The cat had died sometime during the night, hours before Isabella had woken and discovered the stiff body still curled tightly beside her. Isabella’s job was in the next town over, in the big sausage factory, and every morning she left the house at 5 o’clock to catch the 5:15 bus, never a second later. So Malachi found a note in the kitchen—Sugar died. Please clean the bed and move her to the cellar—and a small mound, wrapped hastily in a blanket, waiting for him on his sister’s bed.
He kept a pocket of space between his chest and the dead cat as he made his way to the cellar. There was an awkward feeling he just couldn’t shake, like he was holding a piece of himself and it had just been stolen from him. He didn’t feel like crying. His face just scrunched up tightly until he reached the foot of the stairs.
Sugar’s body was just the right size to fit between the turnips and pickles, above the space that was typically stocked with firewood. Malachi never felt like chopping wood in this type of cold, when winter was supposed to have gone but had decided to drag its feet into the first weeks of spring. He noted to himself that Henrick, who owned the general store, might share some of his household supply for a couple of dollars.
The cat’s face was a small white patch in the darkness, her eyes squeezed into two pink commas. Malachi could almost swear she was smiling. For a moment, standing before the bed with a bucket of soapy water, he wanted to blame her for the mess he had to clean up. But it was only a moment. And then he found he could only muster the energy to release the air in his lungs and start scrubbing.
It was hours before Isabella returned, deep into the evening, with sausage juice sprinkled like rain on her skirt. At the dinner table, they stewed silently in each other’s company, eating the rice and steamed vegetables Malachi had prepared.
“The right thing to do,” said Isabella, “would be to bury her with Papa.” “Too cold. The ground’s as hard as a rock.”
“Okay. Then what do you propose?”
Malachi pictured the cat in his head. “We have the fireplace. Take this weekend and light her up, and it’ll be over in a couple of hours. Henrick’s got wood that I can borrow.”
“You expect a cat to burn properly in there?” “I said Henrick’s got wood that I can borrow.”
“You’d need enough wood for a bonfire. It wouldn’t fit.” “Sure it would.”
“In any case, it’s probably the least dignified way imaginable to put her to rest,” said Isabella. “She’s your pet.”
“She’s not mine.”
His sister stared at him sadly, or maybe coldly. He could never really tell which it was. “He’d want her to have a grave. There’s got to be something you can do.”
“Something I can do? Seems like there’s always something I can do. Like digging and chopping wood and—”
“And working, maybe, if you ever feel up for it,” she said, then blinked and clamped her mouth shut. Malachi’s face filled with heat.
After a moment, she stood and gathered her plate and silverware. “Thanks for the meal.”
The following morning, she was gone again, and Malachi buried himself in his sketchpad. Dim and windy days like these were ideal for his work. Of course, Isabella didn’t like them because the sunlight was swallowed by the thick clouds, posing a threat to her vegetables. But she didn’t have the brain of an artist.
In the garden outside the window, pea plants and turnips protruded from the dirt, waving weakly at Malachi. Beyond the stone border were tufts and bunches of weeds, some with long spiky leaves and others that looked like little crowded colonies. He drew them, capturing the wildness and deadness in the strokes of his pencil.
A bit away from the vegetable garden, the weeds grew tall and tangled together. The stones which encircled them, barely visible, were the only remnant of the garden’s past splendor, Malachi thought. Looking at it, shapes from his childhood formed in his mind—the pale and frothy outlines of peonies and rose bushes, the tiny bodies of bumblebees as they dipped in and out of the blossoms. And Papa, hovering over the explosion of color, always pruning or shoveling or watering. Malachi’s pencil moved urgently, tracing the scene onto the paper.
What Isabella didn’t understand was that a cat was just a cat. Humans got graves and headstones and people to dig holes in the dirt for them because they had done things in life. They deserved all of it—whereas cats did nothing but sleep and bask and wait to be fed.
