The Fine Grammar of Cats by Mary McLaughlin Slechta
She checks the foyer mirror before she peeks again. It’s a steep climb, but his stocky legs mount quickly. Suddenly he stops, distracted by the clump of scarlet peonies.
He ruffles the petals like little heads, and she fancies she hears the catch at the back of his throat. Then he stoops, fascinated by the columns of ants running up and down the stems. They remind her of the children one is expected to tolerate nowadays. The ants at least have a purpose: they make the blooms possible by licking the waxy sap from the bud.
The thought of children, a gaggle of arms and legs sprawling weed-like between the rows, gives her a hot flash. Hurrying to find a dry polo, she nearly trips on the kitties, gathering, as they normally do, whenever the unexpected happens. She barely travels since she found Galahad, her favorite, whimpering inside a suitcase.
On the second ring, she opens the storm door to the dearest blue eyes she’s seen in years. Most deliciously, as she knows through experience and instinct, these eyes are intent on being approved. She hasn’t seen such raw potential in thirty years.
“Good afternoon,” he says like a gentleman, a testament to superior parenting.
“So you like the peonies,” she says, and unable to plaster an exemplary assignment with stars, cracks the screen door to offer her hand. He apologizes that his own is damp, from the peonies, but she insists, so he does the best he can, on his pant leg, and she doesn’t mean to but flutters like a debutante. “The ants can be such a nuisance.”
When he turns for another look, she leans into the surf of his voice, and sees, despite the tinge of gray in his sideburns, a full head of hair. Clean hair. “There wouldn’t be blooms without those little fellas,” he observes knowledgably.
She must ask him in, discuss his rates, but he’s still talking, his face averted like a boy with a valentine, stuttering under the burden of his conviction. “I-I work in lots of yards and I-I never seen ’em nicer.”
Entire ages pass. Fish walk out of the ocean, dinosaurs stomp like kings across the planet, a primate wakes with an opposable thumb and pens Elements of Style. Turning back, his eyes still bright, still blue, the man flinches. The charming woman who greeted him is gone, transplanted by someone resembling his grammar school teacher. “I changed my mind,” this person says from behind the screen, her knuckles clutching the frame in bloodless fury. At floor level, a furry head hisses so meanly he has to catch himself from a serious tumble before he runs.
The woman regards the kitties whetting their tongue on her ankles, Percival and Her Ladyship, crying now the threat is removed, and Galahad boasting in ear-shattering yowls. Impatient monsters, she sighs, but reliable in their simple grammar. She ought to give them tuna.
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About the Author
Mary McLaughlin Slechta
Born: Rockville, Connecticut, USA
Now Resides: Syracuse, New York, USA
Online: visit me on Facebook
Bio: Since her first library card, Mary hasn’t figured out how to live and be normal without some kind of relationship with poetry and stories. Her work has appeared in print and online, a new library she’s trying mightily to understand but quickly learning to love. She’s written a collection of poems, Wreckage on a Watery Moon (Foothills), about familiar topics: home, love, resilience.
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image by haur.
