Olivia

Olivia

I have to wait a few days before I can speak to her again. Ted always seems to be around, drinking and singing along to sad songs. When I row through the freezer door she doesn’t answer.

Three nights later, he goes out. He’s whistling and his shirt is clean. The door closes behind him and the three locks thunk into place. Where is he going?

I count to one hundred, to give him time to get far away, or to come back for his wallet or whatever. The lady on the record player moans quietly about her home town. I race to the kitchen and scratch on the freezer.

Are you OK?I am rowing in distress. Are you there?

‘I’m here.’ Her voice is faint under the record. ‘Is he really gone?’

Yes, I said. He had a clean shirt on. That usually means he’s on a date.

‘Gone hunting,’ Lauren says. She hates it when he dates. Now I know why.

So, I say, stalking up and down. Let’s go through our options. Can you shout for help?

‘I do,’ Lauren says. ‘Or I used to. But no one came. The walls are thick. I don’t think much sound gets through. You have cat ears, remember? I started to think that even you would never hear me.’

Hm, I say. You’re right. Cross that off the list.

‘What’s the next option?’ she asks.

Now I feel terrible because actually I only had one option. That’s the end of the list.

‘It’s not your fault.’ Lauren is trying to comfort me, and somehow that makes my tail hurt most of all. ‘It’s not so bad, sometimes,’ she says. ‘I like my pink bike and I can ride it around the house. There’s TV. He gives me food unless he’s angry.’ Lauren giggles. ‘Sometimes he lets me look at the internet, even. If I am “supervised”.’

The feelings in my throat and tail are worse than a hairball. What can I do? I row miserably. I was always so happy to be a cat but now I’m not sure. If I had hands I could get you out, I say.

‘If I still had feet I could get myself out,’ Lauren says. ‘But you can help, Olivia. You just have to do one thing.’

Anything, I tell her.

‘Make him turn down the music,’ Lauren breathes. ‘That’s all you have to do. I can’t do anything with the music on. He made sure of that, long ago. You hear? It has to be off, or at least so low I can barely hear it.’

OK! What happens then?

Piles of lead weights and counterweights are stacked on top, like abandoned castles in a bad land.

‘You can get me out, Olivia. Just do what you do with the Bible.’

It would be good to record all this in case something happens to me. But I don’t dare.

Ted watches cars screaming through the dirt on the TV and the level of the bourbon bottle dips steadily. He leaves the record player on while he watches. Under the roar of engines there is a banjo playing and the woman sings about bars and love. He is fading. Bourbon and exhaustion twine their arms about him, pulling him earthwards.

I prrp and go to him. But then I stop and my tail blows out. I become a tall arch. When the banjo strikes, I yow.

‘What’s up?’ He reaches for me.

The banjo tinkles and I speed beneath the couch.

‘You’re such a dumdum,’ he says. He changes the song; it becomes something mournful sung by that pretty voice. I cry along to the music, as loud as I can.

‘You dumb kitten,’ he says. The banjo twangs and I row with it, a long note.

‘Oh man, really?’ He turns the record down so that the piano and the woman are ghosts of themselves, whispering into the air.

I row. I don’t come out.

‘Hey, Olivia,’ he says, exasperated, ‘what am I? Your butler?’ But he turns it down even further. I think this is as good as it’s going to get.

I emerge from under the couch.

‘Oh,’ he says warmly. ‘There you are. Decided to honour us, did you?’

I start slowly doing all the things, the way I know he likes them. I circle his ankles in a figure of eight, purring. He bends to tickle my ears. I rear up to rub my head against his face. For a moment I wonder if it’s a trick. Perhaps he’ll take my head and twist it, now, until my neck breaks.

‘Hey,’ he says. ‘Kitten.’ The fondness in his voice gives me a broken feeling in my spine, all along my tail. He is familiar to me as my own silky coat, or Night-time. I thought he saved me. I thought we were part of one another, almost. The thought makes me cough again in my throat.

‘What’s up? Got a bone stuck or something? Let me take a look.’ He lifts me gently onto his lap and parts my jaws.