He finished the last graphite flicks of hair on the back of Papa’s head. The familiar, hulking figure brought back the scrunched expression to Malachi’s face. It seemed that at any moment, the smudged drawing would turn around and face him, and Malachi would feel the familiar tightness in his nose that preceded tears. Stop crying, the drawing would say. If you’re a man, then stop crying. His words were always chosen with sober care. This was a man who hated his son, and somehow, he was also the man who transformed into a fountain of knowledge when it came to flowers, whose hands became as delicate as a surgeon’s when he gardened. It was the same man who fawned over a stray kitten as though it were his own child. Malachi ripped out the page and crushed it into a ball.
He left the house and went to the general store, where he asked for as much firewood as Henrick could spare.
Eyeing him, Henrick heaved the logs onto the counter and said, “I hear it’ll warm up any day now.”
“No, it’s the cat,” said Malachi. “The ground’s frozen solid, so I figured I’d just burn her in the fireplace.”
“Your cat died?”
“Well, she was really my papa’s.”
“You mean Fred’s treasure?” The creases in Henrick’s old face opened up all of a sudden. “Well, that’s a real tragedy. I’d say your papa loved that cat as much as his own two children. I remember, he’d come in here on hot days with her running in on his heels and ask me,
‘John, mind if I borrow a dish of milk?’ And he’d stay right there until she’d finished the last drop.” He shook his head.
“Right,” said Malachi. “How much for all this?”
“Dime apiece is alright. Say, how’s your sister doing? Remember to tell me how everything gets along.”
“How what gets along?”
“The garden,” said Henrick. “I always thought she was practical to the bone but looks like she inherited Fred’s wild streak. His passion for flowers.”
“Isabella’s not really artistic,” Malachi assured him.
“Oh, but she came in here last week and bought all sorts of seeds. Peonies and white roses, mostly. Said she’s going to plant them as soon as the ground thaws.”
Buying flowers? He could hardly imagine Isabella—dull, grounded Isabella—partaking in something so lovely and lively. So that’s what she’d been doing, he thought, all while prodding him about work. Scoffing at his art. The sour taste on his tongue intensified, thick and acidic.
Swallowing, he joked, “Maybe we can keep the cat around until then and she can find somewhere in the yard to put her.”
He expected the old man to laugh, but Henrick only grunted. “You know, you say you’re burning that cat, but I think Fred would have wanted her right by his side. Maybe it’s none of my business.”
“He won’t mind,” said Malachi. The words left his mouth on a whim, fueled by his annoyance, in a tone he hadn’t quite intended to bite so hard. For a moment, Henrick didn’t say anything. When Malachi looked at him, the old man’s ordinarily cheery eyes were watching him steadily, suddenly soft and diluted.
“I’m sorry, son.”
Malachi looked awkwardly out the window. “What, why?”
“Fred should have said that to you, but he never did. I believe he always wanted to. But there’s something you should understand.” He paused. “Well, you’re never going to get that apology. He’s gone now and waiting around for him won’t do anybody any good.” He smiled sadly. “I wish you could’ve had one last talk with him, though.”
As the old man spoke, embarrassment swelled inside Malachi, pumping blood into his face until it burned. Some anger accompanied it as well. The old man’s words were condescending and full of pity, something he imagined Isabella was thinking every time she looked at him with those sad-cold eyes. You didn’t know Papa, Malachi wanted to say. You don’t know me, either.
But all that left his mouth was “Thanks for the wood.” He gathered the logs and left as quickly as he could, looking anywhere but the storekeeper’s eyes.
As he sat adding wood to the fireplace he thought of the day, many weeks after Papa’s death, when he had visited his father for the first time. He remembered the wet feeling of the grass on his knees, and the moody spring sky that was the type of sky Papa hated most. For once, he hadn’t cried in front of Papa. His face had only scrunched up tightly, and stayed that way as he knelt there, hour after hour. As the clouds grew dark and started to empty themselves onto the land, he remembered expecting to feel some sort of weight disappear off his shoulders, to
breathe the icy air into lungs that no longer felt constantly compressed. But the shock, the brief feeling of victory, the confusion, and the anger he’d felt consecutively in these first few weeks had only evolved into a kind of heavy, hollow bitterness.
