The Astonishing Thing

Sean’s words haunt me for days. He seemed satisfied and relieved that my mother is gone.

I agreed with the one thing Man finally said to Sean in reply: “A little baby needs his mother.” That fact is true. There is no getting around it.

For the next couple of days, I brood, skulking from one corner to the next. Now that I know for sure she’s alive, I don’t understand why Mother doesn’t visit us here at the house. I get frustrated and angry when I think about it, because it doesn’t make sense.

Maybe Mother, wherever she is, could have taken the baby with her. And maybe she could have taken me with her too. She should come back and get us.

But then she wouldn’t really be able to get the rest she needs, isn’t that right? I’d like to think she will be back any day now, relaxed and all better.

But I suspect I am wrong about that. I will go to her if she will not come to me.

It will be dangerous for me outside. There are animals and humans and machines and cold air and bright lights. Just thinking about it makes me shudder. To put it out of my mind, I jump up on the soft, familiar couch and huddle in a corner, feeling like a coward.

* * *

In the middle of the week, the neighbor from next door comes over and interrupts supper.

Supper is ham sandwiches. With cheese. Again. It’s one of the only meals Man knows how to make, and even Jimmy can make it in a pinch. Jimmy holds down little strips of white cheese under the table, which I snatch greedily from his fingers. The cheese is bland but milky. I’ll take what I can get. I’m just happy that someone is remembering to feed me.

I watch from the hallway. The neighbor is a little older, with hair that is graying on the sides. He’s red in the face and agitated. He has loud words for Man, pointing at a tree on the side of our house. I’ve seen this person from the window, coming into our driveway to talk to Man more than once. Man isn’t much of a talker, and he usually starts walking away while the neighbor is still yapping behind him.

Now, Man scowls, raising an eyebrow, and listens to the neighbor. Man starts closing the door before the neighbor seems quite done. The neighbor is still talking and strenuously pointing off to the side yard. The door clicks shut.

“Calm down,” Man mutters to himself after he closes the door.

Good riddance, I think. We have enough to deal with.

But in the middle of the night, after he has tried reading his books and has been tossing and turning for hours, Man sits up in bed. He turns and stands up, pulls on his jeans, throws on a sweatshirt, and heads down the steep wooden stairs in the darkness. He gets one of his big, heavy-lined coats out of the closet and slips into his boots. And heads out the door.

It is not long before I hear a loud machine whirring outside. I walk over to the dining room window, the pads on my feet sinking into the soft carpet. I jump up onto a chest of drawers, skirting between two dishes, to see if I can view anything out the window. It’s very dark, but I can feel the buzzing, and it’s somewhere very close.

Jimmy comes running down the stairs, and Mary is soon behind him.

“Where’s Dad?” Mary asks. “Dad. DAD?”

“Oh. My. God.” Jimmy has his face right up against the glass, above me, breathing a fog onto the window. No one has bothered to turn on the lights, and we stand there in the dark. “Dad is OUT THERE. Jesus Christmas.”

Mary is already rushing toward the coat closet. She pulls out a lined flannel coat and helps Jimmy get into it, and then she hands him gloves so he can run out there and help his dad. The air that rushes in when my brother opens the door is bitter cold.

Mary and I return to the window, and we can hear people talking. I think I hear not only Jimmy’s voice but also the neighbor, and clearly this is unusual. Man does not generally go out and trim branches or do yard work of any kind in the middle of the night. I can hear Man yelling, and he is fierce when it happens. I get the impression that you do not want to cross him. I have seen people shrink away from him when he loses his temper. And then there is no more talking. Just buzzing.

They’re out there awhile, and I assume they finish the job.

For a moment, I think about darting out the door when they come back into the house so I can go look for Mother. The humans will certainly be tired and distracted. But Mary picks me up and holds me to her chest, and I lose my chance.

When Man and Jimmy enter, they quietly take their coats off. Mary has a pink blanket wrapped around her shoulders, and I feel very warm in her arms as she carefully asks them a few questions. Pretty soon Jimmy is getting into his story—really getting into it, the way Mother would, imitating the neighbor—and soon he has Mary smiling, and then laughing. Even Man looks pleased.

I know Jimmy reminds them of Mother. Jimmy reminds me of Mother, so much that it hurts sometimes.

When they go to bed, Man sleeps hard, like a rock. He gets his rest for a few hours anyway, until Finn starts screaming just before dawn.

* * *

The next day, Man looks tired but at peace. He goes to work but comes home early because Charlotte is coming today. She still visits twice a week, but last week something changed. Early in the week, Charlotte came in the morning and Mahmee watched her work with Finn. But at the end of the week, she came in the afternoon when Mahmee was gone and Man was at home.

I am starting to see that Charlotte can’t just teach Finn by herself. She wants to teach others how to work with Finn. And maybe, a little bit, teach Man how to be a mother.

Most of the time, they use toys and pictures and books down on the rug. But sometimes there is also a lesson on diapers or bottles, because the baby naturally needs these things sometimes when Charlotte is here. She doesn’t do these things for Man, but watches and instructs as he does them. She is very patient with him.

At first I worried that Man would be insulted that she was helping him with these things. He is a proud Man who already has two older children.

But he doesn’t seem to mind. He seems relieved.

Charlotte seems relieved too. Perhaps things are not so hopeless. She pulls Mary or Jimmy into the nursery once in a while and gets them working with Finn. Finn is a happy little human, when he’s not screaming with discomfort. But he’s getting bigger fast. He can push his head up and move around. He is very active. I wonder when he will start walking on two feet, like a human child.

We need to do something about those steep stairs.

