Fissures
Everything began with a tube of dried-out lipstick.
The cat pulled it out from under the fridge.
Julie and I nicknamed the cat The Inspector. She was new and so was the house. We moved in after my third miscarriage, when I was bleeding and desperate for a fresh start.
The Inspector sniffed our old things with suspicion, especially the framed embroidery—a wedding gift—that said Katie & Julie Forever.
Julie had not wanted children when we met. For me, she’d been willing to try.
I had come to suspect she was relieved things had turned out this way.
The dried-out lipstick belonged to neither of us. It was fig flavored.
“Must be a former tenant’s,” Julie said, tossing it in the garbage.
“Unless you’re having an affair,” I joked.
“No mistress of mine would wear fig-flavored lipstick,” Julie retorted.
We hadn’t slept together in months.
The Inspector could reach into spaces we couldn’t see.
Crevices between sink and dishwasher. Openings between stove and counter.
“Who knew our home had so many cracks and gaps,” I said. I was holding an unfamiliar pen the Inspector had surfaced.
The Inspector leapt onto the counter between Julie and me, knocking the pen out of my hand.
Julie was already moving out of the room. These days she worked late and took dinner into her office. She fell asleep on the couch and showered in the guest bathroom.
“I’ll get some caulk this weekend,” she called over her shoulder. “Fill in the fissures.”
But she kept forgetting, and so the fissures remained.
Every day The Inspector found something new.
An earring excavated from beneath the sink.
A frayed dog toy pawed from under the fridge.
One day, she found fragments of expensive-looking china.
The next, a yellowed pacifier.
“They left a lot behind,” I said to Julie, holding the pacifier. “The former tenants.”
I was in my frayed robe. She was sending emails. I put the pacifier in my mouth; she didn’t notice, and so I took it out.
“Probably didn’t get their deposit back,” she said. “Or this stuff is from multiple tenants.”
“The past and present commingle beneath the fridge,” I said.
My capacity for this sort of analysis was one reason Julie married me. But she didn’t laugh or ruffle my hair. She just replaced her earbuds.
I wondered when I’d first ceased to charm her.
For a while, The Inspector brought us nothing.
She sat, crouched and vigilant, staring for hours at the shadows beneath the heavy mahogany piano.
The piano had been a selling point. Neither of us played, but I thought its presence was romantic. I fantasized about duets. I daydreamed of lessons side-by-side.
Julie thought we could sell it. “We can put away the money for a new fridge,” she said. “Or a deep-clean of the place.”
For days, the cat stared into the dusty darkness beneath the piano and I stared at her.
“Maybe we have a mouse,” I said to Julie.
“You worry too much,” she said, before disappearing into the office.
After she locked the door I heard her exhale, relieved in her solitude.
On a winter morning, The Inspector dropped a human finger beside our bed.
I screamed. What else could I do?
Julie was in the office. She didn’t run to me—she walked.
“Is that real?” she said.
It was a pinky finger. There was a tiny tattoo of a palm tree on its knuckle.
The tattoo was badly done—blurry at the edges.
The skin looked all wrong. Like the finger had been detached from its owner for a long time.
But the fake nail was immune to time’s passage.
Gel manicures are indestructible.
The fingernail displayed a sunset in miniature, the darkening sky dotted with tiny rhinestones.
“Let’s get out of here,” Julie said. She grabbed my wrist. It was the first time we’d touched in weeks, and my heart began to pound.
We left the pinky on the floor and called the police.
When the policewoman showed up, I was trembling.
Julie hugged me like it was an inconvenient obligation.
The policewoman was rotund and impatient. She asked a lot of questions as she followed us upstairs.
When we got back to our bedroom, the finger was gone.
“Maybe the cat ate it,” I said.
The Inspector was always trying to eat onion skins and other things I dropped while cooking.
“Maybe it was a fake finger,” Julie said. “We didn’t get too close a look.”
The policewoman rolled her eyes. “You couldn’t tell?”
“My wife worries,” Julie added. “It’s possible she panicked.”
“It was a real human finger,” I said. “I know it was. It was right there. It was real.”
“Maybe it was a finger made of cake,” the policewoman offered. “Like for Halloween.”
“Halloween isn’t for months,” I said. “And who makes cakes that look like fingers?”
“The cat has been pulling out a lot of old things,” Julie said. “Could’ve been from last year.”
“It did not look like a cake finger,” I said.
“It looked more like cake than flesh,” Julie said, exchanging a glance with the policewoman.
“Jeez,” said the policewoman, “now I want cake.”
Julie chuckled, and I said nothing.
After the policewoman left, The Inspector slunk out from under the couch.
She looked at us with green-eyed suspicion, as if we had tried to sell her pelt.
“Did you put the finger back where you found it?” I asked The Inspector, kneeling towards her.
She ducked out of my reach.
“I need some air,” Julie said. She left.
She was gone until the sun sank behind the buildings. I ate dinner alone.
What happened then? We continued living in the house.
Our silences stretched longer. We kept our different hours.
The Inspector avoided us. She brought us no gifts.
We left the horrible mystery undisturbed at the center of our shared life.
We left it there for so long we forgot we had once lived without it.
Couples performed their easy closeness in the supermarket. They were grotesque with their handholding and intimate whispers.
I became a gel manicure fanatic, knowing that if I died, my nails would live on.
And then, one night, The Inspector went into heat and ran away.
She didn’t go far. A neighbor picked her up along with her kittens. He called the number on our flyer.
Julie said the neighbor could keep the cat.
“The Inspector was not meant to stay with us,” Julie said. “I want to travel. Pets complicate that. This is a sign. She is a free spirit. I am a free spirit.”
“I want to settle down,” I said. “I want to try again.”
“Try again for what?”
“You know,” I said.
“Well,” Julie said, “I booked a trip to Spain for the summer. I’ll be gone for a month.”
“Just you?”
“Just me.”
I didn’t know if The Inspector was a free spirit. But I didn’t want to subject her to the mysteries of our house any longer. Maybe she, like me, was trying to forget.
Summer is here now. Julie is gone.
I see The Inspector in the bay window of that other house sometimes, curled around three orange kittens.
She looks like a different cat. They have a soft teal bed for her, and the bed is embroidered with her new name. When I see her she is always sleeping.
She is fat, and weary, and no longer, apparently, searching for anything.
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