There really were cats everywhere. Dottie's cats were as numerous as Maeve's ants. The house smelled like a giant litterbox, and from the look of things, the animals used it as one. Maeve had to hold her sleeve over her nose as she wandered through it, calling the old woman's name as loud as she dared. No one had seen Dottie in at least three weeks; Alan said he'd gone to check on her but gotten no response when he'd knocked, and just as they'd stood talking about whether or not to do something on a particularly chilly November evening, one of the upstairs windows of Dottie's house had suddenly blown out, showering little bits of glass onto the porch overhang below.
It was around six fifteen, and Maeve had called to her daughter, who'd stepped out the front door of their own house at the sound, to call the police. Cora had rushed inside to take care of that. But Alan had hurried the short distance to Dottie's and easily shoved in the front door. Now they were inside, Maeve having followed him, and it was clear the moment they'd entered that the cats hadn't been fed in a while. The scraggly creatures swarmed their legs, sharp-toothed mouths yowling in expectation, some rubbing up in the hope that kindness would feed them and others nipping angrily. Maeve almost backed out, but she didn't want to look like a coward. "Go on up," she told Alan. "I'll feed them." He listened to her advice, hurrying up the stairs. Dottie's house was one of the newer two-stories, too big for a single old woman but maybe not big enough for all the cats. Maeve found the kitchen, weaving through cat towers and trees and shredded scratching posts, which were more prevalent than furniture, it seemed. There were several large bags of cat food on the floor of the pantry, but they'd been ripped open and emptied. Having never had cats due to mild allergies, Maeve was unsure what exactly to give them, but she was about to lose it with the herd following her around, making it difficult to take a step without squishing a tail, causing her eyes to water and her nose to itch, so she grabbed some easy-open cans of soup and pulled back the tabs, sitting as many as she could on the floor. But there were so many cats and the cans were narrow, so after a moment, she frustratedly dumped the contents of a few more soups on the ground.
Enough space opened for her to slide out of the kitchen and hurry upstairs after Alan. She found him quickly, sitting in a bedroom, the old woman's upper body on his lap. He was talking to her as if she were a child, telling her it was all right, everything would be ok, and Maeve felt more like a nuisance or an intruder, so she stepped back out into the dark hall and pressed her back against the wall, waited, unsure what exactly she should do.
Had Dottie been lying there for days? For weeks, even? What a horrible notion, to be so incapacitated, to be so alone, nothing to do but wander the hallways of your own head.
Not that being up and walking guaranteed any sort of escape from such a nightmare. No, Maeve reflected, whether mobile or immobile, one was always alone. Human existence was, ultimately, absolutely lonely. One's mind was much like a too-big house, which no visitor would never entirely explore, and that, truly, was in the visitor's best interest. If only Maeve herself could keep some of her doors more tightly locked against her own prying.
The cats began making noise once again, having sated their appetites, and Maeve realized they probably didn't have water, either. So back down she went, dreading the animals, their smell, their twitchy eyes, their presumptuousness, as if she were there only to serve them. And it's where she was--in the kitchen, cleaning up and setting out proper food and water dishes and sneezing--when the police and medics arrived. She quickly directed them upstairs, and there was a to-do for about thirty minutes as she responded to their questions, as they carried the woman down on a gurney, as Alan followed and spoke with the police as well. When all was said and done, Maeve and Alan stood on the sidewalk outside Dottie's feline-filled house.
"She told you three days?"
"Said she'd just been sick, mostly, stayed in bed, then tried to get up and fell," Alan explained, his breath condensing around the both of them. "Took all her strength to throw that book out the window so we'd see it. Lucky we did, too."
Maeve sighed. "Those cats seemed more than three days' worth of hungry."
"Maybe she didn't feed them often." Alan laughed. "Good thing she kept her door closed or they might've started eating her."
Grimacing at the notion, Maeve turned. "Yeah, on that note, I'm going to check on Cora."
"Who's going to feed the cats while she's gone?"
"Not me. I don't give a damn if they eat each other." Maeve was already at her porch and heard Alan swear jokingly as he headed back to his own house--it was too cold to stand out there forever-- but she paused before opening her own front door, her eye catching something off about the porch swing, the way it was slowly moving back and forth, as if someone had been sitting on it and gotten up. No breeze was blowing . . . Maeve looked about, thought maybe she'd missed her daughter, but seeing nothing unusual just shrugged and went inside.
