Young Writers Society

Maya drifted through the front door of our apartment, barely registering the soft click of the door locking behind her. My death, my funeral, my burial, she had barely registered anything at all. She was just floating through her life like a cloud of mist in the shape of her body. She was not dead, but she felt like a ghost.

‘A ghost…’ Maya considered it for a moment, the thought creasing her brow as it flashed across her transparent face.She scoffed at herself; she did not believe in ghosts.

“What’s dead is dead and what’s gone is gone, Lola.” she would say whenever I speculated about the connection between the people who must have died in our pre-war apartment building and the shrieking water pipes.

But here I am, Lola the Contrarian, dead but not gone. If she could see me hovering and hanging on to her every action, she would realize this isn’t much different than life. We used to joke about “till death do you part.” I told her, grinning around the fanciful exaggeration, that not even in death would I leave her. I haven’t changed, Maya. But you have.

Maya had become something unrecognizable. She no longer had the energy for carefully chosen and ever-fashionable clothes, the plain black dress she wore was the only break in a week of sweatpants. Her face was barren of makeup and dark purple smudges cradled her brown eyes. Her soft cheeks were sullen, and her warm brown skin dulled from a diet of saltines and hardly touched take-out dinners. She barely stepped foot in the kitchen anymore, the absent smell of her near-constant baking left the apartment feeling like a shell. Her long hair, black as her coffee in the mornings, was tied back in a braid to hide that it hadn’t been properly washed, just wetted in the shower as she hugged her knees and blankly stared at the tile floor.

Maya absently dragged her gaze across our quiet living room, scraping past the ugly orange couch we hauled up three flights of stairs together.Past the scuffed oak coffee table overrun with arrangements of white lilies and unopened condolences cards. Past the jacket I left waiting for my return draped on her wingback chair. Finally halting at a filthy cat. It was lounging comfortably on her threadbare rug, staring back with huge green eyes. A short laugh made its way through Maya’s mouth. The movement was foreign on her lips. The cat was an ugly and feral looking thing, dirty orange fur sticking out wildly in places and missing half an ear. It let out a harsh, rusty meow, as if asking whattookherso long to come home. The cat slowly got to its feet and trotted over. It sat patiently a few feet from Maya, who stared dumbfounded.

We did not have a cat, but the orange creature spurred a wave of recognition within me: I had seen it before.

“You know, I think that cat should be called Arthur. If I had a cat I’d call it Arthur,” I declared. Maya hadn’t asked me, but an orange blur darting into an alley on our way home got me thinking.

“I don’t like cats. Plus, you’re allergic, Lola.” She scrunched her nose cutely.

I replied with an unserious huff, “That cat’s always around though. He deserves a name.”

“You’re so sentimental,” she teased, taking my hand into her own, “but I guess if he needs one, Arthur’s good.” I leaned into her, and we meandered along like that for the rest of our short walk home.

While I reminisced, Maya examined the cat uncertainly. It was as if she glared hard enough the creature would reveal its secrets. It simply melted into the floor at her feet, rolling onto its back, languidly stretching, and revealing one unknown quite brazenly.

“Ah, so you’re a boy.” Maya chuckled delicately at the raggedy creature sprawled in front of her, crouching down to meet him. Her hand reached out tentatively, her fingers stopping inches shy from his pink nose. His head fell into her hesitant hand immediately, purring wildly as he closed the distance between them. She scrunched her nose, some sort of grease from the cat’s fur stuck to her skin and he drooled blissfully, “You’re disgusting.”

She examined her dirtied hands, the red polish on her typically manicured nails was chipped and her fingers were grimy with drool.

“Are you supposed to be so wet…?” She asked the cat uncertainly, as if he could reply, “Maybe you’re hungry.”

Maya disappeared into the kitchen, a small ember of determination glowing in her eyes. I’ve missed the warmth in her gaze, and yet I let her go. The orange cat had my full attention.

“Do you like the name Arthur?” I asked seriously, but he stared through me, cocking his head to the side. I waved my hand in front of his face, trying to get his attention, but he just retreated to the rug, shamefully shrunk his body, and began to retch.

“Not feeling too hot?” I tried to give a comforting pet, but my hand passing through his body startled him. I jumped back with the start, and my vision was consumed by stark white lilies as I fell harmlessly through the table, and into a memory.

