Seven

An electrical signal travels down the headphone wires, triggering the cone to vibrate, creating sounds. The vibrations translate into four cellos in Katie’s brain as her ears relay the raw data of the vibrations. It’s her second favorite cello quartet and her favorite piece by them, the theme from The Magnificent Seven. The beginning is full and thick with harmony, and then one of the cellists drops out to pizzicato the almost-syncopated bassline. The three other cellists break apart from the synchronized harmony to each fill a position in the score, but all melding to create a vivid sound picture of hired guns saving the day in Old Mexico. Two of the cellists rejoin each other, one plays the high melody while the other harmonizes a third down. Katie can see each line of music in her head from the sound, but the piece is so magical to her that the technical knowledge of how the harmonies are created does not dampen her enjoyment.

Relaxing into the music, Katie opens her eyes, wondering when they fluttered shut. It’s time to get to work. But doing what? The day before a friend had sent her a message about her writing, after reading the first few chapters of her work in progress. The glowing assessment is still swirling in her head, as well as the urgent plea. Write, write, write. You may never get a chance like this again. It isn’t verbatim, but the sentiment is there, crashing over her conscious in waves like the ocean. Katie hasn’t seen the ocean in person, but she’s seen the Great Lakes, and it was the largest mass of waters she’d ever seen, so Katie amends the mental image in her mind. The words are lapping at her mind, rolling in, like the morning tide she saw beating the beach in Vermilion, Ohio.

What was I doing? Oh yeah, work. Stop getting distracted.

Katie hesitates, unsure. She needs to get back to work on her novel, but she’s a touch stuck. On the other hand, she also wants to start a book review blog. It is part of her self-improvement campaign, Operation Be a Better Writer by Being a Better Reader: 2011 Edition.

I might as well make the book blog. I have a book to review, after all.

So she opens a browser and logs onto Blogger. While she sets up the new blog she ponders what to say about the book she needs to review. She loved the book, but that hardly makes for an interesting blog post. It was a love story between an American girl sent to a boarding school in Paris for her senior year of highschool and the American-French guy who was raised in England living in the room above her at the school. Katie suspects the realness of the unreal circumstances is what she admires about the book, but isn’t sure all her love of the novel can be attributed to “realness.” Besides, when does real life have purely realistic circumstances? As Sir Arthur Conan Doyle said, “Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent. We would not dare to conceive the things which are really mere commonplaces of existence. If we could fly out of that window hand in hand, hover over this great city, gently remove the roofs, and peep in at the queer things which are going on, the strange coincidences, the plannings, the cross-purposes, the wonderful chains of events, working through generations, and leading to the most outré results, it would make all fiction with its conventionalities and foreseen conclusions most stale and unprofitable.”

Katie’s life doesn’t feel real sometimes. Every time she tries to explain the happenings of the past year she sees her listener’s face grow more and more confused. The look of total shock and disbelief which dawns over a person’s face the second, third, or even fourth time Katie repeats herself is her signal that the person has finally started to grasp what she’s saying. It is all a bit fantastical, but it’s the truth, at least as near as she knows it to be. Her mom walks in the room, breaking her reverie.

“The vet called.”

Katie perks up, yanking off her headphones.

“Is he okay? What did the vet say?”

Her black Labrador, German Shepherd mix named Jake got sick while He was watching him and everyone thought he was going to die. Katie didn’t want to lose one more thing in her life. Especially since this one could be her fault. The dog had gotten into a box of rat poison the day before going to say with Him. However, all her frantic research said the amount her dog had ingested would have little affect on a dog over fifty pounds. Jake didn’t get sick until he’d been with Him for a few days. Katie knew dogs have a much faster digestive track than humans, which is part of the reason they don’t get sick from eating all the gross stuff they eat; their bodies dispose of the food faster. So the poison should have been absorbed sooner, Katie should have seen the effect of the poison the day it happened. Not when she got back from working on the new house to find her dog passing blood in his urine, huddled in the back yard in the sub-zero temperatures.

Katie listens as her mom relays what little information he vet has to offer. Jake seems to be fine, most of his ails, like favoring his hind legs, seem to be from old age, not disease. But, the vet concedes, Jake doesn’t seem to be a complainer. He’s being given medication for his stomach and sent home. Katie smiles, feeling encouraged.

“He’s been so much happier since we picked him up again” she says. Her mom nods.

Katie wants to kill Him. This is just the latest in a long line of neglect and abuse perpetrated against her pets. They had a beautiful, white Turkish Angora cat with a blue eye and a gold eye. She was the sweetest cat and completely deaf. He kicked her in the head every time he caught the cat inside after Katie, her sister, and her mom left. He never let Katie’s personal companion, a special needs Border Collie, Shetland Sheepdog mix named Lilli, or her sister’s dog, a little Jack Russell Terrier mix named Jadzia, outside to use the bathroom, leaving them locked in their crates and yelling at them for barking. Jake’s companion, a black Lab named Jewel, ran away because she wasn’t getting the love she needed. Katie sighs unhappily, remembering the way Jewel used to lean against people, even while walking, after being rescued from the animal shelter, as if she was weary of the world and needed someone to lean on. The crazy, little Calico, Tonks, ran away for the same reason, but she stayed close, adopting the next door neighbor.

Katie hated herself for not being able to do anything about it the first couple months. She didn’t have a place for the pets to go. But eventually she found them homes, good homes, and now all of them were placed, those that hadn’t run away. That’s what was so unhealthy about Him. He made her hate herself for the things He did. Not fair.

Katie wants a pet, something to love and care for, and something to love her back, giving her care simply by being there. There’s no possibility in her mind though. Dogs and cats need a stable home, and Katie can’t offer that. She gave up on rodents and hermit crabs, and knows she can never have a reptile while in her mother’s home. Not that she’d want one anyways. Okay, maybe if snakes didn’t eat mice she’d be interested. Despite her hatred of mice in the house, she can’t bear the thought of feeding them to a predator. Maybe I’ll get plants. I can commit to a plant or two.  Katie is reminded of a boy in her English class who described the room he’d left behind when he went to college. According to him he had filled it with plants as well as the back porch just off the room. He talked for almost half an hour about his plants. Plant Boy is now synonymous with Cat Lady in her mind. Well, Katie will just have to be tasteful about it, maybe a few fanciful terrariums for growing moss to decorate her desk and a couple airplants to hang from her ceiling. Tasteful. Though none of the little plants would be as beautiful as her rosebush at His house, the one she’d nursed for years, growing it into a large, strong plant. It had a bumper crop this year. Katie could pick a dozen deep red roses off it a couple times a week. It was still flowering when they left to get away from Him in October and now it was ratty and covered in rosehips. Katie wished she could prune the plant. If the rosehips remained, it would go dormant, putting all its energy towards nurturing the seeds rather than making flowers next spring. But maybe taking a season off to nurture new growth isn’t a bad thing. Katie resigns herself to a summer without roses.