Something Wild
by Audrey Rowland
The cacophony of stars keeps me up at night. I can’t stay in bed. The walls are too close and too many, too much, too much. I walk to the kitchen and take out a saucer and a bowl, pouring milk into the first and water into the second. We have no cats and no dogs, no fish and no flowers because I like the house neat. I try close the door slowly so Alex stays asleep but it slams shut. Outside, the night air is cool and soft as loam, a rich dark current. I promised Alex that he could come outside with me tonight but I like to do this alone.
The town where I grew up, a few states over from where we live now, had a problem with feral cats. Every once in awhile I’d find one or two napping on the hood of the car but I didn’t have a problem scaring them away. They were long and lithe and stretched out in the sun, their fur scratchy and sticking out in different directions. I started minding when the cats started marking the car, it was my car by then and they acted like it belonged to them. It didn’t matter how much I cleaned: the seats always smelled like urine.
So when I promised Alex he could come with me to scare the stars straight I didn’t mean it. Tomorrow night when he looks at the sky and it is full and focused he’ll know but that is tomorrow and I’ll deal with him then. The constellations cluster and cloister. I can hear their faint whine overhead, a whisper and a whistle rolled into one, and I wish they would keep it down. I set the milk and the water down on curb next to the driveway and the surface ripples, kinetic in its stillness.
When I come back the next morning, the bowl and the saucer are not as full as they were before. The sky is planed and plumed milk-white; the air blankets and billows with heat as I go to get the newspaper from the driveway. Alex is in the kitchen making himself a bowl of Cheerios before school. It’s a new thing for him, so of course there’s milk on the table and cereal on the floor. I sit down next to him and he looks up for a second before going back to eating.
“What, not even a ‘hi, Mom,’?” I ask and he says “hi, Mom,” and neither of us says good morning. Alex’s knees beat staccato in the air, his legs jackrabbiting up and down and the kitchen floods with the noiseless dissonance of it all. He knows, he knows. I made his lunch before I went outside last night, and I tell him so. I tell him it’s waiting in the fridge for him, and he says okay. He says he heard the screen door bang shut late last night, and did I hear it, too.
When I was a kid, I realized that the cats were a problem when the schools started calling home about them. They’d leave messages on the answering machine reminding us not to pet the cats or to approach them or touch them because they were wild. Feral. I erased the message after I listened to it so that my mother never heard it. I reached out to delete it before I could think about why and I still haven’t figured that out. That night I stayed awake, my eyes scratchy for lack of sleep. I got out of bed and tiptoed to the back of the house, closing the door quietly behind me. I stood in the backyard and stared at the night until it was more than blackness and I looked for something wild.
“I heard something out back,” I say. “I went out to check.” Alex nods and goes back to eating. This makes sense to him, but I picture him lying in bed and listening to me outside. By the time he finishes his legs have stopped bouncing, and we sit still at the table. Soon, it’s time to leave for school.
“Are there still stars in the sky when it’s day?” Alex leans forward in the backseat, his hands clasped in his lap. He looks like a businessman in a booster seat. “There are,” I say. “It’s like when you get face paint at the carnival, and your face is covered but it’s all still there.” He perks up. “Like at the Jamboree?” Alex got a tiger painted on his forehead at the school festival at the end of last year. The face-painting station was the fifth grade project, so the tiger was more of an orange with legs than anything else, but Alex was happy enough.
“Just like that.”
The paint had peeled and flaked off his face later in the day, after water slides and sweat. He forgot it was there, and rubbed his forehead; his hand came away orange, his forehead an irritated red. I expected him to be upset but instead he was angry. Why did the paint come off? Why couldn’t it stay? Thump. The anger passed: a stone sinking into a lake instead of skipping across, an endless inky sheen of night sky.
Drop-Off was quick that day. The line of minivans huddled outside the elementary school skittered like rain and evaporated just as fast. Alex jumped out of the car and ran. He might have said goodbye, but if he did, it was buried by car doors closing and kids talking. I am tired of the sounds of his habitat.
The car is quiet on the way home; I am disquieted by its silence. At the first red light–one of two on my way home–I lean back in the driver’s seat, and say “what do you think stars are made of, Alex?” He isn’t here, I know he isn’t here, but still, I need to talk to him. The light changes a second or two after I finish my question, and I am glad to be answered in some way.
I am not paying attention when I pull into the driveway. I should have looked, I should have looked, I should have paid attention. When I get out of the car, I have a horrible feeling. I walk slowly to the edge of the driveway, but I hear it before I get there, a horrible whine. A whisper and a whistle rolled into one. On the curb next to the driveway, the bowl and saucer are less full than when Alex and I left for school.
The neighbor’s cat is crushed on the pavement, bloody and barely alive. I don’t know what to do and I don’t want to look at it but I can’t stop looking even though the cat won’t look at me. I walk over. I have the vet’s number saved on my phone from when we had a dog and I call; he tells me there’s nothing I can do. They’ll be there to do what they can as soon as they can. I walk over to the cat, and kneel down. Its fur is mangled and scratchy with blood, but its eyes are keen when it finally looks at me.