“I hate lilies. They are so ugly. Who would ever want them in their wedding?” I turned from Four Weddings playing on the TV and looked her in the eyes seriously, “they kill cats you know? And dogs!” She chuckled and returned my gaze over her book.

“I think they’re fine, but I guess we won’t use them for our wedding then.”

“Like I’d marry a lily-lover,” I teased back, “but IF we had a wedding, I want violets.” She just shook her head with an amused smile and returned to her reading.

The goddamn lilies. The lilies that Maya accepted stone-faced from my mother, from her co-workers, from the man running the flower shop she bought me bouquets from. The flowers she knew I hated but politely piled on our coffee table until there was a mountain of grief she ignored and no one else could understand.

Maya, who was still in the kitchen, fought with our cheap can opener to open a can of tuna that refused to yield. The battle had her nearly to tears, and she slammed the half-opened can on the counter, drawing in a shaky breath.

I returned to the poor creature and the offensive flowers. The proudest of the bunch was an arrangement from my mother sitting carelessly close to the edge of the table. The cat pathetically pawed at the carpet, failing to hide his mess before he began retching again. He returned to the dangling flower.

I hopelessly swatted at him, only wanting to keep him away from the poison he seemed so eager to ingest. He leaped into the air once my hand passed through his small body, his paws scrambled along the edge of the table in a confused sort of landing. My mother’s arrangement, already too close to the edge, shattered on the floor. The cat, startled again, scurried across the floor to seek shelter from the crash. As the cat fled, Maya returned just as quickly, appearing from the doorway with wild eyes. She stomped over to the flowers furiously.

“What is wrong with you!” she howled, dropping to her knees on the living room floor, gently cradling the lilies as she cleaned my mess. Maya always cleaned my messes. The cat started to puke again.

“What did you do?” Maya’s voice quavered as she lifted the limp flower, the head of it falling off its stem. It had been chewed. Her expression dropped like a weight when she looked at the poor, scared animal. Relief washes over me as realization dawns on her. “Fuck… did you eat this?”

The cat met her eyes and crept forward, his body low to the ground and terrified. Maya choked on her guilt and abandoned the ruined arrangement, letting it fall out of her lap as she crawled slowly to the animal.

“You’re alright, I’m sorry.” She whispered, desperate for him to trust her again. “I’m not gonna hurt you, okay?”

The cat closed the gap between them, and she tenderly cradled him, dismissing her disgust of his grimy fur and leaking drool. She opened her phone and desperately tapped out ‘Cat ate lilies, what do I do?’ with shaking hands.

When she left our apartment, the cat bundled in a ratty blue towel I bought when we first moved in together, I followed. She did not take the direct route to the animal hospital, when her GPS insisted she drive past my cemetery on a serene tree lined road, she detoured.

Maya blew through the automatic doors of the hospital, and what a sight she was. Strands of coffee-colored hair hung loose from her braid, evidence of shaky hands running through it. She was dressed in formal black and clutched a softly mewing blue and orange package. She made a beeline for a prim sandy-haired receptionist.

The receptionist, a stout woman in a nametag with the name ‘LILLIAN’ pinned to her colorful paw-print scrubs gently coaxed Maya through the admission process, asking what the cat’s name was.

Maya barely hesitated, “Arthur.”

The remaining questions passed quickly, she explained he’d eaten my flowers and Arthur was whisked into the back before she could get her head to stop spinning. She sat in the uncomfortable and empty waiting room, suddenly all too aware of the lengths she was going. She didn’t even like cats. The fluorescent lights flickered slightly and suddenly, she was in the Emergency Room again, waiting for someone to tell her I was going to be alright.

Maya silently sat in the corner of my room; fluorescent lights shone unforgivingly from above. Countless tubes and wires wove in and out of my broken body, splatters of yellow and oily purple bruises painted my swollen face. I was half machine, only alive in the technical sense, but she still held my hand in hers. I couldn’t feel her thumb tracing warm circles on my knuckle anymore, I had been watching outside my body for some time.

“You aren’t gonna die, ok? You are gonna get through it Lola,” she whispered desperately, and I almost believed her, but I knew I was beyond saving. “You can’t die, you can’t leave me.”

