Kate Hill Cantrill

Too Huge

          I made a request of no crying, for I had the grand task of handling the cat.

          No crying, I said. Do whatever it takes to wait until I’ve gone.

          He agreed to blame his contact lenses and to leave once I’d passed through security, but not before. Just in case the cat didn’t fly.

          This cat can fly, I said. He will.

          Like a Superhero, he said. The sort of comment I could count on him for.

          I said ‘this cat’ to avoid saying ‘our’ or ‘my.’ That dog looks concerned. I had said this earlier as I stacked my bags by the door of that home. Don’t forget to water that plant. This street is still asleep.

          These neighbors haven’t woken yet, he said.

          I looked at him and snort-laughed, swallowed stones.

      The cat curled drugged and dense inside the fabric carrier. I sought to bring him on the plane surreptitiously, to avoid explaining the fact of him. It could lead to talk of my one-way ticket. It costs $80 each way to carry him aboard. Someone might say that up and back costs a pretty penny, and then what? I’d have to correct them. No no, just up. Then the panic might set in.

           

            I was ready when the wide-belted woman by the metal walkthrough hollered that I must remove the animal from the carrier and walk him through. I had thought ahead and worn white because I knew I’d have to hold the great fluff to my chest. I unzipped the bag and glanced over to my husband, who fooled with his contacts on the other side of the security lines, rubbing and blinking his eyes. I looked forward to pressing the soft whiteness to my chest. I planned to push him hard into my solar plexus to keep that hot swell down.

            I pulled him out of the bag. It was snug on him. It was as if he wore the bag more than the bag held him. For a week I’d take a measuring tape to his hugeness as he slept, willed him to lose some length, some girth. He was supposed to be able to stand up and move around in there, but come on, what good’s a cat so small he can turn around in 16x9x10? Besides, I knew his ways and his ways were not that active, so I bought the bag and told him to hunker down for a few hours. Catch some Zs, I said.

            I clutched him to my chest. I thought of ten years earlier when we found him in the basement of a highrise in which our friends lived—our friends who were a ‘one-cat couple,’ they said, when they were still a couple—and whose one cat used the toilet and fetched the paper from the hallway, no lie. I thought these friends were the sort to look up to. I had slipped the gray kitten inside my coat and we walked the ten blocks home and thought of names for it. My husband suggested Concrete or Slate, but after we washed him we started to lean more toward the clean and banal, like Cotton or Snow. I pressed my face down into the cat’s nape when I thought of this time, and when I thought of the name on which we had finally settled—the name of the month in which we had met; the month in which we had married. That cat was like a calendar. Friends teased us by mixing it up, calling him January, September, ridiculous months like July.

            The detector buzzed when we crossed under. The wide-belted woman ran a wand over me—my front, my back—and then over the cat—his collar, my left hand holding the softness under his arms, where my ring shone through his downy fur. I knew it was his ID tag that did it, but how appropriate, I thought, if the ring had sounded an alarm.

            All right, she said. Let’s see him in action.

            Did she want him to dance? I bounced him and then stopped. He’s not a big performer, I said.

            Put him in the carrier, please.

            It’s regulation, I said, leaning over and using the cat’s paw to point to the tag that said, Compliant with Aviation Standards.

            I’m checking the fit, Ma’am. Place the animal inside the case.

            I looked over toward where my husband stood, but couldn’t see his face through the people in line. I caught sight of a bit of his shoulder, though, and wanted desperately to tap it, say, What of the fit? How many points off for an ill fit? He’d know. It’s the sort of thing I could always count on him for.

            Ma’am, she said. Place the animal inside.

            I held the bag beneath the cat’s rear; his rear that slung like a potato sack due to the sedative. Why was I here? Why was I taking our cat?—my cat, that cat? Why had we decided this was the way? Every morning the cat waited to eat until the dog was ready. Who would he wait for now? We had no children, we had decided, so now’s the time to separate, reassess our situation for a year or so.

            If ever there’s a time.

            It was the or so that killed me. It woke me at night. Me and that cat, shoving his nose into my eye telling me to wake up already.

            The cat’s arms stuck straight out as I slipped the bag over his enormity. I tucked his paws inside, zipped the front. I shook the bag as if he might settle into some mysterious crevice, make some room for him in there.

            Nuh, uh, the wide-belted woman said. She shook her head. Her eyes wide like saucers.

            He likes to be contained, I said, and pushed the palms of my hands together to show what? To show, held together. To show, held.

            Nuh uh, she said again.

            To show, Please.

            I felt a thumping in my chest. I looked over to my husband, who had committed to the parting, who said the pain of the very moment of leaving would subside, yet the continuation of stagnation would last forever.

            I had asked him if he might graph that for me.

            Now I saw him rubbing his nose as if it had wronged him.

