My sister
Katharine requested a tale, so this is for her, embellished, of course. A few weeks ago, I was gearing
up one Saturday morning for a day of Productivity Like None Other. My first
mission was to take some old furniture to the goodwill, which included a few
pieces that had been left at our house by a variety of people who have asked
us to store their stuff for safekeeping while they are doing really exciting
things like moving to cool cities or traveling, but I’ve gotten tired of
looking at it when I go into the bomb shelter area of our basement—because I am
in there, like, all the time—and, really, I think a year lease is pretty fair. You know,
if you haven’t inquired about your shit in a year, don’t imagine ever seeing it
again.
Anyway, so
I took the truck to the goodwill, returned home, backed the truck up to park it
in a different location, and screamed in terror at the sight of a tabby cat
lying where the truck had originally been. Y’all: it was totally dead. Granted,
there was no blood or strange bodily fluids about it, but I think you can
confirm death when a creature appears completely undisturbed by a fly crawling
about its eyeball.
I didn’t
want to touch it, but I had to move it, and I felt like I needed a consultation
first. Jason was at soccer, which means I had more of a likelihood of falling
into a black hole than getting in touch with him in my hour of need, so I
called my sister Katharine, and the timing could not have been better.
You see,
that was the same weekend that both of my parents were visiting her in NOLA,
and at the moment I called, she was on the brink of frustration and had
encouraged (some in the family have said forced) my parents to take a walk to get
coffee (and give her a break). No one should be offended by this. I mean, I
think it’s a rare family in which people can stand to spend 24 hours or more
together at a time. I have about a two-night limit with my family members, and
even then, we all kind of disperse and largely ignore each other—all we need to feel the special togetherness of family is merely knowing that we have the ability to just yell at each from another room.
Anyway, so
I was on the phone with Katharine, and we decided that I needed to at least
move the cat from the driveway and then I could wait on Jason to do all the dirty
work when he got home. So I got a shovel, but the shape of the shovel and the
shape of a big, dead cat just didn’t work so well together, and I ended up
pushing the cat around the driveway and merely disturbing the flies. So
then I got a board, and I pushed the cat onto that, I put the phone between my
shoulder and my ear, and I picked up the board and started running. Maybe it
was the laughter coming from my sister or maybe I stepped in a vole hole in the
yard, but all I know was that suddenly the cat went flying off the board and
landed in the yard, seemingly unbothered by all the action—I guess rigor mortis
lends to that. I decided then that it was best to wait for Jason to take care
of the cat. Upon his return, he looked at the cat and the
board and the fact that I only made it 20 yards, and was all, “WTF, woman?” And I was
all, “Here’s the shovel,” which he took and used to dutifully dig a hole in
which we discovered a bunch of glass bottles from, like, the late 1970s I am
certain (which makes them ancient, people). We buried the dead, nameless, tagless cat, and
then put those bottles in the recycling and felt GOOD about ourselves.
And somewhere about that same time in a small apartment in New Orleans, my sister attempted to talk to my parents about feelings and personal space issues. And we can all guess how that probably ended: my mother felt the need for a nap, and my father excused himself to visit the toilet.