‘No,’ he says. ‘You’re OK, kitten.’ I purr and knead and he runs a gentle hand up and down my back. ‘I’ve been away too much,’ he says. ‘We’ve spent too much time apart. I’m going to be home more often, I promise. Starting now.’

I row furiously and purr.

‘You want me to turn off the TV?’ he asks.

I purr louder. We’re going to get away from you, I start to say and then I think better of it. What if he’s like Lauren and understands cat? A horrible thought – that all this time he has been listening to me.

‘Got to turn the music up again,’ he says sleepily, but I stroke the underside of his chin with my tail. I know just what to do to give him peace, I always have, and his eyes close, as I knew they would. His breathing becomes slow and regular and his chin meets his chest. I watch for a moment, searching for a way to feel. I guess something or someone made him the way he is, but that doesn’t matter now.

He looks so much younger when he sleeps.

I did it, I say to Lauren. He’s asleep.

‘Is he really out?’ Lauren asks. ‘Is it really safe?’

I listen. Ted’s breathing in the far room is heavy and regular. I think it’s now or never. OOoooeeeeeooo. The whining in my head is back, a mad wasp in my ears.

Yes, I tell her. I hope I’m right. I shake my head and rub my ears.

She says, ‘You see where the freezer sits close up against the kitchen counter?’

Yes.

‘Knock the top weight off the pile. It’ll make some noise, but not too much. Don’t let it fall on the floor. Then push it off the freezer, onto the counter. Got it?’

I nod, forgetting she can’t see me. Got it, I say.

The first weight comes off the pile with a clang. It’s small and wants to roll. I bat it back with my paws and push it onto the counter. Then the next. The one after that is heavy. I push it too hard and it slides off the freezer onto the floor, with a leaden thunk that seems to shake the world. We are both as still as death. I listen. It’s difficult through the shrieking drone in my ears. Lauren’s breath shudders in and out. In the next room, Ted snores. He’s still sleeping, I say, weak with relief.

After a moment Lauren says. ‘Don’t drop them, OK, Olivia?’

No, I whisper. I won’t. I’m very, very careful after that. The last weight, the one at the bottom of the pile, is so heavy that it hurts my paws to push it. Each inch is a miserable struggle. But at last it slides onto the countertop, clunking against the others.

They’re all off, I say.

‘All right,’ she says. ‘I’m coming.’

I close my eyes tight and make a sad little row. For some reason I am afraid. What will she be like?

You know, Lauren, I say, eyes still tightly closed, I don’t think I have ever even seen you in real life. Isn’t that weird? We have kind of always taken it in turns being out here, I guess!

There is no answer.

I hear the freezer begin to open, slowly, effortful, as if the hand that lifts the lid is shaking and fragile. I hear the lid thud against the wall. There is wet stirring, a sigh. The stench of misery and terror comes in waves. I think of white thin hands like claws and flesh shiny with scars. It makes me want to row and curl up in a ball.

Come on, cat, I tell myself sternly. Don’t make things worse for the poor girl.

I open my eyes. The freezer lies open, a dark grave. I stand on two hind legs and peer into the depths.

It is empty.

Oooooooeeeee, goes the whine.

Where are you?I whisper. Something is very badly wrong. The whining in my head rises to a scream, and I row and claw my head. I want to run headfirst into a wall, just to make it stop.

‘Hey, cat,’ Lauren says, next to my ear. The screaming rises. Through it I can hear my breath, my heart chopping like an axe on a block.

‘Olivia,’ she says, ‘try not to freak out.’

What in heavens, I say. I’m going insane … Why aren’t you in the freezer?

‘I was never in there,’ she says.

I can feel her, somehow, the warm outline of her, or smell her maybe. Or maybe there’s no word yet invented for the sense I am using. I’m on the very knife-edge of losing my mind.

Lauren?I say. Where are you? What the eff is going on? Why can’t I see you? It feels – and I know this can’t be true, but it’s what it feels like, nevertheless – it feels like you’re inside me.

