This story is a contest entry for @tinypaleokitchen’s Mixed Media collaboration contest: @tinypaleokitchen/reflections-1-a-mixed-media-collaboration-contest.
I will provide a bit of background at the end of the story. To begin, I want to honor the artist, @yurche, who supplied the beautiful drawing that inspired this story. He is a fine artist and teacher, and I hope readers will visit his blog and enjoy his breathtaking work.
Refracted Light
One night Helen left the window ajar to let in the late September breeze. She had chosen this little yellow stucco house by the sea because it was quaint and old and had a stately charm. But that night she became certain the place was haunted, because something came through the window in the wee hours and was rattling about. She tucked into the pillows, listened to the ghost’s wanderings, and waited for dawn.
Whatever it was, it left by morning light. She woke to the sounds of the gulls calling and the horn of a distant train. In the kitchen she found the curious remnants of her night visitor's prowling--an overturned vase and her garden flowers spilled to the floor.
As she made her coffee and cleaned up the spill, she looked out the window. And there she saw the perpetrator--a big gray cat, sitting on a deck chair and looking out to sea like a sentinel.
She stepped out onto the veranda, with her mug in hand.
“It was you, wasn’t it? You scoundrel.” She couldn’t help smiling. He was a handsome fellow, sturdy and pale gray with darker gray stripes. A little monochrome tiger.
For a moment the cat did not even glance her way, as if she were the ghost—invisible, or maybe just boring. But after a moment it jumped down and came to her, intertwining itself around her legs and rumbling like a diesel engine.
Helen pulled her sweater closer around her, for the breeze off the ocean was cool this time of day, with the season headed toward fall. She stooped and petted the cat. His fur was very soft and he arched his back to meet her hand. But then she stood again. The day was getting on, and she needed to get busy. Her column for the Portsmouth Herald was due the next day.
The cat watched her curiously, as if questioning whether they were now friends. She laughed. “Now, listen, young man. There will be no more bumping around in my house like a ghost in the night. You should go on home now.” She stepped into the house and firmly shut the door.
She had forgotten to close the window, however, and the cat came through the gap in one graceful leap. In the next moment, he was pattering around her house as if he owned the place.
Helen sat at the table with her coffee to assess the situation. She loved the quiet here in this little house she bought with the inheritance after her father died. The house stood on a lovely knoll, sprawled across a little corner lot, with an ancient gnarled beech tree at the edge where the landscape fell away toward the sea. It was perfect. It was secluded. She almost never needed to talk to a soul.
But now the quiet order of her home was disrupted by a big gray-striped cat and his airs of importance. Yet she couldn’t bear to throw him out. He looked at her rather studiously. Perhaps he was one of her favorite dead authors who had come back as a cat to see what she might be reading.
“How about if I call you Dickens?”
The cat meowed, in what seemed an affirmation. The name suited him, for he was a dickens indeed. The next thing she knew, he was up on the kitchen counter, lapping up milk from a glass she had left unwashed the night before.
“Well then. Let’s find your real home. And I will be sure to tell your owner about the mischief you’ve gotten into.”
She phoned the grocery, imagining its corner store aromas of cardboard and cabbage. Mel answered--a person she might call a friend, if ever she felt terribly lonely.
“Mel’s Grocery.”
“It’s Helen. Is anyone inquiring about a lost cat? Any Lost Cat signs up on the bulletin board?”
“Sorry, Helen. No one is looking for a lost cat. Is he skinny? Like a stray?”
“No, he’s a very nice fat cat.”
“Check with your neighbors, then, I’d say.”
That was the very last thing she wanted to do. But she did. She went first to the house where the elderly couple lived. They peeked together through the partly open door, squinting suspiciously as if she might be trying to sell them something, or perhaps steal all of their possessions. The man spoke in a thick New England accent, and she imagined him on an old fishing vessel in his younger days, navigating Nor’easters. “Nevah had a cat heeya in this house.”
The homes here were well spaced, and she tried three others on the long road toward town before she gave up. Just as she was turning back for home, something a bit further down the road caught her attention. It was a big gray cat, not unlike Dickens. Had he come this far? It would seem a long way for his little cat legs to carry him. She walked up to the cat, and saw that it was smaller than Dickens, and lacked his characteristic gray stripes.
“Hello.” The voice belonged to a man standing on the porch of a white colonial, studying her, hands jammed into the front pockets of his jeans. He was smiling.
She realized it must look odd, this woman in the middle of the road, visiting with a cat.
“Is it yours? The cat, here?”
