Pretend Play

‘I just feel bad they don’t have proper hands and fingers, you know?’

‘Mmm,’ my husband responded. 

He and I were lying on our couch watching our six-month old kittens bat around the cap from a carton of milk. All around them was a junkyard of sorts of the toys we had bought them over the past three months since first adopting them—spotted and striped plush mice, multicolored feathers, things that spun, things that spit out water, things that squeaked and rolled and jumped. Instead, they leapt for wrappers. They sprung for ribbons and rubber bands and the corners of our rug. They dove for boxes, cardboard, packing peanuts. But their favorite of all was the milk carton cap. Oh, how they could bat it around for hours on end. They liked bottle caps too, got everything stuck under the coffee table, the couch, the rug. They’d look up at us with those huge, green glass eyes of theirs asking for help—utterly helpless.

‘I wish they had actual hands so they could pick up whatever they were batting around and actually play with it. I wish they could grab their toys from wherever they got stuck under and continue playing.’

‘In other words, you wish they were self-sufficient,’ Greg said, eyes still glued to his computer. I was watching one of The Real Housewives on the TV; Greg’s hockey game was relegated to his laptop, perched on the arm of the couch. One of the housewives screamed, threw off her top, ran around the pool waving her bikini in the air. I glanced over at Greg in my periphery. He was watching the TV screen but pretending not to. I was talking about something else with my unfulfilled desire for the kittens to have hands, but pretending not to. I stood from the couch. I thought, if Greg grabs my wrist and pulls me back down onto his lap and kisses the side of my neck, then we’ll be okay. I stayed still for several seconds. When he didn’t move, I thought, if he asks me to get him something from the kitchen then we’ll be okay. I crossed my arms, popped a hip. I reached down for the remote, paused the TV, but he remained silent. If Greg says anything, anything at all, then we’ll be okay. 

I said, ‘I’m going to the kitchen to refill my water.’ I looked down and over at him. His arms were crossed, one of his legs crossed over the other. He looked like a piece of origami. I thought about getting him to lie on the ground, prying his limbs from him, spreading them out, smoothing the folds until he was in a snow angel-making position. ‘Need anything?’ I said, not counting it as cheating that I was prompting him to speak. When he shook his head that no, he did not need anything from the kitchen, I thought, we’ll still be okay because he moved his head. 

I accidentally slammed the fridge door on one of the kittens’ heads. He was the silent one, but he yelped. I grabbed him and pressed him against my chest. I rocked him back and forth speaking to him in a high-pitched voice I had read kittens prefer. I looked at the corner of the kitchen I had been avoiding for the past four months. The tops of the cardboard boxes were open, their brown flaps like the open cover of a book. The kittens sometimes hid in there, but Greg always got them out, I never did. 

The pebbles that lived in the base of my neck warbled up through my throat, clung to the skin just under my ears. I kissed the top of the boy kitten’s head and stood up with him still in my arms. I walked us both to the bedroom, closed the door, and slid under the covers. Greg knocked on the door. I poked my head out from the comforter to peek at him as he entered the room. He asked me if I was done watching the TV because pausing the show was going to make the screen freeze. I said I was done. He said okay and closed the door. 

*

I fell asleep in bed in the middle of the afternoon and slept til morning. I wandered into the kitchen and found Greg sipping coffee at the table. He said good morning. I noticed a smirk on his face. I asked where the kittens were. He said to look in the living room. He said there was a surprise in there for me. He said it might make me happy. It had been a while since I had thought about that feeling in relation to me; I hadn’t forgotten the word happiness, per se, but I had forgotten it was something I could have, could ever feel again.

The kittens were sleeping like little bunnies on the rug—their backs hunched, their limbs tucked under their warm, soft bodies. They made me feel so close to happiness, as adjacent as one could get to it. I sat on the rug and began to pet them, my arms outstretched on either side of me to reach them both. The boy unfurled himself, rolling onto his back, his eyes still closed and a little gummy. But where were his paws? His feet were still furry and painted black. But his paws? No longer were they soft and round, hiding long clear claws. They were pinkish, fleshy, with the tiniest little fingers like halves of cocktail wieners. They even had smooth, pearly nails on the ends. I gasped. I picked up his hands and ran my fingertip over his palm. It had lines, no calluses or blemishes. I traced the creases—his heart line, head line, life line. I scooted over to the girl and hers too were like small human hands. I marveled at them. I picked up a nearby milk carton cap and dropped it into her palm. She grasped it, squeezed it, brought it to her mouth to chew. My hands flew to my mouth in awe. Greg sat down on the floor beside me. 

