step down—no voices could be heard. Two more steps. I heard nothing. I clutched the bag to my chest and crept down the stairs. When I got to the bottom I turned and I was just about to dash into the guest room when I heard a noise: the tiny mewl of a kitten. I looked up—Louie was poised at the top of the opening, ready to dive into my arms. I dropped the bag and caught him with one outstretched hand.
“Oh, you bad little boy,” I said. “I thought you were asleep.” I tucked him under my arm, grabbed the bag and ran into my room. Shoving the papers into my luggage, I managed to get everything out of sight before I heard Michael’s footsteps coming down the hall.
“Cassie, are you in here?” he asked.
I shoved the bag with my foot and launched myself across the bed with Louie in my hand. “Hi,” I said as he opened the door. “I thought Louie here might need to check out the litter box, so we came down for a bathroom break. How’s everything going? Is your Mom really angry?”
“She’ll be okay,” he said. “She’s making cookies. That always calms her down.”
I prodded Louie towards the bathroom. “Go on, take a pee-pee,” I said.
“Louie? So you weren’t kidding about that,” he said.
“Nope,” I said. “That’s his name. So, what should we do? Should we keep working in the attic, or go and help in the kitchen, or what?”
“Let’s leave her alone for a while,” he said. “Then maybe you can go down and check on her? See if you can get anywhere?”
“Okay,” I said. “Do you know anything about cats? Will he go to the bathroom when he’s ready or what?”
He shrugged. “I don’t have any idea. We’ll find out, won’t we?”
“These things don’t come with instruction manuals?” I asked, scooping up the kitten and following Michael out of the guestroom.
Back in the attic, we resumed our tasks. I picked apart more of the bankers boxes and sorted them into shredding piles. The desk itself was empty, and the file cabinets were also easily sorted out. Within the hour, my work was complete and I moved over to the mounds of clothing that Michael was attempting to sort.
“Why don’t you take some of this to New York?” I said. “These are great, and they are back in fashion.”
“I don’t want to wear my dead father’s clothes,” he said.
“What did he do for a living?” I asked.
“I don’t really know. Something with computers; he never talked about work at home,” he said.
“Was he older?”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. I just felt like he was much older than your mother, like he was relatively older than most men when he became a father,” I said.
“That’s a strange thing to say,” he said. “It’s true, though. He was over forty when I was born. So he was older than all the other fathers. He never played catch with me, never taught me how to ride a bike or any of those things. My mom did all of those things.” He looked at me. “Really—how did you know that?”
“I had a feeling, that’s all.”
“Hmmmph.”
“So, when he died, he was what, sixty?” I asked.
“Something like that, yeah. Maybe a little older,” he said. “What difference does it make now?”
“I’m just curious, that’s all. You know me…I have an active imagination. I wonder, was he in the war? Do you know?”
“You mean World War II? I don’t think so. Now that you mention it, I don’t remember ever seeing any photographs of him in uniform, or anything like that, but he should’ve been. That’s odd.” He paused. “Well, like I said. He was a silent person. He didn’t share much, didn’t talk about what he did at work, didn’t talk about the past, didn’t talk much at all. And then, he didn’t approve of me, so he didn’t want to talk about politics or any of that—he prohibited it at the table. He wanted calm quiet dinners, for better digestion, he said, so we were not allowed to talk about politics or social unrest at dinner time. And right after dinner, he went to his office and closed the door, so Peggy and I could watch what we wanted on television and talk about what we wanted, and he wouldn’t be disturbed. But when he was around, oh no, you had to be quiet.”
“I’m sorry that I brought this up,” I said. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“I’m not upset,” he said, folding a jacket and placing it in a box. I reached over and wiped away the tears that were coursing down his cheeks.
“Okay,” I said. “Not upset at all.”
He smiled.
“I think I’m going to need to take you and Peggy out for a big seafood feast, to make up for disrupting your holiday festivities so much,” I said.
“Nonsense,” he said. “We’ll have steak.”
“Are you talking about food again?” Peggy asked as she appeared at the top of the stairs. She was carrying a tray with sandwiches and a bag of chips. “I thought I’d bring this upstairs, but we can go downstairs to eat if you’d be more comfortable.” She pulled a couple of milk cartons over for seats and a makeshift table. Passing around the tray, she sat on an uncomfortable upright rocker that resembled an electric chair.
“No, this is perfect,” I said. “Thanks.” I took a sandwich. “Peggy, I’m sorry if we made you angry before. I didn’t mean any harm, I hope you know that.”
“Oh, I know, I’m just being sentimental. I told myself I was going to get through this without any drama, and look what I did—blowing up over a stupid old vest. I’m embarrassed to realize that I can be just as sentimental as all the people I’m always making fun of—right, Michael? No harm done, let’s just forget it ever happened, shall we?”
“I’m down with that,” Michael said. He shoved a sandwich into his mouth and we relaxed into the fellowship of food.
I crunched into a chip just as Louie hopped out of his box and ambled into the center of our little circle. He looked around at us, seemed to squat a bit, and a river of pee began flowing from between his legs.
“Quick—grab some newspapers or a rag, or something,” Peggy said. She looked around frantically and pulled a handful of paper from a box marked for recycling. She shoved paper under the cat to stem the flow of water, while I looked for something more absorbent to mop up the river.
“Well, I guess we learned something about litter training a cat today,” I said, balling a wet t-shirt into a trash bag.
“What’s that?” Michael asked. He was working on a second sandwich, his eating not having been interrupted at all by the urinary accident playing out at his feet.
“It’s not automatic,” Peggy and I said at the same time. We looked at each other and laughed.
“Mom, why didn’t we ever have any pets?” Michael asked.
“Did you just see what happened here?” she said. “That’s why.”
“Huh?”
“I would have had to do everything, and I thought that it was enough to have to pick up after you and your father. So I didn’t want to have to do it for another animal,” she said.
“Hey,” he cried. “I wasn’t that bad.”
I went downstairs, listening to their laughter following me down the hall. I brought Louie with me to have something to eat and coax him to make a visit to his litter box. He was fine on both counts, not interested in either case, so I tucked him back into my sweater and returned upstairs with two beers.