* * *

On a cold but sunny day when everyone is home, Aruna stops by in the late morning. She looks bright eyed and is wrapped in a red coat, her hair pulled back in a ponytail with a matching red ribbon tied around her dark hair. Jimmy gives her a hug, but I have not seen him kiss her yet. Aruna turns her collar up against the wind, ready to go back out, but sees me out of the corner of her eye. I receive a friendly pat on the head, and when I rev up the purring, I get scratched between my ears and she picks me up.

Aruna is soooo sweet. She makes me shiver with delight.

Suddenly, I have a thought. When Aruna puts me down, I start to meow, over and over. She frowns. And then she tells Jimmy to go get something for me. He comes out of the kitchen with a spoonful of something that he hands to her.

Aruna leans down to present me with a bite of tuna. Mother always bought the most delicious, fresh tuna, but I can tell this is from a can. It has a slight metallic taste. No matter.

If you had told me this past summer that Jesus Jimmy and a girl (a complete stranger to me then) would become my heroes, I would never have believed it.

But now, here they are. My saviors. Keeping me fat and happy. I didn’t think anyone would ever remember to feed me the way that Mother did.

After they leave, Man sees that Jimmy accidentally left his little phone on the kitchen table. He holds it in his hand for a moment as he sits eating a bowl of cereal.

After a minute, Man turns it on and starts scrolling through something. He is only half-looking when something catches his eye.

Man works with the phone for a few minutes, pressing buttons, listening. His mouth opens and then shuts. He squints at it, and I think he is reading something on the small screen. It is very puzzling to him, whatever he has found.

I know that Jimmy has been talking to Mother, but he doesn’t.

I jump up on the chair next to him to get a better look. Absentmindedly, Man strokes my back. I arch to lean into him.

After staring at the table a long while, he finally clicks something and puts the phone to his ear.

“Care,” he says. I lift my head to stare at him. He must be talking to Mother. His face doesn’t give anything away. I watch, wide-eyed, crouched on the chair. My heart beats hard in my chest.

They talk for a very long time.

Man asks a lot of questions, calmly. They start like, “Why can’t—?” and “Why don’t—?” and “Yes, but why did you—?”

Then the conversation turns to Finn, and Man does his best to tell her some stories. I can hear Mother laugh on the other end, wherever she is.

At the end of the conversation, Man clearly wants to keep her on the line, and she wants to go. He tries, “But please don’t—” and “But we all need—” and “But don’t you think—” and “I thought you felt—”

It occurs to me that Man hasn’t been talking to Mother on the phone these past few weeks. And many weeks have gone by.

Perhaps Mother bought a new phone so Man wouldn’t bother her. But why wouldn’t she want Man to call her? I haven’t figured out yet if it is Man’s fault or the baby’s fault that she left, but how can Man apologize for whatever he did if she won’t let him reach her? He needs to tell her that the baby is getting better so she will come back and take care of us all.

Now I think, for the first time, that my mother is being foolish and stubborn.

I wish she would just let him apologize. Let him say what he needs to say.

I know Mother is out there. And I know she loves me. She loves me and Mary and Jimmy and Finn, and she even loves that yappy Jasper.

I heard Mary and Mahmee talking about the holiday called Thanksgiving. It is coming soon. Mahmee said she will make us a turkey, and I plan to eat my share. So that means it won’t be long until we celebrate the even bigger and more special holiday, called Christmas. I am sure Mother will come home for that and we’ll have a happy reunion.

It will be a tremendous day!

If Man can just convince her to come.

When he stops talking into the phone, he looks tired, his eyes heavy. I am not sure what it means.

Just a few short days later, Man is going through the mail and finds a letter. It is late in the evening, and the kids have gone to bed already. He brings it over to the fireplace and sits down.

He looks at it a long time, unopened. Finally, he gets up, goes into the kitchen, retrieves a dark brown bottle from the refrigerator, and brings it into the living room. The fire sparks and cracks as he drinks and stares at his letter.

Man doesn’t usually drink that foamy beer when he is alone, maybe because it makes people talk loudly and he can’t afford to be loud when the baby is sleeping. But now, he drinks the whole bottle before tearing open the letter.

Honestly, he has no one to talk to anyway.

I climb into his lap. It is so incredibly warm and snuggly sitting there by the fire. I have never sat in Father’s lap before, and it is not too bad.

I—Did I just call him Father?

Sorry, I think I did. I don’t know why I did that.

No—I take it back. I did it because he must be Father to me now. I settle in, both into the word and into his lap. I see how things have changed. He must adopt me because Mother is not here, and we are getting so tired of waiting for her. She is making us wait too long.

He holds the letter above me and reads it several times. He is so still that I relax and start to nod off.

I am startled when his body turns suddenly. I jump up and run over to the middle of the rug. I think he forgot I was there. Father puts the letter into the fire, then changes his mind and grabs it back out with his hand, which seems like a dangerous thing to do. But I guess Father knows how to handle fire. He slaps the edges of the paper with the palm of his hand, where it is singed. I worry that he is going to burn his hand.

Crouched over the letter, on all fours, he reads it again. He starts taking long, deep, shaky breaths. He stays like that a long time, trying to breathe, like his throat is closing up. His hand goes to his heart, and when he winces I know he is in tremendous pain. But he stays as quiet as he can. I believe he doesn’t want to disturb the children. I am afraid to get closer, because I’m not sure when he will suddenly move.

I think Father has had more bad news. I am worried it is from Mother.

He rolls over onto his back, right there by the fire, and lays an arm over his eyes. As if he does not have the strength to get up. Eventually, he falls into a restless sleep. If I could bring a blanket to him, I would. But I cannot, so I curl up by his knee.

We fall asleep, he and I.

The day will come when I go out and look for my mother, but today is not the right day. Father needs me.