The minute she entered the house, Maeve shuddered. She was beginning to hate this place, though she couldn't entirely pinpoint why. The ant problem--well, that'd gone, sort of. At least, the literal aspect of them had gone, surely due to the cold weather. The ants weren't in her room anymore; they'd instead moved into her head. She dreamed of them everywhere, every time she closed her eyes. In fact, Maeve hadn't slept properly for days because of those nightmares. The insects seemed in her very skull, and even when she was awake, at work or driving or getting groceries, she'd see their movements, quick stringy shapes, at the corners of her eyes. But with or without the ants, the house was bothering her in other ways, in overall vibes. Cora had grown weird about being in her room all the time, and the basement was continually off-putting. She was annoyed by the cracking windows, too--by now, almost every window in the house had at least a hairline split in one of its corners. The cracks were threads, non-threatening, but they were worrisome. If the house were indeed shifting, when would that shifting stop? Maeve recalled horror stories she'd read of sinkholes swallowing up cars and on rare occasions entire buildings. Was there some cavernous danger beneath their new house, just waiting to suck them down?
She'd lived the past twenty years hovering over a chasm, a latent void, waiting only for one wrong move from her in order to wake and drag her into it--was it so odd to think the place she lived was becoming the physical manifestation of her own life of suspension?
"Mom, I need to talk to you," her daughter stated from the kitchen.
Maeve was drawn from her thoughts. Cora wanted to talk to her? That was something new. She walked in, switched on a light to brighten the dim room. "In case you wondered, Dottie is fine. She just had a fall."
"Yeah, I saw from the porch."
Cora was wrapped in a fuzzy black robe, slipper-socks on her feet. She looked pale. Maeve would call the doctor again, soon, insist on something else; the antibiotics didn't seem to be working. She sat down at the kitchen table. "All right. Talk. I'm going to be late for work, anyway--already called it in."
Leaning against the counter, the girl said, "A friend wants to come visit me."
Maeve waited for more, but Cora didn't add. "Okay . . . well, you're sick. So tell her no. Unless you just mean Brian--he's fine."
"No, it's not Brian."
The girl was hedging. "Who is it? Someone from school?"
"From my old school. From back home."
Maeve widened her eyes. She hadn't thought her daughter had any friends back home. Something sunk in, though. "She can't stay here, if that's what you're thinking. You've been too sick, Cora, and there's just too much going on."
"You mean with you and your hallucinations?"
"What? No! I mean with my work schedule, and you unable to go out--"
"Fine." Cora rolled her dark eyes. "I'll tell him he can't stay here."
"Him? It's a guy?"
"Yeah."
"Definitely can't stay here, then, especially because I won't be home, like, at all."
"I said fine, okay? It's fine!" Cora's tone didn't sound as if it were, and yet she'd given it up quicker than Maeve had thought she would. The girl spun and flew out of the kitchen.
"When does this person want to come?" Maeve called.
"Tomorrow!" Cora snarled before slamming herself into her bedroom.
Left at the table, Maeve inhaled a deep breath, pressed her palms against her forehead. It was too much, too ill-explained, too fast. But at least he'd have to find somewhere else to stay. A friend, though? And a boy? What was that about? She'd not worried about Cora in the relationships-and-sex department in a long time . . . should she worry?
Her mother had been right to worry about her, after all. Because after that ridiculous encounter with that man in the department store, she'd quickly gotten herself into trouble. He'd shown up within several days, at her school, parked across the street, watching the students pour out of the building after the last bell of the afternoon had rung. And that was just the first time she and Alyssa had noticed him; for all they knew, he'd been there every afternoon that week. Maeve had warned her friend that it could be a bad idea to talk to him, but Alyssa hadn't cared, and the two of them had crossed under falling leaves and sunshine and approached the car. He'd smiled, clearly for Maeve though Alyssa was the one that'd done all the talking, and she could still recall the tremors his attention sent through her.
Even now, if he walked through the door, all these years later, she knew she'd feel exactly the same, and that was why he was so dangerous.
Well, it hadn't taken long after that, had it? At eighteen, living with her sheltering parents, hardly any worldly knowledge beyond the skewed bits and pieces she'd learned secondhand from Alyssa and random films and magazines, Maeve had wholly melted under his presence.
But Cora was far more knowledgeable than she had been, far more assertive. Maeve was proud of the girl for that. Surely Cora would never find herself in a similar predicament. Still, it'd be a good idea to meet this person who wanted to see her daughter. Maybe Maeve could call in sick tomorrow, or find someone to cover for her. The old people would be fine without her for a day, right? Dottie had been fine lying on the floor for three days. Sure, it must've been uncomfortable, maybe kind of terrifying, but the woman was fine. She'd had enough energy to lob a book through the window, after all. Maeve suddenly wondered whether the cats would freeze with that broken window, then realized she didn't care. She had to get her act together; she was already pushing it staying late to speak with Cora. And as much as she'd rather have taken a hot shower, streamed a show, and had a glass of wine, the convenience store wouldn't run itself.