What Do Fish Have to Do With Anything?

by Avi

  Over the next few days Shadow grew more ill despite the fact that Eve gave him the pills the way the vet had instructed her. She pried the black cat’s mouth open, popped a pill deep into his pink throat, then gently held his mouth closed so that he had to swallow.

  It was only later that she found a pile of the pink pills — spit up — behind the wing chair. Eve feared there was nothing more she could do. Angel had insisted Shadow join her. And he was going.

  Even so, Eve kept trying to convince Shadow to stay. She spoke to him about the pleasures of life in their house, with her, the family. “We all love you,” she said. Shadow merely listened.

  “I’ll get you a new friend,” Eve pleaded. “I’ll go to the ASPCA and find someone this weekend. I’ll even look for a white one. A white kitten would be so much fun. Oh, Shadow,” she cried, holding the now thin creature close to her heart, “don’t go to Angel. Stay with me.”

  Though he grew sicker, Shadow went out each night and looked up at the tree. Eve, tears running down her cheeks, watched him from her room. How could Angel be so powerful?

  “I’m afraid he’s doing just as poorly as Angel,” Eve’s father said Saturday morning.

  “He doesn’t want to live,” Eve informed him.

  “You mean, he misses Angel?”

  “Dad,” Eve said with some bitterness, “Angel is insisting he join her. And Shadow always does what she tells him to do.”

  “My suggestion,” her father said, “is that we take him back to the vet.”

  That night, when Shadow dragged himself out into the garden, Eve joined him. The black cat sat by the pool, occasionally looking up. Often, in his weakness, he nodded off.

  The white cat was in the tree.

  “Angel,” said Eve, “why must you do this? It wasn’t our fault you died. Just because you died doesn’t mean everybody else has to. Shadow has a right to his life.”

  The white cat opened her mouth and hissed.

  “And what about me?” Eve cried. “Don’t you care about how I feel?”

  Angel hissed again.

  The next morning Eve and her mother took Shadow to the vet. It was of no use. Shadow died the way Angel had — in Eve’s arms.

  On the way home, Eve was very silent. All she could think about was that Angel had betrayed her. She was hurt and very angry.

  Eve’s mother reached out and touched her. “When you’re ready you can get another cat.”

  Eve said nothing. But she kept asking herself, why was Angel treating her so badly? Had she done something wrong? Had she offended the cats in some way? No, she insisted to herself. It was just the opposite. She had loved them. Given them so much.

  The next day a sad Eve put away the cats’ bowls, cleaned and stored their litter box, shelved the remaining cans of cat food, and put the cats’ collars in a box of mementos she kept at the back of her closet. Her sleep was uninterrupted.

  Then, two nights after Shadow died, Eve woke. She turned on her reading lamp and looked toward her feet. Both dead cats, Angel and Shadow, were looking at her, staring with unblinking eyes.

  Eve was so shocked she drew in her breath sharply. She hardly knew what to do other than to stare back. Suddenly it dawned on her why the cats were there. “Oh, Shadow, oh, Angel,” she cried. “You’ve come back for me, haven’t you? You want me to be with you.”

  The cats stared fixedly at her.

  “But why do you want me?” Eve asked. “Is it because you love me so much?”

  Eve sat up in bed — arms hugged around her knees — gazing at the cats, waiting for a response. They made not so much as a sound.

  After a while Angel stood, arched her back, and crept forward. Approaching Eve, she leaned down and bit her hand.

  “Ow!” Eve cried, snatching her hand away. She sucked at the blood.

  Angel sat back on her haunches, licked her lips, and stared at Eve.

  Eve suddenly remembered that what Angel did was exactly what she had done that time she thought her food was late. Then, all in rush, Eve understood.

  “Is that all I am to you?” she gasped with horror. “Just someone to take care of you? Your servant. Your pet?”

  The cats vanished.

  The next day Eve told no one of the cats’ visit. They didn’t believe her before. She knew they wouldn’t believe her now. Besides, she was sure she was strong. She would be able to resist the cats’ demands.