‘It’s the other way around, Olivia,’ she says. ‘You’re inside me.’ And now a horrible thing happens. My body seems to stutter and shift. Instead of my lovely tail and paws I feel for a moment that there are hungry pink starfish at the end of my limbs. My silky coat is gone, my eyes are small and weak …

What, I say, what … Let me go. None of this is happening. Let me go back into my nice crate …

‘Look at it,’ she says. ‘The thing you call a crate. The truth is right there. But you have to choose to see it.’

I look at the chest freezer, the open lid resting against the wall, the holes punched in the lid for air.

‘I left you a note,’ Lauren says. ‘But what kind of cat can read? What kind of cat can talk?’ The screeching rises again. OOooooeeeeoo.

I’m imagining this, I row. If only that gd noise would stop I could think …

‘One of us is imaginary,’ she says. ‘It’s not me.’

Go away! Stop it! Stop that noise!

‘Olivia,’ she says, ‘look at what you’re doing.’

My paw is outstretched, claws extended. It rakes across the side of the metal freezer, making a scream like terrible suffering. Eeeeeeeoooooeeeee, go my claws, screeching across the metal. The noise was me, all the time. But how can that be?

‘I’ve been trying to get your attention for such a long time,’ Lauren says.

The screeching of claws on steel rises. The world seems to flicker. Instead of my paw there is a hand with long dirty nails, dragging, dragging … eeeeeeeeeeeoooeeee. Claws on metal. Fingernails on metal, a voice whispers and I yow and scream but even that can’t rise above the screeching; it builds until it becomes a physical thing, a wall inside me that breaks with a terrible crack.

I come to with Lauren stroking my back. But somehow, once again, she’s doing it from the inside. I start to cry, little piteous mewlings like a kit.

‘Shhh,’ she says. ‘Let it out quietly, if you can.’

Leave me alone, I say. I curl up tightly. But it feels like she’s wrapped around me.

‘I can’t do that,’ she says. ‘You really don’t get it, do you?’ She strokes me again. ‘The first time I tried to run,’ she says, ‘he took my feet. He broke them between two boards with a mallet. The second time I tried, you came out of my mind.

‘I was half way to the door when he took me by the hair. I knew I would rather die than go back into the freezer, so I made up my mind to do that. But instead, something else happened. I went away. I don’t know how. It was like my mind was a deep cave and I was pulled back into it. You walked out of the emptiness, and came to the front. I could see you, feel what you were doing. I could still hear what he was saying. But it was like watching TV. I wasn’t in our body. You were. You purred and sat in his lap and made him calm again. You were made from darkness, to save me.

No, I say. I remember being born. It wasn’t like that.

‘I know the story,’ Lauren says. ‘I can see your memories. Or what you think are your memories. You were in a ditch with your Mamacat …’

Yes, I say, relieved to hear something I recognise.

‘It never happened,’ Lauren says. ‘The mind is clever. It knows how to tell you something that you can accept, when life gets too hard. If a man who calls you kitten keeps you prisoner – why, your mind might tell you that you are a kitten. It might make up a story about a stormy night and how he saved you. But you weren’t born in the forest. You were born inside me.’

It was real, I say. It must be. My dead little kit sisters, the rain …

‘It’s real in a way,’ she says sadly. ‘There are dead kittens buried in the forest. Ted put them there.’

I think about the earth that clings to Ted’s boots, some nights when he comes in from the woods. The scent of bone on him. I can’t seem to get enough air, even when I open my mouth wide to breathe. Truth has weight. It leaves footprints in your mind. Lauren strokes me and murmurs until the blood stops pounding in my ears.

Why did you pretend to be in the freezer?

‘I knew you wouldn’t believe me,’ she says. ‘I had to find a way to show you that we’re one person.’

Oh, I say, helpless. I’m your psychological issue.

‘Don’t feel bad,’ she says. ‘Things got better after you came. He began to let you out regularly, feed you. You calm him. You’re his pet. You like the freezer. You feel safe in there. And the happier you made him, the kinder he was to both of us. There is no more hot water and vinegar. He sends me to sleep and you come forward.’

I help keep us here, I say. I care for him, I let him stroke us …

‘You made sure we survived,’ Lauren says. Warmth spreads throughout my mind. ‘I’m hugging you. Can you feel it?’

Yes, I say. The feeling is just like being enclosed in loving arms. We sit for a while, holding each other.

