Stone Field, True Arrow Page 2

  As she goes to Yuko’s car and sits down, Maya pictures the garage where her father painted. In the winter, he sectioned off an area about twelve by fifteen feet with sheets of canvas hung all the way from the ceiling to the floor. Standing in this cocoon of white cloth, with a kerosene heater to take off the chill, he worked for hours while Maya tried her drawings or sat on a stool, listening to his stories. The bright overhead lights made the cloth around them glow like a tent of skin. Maya daydreamed that she and her father were the last two people in a long-lost nomadic tribe in a desert. Using oils and beeswax on the canvases and linens he’d stretched, he painted swirls of white light overlapping with blurred squares of rust and beige, thin strokes of green or plum like mirages in the distance. A child in Osaka, she had never known any climate except the humid, warm summers, the mild winters, and the gradual changes of temperatures and colors in between. All the same, if the past were a place she could go back to, that’s where she longs to be: painting with her father in the desert of their imagination, inside the skin of light.

  2

  On the loom in Maya’s studio, five shades of blue travel across the length of plain warp, growing darker like water leaving the shore. On the finished jacket, the colors will move in slow gradations from left to right, starting with pale blue and ending with petal pink. In between, the shades of blue, violet, purple, lavender, mauve, and rose will shift so gradually that the eye will follow along, scarcely noticing the change. The effect she wants is a small surprise—toward the middle of the jacket, somewhere over the heart, the blue will stop and the pink begin, but no one will be able to pinpoint the exact border between the two. She winds the next shade of blue around her shuttle and weaves another inch before loosening the tension. She will come back after supper to work, stay the night, and continue in the morning before she goes downstairs to open the boutique. It’s the last week of November. A month has passed since her father’s death.

  The skeins for the rest of the jacket are arranged on a table by the wall, each one hand-dyed and spun last winter when business was slow and Maya could do her own work while tending to her customers. The wool is from the white sheep that belongs to her boss, Peg, who lives on the other side of the ten-acre property and keeps two sheep in a toolshed-sized barn her husband, Larry, built from a kit. The cornfields surrounding the buildings belong to Peg and Larry, but they’re city people; they rent out the fields to the farmer down the road. Larry owns a construction company, Peg used to be a nurse. Twelve years ago, Peg quit her job at the hospital and converted the big barn into a boutique with a weaving studio upstairs for herself. But Larry didn’t like her driving across their property at night to weave. “Why do you want to get away from me?” he complained. He turned one of the spare bedrooms into a workroom for Peg, leaving the loft empty until three and a half years ago, when Maya was about to move to Jeff’s. She’d been living alone in an efficiency on the lower east side, in a room mostly taken up by her loom, spinning wheel, sewing machine, and worktable. She had considered keeping the place for her weaving but couldn’t afford to. “You can have the loft for free,” Peg said. “Consider it your fringe benefit. I’ve been thinking I don’t pay you enough.”

  The loft looks exactly like her old efficiency: her loom and spinning wheel by the windows to the west; her worktable and sewing machine against one wall; yarn, beads, and other supplies on shelves above the couch against another wall; the kitchen and the bathroom off to the left. It has everything she owns except for her clothes and dresser. She has spare clothes in the closet and the kind of single-person food she used to eat—yogurt, salad, apples—in the dormitory refrigerator. It’s as though, when she married, she put half her life inside a tent and moved it to this countryside. Turning off the light and heading down the stairs, she feels like a person making a temporary trip into town.

  At the counter in the boutique, Maya picks up the phone and dials her number at home. The machine comes on after one ring. Jeff doesn’t answer between five and eight, the hours when telemarketers call. His recorded voice identifies the number and asks the caller to leave a message. “Hi, it’s me,” she says. “No need to pick up. I’m on my way. I know it’s my turn to cook but I’m late. I still have to stop for groceries.”

  Outside in the dark, a few flurries are coming down on the highway. When a streak of white flashes across her headlights, she realizes, too late, that an animal has dashed out of the ditch into her path. There’s no time to veer. She has never hit anything in her eighteen years of driving. Holding the wheel straight, she slams on the brakes and hears them screech. She stumbles out of the car, not really wanting to see, and finds a white kitten crouched on the asphalt an inch from her front wheel. He is half the size of her shoe.

