8

What Is Under the Bed

In the morning, Father wakes up early and looks around in wonder when he finds he is by the cold fireplace. I think he must be sore when he sits up, wincing and holding his back. We can both hear Finn stirring in his crib.

Carefully folding the letter and putting it in his back pocket, Father heads upstairs. I follow. He lifts Finn out of his crib and wraps him up in several layers, and I realize they are going out. He brings Finn down and puts him in the car seat that waits by the front door before he gets his coat on.

When Father returns about half an hour later, he brings the baby in first, placing the car seat, with Finn still in it, inside the door. He walks back to the car to get a few bags. When he lays everything out on the kitchen table, I see it is doughnuts and coffee and orange juice.

It takes Jimmy and Mary another hour after his return to wander downstairs, but when they do, they are happy to see the food. Father is looking through the newspaper. He usually finds a few things to show Jimmy about the Sox in the summer or the Bruins in the winter.

I think the Sox and the Bruins must be warlike tribes of peoples. From the way Father describes them, it sounds as if they are always in battle.

Everyone is quiet and relaxed. But when the whole family is seated and tucking into their food, Father asks my siblings a question that makes them freeze.

“So. You guys have been talking to your mother?”

His arms are crossed, which makes his shoulder muscles tense under his tight shirt, and he looks a little intimidating. Which he already is anyway.

I want to tell him: breathe.

And this: loosen up.

“Uhhhhhh . . .” Mary realizes she must answer his question. She opens her eyes wide at Jimmy, who gives a subtle shrug. “Um, yeah, Dad.”

“You talk to her all the time?”

“Well . . .” She puts her doughnut down. “Yes and no. We don’t talk, we text.” Mary has a snappy way of talking. She is at a loss, so she just repeats herself, as if he is an idiot and doesn’t understand the difference. “We don’t talk, we text.” She lifts her eyebrows, as if to say, Get it?

Jimmy snorts. But then it’s his turn. “Dad, I’m really sorry. Ma said not to tell you. She said you weren’t going to handle it well. She said you would drive her crazy.”

Father just sighs. So now we know. Everyone has been talking to Mother except for him.

He shakes his head and drinks his coffee.

Father loves coffee, just like Mahmee does. In some ways, Father is very like Mahmee. Because of this, they get on each other’s nerves sometimes. It works out well that Mahmee leaves most days before Father gets home.

Mahmee is generous, even if she is stubborn, just like Father. I believe that Mahmee gave Father this house. I have come to realize that this house is the one that Father grew up in, yet Mahmee no longer lives here. I can smell his scent everywhere, on the old, ratty furniture and on baby blankets in the closet.

Maybe this is one reason Mother felt she had to leave us to get her rest. It is Father’s house. But then, where is she? Unlike Father, she has no family anywhere near here. But she does have friends. Many, many friends.

I hope she is with friends. And not injured or sick in the hospital, which I have heard Mother say is the worst place in the world to end up. That’s the best I can hope for.

“Dad,” Mary asks, “it’s Sunday. Why don’t we go to church anymore?”

“I don’t really want to see anyone,” Father mumbles quietly, head lowered as if he’s talking to his plate.

“Dad, maybe you should see people.” Jimmy grabs a second doughnut, rips it in half, and stuffs a piece in his mouth.

Father scowls. “I don’t want to have to explain it. You know they’re already talking about it anyway—”

“But Dad, of course people are going to talk. People either love Ma or hate her.” Jimmy puts his hands out in front of him as if he is a scale, balancing items on his two palms. “They love her”—and here he drops one hand—“or they hate her.” And he drops the other hand.

Hate her? I don’t understand Jimmy’s words. How could anyone ever hate our mother? She is the sweetest, loveliest, kindest person.

To me anyway.

Maybe not to everyone.

Maybe not to Father, at least, not all of the time. But she did love him once. Of that, I am sure. I remember when she held him and kissed him and loved him so, so much.

And, I remember when she . . . Well, when she was not happy. When she was tired and moody and very angry. But we all get like that sometimes, don’t we?

I need to think about it. I slink up the steep stairs and crawl under Mother’s bed. I need a break.

It is dark under the big bed, and I love it. I enjoy prowling in the night, and I sometimes seek out the dark even in the middle of the day. It feels soothing on my eyes, and I feel very safe tucked tight among the boxes.

I see one of Mother’s little, round red pills sitting by a shoebox, and suddenly I feel nostalgic. I bat it with my paw until it skids out of sight.

