Olivia saw Lethe open her mouth as if calling out to her as she approached the front gate of home. The black cat probably had been, but Olivia had her wireless earbuds stuck into each ear, which were blocking out the sounds of the outside world with the top 50 hits on a music streaming app.
Olivia took the earbuds out of her ear as she bent down to rub Lethe under her chin. Mrrrow, was her response. She felt the sensation of fur brush and move against her feet. It was smooth, even a little glossy, with some rough ends. Where Lethe snuggled up against also felt warm.
Lethe was a stray that her neighbour Uncle George had looked after for the last 5 years. She came with a black coat of fur all over, save for its faded yellow eyes and a very tiny patch of white below its chin. Wasn’t there a saying that when it came to cats, they had to choose you, and not the other way round? This was definitely the case here. It began with her lounging in George’s front yard. Sprawled out, soaking up the sun, which reflected off her glossy black coat with a bright sheen. Endeared and captured by the sight, George would often leave food out for her, and even left a window open on the ground floor for Lethe to enter overnight. If she wanted to come in, of course.
Lethe for that matter was pragmatic as all cats were and did not decline George’s invitation over something as human as pride. She did not go over to her neighbour’s place unlike during her childhood, however at the dinner table, which George would come over every evening, the topic would one way or another drift to the Lethe.
After a couple days of co-existence, Uncle George decided to give the black cat a name, making him a new family member, giving her the name that everyone knew her as now.
Olivia’s legs began to ache from that squat she had been holding for a length of time that she lost track of. She stood up and opened the gate to the front yard of her house, leaving it open behind her instead of closing it again. Lethe let out a meow behind her, but did not follow her in. Instead she walked away towards the right, likely back into Uncle George’s front yard, which she called her own home.
After taking off at the front door the heels that she wore only to and from work, Olivia opened the door.
“I’m back.”
The aroma of chicken with herbs burst forth the moment she opened the door, as if she had opened the lid of a container that was about to vent.
“Welcome back.”
Mother was sitting in the couch in the main hall, leaning back into it, watching a drama series on the television and scrolling away on her phone at the same time.
Dinner was already spread out on the dining table. Cooked salmon pieces, seasoned generously with black pepper. A spread of greens; Olivia could never quite tell them apart, except for the ones that were easier to tell apart. Like the bell peppers. Olivia opened one of the pots. The aroma of chicken simmered with herbs burst out in a cloud of steam.
“Are we starting soon?” Olivia asked.
“I believe so, when Uncle George comes over.”
“What time is George coming?” Olivia asked.
“When he finishes work. I think he’s coming straight here after his shift ends.”
“Oh. He got a shift today? I thought he had the day off.”
“They couldn’t find anyone who was willing or able to work even a half-day shift on New Year’s Day.”
“Fair point.” Olivia covered the pot with the herbal chicken. She had decided to head upstairs for a shower first, before Uncle George came over.
Uncle George lived in the house next to Olivia and her family. Once upon a time, Uncle George had lived with Auntie Miranda, as well as their two sons, Kenny and Brendan. However, Auntie Miranda had passed on from advanced breast cancer which had been caught too late. Kenny and Brendan had also over the years grown up, and moved out of their childhood nest to start their own families.
Back when they were just young children, Olivia would heading over to spend her afternoons with Uncle George, Kenny, and Brendan, after school, while Mother went out to work. Mother’s work hours back then started early in the morning, and ended in the middle of the afternoon. But it was no time for Mother to rest, for right after she would be rushing home in the late afternoons to start preparing dinner for all of them.
On weekends, Kenny and Brendan would come over. They would stay all the way till dinner; Uncle George would come over then after enjoying the peace and quiet that had given him.
This got lesser as the children grew up and got busy with their own lives at their different schools, new social circles, and ambitions. The gatherings soon became limited to special occasions. Although, the two families would sometimes still go over to deliver food such as excess portions for dinner, and baked goods.
It was not long after George first took in Lethe that Brendan, the younger of his neighbours’ two sons, tied the knot with his partner and moved out of the house, no longer joining for dinner. Kenny followed suit after a couple of years. Olivia remembered attending both wedding banquets, but the first one with Brendan felt more memorable because he was born just a couple of months before Olivia herself. She had found herself thinking, with a trace of bitterness, that someone who was “like her”, meaning at the same age, had already found a forever partner. And here she was, watching someone her age already marking the day they found their “forever”.
