Donna's Kitten

From Donna’s spare bedroom, through a gap in the curtains, Erin watched her own house across the road. Her husband locked the front door, turned around, straightened his tie and walked down the driveway. He stepped into his shiny black Volvo and drove away. It was eight twenty-five.

Her daughter Zoe would follow soon, messier and hurried. The only thing Erin could predict about her outfit was its unpredictability.

She gasped.

‘What is it?’ came Donna’s voice, from the bedroom doorway behind her.

‘Nothing. Nothing, just, you know, Zoe has pink hair this morning,’ Erin replied, turning to face Donna, who filled the doorway, with her hands on her hips. ‘Anyway, they’re gone now, so I’ll be off.’

Donna shook her head and pursed her lips, affectionately.

Five minutes later, Erin crossed the street and let herself into her house. There, in an order which was gaining the familiarity of routine, she went about her morning tasks.

She began by sitting with her four cats for half an hour.

‘There now,’ she cooed as they purred in her lap and on the surrounding cushions. ‘Mama didn’t forget you. Mama’s still here.’

Then she went into the kitchen. She replaced the water in which a swollen cat biscuit floated, then emptied a sachet of reconstituted meat in gravy into each bowl, and watched them eat for a moment, listening as they purred. Then she restocked the fridge with fresh groceries and made a dish of lasagne. While it cooled, she cleared the dinner table and washed the dishes, vacuumed and washed the floors, cleaned the toilet, took out the rubbish, changed the cat litter, ironed three shirts, and loaded up the washing machine. Then she spread tinfoil on the lasagne, labelled it and went to the freezer. There, she moved a box of curry from the bottom to the top drawer, and two jars of soup from the middle to the bottom. She placed the lasagne in the middle drawer, and concealed it behind four boxes of ice cream.

She leant against the freezer door and surveyed her surroundings, eyes moving methodically from floor to worktop to cat bowl to sink. Then, eyes closed, she surveyed the second floor, or rather the version of it that she could see inside her head. When her mind’s eye came to the washing machine, she remembered that the laundry needed placing in the dryer, and her still body launched itself across the kitchen and up the stairs. As the dryer began to turn, she rested her forehead against the metal door, and made one last mental check of the morning’s household chores.

Tasks completed, she stepped out of her door again, and back across the street to Donna’s house, where a pan of vibrant roots and golden spices simmered on the woodstove. Donna dozed in a rocking chair, her face glowing in the orange light of the flames.

‘Soup?’ she asked Erin, through half-open eyes.

Erin nodded. Donna scooped up a sleeping kitten which nestled between her breasts, and nudged the Maine Coon which lay curled on one of her thighs. With a hand on each armrest, she prised her hips from the chair’s grip.

Steaming bowls of velvety, amber soup soon stood on the table, alongside a bowl of freshly-picked leaves in all shades of green, which tasted of aniseed and parsley and bitter dandelions and earth and spring. There were hunks of sourdough bread too, thickly buttered, and a board of sweating cheese.

***

Under normal circumstances, Rob was the one to leave home, sometimes for a few days, often for several weeks. And he went a lot further than Donna’s house. His job required him to spend a large portion of time away from England, in destinations which induced envious facial expressions at social events when he dropped them into conversation. Recent missions had taken him to New York, Singapore, Barcelona and Stockholm.

In earlier years, Erin had sometimes accompanied him when the destination excited her, but sightseeing alone while he worked lacked the lustre of exploring together, and she resented the time away from her own projects. So she learned to compartmentalise her existence into chapters: chapters with her husband - two full lives lived alongside each other in mutual support and shared pleasures - and chapters during which he became more of a pen pal, a romantic idea rather than a sensual presence. During these chapters without him, her focus on her work sharpened further.

She made a tidy income writing erotica anonymously online, for which the bulk of inspiration flowed abundantly from her own marital bed. This income allowed her to pursue her passion projects with a certain quietude which was often mistaken for a lack of ambition. She only had one novel to her name, and the publishing house was small. Drafts of other works piled up on her computer, which she lovingly crafted to perfection whilst the work which financed her remained largely veiled in secrecy. She had time left over to tend to a paradisiacal garden, stay close to her teenage daughter, and look after the house.

She had crafted this life for herself to a certain degree of satisfaction. The only thing she had to contend with was the onlookers—the family and not-so-close friends who thought of her as a housewife with a hobby. When her husband travelled, their pity claimed her:

‘You must miss him terribly,’ they said.

Or: ‘How long is he away for now? Five weeks? Oh, you poor soul.’

