Yowl

His cough disturbed the silence of the room. She faced away from him, trying to sleep while he stayed up reading papers from work, but trying in vain. His lamp cast a wan yellow glow over the blankets, and he coughed again, a wet sound that ricocheted off the four walls of the small box they called a bedroom. She cringed, a fire curling in her belly. Was it his fault? Not really. (Didn’t mean it wouldn’t bother her, didn’t mean it wouldn’t keep her up, didn’t mean he shouldn’t at least cover his mouth, didn’t mean anything at all). When he coughed for the third time, her thoughts veered towards castration. She bolted upright and flung her pillow at the dresser.

“Phil,” she hissed, and then instantly deflated. His startled face accentuated the bags under his eyes, the shadow of stubble on his chin. He was more tired than she was, working himself into the grave.

She softened her tone. “I’m sorry, honey, I couldn’t sleep. Can’t you get a lozenge?”

He nodded but didn’t reply, just pulled the covers off of his legs and slumped out of the room. He returned with a handful of lozenges, and let them drop from his fist onto the nightstand in a small pile.

Her regret was almost instantaneous– the sound of the lozenge clicking off of his teeth, the occasional open-mouthed sucking sound infiltrated her attempts to sleep far worse than the coughing had. She pulled the covers up over her head and imagined smothering him with a pillow. She tried not to say anything, really, she did.

“I don’t get it, Phil.”

“Get what?” He lowered the papers to stare at her.

“How you can work all day, and come home, and then work more.”

“I don’t have a choice.”

“You always have a choice. No one made you help your brother with his medical bills.”

“God, Ginger, is that what this is about? He’s my brother, for Christ’s sake. The man needed a heart transplant. I wasn’t going to let him die.”

“He wasn’t going to die. Don’t exaggerate. Really, it wasn’t your responsibility to help him out. The man has a job. And he’s not exactly grateful to you, what, he lets you drag him to dinner once a week? We don’t even go out to dinner once a month.”

Phil remained silent, sucking on his lozenge. Outside, there was the sound of cans falling from the trash bins, and then a cat began to yowl.

“Goddamn it,” Ginger said, “It’s always something.”

“I think I’ll sleep on the couch,” Phil gathered his papers and Ginger watched him, wanting to tell him not to run away, to stay and try to fix this, whatever it was that was broken. When he was gone, she found herself unable to sleep in the silence.

The cat returned the next night, and the next, its yowling increasing in strength.

“That cat is going to drive me insane.” Ginger placed the pillow over her head in the dark.

“It’s just a cat,” Phil said, lying in bed with hands folded over the blanket, papers tucked away for the night.

“It’s not just a cat,” she said. They listened to its wails for a moment, the only sound in the otherwise quiet neighborhood. “I think it’s in heat.”

“It sounds like it,” Phil replied. “That, or it’s possessed.”

“It’s not just a cat, Phil,” she said again, turning to face him in the dim light. “It’s one more goddamned thing on top of all the other things.”

Phil rubbed his jaw wearily. “Okay. I know.”

“No, you don’t know. You don’t know because you’re never here. You don’t talk to me, Phil. You talk at me, or not at all.”

He sighed. “Why bother talking if I can’t say the right things?”

“That’s not–”

He was already sitting up, tossing the blankets off. “Maybe I should sleep on the couch.”

“Phil.”

“What? I clearly can’t fix what you want me to fix.”

The cat yowled again, a long, drawn-out screech.

“Maybe you can’t fix this, but you can do something about that goddamned cat.” Ginger regretted the words, but Phil’s mouth was set in a grim line.

“I’ll do something about it.” In his house slippers and pajamas, Phil turned and walked out of the bedroom, then the back door slammed. Anxiety churning, Ginger went to the kitchen window and pulled aside the shade. She watched as Phil kicked loose gravel on the ground, then picked up a couple of small stones. He weighed them in his hands. Ginger watched with bated breath.

The cat sat high up on the fence, silhouetted by street lights. Its tail swished against the worn wooden planks, ears twitching as if hearing noise only audible to itself. Without warning, it began its caterwauling, a surprising sound to come from such a small creature.

Phil chose a pebble from his hand chucked it in the direction of the cat, but it didn’t move, only ceased its wailing to stare down with its eerily reflective eyes. He chose a larger stone, this time hitting the fence, and without waiting, threw a third. The cat jumped down and landed on the asphalt, letting out a confused mew.

Then all was silent.

They waited for the cat to run away, or hide behind the trash cans. Phil chucked one more rock that skittered off the ground, trying to drive it off, but the cat didn’t move. Instead, it slumped over. He approached it, blocking Ginger’s view.

She let go of the shade and went to the door, opening it to find Phil on the stoop. He cradled the cat’s body in his hands, holding it away from himself as if he were afraid of it. It was a calico, a pretty thing, blood smeared in the fur on its head.

“Is it dead?” she asked, and at the same time he spoke. “Jesus, Ginger, I think I killed it.”

“Hold on, now, I’ll get a towel.” She rushed inside and pulled an old rag from the linen closet to wrap the thing in, returning to find that Phil hadn’t moved a muscle. “We’ve got to keep it warm.”

“Then what?” She took the cat from him, leaving his hands to hang by his sides, relieved of their burden.

“I think there’s an emergency vet in Burbank. We’ll take it there.”

They got into the car, Phil driving in his slippers, lanky form hunched over the steering wheel. Ginger held the cat in her lap. The night swallowed them as they pulled onto the road, dashboard lights casting Phil’s face in blue and shadow.

They drove for forty-five minutes, and though Ginger thought she knew the way, they looped the same stretch of street in Burbank three times before she remembered which road to take.

“Left at the next light,” she said finally, her voice quiet.

The turn signal clicked as they waited at the red light, a steady metronome cutting through the silence. Phil reached up, rubbing the back of his neck, and Ginger glanced sideways at him. The cat stirred slightly in her lap. Phil flicked his eyes toward it but said nothing.

The light turned green. The car lurched forward.

“Is it still breathing?” he asked. She opened the towel and carefully placed a hand on the cat’s side.

“I think so. It’s hard to tell.”

The lights of the vet clinic were on as they pulled up, much to Phil’s relief. Ginger didn’t wait for him. He ran around and closed her car door before following her inside, where a sleepy vet technician took the cat and gave them a wary glance as they tried to explain what happened. Finally, the tech said, “I’ll take her back and we’ll have the vet take a look. Just wait here.”

Phil sat in a thin plastic chair, elbows on knees, hands tightly clasped. Ginger had the towel still in her lap, though the cat was gone now, taken behind sterile doors.

She ran her finger along the frayed edge of the rag. “You didn’t mean to.”

“Didn’t I?” Phil let out a breath.

She looked at him then. He wasn’t looking at her, just staring at his hands.

Phil exhaled again through his nose, rubbing his palms together as if to scrub something away. “I’m so goddamn tired.” He started, and then stopped himself, letting his head drop. He didn’t have to finish his thought. She felt it too.

She reached for his hand and let her fingers brush his knuckles. Phil didn’t look at her, but he didn’t pull away, either. After a moment, he took her hand in his, callused fingers on soft skin.

The vet tech reemerged from the back room, empty handed. They both stood.

“Is it going to be okay?” Was it Phil who asked that, or Ginger?

“The vet is taking a look. Just wait here. We’ll see.”