“I thought you might like to go for a little drive,” Hope says. “Just a short trip down the road.” The cat does not respond, watches her through eyes half-closed. Still crooning, Hope asks, “What do you expect from me?” The cat licks its paw and swipes its nose.
Hope is nothing, if not patient. She stands, arches her back and stretches her arms above her head, reaching for the remote that hangs on the wall. She presses the button and panels of aluminum clatter shut. The cat jumps, scurries behind the washing machine. She follows it, leans over the machine, her head buttressed against the wall. She winks at the cat. “Gotcha,” she says.
Hope pulls on the back door and walks into her gloomy kitchen. Dr. James Dobson is on the radio, something about an epidemic of abortion. Hope pictures her husband standing before the mournful group at church, pacing back and forth, maybe slumped against the lectern, listening, trying to care about the troubles of other parents who failed to make everything all right.
She grabs a cold diet Pepsi, saying to herself, “I wonder what Dr. Dobson would make of us.”
The closed blinds keep the house appropriately dark, and Hope does not believe she will ever care about brightness again. She studies the refrigerator door. Thin light shifts across the pictures on its surface. She glances once at the picture of Missy, glued to the center of a red, heart-shaped piece of construction paper, then looks back at the garage door and thinks about what she will do with the cat. The cat Missy had loved, had insisted share her bed. The cat cuddled soft against Missy's body, especially at the end when the slightest touch would elicit cries of pain, devastating Hope, who wanted more than anything to hold on to her daughter. But Missy cried and said, “No. No touch, Mommy.” And that stupid cat, able to lie beside her and rest its head on her arm, rub against her cheek, without a whimper from Missy. And that stupid cat, not caring about Missy or anything other than food and a warm place to sleep.
Hope remembers playing dress-up at her grandmother's when she was young. There was a hat—a stiff old thing with a black veil that covered her face. The idea of wearing the hat now, maybe all the time, is appealing. Maybe she will even wear it at home, in front of Caleb. A world in constant shadow. The pattern fragmented, like a crossword puzzle, with tiny straight edges and narrow spaces. She thinks of arranged letters, suggesting words that are recognizable but incomplete.
She has just finished her soda when she hears Caleb's car pull in the drive and the door roll open. As she steps into the garage she hears his voice. “Where's your mom, Mr. C?” Hope folds her arms across her breasts.
She is not happy to see him, this husband, kneeling down to pick up the cat, burying his face against its fur. He sets the cat down, pets it, and she hears it purr, watches it rub itself repeatedly against his leg. Hope watches her husband straighten and turn to face her.
Caleb comes to her and wraps her in a hug. She watches over his shoulder as the cat stretches and makes its way across the garage to the dismantled bed. It sniffs and rubs the mattress.
She glances at Caleb, not seeing him, but rather the role he plays in her unhappiness. “There's nothing out for dinner. You were supposed to be late.” She pulls away. “It's early yet. I suppose I can whip up something.”
Instead of responding, Caleb walks into the house, the cat at his heels, and begins to open blinds.
Hope almost asks him to keep them closed—nearly shrieks as if to ward off some terrible truth. But she remains silent, and follows him into the house. She looks at his face, crowned with the same thin red hair as Missy's, lidded with the same splash of red bushy eyebrows. Below them Missy's eyes look back, blue and warm, a tenderness that makes Hope sick with longing. She turns away and switches off Dobson. “Abortion talk,” she says.
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