“Okay,” Edmund says as he hops in place. “Let’s go!”
He scampers off, and I walk after. Owen takes my arm and mutters, “Remember what the classes said. Engage in conversations they like.”
I nod and continue.
This is a ridiculous game. Both routes take less than five minutes to reach the picnic area, and at some points the trees thin so much I can see their trail. We might as well have all gone together, but I suppose Owen wants us to have one-on-one time with each kid.
After a minute in, I struggle to think of something to talk about.
What do kids like? Destroying things? No, that’s incidental.
“So,” I begin.
Edmund turns around to face me, his eyes staring straight into mine as though he can’t wait to hear what I have to say.
What’re we going to talk about? He’s six. It’s not like we can have deep philosophical discussions. What if I damage his frail little mind? Maybe I should just remain silent.
No, the classes said not to do that.
Fuck.
“All right,” I say. “I need to level with you. I don’t know anything about small children.”
Edmund holds up the picnic basket. “I’m not small, ya know.”
“All right. I don’t know anything about medium children. Tell me things you like to talk about.”
“Legos and superheroes,” Edmund says matter-of-factly.
Superheroes? Eh. I know next to nothing about superheroes. I exhale and ask, “Okay, if you could have any superpower, what would it be?”
“Laser eyes.”
With a scoff I say, “That’s ridiculous. That’s not even useful.”
I regret my comment the second it leaves my mouth. He’s six. I shouldn’t be so quick to judge his fantastical choices.
Edmund snorts and continues on the trail with his head held high. “Laser eyes are super useful.”
“How so?”
“I could laser bad guys, of course.”
“And what about everyone else?”
“I wouldn’t laser them, because you’re all good guys.”
I guess that’s a little more useful than I originally thought.
Edmund stops again, gasps, and points. “Look! An animal!”
“Don’t touch it,” I say on reflex. I amble by the kid and head around the bend, toward the picnic area. “Wild animals should be left to their natural habitat. Human interaction can be dangerous for both the animal and the person. Observing from afar is the best course of action.”
I recite the warning straight from the park handout. I’ve repeated the damn thing over a thousand times to visiting school classes, tour groups, and individuals who ask about feeding the muskrats.
“She likes me!”
I whip around, half expecting Edmund to be mauled by a wolf. Instead, I find him crouched down, petting a small domesticated house cat. The gray feline purrs enough for the whole park to hear as she rubs against Edmund’s hands and legs. The erratic trail she left in the snow goes on for some time. She’s been traveling for a while.
“Stop,” I say. “Leave the cat alone.”
“But look at how skinny she is.”
Sure enough, the cat has visible ribs and scrawny limbs. It’s a miracle she’s even alive. Most house cats don’t make it long in the snow, especially if they don’t have anything to eat.
Edmund sets the picnic basket down and picks up the cat. “We need to take her with us.”
“No. We’re not taking the cat. Put her back where you found her.”
Edmund stares up at me with wide eyes. “But we can’t leave her.”
“Yes, we can. She isn’t our cat.”
“But then she’ll be all alone.”
“Lots of animals live alone.”
“But… but that’s so sad.”
Tears well in the corners of his eyes. I grit my teeth and say nothing as he unzips his jacket and scoots the cat inside, allowing her head to poke up out of his collar. The feline doesn’t protest. If anything, she purrs louder, no doubt craving the warmth.
“She needs a family,” Edmund continues, now hugging the cat like he’s hugging himself.
After a long sigh, I say, “Fine. We’ll bring her to the pound. She’ll find a family there.”
“No, not that!” Edmund turns away from me and strokes the cat’s head. “The pound is… it’s the foster home for animals. She’ll get sad. And then she won’t talk as much. Just like Luke.”
I catch my breath.
How did this turn so upsetting so quickly?
Still, I can’t let him keep the cat. I hate cats. And we’re in the middle of becoming accustomed to two new kids. Adding a cat to the mix isn’t right. As long as Edmund doesn’t name it, I can still—
“Look, Legos is a good cat,” Edmund says. “She’s happy.”