Oh, and the invasive questions, from Uncle George, who had been in a really good mood that day, almost as if Auntie Miranda was still around. When will you be getting married? Are you seeing anyone? I saw someone at my workplace and I think he’s a good person. I can introduce them to you, if you like. You should get married and have children earlier rather than later. The chances of birth defects like autism and Down Syndrome increase the later you gestate. Those kind of topics. She would just nod away with the mindfulness of a bobblehead mounted on a car’s dashboard. If she had nothing good to say, it was better to just not say anything at all. They came from a different era after all, one where it was already possible to be planning for marriage at an age where students today would not even be done with their educational pathways. The questions became second nature – George didn’t press too much even if she gave halfhearted answers to those questions as well.
In her room, Olivia caught the whiff of faded scent of perfume and the odour – and germs – of an entire day at the office, clinging on to her. She stood in front of her open closet, looking at the rows of choices for her. Since it was a little bit of a special occasion, I should probably dress up a little bit, she told herself. She grabbed one of the more casual pieces from her usual ensemble that she wore on non-workdays – a light green mini dress this time, and headed into the shower.
Olivia stepped into the shower and allowed the warm water from the showerhead to run down her frame while she stood almost motionless for a couple of seconds. She stared at her own hand, which was wrapped around the tap after having just turned on the water flow. All that was in her head, was the feeling of water running down her body. The sound of water, in mini streams from the showerhead, spraying against her hair.
Then work popped into her head. Somehow, she was already thinking of the work that was piling up, each second that she was not looking at her email. Her mind played an assortment of scattered events that had happened throughout the day while at the office. The last minute meeting to wrap up the year, and to prepare for an end-of-project report. Right – had she sent the recap pointers for that meeting yet? And maybe she could even do up some of the pointers. Perhaps after dinner later. So she could just walk in to the office on Monday, and fill in the relevant details. She pressed on the soap dispenser, squeezing the soap out into the other, and lathered it all over herself. rself.
Mother was still in the couch when Olivia came down the stairs in a light green mini dress, patting her hair dry with a light pink bath towel.
“Could you call George to tell him that he can come over for dinner now?”
“Okay, ma.”
Olivia headed to the house phone with the damp bath towel draped around her shoulders and dialled the number for George’s house just next door. She heard the tone pulsing as the phone on the other end rang. Once. And again. And again. And again. It repeated over and over until Olivia replaced the handset.
“He isn’t home.”
“He didn’t pick up? Maybe he had to work overtime.”
“I’ll call again later.”
Olivia sat down on the other end of the couch with Mother, watching the show on TV together. The people on the screen were engaged in a match of midnight tug-of-war, heaving as they pulled on both ends on a rope on a platform in the middle of a sea of dark. The camera would periodically close in on the beads of sweat running down their faces, their grimacing expressions, then pan out for an overview shot of the entire match.
It appeared to be a battle royale, a survival of the fittest thing. Olivia looked up at the clock once the match had been decided by one of the teams being pulled with the rope off the platform into the abyss that surrounded the arena.
“I think I’ll call now.”
Olivia dialled the number for next door again. Same thing, the dial tone pulses to no avail until she hung up.
Was George out or something? Olivia stepped out of the house, into her front yard. No – someone was home. The lights in the front yard were off, but on the second floor of George’s house, in one of the rooms, there was a pale white glow, from a fluorescent light fixture approaching the end of its lifespan. It looked barely enough to even light up Olivia’s room to a comfortable level.
Since she had already stepped out of the house Olivia thought she might as well just ring Uncle George’s doorbell. She pressed on the electronic bell, and vaguely heard a synthetic, electronic bell chime from inside the house.
Olivia waited for some time. Without her phone on her, she wasn’t sure exactly how long it was. Probably just a couple of seconds. A minute? She rang the bell again.
She was about to turn and leave when she felt something furry brush between her legs. She leapt up slightly with a start before realising that it was simply Lethe.
“Lethe! What are you doing out here? Isn’t it late?”
Lethe meowed back. And again. Two meows, back to back, almost connected.
“Can you go and tell George it’s dinnertime?”
