Alex and Holly Send Their Love

Dear Matt,

Attached you will find a payroll check from UMD for $319.02. 

I’m not sure if you know this, but you can change your mailing address online with USPS for 99 cents. Just a gentle suggestion. 

I thought about tossing all of it. That would have been easy, relatively speaking. There were other signs of you I could not throw away quite so easily. I could not cut down the oaks where you hung your hammock, though I find myself in the swatting mosquitos in the backyard far less frequently now. I tried to remove the hook on the front porch for your bicycle wheel, but it wouldn’t budge. And I couldn’t afford, of course, to move out of Gainesville, which I can ironically no longer separate from you, though you’re long gone.

And so the mail kept piling up on the entryway table— statements from USAA, marketing materials from Santa Fe, those fucking New Yorkers that you never read, but felt so smart leaving around the house—until one day, the pile got so high, it fell on the floor. The dust-print (or I guess, absence-of-dust-print) it left on the table was unreal.

I know that legally, I’m not supposed to open your mail. Really it should be legal, like common law privilege, or something. But there was no way I wasn’t going to comb through your heap if I was going to send you anything at all. I’m not buying a pack of manila envelopes from Walmart just to send you magazines you’ll inevitably leave out on some new second-hand coffee table, to make some new girl think you’re smart, thoughtful, and the type of person who knows what’s happening in the Manhattan performing arts scene.

I figured the check was the only thing you cared about, so that’s all you get. I’m honestly surprised you hadn’t messaged me for it yet, but then, maybe never interacting with me again is worth three hundred bucks to you.

So that’s what this is supposed to be about, that very pathetic two-week (I presume) payroll for a very pathetic (almost) man. 

But really, it just gave me an excuse to tell you about your cat. 

Because she is, and always will be, your cat, as much as that probably grates your eyeballs to read.

Do you remember the day you brought her home? I’m sure you do, though you would probably rather forget.

It’s raining out, because, of course it is. Around 3 PM, middle of August. I’m sitting on that nasty pink and green floral couch we got off Marketplace when we first moved in. My butt’s on a towel, because that couch is always moist, no matter how long we use a hair dryer on it.

I’m wondering where you are. You left for Aldi two hours before, and it never takes you this long to come home.

I focus on the books on our wall, meticulously color-coded to serve as a consolation for the lack of art. When you leave, this will make it impossible to separate my books from yours. 

I tell myself that you’re fine, you’re grown, you’re allowed to take a ridiculously long time if you want, while in the back of my head I’m thinking, What if he got into an accident? What if some guy gunned him down while he stopped for gas? Because that is always where my head goes. But I know you remember that.

Finally, I hear the rattle of your key in the doorknob, just barely louder than the rain and occasional thunder barreling into the roof, shaking the windows. And in you come, struggling to push the door open on the slightly-uneven floor. You're so wet it looks like you went swimming in the gutter. Your back is toward me at first, but I can see that you’re carrying something. Something requiring more care than cheap groceries, something not to be swung from side to side with the carelessness of canned chickpeas.

And then you turn around, and you’re holding your gray Penn State sweatshirt, except it’s soaking wet so it looks more charcoal. 

Before I can stop you or say anything you put the sweatshirt on the couch, making the molding fabric even wetter than it already is. And the sweatshirt opens up, like a giant fake present on a game show, where the sides fall down to reveal the car (yay!) or the pack of goats (haha, dang!) on the inside.

This particular present reveals a little ball of brown and black and gray fur. It doesn’t immediately register as a real, live kitten. Until it stands, and starts to shake, and starts to cry. 

“Why this one?” I ask. It’s all I can think to say. Our neighborhood, poor and grad-student-ridden and always warm, is filled with semi-stray cats. Humane societies pick them up to spay and neuter them, and old women in peasant skirts leave food out by the many churches to keep them well-fed. I don’t understand how you can single out just one who’s worth rescuing, who’s worth breaking boundaries and rules and not calling ahead.

But then, the kitten starts hobbling over to me. It’s clear that one of its front shoulders is busted. And so you don’t answer the question; you let the cat answer for you. Which is a very you thing to do, although I don’t see it that way at the time.

