A week had passed since her father died and I wasn’t sure I had seen Chloe cry. While her brother and I spilled our emotions all over the house, Chloe quietly rolled her eyes at us. At bedtime I started giving them extra long snuggles.
“How’s it going, honey?” I asked carefully.
“Good,” she chirped in an unusually high octave. Her hair fanned out on the pillowcase like a dark cascading waterfall.
Every evening friends dropped off meals for us. It was almost always lasagne. I worked the ricotta around in my mouth barely able to swallow it. My stomach was in knots. Chloe sat next to me, her fork like a snow shovel. She was taking enormous bites. She asked for another helping. I couldn’t imagine how her little stomach could fit so much food. One night I heard a rustling in the pantry and peeked in to find her dipping a spoon into the bag of brown sugar. She was trying to fill a bottomless hole.
The next day while the kids were at school, I went into Chloe’s room and sat in a patch of sunlight on her bed. I ran my hands along her fuzzy purple blanket and yearned for a way into my daughter’s psyche. There was a tangle of dirty laundry on the floor near the door. I narrowed my eyes. On the top of the pile was a pair of pink underwear stained with blood. Had she gotten her first period and not told me? I looked more closely. It was true. I felt crushed by her silence.
That evening the kids and I were going to Carol’s to say goodbye to Randy’s cat. Carol’s purpose in life was to be a cat rescuer. Her house was filled with a dozen strays. When Randy died, the police took his cat Hailey to the humane society and Carol promptly went and fetched her. She was so bullied by the feline gang that she hid in the bathroom terrified. Carol had decided to take her back to the Humane Society. My kids begged me to keep her but I was allergic and also determined not to inherit Randy’s cat.
We sat on the cool white tiles in Carol’s bathroom. They were dusted with a layer of fine black fur. Hailey walked along the rim of the tub on her tiptoes, leaped down and rubbed up against Chloe’s knees. She let out a whisper of a meow. The kids both reached out to scratch under her chin. She blinked her yellow eyes slowly and snaked her small body this way and that. I wondered what it must have been like for her to spend twenty four hours with Randy’s body.
“Why can’t we keep her Mommy?” my son asked again.
“It just won’t work, honey. Not with the dog and my allergies. We just need to trust that the perfect person will come along and adopt her.”
“You’re so mean,” he replied with watery eyes. My stomach twisted. Was I doing the right thing, I wondered. Chloe was quiet. She kissed Hailey on the nose and we got up to leave. On the drive home Rowan filled the car with his tears and I hated myself.
At bedtime I lay with Chloe and she curled up against me. A baseboard heater rattled in the silence.
“First Daddy and now Hailey,” she said quietly into my hair. “I’m losing everyone and I have no control.”
I tried to hold the weight of her sorrow while I stroked her smooth hair. There was nothing I could say to rescue her. I knew I had to be quiet and let her feel it.
“I’m losing everyone and I have no control!” her voice was louder now.
“I never even got to say goodbye.”
At last she began to sob, gripping the purple blanket, and I knew that the tears for her father had finally arrived.