THE RADIOACTIVE CAT
by Eric Altemus
“It’s called radioiodine therapy,” Marie says, like she knows what she’s talking about. I’m standing in the food sciences hallway, next to the vending machines that don’t work. Marie’s my ex; she left me two months ago while I was in detox. And now she’s calling, telling me out of the blue that her cat’s radioactive.
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Or was about to be.
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“For hyperthyroidism. I admit it, okay? You were right. There was a problem.” I’m no genius: all I did was Google cat throwing up, eating too quickly after another fight over who was responsible for cleaning the cat puke in the hallway.
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Old bags of SunChips have started to wilt in the upper vending rows. “Does that mean you’re putting him down?” I reply. Marie rescued Beans from the Humane Society after we first started dating. We fell in love with his faults: frequent sneezing, emotional dependency, fondness for thighs.
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“Will you listen for one second? Alex, I swear to God.”
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“Why are you calling me?”
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Marie explains the procedure: driving an hour and a half to a special veterinary hospital in East Lansing, the radioiodine injection into Beans’ thyroid. Then, three days’ quarantine in the spare bedroom, scooping radioactive shit out of a plastic litterbox with latex gloves and a shovel.
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Cat chemotherapy? Would all his fur fall out?
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It’s easy to imagine the scene. Like something filmed in Chernobyl: Marie’s white oak desk; that lumpy Goodwill futon of hers for guests. Gray light from the window overlooking the cold street. Dead cigarette in a crystal ashtray. This hairless, irradiated feline prisoner on display for the neighbors.
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“The vet said it has a ninety percent success rate.” Marie makes a noise over the line that sounds like hiccupping. “And after Dad finally died, I didn’t have anyone else, and—”
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“Okay. How much is it?” I ask.
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She tells me. Holy shit. It’s like, a down payment on a new car.
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“Did you get a second opinion? Maybe the vet was trying to scam you.” Through the classroom window, I can see Brenda, my class partner, already putting our soufflé into the oven. Great. She doesn’t even need me.
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Marie sighs. “No, Alex. He’s not.” She stops. “Where are you?”
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“Cooking class at Huron,” I say. I’m enrolled in Intermediate Cooking at the local community college. My therapist said learning a new skill would help me stay busy, keep my mind off drinking after work. It sounds weird when said aloud. Because it is. I then hear tapping by the window. It’s Brenda, gesturing incomprehensibly with both hands. Her eyes are wide, her mouth forming the shape of what the fuck are you doing.
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I’m coming, I mouth back to the glass.
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“Sorry. It was a stupid idea to ask you. Just forget it, alright?” says Marie. The call disconnects before I can respond. I stare at the phone in my hand. Through the window, some pale dude who looks Machine Gun Kelly is flipping a pancake.
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Later, Brenda and I take turns looking at a soufflé through the small, dimly lit oven window. It looks like a giant zit.
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“You owe me big time,” Brenda asks. “I had to do all the prep myself.”
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“Long story. Looks good, though. Great British Bake Off, here we come.”
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“Okay, now I know you’re full of it.” She sighs. “Hope it doesn’t overcook. You know what happens if it does?”
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I’m still thinking about the tension in Marie’s voice. “I honestly don’t know.”
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Brenda’s lips purse. She flicks my forehead. “Didn’t you read the handout? Like a balloon: pop! The whole thing deflates. Can’t eat it then.”
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I take one last look at the soufflé before turning off the oven light. Still bulbous and edible; the world is still filled with possibility. Next time, we’re filleting fish, the instructor says, as we wipe down our workstations. She reviews food preparation procedures: knives, salmonella. Our soufflé still has fifteen minutes to go. But I’m not worried, and neither is Brenda. We’ve got everything under control.
*
After class, I watch Brenda pack her favorite bong in her living room: rainbow-colored glass with peace symbols on it she’s nicknamed Mother Knows Best. She pulls out a lighter, fills the chamber with sink water. Weed and Wheel of Fortune: we’ve been doing this every Tuesday night since we became cooking partners.