“I was thinking we could call him Alexander. You know, since we found him in a hurricane.” Hamilton is, of course, all the rage.

“This isn’t a hurricane,” I say. 

“Tropical storm, same thing.” It isn’t even a tropical storm, I don’t think, but I drop the point. 

You know I don’t want a pet. When we agreed to move in together, I told you very firmly. I don’t want a pet. We can’t sustain it, can’t afford vet bills and extra food and flea medication. I’m working two jobs and I know I don’t have the energy to commit to an animal. I barely have the energy to commit to you. 

Even though you are just as busy as I am, juggling a masters program with a sub job at Lincoln Middle, you see that cat, and you don’t think twice. You take the cat in and say we’ll figure it out as we go. Simple as that. As annoyed as I am about the cat, I find this charming. I think it shows a deep sense of empathy, if occasionally misplaced.

But then, I take Alexander to the vet. “It’s actually an Alexandra,” she says. They still spay her the same day, even though the appointment had been for neutering. Neither of us had stopped long enough to check if the cat had balls. The vet also looks at Alex’s broken shoulder, which will apparently heal on its own. Thank fucking God.

I tell you, repeatedly, that I don’t want a cat. That I don’t want to get attached to something we can’t afford to care for, to commit to a stewardship I can’t handle. 

You make concessions. The cat is not allowed in our bedroom. You waste no opportunity to tell our friends that this is my rule, that if it were up to you, Alex would have full and complete rule of our home. 

You say that I will never need to clean the litter box. But then, it becomes so filled with piss and shit that Alex starts shitting on the kitchen tile near the back door, pissing on the area rug my mom sent us as a housewarming gift once I agreed to find a place with you. And so I shovel shit, I vacuum and stain-remove, I buy Febreeze.

When you first said you loved me, I didn’t say it back. We had only been on four or five dates, only slept together once. It was fine. We were walking by the plaza after dinner at Dragonfly Sushi—an over-priced, ornate affair which would give me gnarly food poisoning hours later—when you took my hand. 

To be fair, it was a beautiful night, warm with a light breeze. Even though it was late May, you could still smell jasmine in the air. The cicadas hummed all around us. I was wearing a sundress; you were wearing that tan button-down that reminded me of Indiana Jones. It was the type of night where you’re supposed to say you love someone.

You took my hand in yours. It felt clammy, but I knew it was my own sweat. I love you. You said it so simply, so effortlessly, I wondered if you’d thought about it at all.

At the time, there was something radical about how easily you could give love. How it seemed to flow through you, seamlessly washing over everything in your path.

I don’t love like that. My love is weighed. My love is measured with coffee spoons. My love is a conscious choice, as much about feelings as it is about capabilities. I do not promise love I can’t deliver.

I don’t remember how I responded when you told me that night. I probably did something lame, like thanking you, or apologizing that I couldn’t say it yet.

But I do know that two months later, when I was finally ready to say it back, I was so full of love for you that I cried. We had gotten takeout, and we were eating at the kitchen island in your old apartment.

You smiled. I love you, too. You went back to eating your veggie burger. 

It only recently occurred to me that you didn’t realize it was the first time I had said it.

Alex is cuddled up on my lap as I type this. I’ve got my laptop on the coffee table, and I’m sitting on the new couch I bought all by myself. It’s from IKEA, so nothing too crazy, but I did buy it new. And it isn’t even the cheapest line of couches they sell. It’s royal blue, and it’s covered in Alex’s hair, and I absolutely love it.

She’s lost weight since you left. I don’t know how much you were feeding her, but it was too much. I didn’t realize how overweight she was until she wasn’t anymore. There’s something almost abusive about letting a pet get fat. Her whole personality has changed. She seems younger. She actually plays with the toys my sister got for her. She really likes that little lemur that was always under the TV. I don’t know why we never bothered to move that. It was covered in dust bunnies when I finally reintroduced it to her.

I might be biased, but I think she’s happier.