Overhead, the stars are silent.
The town where I grew up, a few states over from where we live now, had a problem with feral cats. Every once in awhile I’d find one or two napping on the hood of the car but I didn’t have a problem scaring them away. They were long and lithe and stretched out in the sun, their fur scratchy and sticking out in different directions. I started minding when the cats started marking the car, it was my car by then and they acted like it belonged to them. It didn’t matter how much I cleaned: the seats always smelled like urine.
So when I promised Alex he could come with me to scare the stars straight I didn’t mean it. Tomorrow night when he looks at the sky and it is full and focused he’ll know but that is tomorrow and I’ll deal with him then. The constellations cluster and cloister. I can hear their faint whine overhead, a whisper and a whistle rolled into one, and I wish they would keep it down. I set the milk and the water down on curb next to the driveway and the surface ripples, kinetic in its stillness.
When I come back the next morning, the bowl and the saucer are not as full as they were before. The sky is planed and plumed milk-white; the air blankets and billows with heat as I go to get the newspaper from the driveway. Alex is in the kitchen making himself a bowl of Cheerios before school. It’s a new thing for him, so of course there’s milk on the table and cereal on the floor. I sit down next to him and he looks up for a second before going back to eating.
“What, not even a ‘hi, Mom,’?” I ask and he says “hi, Mom,” and neither of us says good morning. Alex’s knees beat staccato in the air, his legs jackrabbiting up and down and the kitchen floods with the noiseless dissonance of it all. He knows, he knows. I made his lunch before I went outside last night, and I tell him so. I tell him it’s waiting in the fridge for him, and he says okay. He says he heard the screen door bang shut late last night, and did I hear it, too.
When I was a kid, I realized that the cats were a problem when the schools started calling home about them. They’d leave messages on the answering machine reminding us not to pet the cats or to approach them or touch them because they were wild. Feral. I erased the message after I listened to it so that my mother never heard it. I reached out to delete it before I could think about why and I still haven’t figured that out. That night I stayed awake, my eyes scratchy for lack of sleep. I got out of bed and tiptoed to the back of the house, closing the door quietly behind me. I stood in the backyard and stared at the night until it was more than blackness and I looked for something wild.
“I heard something out back,” I say. “I went out to check.” Alex nods and goes back to eating. This makes sense to him, but I picture him lying in bed and listening to me outside. By the time he finishes his legs have stopped bouncing, and we sit still at the table. Soon, it’s time to leave for school.
“Are there still stars in the sky when it’s day?” Alex leans forward in the backseat, his hands clasped in his lap. He looks like a businessman in a booster seat. “There are,” I say. “It’s like when you get face paint at the carnival, and your face is covered but it’s all still there.” He perks up. “Like at the Jamboree?” Alex got a tiger painted on his forehead at the school festival at the end of last year. The face-painting station was the fifth grade project, so the tiger was more of an orange with legs than anything else, but Alex was happy enough.
“Just like that.”
The paint had peeled and flaked off his face later in the day, after water slides and sweat. He forgot it was there, and rubbed his forehead; his hand came away orange, his forehead an irritated red. I expected him to be upset but instead he was angry. Why did the paint come off? Why couldn’t it stay? Thump. The anger passed: a stone sinking into a lake instead of skipping across, an endless inky sheen of night sky.
Drop-Off was quick that day. The line of minivans huddled outside the elementary school skittered like rain and evaporated just as fast. Alex jumped out of the car and ran. He might have said goodbye, but if he did, it was buried by car doors closing and kids talking. I am tired of the sounds of his habitat.
The car is quiet on the way home; I am disquieted by its silence. At the first red light–one of two on my way home–I lean back in the driver’s seat, and say “what do you think stars are made of, Alex?” He isn’t here, I know he isn’t here, but still, I need to talk to him. The light changes a second or two after I finish my question, and I am glad to be answered in some way.
I am not paying attention when I pull into the driveway. I should have looked, I should have looked, I should have paid attention. When I get out of the car, I have a horrible feeling. I walk slowly to the edge of the driveway, but I hear it before I get there, a horrible whine. A whisper and a whistle rolled into one. On the curb next to the driveway, the bowl and saucer are less full than when Alex and I left for school.
The neighbor’s cat is crushed on the pavement, bloody and barely alive. I don’t know what to do and I don’t want to look at it but I can’t stop looking even though the cat won’t look at me. I walk over. I have the vet’s number saved on my phone from when we had a dog and I call; he tells me there’s nothing I can do. They’ll be there to do what they can as soon as they can. I walk over to the cat, and kneel down. Its fur is mangled and scratchy with blood, but its eyes are keen when it finally looks at me.
Overhead, the stars are silent.