“Yes, but he could be yours if you need a cat. I have cats up the ole ying yang.”
Helen looked down at the animal, which now entwined around her legs in a familiar way. “No thank you. I may have one of them--one of your cats--at my house.” She pointed. “Down at the end, on that knoll.” She looked way down the road where she had come from. Her house looked very far away, and it seemed to be calling her home like her mother did in the old days, when Helen was a girl and her parents were living, and her brother Ricky too. So much had gone from her.
“You may keep him. It’s probably Cat Three. The third born out of a litter of six. He’s my wanderer.”
“Well I don’t….”
“C’mon, let’s go have a look. I can tell you if it’s him or not.”
They walked side by side toward her house, the ocean crashing on the shore below, to their right. The wind had come up and wind chimes jangled from porches along the road. Seagulls rode the air currents and cried like small children.
“Storm’s coming in,” the man said. He clomped along next to her in big brown boots. He wore a black hooded sweatshirt and seemed comfortable with himself in a way Helen could only imagine.
She kept her distance as they walked down the road, fearing their swinging arms might touch.
“I’m Dave,” he said.
“Helen.”
They arrived at her house then, but Dickens was nowhere to be seen. She had put him out and closed the window, so he certainly wasn’t inside. She checked the deck and the shrubs, a memory coming to her from childhood--looking for eggs with Ricky on Easter morning, giggling, running, gathering.
She looked at Dave, who was waiting patiently, admiring the rough sea. She shrugged. “I’m afraid he’s gone.”
He laughed. “No, not a worry. He’ll return, I’m sure.”
“Does he climb trees?”
“He might.”
Helen led Dave around to the back of the house. And there was Dickens, perched on the long, sturdy branch of the beech tree where she liked to sit on warm days to read.
“That’s him,” Dave said, matter-of-factly. “He has adopted you.” He looked at her, grinning. “So that, as they say, is that.”
Helen looked at him, and felt herself blinking as she chose what to say. “Well, I’m sorry. I couldn’t possibly keep him.”
Dave laughed. “Oh no, it’s not for us to decide. When a cat adopts a human, it’s for good. There’s no going back, I’m afraid.” He was already turning to leave.
Was there something wrong with the cat, that Dave wanted it off his hands? He waved as he walked off down the road. “I’m sure you can come up with a better name than Cat Three!”
“It’s Dickens,” she said. She looked back at the cat, which was eyeing the seagulls as they flew by on their various missions. After a moment she turned and shouted at Dave’s diminishing figure. “Wait! What does he eat?” But the wind and the crashing waves devoured the sound.
That night, the storm came up off the ocean and Helen allowed Dickens to come inside once she discovered him glaring at her through the rain splattered window. Thankfully, she had a can of tuna on hand, and he was quite pleased with that. But she made plans for the next day to go purchase real cat food from Mel.
After his meal, Dickens licked his paws by the fire as the wind rattled the old windows. He seemed to be making himself at home. Just as Helen settled in with some tea and her laptop to complete her column, the doorbell rang.
Helen hesitated, then stood. “Dickens, who could that be?” Looking through the front door peephole, she saw Dave standing in a dark green rain slicker, looking unfazed by the storm.
She opened the door and stood back just enough to give him entrance onto her rug, then quickly shut the door behind him. Rivulets of water ran down his slicker and off the brim of his hat.
He carried a little plastic bag, which he held out to her. “Supplies.”
She peered into the bag, which held several tins of cat food and a collection of clever little toys, including a feather on a stick and some little fuzzy things that looked just like mice.
She looked at Dave. “This is quite a collection for a cat named merely by his birth order.”
“He likes to play. The mice are stuffed with catnip.”
“Thank you.” Helen opened the door again. She looked out as the wind blew rain sideways into the house, but there was no car. He had walked the half mile in the raging storm just to bring her some food and cat toys.
“Oh,” Dave said, stepping out. “I’d like to invite you to my beach soiree tomorrow evening. Will you come?”
“Beach soiree?”
“Yes. We always have them after a storm. We have a bonfire and collect beach glass and have a few glasses of wine. It’s just a few of us from here in town.”
Helen felt cold and flustered. “I’m sorry. Really. I don’t do soirees.” She shut the door.
She turned to find Dickens watching her from his place by the fire. “Was I rude? Is that what you’re thinking? I’m sorry, but one new gentleman in my life is enough.” She joined him by the fire to get warm, and he climbed onto her lap and settled there, purring.
