Calliope: Voice of the Writers

 

 

The Great Novel Race 2008:

Feels Like Home

by Crystal Crawford

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Chapter 3: Furry Cats and Fallen Pots

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Allison awoke, gasping and sputtering, to a mouthful of fur.  Curled up beside her face was a large white Persian cat, purring softly, its tail swishing against her mouth.  Allison didn’t remember her mother having a cat, and as she sat up and rubbed the sleep from her eyes, she wondered how the cat had gotten into the house – she hadn’t seen a cat door, and if the cat had been inside the whole time, she would surely have smelled a litter box.  After all, the house had been shut up for days.  Then, through her grogginess, Allison noticed that the cat’s purring wasn’t the only unexpected sound.  Someone was opening and closing cabinets in the kitchen.

Allison crept nervously toward the kitchen, her ears attuned to the banging sounds emanating from just around the corner.  Her mind ran wildly through the possibilities:  it could be a thief, searching for items worth stealing; a neighbor, come to borrow some flour; a maid, putting away the dishes – but then wouldn’t a neighbor or a maid have known that her mother was gone?  Surely a neighbor wouldn’t have the nerve to borrow her flour after she’s been gone for so long in the hospital.  Allison approached the section of wall which divided the front hallway from the kitchen, and leaned her head around the corner.

Surprisingly, the source of all the banging wasn’t a maid, a neighbor, or a thief.  It was a little boy.  He was rummaging through the cabinets in the kitchen, and the door still stood ajar from where he’d entered the kitchen through the back patio.  Allison was sure she had checked that door the night before… it had been locked.

Allison stepped forward into the kitchen, and the little boy stiffened, dropping a pot he was holding.  The pot clanged around, rolling on its side and finally settling top-down on the floor with a resounding ding.  The boy stood, frozen, one hand on an open cabinet door, the other held out awkwardly in the air, until the pot came to a stop.

“Hello…” said Allison tentatively, “my name is Allison.  Why…um… who… are you?”

The boy’s eyes dashed up to Allison, then back to the fallen pot.  He looked ordinary, a smallish boy of maybe five years old, with tousled blonde hair and a t-shirt, jeans, and sneakers.  His eyes, for the moment Allison had seen them, had  been blue. 

Allison took a step forward.  “This is my mother’s house.  I’m Allison.  Do you need something?  Can I help you with anything?”

The boy glanced up at Allison, then dashed to the right, grabbing the fallen pot as he passed, and darted out the open door.  

Allison ran across the kitchen after him.  “It’s alright,” she called, “It’s alright; I won’t hurt you!  I just want to talk.” 

By the time Allison had crossed the kitchen and stepped out onto the back patio, the boy had already scaled the far fence.  She caught a last glimpse of his t-shirt and jeans as he leapt from the top of the fence into the yard beyond, and disappeared from sight.

Allison sank down into one of the patio chairs, placing her elbow on the swirled-glass surface of the patio table.  What was going on with this place?  Not one thing had been normal since she’d come here – the dozens of flowers in her mother’s hospital room; the fresh, clean smell of lavender in a house that had been shut up for weeks; the mysterious comment of the cab driver; the cat that appeared out of nowhere; and now, this bizarre little boy raiding her mother’s kitchen cabinets.  There was something strange about this town.

Allison sighed, pulling herself up from the chair.  She’d had almost a full night’s sleep on the living room couch, and now it was time to get to work.  She needed to unpack her things, settle in, make some phone calls, and then – her insides moaned at the thought of it -- get started going through her mother’s things.  No one seemed to know whether her mother had left a will, but perhaps there were some important documents stored in that lockbox the doctor had given Allison.  She’d have to scour the house for information on what the combination might possibly be, or even for names or phone numbers of people who might know something about it.  This was a relatively small house, but a detailed search like that could take all day, so she’d better get started.