  Four days later the two cats returned. They called to her — soft, plaintive mewing sounds — in her sleep. When she woke she knew they were in the yard.

  It was a warm, humid night, the last hot breath of the summer that had been. When Eve stepped onto the patio, she felt almost suffocated by the fragrance that filled the air, the thick, clotted scent of decaying vegetation. The limp leaves on the trees were edged with brown. A heavy dew clung to the plants and shrubbery and weighed them down. Rotting mushrooms glowed faintly and seemed to pulse. A waning moon slipped in and out behind streaks of clouds. In the pool floated a dead goldfish. Its white belly was turned up, a mirror image to the moon in the sky.

  The two cats were sitting side by side beneath the tree. Angel seemed to be in bloom. Shadow’s ebony fur shimmered. Their tails waved with impatience.

  Before the cats were their food bowls. The bowls were empty. Eve understood instantly. The cats were waiting for her to feed them.

  Eve stamped her foot. “No,” she said. “I will not take care of you anymore. I won’t. And there’s nothing you can do to make me!”

  The cats meowed with aggravation, but faded away.

  Over the next few days Eve suffered various visitations. The cats hissed in dark rooms, swiped at her as she went down the hallway. A bleeding scratch appeared on the back of her hand. She tripped over something as she came down the steps. A dead goldfish lay on her pillow. It stank badly.

  “I’m not going to join you,” Eve told the cats when she saw them next.

  Angel spat at her.

  Shadow had the decency to look away.

  At dinner the following day, Eve said, “I have an important announcement.”

  Her mother, father, and brother looked at her.

  “The cats,” said Eve, “have come back as ghosts. They are trying to get me to join them.”

  “Oh yeah, why?” her brother demanded.

  “So I can take care of them.”

  “But they’re dead!” her brother protested.

  “I just told you, it’s their ghosts!”

  Eve’s mother and father exchanged bemused looks.

  “Well,” her mother said, “I know they were attached to you.”

  “And you to them,” her father added.

  “You think I’m joking, don’t you?” said Eve. She left the table sorry she had spoken to them.

  The following day Eve became ill. First came fatigue, aching joints, sore throat — then a fever.

  Both of Eve’s parents worked, so a baby-sitter had to be brought in to stay with the ailing girl. It was on the third day, when Eve’s fever grew high, that Eve’s father remained home. When he went to work her mother came home. When his school was out, Jeff sat with her. Eve, however, had eyes for only Angel and Shadow, who either sat or slept at the foot of her bed. They kept gazing at her, mewing, waving their tails. Eve knew they were only waiting for her to die and come take care of them.

  “I’m not your pet,” she said to them vehemently. “I’m staying here.”

  “Daddy,” she begged, “make them go away.”

  Her father got a cold compress and laid it over her forehead. “This should help your fever,” he said gently.

  After the fourth day of high fever, Eve was taken to the hospital. The cats followed her to the sterile white room that almost put Angel’s coat to shame. As for Shadow, he looked like a dirty oil spill at the foot of the bed, where they were sitting.

  Once, when Eve woke from a deep sleep, she found both cats sitting on her chest. They were side by side, pink and black noses two i
nches from her face.

  “Take care of yourselves!” she cried out angrily. With that she fell into a faint.

  That night she was sent home. Her parents and her brother were beside her. They looked sad and whispered among themselves. Sometimes there were tears.

  At the foot of the bed, the two cats, paws folded under their chests, waited patiently.

  “Please make the cats go away,” Eve said, feebly.

  Her family, seeing nothing, could only shake their heads.

  That night Eve woke at about two in the morning. Feverish and weak, she crawled out of bed and went to the window. Leaning against the window frame for support, she peered down into the yard. The two cats were there, waiting by their empty bowls. They looked up at Eve and mewed.

  A wave of exhaustion washed over the girl. “They need me,” she told herself. “They must be very hungry. It must be time to feed them. Only I can do it.”

