if you would like to take him. If that’s too much to ask, then maybe you would like to have a say in the rehoming process. Please let me know either way.

Cordially,

Olivia

It had taken Laura a moment to recover from the painful formality of the email. “Mrs. Kaplan,” she was actually now back to being Ms. Richter, “Cordially, Olivia;” the icy message from a woman her daughter cherished those six years before her death stung, and she’d let herself admit it. Progress. 

Tupperware! Laura took a plastic container off the pantry shelf labeled “Containers,” then bent down, eye level with the shelf labeled “Canned Goods.” Winston, she thought, today’s your lucky day. Sustainably farmed, organically raised Albacore Tuna. Did house cats also need water bowls like dogs, or did they only occasionally hydrate like box turtles? Laura shook her head. Carly, I hope you’re watching. Just don’t ask me to love this thing. 

If she believed in kismet or karma or whatever the term was, Laura considered, her hand on the doorknob, maybe she’d think this was some divine plot to get her to go into Carly’s old room. Dr. Cantor had given her that assignment almost weekly that first year when she’d been willing to pay the exorbitant $300-a-session fee. She never completed her task, it was easier to just stop going to sessions. And it wasn’t as though she dared not step foot in the room, she simply didn’t like to linger. 

The bedroom door squeaked, unaccustomed to much movement, and Laura opened it enough to slip in and close it behind her. Winston would have to come to understand that the rest of the apartment was off-limits. Laura flipped the light switch anticipating a hearty greeting, but the animal was nowhere in sight. Carly’s quilt, the one she’d had since their first trip to Europe as a family, to where Seth’s grandparents came from Poland before The War, was covered in tiny grey, black, and brown strands. This was one of the reasons she’d held fast to a no-pet policy. Laura placed the plastic container of organic tuna on a coaster on Carly’s dresser and tried brushing the hairs off with her hands. It was useless; they clung to the fabric as though they’d been dipped in glue. 

She had the sensation of being watched as she sat down on the bed’s yielding mattress. She’d felt it before which was, in part, why she rarely went in. It was as though she’d invaded some sacred space and was being surveilled, her every movement documented. Carly would have known that the animal hair would catch her attention before anything else, and after going off to school, then meeting Liv, she would have had what Seth called “the chutzpah” to say something. 

“You only care about appearances,” she’d snapped one morning on the phone. 

Laura couldn’t remember the entire exchange, what she had said, but it had something to do with Carly’s sudden weight gain. She’d been so lovely: long swan-like neck, sage green eyes, the most inviting smile; so charming, and Laura felt it a shame she’d agreed to take a medication that caused her to become heavy for the first time in her life. Perhaps she shouldn’t have commented, but appearances mattered. Presentation mattered. The whole “I don’t care what other people think” line tossed around so often these days was the very definition of privilege, something young people didn’t understand. 

Laura recalled, looking down at her French manicure, one Sunday back in Wisconsin. She must have been ten, and one of their Irish Setters, Rusty, had died suddenly in the night. She’d found him when she went to the pen for the dog’s morning feed, bringing scraps from her family’s pre-church breakfast. In her baby blue dress, her hair fastened in a perfect ballerina bun, she sobbed in the backseat of the car. As they neared Immanuel Lutheran’s entrance, her mother stopped the car and turned to face Laura. Her voice as stern as Laura had ever heard, said, “You are about to enter a home, the Lord’s home. I want you to imagine what he’d think seein’ you walk through those doors, head down, red-faced, nose runnin’ like a faucet. I want you to imagine givin’ your only son as the savior of mankind, then havin’ to witness this nonsense over a dirty animal. Don’t you dare, Young Lady. You will fix your face and your attitude, and you will walk into that home like you haven’t a worry in the world. I’m not askin’, I’m tellin’.” And she did. She’d never sat so straight in the front pew, hands folded in her lap, eyes fixed on Pastor Schultz, absorbing his every word. 