Oh, goddammit.
“Legos?” I ask. “You named her Legos?”
“Yeah. Legos are my favorite thing, so now she’s my favorite thing.”
Edmund rubs his cheek on Legos’s head and smiles. The cat closes her eyes and lets out a contented mew.
The cat could have a disease! Or fleas! Or be batshit insane once she has some food in her! It’s unreasonable to let him have that cat. Any responsible parent would take it away.
“And it’s the month of Christmas,” Edmund continues. “Remember? We can’t let her be cold on Christmas.”
He pouts—lower lip jutting out, eyes swollen with tears.
I really hate cats.
What would Owen do? I curse under my breath, knowing the answer in a heartbeat. He would let the kid have the damn cat.
“Fine,” I say through a groan. “We’ll take the cat with us.”
“Legos. Her name is Legos.”
Another groan. “We’ll take Legos with us.”
“Yay!”
Edmund jogs ahead, keeping the cat pressed firm against his body, leaving me with the picnic basket. I pick it up and hurry after the kid. All I can think about is the expense and time a cat will cost me.
Vet bills. Cat food. Toys.
Ugh. And a litter box.
I really, really hate cats.
“What took you two so long?”
I glance up from my musings and find I’ve already arrived at the picnic area. Owen and Luke stand by the frozen table, giving me and Edmund odd glances. Owen spots the cat straightaway, and his eyebrows shoot up toward his hairline.
“Is that a cat?” he asks.
“Her name is Legos,” Edmund says, his voice laced with a squealing delight.
Owen turns to me, an unspoken conversation worth of words in his expression. He knows I hate cats. We’ve had multiple discussions about pets. Dogs are the closest thing I’d ever want, but even then I’m not keen on them.
I give Owen a quick nod, and he knows I’m “okay” with the situation.
Okay being in big fucking quotes.
Owen walks over to Edmund, kneels down, and pets the feline with a delicate pat. “She doesn’t look too good, champ. Where did you find her?”
“Out in the snow. She’s cold. And I think she’s hungry. Can we give her some of our lunch?”
“Cats aren’t going to like the sandwiches I packed.”
“But she needs something. I don’t want her to be sad. I want everyone to be happy.”
Owen smiles. “Well, then, I think we should declare this an emergency rescue mission. Let’s go get the kitty cat some food, shall we?”
“Wait,” Luke says, cutting into the conversation. “We’re going to leave? But we just got here.”
“The cat really is in bad shape,” Owen says as he stands. “We can always have a picnic tomorrow, or come back another time.”
Luke stomps over to his brother and glares. “Edmund, put the cat down.”
“I don’t want to,” Edmund replies. “I love her.”
“No, you don’t. Put it down. It’s dirty and gross.”
“N
o.”
“You’re ruining the day by being weird,” Luke hisses under his breath. “Put. The cat. Down.”
“No!”
“Whoa, whoa!” Owen says as he jumps between the two brothers. “Don’t worry, the day isn’t ruined. Trust me—no day in December is a bad day. Rescuing the cat is an adventure.”
Luke runs both his hands through his hair, his normally calm façade breaking as he furrows his brow and glares into the snow. He says nothing, which is worse than speaking his mind, at least in my book. If he talked, I would at least know what’s bothering him.
“I think the lil kitty needs some warmth,” Owen says. “C’mon. Let’s head back to the truck.”
I grab Owen by the arm and pull him close. “Can you please stop calling it kitty?” I say to him in a hushed tone. “You’re a grown man. Grown men don’t call them kitty cats.”
He kisses me on the cheek, catching me off guard, and I flush. Then he leans in close, his sweet, misty breath on my ear. “My dad used to call them itty-bitty kitty cats,” he says, mirth in his tone.
Good grief. Of course his whole fun-addicted family would use names like that.