  She gazed about the yard until her eyes came to rest on Chase’s grave. In the moonlight his marker stone was radiant. Where was he? Why had he never come back to haunt her? Presumably he lay in peace. Eve envied the dog.

  With a sigh of resignation, she took up her robe, wrapped it around herself, and went slowly downstairs and into the yard.

  Though the night air made her shiver, her forehead felt as if it were burning. Her body was so hot she was sweating. As soon as the cats saw her, they began to mew angrily and swish their tails as if they were whips.

  Then a thought came to her. Eve stumbled past the cats and into the yard to the area where all her pets had been buried.

  The cats, complaining bitterly, darted between her feet, clawing her ankles, nipping at her.

  At Chase’s grave Eve sank to her knees.

  Shadow bit her bare toes. Angel clawed her ankle.

  Eve was too far gone to notice these attacks. “Chase,” she whispered in a trembling voice, “please come back. I need you badly. I want you to chase these cats away.”

  So saying, she squeezed her hands together and repeated her words passionately.

  Suddenly there was a bark. Eve looked around. It was dim, her vision was fogged, but there before her — unmistakably — was Chase. In her delirium Eve saw him in reverse: where he had been white, he was now black, and his black spots were now white.

  Chase paid no attention to her, but was galloping madly toward the cats. Behind him followed a ragged parade of salamanders, turtles, hamsters, gerbils, and many flopping goldfish. All were ghosts.

  The cats spun about, hissed, and spat, but as Chase approached, they gave ground quickly. They ran for the wall, scampered up, and disappeared over the top. Chase, panting, stood at the base of the wall and barked furiously. The other ghosts made appropriate noises.

  When the cats were gone, Chase trotted over to where Eve was, barked once, twice, then evaporated.

  Eve barely made it back to her bed.

  But starting the next morning, she became better. Every day that followed she improved, until the doctor declared her cured. He was even heard to say, “And I didn’t think she had a ghost of a chance.”

  In the years that followed, on the anniversary of Chase’s death, Eve never failed to leave a large dog biscuit on his burial stone. During that particular night — she always waited up to hear — there invariably was a bark. And in the morning the biscuit was gone.

  As for pets, Eve never wanted another.

  That fall term we seventh graders had a choice of electives: art, music, or woodworking. You had to take each of them during the course of the year but you could usually pick the order in which you took them.

  I asked for woodworking because I always liked fooling around with tools. We had some in our basement, and I was allowed to bang about with them as long as I didn’t break anything.

  The first time the class met, Mr. Hanks — the shop teacher — said we could make what we wanted, but the first and only thing we were required to make was a square box. He showed us one he had made.

  There was a general groan. Like, not cool. Know what I’m saying? A box seemed so nerdy. Talk about square. I thought, what can you do with a box — except put something in it?

  Turned out, a box — if you’re going to make it right — is a wicked hard thing to do. See, you have to cut every piece precisely the same size; and when you cut the pieces, each one has to be exactly square. ’Cause when you put it together they have to fit exactly right. Otherwise it’s lopsided, weird looking, like that old shoebox you keep your busted — but decent — sneakers in.

  Finally, when you put a hinged lid on this box — another requirement — that made it even harder. It had to close absolutely.

  To show how it was done right, Mr. Hanks put a turned-on flashlight in his box, closed the lid, and switched off the shop lights. Everything was pitch dark. No light leaked out from his box. He said, “If I see any light oozing from your box, you’ll have to fix it.”

  “What if I don’t put any light inside?” someone shouted out.

  We laughed. Mr. Hanks, grinning, said, “If you want to get out of this class alive, my friend, you better have something inside that box. And I better not see it.”

  It took me four weeks of classes — and a lot of after-school hours — but when my box was done — stained, varnished, waxed — not only had I learned a whole lot, it looked pretty sweet. And no light leaked out. You could have put a million bucks in that sucker. Or nothing. No one would have seen the difference.

