“It’s not about the cat,” the wife often said back then (and would continue to say now if she still dared to talk about the past, which she mostly didn’t). The cat had started things, was the catalyst, you might say, of the rupture.
Throughout the wife’s vomitous pregnancy, Delilah had been there, black paws pressed against the wife’s knees. Claws retracted. Always. When the wife wasn’t kneeling over a toilet or slogging through a workday, she lounged on the couch with Delilah as her caretaker. The cat would nudge her velvety head under the wife’s hands, and the wife would slip into slumber.
But with other people, Delilah was a feisty cat. Delilah loved the husband since the wife loved the husband, but the cat did not take well to most other people.
Pregnancy had been tough on the wife. She’d thrown up multiple times a day, every day, so much that even her high school students noticed and reported her to the nurse, concerned their teacher might have an eating disorder. Instead of growing plump and round and glowing, the wife had withered away, thinner than she’d been in over a decade. Funny, given that the husband had wanted to wait until she lost “just a little bit of weight” before trying to conceive, that in her pregnancy she’d been the skinniest he’d ever known her. Ironic–or something else. Who knew? Like Alanis Morrisette, the wife didn’t understand irony, but she should have, given that she was a high school English teacher.
For better or worse, the wife got pregnant while overweight, then lost that extra weight and more as her baby grew within her, and despite all the sickness and anxiety and the bloodbath of delivery, she was happy. And her husband seemed happy, too.
Some hours after delivery, she lay in the hospital bed, lemon cake fresh on her tongue. During her pregnancy, most foods had tasted terrible. So this cake that the hospital had given the wife and husband to celebrate their son’s birth tasted like the sweetest thing she’d ever eaten, even though it wasn’t, its texture light and moist, its flavor bland. The sunny yellow icing and white trim looked the way the cake surely intended to taste: like joy.
The husband strode into the room carrying the things he’d gone back to retrieve from their apartment: adult diapers, a breast pump, an abdominal binder. Extra sweaters, since the second blood transfusion had left the wife shivering cold. An aqua green onesie for their son, the going-home outfit they’d chosen for him a couple of weeks ago.
Their son was in the hospital nursery rather than in the room beside the wife. Doctor’s orders; the wife needed to rest. The doctor had said that the blood loss from her C-section meant the wife had worse anemia than her baseline anemia.
“How is Delilah?” The wife reached for the husband’s hand. He didn’t notice, too busy arranging the items he’d brought. She dropped her hand on her lap.
“She was freaked out. She hissed at me as soon as I walked through the door. And she barfed all over the rug while we were gone.”
“Did you put our clothes in her cat bed? My cardigan and the hat that the baby was wearing last night?”
Over the past few months, the wife had read almost as many articles and books about how to acclimate cats to a new baby as she had about caring for a baby. Several experts suggested establishing trust through scent.
The husband shook his head.
“That’s okay, we can still do it when we get home…”
“Listen. I think we need to get rid of that cat.” His voice was gentle, but he’d set his jaw the way he did when he had come to an independent conclusion. They’d talked about this. She figured they had at least a month or two to see whether the cat adapted to the baby. He had agreed.
“We’ll see,” she reminded him. “Let’s give it some time.”
“No. We need to get rid of her.”
She wanted to fight, but eating cake had exhausted her. Against her will, her eyes closed.
No way, she thought before she faded into sleep.
When they walk into their apartment a couple days later, the wife now a mother holding her sleeping baby boy, the cat nuzzles her face against the wife’s ankles. When the wife sits on the couch with the baby, the cat stretches on the cushions nearby, ignoring the unfamiliar creature swaddled in the wife’s arms. This could be okay, she thinks, eyes on her baby’s button nose, hand on her cat’s soft fur. This could be good.
But for the husband, it’s not good enough. The cat hisses at the carseat. She hisses at the crib. She stalks the husband’s feet. She vomits up her nerves.
When the wife pushes for more time, the husband snaps. He calls her selfish, a word he rarely calls anyone but his own mother. He questions his wife’s maternal instincts. Any good mother would know this cat has to go. What’s wrong with her? Doesn’t she know any better?
The wife wants to fight, but she can’t. She just had this baby yanked out of her four days prior. She’s still dizzy. It’s August, and the AC is blowing hot air. Her milk won’t come in. She needs to practice latching, but all the baby wants to do is sleep. And her husband, whose siblings usually call him Cool Cucumber, stands in the middle of the living room, tears streaming into his beard. He tells her what she already knows, reminding her of the source of his fears: his childhood home, that place where his stomach panged in hunger while fleas feasted on cats feasting on fleas. He wouldn’t wish that wilderness on his enemy, let alone his newborn son. The cat–this particular cat–reminds him too much of the chaos of his upbringing.
The wife has no fight. Her blood is weak. She holds her husband in her arms, tells the little boy living inside him that everything will be okay.
The wife doesn’t sleep when the baby sleeps. Instead, she looks on local pet websites for someone who might want her cat. She posts ads. She calls friends and co-workers.