I roll my eyes, and I catch sight of Luke and Edmund.
Luke, hunched over Edmund, whispers with a gruff tone. His younger brother tears up, his lip quavering, and hugs the cat in his jacket like it is a long-lost teddy bear.
“Enough,” I say as I walk over to them. “I said he could have the cat, so that’s the end of the discussion.” I push Luke away. “Don’t harass your brother because of it, all right? We’re moving on.”
Luke stares at the snow and says nothing. Edmund sniffles.
Perfect. First family outing and both the kids are upset. Great way to top off a first jarring and awkward night.
Carter, you told yourself you were going to be a good father, so you better start acting like one.
“THE PIZZA good?” Owen asks between bites of his pepperoni slice.
Edmund and Luke both nod, but otherwise they offer no verbal confirmation. They seem to enjoy the food—they ate enough of it for five people—but their lack of conversation all day has begun to get under my skin. They can’t be this quiet. Kids are never this quiet.
“Um,” Luke begins.
Both Owen and I perk up. “Yeah?” Owen asks.
“So, do you guys have a TV?”
“No,” I say. “We don’t.”
“Why not?”
Owen cringes. He sets his half-eaten slice down on his plate and forces a smile. “Well, you see, Carter grew up in a household without TVs and other stuff like that. We’ve just never purchased one as a couple, and I gave mine away to my sister when he and I moved in together.”
“But how do you play your video games?” Edmund asks with a frown.
“We don’t own any video games.”
The brothers slouch in their chairs.
“TVs aren’t that necessary,” I say, knowing full well they’re disappointed. I grew up without a TV; I know these kids can too.
They say nothing. And they’ve lost their appetites.
Tsk. I can’t buckle every time they get sad. The roles of parents are to shape children and help them focus on making a better future for themselves. TVs are distractions. Terrible for their brains. It’s better that they don’t have one.
“Legos is hungry,” Edmund says. He points to the cat.
I glance over and spot the cat wolfing down a huge helping of cat food. Owen got her a little bowl, a pink collar, and thirty toys. Maybe thirty-one toys—one for each day of December. I wouldn’t put it past him.
Owen nods. “I set up a vet appointment for Legos on Tuesday. That was the earliest they had available.”
“Is it okay… if I go to my room?” Luke asks, his voice so low it’s almost drowned out by the silence.
“Yeah, of course,” Owen replies.
Luke gets up, and Edmund joins him.
“Thanks for dinner,” Edmund says with a forced smile.
They disappear into their shared room, and Owen locks his gaze to mine.
“Really, Carter? You’re going to maintain the no TV rule?”
“It’s a good rule,” I say with a huff.
“Is it? Every other kid at school will have a TV. You’re making them stand out for no good reason. And they’ll be out of the loop for pop culture stuff.”
“It’ll distract them. What if their grades suffer?”
Owen chuckles. He leans forward on the table and takes my hand. Then he gets this serious look about him, and I hate it when he does that. I grit my teeth and wait.
“I grew up with a TV,” he says. “You didn’t. Yet here we are. Both of us happy men with fulfilling jobs. Starting a family. I submit to you that having a TV, or not having a TV, isn’t the determining factor when it comes to a child’s success.”
First a cat, now a TV? We’re already piling on a whole shit-ton of new things and responsibilities. Do I have to change everything in order to accommodate kids?
“You broke one of the parenting class rules,” Owen says, saving me from my depressing thoughts. “They said you weren’t supposed to take a new animal in at the same time you get the kids. Too much work. And it takes your focus away from the child, remember?”
“Yeah, well, I buckled in a moment of weakness, all right? I can’t follow all their damn rules.” I say everything with more bite than I intend, but Owen responds by squeezing my hand, calming me down in a matter of seconds. I exhale and squeeze back. “You should have been there when the kid asked to keep it.”
“Why?”
“I couldn’t say no.”