Mother has been taking the red pills every day since I met her. I am not sure what they do, but they seem to give her energy.

There was a time, maybe a year before Finn was born, when the pills stopped working. I knew something was wrong because Mother was too tired to get out of bed. I remember those days well. I didn’t mind Mother being in bed, because we could cuddle. We had a wonderful, amazing time together. It was a rainy month in the middle of winter, dark and damp, and I was so glad to have Mother to warm me up.

When those pills stopped working, Jimmy finally confronted Father in the kitchen one night. I watched from where I lay spread out on the tile.

“She’s gotta go back,” Jimmy begged. “Please, Pops. You can’t pretend it’s not happening.”

“I don’t want to go back. Those doctors have no idea what they’re doing. They can’t even figure out—”

“Just give them one more chance. I’m worried. C’mon. Just try it.”

Father rubbed his neck, listening. He finally agreed.

She was gone for a day, and when she returned, Mother was back to taking the red pills, plus some light blue rectangular ones. And Mother was full of energy once again. Full, full, full of it! Making lots of calls and seeing lots of friends. Telling lots of funny stories.

In those days, at bedtime, Father would sit in bed and watch her pace and talk, back and forth, wearing a trail into the rug. He listened to her stories until she wore herself out. When she’d finally lie in bed, he’d throw an arm over her, as if that alone would keep her anchored until morning. Father would nuzzle her behind the ear until she laughed and relaxed, and I would have to jump off the bed if she started to kiss him, because then he moved around too much.

I didn’t like getting kicked in the hip or the head, which is what happened if Father wasn’t paying attention.

That would be on a good night.

On a bad night, they would fight. Mother could start a fight about any old thing. She could never “let it alone,” as Father begged her to do. Sometimes he just stared at her, with a wounded pout on his face as she cursed at him. After throwing his pillow and a blanket into the hallway, she’d slam the door behind him.

Other nights, he fought back, bellowing down the hallway. I would watch the muscles twitch in his arms as he clenched his fists and screamed his heart out. Sometimes on those nights he somehow ended up back in our bed, which confused me. But when Mother changed her mind, I was in no position to argue.

Either way, it didn’t make a difference to me. Mother gathered me to her chest and caressed me when she was ready to sleep, whether Father was there or not. She was always loving toward me.

I miss her. I hope she misses me too.

The other person who really bothered her sometimes was Jimmy. Oh, there was one day when she was still adjusting to those new blue pills that she really let him have it. He just messed up one thing after another. He spilled the cereal all over the kitchen floor and forgot to take the trash out, which caused the ants to march in. Then he handed her a slip saying his homework was late for the third time that month.

Mother always kept the house very, very clean. There was never a mess until the day she left. And she was extremely organized. I don’t know how Jimmy got to be such a messy, careless child.

I was angry at Jimmy too, for making Mother so, so frustrated.

At first, she just screamed at him: how he was so disappointing, and how she couldn’t believe he screwed up again. How he was driving her crazy. How he was making so much work for her. How he was just as stupid as his father.

But this one time was different: She hit him. More than once, on the arm and his side.

Jimmy was already bigger than Mother, but he didn’t fight back. He just looked stunned and ran outside. It was a nice spring day. Believe me, he was perfectly fine.

I sat on the windowsill by the screen and watched Jimmy as he stood on the front step, talking into his little phone. “Dad. Turn around and come back. She just hauled off and started wailing on me. Yes . . . yes. But Dad, I’m late for school—okay. Okay.”

When Father arrived, Jimmy got up his courage and told Mother how he felt, standing tall while she sat on the couch in the living room. I could see he felt braver with Father there next to him.

“You don’t get to do that to me, Ma,” he warned her, his eyes finally starting to water. He blinked back the tears. “I’m not going through that again.”

I don’t know what he meant by “again.” I’d never seen her do that before.

Mother and I scowled at him. Jimmy caused the problem, not her.

Father looked worried and hustled Jimmy to the door. “You should go to school.” He walked outside with Jimmy for a minute, talking to him quickly and quietly. “Tell them you slept in by mistake.”

It was that point of the spring where the trees had just bloomed with baby green leaves and the air was heavy with moisture. They stood there on the step not noticing the beautiful day that was unfolding around them.

Jimmy whirled around. “Dad—you won’t let her call the school, will you? Because then everyone will know—”

Father assured Jimmy he would not let Mother call the school. He promised he would not leave her alone all day. And Father said he would be there when Jimmy got home from school.