Mother Earth, Brenda reminds me. Not her. She always tells me she was a bad parent.
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“I see the bad moon a-rising,” she croons, as she flicks a lighter and descends toward the mouthpiece. Brenda qualified for medical marijuana last year due to her chronic back pain. She’s even got a small greenhouse in her basement. Every time I grab a Vernor’s from the fridge, I can smell her crop wafting up from the bottom of the stairs.
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She hands me the bong, smoke trailing from her mouth in wisps. “I cannot believe you haven’t blocked her. What is wrong with you?”
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“I don’t know. I’m stupid. I’m a simp.”
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“No, you just have issues setting boundaries.”
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“Okay, mother.” I take a hit and close my eyes. Brenda lives alone, in this place that’s more time capsule than home, with its doily coasters and chintzy table lamps. Decades of family portraits line the walls: weddings and honeymoons, babies, high school and college graduations. The photos stop there; Tom, her husband, died of a heart attack six months after their first post-retirement trip to Key West. All of Brenda’s kids left Michigan. They don’t visit anymore.
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I pull up a picture of Beans from my camera roll. It was the last one I took before treatment. I was drunk then: the soft light from the floor lamp behind him made his orange fur look ethereal, or so I thought.
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“Cute. Worth the money,” Brenda says, coughing into her shoulder. She blows up the photo with her index finger and thumb, focusing on his Disney eyes. “You still care about him, don’t you? After everything that happened?”
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Detox was a phenobarbital taper, the feeling of living on the exterior of a giant bubble. The smell of well water and cheap roll-on deodorant leaving a sulfurous, antiseptic layer. Smoke from standing outside with everyone else. A sink faucet shaped like a pen’s nib that shot out, not down. No locks or switches. A patient’s work truck left all crooked in the parking lot, filled with bottles and drywall scraps. Listening to nurses waking new patients to check their vitals while an overhead exhaust fan stuttered, same as the recovering drunks.
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And when I got home, Marie—and Beans—were gone.
Brenda reclines on the couch, hands folded on top of her belly. Pat Sajak drones in the background, along with the wheel slowing to a stop. The air in the room feels hazy and leaden.
“So what if I do? You’re not my therapist.”
“Tell me: how’s this going to keep you from getting hurt again?”
“How about dessert first?” I say, half-rolling out of my chair.
Brenda nods as a contestant fails to solve the puzzle. “Gone with the Wind, you idiot,” she says to the television. “It’s obvious.”
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See, we were Midwesterners: we didn’t believe in healthy expression of feelings. You internalized emotional pain and toughed it out like a bad case of gas, revisiting the embarrassing, sometimes painful moments in some fucked-up relationship montage while lying awake in bed at night. Was that what Brenda wanted to hear aloud: admitting my stupid, privileged problems, my own idiotic stubbornness?
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Abandonment. I thought I deserved it. It had happened to my mother before she died, too.
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But when I return to the living room, plates of soufflé in hand, Brenda is already asleep on the couch. The Wheel Watchers membership number flashes across the screen before the final spin. It’s not Brenda’s. It never is.
I’m used to this by now: her high-powered strains can knock her out in under an hour. I cover the plates in tinfoil and put them back in the fridge. “Brenda,” I say. “I’m taking off.” She snores again, quick and sharp, some subconscious acknowledgment.
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It’s almost ten o’clock. The living room is quiet except for the television and a cuckoo clock. I turn out the lights and lock the front door behind me.
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As I try to fall asleep back at my apartment, I can’t help but wonder what Brenda’s life was like years ago, replaying a different relationship montage. The clatter of someone working in the garage; a car being washed in the driveway, stereo pumping; teenage bedrooms papered over with magazine posters. I always try to imagine happiness in each made-up scenario. But all that appears are ghosts, skulking like radioactive cats in the corners of each room.
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And Tom’s lifeless body waiting for her to find on the living room floor.
