I had the day off and spent it camping with Tracy, her dad, sister and brother-in-law. It was the first day I had spent both sober and out of the apartment in years. We found a stream and followed it, holding hands and spotting deer, snakes, fish and even a bobcat. Lost in conversation, laughter and each other, we walked a couple of miles without even realizing it. We stopped at a spot where the stream opened to a large pool resting at the bottom of a small quarry. We spent a couple of hours making small sculptures in the mud before returning to the campsite.

Tracy's dad looked us up and down. I was wearing blue jeans, sandals, a black t-shirt and a green flannel. I was covered with mud. Tracy was wearing a dark green dress and was barefoot. She was covered with mud.

"So, what have you two been doing out there all this time?"

Tracy giggled, "Oh God. Shut up, you freak!"

I laughed nervously but relaxed when I realized Tracy's dad really didn't care what we had been doing. This was my kind of family.

Everyone else had started cooking before we returned and we ate hot dogs and sat around the fire singing Beatles songs while Tracy's dad played the guitar, finishing with the "Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill." Tracy's dad put down the guitar.

"So, Tracy tells me you work at the Phillips there next to the police station."

"Oh, yeah," I wondered if I was being interviewed, "I'm going to be starting college in the fall."

"You know just this past winter, I had an accident out front there."

This was interesting. Tracy hadn't said anything about it, "Oh really?"

"Oh yeah. Some woman pulled out in front of me on my motorcycle. I'd just started going from that stop at the intersection there so I wasn't going too fast, luckily."

"Holy shit, that was you?!"

"Yeah, that was me. You were there?"

"Yeah." It figured. That damn hick's mother had almost killed Tracy's dad. The world had such a sick sense of balance to it. I shivered and hoped this wouldn't induce some sort of acid flashback.

"So what're you studying in college?"

At that moment, my choice had become crystal clear, "I think philosophy."

We all talked into the night until the air chilled and the fire died. Tracy's sister and brother-in-law retired to one tent, her dad to another and we had one of our own. Years of lying in bed for hours, tossing and turning, or passing out instantly in a pool of my own vomit melted away as I easily slipped into unconsciousness warmed by a cocoon of our combined body heat.

The next morning I awoke to the feel of the cool, damp air and the scent of Tracy next to me. I was struck by how natural it all felt. We were both still covered with mud and dried perspiration, but I felt cleaner than ever before. It seemed like I'd known this girl all my life, like a piece of my broken soul had been returned in the night.

I had to work that day, so Tracy drove me home. We had the White Album going at full volume, singing along loudly. We both knew every word, every accent and every staccato.

I walked into the building, my head swimming with clarity. It was like an opiate high without the distance from the outside world. And just as quickly, with the sound of the Probe fading into the distance, a melancholy came over me. Many things were changing rapidly after years of stasis. I knew, somehow, I'd be leaving this apartment soon. In some ways, that brought me relief, in others it left me saddened. In truth, I'd always felt more like I had abandoned my mother as a child to stay in the more stable comfort of my grandparents' home. Now, I would be abandoning her again and this time she would be alone. This led to another complication.

I unlocked the door and swung it open energetically. There was a thump as it hit something. I cringed, knowing what it was. Sung had quickly lost a tremendous amount of weight and was nothing more than a skeleton now. She would move from spot to spot, half-sitting and half-standing in discomfort. At some point, she moved to a spot near the door - perhaps waiting for someone to come home. I rushed inside to see if I'd hurt her. She appeared to be uninjured.

She was fading quickly. She could barely lift her head. It was too heart-wrenching to bear. Sung was eighteen years old. I almost couldn't remember a time when she wasn't around. She'd survived two stepfathers, countless gerbils, a handful of fish and an opiate addiction. All I could do was helplessly watch her slip away.

Guiltily, I got myself cleaned up and headed to work. Aaron was sitting at the side of the desk with the "Thousand Yard Stare" everyone who worked with Toad acquired. He was a tall kid, almost as thin as I was, with long, black hair. People often confused us for one another and we called each other our "Evil Twin."

"Hey dude, how's it going today?"