But life was so different these days, now, here. From her small town in rural Wisconsin where dresses never crept above the kneecap to this city where teen girls rode the subway braless, exhibiting their figures in see-through tank tops, headed to Union Square Park where some stranger might offer them a joint and a tarot card reading for $20. Carly’d exchanged her girls’ school uniform for torn jeans and t-shirts with names like “Babes in Toyland” and “Bikini Kill” once she reached ninth grade. Seth said it was, “Critical to finding her identity,” and might help with some of her troubling behaviors. The thin, scabbed-over striations on her left arm generated such panic outside their family unit, and there were times Laura wished simply that Carly would take the double-edged razor blades she hid in an old shoe box under her bed to a less visible part of her body. God, Laura turned to face the untouched bowl of tuna, she’d been ashamed. There was no longer any point in denying it. 

Perhaps he’s ill? Cats were really undomesticated domestic pets. They didn’t form bonds, never cared to please their masters, and were wholly self-preserving. At least that had always been her impression, not to mention, they did their business in a box, in the house, and stepped over, or even in, it once they’d finished. So why wasn’t he devouring his organic fish without a care in the world, perched atop her daughter’s old dresser, leaving traces of whatever he carried on his paws on the 19th-century wood? “I didn’t want to give him away without letting you know as you know how much Carly loved him,” Liv had written in her email. Having to let her know the animal got sick or, worse, died in the middle of the night would be mortifying. Laura felt the blood rush to her cheeks, her heart palpate. She dropped to her hands and knees and peeked under the bed. Two tea green eyes, a shade similar to Carly’s, peered directly at her, unblinking, as the animal crouched motionless. 

“Oh, For Heaven’s sake.” 

Laura grasped the scruff of Winston’s neck. She knew he wouldn’t scratch her, partially paralyzed as he was, just like when his alley cat mother would have carried him from trash can to trash can before finally abandoning him outside Carly and Liv’s dorm that brutal Ithaca February. She placed him on the quilt he’d already seen fit to sully. 

“Well? Food? There,” she pointed toward the dresser. He just stared at her. 

Oh, what was the name? The holy creature Carly mentioned? Laura returned the cat’s gaze, refusing to look away as though they had both entered into some undeclared contest. Bastet! Goddess Bastet, protector of expecting women, divine manifestation of the Eye of Ra. Laura’s memory served her well, and she couldn’t help smiling, as the words sounded like they could have come directly from Carly herself. Carly had loved learning about Ancient Egypt, though all the classes in her Near Eastern Studies major fascinated her. To Seth’s delight, she even took three years of Classical and Modern Hebrew, and read his grandparents’ copy of The Torah. 

“She’s really found her passion!” He’d beamed when she came home to visit after her third semester. 

“Heading toward unemployment?” Laura countered. 

It had struck her as just another display of privilege, succumbing to the impulse to follow one’s whims, even when it came to education. To get into a top-tier school and choose to focus on a subject with no practical value in the real world was absurd. What had Carly planned? To impress the CEO of some company with her knowledge of Ancient Egyptian deities? 

“Maybe she’ll become a rabbi,” Seth offered.

Laura arched her brow. “With her, what did your mother call me? Shiksa mother? The great-granddaughter of Lutheran Pastor Carl Richter? Not a chance. She’d have to get rid of half her…” She never finished the sentence. Somehow the words hurt more to say than to think. 

Carly’d done better, at least in her mind, landing a job teaching eighth-grade English and history. Laura and Seth even helped her and Liv rent their one-bedroom in a midtown high-rise, Lord knew they’d never have managed it on their own. But they’d appeared happy, moving into a serene daily rhythm. Laura had to admit, it was enough to ask for. 

“From the outside,” she heard herself say, turning to face the door. It had a rectangular marking where a body-length mirror once rested. 

“You win.” She glanced back, reaching out to touch Winston’s head. He drew back, his eyes still fixed on hers. The tiger pattern of gray, black, and light brown with white under the chin, then forming what looked like a bow-tie across his snout couldn’t be beautiful by any standard. But Carly had loved him.

It was amazing how different a mother could be from her daughter. Laura would have imagined a young woman with Carly’s general appearance, but the rest was so foreign. A love of getting dressed in the morning, accessorizing, excitement over finding the perfect tableware that matched her home decor, Spring and Summer when flower arrangements were in abundance and a trip to the shop held the question: is this week tulips or peonies? That Carly would have studied business, found her niche in the ever-expanding tech industry, maybe still owned a cat, but one with short hair and a good, solid color. She’d meet a young man who, too, had high financial aspirations, perhaps an actuary. Laura’s chest tightened, she felt the blood rush to her face. Had she really just wished for a different child? What was wrong with her? It was the damn cat. But she’d agreed to take him, and now he seemed ill or anorexic or on some feline hunger strike. She sat on the edge of the bed, moving slowly so as not to rattle him. 