And in conclusion: ‘It must feel like a terribly long time to wait.’

‘I don’t wait,’ she reproved. ‘It’s nice when he’s home, fine when he’s not. It’s like a separate mode. I have passions of my own.’

‘Oh yes, your writing? That’s nice.’

‘Yes. In truth, I hardly have time to think about him,’ she answered with her sweetest smile.

But this truth was not whole.

In truth, each departure was the same. They said goodbye in the hallway as the airport taxi waited outside: he ran his fingers through her hair, then slipped his bear paws down to her waist and underneath her t-shirt, letting his warm, strong arms envelop her; she pressed her head into his chest and murmured her love to him before lifting her face to his to kiss him. She lingered in the doorway as he walked down the driveway, his suitcase rolling behind him, purpose and pride expressed by the length of his stride and the width of his alert shoulders. Then, as the taxi carried him away, she closed the front door, but as she leant against it, sadness did not swell in her chest, only space.

Calm spread through the house like breath.

The bed was hers alone - wide, quiet, free from snoring. She did not have to wear earplugs while she cooked to protect the sanctity of her mental space from his beloved reality TV shows. He did not vex her by not noticing how she pointedly removed the earplugs when he looked up from the TV to speak to her.

In the evening, Zoe filled the house for hours with the sound of her cello practice, and then retreated to her room to do the homework at eleven P.M. that a less dedicated musician would have done hours before. And so, once the simple business of feeding herself and one teenager was over, Erin’s evenings were no less her own than her days.

She savoured the days.

She savoured the evenings.

She savoured the thought of being reunited with him, letting her body flush and flutter in anticipation of him coming home, starved of her, a raw edge on his arousal, ready to consume her with an urgency and a focus that may not have survived the monotony of a marriage with no absences.

She savoured the thought of talking afterwards in drowsy tones, smug in the intimacy of mutual satisfaction, sticky fluids drying, pungent, on breasts and bellies and beard and thighs.

And in the meantime, she savoured space.

Yet still, under all her layers of independence and self-contained satisfaction, something ached.

‘I miss him,’ she admitted to herself, usually around the tenth day of absence, from the depths of the big, quiet, empty bed, breathing in the stale sweat of his gym shirt.

And that’s when she sent it, the same text message every time, that she regretted in the same way every time:

‘I miss you.’

His reply arrived promptly enough.

‘I miss you too xx.’

Did he though?

In truth, she longed for him to say it first.

***

Erin prided herself on missing her husband simply because she loved him, nothing more. She did not miss her husband because she needed to cry on his shoulder, or for him to anchor the mothership when the waves rose too high or crashed too hard.

She would have been offended if anyone suggested that she did not miss her husband’s anchoring presence because Donna filled in for him. But fill in Donna did.

Donna worked from home too. She had converted one of the rooms of her house into a reflexology practice, and a few hours of work every weekday afternoon allowed her to live simply and freely. Erin soon learnt her friend’s hours, and Donna never seemed to object when Erin appeared on her doorstep at varying points of a large emotional spectrum.

Donna was as good a stabiliser as Rob ever was.

And there were things Donna did better than Rob too, like reading Erin’s work.

Erin knew that Rob supported her unconditionally in her literary projects, but when she showed him a new chapter of a novel, or a short story, he often took several days to get around to reading it. Praise would follow in predictable patterns, but it never carried the precision she longed for.

Donna, on the other hand, would extend two excited hands when Erin arrived with a print-out, and usually drop whatever she was doing to sink into her rocking chair and devour the words with fast-moving eyes. Erin would slip out the backdoor and soon after receive a long voice message effusively detailing the complex feelings aroused in Donna by Erin’s ‘truly, truly brilliant writing’.

Erin stored all of these voice messages, and whenever she felt a lack of confidence, she would only have to play one and her fingers would be typing again in minutes.

The two women had met nine years before, when Erin, Rob and Zoe moved into the house opposite Donna’s. They had initially bonded over their shared love of cats, and Donna soon invited Erin for lunch.

During that first lunch together, Erin noticed several photos of a young man on the mantelpiece.

Donna smiled across the table.

‘That’s my son,’ she said.

‘Oh, isn’t he handsome with his blond curls! I thought you lived alone,’ said Erin.

‘I do. He’s studying in Edinburgh now,’ replied Donna.

‘And his Dad?’

‘He walked out. Awful man. Awful sex. Beautiful angel of a son. Funny how life evens things out, isn’t it?’

‘I don’t know how it’s possible to walk out on a child.’

‘He didn’t. He walked out on an embryo.’