*
I was lucky to keep my job after rehab. But when I arrive at work the next morning, I sometimes understand why: my coworkers are taking turns throwing darts at cardboard standees propped up in front of the supply closet. Blown-up copies of faculty ID photos have been taped over their faces, but you can see the original criminals underneath: John Wayne, Austin Powers, Betty Boop. Thick, vertical Sharpie lines have been drawn over the professors’ heads to further the illusion of imprisonment.
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I work at a college library. It’s late summer, that special time of year when everyone in Reserves loses their minds because we don’t have student employees around to do the work for us: retrieving books and scanning articles to upload on behalf of tech-illiterate professors.
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“When you don’t return your books, you end up in—dun-dun-dun—Library Jail,” my boss says, as I clock in and head for my cubicle. Nobody laughs. “Come on, really? It’s gallows humor.”
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“More like a firing squad,” I reply.
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My boss writes young adult novels. I sometimes hear her typing frantically in her office, crying after calling her agent, asking for more time. By now I’ve figured out that whatever new, esoteric gimmick in the office is probably some byproduct of research for her next over-the-top installment in her Heroes of History series. Teenagers storming the Bastille, pimply Communists seizing the means of production: in her world, you never knew what kids were capable of.
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Every Saturday, my boss leads a Beginner Writing Workshop at Shapiro’s Deli. Marie used to go when we first started dating, back when she had delusions of being a novelist. She and my boss were still friends.
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“That’s a good one.” My boss hands me a dart. “Your shot, deputy.”
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“Isn’t this a little sociopathic?” I say, aiming for a history professor’s fivehead. “This guy never complains about recall notices, though. He just gets a lot of them. I don’t get it.”
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“You don’t have to get it to participate. We’re playing for stacks retrieval today. Test of skill: loser takes the cart up.” She claps me on the back. “Get it now?”
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I’d like to say that I get it. Maybe I do, and this ridiculous situation is the one thing preventing us from killing each other on a hot, fetid weekday in August. But it still doesn’t add up upon closer inspection: these wounds made in the name of inspiration.
Each dart is scratched and dull, like they’ve been stolen from a dive bar. Some of my coworkers have gathered by the supply closet. “What if I hit a bullseye?” I ask. “Right between the eyes.”
“You won’t.”
“Bet me a raise if I do?”
My boss chuckles and gently shakes her head. “Who do you think we are, Goldman Sachs? This is a library. I couldn’t even if I wanted to.”
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“Whatever.” I rear back and fling the dart. It arcs through the air and nails Austin Powers in the thigh. The rest of the office cheers wildly.
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“We have a loser,” my boss says. “The Tower—and the cart—awaits, Alex.”
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“Library Jail sucks. That was a practice shot,” I say.
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My boss shakes her head. “No can do, partner. That’s life out in these parts: Westworld meets Orange Is the New Black. Marie recently turned me onto it.”
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I don’t say anything as I grab the retrieval cart.
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“Oops. Sore spot.” My boss forces a cough as she rips off the faculty ID printouts. The fluorescent light highlights the cutouts all pockmarked with holes. “Well, good luck.”
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Eight floors up, the wooden cart’s frame is smooth against my palms, glossy from decades of use. Marie always said the Tower reminded her of a monastery: silent grad students sequestered in carrels, hard at work.
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When I’ve finished pulling from the pick list, I push the cart toward the elevators and flip through one of the books while I wait. It’s a photographic history of dictators. I scan shots of tiny cells and labor camps, and suddenly the idea of Beans’ feline imprisonment doesn’t feel so funny anymore.
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I never had a pink cloud, what they say after you get sober. No. When I got out of treatment, I found the apartment mostly empty, save for the loveseat, a floor lamp, and my old television too heavy to carry alone. It was as if the universe said, I see that you’re drowning. Let me throw you a fucking barbell. She’d left the FMLA paperwork on the breakfast bar along with new bills that had come while I was away. In the morning, I got up, shaved, and turned in all my shit to HR before walking in and grabbing the same cart. No one had said anything; in the end, I hadn’t missed much at work. Insurance covered most of it. Maybe that’s why being abandoned hurt so much more: because all it had really cost was my dignity.