I let her sleep in the bedroom. We spend so much time together that keeping her out felt arbitrary. She wakes me up sometimes, but it’s a small price to pay for having a companion through the night. She actually cuddles up to me—imagine that.

It was always sort of scary to me, how easy it is for you to let go of things. To sever ties. How little thought moving out of your old apartment and into a place with me was, even when you lived with your best friends. How short that conversation was. How moving across the country for college meant so little to you. How you never visited home if you could help it. How you spoke of Pittsburg with such disdain, such superiority. Such focus on the poor air quality. How in the three plus years we were together, I only saw you call your mom twice.

I’ve lived in Florida my whole life. Maybe I’ll leave one day, but I know I’ll mourn it if I do. 

I’ll mourn the impromptu visits from my sister, which you so very subtly hated. I’ll mourn the brunches with my family and the paddles down Rainbow River. I’ll mourn jasmine season and citrus season and maybe even lovebug season. I’ll mourn the Black Church music creeping in from down the street every Sunday morning, the interspersed preaching of the pastors, the hot plates offered on neighbors lawns paired with Diet Coke courtesy of sunhat-clad Ms. Tana at the end of the block. I’ll mourn our little blue cottage, the cactus outside blooming prickly pears in September. I’ll mourn the time I spent with you.

I’m not quite sure if you know how to mourn.

When you got into your Ph.D program, your plan—our plan— wasn’t even a conversation. Maybe that’s why you hadn’t told me you applied. You knew it wouldn’t be up for discussion. That this would be a chapter of your life that didn’t demand my input.

You told me we could take a break, if I wanted. Or maybe we could try long-distance. I didn’t believe you as you said it, and I don’t think you did, either. 

This was the opportunity of a lifetime, you had said. I would regret asking you not to take it, just as you would regret asking me to give up my life here to come with you. 

How very kind of you to consider my life like that. How very thoughtful of my plans. A move—that I could never handle, but ending a relationship with the man I thought I’d marry? Not even a question.

The craziest part is that I absolutely would have followed you. If only you had asked me. Just as staying together wasn’t an option you really considered, breaking up was never on my radar. Because when I love somebody, I fucking mean it.

But I think what pisses me off the most is not that you left me, that you ran off with no remorse for the three years we’d spent together, the home we built. Not that the life we shared could mean as little to you as my high school romances meant to me.

What pisses me off is that you picked up this damn cat all those years ago, and left her in my home like she’s nothing more than an old set of dishes.

I lost it when you told me. I acted out of character. You said that your new apartment complex doesn’t allow pets. You shrugged like you just told me that the Gators lost yet another basketball game. It’s a bummer, but you’re a dumbass if you expected anything different.

I told you to find another fucking apartment complex. You reminded me that you were going to be a full-time grad student, so you couldn’t afford another complex. That really, you don’t have time for a pet anyway. 

Which is what I had told you. Two fucking years ago.

I always got the sense you found me cold. I struggled to get on with your friends, to feel comfortable with new people. You’re just an introvert, as if it was an illness for which I couldn’t be blamed. An unfortunate flaw of my character.

But as the cat purrs under my arms—reaching a paw out now and then to stretch her little body into a more comfortable position—I know that this is a better way to be. That my love, slow to flow, but thick and full and maybe even suffocating when it does, is infinitely superior to your gaseous adoration. Your love leaves no trail.

I would never, ever have left you like that. I would have fought for us.

I’ve tried to recall what fears had prompted the No Cats in the Bedroom Rule. Was it allergies I might have? A premonition of hairballs on the comforter? Fear that the cat may sit there, traumatized but transfixed, watching us have sex?

I can’t remember what it was, nor can I remember ever asking you to kick the cat out of the bedroom. I can’t remember wanting the cat banished from the bedroom. 

Which leads me to believe that maybe, I had never in fact wanted the cat out of the bedroom. Rather, it was your imperfect solution to a problem entirely of your own creation. It was how you’d make me feel like I’d won, too, without you losing anything at all. You are no victim of circumstance. 

Alex says fuck you.

Yours, 

Holly