The Weight of Things

On the top of a wooden table he sat. Calm as a tree absent the breeze, calm as a chef without orders. He cleaned himself, like always: slow and methodical. Is it strange that I wonder at the texture of his tongue? Elegant as the creature might be, he rarely allowed for the kindness of touch. What an odd thing to find oneself lacking, after a husband, after a son, after a time when physicality seemed the only constant in whirlwind days. Compared to those fingers, or even this cat’s fur, the click of keys on my laptop leaves a cold mark. Where did this feeling come from?

I could track my misfortune miles back, I suppose. To my marriage, my decision to become an out-of-office reporter, or further: to the allure of Philadelphia, where I found my calling, was introduced to the man who would leave me. Like a runner I’m left to wonder where the beginning of my trail really lay. What ghastly order set itself into motion so long ago? That first innocuous step. In any case it led me here, to this cat and only this cat. My hope. 

“Bring him back, like a good cat.” Wasn’t there a story somewhere in mythological past, the cat sussing out gateways to somewhere else, going down with their clear vision into that dark place? He was not yet done cleaning himself. I was angry, figuring that one did not bathe before a journey through the muck of the earth. “You good for nothing murderer!” He brought his eyes to mine. A shout never failed to catch his attention, but it did little more. If he understood he showed no sign. So what if I had little confidence that he would, or even could, bring my son back to me? Futile bargaining with an unreasonable creature was the tool I had. At the very least, there was something cathartic to his recognition of my voice, if not my pain, that screaming to the sky left wanting. How long had it been since I’d touched his fur in a way reminiscent of love? 

Ten days ago my son, leaving the apartment (where was he heading? Could I have driven him had I been home?) was killed. The man in the car is awaiting trial. His face, when I met him that evening at the station, was red with shame, but behind that bland as a weed, just something who happened to sprout between the cracks of a sidewalk. How could a nameless figure kill my joy? It did not matter, it was for the same reason that a cat could bring him back. He was there, apparently, just outside this door, watching the wreck like any animal would. If not somehow to blame, he at least would have seen the path taken. The spirit’s traversal. I imagine his flitting gaze curious about such things. 

There was nothing to do. Infrared, ultraviolet — in what colors shine the footsteps of the dead? Mortality was something my husband spoke of, when our divorce was near at hand. I was traveling so often, true, he wondered rightly how much time we’d have left by my retirement. The man desired a comfortable life, and so the approach of the end, everything to be done beforehand, it occupied him. Grief has had a way of sharpening that feeling, adding certain details. “Death” also became my ignorance of its trail, my weakness and inability to see anything clearly. My human eyes. 

He was done now. Lithely my cat sank to the floor. What time was it? I pulled open a pantry door and measured out a cup of kibble. No. My cat would earn his food, same as myself. He watched expectantly as I approached a bowl on the floor. But at a critical moment I turned to the 2nd floor balcony, yanked the sliding door with my other hand. It had been ten days since he’d been allowed out, a kind of punishment? That was over now, it was high-time for reparation. Throwing his pellets to the wind was a practical affair, purely rational, for he would leap for them, just as he did from the table, and out there in the dark he would find my boy. 

*   *   *

The station was dull. Walls gray as the end of a hammer. He wasn’t sure what time it was, with his phone taken away a lot of things were unclear. Who was taking his daughter to school each morning? His friends, coworkers, they knew by now. What did they think of him? No one had paid bail. He couldn’t pay bail. He’d yet to wonder whether they’d impounded his pickup, what hoops he’d need to jump through in order to get it back (if, indeed, going back were ever an option). No, to see that truck again was unthinkable now. What stood out to his mind instead were the treadmarks on that neighborhood road. His braking, it was stiff, he should have stopped. He’d had to brake because he’d been going fast, too fast to stop? The treadmarks proved that he’d tried to stop. 

Peyton. Pay ten. Pay ten years of his life. The situation was unthinkable. Images flashed in and out of context, on their own each one made sense. Pinching the black dial of his radio. A boy with white laces and brown hair — on the road. (Hadn’t he himself used to play basketball on the road? Why had no one hit him? Where had death come from? Now? Had he brought death, like a seed stuck to his boot? Had it been there in the boy already?). These thoughts came hazy, translated from a wordless arrhythmia. He was tired by the time the boy’s cat came to mind. Sitting on the front step of a wooden porch. It had been relieving, almost, to see its dumb stare, unaffected by what, on every other account, was a tragedy. At least one creature did not blame him, he felt sure. But shouldn’t it have? The thought condensed, it was a wad of spit on his tongue: the world kept turning with one less boy to turn it. It would turn without him, too, for the next few years. He could watch his own life pass. He could be aloof as a passerby.  

*   *   *

Out there in the dark shone the eyes of a cat. Its steps could not be heard as it flitted over concrete, dove between odd objects littering the alleys. Scamped between rough-hewn buildings that proved too flat to scale. Apartment blocks too high for the eye to measure, eclipsing the sky. Beneath their open windows sounded the beating of so many clocks. This cat did not look up, it directed its attention instead to a manhole at the edge of things. Mother had cast him out, the sting of a last meal was something he felt and recognized. Yes, his world had shifted, despite all efforts. 

To locate the fulcrum of a world is difficult for a cat. Easier to sense when the world tilts, like the feeling of a misstep, only one knows that their body has not moved. Such a thing happened recently. What could I do but regain my footing? Clearly there was a new direction to things, an unfamiliar slowness to the world. Mother no longer left and returned with the sun, nor was I permitted my usual freedoms. He was also gone. A point, clearly, around which important things spun. But why? And for what reason should I not consider myself similar? I payed careful attention to remaining what I was. But quickly the rules changed, gravity shifted, I felt myself fly from the balcony. Now, here, new focal points called, a field of attraction rebalancing the weighty world. 

People, I have come to notice, do not understand the shapes that they see in the dark. Certain colors elude them when the lights dim, their bodies unphased by the vivid movement. If mother were here I could speak, call attention to the blurred image just ahead, in darkness. All paths lead outward, but there is a reason why certain trails grow familiar, become roads, highways, and others are left unnoticed. A pattern of footfall is all it took me to find an edge, but the stones beneath my feet were laid by a rare desperation. And now, as a figure approaches, as a stray beam of streetlight falls on his kind and familiar face, I begin to wonder what unearthly silence that dark space would endure without his color. Or what noise he would cause if the sun rose, with its unmistakable clarity. His mouth was not twisted, hands unclenched, but something at eye level, the stained lace of his shoes, held my gaze. I wondered at the depth of earth he had navigated, the inconceivable strength it had taken to ascend that open manhole. The scent of petrichor accompanied him. Like two ends of a scale, we stood a certain distance apart. Until that distance began to tip, until he approached, and I felt the vertigo of a motionless fall. 

Until, frightened by the weight of things, I fled. Just another shadow under the moon in a patch of yellowed grass.