Fiona called, “Roscoe!” Quietly, like she was afraid of the answer.
Yale went to the kitchen and checked the litter box, which had indeed been used, but not as much as you’d hope. Roscoe had a double plastic bowl—food on one side, water on the other—and both halves were empty. Yale had refilled it himself the morning he left—intentionally overfilled the food side, a mountain of Meow Mix, enough to last a while. The water was the bigger issue. Yale said, “Roscoe?” He ran the faucet to see if the sound might attract him. He looked behind the garbage can, in the cupboards, beside the refrigerator. Fiona was calling still, moving through the apartment. “The toilet’s open,” she called, and Yale understood she meant the cat had a water source if it was smart enough, if it had good balance.
There were bottles of pills lined up along the kitchen windows. Painkillers, vitamins, more vitamins, old antibiotics. All half full (he shook a few), all useless. He could grab them for Julian maybe. Or himself. A spider plant wilted on the counter in a little blue pot, and Yale held it under the tap, soaked the soil. Why not.
He looked behind the garbage again. In the garbage. Out on the fire escape.
Fiona was in the doorway, her face red and wet.
In her arms she held what looked like a deflated stuffed animal. A fur pelt. Roadkill.
“He’s still breathing,” she said. “I think.”
* * *
—
In the waiting room at the vet, Yale paged through an old Life magazine with a feature on the Mafia. Fiona held a ball of Kleenex in her lap, and although she’d stopped crying she still had the hiccups, and every few minutes she heaved a single sob, leaned forward into the tissues. They’d given Roscoe a kitty IV, and the vet had promised he’d update them soon. He had so clearly considered them a couple, Yale and Fiona. He’d directed every question at both of them, even after Fiona made it clear that Roscoe was her brother’s cat. She’d told a short version of the story, said her brother had died and the cat had been neglected. “You did the right thing,” he said to both of them.
Around them in the waiting room, dogs strained against leashes and the slickness of the tile floor. A cat paced circles in its carrier. Fiona said, “So last week, I went to get a massage. And the woman goes, ‘Were you in a car accident?’” She did a Russian accent for the woman. “And I’m like, ‘No, I’m just really stressed right now.’ So like five minutes later she goes, ‘But maybe a long time ago? A car accident?’ Feel.” She put Yale’s hand on the back of her neck, and he pressed into what he’d already guessed to be muscle as hard as marble.
He said, “That’s not good.”
“And I’m like, I have honestly never even been in a fender bender. And she goes, ‘Yes, but sometimes we forget.’”
Something about her delivery, the Russian baba wisdom of it, cracked Yale up. Or maybe it was the fact that he’d felt like this himself all month, like someone had injected cement into his deltoids and locked him in a meat freezer.
An assistant came out and told them Roscoe was doing well, and they exhaled as if he were their child.
Yale would take the cat, if it survived. Obviously. How could he ask Fiona, of all people, to worry about one more thing? He told her he’d figure it out, and she nodded slowly, already somewhere else, her head framed by an informational poster about feline leukemia. Her skin was dry and tight; she was too thin. He was about to ask if she was taking care of herself, if she was thinking about going back to school next year, if it wasn’t maybe time for a break—but then she looked at him and said, “What if you went to Dr. Cheng?” Dr. Cheng had been Nico’s doctor, and during the couple of weeks last summer when Nico was allowed to be at home, he’d visited every day to check in. He’d shown up once when Yale and Charlie were there, and ordered and paid for a pizza—not for himself or for Nico, who couldn’t hold down food, but for Yale and Charlie, who’d been there all afternoon. “Just to get his advice,” she said. “It’d be better than some helpline. I can call him. He loves me, I don’t know why. I could get you in today. I really could.”
Yale had the instinct to stop her, to tell her she wasn’t allowed to take care of him, too, that she couldn’t do that to herself. If she called Dr. Cheng, was it the start of something? Would she be the one changing his bedpans in the end? But he was already agreeing, because the thought of Dr. Cheng, of his slow voice, was so overwhelmingly comforting.
* * *
—
Fiona called right from the vet reception desk, and when they left an hour later—Roscoe would need to remain on the IV at least overnight—it was to walk to Dr. Cheng’s office on George Street. Yale chastised himself for letting Fiona escort him there, for letting her get further embroiled in everything. She should be home, taking a nap. Eating something. But she must have felt she’d failed Nico today, failed Terrence. She’d cried into the cat’s fur the whole way to the vet. Was it so bad to let her do right by him?
Dr. Cheng’s office was in what used to be a house. Incense in the waiting room, a nurse who came around the desk to give Fiona an enormous hug. There was no one else there, thank God, no hollow-eyed stranger sitting like the ghost of Yale’s own future, no acquaintance with whom he’d have to make small talk.
“It’s a day for waiting rooms,” Yale said.
Fiona said, “Better magazines here.” On the coffee table sat a stack of old Esquires. He had forms to fill out, though: family history, medications, surgeries.
He said, “You don’t have to wait.”
“I want to say hi to Dr. Cheng. If I go back home, I have to watch the kids. Trust me, this is vacation.” She must have been lying. She’d probably passed some of the worst moments of her life in the same worn green armchair she was sinking into right now.
Yale said, “I’ll let you stay if you promise something.”
Fiona’s look was a cross between wary and indulgent.
“What are you doing for yourself these days? What’s your plan for next year? You’re twenty-one. You’re smart. Don’t you think that now—don’t you want to go to college?”
“You mean now that Nico’s gone.”
“Well—yeah. And Terrence. Here’s what I don’t want. I don’t want you to adopt me next, and then whoever else gets sick, and then the next guy, and before you know it you’re fifty and you’re living in a ghost town surrounded by all our old clothes and books.”
“I won’t adopt the next person. Just you. Nico loved you, and you were so nice to me when I was a kid. Do you remember when you walked me through the Art Institute?”