“You gonna call the doctor?”

“Nah. It’s fine. She’s just tired. I’ll figure it out.”

Jimmy nodded. Father put one hand on either side of his son’s head and kissed him on the forehead.

I was mad at Jimmy, even if Father wasn’t.

Good riddance, Jimmy, I thought. Go think about what you did wrong. Upsetting Mother that way.

Father came back in and went upstairs. He never went to work that day. He brought down Mother’s little bottles of pills and made sure she’d taken them. When Father asked Mother if she felt anxious or agitated, she just rolled her eyes.

I wondered if maybe she had not taken enough pills, or she had taken too many, and her energy was off. Perhaps that was why Mother was so, so frustrated. Mother offered many arguments about why she didn’t want or need those pills anymore, but Father was having none of it. He just kept shaking his head no. He didn’t want to hear it.

Father was angry, but he didn’t yell at her that day. He just counted out her pills, over and over, double-checking. Keeping a nervous eye on her. Sitting right next to her when she got tired and lay down on the couch.

So that’s about all I know about the pills. I wonder if Mother has new pills, wherever she is.

I try to hunt down that little red pill under the bed, between the boxes. Although I nose around, I can’t find it. When the doorbell rings, I decide to go see who it is.

Sweet Aruna has come to watch a movie with Jimmy. Jimmy is happy to see her. He helps her take her coat off and hangs it up. Winter is almost here, and they express a desire to stay inside on their day off.

I understand. I’ve never been outside, but after his walk Jasper sometimes comes in looking like a popsicle, coated in ice. I wouldn’t want to be out there either.

Aruna sits with Jimmy on the couch. The room is dark and the shades are drawn. There’s a movie on the TV, but they aren’t really watching it. They are preoccupied with the upcoming school winter social, talking quietly about who is going and what they’ll wear.

“Are you going to dance with me at the social, even the slow dances?” Aruna asks, slowly blinking her big brown eyes at him. She is teasing him. She wears a thick sweater, and I have never felt anything so soft against the pads of my paws, as I knead into the material while sitting right on her lap. Lucky me! Aruna really loves me, I am sure of it. And she isn’t much interested in Jasper. Which in my book makes her pretty smart.

“Yes, of course,” Jimmy replies. He has his arm up on the back of the couch behind her. Sometimes he nuzzles his head against hers as if he’s sleepy, although he looks wide awake to me.

“Are you going to try to kiss me too?”

“What do you mean try?” A sly smile emerges on his face. “I ain’t trying. I’m doing.”

When Father goes out to do an errand, Jimmy tells Aruna a few stories about the many ways his dad has been “freaking out” lately. Aruna has a beautiful laugh, like the bells Mother hung on the back screen door. She laughs repeatedly, but as the stories go on, she laughs less and less.

Until finally Jimmy doesn’t sound so amused. He sounds tired. And Aruna isn’t laughing at all anymore. She pats his leg.

“Poor Jimmy.”

“Yeah,” he joins in. “Poor me.”

I watch as Jimmy’s hand pulls away from her and slides up to his arm, covering the X scar that is hidden by the sleeve of his shirt. I know the scar is there, but Aruna probably does not. I have seen him touch the scar before, as if he’s protecting it, at times when he is upset. But I don’t know if he realizes he’s doing it.

That’s not the only scar he has. There’s another one on his leg. It is also a big crooked X. It looks exactly like the one on his arm.

Aruna slowly leans in. She kisses Jimmy once, on the cheek, just barely.

“There it is,” he says triumphantly. And now he’s laughing again.

Jimmy’s a good boy. He always bounces back.

Aruna smiles at him. She takes his hand, and he intertwines his fingers with hers.

Now, watching Jimmy, I wonder if Mother was too hard on him. Did she need to hit him so many times for being messy and careless? It seemed right at the time, the kind of thing a mother should do, but now I’m not so sure. I don’t know exactly what human mothers are supposed to do to get their children to behave.

Mother never hit me. But, of course, I’m a cat. That’s different.

My back twitches, and I jump up and start cleaning myself head to toe. I lick until my neck is sore and my tongue is raw.

Aruna and Jimmy are kind, and they do feed me, but neither one is my mother. I refuse to think bad thoughts about Mother. I don’t know why I suddenly feel so guilty.

I have let my concern for Father distract me. I’m determined to make my plans to go find her.