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From the eighth-floor window, the Main Quad is obscured by row upon row of wilting trees. Summer sun illuminates the brick courtyard below, dotted with students. A frisbee, picked up by a wayward gust of wind, sails into a concrete planter filled with fresh begonias. I watch for a while, even after the elevator makes it to the top. Then my phone buzzes in my pocket.
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I take it out. It’s Marie. Can you meet later to talk? It’s important.
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My thumbs hesitate, hovering over the keyboard. Must be nice, I think, still looking out at the scene below. They look like they don’t have a care in the world.
*
The cooking classroom smells like a fisherman’s wharf. We’re making sole meunière with capers. Each station murmurs to themselves as they follow the laminated handout provided on preparing the fish. Out of the corner of my eye, the fish looks like it’s still alive and wriggling on the cutting board, as if pleading for a reprieve. But it’s not. It’s already dead.
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“Sharpen the knife for me, will you? I’ll take care of the filet. You can cook when it’s ready.” Brenda says, rummaging through a drawer. She extracts a small, rectangular whetstone, runs water over it, and hands it to me.
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The whetstone is cold and dense in my palm. I pull the chef’s knife out of the block and angle it the way the instructor showed us, taking short strokes against the stone. Across the room, pale dude and his equally ghost-like girlfriend work in tandem. She grins as she strips the spine.
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Brenda puts her hand on my shoulder. “Easy now,” she says. “You’re going to take your finger off if you don’t pay attention. Here. Get the pan going.”
I turn the heat on, let the oil start to shimmer before adding out newly boneless fillets. Small bubbles sizzle along the skin as they begin to cook. Just then, the classroom door opens. I look up. It’s Marie. She’s wearing yoga pants and a tank top that says HURON CAT CAFÉ. Her eyes are swollen and red.
“Excuse me, can I help you?” the instructor asks. “This class requires registration. It’s not open to the public.”
“I’ll just be a minute,” Marie says. She walks over to our station. “Look at you, chef.”
“I will cut this bitch,” Brenda mutters. “I will turn her into sashimi.”
“Relax, Brenda. I’ve got this.” I reply. Then the familiar acrid tang hits my nose, making me shudder. “Are you drunk?”
Brenda puts down the laminated handout, her readers having slid halfway down the bridge of her nose. “You must be Marie,” she says. “The abandoner.”
“Is that his version of it? Okay, sure,” Marie scoffs and turns to me. “Alex, I’ve been thinking. I’ll manage with the appointment, the money. I’m not some charity case. You can go on seeing your friend here. It’s fine. Just fine.”
“Honey, I think you have the wrong idea,” Brenda says.
“You need to leave,” the instructor says. Marie holds up a single finger.
“What’s your problem? I already told you I’d help. It isn’t a big deal,” I say. “Do you want the money or not?”
Brenda’s head cocks sharply. “You told her what?”
“Out. Now,” the instructor says, pointing at the door. Marie smirks. “No wonder she’s taken your side. You haven’t told her the truth.” Then she obliges the instructor.
“Alex—” Brenda starts.
“I don’t need your permission to do things, okay?” I reply. Then I notice the fish is starting to burn and stick to the pan. I grab the tongs and flip the fillets while also realizing we haven’t chopped parsley or lemon, either. “Hand me the knife. We’re behind schedule.”
Other students have begun to stare. “No. I’m taking over. Get away from the stove.”
“I told you, I’m not your kid.” I start moving toward the block of knives and Brenda steps in between.
“Are you doing this just to spite me?” Her eyes are wild. “You told me you don’t even like to cook. It’s your therapist’s homework. And I am trying to help you avoid fucking your life up a second time. Is that what you want? To be used up and left again?”