  Far behind her, where the highway crests up a low hill, she can see the headlights of the cars approaching them. They are still a mile away, but Maya has an awful vision of the kitten dashing across the road just as those cars are coming down the hill. She kneels a few steps from him. He raises his head slightly and fixes her with his blue eyes. His fur is completely white; he wears no collar.

  “Come on,” Maya coaxes. “You can’t stay here. Someone else is going to hit you.”

  The kitten arches his back and stretches; then he saunters over to her, pushes his face hard against her ankle, and begins to rub his forehead back and forth. After ten seconds, he lies down on his back at her feet and rolls to the side, showing her his belly. The skin under the white hair is smooth and pink. She reaches down and picks him up. He is small enough to fit into her hand, but the noise he is making is unmistakable: he is purring. The kitten doesn’t flinch when several cars speed by in the left lane, honking. More cars come and swerve around them. Maya has left her dark blue car in the middle of the right lane without the hazard lights. She watches the traffic flow away around her. It’s a minor miracle. Any of the cars could have hit the Civic and pushed it forward, rolling its front end over her as she stood holding a stray animal on the highway. No more cars in sight, she walks around to the passenger side and opens the door. She places her shawl on the seat, rolled up into a makeshift nest. Then she puts the kitten in its center, closes the door, and jogs around her car to the driver’s side.

  The kitten doesn’t do what she feared—run around the car in panic, trying to get under the dash. He curls up on her shawl, with his paws tucked under his chin. Halfway into town, she realizes that he is sleeping. Maybe he is too sick to do anything else. But he might be like Yuko, whose response to stress has always been to fall asleep. “Imagine,” she says to the sleeping cat. “If you were a person, I’d be spending the next fifteen years waking you up to go take an exam, dress for a date, greet your parents when they visit, even get ready for your own wedding.” She pictures Yuko sitting by the sunny window of the upstairs room at the Unitarian Church where she and Dan were married. Yuko kept dozing off while Maya combed and braided her hair, pinning the braids up to form a shiny black crown. “I hope no one cries,” Yuko said, waking up with a start. “That would make me feel so weird, to have people crying.” Later, at the reception, when her new in-laws tapped their coffee cups with their spoons and the tinkling noise filled the room, Yuko stood up alone and waited till everyone quieted down. Then she motioned for Dan to stand up. Before she kissed him, she cleared her throat and announced in her strong, low voice, “This is the one and only time. After this, no more kisses on demand.” Maya smooths the kitten’s fur with her fingers. “You’ll meet my friend Yuko,” she tells him. “I’m going to let her name you.”

  * * *

  As she pushes open the front door, holding the kitten, Maya remembers she was supposed to stop for groceries. Jeff is sitting in his armchair by the window in the living room, grading essays. There are folders and books everywhere—stacked up on the coffee table, scattered over the hardwood floor, propped against the window ledge. A high school English teacher with five classes every day, he has a complicated system of keeping things separated
. The room is full of breakable objects: the porcelain bud vase on the coffee table, the crystals on the low shelves, the ceramic and tile coasters, none of them hers. The kitten’s claws will scratch the hardwood floor Jeff sanded and refinished all by himself. He lived here for eleven years, the first nine with his former wife, before Yuko’s husband, Dan, introduced him to Maya. All the knickknacks are his. Unless the cat is sick, it won’t be long before he starts knocking them down. Just last week, Peg’s cat Caliban swiped five coffee mugs off the counter and shattered them in the middle of the night. Peg and Larry laughed about it, but Jeff won’t find much humor in broken cups. He is staring at her, his gray eyes squinted behind his new reading glasses.

  “I found a cat on the highway.” Maya tilts her arm so Jeff can get a better look from across the room. Wide awake now, the kitten sits up in the crook of her elbow. She cups her hand around his head and feels his throat vibrate. “I’ll still go grocery shopping, but I’d better get him settled first.”

  “Maya, I don’t know.” Jeff hasn’t moved from the armchair. She stops in the middle of the room.