‘Amazing, isn’t it?’ he said. All I could do was nod.

*

The kittens slept curled like commas. I pet their fuzzy bellies, I let their little fingers wrap around mine. I tried not to cry anymore. My face felt chapped like I’d been standing behind a waterfall for months letting the water and the wind slap me over and over again. I walked over to the box of clothes. I held up the smallest pink sweater you’ve ever seen with white lace on the collar, big white buttons going down the front, buttons that didn’t button, pretend buttons. I touched each one, folded the sweater, put it back down on top of the rest of the pile of clothes in the box, picked it back up again. I walked to the girl kitten sleeping peacefully on the couch. I lifted her by the armpits, sat her on my lap. I poked her head through the top of the sweater, her little human hands and her arms through the sleeves. Greg entered the living room. I watched his bottom lip tremble. He scratched the back of his neck like he always does when he’s about to cry. He said, in the smallest voice I’ve ever heard—

‘She looks like a little doll.’ 

I nodded. We’ll be okay if he sits on the couch beside us, I thought. We’ll be okay if he wraps his arms around us both. We’ll be okay if he ruffles my hair, if he laughs, if he smiles, if he walks out the door and walks right back in it. 

‘I don’t know about this,’ he said, gesturing toward the kitten in the pink sweater. He made his way to the bedroom, closed the door. When I checked on him a few minutes later, he was asleep. The bed was a big black hole sucking us both into it the minute we touched down on it. I took our little girl kitten with me, still dressed in the pink sweater, and held her to me as I climbed in beside Greg. She wanted to jump off, but I forced her to stay. Eventually we all fell asleep. When I woke later, the kitchen was rearranged—the sugar pot was moved across the counter, the bowls and plates were mixed up in a different cabinet, the spices shifted on the rack. The boy kitten sat on top of the table peeling a banana.

‘I thought you didn’t eat bananas,’ I said to him. He was wearing a small white cotton onesie he’d managed to grab from one of the cardboard boxes in the corner. It said—Grandma’s favorite little girl—all the i’s dotted with hearts. When he had to use the litter box, he used his little human hands to snap open the buttons at the back so he could relieve himself. Greg stood next to me as we watched. His hair was tousled with sleep. He picked at some crust in the corner of his eye.

‘Huh,’ Greg said before starting another round of FIFA in the living room. I found a bottle in the boxes. I filled it with warm milk I heated on the stove. I sat on the floor in the kitchen and I fed it to the boy kitten who also used his little human hands to grip it and hold it to his mouth. He made little burbling noises. I found the girl kitten and fed her too. Then they played together and slapped each other with their hands and their fingers and their nails until one of them screamed and ran under the fridge. I started to unpack the boxes.

*

There’s an episode of The Twilight Zone where the little girl gets sucked into an alternate plane of existence behind her bed. Her parents can hear her calling out for them from beyond the wall. I dreamed that our daughter was stuck behind a wall too. Ruth—her name would have been. I searched for her every time I fell asleep, which was all the time. Greg searched for her in my dreams too, inevitably getting swept into the other realm alongside her. Then there was no her, no Ruth anymore, just as in real life. There was only Greg, but he too was lost. The wall always seemed to close on me as I was halfway through it—my right side always made it in, but not the rest of me. I straddled the two worlds when all I wanted was to get to Ruth, to Greg in the other; I never made it.

*

Greg, the kittens, and I decorated the Christmas tree. We held the kittens up so they could hang the ornaments higher near the top. Greg unraveled a string of popcorn to thrown on the branches. The girl kitten picked an eyelash off my cheek with her finger, held it out for me to make a wish. My sister called, asked if I could watch her kids while she and her husband attended her company’s holiday party. I arrived later that night with the kittens in a stroller, and Greg. My sister fixed her makeup in the hallway mirror, poked an earring through her left ear before looking at the kittens.

‘What in the…’ she started.

‘We’re happy,’ Greg said, putting an arm around my waist, pulling me in closer to him. It was the first time he’d touched me in months. My waist nearly disappeared from the human contact, melted like butter inwards. I did, I thought, feel happy now that Greg had said it. I smiled up at him, he smiled back at me. One big happy family.

‘Whatever floats your boat, I guess,’ my sister said. ‘Are you still going to therapy?’ she said pointedly at me. I said I was although I had really stopped going weeks ago. My sister’s husband met us in the hallway. He pointed to the kittens’ human hands.