He laughs his Owen laugh, and I can’t help but smile. I don’t know where the man finds all his optimism and happiness. If he died he’d be reincarnated as a double rainbow.
“I’m going to take a shower,” Owen says as he stands, breaking contact with me. “We can talk more about the TV situation afterward.” He walks off but stops at the edge of the hall. “We survived our first twenty-four hours, Carter.”
“That we did,” I drawl.
He disappears into the hall, and I return my attention to my pizza.
And then the damn cat starts to hack and wheeze.
“What’re you doing?” I ask it.
Legos gags and convulses, her legs trembling. She vacuumed that food so fast it’s no wonder it’s coming up again. I jump from the table and attempt to catch her before she vomits, but the cat hobbles away and then hurls her half-chewed cat food all over the tile floor. To make matters worse, she stumbles through it, creating paw prints across the floor in her yellowish-green bodily fluids.
Goddammit.
I scoop the cat up and take her to the sink, biting back a whole host of curse words. The feline meows a sad and frightened chorus of mews.
“Don’t start making noise,” I say through clenched teeth. “You’re already on my shit list.”
She continues her yowling as I turn on the water. Then she becomes possessed by a demon from the ninth layer of hell and thrashes around like she’s part honey badger. Her claws rake across my arms, her fangs sink into my flesh, and she spins in the sink with more muscle than I thought a cat could muster.
Not today, Legos.
I clench my jaw, keep her in the sink, and somehow squirt soap onto her using my elbow to pump the dispenser.
“You will get clean,” I say, holding her in the stream of water and rubbing the soap over her legs and paws.
I’m pretty sure my blood is all over the place, but now it’s just the principle of the matter. After a minute of struggling, the cat relaxes and I can finish her cleaning. Our war zone of a bath leaves me with scars, but she smells good afterward. Which is more than I could say for her when she got to our house. Damn cat looked like she died of the bubonic plague in one of her past lives.
Legos leaps from my hands the moment I let her go. She sits on the counter, shakes off, and then licks herself as though nothing ever happened.
>
“Seriously?” I ask with a grunt. “Weird-ass cat.”
I wipe my arms off, taking stock of the damage.
Eh. I’ve had worse. I had to pull a beaver from a felled log, and the damn thing thought I was going to eat it. The worst part was visiting the doctor afterward to make sure I didn’t have rabies. I should probably do it again, given Legos’s dubious origins.
With a clean rag, I scrub the floor and rid the kitchen of the cat vomit. I finish up and listen.
The stillness of the house bothers me.
All those parenting classes said that our house should be full of noises with two brothers, but I don’t hear a thing.
Once dry—and I’ve rolled down my sleeves—I head for the boys’ room and stop outside the door. Nothing. Not a peep.
I’d be happy if that’s how they were—quiet kids who liked to sit peacefully in the corner of a room—but I remember when I was six and thirteen. All that pent-up energy meant I was climbing trees all day and throwing rocks across the river. What could Luke and Edmund be doing in their room that makes absolutely no noise?
I knock.
“Come in?” Luke says.
I open the door and stand in the doorframe. Luke sits at the desk, drawing, and Edmund is in the corner of the room, playing with his Legos. Neither of them look as though they’ve done much since retiring for the night, and their backs were facing each other before they both turned to me.
“Is something wrong?” Luke asks.
“You’re too quiet.”
The brothers exchange glances.
Edmund taps two Legos together. He hesitates for a moment, frowning, until he finally says, “We want you to like us.”
The statement cuts me. “What?”
“We want you to like us, so we can’t make any noise.”
I run a hand over the back of my neck and sigh. “I’d like it if we could get past this and you two acted like normal kids—that’s what I’d like.”
Luke lifts an eyebrow. “Normal kids?”
“Yeah. Makin’ messes. Yelling.”
Edmund giggles. He stands and gives me a large smile—the kid was made to smile. “And if we made a mess, you would come and tell us to clean it up, right?”
Thirty-One Days and Legos Page 3
