By Karen Lesli
Salmon Arm, BC
“She’s here, you know, she sleeps in my bed, right under here.” She pats the bed by her hip. “Sometimes the cook brings fish for her.”
There was no cat that day, nor the day before that, and not tomorrow. Not in the bed.
“Her name is Whisper, and she also whispered, “because she’s so quiet.” Her German accent made it Visper. I questioned neither the cat nor pronunciation.
But I learned the storyline. She’d married late, both compliant to family expectations, without romance. Following the commitment he announced the move to Canada, to Montreal, where she spoke neither language.
Clutch a bushel of balloons, around you, the lightness of family, friends, community. “Pop,” you’re married, and “Poof,” they’re gone. Call that emigration.
Though finances were good, business kept him on the road. Occasionally she went along, but boredom followed.
“She found me. One day I opened the door and she came in. Just like she was home.” I’d heard the story often, her right hand demonstrative, her left hand quiet, like the cat.
“She came so quickly, jumped on the chair, like this,” her arm scooped the air, “lick, and then she was sleeping.”
My role was to listen, believe, and to acknowledge the cat as her constant. Warming her empty marriage bed, purring for memories of balloons.
Then, a comfort while she sat by that bed, her husband dying, quietly. Whisper at her feet, there for the exit.
Whisper tucked in close when the neighbour peeked in to find the woman sprawled, unconscious. At the siren sound Whisper streaked under that bed never to be slept in again.
When I met her, with V for Whisper, she’d lost everything: husband, home, dignity, not the cat, for her, still the cat. One Wednesday, she pulled me in close,
“My cat, my Visper, she’s going.” What could I say? I had no balloons. Friday I looked for a reason not to visit, made excuses in the elevator. The door slid open. Yes, the bed I knew well, now stripped bare. So quietly, Whisper must have said, “Let’s go.”
Whisper,
Copyright © Karen Lesli, 2020
So poingnant. Made me weep.