Dickens slept that night at the foot of her bed, and if he prowled in the night he was quiet about it. Helen slept soundly and only woke by first light as Dickens meowed to go out. There was something she had not thought of. She had no box for him. She shooed him out into the calm and dewy morning, resplendent with that magical air and light that can only be found the morning after a storm. Then she completed and submitted her column over coffee.
Upon his return, Dickens rubbed against her leg and emitted a petulant meow.
“Oh! Breakfast. Of course.”
Helen opened a tin of the cat food from Dave, which Dickens nibbled on delicately before flopping onto the rug by the fire and stretching playfully. He looked at her and made a curious meow. She was learning his language.
“All right, let’s have some play time.” She reached into the bag and tossed a catnip-infused mouse to Dickens, who attacked it, purring and growling at the same time. What an odd little animal he was. Suddenly, he jumped up and began racing around the house. He leaped at the mouse, then ran off, skittered across the top of the couch, and then arched his back and stalked his own image in the mirror.
Helen laughed at his crazy antics. But then he jumped up onto the highest shelf of her living room, and worked his way behind a storage basket, knocking it to the ground. Letters and pictures spilled every which way.
“Naughty cat!” She bent to collect the spilled items--memorabilia items she had purposefully tried to forget.
She looked down. What she held in her hand was a picture of her family. They had posed together out on the gigantic sprawling lawn of their house in Ogunquit. It must have been a Sunday, for they were all nicely dressed. Ricky wore a little white shirt and tie and pressed black pants. He must have been seven--a year before the accident that took his life and her mother’s. And Helen, age nine or so, wore a peach colored dress, bordered around the waist with white cotton daisies. Her mother looked regal in a black dress and a brightly colored scarf. And her father, dressed in a prim gray suit, stood straight and tall, looking proud of his handsome family.
The photo, twenty years old, had aged and was faded and cracked at the edges. But the faces of those four people, so strange yet familiar, gazed back at her and seemed to be looking directly into her soul. All of them had left her--first Ricky and her mother, and finally her father. She placed her hand over the three that were gone, blocking them out. And then there was one. “Where are you?” she asked her little girl self. The little girl in the pretty peach dress just looked back at her, as if determined to keep her secret.
That evening, Dave came by, as the sun set to the west and an orange tinge spread over the sea where the moon prepared to rise. He carried a picnic basket, and Helen could see a bottle of wine peeking out from under a blue plaid cloth.
“We’re heading down,” he said. He looked at her, then down to the beach below, then back at her. “It’s not too late to come along.”
“Thank you. It’s just not my sort of thing. I hope you don’t mind.”
“No, of course. But I just wanted to make sure you know you’re welcome. If you change your mind…" He ran a hand through his hair. "They are good folks, these friends. It’s just casual.” He looked slightly uncomfortable, which seemed uncharacteristic for him.
The idea that she could stir someone this way was not lost on her. “Maybe another time.” She looked down, unable to continue making eye contact.
“Alright then. I’ll be off. Say hello to Cat Three.”
“Dickens.”
“Ah yes. Dickens.”
She would have liked to tell him about Dickens knocking the basket down, and the pictures and letters falling to the floor. And how time melted away into the past, into the coalescence of love and sorrow. Instead, she waved her hand, smiled at him, and closed the door. Then she watched from the window as he made his way to the edge of the knoll and down the steep path to the beach.
“C’mon, Dickens,” she said. “Let’s go watch the moonrise.”
Out on the limb of the beech tree, she swung her feet. Dickens crawled across the tree’s rough bark then, and rubbed against her arm, purring. She took him onto her lap, and looked down at the beach, which was strewn with rocks and shells and the detritus of the storm. Dave had spread a blanket and was starting up a bonfire. Several figures were walking toward this little scene along the beach.
Holding Dickens close, Helen watched the moon rise out of the sea, immense and brilliant, and full of unknown possibilities.
Thank you for reading! As I mentioned, this story is for a collaborative contest, and was inspired by @yurche's beautiful drawing of a girl on a tree by the sea. You can see his artwork posting here.
I asked him to tell me a little something about the picture, and he said:
"Helen was a romantic, silent and alone girl, who preferred to live in her small «shell», course she did not like a big, noizy friend's companies and parties. Only big gray striped Cat was her favorite friend. She lived in the little old house and sometimes she loved to left timidly her cozy room and look for distant long-long buzzing trains, which run not so far away from the district where she has been living. Unfortunately, I also failed, trying to conquer her vulnerable and quivering heart."
This was so beautiful to me, that I had to share both the image and the words that inspired the story. I only hope my little fiction piece holds up to the magic of this lovely artwork and the artist's imagination.