  “I almost killed him with my car. My front tire was an inch from his head. I couldn’t just walk away. I’m going to keep him. I’ll be responsible so you won’t have to do anything. As far as you’re concerned, it’ll be like we don’t even have him.”

  He sighs, gets up, and walks toward her. “You can keep him overnight. After supper, we should talk about what to do. I’m not sure about keeping him, but we don’t have to decide now.”

  “I’m not taking him to the humane shelter.” Maya feels her voice rise. “They euthanize a dozen kittens every week.” She’s about to explain how Yuko’s mother volunteered at the shelter in Minneapolis once and had to quit because it was too depressing. But she doesn’t get to talk anymore. When Jeff is two steps away, the kitten wriggles out of her arm and leaps into the air. Jeff puts his hand out and the kitten lands on his wrist, wraps his legs around his forearm, and bites down.

  “Jesus Christ!” Jeff yells. He shakes his arm, but the cat clings on, his little legs curled tight as he hangs upside down.

  “Hey, take it easy,” Maya cautions. “You’ll hurt him.”

  “He’s hurting me.” The next moment, Jeff is throwing the kitten across the room. The kitten lands on the floor by the couch; it’s not a myth that they always land on their feet. As soon as Maya kneels down next to him, he jumps up on her shoulder and clings to her, pushing his face into her neck as if he wanted to burrow under her skin. She is sure the guttural noise coming from his throat is vibrating in her own. He’s hissing, spitting, and growling, but not at her.

  “Jesus.” Jeff groans. “We can’t have that thing in the house. He’s a wild animal.”

  “He’s not.” Maya stands up with the kitten on her shoulder, where he perches like a bird and continues to hiss and growl at Jeff. “You scared him. No wonder he bit you.”

  Jeff holds his arm out toward her. “Look at this and tell me who scared who.” There are red marks several inches long and blood is coming out, but the cuts don’t look too deep. “How do you know he’s not rabid?”

  “A cat this young isn’t going to have rabies and live long enough to pass it on.” She doesn’t know this for a fact, but it sounds good—like it might be true. The kitten stops hissing and taps her face with his paw; with his claws retracted, the bottom of his paw is soft and cool. He rubs his head against her cheek. “If you don’t want to share your house with a cat who has nowhere to go,” she says to Jeff, “that’s your problem. But he’s mine. I don’t care what you think.” Lifting the kitten off her shoulder and cradling him in her arm, she runs out the door to her car.

  She’s left her shawl on the passenger seat. The kitten lies on his side, his legs pumping. He’s biting the fringes and scratching the fabric, his mouth open as if in a big grin. He’s not sick at all, he’s having a good time.

  “You’re trouble,” Maya says, as she backs her car out of the driveway. “You’re lucky I’m a weaver. I didn’t buy that shawl, and I can make another one if I want to.” She’s going to have to cat-proof her loft, because that’s where he’s going to have to live. Peg can show her what to do to protect her loom.

  At Peg and Larry’s house, Maya leaves the kitten in the car and knocks on the door. She steps inside the kitchen, where Larry is doing the supper dishes. Their three cats are sitting under the table. Peg comes downstairs, dressed in a blue sweatshirt and jeans, her long silver hair braided down her back. Tall and straight-backed, she is a strong-looking woman with a kindly face. “Have a seat,” she says.

  “Thanks, but I can’t stay. I have a bit of an emergency.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I found a kitten on the highway. He’s out in the car now. I don’t think he’s hurt or sick, but he bit Jeff and drew blood. So he’s not going to be allowed to live at our house.”

  Larry is drying his hands on a dish towel. There’s a tattoo of a plant that starts near his wrist and winds up his arm, disappearing under his T-shirt, but it’s faded. Maya has never been able to figure out if it’s a grapevine or a marijuana plant. He got it when he was a young man, decades before it was fashionable to have tattoos. “When we went to get Ms. Bronze at the breeder’s,” he says, indicating their Siamese cat by jutting his chin toward her, “her mother bit my ankle and wouldn’t let go. She was worse than a snapping turtle. I was bleeding through my sock. But Ms. Bronze turned out all right. She’s more docile than Caliban or Pip.”

