Mothered (49)

Coco followed her from room to closet to room, meowing the answers to Grace’s questions: Where’s your carrier? Do you have some favorite toys?

By the time she was ready to go it looked like she was taking everything Coco owned—her food bowls and food, litter and litter pan, bed and blankie, her brush. The carpeted cat tree was too cumbersome to put in the car, otherwise Grace might have brought that too. She carried the stuff out in batches, until all that was left was Coco in her carrier, mewling unhappily.

“You’ll come back soon, Coco. I promise.” This time she was glad the cat couldn’t decipher English; Grace didn’t like to promise things she had no control over.



She left Coco in her carrier on the dining room floor and went out to retrieve the rest of her things. When she came back, Jackie was leaning against the doorway to the kitchen, eyeballing the cat. Grace wanted to get everything ready first before letting Coco explore the house. She started with the litter box, setting it up in the corner farthest away from the kitchen.

“Shouldn’t you put that in the basement?” Jackie asked, caustic with disapproval.

“Then we’d have to leave the basement door open.” She brushed past her mother to fill Coco’s water bowl. That went in an opposing corner of the dining room, next to her food bowl.

Grace had hoped her mother would wake up in a pleasant mood, refreshed by a good night’s sleep, the previous evening’s discoveries long forgotten. But maybe it wasn’t realistic that Jackie would simply forget. The term is liar. Her demeanor expressed nothing but reproach.

“Why did you bring that here?” Jackie glared at the cat. And now Grace understood that her mother’s previous question may have been directed at Coco, not just her litter box—as if Grace would ever consider exiling the poor creature to her damp basement.

“Because I don’t know how long Miguel will be in the hospital. Her name is Coco. And the one thing I can do to help Miguel is make sure his fur baby is okay.” She knelt down and unzipped the carrier. Coco poked her head out and looked around.

“Fur baby,” Jackie snorted. “People want pets over children because they don’t talk back. They don’t grow up and embarrass you.”

With her back turned, Grace rolled her eyes. She had no idea how she was going to make things okay with her mom again; engaging in her pissy mood certainly wouldn’t help.

Jackie wasn’t ready to let it go. “You’re just bringing more germs in the house.”

“We don’t eat in the dining room anyway.” The only thing that kept Grace from flinging sharp-edged jabs at her hard-hearted mother was her desire to stay calm and chipper for Coco. The cat deserved a warmer welcome. Grace petted and fussed over her to make up for it.

“All that fur.” Jackie looked as repulsed as if Grace were caressing a pile of excrement.

Grace struggled to not raise her voice. “You don’t have to like it, Mom. This is my house, and this is what I’m doing to help my friend. Who is sick, as if you give a shit.”

“I give many shits, Grace. I like Miguel, quite a lot. But not enough to die for your misplaced guilt.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“A good friend would have told him to call an ambulance. A guilty friend, who spends her life lying to people, has to prove that she’s worthy of his friendship.”

Grace left Coco to sniff out the litter box and faced off with her mother. “I love him. I’m worried about him. He’s scared and I didn’t want him to have to go alone. I should not have to explain that!”

Jackie, unimpressed, took a step back, deliberately increasing the space between them. “And I shouldn’t have to explain that now we have to stay in quarantine even longer. Because you exposed us again. And God only knows what that cat has.”

“She’s an indoor cat! She doesn’t have anything!”

“Miguel could’ve given it to her. It’s not impossible. That happened to a tiger in the zoo.” With the raised chin of haughty disdain, Jackie whipped around and retreated to the kitchen.

“If you’re concerned,” Grace said, hanging onto the doorjamb so her body invaded her mother’s queendom, “about getting sick from me or the cat, you can stay in your room.”

“Ha!” Jackie barked. “You’d leave me up there to starve to death.”

“No I wouldn’t.” What a dumb thing to suggest. Grace wasn’t sure if this hostility was coming from Jackie’s umbrage over her catfishing, or a genuine fear of getting sick. The bickering would just get worse unless one or both of them cooled off.

Though Grace had suggested that Jackie should be the one to retreat to the second floor, Grace opted to remove herself. She scooped Coco into her arms and headed upstairs.

“You can check out my room,” she whispered to the cat. “No nasty old women there.”





31


Grace snapped a pic of Coco blissfully stretched out and asleep at the foot of her bed. She texted it to Miguel, hoping it would put a smile on his face. Every hour that he didn’t text magnified her apprehension. It was too easy to imagine him incapacitated by medical gear—but maybe he was simply resting. Though Grace hadn’t gotten much sleep the night before, she was bored of resting—and irked that she was holed up in her room like a naughty child while her mother watched TV and did whatever she wanted. After the previous day’s debacle post-ShyShaina, Grace felt too guilty to pass the time with one of her damsels.