Refund (34 page)

“Why?” I asked, alarmed.

“I don't know. I'm just not a fan of them.”

I contemplated this. What was this new change? Should I be understanding? Or mad?

The cat sat there, a gray and hairy beast.

“I love you,” said the cat.

Did the cat love me? Or—more likely—did he just want dinner? I had forgotten to give him dinner. I felt bad about it, but not that bad. He was so fat his stomach dragged against the ground.

If the cat was saying I love you, and he was saying it to me, what was my responsibility to him? Did I have to pet him more? He
seemed to need nothing. He awoke several times a day, stretched, checked his food bowl, trotted to the front door, went out, came in, and over and over. He had been allowed into the house because he was the one with no longings.

The rain began to bang against the house. The cat sat there, with immense patience.

“Was that the cat?” my husband asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“He can talk now?” asked my husband wistfully.

“He said, I love you.”

“To you or to me?”

I said, trying not to brag, “I think he said it to me.”

“How do you know it wasn't to me?”

“I just assumed,” I said.

Cutie was apparently done speaking. He would just gaze upon the wreckage.

“Why couldn't it be me?” I asked.

“Who did you say it to, Cutie?” my husband asked the cat. “Me or her?”

The cat stepped forward. My husband petted its head. Now he was pandering. Cutie rolled over on his back. He was large; his gray fur smelled of wet grass; there was a leaf stuck to his underside. He was a wild animal. We had innocently invited him into our home. We had even joked to the children that he was the third sibling. They liked that, someone they could push around. “He is your furry brother,” we said. But he was really no better than a possum or a rat. He assumed the fragile mantle of a household pet, nibbled politely at the kibble, rubbed against your legs, posed adorably with a ball of yarn, but up close, he smelled of damp earth, and his hot breath had the metallic undertone of blood.

He rolled on the bed, his legs trembling, splayed out, in a
shameless erotic display. His belly was pale pink, rimmed with translucent white fur.

What did he feel when he watched us?

My husband petted him. “It was me, wasn't it,” he murmured. His arm was covered in curly hair. He looked brutish. He was sexier now than when we first met, when he was just thirty, a raw-faced boy. Why didn't he like the way my toes rubbed against him? What other mistakes would we find in each other? But we loved new things, too. My husband had put a freshly washed plate into the cabinet with a tenderness that moved me. In what corner had he found this gentleness in himself? Would he find other things to love about me? We were peculiar mirrors for the other, and we were each long, stubborn walls; the pressure of marriage was trying to crack through them, to own the gorgeousness that we believed lurked inside. It was a lifelong task to distract us.

“What do you want, Cutie?” I asked. “What? Tell us.”

We wanted an answer. The pressure in the room was unbearable. Nothing would break it, not speech, not sex, not sleep.

Cutie writhed under my husband's hand and then nipped at my wrist.

He was prone to this sort of casual savagery.

“No, Cutie!” my husband said. “Be nice!”

This was what we were used to—it was comforting, actually. We were more frightened by the idea of the depth of his feelings. Cutie meowed, a regular catlike sound.

“Ignore him,” my husband said, now annoyed.

Cutie leapt off the bed.

Credits

“Reunion” appeared in
Ploughshares
, Fall, 2007.

“Theft” appeared in
The Harvard Review
, Spring, 2005, and was reprinted in
Best American Mystery Stories 2006
.

“Anything for Money” appeared in
Zoetrope All-Story, Fall, 2001
, and was reprinted in
Zoetrope All-Story 2
, 2003.

“The Third Child” appeared as “The Visiting Child” in
Granta
, Fall, 2005.

“The Loan Officer's Visit” appeared as “The Visit” in
The Harvard Review
, Summer, 2012.

“Refund” appeared in
Ploughshares
, Summer, 2005, and was reprinted in
Pushcart Prize XXXI, Best of the Small Presses, 2006
.

“This Cat” appeared in
Narrative
, October 2013.

“A Chick from My Dream Life” appeared in
The Iowa Review 1992
and was reprinted in
Pushcart Prize XVIII, Best of the Small Presses, 1993
.

“Candidate” appeared in
Ecotone
, Spring, 2007, and was reprinted in
New Stories from the South: The Year's Best, 2008
, and also in
Astoria to Zion: Stories of Risk and Abandon from Ecotone's First Decade
.

“The Sea Turtle Hospital” appeared in
StoryQuarterly
, February 2014.

“Free Lunch,” under the title “Sent,” was one of
Narrative
magazine's “Top Five Stories of the Week” in 2013.

“For What Purpose?” appeared in
Guernica
, October 2014.

“What the Cat Said” appeared in
The Harvard Review
, Fall, 2008.

Acknowledgments

E
normous thanks to those who supported these stories over the years, in so many ways, especially: Christina Thompson, Don Lee, Adrienne Brodeur, David Hamilton, Paul Lisicky, Bill Henderson, Meg Wolitzer, Tom Jenks, Olga Zilberbourg, Ian Jack, ZZ Packer, Andrea Barrett, Martin Espada, Otto Penzler, Scott Turow, Danzy Senna, Jacquelyn Mitchard, and Douglas Soesbe; to Eric Simonoff and Claudia Ballard for constant belief in my work and guiding these stories to a good home; to the wonderful team at Counterpoint Press, especially amazing editor and life coach Dan Smetanka and dynamic publicist Megan Fishmann; and, with love, to David and Meri Bender, Suzanne and Aimee Bender, Natalie Plachte-White and Michelle Plachte-Zuieback, Frances Silverglate, Sean Siegel, Perrin Siegel, Margaret Mittelbach, Jennie Litt, Jenny Shaffer, Katherine Wessling, Timothy Bush, Amy Feldman, Hope Edelman, Deborah Lott, Eric Wilson, Rebecca Larner, Rebecca Lee, Dana Sachs, Malena Morling, Virginia Holman, Sunny Xuemei, and Norma Varsos.

And, of course, to Jonah and Maia for their beautiful, essential Jonah- and Maia-ness, teaching me something every day, and to Robert, for being my dear partner in everything and for sharing the best words.