He’d been in the apartment that day. Liv had gone to her university administrative job. It was just Carly and Winston, and something hadn’t been right for weeks. There were complaints from the parents at school. 

“She’s forcing the kids to listen to punk rock?” Laura joked at first.

Seth’s face was drawn, concerned. “They have a predetermined curriculum. First quarter English is Of Mice and Men, history is ancient civilizations—”

“Well, that's her ‘thing,’ no? What’s the problem?”

“The problem?” Seth blushed. He’d always seemed embarrassed when they discussed their only child. Or was it anger?

“She requested they combine the classes and read The Bible,” he continued. “And when the Headmaster said no, she went ahead and assigned the first two chapters of Genesis anyways.” 

“Isn’t that ancient—” Laura stopped before making a fool of herself.  “Is she self-harming?” She shifted, realizing suddenly she was running late for a meeting. 

“You need to call Liv.” 

“Okay.”

She never called Liv. Any involvement on her part was always interpreted as criticism, and she was tired of the arguments. 

“All you do is put me down!” Carly would yell. 

How could you communicate with someone who took every suggestion, any hint that maybe, just maybe, an alternative approach might be warranted as harsh disapproval? And once you’d been responsible, in part, for bringing someone into the world, were you always expected to put their needs ahead of your own? At what point could a mother say, I am no longer responsible, this is no longer my problem? It was a question Laura never dared to ask. 

The public report stated there had been multiple bibles on the table Carly dragged to the floor-to-ceiling living room window in the apartment she shared with Liv. Those lawyers Seth consulted! All charging an arm and a leg to tell him the same three things: some asshole on the police force had a big mouth, these types of details were often leaked due to an ever-growing attraction to morbid news stories, and, honestly, if Carly’d desired privacy, wouldn’t she have found a method that didn’t include falling fifteen stories onto a busy sidewalk?  

Laura didn’t involve herself in public disputes. She stopped taking calls from friends, avoided her family, lacking the energy to say, yes, Mom, maybe you were right. Maybe we gave her too much freedom. She sat, hands folded in her lap, at the kitchen table while Seth raged into the void of his iPhone, his flush red cheeks answering a long unanswered question: he was angry. She went to the young couple’s apartment as soon as the police made their determination: Death by Suicide. The broken window was beyond repair, but she hated the thought of the building’s super having to clean Carly’s writing off the wall. She couldn’t stand him thinking she’d raised a delinquent. And as she stood, a washcloth in one hand, rubbing alcohol in the other, the foreign letters touched her. 

?מֶה עָשִׂיתָ

As she scrubbed each red, Hebrew character, she marveled, for the first time, at how similar Carly’s script was to her own. She had beautiful penmanship. 

Turning to face the back alleyway tabby, Laura felt her chin tremble.

“What did you see?” 

She tried shutting her eyes to keep them dry. Did that ever work? Did it matter, now?

Laura wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand. Carly’s old quilt could be dry-cleaned, or Laura could get one of those white sticky rollers cat people always seemed to have lying around. She went to the dresser where the untouched tuna sat. Setting the container on the floor, she looked up at Winston sitting straight, tail curled at his feet, watching. She returned his stare as she rose and moved toward the door. 

“Love is a lot to ask,” she whispered. 

She left the door ajar. As she walked slowly to the kitchen, she thought she heard the sound of a rough tongue meeting plastic. 

Emma Eden Ramos is a writer and former high school teacher. Her prose and poetry have appeared in Luna Luna Magazine, Neon: A Literary Magazine, Sage Cigarettes Magazine, The Citron Review, BlazeVOX, and elsewhere. Emma’s novelette titled Where the Children Play was anthologized in Resilience: Stories, Poems, Essays, Words for LGBT Teens, edited by Eric Nguyen, award-winning author of Things We Lost to the Water. Emma lives in New York City, and is a single mother to her son, Michael. In addition to writing, she works for a membership organization for women in cybersecurity.