The night we brought Beans home, we just stared at him, transfixed, as he tried to decapitate a stuffed mouse with his teeth and back feet. I thought we had it all then, lying on the living room floor, several drinks deep: that summer of kayaking the Huron until our wrists ached and grilling under the upstairs apartment deck all infested with spiders. Strange, then, how it all fell apart later that year. Drinking when the days were bad; drinking to celebrate a long weekend. Cans on the lake, shots in dark bars. Beer in the morning, just to feel normal again. Vodka in the eighth-floor bathroom of the Tower, the accessible stall, a swollen face staring back in the mirror and—
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I feel something stinging my palm as I look down. Only then does the pain register as blood runs in rivulets toward my wrist. Brenda and the instructor start pressing wadded-up paper towels into my hand, but it does nothing to stem the flow.
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Urgent Care is just up the road from the community college. Brenda and I wait for over two hours for stitches. Afterward, as Brenda helps me into the passenger seat of her car, I swear I can see Beans sitting on the trunk of a hatchback parked a few spots over.
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“So real,” I say, as we pull out of the parking lot. I know he’s not actually there: it’s a trick of the light, the local anesthetic. Another ghost for the living room.
Brenda places her hand gently on my knee as she drives. “What is, hon?”
I look back, and he’s already gone.
*
I blink and Brenda’s leading me through the garage door. Everything feels hazy and familiar again: the doilies, the portraits, the old bubble-screen television we use to watch Wheel.
Brenda pulls out several blankets and pillows from the hall closet. “You’re staying here tonight. We’ll figure out your car in the morning, okay?” She guides me over to the couch, props me up, places my hand on a decorative cushion. “Here. Put your hand out like this.”
“I’m fine. Just hurts like hell,” I reply. It’s like there’s a second heart in my hand. “I’m sorry.”
“I know. Make sure you text your boss, too.”
Brenda emerges from the kitchen with Mother Knows Best. She stares at the empty bong for a while and then sets it aside. “You can’t end up like me, you know? Like us.”
“Us?” I can feel myself getting drowsy, now that the shock has worn off. It’s like I’m melting into the couch’s soft leather.
“Me and Tom,” she says. “You’re young. Love yourself, Alex. It’ll never be the same again. I took him back. Tom, he—I didn’t think I deserved anything different. Not even for our kids. By the time I even realized that maybe we would have been better off apart, he was already gone.”
The clock on Brenda’s old VCR reads half past one in the morning when I open my eyes again. She’s asleep in the chair next to me.
“Brenda,” I say quietly, trying not to startle her. She doesn’t budge, so I reach over and touch her forearm. “Hey. You can go to bed now, okay?”
“Tom?” Brenda says. It’s as though she’s emerging from a fog.
I had seen those last photos of Tom once, when Brenda and I went out for drinks one night after our first cooking class had ended. She hadn’t said much about him until then. I didn’t press it, figured it was still too painful to talk about. To me, Tom had always existed as he did on their wedding day: thick, slicked-back hair, mustache, devilish grin. Tan, too. A man who might have thought himself invincible. But the man in those Key West pictures looked like a stranger: white, close-cropped hair, tucked-in polo, bifocals. Grossly overweight. Doomed to drop dead on his way to the kitchen for water after cutting the grass.
“No,” I say. “It’s Alex.”
“You look like him. From when we were kids, back in high school.” Brenda says. Her eyes are bleary and wet. “I’m sorry. You must think I’m crazy.”
“It’s okay. Everything’s going to be fine,” I say, unsure, still half-delirious.
“That’s funny,” she says, sighing. “He said the same thing the night he died.”
*
There’s a hot-pink ticket under my windshield wipers the next morning, glued there by overnight rain. I figured my luck was bound to run out eventually; I never bothered buying a permit. Wide swaths of empty pavement mark the commuter lot, the campus still silent in the summer.
“You’re sure you’re feeling alright,” Brenda says. “Believe it or not, I used to parent young children.”