As Allison turned to exit the patio, a glint of metal near the far fence caught her eye.  She walked over to it; it was the pot the boy had grabbed.  He must have dropped it when he climbed the fence, Allison thought.  Why would he have wanted this old pot anyway?  She picked the pot up from the grass and turned it over, examining it.  It was just an ordinary pot, the kind for boiling spaghetti in, worn from years of cooking, with a blackened bottom and a scratched surface.  But then, underneath one of the small handles on either side of the pot, Allison noticed something carved into the metal: 5-11-03.

It was definitely a date, but of what?  And why in the world would her mother carve a date into a pot?  Suddenly, Allison remembered the lockbox and her heart skipped.  Could this be the combination?  But her excitement faded instantly when she remembered the combination required four digits, not five.   So what could this possibly mean?   

Allison carried the pot back over to the patio and sank back down into the chair.  Maybe she was reading too much into things.  Maybe 5-11-03 was just the date that her mother had purchased the pot, and she just wanted to keep track of how long she’d had it.  Allison rose and went into the kitchen to test her theory.  She pulled out one pot after another from the cabinets; none of them had any carvings.   Returning the rest of the pots to their cabinets, Allison picked up the engraved pot and ran her fingers over the inscription: 5-11-03.  It wasn’t any date she recognized, not a familiar birthday or holiday or anything, but it could still be something perfectly normal; that pot might just have been a gift from someone, who had it engraved with the date.  But then why would that little boy have tried to take it?  And for that matter, how did he get in through a locked door?

Allison set the pot on the counter and sank to the floor, her back against the cabinets.   Her brain was still exhausted from the events of the past few days, and the bizarre happenings since her arrival certainly weren’t making things any easier.   Suddenly, the numbers 5-11-03 floating in her head sorted themselves into a new order and Allison leapt up, sliding on the tile floor as she ran from the kitchen up the stairs into her bedroom.  She grabbed her purse and turned it upside-down, scattering its contents on the bed.  Within the clutter of chapstick, mascara, pens, and store receipts, she located the object of her search – her pocketbook – and removed a folded yellow sheet of paper.  Unfolding it, she scanned it for the information she needed.  There, near the top, beneath the line for “name”, she found it.  “Diagnosis:  Terminal Breast Cancer.  Date of Diagnosis: November 5, 2003.”  5-11-03 wasn’t May 11, like she had thought; it was November 5.  She was so used to the American method of date-writing that she hadn’t even thought about it.  But there it was, November 5, on the copy of the report her mother had mailed to her when she’d first been diagnosed.  Allison had kept it, folded, inside her pocketbook since the day she received it.  It was a reminder to her of the seriousness of her mom’s illness, of the shortness of life.   Her mom hadn’t wanted to send it at first.  “Why do you need a copy of my diagnosis, Ally?” she’d said.  “Can’t you take my word for it?”   But she’d sent it, nonetheless, and Allison had kept it, opening it from time to time whenever she felt the need for some sobriety.

Yet, with all the sentimentality of holding on to her mother’s diagnosis report, she had still managed to convince herself that her mother was fine; that she needn’t bother coming to visit just yet; after all, she only got so many personal days and she’d better save them up for when the visits really mattered.  And then her mother was doing so much better than the doctors had expected, and she’d put the visits off even longer.  Eventually, the now’s-not-the-time’s and I-don’t-have-the-money-now’s turned into I’ll-make-a-visit-soon’s, and before she knew it, five years had gone by and she hadn’t been to visit her mother once.  Not even once, in five years.   Even though she knew her mother was dying; even though she knew she should be there with her – but then, her life was so busy, and money was tight, and she had her job to worry about, and her apartment  --  Allison sank down beside the bed, guilt boiling inside of her.  What kind of a daughter was she?

It was several moments before Allison’s guilt subsided enough that she remembered the point of her frantic search for the scrap of paper.  Even if November 5, 2003 was what the numbers meant, why would her mother’s date of diagnosis have been carved on a pot?  And even more baffling, why would a five-year-old boy break into her mother’s house to steal it?

Allison stood up, returned the yellow paper to her pocketbook and shoved her assorted belongings back into her purse. There were some strange things going on in this town, and she was determined to find out why.

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