In the living room, Ted groans.

‘He’s coming,’ she says. ‘I have to go. I’ll try and come back soon.’

She touches me gently, comforting. ‘You opened the door between us, Olivia. It will be different now.’ And then she is gone.

I used to spend all my time wishing Ted would come home. Now all I want is for him to stay away.

I feel weird because even though it is such an awful situation, I love having Lauren around. She is fun to talk to. We talk or play or just sit together. It is really nice, like having one of the kits in my litter with me again. I suppose that’s what Lauren is. She can make it feel like she’s stroking me or hugging me, though it’s just in our mind. The music stops her from using our body. It’s like being tied up but not gagged, she says, and I shudder at her matter-of-fact tone, because she sounds so young, and no one should know how those things feel.

Tonight we are curled up together on the couch in the dark house. Outside, the trees spread fingers against the moonlight. The cord is a soft black, invisible against the night. Ted is passed out, the stone-dead kind of passed out, upstairs. We whisper to each other.

‘If I still had my feet we could run away,’ Lauren says. ‘Just run.’

Can you see me?I ask. I can’t see you. I wish I could. I want to know what you look like.

Ted has made sure that there are no reflective surfaces in the house.

‘I’m glad you can’t,’ she says. ‘Too much has been done to our body. I feel you, though. You’re warm – it’s nice, like someone is sitting by my side.’

I try not to think about the body, Lauren’s body, that she says we both live in. I kind of only half believe her. I can feel my fur, my whiskers, my tail. How can that not be real?

You know, there’s another one, I say. There are three of us. He’s called Night-time.

‘I think there are more than three,’ she says. ‘I hear them sometimes, when I’m very deep down. I try not to. I don’t like it when the little ones cry.’

Deep down?

‘There are other levels. I need to show you all that.’

Fear strokes me, a dark feather. I purr anxiously to make the feeling stop.

‘Don’t you think, Olivia,’ and I can hear the wet catch in her voice, ‘that it would be better if none of us had been born?’

No, I say. I think we’re lucky to have been born. And we’re luckier still to be alive. But I don’t know what being born or being alive means any more. What am I? It seems like everything I knew is wrong. I thought I saw the LORD, once. He spoke to me. Did that happen?

‘There are no gods except Ted’s gods,’ she says. ‘The ones he makes in the forest.’ The cold feather strokes on, up my tail, down my spine.

We won’t let that happen, I say. We are going to get out of here.

‘You keep saying that,’ she snaps. For a moment she sounds like the old Lauren, shrill and unkind. Then she softens again. ‘What will you do when we’re free? I’m going to wear a skirt and pink barrettes in my hair. He never lets me.’

I want to eat real fish.(Privately, to myself, I think, I will go and find my tabby love.) What about your family? I ask Lauren. Maybe you can find them.

After a pause she says, ‘I don’t want them to see me like this. It’s better if they keep thinking I’m dead.’

But where will you live?

‘Here, I guess.’ Her voice sounds like it doesn’t matter. ‘I can manage without Ted. I want to be alone.’

Everyone needs someone, Lauren, I say sternly. Even I know that. A person to stroke you and tell you nice things and get annoyed with you sometimes.

‘I have you.’

That’s true, I say, in surprise. I hadn’t thought. I tickle her strongly with my tail and she laughs. Luckily, I am an optimist and I think we’re going to need that.

Lauren sighs, the way she does when she’s about to say something I won’t like. ‘It has to be you,’ she says. ‘When the time comes. You know that, right, Olivia? You have to do it. I can’t use the body.’

Do what?But I know.

She doesn’t answer.

I won’t, I say. I can’t.

‘You have to,’ she says sadly. ‘Or Ted will put us under the ground like the other kittens.’

I think about all those little girls. They must have sung songs too, and had pink barrettes and played games. They must have had families and pets and ideas and they either liked swimming, or didn’t; maybe they were afraid of the dark; maybe they cried when they fell off their bikes. Maybe they were really good at math or art. They would have grown up to do other things – have jobs and dislike apples and get tired of their own children and go on long car rides and read books and paint pictures. Later they would have died in car wrecks or at home with their families or in a distant desert war. But that will never happen, now. They are not even stories with endings, those girls. They are just abandoned under the earth.