“Yeah, well.” I hear the engine sputter, the air conditioning whine with the passenger window rolled down. “My boss told me just to take the day off, so that’s what I’m going to do. Maybe watch a baseball game or something. I don’t know.”
Brenda sighs and adjusts her seat. “You deserve more, you know. I hope you realize that.” The car judders again. “Listen Alex, I don’t want to start a fight—”
“I know you don’t,” I reply. “Thanks for the ride.”
She smiles weakly. “Text me later to let me know how you’re doing. Okay?”
I nod, and she drives away. There’s a peeling bumper sticker on the right side of her Corolla: planet Earth, a cannabis leaf, followed by LOVE YOUR MOTHER.
When I get home, I check my e-mail after showering. There’s a message from the cooking class instructor in my course site amid the newsletters and assorted spam. I’m lazily scrolling through the reprimand—guests are NOT permitted in campus workstations—further disruptions and/or inappropriate behavior will result in your removal from the class—when I get a text from Marie: it’s me let me in.
She’s standing halfway down the hallway when I open the door. Her face is red, and she’s wearing the old workout clothes she doesn’t teach in at the yoga studio. “Sorry. Were you still asleep?” Marie pauses, looks down. “Jesus, Alex. Your hand looks awful.”
“Thanks. Breaking news: I’m bad with knives.” The throbbing in my hand returns. “How’d you know I was here?”
Marie holds up her phone. It’s a text conversation with my boss. “I told her you weren’t faking.” She sighs. “Look, I acted like a bitch last night, okay? Tell your friend I’m sorry. Or not. I’m sure you both talk about me enough as it is.” Then she stares at the ground.
“We don’t. But I’ll pass the message along.”
“Because I was angry. Not at you, at the world. It isn’t fucking fair. First dad, then Beans, and attendance at the studio never recovered from the pandemic—”
“You want coffee? I’m making some. It’s still early.”
Marie exhales. “Sure. Yes. But I only stopped by for a few minutes.”
Fifteen minutes later, we’re fucking on the loveseat. It’s like a scene from some horrendously toxic rom-com, the sex urgent yet impersonal. I think of our tongues writhing like two slugs in heat as we kiss. My bandaged hand dangles from the edge of the couch, and when Marie’s leg angles open to pull me in, they connect, sending shooting pain into my wrist. I grind my teeth, bury my head into her clavicle, and keep going until I’m no longer able to think about anything.
In the aftermath, our bodies are filmed with sweat. The room is silent; outside, I can hear a large lawn mower making passes in the grass outside the building. What was once empty now returns: lying there, partially clothed and pressed together, I’m reminded of Marie’s friend from the yoga studio upon learning I was checking myself into rehab: I didn’t realize you were that kind of guy.
“Are you okay?” she asks, after a minute.
“Never been better,” I reply, pulling up my shorts. Marie excuses herself to the bathroom while I find the one-hitter in the bedroom: a gift from Brenda. The glass piece looks like a miniature galaxy, blue and purple intermingling with bits of glitter. I light up, take a quick hit, and retrieve the French press from the kitchen, along with two chipped mugs and an electric kettle.
The water starts to hiss when Marie returns. I hold up the one-hitter. “What are you doing?” she says. “What the hell are we doing.” She rubs her temples and sits down beside me.
“I’m not keeping this place anyway. It’s too big,” I reply, as I begin to pour. Boiling water works through the coffee grounds like sand in an hourglass.
“That’s not what I meant.”
I press the plunger down, pour both mugs half-full. “Here,” I say.
“He’s getting worse. I had to call the emergency vet last night. They said he might not survive the procedure if I go through with it.” Marie runs a fingernail over one of the chips in the mug. “And then there’s the cost. I don’t know what to do.”
“I said I would help, Marie.”
She sets the coffee mug down and picks up the one-hitter. When she rotates the piece, it sparkles slightly. I offer her the lighter. “Am I a bad person?”
“What?” I say.
Marie sparks the lighter, spills some of the coffee on the table when she sets the piece back down. “I want to know if I deserve this, Alex. Tell me the truth.”