He glared at Toad, who was talking in hushed tones on the pay-phone, and rolled his eyes.

I sat down on the safe, feeling a tension in the room. Aaron and I sat in silence while Toad alternated between long pauses of compulsive rubber straw sucking and low-volume emotional bursts. Suddenly, Toad slammed the phone onto the receiver. His face was red and his eyes watery.

"It just isn't fair."

Aaron knew better than to ask, but I was always fascinated by the bizarre, "What's up, dude?"

"Sally and I have been fighting." Shaking, he took another draw from his vodka and Mountain Dew mixture, "Now she's dragging Kacey Bleau into it. I was supposed to take him to get his hair cut this weekend."

Incredible. Kacey Bleau was Toad and Sally's dog. Evidently, he was now being used as a helpless pawn in the continuing battle that was their marriage.

Maybe I should warn Toad that Kacey Bleau is in danger of becoming a morphine addict if he doesn't get some counseling or at least some semblance of stability in his life.

I knew Toad was taking all of this completely seriously. I had worked with him long enough that I had controlled my initial instincts to laugh out loud at such situations and to instead feign genuine concern.

"So, what happened?"

"She went and took him to Pet Mart during lunch."

"Man. How could she do that?"

Aaron watched in fascination, probably frightened that I seemed to actually be as serious as Toad about the situation.

"I don't know, Darren. I try to work things out rationally..."

My mind strained to imagine such a thing.

"But she goes and pulls shit like this."

Toad was visibly shaking. He jaunted to the men's room and closed the door. I had his island that night, so I went ahead and did the shift-change so he could go home and work out his family issues - and leave Aaron and I with some sense of sanity.

We watched, laughing, as Toad sped off, sucking on his rubber straw with chunks of rusted blue metal falling off the Death Trap which still proudly displayed the "Watch That Child!" bumper sticker.

After work, I hung out with Tracy only an hour or so. I had to see her, but still felt I needed to go home for a little grounding. I also knew Sung would be dying any day. I returned to the apartment and planted myself on the couch and watched whatever garbage the television decided to feed me. I helped Sung up onto the couch with me, but she didn't stay there with me long. It was too uncomfortable for her in her usual position nestled between the fold of my bent leg.

My mom got home and put her things away and started some soup in the kitchen. She burst out in tears. I went in and held her.

"She's dying, Darren."

"I know."

The next morning my mother awoke me in tears. She had been awake all night with Sung. She passed away a few minutes before.

❖

I sat in Toad's chair at work, in dazed silence after having smoked a joint with Roy. Josh stopped by and was getting on my nerves a bit, as he was doing nothing but hanging out in the back room snorting coke. Just the image of the black Ford Probe pulling into the lot lifted my spirits. I had talked to Tracy earlier on the phone, so she knew what was going on. She came inside and hugged me, then sat down on the desk next to me.

"I feel like shit. I grew up with that cat. My mom's a mess."

I expected the usual, "It'll be okay... it's a part of life... blah... blah" speech. What I got instead took me completely by surprise. It was like the Theory of Relativity. After reading it, one can only think, "Of course. This is so simple, so obvious. How could I have not seen this?"

"You should go to the shelter and get your mom another cat from there. That way Sung's death will have some meaning. She'll have saved the life of another cat."

I looked into her big brown eyes and an explosion of emotions bursted in my head. The cacophony finally congealed into a single thought, "I don't deserve you."

I convinced Josh to cover my shift while Tracy took me to the animal shelter. He was so hopped up on coke, he would have lifted a dump truck if I'd asked. As Tracy and I pulled in, a scrawny farmer-looking guy was walking in with his son. He was carrying a small, incessantly meowing kitten. Having grown up with cats, I knew it was starving, or at least thought it was. I stared at him and he glanced back at me. Then glanced again, noticing I was still watching.

"Want a cat?"

"Yeah!"

He handed the kitten to me, "There ya go." It was a female tabby - gray with black stripes and a black "M" shape on her forehead.

And that's how my mother got Mathilda.

Posted by DevilMonkey at 9:22 PM

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