‘Oh, I see. And you never dated again?’

‘Nope. Got my MR jab.’

‘MMR?’

‘Just MR. No more misters for me.’

Erin laughed, then fell silent. Her smile faded as her mind grappled with two decades of celibacy and solo-parenting.

Donna nodded slowly, looking straight into her new friend’s eyes.

It was the first of many shared lunches, teas, coffees, dinners and moments in between.

So, when Erin needed a place to hide from her own family, Donna’s house was the obvious choice.

***

But Donna frowned when Erin asked to stay.

‘You want to live here indefinitely?’

‘Well, it might not take too long to fix,’ replied Erin.

‘I thought Rob and Zoe were both home tomorrow?’

‘They are. Which is precisely why I need to be away.’

‘And they won’t know where you are?’

‘Nope. I’ll be in hiding.’

No identifiable issue needed to be fixed. It was more of a feeling that bothered Erin, a feeling which had swelled from words which stung. And now Erin wanted more words - different words - to be applied to the swelling, like calamine lotion on a bee-sting.

And she resolved to get her words.

***

The sting had been implanted a week before - implanted without malice, during two conversations which had followed each other in quick succession.

The first was a text message exchange with her husband, who was working in Boston:

‘I miss you,’ Erin typed.

‘Miss you too got to go xx,’ came the answer.

Erin sighed, staring at the screen, until her daughter called from the hallway.

‘I’m off, Mum!’

Erin jumped up and ran down the stairs. Her daughter was walking towards the door, concealed behind the enormous instrument she carried on her back. The small suitcase she dragged knocked a pair of shoes off the shelf.

‘Wait, love!’ called her mother from the stairs.

Zoe turned awkwardly, setting a picture frame askew with the cello case.

‘Enjoy the tour. And good luck with… French horn boy.’

Erin cussed inwardly, forgetting the name of Zoe’s crush.

‘James? I’m over him, Mum.’

‘Right. Good. Who is it now then?’

‘The coach is leaving, Mum.’

‘Right. Yes. Off you go then. Have fun. I’ll miss you.’

And she kissed her daughter on the cheek.

Zoe didn’t answer.

Silence pressed on Erin’s ears when the front door closed. A cat brushed against her legs.

***

In the week that followed these conversations, the sting swelled to a hard abscess in her chest, driving Erin to make her strange request to Donna.

Donna agreed to let Erin hide in her house. She was delighted, of course, to have Erin to stay, but she doubted her absence would resolve anything.

Erin texted Rob to warn him that she would be away:

‘Darling, I won’t be home when you get back tomorrow. I’ll miss you but I just need a little time to reset myself. I’ve found a nice retreat and I’ll be home in a few days. Don’t worry about dinners and cleaning and all that. There’s plenty in the freezer and Zoe is more capable than you think.’

‘Ok hun, we’ll be fine, you do what you need to do. What is this retreat? Yoga?’

‘It’s just one of those all-women divine feminine type retreats in a big old house with a nice garden. All we really do all day is cook together and talk and sometimes there are massages.’

And to her daughter:

‘Darling, I won’t be home when you get back tomorrow. I’ll miss you but I just need a little time to reset myself. I’ve found a nice retreat and I’ll be home in a few days. Don’t worry about dinners and cleaning and all that. There’s plenty in the freezer and your dad is more capable than you think.’

‘Right, Mum.’

Erin and Donna slipped into an easy routine together.

Erin would leave each morning to look after her own house before returning to have lunch with Donna. In the afternoon, they each went about their work. When Donna’s last client left, they met in the kitchen and chatted while they cooked. They shared a love for old films, and often settled on the sofa after dinner, Erin with her head on Donna’s shoulder, big mugs of herbal tea steaming on the coffee table, and watched painting-like scenes from Malick or Tarkovsky. Sometimes Donna worked on Erin’s feet as they watched, chiding her for wasting her intellect on so much housework.

‘You’re spoiling them you know,’ said Donna over breakfast one day, before Erin left to do her morning’s chores.

‘You know I’m house-proud, Donna.’

‘Pathologically.’

‘Besides, I might be slim, but I don’t need my woollens transforming into kids’ clothes. I have to do the laundry.’

‘You could at least let them cook for themselves. And don’t you think they’re going to notice they have a self-filling freezer?’

‘Neither of them would notice if the freezer grew legs and swapped places with the cooker.’

‘Then why are you bothering?’

Erin paused, sipped her tea, and laid the mug down slowly.