Another meow. Then Lethe hopped through a door carved into the cage, meant only for cats to pass through, still meowing from behind the gate.
Huh, Olivia thought. She could have sworn Lethe had understood her at that point. She returned into the house.
“Is George coming over?” Olivia’s mother asked.
“I don’t know. He didn’t answer, but he’s definitely at home,” said Olivia. “His room light is on.”
“That’s strange. Usually he hears the phone even from upstairs. Anyway, go grab dinner. I’ll try to call him on his phone also.”
“It’s okay, I can wait and then we eat together.”
“Okay, then.”
Olivia sat back down in the couch, continuing with the TV show. Mother was scrolling on her phone, and once or twice raised it to her ear.
“He’s taking a while to answer, isn’t he?”
“Should I go check on him?” Olivia asked.
Mother remained quiet as if considering.
“I can just go now.”
“You sure about that? You just went. I can go instead.”
“Never mind, it’s okay.”
Olivia stepped out of the house again. When was it this dark? She could have sworn the sky was still a light orange just a couple of moment earlier. The sun had somehow plunged into the horizons in just a few short minutes. She stopped outside the gate again, and this time reached inside to feel for the latch.
Uncle George usually did not have a habit of locking the gate to his compound when he was home even when he turned in for the night, only electing to lock the front door.
The latch had already been slid into the open position. It was most likely the fact that someone was home. Olivia pushed the gate open and went up to the door.
As Olivia opened the door without ringing the bell or even knocking, she remembered when a time where she could casually stroll into the house after finishing her school day.
It was the same couch, the same red-rose print upholstery, the same wooden coffee table from before. The living room was frozen in the same moment where she had last been in here from when she was a child, about 20 years ago, except that people no longer surrounded the table.
“Uncle George?”
As she walked through the living room on the ground floor, she heard water sloshing upstairs. Seems George was taking a shower. No wonder he wasn’t answering his phone.
Still, it did feel just a little too long. Sometimes Uncle George would take a shower in the middle of the day; Olivia couldn’t remember Uncle George as one who took long ones. Olivia walked up the stairs and stopped outside the bathroom.
“Uncle George! Come over for dinner! The food is already getting cold!”
Her voice, to herself, seemed to be getting swallowed up by the walls of the house. There was no reply from inside the bathroom.
“Uncle George?”
Was he ever hard of hearing? She didn’t know – or recall this. Mother had never said anything, and Olivia didn’t feel like she had to really raise her volume at conversations with Uncle George at the table as well.
From behind the bathroom door, the sounds of running water continued.
Wait – no, something was amiss. She hadn’t heard anything else aside from the constant stream of water inside.
“Uncle George?” Olivia knocked on the door with her knuckles. “Are you in there?”
She tried the doorknob, which turned in her hand. The door wavered as Olivia contemplated for a few moments before she made her decision to open it all the way.
Condensation had accumulated on the walls of the shower cubicle, obscuring Olivia’s view so that all she could see through the glass wall was the figure lying on the ground, motionless.
Water from the showerhead continued to pour down.
***
On her way home from work one night, Olivia saw light emanating from the upper floors of the short two-storey house situated beside her own. These lights were a much brighter – and harsher white, than what she remembered.
As she reached the gate to her own home, she saw Lethe sitting outside, and meowed at her. She meowed a single meow in response, and snuggled up to Olivia as she squatted down to pet Lethe, feeling the sensation of fur brushing against her calves.
Perhaps it was her imagination, but it felt coarser than she remembered.
A few days later after that night, Mother and Olivia had searched for someone who could install a cat door on their front door, so Lethe could come in about out freely. This was after Kenny and Brendan had informed Olivia and Mother that they intended to sell Uncle George’s home to a new owner; they also decided then that it was better for Olivia and Mother to adopt Lethe.
Some days Lethe would be in Olivia’s yard; some days she would be basking on the high wall between Olivia’s home and their former neighbour’s place. On many days she was nowhere to be seen; resuming her vagrant lifestyle from before she had selected her forever home. Although they had gone to the expense of installing a cat door, a camera on the front porch showed that it had never been used even a single time.
After all, they had adopted Lethe, and not the other way round, as was the way with most cats.
Olivia gave Lethe one final stroke on her head, before she stood up and headed into her own house to wash off and forget some of the fatigue from the day for just a little.
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