I tried to take her hand, willed my disconnected fingers to respond with three quick squeezes—a silent ‘I. Love. You.’ But the useless thing refused to listen. She fell asleep like that, her exhausted body just slumped in her chair until she was beckoned away by a sympathetic looking doctor. I was gone, I was a donor, there was a man who could use my heart.

Maya gave the man my heart, and now she was hollow. She didn’t know when she started crying but tears appeared on her clasped hands. The grief had been welling up gradually and forced its way up her throat, she was too exhausted to push it down anymore, and she let go. Her shoulders shook with the intensity of it, and she gasped for breath in between the tides of emotion.

I hovered uselessly next to her. I longed to run my hand through her soft black hair and ease her pain, to coo soothing words in her ear, tell her ‘It’s alright, my love. I haven’t left you; I’m not gone.’ But to her, I was. I left her alone in the world we promised to fight together, and all I could do was watch as she, a stone pillar in my life, crumbled before me.

Lillian avoided looking at Maya at first, but once the sobs began to wrack her body she got out of her chair and toddled over, her caution resembling a person approaching a frightened animal, armed with a box of tissues. She placed an experienced hand on Maya’s shoulder, “He will be alright, dear. You caught it soon and our vets are very experienced.”

Maya looked at her helplessly and accepted the tissues. Lillian took the seat next to her and squeezed Maya’s hand reassuringly. Maya did not pull away from the stranger, instead leaning into the comfort as she wept. Lillian did not know who I was, she did not know the tears falling were not just for the poor cat having his stomach pumped so he might live, but for a lover who had already died.

Time passed slowly in that fluorescent waiting room, Lillian chatted with Maya between the ebb and flow of her grief, and the picture of my life (and death) slowly painted itself in her mind. When the tears lessened, she laughed as Maya joked about my feral bedhead, and when the grief came crashing back, she hugged her like her own child as Maya lamented. All the while, Arthur fought for life.

The cat had a coin flip chance, the veterinarian explained to Maya once she regained her composure. They had sedated him, pumped his stomach, given him fluids, and the only thing they could do was wait. 72 hours and he would be in the clear. So, she waited.

She waited the first night at my mother’s, who opened the door and pulled her into a tight embrace before Maya could say hello or explain the apartment was too empty for her to sleep in tonight. Maya told her about the cat and how sick he had gotten, apologizing tearfully for the ruined flower arrangement, but only earned a gentle hush. My mother sat her down on the same couch from my childhood, and they spent hours looking through photographs of my life.

The day after, Maya found a pet store. It was a musty, cramped, and generally un-Maya place, but she left with bags of anything ‘cat’ she could find. When she returned to our apartment, she gently placed the arrangements of lilies in a cardboard box and left them by the dumpster. Who’s sentimental now, dear?

The second night she scoured the internet for someone looking for an orange cat missing half an ear but came up with nothing.

The final morning, Maya took a call from the receptionist Lillian, who assured her everything was going quite well, and she could pick Arthur up at five. He would live. Maya took my jacket from the chair where I carelessly left it and pulled it on before heading out the door. She stopped first at the florist, where she’d bought flowers for first dates, and funerals, and weddings, and Sunday afternoons for years. He dropped everything to greet her. He assaulted her with questions of how she was holding up and assurance that if she ever needed anything she need only ask. She weathered the barrage as a small, relieved smile pulled at the corner of her lips. She left the shop with an armful of violets.

Maya, still hours early, drove in the direction of the animal hospital. She turned onto a quiet tree-lined road, and again into a cemetery lined with a black iron fence. On sunny mornings we would walk along the path here, relishing the sun on our skin and quietly pointing out impressive memorials.

It was not quite sunny, but she trudged on. She found me under a willow tree; my headstone was not yet in place, a small plastic sign adorning a pile of rich earth assured her I was there.

“Hey Lola,” she whispered to my grave, voice cracking “Sorry I’m late.”

“Took you long enough,” I smiled.

“I’m finally getting you that cat.” The tears fell freely.

I caressed her cheek gently. A breeze disturbed the willow branches around us.

“I know. You’re keeping the name, right?”

The rustle of the leaves whispered in her ears.

“You were right about Arthur. It’s a good name for a cat."