            You got someone who can take this cat?

            What? I asked.

            You got someone—

            I can take him, I said. This cat can fly. Like a Superhero, I added.

            This cat can’t fly, she said. This cat too huge—

            He likes to be contained, I said.

            This cat too huge to fly. She shook her head, reached for the cat that slept so unaware inside his carrier. You got someone—

            I got someone, I said. I do, but when I looked he seemed so far away I said, He’ll never reach! And what I meant was that his body—so hunkered now and shaking—it could never reach out and grab the cat that couldn’t fly. Not unless I threw the cat, or left the line and started over. Not unless I missed my flight and stayed instead within stagnation. We’re young, we said. We have no children. Now’s the time.

            Now’s the time, I said to her. The cat is fine. He likes to be contained.

            He ain’t happy in there, she said.

            What’s happy? I said. Nothing’s happy. Nothing’s more or less ok with what they’ve got, and what we’ve got is quite ok. It’s really very much ok.

            Ok ain’t compliant, she said.

            She grabbed the handles of the carrier, started to lift him somewhere different.

            You’ll see it when you return, she said.

            It’s a one-way! I said, maybe shouted, waved my boarding pass.

            Ma’am, this is not the place to lose it. She held the cat up, away from me and headed for the place where confiscated items went.

            I looked toward my husband. I caught a wisp of hair and what seemed to be his hand upon it. Is ok fine? I wanted to ask. Is ok perhaps the final goal? Where might familiar factor in? Where might: we like the same ice cream. Where might: I know you.

            I grabbed at him, the cat inside the carrier. I grabbed at him and said, Don’t take him from me!

            Ma’am! she said with some conviction, although she looked away from me, toward another, who locked me then within his eyes as he walked forward. Is there a situation here?

            Yes, I thought. No, I said. My husband by now had noticed the hold-up and had maneuvered himself into a position of receiving the cat over the black zip-line. I saw this in slow motion and something burst behind my rib cage; as it did my body filled with dense, hot liquid that added weight, that gave me a gelatinous pull upon the earth. I felt too heavy to move toward gate 34, let alone to lift up off the ground and fly to the place I had previously thought of as home, where my new life—temporal, or so—awaited my landing.

            Hands guided me away from the security line and I heard myself tell the wide-belted woman of the cat hole my mother had so kindly cut into her basement door, and now for what? I looked back at my husband, saw the weight in the bag tipped him to the left. His eyes looked very sorry.  He stretched open the palm of his free hand to show what? To show he had nothing. I envied that cat. I, too, felt too huge to fly. I wanted to be contained. Just reach for me. Grab for me over the zip-line.

When we planned the wedding nearly a decade before, I had argued with the caterer because he insisted we provide more main dish choices than we had wanted to.

We’re not looking to feed these people for the entire weekend, I had said. We’re young and can’t afford it. I looked at the man who would soon be my husband, and he agreed, although he did so non-committed-like, with a nod and shrug of his shoulders. Who are you people? I thought then of men.  

            Perhaps you should wait until you’re older, the caterer suggested, until you can do it correctly.

            I felt defiance well up within me. Had I not been doing it for love I would have married out of spite at that moment; but later I remember waking at night and thinking of it, only in my half-sleep state I heard the caterer grumble that it’s a long life—not a long reception—and people get hungry.

            Perhaps you should wait until you’re older then. Until you can do it correctly.

            My husband had turned away by now. He walked with that cat slung in that bag toward the exit door of the airport. We’re still young, I thought, as I saw the lovely leanness of my husband’s waist, as I slid my own weighted legs over the slick terrazzo, toward gate 34.

            There once had been a Superhero doll weighted just like this, his rubber arms filled with a gelatinous goo that stretched when you pulled and reformed when you let go. If you pierced the skin with scissors it would leak. What was he called, that heavy, stretchy Superhero? He wasn’t the caped sort—he was earthbound and tortured. He did good things reluctantly, not due to bravery. It hurt his body to do what needed to be done. It ripped his clothes and made him feel very much alone. What was he called?

He would know the answer, I thought. As I pulled my weighted legs over shiny terrazzo and walked passed the twenties, toward the mid-thirties, I made a mental note to ask him about this later. We’re from the same time and all—he and I. For years we had counted on the other for just this sort of vital, vital, vital thing.

Kate Hill Cantrill’s writing has appeared most recently in Mississippi Review, Quick Fiction, Cake Train, Matchbook, Sleepingfish, The Believer, Wigleaf, and others. She lives in a basement apartment in Brooklyn, and she has a container garden that is growing shazam this year! She curates a reading series for both Bric Arts Media Brooklyn and for Rabbit Hole Studios in Dumbo. She can be reached at k_hcantrill@hotmail.com. Or, for the reading series, rabbittalesdumbo@gmail.com.