What the Cat Knew

The vitamin bottles lined up on the bathroom counter like soldiers in retreat. Vitamin D for him, B-complex for her, the mismatched collection of a shared life that was no longer shared. Mara stood before the mirror, her fingers twisting through hair that still smelled like him—product and cigarettes and the particular scent of his neck after three years together.

"You're doing it again," said Lena, leaning in the doorway. "Memorializing."

"I'm not." But she was. She'd caught herself staring at the stray hair on his pillow that morning, dark and coarse against the cream linen, wondering if she should save it. As if that wasn't unhinged. As if she needed physical evidence of what they'd destroyed.

The cat, Bastet wound around her ankles, demanding breakfast. They'd adopted her together at that shelter in Queens, the Saturday after they moved in. He'd wanted to name her something cool—Shiva, Medusa. Mara had insisted on something softer.

"He never remembered to feed her," she said suddenly. "Not once in three years."

"So what? You get the cat, he gets his vinyl collection, and everyone wins."

"It's not about the cat."

"Then what is it?" Lena's voice gentled. "Because you've been standing here for twenty minutes staring at vitamin bottles like they're going to tell you where it all went wrong."

Mara opened the medicine cabinet, swept everything into a plastic bag. The vitamins rattled together—hard little pills of optimism she'd swallowed daily, believing they were building toward something.

Outside, a car honked. Someone was moving. Someone always was in this city.

"I kept thinking," Mara said, "that if I could just be the right combination of things—if I took the vitamins, if I grew my hair out the way he liked, if I learned to like whiskey—if I could be exactly right, then he wouldn't look at other women. Then he wouldn't need to."

Lena snorted. "Honey, he cheated because he's an asshole, not because your hair was wrong."

Bastet jumped onto the counter and batted at the plastic bag, claws extending.

"Yeah," Mara said. "I know."

She dumped the vitamins into the trash. The cat watched with grave, knowing eyes. Animals always knew, before humans did, which arrangements were sustainable and which were just arrangements.

"You staying?" Lena asked.

"Yeah. No choice, lease runs four more months."

"You'll need new vitamins. These ones are tainted."

Mara laughed, actual sound startling in her chest. "I'll just eat vegetables. Like a normal person."

"Revolutionary."

She brushed her hair back from her face, caught her own eyes in the mirror. They looked tired but clear. Three years of compromise reflected back at her, and then—just like that—she didn't see him anymore. Just herself, and the cat watching, and the possibility of vitamins she'd actually choose for herself.