The Cat and the Doll

The Cat and the Doll

  by Elif Savas

  Copyright 2012 by Elif Savas

  THE CAT AND THE DOLL

  There they were, sitting around the small, glass table, perched on uncomfortable iron chairs like a couple of odd-shaped birds, sipping each others' eyes and the cool Chardonnay, washed in rose- color light that was streaming through the dusty blades of the plastic blinds at Magic Hour. She knew this was the beginning of something- dare she call it- maybe a relationship. The room was not exactly how she imagined. The ceiling a little too low and the television a little too much the center of the attention, when she had dreamed of? well? maybe a walnut book case and no television at all! But she was not at the point of her life to be choosy. Life had brought her opportunities which she had always refused because of a too-low ceiling or an Ikea bookcase. In any event, there was no way of knowing which channel the TV had been tuned to before it was turned off. Perhaps, if she could manage to stay longer, he would turn it on, it would be set to PBS, waiting for the pre-nuptial couple to cozy up to a tasteful documentary. She wanted to stay longer. To find out about the channel, investigate the books, dust the blinds, check the medicine cabinet in the bathroom. She would pull the dirty sock from under the bed, give him a sweetly scolding look, they'd giggle and hug, and she'd go to her way to the laundry room with it and the many other dirty clothes lost under furniture. When she'd come back, surrounded by the chemically rich flower scent of the softener, she'd find him just as she left him: on the couch, reading some article, the rest of the paper spread on the floor like the peeled outer skin of a palm tree. "Oh, honey! But you promised me that you'd boil the water for the pasta!" And he'd look down with feigned embarrassment, his lower lip bent out like a sad doll, and he'd say: "My love! It has been sooo long since anybody did anything for me! Please lemme stay in this moment, spoiled rotten, taken care of by you and only you, and lemme read an article, feeling your presence in the kitchen, filling the pot, turning on the gas, boiling the water."

  Her eyes, cloudy with sentiment and hopes and dreams, sipping his eyes moved away for a second and noticed the large opening carved on the living room door. It was the largest trap door she has ever seen. It must be for a pet but why is it so big?

  "Do you have a dog?" "Oh, no! I am allergic to dogs! Also I'm not so fond of the smell of dog fur, wet or dry! We used to have a big German Shepherd when I was a child. He drowned trying to save my sister when she fell into the pond my grandparents had in their yard. That dog just loved my sister! I was too young to remember, but they say the dog stayed with her till the end. They thrashed in the water together, trying to hold onto each other, my sister's little arms around the dog's neck, trying to hold her head above the water and dragging the dog under, the dog's paws running round and round like a mouse in a Ferris wheel, trying to keep up with the weight. There was unspeakable terror in the dog's eyes- and also confusion whether he should just bite the arms that are drowning him or try to save them because it would be too shameful to live after letting his human girl die."

  He sipped his wine, blotted his napkin with the golden drops dripping from his freshly shaven chin, and added matter-of-factly: "He choose honor and died with my little sister." End of story. She might have preferred him to have moist eyes so that she could stand up from the uncomfortable chair, reach out to his head, and cradle it in her arms. Maybe a kiss would come later. Maybe more?

  But he was finished with his story with no moisture in his eyes whatsoever. So she did not want to appear overly sensitive to his pain. It is easy to be considered over-vigilant once you pass the age of child bearing. Every move you make, at least every move that betrays some kindness, might be interpreted as motherly love gone awry. A big no-no. A huge turn-off for men who are already worried that their soft spot for a barren female might be considered by a bystander as some kind of "mommy love" channeled to an old woman. It is different to meet somebody at the height of youth and go through life and make decisions about parenthood together, and even if you decided never to procreate or maybe you were not capable of procreating, you knew that somehow the woman you love is at the right age, you can change your mind about babies or go to a doctor or whatever, and then the years pass and here comes "the Menopause". The ovaries shrivel up and stop doing what ever they were doing before. She might be a little dry down there and crazy up here, but you knew she hadn't been like this when you two met. But when you meet a woman who is already post-menopausal and so giving and soft and sweet and motherly, everything is colored by it. To be attracted to that woman is almost akin to incest!

  So she controlled herself and kept sitting. "You have a cat?" "Yes, well? if you can call her 'a cat'! I have known her for many years, and we share a lot. She is more than 'a cat' to me. Almost like a family member and maybe even more than that. I should say she is my best and closest friend. "Well?" she thought. "I can deal with that. I've met men with much worse friends than 'a cat'. There was this guy who wouldn't go to sleep without his childhood doll, and another one who carried two bags of Penguin Classics everywhere he went, because he was too scared that a fire would burn them up if he left them in the house. And there was the dude who did not mind explaining his love- emotional and physical- to his Cremello mare. He even insisted that I should bleach my hair white and wear blue contact lenses during sex just like the mare- if I wanted to experience what the mare felt like while receiving his enormous love."

  But a cat? A cat she could deal with. Cats liked her, anyways. She read somewhere that the reason cats always go to people who are not fond of them is because the people who love cats stare at them in the eye, and the felines take that as a threat, but the people who are afraid of cats just don't look at the animals at all. Not in the eye or anywhere on their bodies, and cats find that calming. So she wouldn't look the cat in the eye, and they'd be friends. Maybe not the closest of friends, but that would be even better, since too much closeness would make him jealous, and we don't want to deal with jealousy issues yet, do we? At least we don't want to get caught between a man and his cat.

  There it was, this huge trap cut into the door in the most amateur fashion, with splinters and cracked paint and all. Bolts screwed in hastily. He must be renting, she thought. It just has that feeling, a foster home not even worth his time to paint the walls his favorite color. But had he carved a trap door on a rented apartment then? Maybe he moved the original door, and it is sitting behind his bed or something. She'd wished he owned the place. Well, what can you do? You can't be choosy with so few choices. The streets are full of crazy middle-aged men who are just divorced or even worse: never been married. Molding a man like that to fit into domestic life is more difficult than molding hot water into a sculpture. Her mother warned her over and over once she passed the easily-marriable age of 30 to stay away from middle-aged men who never married before. They would beat her up for sure, because they weren't used to the ways of females; they would think that she was crass, rude, unmanageable, opinionated. They wouldn't know the female spirit, the rebellious character that needs to be tamed by stern words but not by punches. They would demand more from her, because they were raised by mothers who were so very genteel, and they didn't know any other women who might not feel the same way towards their chunky toes or burps as their mothers had felt. These men just didn't make good prey. That's what her mother called them: prey. You caught one and got married. Her mother must have thought that marriage was death for men and livelihood for women. Her mother also warned her about the men who made toys out of women. They were the worst, because they preyed on women who were desperate, who had hopes of starting a family with decent husbands but were a little too picky in the beginning and too accepting at the end. They smelled the desperation on you
and played with you for a while, and when they were bored, they threw you away like an old toy a child would do. Her mother called her boyfriends, the ones she liked and thought that would make fine son-in-laws, dolls. Here is some more soup, doll, her mother would purr. That was her code for "This one might be it."

  But it was too late for now; she couldn't afford to be picky, and her mother was dead. She had no say now. Also, her mother was married by the time she was sixteen, and what did she know about men or single, middle-aged men in particular? Her father was not what you could call prey (her parents were both too young to think about sustaining livelihoods or anything like that when they got married), and he definitely made toys out of women but never brought them home and never procreated with them and never spent more money than necessary on them or furnished homes for them. He was like a good boy who played with his toys outside and left them in front of the doorstep when called in. He had been respectful to her mother in some ways. He had dressed up the way Mom