  When I took the box home, my parents went on about it so much — how neat, beautiful, and useful it was — I decided to make a second box and give one to each of them for Christmas presents. You know, His and Her boxes. So what if you couldn’t tell them apart? Pretty neat, I thought.

  That’s just what I did, and Christmas morning my folks were real happy. In fact, Christmas afternoon, during the annual big family Christmas party, which was at my house that year, my parents put them on display. That made me feel good, though I acted, you know, cool. Like, you don’t want people to know what you’re feeling, right?

  It was during that same afternoon — my cousin Danny saw the boxes.

  Danny was fifteen — two years older than me — a big geeky guy, always bumping into things, knocking stuff over, like he was trying to get through the dark. The kid couldn’t walk into a room without slamming into something, after which his pimply pizza face turned tomato red. And he usually spoke only apologies. I mean he was the type who if you gave him a birthday present, would have apologized for being born.

  When he did say something it was mostly sad and distant. For example, I once said — sincerely — “Hey, man, that’s a cool shirt.” And he said, “My folks made me wear it.” Know what I’m saying? The guy was so down, if he climbed out of his hole, he’d still be in the basement — and the lights would be off.

  Most times he kept to himself and just hung around, watching with those mournful eyes of his. I never saw him smile much, or even straighten up.

  His parents were not much happier. At the moment, his mother — my father’s sister — worked at a Burger King, while his dad did local trucking. I don’t know, from what I heard my parents say, their life seemed always to be crashing into holes. One crisis after another. Nothing was ever right. Things were always getting tangled. They were their own threeperson traffic jam.

  Now the point is, one of the weird things about Danny was that he seemed to like me. I didn’t know why. But I have to admit, I was sort of flattered. He was already in high school. But no way cool, so it was a little embarrassing, too.

  Anyway, that Christmas afternoon, there he was staring at those boxes, opening and closing their lids, measuring just how big their insides were.

  “Hey, man, you like those boxes?” I asked.

  “I suppose,” I think he said.

  “Presents for my folks. I made them.”

  He looked at me with those dismal eyes of his. “You did?” he asked.

  “Yeah. Hard to do, tho
ugh,” I replied.

  “I couldn’t do it,” he told me, like it was some fault of his.

  “I made them in school,” I said, so he wouldn’t think I didn’t have help.

  He walked off, looking back over his shoulder at the boxes — not me — as he went to stuff his face with grub.

  A couple of days later, about nine in the morning, Danny called me up. He said he wanted to see me about something. “Right away,” he murmured. “It’s important.”

  “Sure, fine,” I said, not because I really wanted to talk to him, but I have to admit, I was curious. He rarely called me.

  Then he said, “Has to be when your folks aren’t around.”

  “How come?”

  He hesitated. “Just does.”

  My folks both work — and it was still Christmas vacation for me — so that was easy. “You can come over now, if you want,” I told him.

  “Okay,” he said. “I’ll be there soon.” Then he added, “You still have those boxes?”

  “What boxes?”

  “The ones you made.”

  “Still on display,” I told him.

  He grunted, then said, “See you.” He hung up, loudly, like he’d dropped the phone rather than hung up normal. Made me sorry I invited him over.

  When he called I was still lounging about in my pajamas and one of those heavy terry cloth bathrobes with the baggy pockets. I was going to dress, but instead I kept sitting in the living room, wondering what it was all about. Then, just as I reminded myself to get some real clothes on, the doorbell rang and there was Danny.

  The first thing he said to me when he walked in was, “Your folks home?”

  “I told you, no.”

  He lumbered on past me and went into the living room, knocking into the tall plant my mother had in the hallway. After setting the plant right, I followed him.

  He was sitting on the living room couch, slumped over. He looked more miserable than ever, chin resting on his hands, eyes staring at the low table in front of the couch. On the table was a gun.

  The gun was a small shiny silver pistol with a white handgrip. On TV cop shows I think they call them Saturday night specials, but I had never seen an actual one before.