Now, he unraveled the blanket Sugar was bundled in and placed her stiff body on the wood. What now? he thought. All that planning, all that nagging, and the old man still couldn’t point him in a proper direction. His head was spinning a little. He struck one match and tossed it into the fireplace, then another, and a third one, until the stack of firewood was blazing.
“What are you doing?”
He hadn’t heard Isabella enter through the front door. She was hugging a bag of gardening soil with wide eyes.
“Why are you here?” was all he could think to ask.
“I thought you’d be in your room,” she said quickly. “I mean, you’re usually drawing in your room at this time.” Her gaze fell on the flames blooming in the fireplace. “What are you doing?”
“It’s not like you,” said Malachi, his voice rising, “to take a day off at all, let alone to use it for gardening. I heard from Henrick that you’re quite passionate now. Were you trying to keep it a secret?”
“Because I knew you’d react like this,” she said.
“You’d react this way if you were in my shoes. It’s easy, I suppose, to want to honor him and his garden when you were the one he loved.”
She let the soil fall to the floor with a thud. “Of course. He loved me so much that every word he directed at me was about you—teach Malachi this, make sure Malachi does that. I’m just stupid enough that I’m still here, taking care of you ten years after he died.”
“I didn’t ask to be taken care of,” he said, flushing red. “I’d never have stayed in this house if I’d known I’d be cooking and cleaning like a—a maid. I’m stuck here.”
“I’m stuck, too!” She sounded tired and desperate and alive. “Look at me. Buying soil and seeds to revive something he loved. Begging my brother not to burn his beloved cat. I wonder all the time why it always falls on me. But I remember that I do it because it’s right. Because he’s my Papa, and because hating him ten years later would only be a waste of space in my heart.” She stared at the bright tendrils flicking in and out of the fireplace, then looked back at Malachi. “It’s time for you to realize you’re not a kid anymore.”
Malachi opened his mouth, but the flames had begun to lap closer and closer to his face, whooshing like hot breath, and he moved back. The fire had started to spill out of the fireplace, spitting bright mouthfuls that singed little black holes into the rug. Isabella rushed to the kitchen, while Malachi stood and stomped frantically on the tiny fires that had sprouted across the living room floor.
Isabella returned with a dish filled with water and emptied it onto the flames. “Go!” she shouted, and for once, he listened.
They worked in silence. There was only the thud-thud-thud of their shoes on the floor as they ran back and forth from the kitchen, and their heavy, rhythmic breathing as the fire crackled. Even once they’d put out the flames, they sat for a moment without speaking. Finally, Isabella crossed the room to the fireplace and nudged the wood aside. Something charred and misshapen was all that remained of Sugar’s body.
She drew in a sharp breath. “Malachi,” she said, “look at her.” Malachi put his face in his hands and started to cry.
His memory of the grave was fuzzy now, ten years later. But standing before the headstone, it somehow felt as though he’d gone back in time to that day, the first and last time he’d visited this place. Some flowers Isabella had left the week before still lay at the base of the headstone. He set down the kettle and the basket he’d brought with him and replaced the wilting peonies with a fresh bouquet, a collection of all the kinds that Henrick had said were Papa’s favorites.
Malachi emptied the kettle onto the ground, watching the boiling water splash and hiss and seep into the dirt, thawing it gradually. After a few minutes, he prodded the ground with his foot, and started to dig. Nearby, a couple of robins had emerged with the morning sun. Their voices rang throughout the graveyard, above the dirt squelching and the clink-clink of the shovel. Malachi soaked in the sound, taking in deep lungfuls of spring air.
When he’d finished, he reached into the basket for Sugar, removing the blanket to reveal the disintegrating mass. He placed her gently in the dirt, and then closed his eyes and tilted his chin toward the clouds. He didn’t know what he was doing—praying or simply absorbing the morning sunshine. All he could think about was how warm the sun felt, filling him from head to toe.