I think of the community college parking lot: You deserve better. Other memories: that slight curve in the road off Werkner and Island Lake, the skittering gravel, both of us drunk and laughing with the autumn cascading, that crisp and pliant air—
“You left me alone. What do you even want me to say?”
We put Beans in a harness and took him to Dexter for apple cider donuts. Wolverine football on the radio. It snowed on Halloween and killed all the bees. You were wearing a denim jacket and earmuffs as we traded off holding him while in line. I wasn’t drunk; I said I loved you then. And in six short months, I destroyed everything when I only wanted to destroy myself.
“Alex, please. I didn’t feel safe anymore. I didn’t know what to do. How to help you anymore.” Tears started to form at the corners of her eyes.
I remembered the light, the light. It was just like it was now: half-cut by the blinds in front of the sliding glass door, that dreamlike haze casting thin, segmented shadows along the back wall. It was hope and the future in the same breath; it was rust-water and abject fucking despair. What did it mean? And how could it all ever be repaired again?
“I made a mistake.”
I reach for Marie’s hand, and she lets me hold it. Everything is so loose, as though too much pressure applied will dissolve the moment.
“I’m going to Lansing in the morning,” Marie says. We sit there for a moment in silence on the loveseat. “The appointment’s at seven when they open. I’ll text you when I get there and checked in.”
Later that morning, after Marie leaves, I reach for my phone and start to text Brenda. I type up several variations of the same message, telling her that I’ve decided to drop the cooking class, but always end up erasing everything in the end. When I finally work up the courage to call her, it goes directly to voicemail. I don’t leave a message. Maybe some things are better left unsaid.
*
I-94 on the way from Ypsilanti is empty on Saturday mornings, all potholes and trash. At this hour, the morning sun washes over the dew and the scattered fields are glistening with humidity, summer’s substitute for fog. I see the silent gas stations, the coneys just opening for the retired crowd as I pass exit signs until finding hers, nestled on the edge of the county. When I pull into the parking lot of Marie’s apartment complex, she’s loading a soft cat carrier into the passenger seat of her Trax.
“What are you doing here?” she says.
I crouch down and look through the window of the carrier. Beans. He looks exhausted, yet also drugged, his big green eyes gazing back with an expression that resembles pleading.
“Hey, buddy,” I say, then glance back at Marie. “I told you I would help. He hates the carrier. Now I can drive while you hold him. If you want.”
I don’t know what she’s going to say. Maybe this was all a waste of time and I got up for nothing. What’s broken can’t ever be fixed. But Marie just nods. “Okay,” she says. “Yes.”
Marie unzips the carrier; we get in the Trax. Beans finds space on her lap, grateful to be free again. “Ready?” I ask. Our eyes meet, but she doesn’t say anything. Beans looks up weakly from her lap, as if to say, don’t make me regret this.
I start the Trax and we pull out of the apartment complex, toward the Interstate. As we wait at a stoplight, I hear retching coming from the passenger seat. It sounds like someone taking a plunger to a bowl of oatmeal.
“Oh God, Alex,” Marie says. “I tried to give him something for the trip.”
It’s all over her leggings. Quickly, I grab a roll of paper towels wedged in the footwell behind the seat and pull onto the on-ramp. “Are you going to be alright?” I ask.
“Yes,” she says. “Keep going. I’ve got this.”
I stay fixed on the road, silent with every exit sign, truck stop, and mile marker we pass. Maybe this is just delaying the inevitable, and what’s broken can’t ever be fixed. But the vet’s office is ninety minutes away, and there’s no construction traffic for miles. I hit the passing lane and floor it into the morning. We still have plenty of time to figure this out.
​
* * *​​
Eric Altemus is ​a graduate of Oregon State University's MFA Program in Creative Writing. His fiction has previously appeared in Willow Springs, New Plains Review, Sou'wester, and The Rappahannock Review. He lives in Indianapolis, Indiana, where he works for the Indiana State Library.