I say, I know where he keeps the big knife. He thinks no one knows, but I do.

She holds me tight. ‘Thank you,’ she whispers, and I feel her breath in my fur.

Suddenly I cannot bear to wait. I’ll do it now, today, I say. Enough.

I leap up onto the counter and stand on my hind legs. I open the cupboard. At first I can’t believe my senses. It’s not here, I say. But it must be. I nose in and search the dusty interior. But the knife is gone.

‘Oh.’ I hear the deep wound of disappointment in her voice and I would do anything to make it better. ‘Don’t worry about it, Olivia.’

I’ll find it, I tell her. I swear, I’ll find it …

She gives a little sound, and I can tell she’s trying not to cry. But I feel her tears running hot through the fur on my cheeks.

What can I do to make it better?I whisper to her. I’ll do anything.

She sniffs. ‘You probably can’t,’ she says. ‘You would have to use the hands.’

I’ll try, I whisper even though the thought of it makes me ill.

The cupboard under the stairs is dusty and smells pleasantly of fatty engine oil. There are dusty rugs piled in the corner, a stack of old newspapers, part of a vacuum cleaner, boxes of nails, a beach parasol … My ears are wide and alert, my tail raised with expectation. This is just the kind of place I love. I sniff the delicious trickle of black oil that runs across the floor.

‘Focus, Olivia,’ Lauren says. ‘I hid it under those newspapers.’

I nose into them and I smell something that is not newspaper. Bland, smoother. Plastic.

‘It’s a cassette tape,’ Lauren says. ‘Pick it up. No, that won’t work, use your hands. You don’t really have paws.’ Her frustration rises. ‘You live in my body. We are a girl. Not a cat. You just have to realise that.’

I try to feel my hands. But I can’t. I know the shape of myself. I walk delicately balanced on four velvet paws. My tail is a lash or a question mark, depending on my mood. I have eyes as green as cocktail olives, and I am beautiful …

‘We don’t have time for all this, Olivia,’ Lauren says. ‘Just pick it up in your mouth. You can do that, right?’

Yes! I take the cassette gently in my jaws.

‘Let’s go to the mail slot, OK?’

OK!

On our way past the living room I see something that makes me stop for a second.

‘Is something wrong, Olivia?’ she asks.

Yes, I say. I mean … no.

‘Then hurry up!’

I nose the mail flap open. The metal is heavy and cold on my delicate velvet nose. The outside world smells of dawn frost. White light hits my eyes.

‘Toss the cassette out into the street,’ Lauren says. ‘As far as you can.’

I jerk my head and throw the cassette. I can’t see anything, but I hear it bounce.

‘It went into the bushes,’ Lauren whispers. I hear the dismay in her voice.

Sorry, I say. Sorry.

‘It was supposed to land on the sidewalk so someone could find it,’ Lauren says. She starts to cry. ‘How will anyone find it there? You wasted our chance.’

I feel terrible, Lauren, I say. I really do!

‘You aren’t trying,’ she says. ‘You don’t want us to get out. You like it here, being his prisoner.’

No!I say, agonised. I don’t, I want to help! It was an accident!

‘You have to take this seriously,’ she says. ‘Our lives depend on it, Olivia. You can’t go on pretending you don’t have hands. You have to use them …’

I know, I say. For the knife. I’ll practise. I won’t mess up again. I nose her and rub my head against her where I feel her in my mind. You rest now, I tell her. I’ll watch. We curl up on the burry orange rug and I purr. I feel her beside me, inside me. She gives a deep sigh and I feel her slip gently down and away into the peaceful dark. My tail is filled with worry. Lauren never likes to talk about after, when we’re free. I have a bad feeling she doesn’t care about being free. Worse – that she doesn’t want to be alive. But I will help her. I will keep us safe.

She has enough to deal with, so I didn’t mention it, but the weirdest thing just happened. As I walked to the front door just now, with the tape in my mouth, I glanced into the living room. And I swear that for a moment, this rug had changed from orange to blue.