‘I took a gummy, but I can’t be imagining that, right?’

‘It’s so strange,’ my sister whispered, bending down to touch one of their hands. They grabbed hold of hers. ‘It’s still soft, like velvet.’

‘I’m tripping,’ her husband said. ‘I must be tripping. Let’s get out of here.’

‘Please be careful with the boys,’ my sister said, her eyes never leaving the kittens. ‘We’ll talk about this when I get back.’ We hugged goodbye, watched as the falling snow outside swirled like sparkles in the air, shut the door again. Greg kissed me on the temple. 

‘A happy Christmas indeed,’ he said, sweeping me off my feet into his arms and carrying me upstairs to the boys’ room. I stood at the top of the landing and watched the kittens jump out of the stroller, take in the house, lift the various candles and vases and plants up to examine them. Greg and I found our nephews and threw them onto their beds, tickled them, let them tell us all about the toys they’d asked for for Christmas. Later, in the bath, they giggled and giggled until one of them stuck out their hand and gave us a little brown rock we soon realized was a piece of their poop. They laughed uproariously until we lifted them out of the water, swathed them in big striped towels, and helped dress them back in their bedroom. 

Greg and I were on the couch downstairs, each of us holding one of the kittens, when my sister arrived home. She was drunk. I asked her how the party was. 

She said, ‘Lots of seeded crackers and seedless grapes.’ She plopped down in the middle of Greg and I on the couch and began to sob.

‘Can’t you see what’s going on here?’ she wailed. Greg and I looked between each other. ‘I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry,’ she said, blowing her very full nose into a tissue. Her husband reappeared in the living room, stared at the kittens in our arms dressed in festive baby clothing.

‘I think it’s best you two go,’ he said, gesturing toward the front door. I kissed my sister on the cheek good night.

She said, ‘Please don’t lose your mind like mom did, please. I couldn’t bear it.’

‘It’s right here,’ I said, tapping my temple. ‘It’s not lost.’

‘You know what I mean,’ she hissed. I looked back at her when we were further down the street from her house. She looked small in the door frame. She and her house with its red and white Christmas lights looked like the inside of a snow globe with all the snow falling. I closed an eye and grabbed the bottom of her house with my hand and shook it up and down watching her slant this way and that. 

*

Greg and I started hiding under the covers in the bedroom together. Sometimes we’d sit cross legged and face each other. We’d have staring contests. We’d see who could make the other one laugh or flinch first. Sometimes I’d lie with my head on his chest. We’d close our eyes and say where we were—I’m in Paris having a croissant strolling along the Seine, I’m walking the Great Wall of China, I’m snorkeling in the Silfra Fissure in Iceland. We’d guess what the kittens were doing in that moment—sleeping, or drinking water, or playing a game of chess with their new fingers. Occasionally we’d bring up the issue of naming them. It still felt too scary to name the things we loved so much only to have them be possibly taken away once more. I’d noticed the kittens were bored, melancholic. Part of the joy of playing with the milk carton cap had been in losing it, in finding it again.

‘Let’s go check on them,’ I said one afternoon while we were under the covers playing hide, no seek.

‘You go ahead. I’ll meet you out there,’ he said. I found the two of them in the living room playing Patty Cake. They followed me back into the bedroom to check on Greg, but he was gone. I looked under the bed, under the dresser, in the closet, out the window. I pounded on the bedroom wall, I called out to him—Greg! Greg, can you hear me? But received no answer. I already knew he was gone; he’d already been gone a long time, after all. I went through the drawers in his desk to see if I could find any clues as to his whereabouts. Instead, I found the flesh-like clay he’d used to make the kittens’ hands. I pressed my fingers into its waxy lumps, pushing and pulling at it. I wondered if I could make a whole new person out of it. How could you leave me here like this? I asked the Greg in my head. How could you do this to me?

I undressed the kittens and donated the clothes from the boxes in the kitchen. I donated my maternity clothes, the bottles and bibs and binkies, the stroller and the crib. I cancelled the Mommy & Me classes I’d signed up for, for the kittens and me. I took the gobs of clay that were so life-like, so real from their paws, and gave them back their fur and their claws, watched as they curled their paws around their eyes, rested their heads against them. I sat on the couch and watched as they batted the milk carton cap around and around the living room. And when they inevitably lost it, I looked for it under the TV stand and the bar cart, the book case and the couch. And I was happy, even just for a morsel of time. I was happy to be afforded the chance to find what was lost, and to be able to return it.