Page 16 of Going Down

“Does it include another gourmet breakfast?” I ask with my mouth full.

Dash takes my bowl. “It will absolutely include breakfast if that’s what it takes for you to say ‘yes’.” He kisses me before trotting down the few steps. Then turns back and opens one of them. A drawer pops out from the riser and Dash chooses the clothes he’s going to wear. Today’s shirt is basic black with the word “ride” across the chest. I’m guessing he’s not going to wear the gloves that flip everyone the bird to ski school.

Heading for the shower, Dash stops to pour cat food into a dish. Capote comes out of hiding when she hears the tinkling sound. The kitten finishes before Dash is washed. She skitters up to the bed, burrowing herself under the covers, and finding the warm spot Dash has left behind.

I can’t help touching the twitching pink tail sticking out. The Capote lump moves under the blankets and her nose replaces her hind end. She looks at me with her big bat ears and round eyes. Her wrinkled old-man face is downright adorable. I skitter my fingers across the mattress and her paw jumps out to tackle them. The more we play the feistier she gets, finally attacking my hand with both claws and her sharp teeth.

“Ouch!” My loud reaction has her skittering back under the blankets.

“She’s testing you.” Dash stands by the couch, toweling his hair dry and securing his man bun with a hair elastic. “It may happen again, but as long as you don’t let Capote get away with it she’ll stop. She gets bored a lot. It can’t be any fun being cooped up in here while we’re roaming free.”

“How did you wind up with a cat anyhow?”

“The vagabond life loses some of it’s appeal when the sun sets and there’s nobody round to share your adventures with,” he replies simply.

A short time later, Dash leaves me with his kitten. It’s awkward in the tiny house without him. To fill the silence I keep a running diatribe of what I’m doing with the cat. Capote alternately ignores me—the way all cat memes say they do—and gets into my business. She likes the inside of my backpack and to get what I need out of it, I try the Sherpa hold Dash does. In the end, I wind up cradling her like a baby and she purrs.

“For someone with zero animal experience, I’m not doing so bad.” I congratulate myself aloud.

I wash the breakfast bowls and everything seems to fall into place by the time I need to get to the peak on schedule. Capote has disappeared once again. I push back the curtain and slide open the door. Too quick she bolts from under the table outside.

My heart starts to race as I panic. Me. The woman who is trained in an emergency not to become flustered. But hell, Dash’s naked cat is out in the snow. It’s twenty-two degrees and the wind is blowing.

My bag falls off my shoulder and I place a tender foot on the exterior step glancing around to see where she’s gone.

Capote is by the grill of my Jeep. She picks up a paw and puts it down, not liking the cold on the pads of her feet. She looks like she’s walking through glue. I talk to her the way Dash speaks to me. Soft. Gentle. Like she’s the most precious thing. Capote is to Dash.

“I don’t want him to lose you because of me.” I tell Capote.

She looks at me and mewls. Then she tries to sit, but her butt scoots back into the air on contact with the snow and she cries.

“You’re too smart a kitten to act pitiful. Let’s go back inside.” I approach her slowly, unzipping my coat to slip her inside the lining. Capote lets me rescue her. She snuggles in the way she does in bed.

After shutting the slider, I hold her close until we both stop shaking. Her from the late-January temperatures in New England. Me from the realization that it wasn’t only about me losing Dash’s cat. It was me losing the trust of someone who is becoming special to me. I don’t take anyone on their word anymore, but Dash is breaking down that barrier. The trust I’ve begun to build with him is a two-way relationship. It’s also something I’m not sure I’ll be able to maintain with anybody else after he’s gone—Especially if I’d been as untrustworthy as my mother.

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8

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You can’t steal second base if you keep your foot on first

“Your fortune would have made more sense if the Sox were playing.” My dad quips about the slip of paper I got with our to-go boxes at lunch. He’s decked out from head to toe in red, white, and blue for Sunday night football, refusing to retire his tattered old number twelve jersey when Brady did. My dad’s superstitious and maintains that it brings his favorite team luck. New England needs all the good fortune it can muster. They still play great, but the games aren’t what I’ve heard they were like in their hay-day.

I give him a countdown until Truck Day. We’ve always trekked to Van Ness Street to watch the big green semi pull away from the park. A few years ago, he even brought me down to Fort Myers to watch spring training. My mother didn’t come and now her choice to stay at home makes more sense.

With a toothy grin, Dad flips to the local network’s playoff pregame show on the television.

I spend one evening each week helping him organize what my mother left behind. Which is everything in the house they brought me home to from the hospital.

I’ll fess up that once his interest wanes, mine does as well. I don’t enjoy sorting through the effects of their marriage, nor do I like the reminders of days gone by. In snapshots similar to the perfect, happy ones Dash has on his cork board in his quirky little house, I only see the things that weren’t obvious.

Now with each family memory, I wonder what my mom was thinking. If she wanted to walk away from her marriage all those years and was pretending to love us. If she was lying to my dad about how miserable and trapped she felt. If I held her back from who she wanted to be.

Most of all I worry that the person I tried to make proud was never invested in who I was whatsoever.

Chip gave me today off so that Dad and I could keep another tradition and watch as many games together as we can. There are so few things with any sense of nostalgia anymore. Our holidays used to be big bashes. Now on Thanksgiving and Christmas, Dad and I sit with little fanfare eating reheated turkey and congealed side dishes. But we’re together, I haven’t left him, and that’s what’s important.

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