  “I’m sure this kitten will turn out fine too, but he needs a place to live. I came to ask you if I could keep him in the loft. I’ll make sure he doesn’t come down and attack the customers.”

  “Of course,” Peg says. “Maybe he’ll mellow out in a few weeks, and then he can come down to the store. A store mascot is just what we need. Are you going to take him to the loft now?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did you feed him?”

  “No. He’s so small. Would he eat cat food?”

  “He has teeth, right?” Peg asks.

  “Yeah. Pretty good ones. I saw them in action.”

  Peg laughs. “I’ll get you cat food and a litter box. In the morning, you ought to take him to the vet to make sure everything’s all right. They’ll give you some special food for kittens. But what I’ve got is good enough for tonight.”

  When they go out to the car, the kitten is sitting on Maya’s shawl. As soon as Peg leans down to look at him through the passenger window, he rears up on his hind legs, puts his paws on the upholstery, and opens his mouth. His hair puffed up, he’s hissing at Peg through the glass.

  “I’m sorry,” Maya says. “He’s an embarrassment.”

  “He’s a spunky guy. What are you going to name him?”

  “I don’t know. I’m going to ask Yuko to name him.”

  “Why?”

  “I named all her pets when we were kids. My mother wouldn’t let me have a dog or a cat because she and my stepfather were too busy working. Yuko and her brothers had a dog, a parakeet, an iguana, and a bunch of rats and guinea pigs, and she didn’t complain when I named the rats after my favorite candy bars. Snickers, Carmello, Hershey, and most ridiculous of all, Kit Kat.”

  Peg laughs. “You and Yuko go back a long way.”

  “Fourth grade. Her dad and my mother taught at the same college, and the Nakashimas lived two blocks away from us. Yuko and I went to the same grade school.” Maya remembers walking into Miss Larson’s fourth-grade class in the middle of the semester and seeing Yuko raise her hand. “That girl’s my cousin from Japan. I’m going to sit next to her.” Yuko’s mother had told her to be on the lookout for Maya and be friendly toward her, though perhaps this wasn’t exactly what Mrs. Nakashima had in mind. Maya sat down next to this tall girl with her big frank smile and knew they would be friends for life. “It was the friendship version of love at first sight,” they always tell people. “There couldn’t be any other best friend.”

>   Peg puts the cat food and the litter box in the trunk. “Good luck. Let me know if you need anything else.”

  Maya thanks her and drives down the dirt road that leads through the cornfields toward the barn.

  * * *

  The kitten eats the food Maya has put in a bowl, drinks some water, and jumps on the couch. Curled up on the blanket, he closes his eyes and falls asleep as if he has always lived in this loft. Maya goes downstairs and calls Jeff.

  “How’s your arm?” she asks him. “I’m sorry if I sounded indifferent about it.”

  “My arm’s all right,” he answers. “I’m not going to need stitches or anything. Maybe I overreacted a little.”

  “The kitten drank water, so he must not have rabies.”

  “Oh, I never really thought he was rabid.”

  “I was afraid you were going to have his head cut off.”

  “I would never do that.”

  “I’m going to keep him here at the loft. It’s all right with Peg and Larry. I don’t know why I didn’t think of that in the first place.”

  Jeff sighs. “If you really want to bring him home, we can talk about it.” His voice sounds tired and resigned. If she insisted, he might give in. But Maya thinks of the day she found out about her father’s death. She and Yuko drove to the lake and sat on the bluff to watch the hawks migrating south on the stiff north wind; then they stopped for coffee, for dinner, for some mindless movie in a multiplex on the north side of town. It didn’t matter what they did. They didn’t talk about her father’s death after the first half hour, but Yuko was there with her and that was what counted. Maya couldn’t imagine wanting to be with anyone else that evening. When she came home at eleven, she felt calm enough. “I found out that my father died,” she told Jeff. “But it’s all right. He’s been gone a long time anyway.” “Look,” Jeff said before they went to bed. “If you ever want to talk about it, you can, with me. If something comes to your mind in the middle of the night, you can wake me up and tell me.” He put his arms around her and hugged her. Maya tried to see herself waking up in the middle of the night with a perfect sentence in her head—all her feelings summed up in a few concise words she could hand over to Jeff. She knew it would never happen.