Then, as she tilted the mug and watched the liquid adjust to its new centre of gravity, she said:

‘Because I want to be absolutely sure that I am missed for something other than my cooking and cleaning.’

***

Words did begin to trickle through her phone, but they did not yet possess a calamine quality. And now that the sting had festered into an abscess, something stronger than calamine would have to be administered.

The first messages from Rob and Zoe were gently provocative. They sent photos of pizza eaten in front of the TV on a Thursday evening, a practice which Erin strictly limited to Saturdays. They took several photos of cats looking content on the sofa. There was even a photo of Zoe unloading the dishwasher with a caption ‘who says Daddy and daughter can’t fend for themselves?’

Erin smiled at the irony, answered with a laughing emoji, and waited.

‘When are you actually coming home btw?’ Rob texted on the third day.

She could stay indefinitely, she replied, until she was fully rested.

Her thumbs hovered over the screen.

‘I miss you,’ she typed.

Then she deleted it.

In the evenings, Rob messaged her about his day, and asked her about hers.

He seemed to be doing fine.

Zoe would sometimes send her a video of a new piece she was working on.

She seemed to be doing fine too.

On the fifth day, Rob asked her how to make salad dressing.

On the sixth, Zoe couldn’t find her skinny jeans.

On the seventh, Rob sent her a link to a hotel website with a message, ‘dirty weekend soon?’

Erin answered with a heart.

On the eighth, Zoe sent her a screenshot of a message from her tutor, asking her to play at the beginning of his next recital. Erin knew there was no greater honour he could bestow on her. She almost rushed across the road, but she sent a gif of Rachel and Phoebe jumping up and down and clapping instead.

But on the ninth, they came. The words she had been waiting for.

She was chopping carrots at the time, whilst Donna skinned a salmon fillet.

During the first days at Donna’s house, she had been sure the words would come quickly. Their failure to arrive slowly eroded this conviction, and the abscess swelled, increasing the pressure in her chest day by day. Eventually an idea came knocking –the idea that they may never arrive, tapping faintly at first, then with increasing volume, until the pressure in her head competed with the one in her chest.

So, when the words finally came on the ninth day, the notification illuminated her screen like a small miracle. The release of pressure was immediate, and a deliverance.

‘Mum, I really miss the way you hum while I play. Usually it irritates tf out of me but now I miss it. And the little comments you make when I pause between pieces. Dad’s are not the same.’

And almost simultaneously, Rob sent:

‘You carry on getting what you need, hun, for as long as you need to. But I just want you to know I miss you. 
I'm not a writer but let me try to tell you how much I miss you. Please do not laugh at my attempt I'm dead serious. 
I miss the smell of your hair when you put your head on my shoulder on the sofa. 
I miss the way you listen with your head on my thigh when I talk to you about my day.  
I miss the warmth of your breath on my chest as we make plans we'll forget while we fall asleep. 
I miss the way you arrange the food on the plate like an edible love letter. 
I miss the way you pretend to be shocked when I do a humongous fart and I know you secretly think it's hilarious. 
I miss the way you rub your finger on my gym-sweaty forehead and smear my sweat on your top lip saying hmmm pheromones. Or maybe it's the way you grin while you do it. 
I miss the anticipation in your eyes when you hand me a story, and I'm sorry for all the times I made excuses for being slow getting around to reading them. Your writing is sublime and I promise to read every piece immediately from now on. 
I miss listening to you steer Zoe through frustration. You're always so focussed you don't even notice me admiring your motherly talent.
I miss having my grammar corrected mid-conversation. 
I miss feeling myself getting hard against your naked bottom before you've even woken up in the morning. 
I miss the taste of your mouth and the softness of your skin and your salty sweet pussy. 
I miss the intensity in your eyes when you're down on your knees and you look up at me and ask me for permission to stand that you don't want me to grant. 
I miss your hair in my hand your thighs crushing my hips. 
I miss your elbow in my ribs when I snore too loud.
Oh, Zoe's calling. Got to go xx’

‘Has he written you a novel?’ asked Donna.

Erin looked up from her phone, beaming.

‘It worked, Donna! I can go home now. I got my words. I got my words!’

‘Really? Well, jolly good. Off you trot then.’

Had Erin been less excited, she might have noticed that Donna’s voice was thinner than usual, a slightly higher pitch, her tone constricted.

But Erin was excited, so she hugged her friend tightly and quickly, and turned to put her shoes on.

Donna went to the sink and stood with her back turned, scrubbing earthy parsnips under the tap.

As Erin pushed the door, Donna wiped her cheek with the back of her hand.

Her shoulders seemed to shudder.