Somehow, the husband’s still displeased. He locks the cat in the guest room with food and water bowls. He gives the wife twenty-four hours to rehome the cat; otherwise, he’s taking her to the nearest shelter.
The time comes. She’ll always remember this, live it again and again. The baby sleeps in his crib, safe in another room. The husband, a stranger, paces the living room, searching for the cat. He waves a broom at the cat, trying to scare her into her carrier. The cat bolts. He chases her. The cat yowls and runs. The husband chases. The wife hides in the bathroom, holding the door open a crack so she can watch the scene unraveling. As she stands, the wife’s feet feel like sausage bursting from its casing, the postpartum swelling too intense. She cries for him to stop.
The husband’s head whips toward the bathroom. He stares at his wife like she’s the one who’s out of control. He asks if she’s crazy, if she really thinks he’s going to harm the cat. “I just want her to get in the carrier,” he insists, “I’m not going to hurt her.”
But you’re trying to take her to a kill shelter, the wife thinks. Her blood is still weak. She vomits in the sink.
The wife may not have much fight, but the cat does. Delilah will not be caught. Delilah will stay out of the husband’s way for one more day and one more night, hiding on top of the fridge or behind a bookshelf. And only when the wife calls to her will Delilah climb into her crate, allowing a friend of a friend’s coworker to carry her out of the couple’s lives and into a new home.
After months and months and months of couples’ therapy, the husband expressed contrition. But only after he’d spent months and months and months being angry at her. Angry that she was too sad about the cat. Angry that she couldn’t look at him the same way. Angry that she was acting like he was some kind of terrible guy. Why should he owe her an apology for trying to be a cautious parent? It’s not like he was some deadbeat cheater goon like her own father.
“I’ve put up with a lot from her over the years without com plaining,” he complained to the therapist, “yet here she is, holding a grudge about a cat.”
“It’s not about the cat,” the wife said, even though it partially was. “It’s about respect. It’s about trust. It’s about letting me feel my feelings.”
He didn’t relent. He broke her heart in a dozen ways during those first months of therapy. Told her he was sure about the baby but not about her. Told her that if she looked at the earlier stages of their relationship, she would see it, his ambivalence. She didn’t see it, so helpfully, he showed her. How he’d tried to break up with her when he went away to medical school. How after their engagement, he hadn’t invested much energy into planning the wedding. How he would grow silent sometimes, sullen. Hadn’t she seen it?
She hadn’t seen it. She had recalled their beginnings as pure. They’d met working at the same afterschool program, he as a tutor, she as a supervisor of tutors. She was sort of his boss, except he got paid more, for reasons he didn’t think much about until after they’d been dating for a while (she was black and a woman; he was white and a man). They were both a year or two removed from college. She attended grad school in Bronxville, shared an apartment in Brooklyn with her sister. He was visiting New York for a year, working and applying to med school and living with his ninety-something-year-old grandmother up in Inwood. What had she—the wife in her pre-wife days—seen back then? His lopsided smile. How he fed her, tucking tangerines and donuts into her backpack so that she’d find a surprise during her workday. How he held his grandmother’s arm, leading her on long walks through Isham Park. How on their first date at a Midtown diner, he had grabbed the saltshaker from the sticky table and sprinkled salt in the cup of his hand. He’d rubbed his palms together (to sanitize his hands) and then had thrown the salt over his left shoulder (to blind the devil). All the while grinning, leaning across the table toward her like he wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.
In couples’ therapy, he undid that moment and many others. He cast doubt on all these memories that she’d once held in her heart like charms on a necklace. Yet somehow, they carried on. The therapist used words to explain: attachment issues, transference. Post-traumatic stress disorder. Men can get postpartum depression too, the therapist said, and the wife tried not to show her annoyance. Can’t women have anything for themselves?
Even when the husband had said terrible things during therapy, the husband and wife would leave the therapist’s office and go out to dinner. No need to waste the sitter, after all. They would talk like old times, sharing stories about his patients and her students. They would eat decadent food. Lobster, red meat, pasta coated in pesto. Chocolate cake and pumpkin budino for dessert. They stuffed themselves, drank wine, then made their tipsy way home to their baby boy.
In rare moments of solitude, the wife couldn’t stuff down her feelings, the doubt he had sowed within her. In those brief and anguished moments, there was nothing she wanted more than to turn back the clock and undo it, the oranges and donuts, the salt over his shoulder, his lopsided smile. But like everything tends to do, those terrible moments passed. She couldn’t help but cling to what she still loved: this new family, this new light. Her son, a perfectly warm and tiny body in her arms. Her husband, broad shouldered and strong on the outside, just a motherless child on the inside. She couldn’t undo it. She couldn’t turn back and dismantle it. They were hers.
And besides, the medication was working wonders. He was becoming himself again. He began to sing a different tune in their couples’ sessions. Of course he’d always loved her. He couldn’t believe the things he had said to her over the months. Soon he would forget. Couldn’t she forget too? That had been depression talking, anxiety.
“That wasn’t me,” he insisted over and over. “That was some one else.”
Time is a funny thing. It can bend and stretch. It can crawl and walk and run. Somehow, it began to feel like they were past it. Like everything bad had happened a lifetime ago. He had gained self-awareness. They both had. Their son was thriving. They both had jobs they liked. Maybe they could have another baby. The husband would never make a unilateral decision again, would never give her an ultimatum.
The years are breathless, how fast they run. They are now a family of four. Two curly haired boys, best friends. Two under five is how the mommy bloggers would describe their current state of parenthood. It’s not easy, nor is it a disaster: the kids go to preschool, to playgrounds, the children’s museum, friends’ houses for playdates, and the husband and wife happily facilitate it all. Everything’s fine, until it’s not. The husband is tired of living in New York City, tired of lugging strollers and car seats everywhere, of sky-high rents and mediocre pay at the county hospital.
“We need to move,” he says. He sets his jaw in that way he rarely does, in that way he did all those years ago, and she knows she’s going to have to fight a battle she cannot win.
Time is a funny thing. He can look at these old pictures of their boys’ small hands and sausage roll legs and think how that was just yesterday. Yet he looks at the rupture, the stuff that happened back when their first boy was born, and he wonders why she hasn’t gotten over it. Why she feels like part of herself is still flattened against her postpartum hospital bed, her body hemorrhaging blood almost as fast as her veins drink it. Why she feels like part of herself still resents his inattention during that time, the way he stopped holding her hand or looking her in the eye. Why she feels like part of herself still hides in the bathroom while he tries to broom-scare the cat into her carrying case to deliver her to certain doom. All of her selves, left behind in a past whose presence mocks her daily, reminding her that she’s become a stranger to herself. He wonders why she’s still reliving every foundation-shaking thing he said, why she still hears the echo of words he doesn’t recall saying. Why she’s still reeling in all the slack she has cut him.
Of course he has cut her slack, too. She has been moody and unmovable. In some ways, she can’t function, is a child. She can’t even drive a car. Not just “she’s a bad driver” but she legally cannot drive a car because she doesn’t have a license, hasn’t driven a car since age seventeen. It’s too much work, she says, being alert. She’s too daydreamy to have a three-thousand-pound car in her control. She prefers instead to ride trains and buses, looking out the window and ruminating about god knows what. Impenetrable fortress. Or at least that’s how she imagines he imagines her.
In California, where they move, everyone thrives except the wife. The kids have a house with a yard, a playset with swings and a slide and a climbing wall. They have good schools, three parks within walking distance. The husband’s job pays so much more money, and his father’s twenty minutes away, one of his brothers and one of his sisters a few hours’ drive north.
The wife is adrift. She misses her sister and friends in Brooklyn, misses the students who cared enough about her to wonder why she was vomiting so much during pregnancy. Her new school job doesn’t involve teaching at all; she doesn’t like it. But also, she’s simply too depressed. No job would have been good enough. She’s too weepy and fragile and her body hurts after each long day of trying to do her job and talk to people and pretend she’s not in ruins. She just can’t believe it, that he’d made this decision without her. That she hadn’t put up a fight, or maybe that she was fighting for the wrong thing. She can’t see herself anymore, her self subsumed into someone else.
The house they bought is beautiful, but in their first full week it flooded. Everyone was sleeping in their beds except the wife. She liked to stay up later than everyone else, waiting in the living room in case one of the boys woke up crying, disoriented in their still-new home. She’d dozed on the couch in the living room, the TV watching her. Time passed, and she found herself somewhere else. She was a boat bobbing in the ocean. The sun poured down on her, making jewels dance on the water surrounding her. A gray and black rumble of clouds rolled away, off to darken someone else’s horizon. The water was calm now. But she ached from before. Waves had battered her hull, whatever a hull was. The mast had snapped in half. What was a mast? Water lapped against her, rustling in her broken…oars? Ears? Boats don’t have ears.
Her eyes popped open, and she followed the sound of water in real life. She stood up from the couch and followed the sound to the bathroom around the corner. Water gushed from the sink, the tub, the toilet. Her toes were submerged, but the water didn’t reach her ankles yet. She called his name, her husband. He emerged from their bedroom, eyes barely open.
“What’s wrong now?” He sighed as he shuffled toward her, assuming, she knew, that she was waking him to kill a spider or some inane thing. But then he saw the water and thanked her for acting fast.
They cleaned the mess. Shoveled water outside in buckets, mopped and disinfected and then mopped again. Their boys slept through it all.
In the morning, they would have to call a plumber. Your pipes are crumbling, the plumber would say, and whatever isn’t crumbling is backed up. They duped you during the inspection. You inherited a mess. The house is shifting. The foundation is cracking. There’s sludge brewing beneath the floorboards. This house, one day, will be in ruins. And you bought it, so the wreck is all yours.